I worked as an HR in a small company a few years ago. Please bear with me because this might me a long one. I know and I frequently see how workers really don't like HR in general because they work to protect the company. For me, it was a shitty job, and I was also treated badly.
So I replaced a person who, in my opinion, tolerated their behavior for years and I wouldn't blame them because that's just how companies gaslight and abuse you into thinking that you need them. That person I replaced was not allowed to leave/resign from the company on a two weeks notice. They were only allowed to leave until they fully trained a replacement (this only worked for the admin jobs because they only had ONE employee each for accounting and HR since it was, indeed, just a small company of 30)
Get this, all the HR's work? It was done by ONE person, meaning the person I'm replacing, meaning ME. This included computing payroll and financial transactions. She stayed for at least 5 months more to train me because the work wasn't easy and if she left, no one will do her job, since apparently, the bosses don't know shit about what we do and they only rely on us to make the company work flow smoothly. It should have been a major red flag from the start before I even accepted the job but it was my first one and I really had high expectations with my career before. I wasn't sure if the person I was replacing just badly wanted me to accept it because she wanted to leave and no one's accepting the job lol. They even tried to convince me that even though the work didn't pay much, it had a LOT of responsibilities which would be good for my resume in the future, which was you know, a load of bullshit since I still needed money to survive.
As I said, it didn't pay much, at least on my part because the workload should at least be for two people. It was a minimum wage job (which was not a livable wage in my country) but it increased 5% every year.
The work was generally okay for me despite the pay and the 48+ hours per week, but the thing that really made me push to give this company their own medicine was when I noticed that this one boss feeds off of humiliating her employees. As someone who didn't have anyone to help me with work since I'm alone, some mistakes I make can really fly out of my head since I had too much on my plate and I wouldn't notice if I did. I know mistakes aren't an excuse, but you can't help an employee do it right if you humiliate and step on them every chance you get.
At first, her quirks weren't really that big of a deal, but these “quirks” in the long run were masked as abuse. She'd humiliate and scream at me for mistakes that can be remedied immediately and be reprimanded privately, would call me just to summarize my work responsibilities for her just because she wanted to even though she already knows it just to “test me” (which steals me a load of time to do more important stuff), would humiliate our company driver and belittle him just because he was one (she's a hard elitist and would lowkey shame us just because we weren't as rich as her) and they would normally make him work outside his normal work hours just to assist them with family matters, and would just be all around aggressive with every small changes and mistakes we make around the office. This one time she called me outside of work hours (which can be done and said the next day) and even had to harass my co-worker to get my personal phone number and called me while I was already eating dinner.
The thing that broke me down was when she screamed at me when I made a mistake on this one detail with paperwork. It didn't have too much of an effect since I computed and put the correct total on everything, I just mistakenly wrote the solution wrong on a different paper and she went full mad and screamed at me until I cried and went immediately home. My co-workers and I agree on everything about her because they too were getting treated this way for years, they just didn't have the guts to leave. And they were the only ones I had to confide to because they understood so they helped me go home. (this wouldn't be the case later lol)
I think her behavior went more full on when I told them I needed to adjust my work hours to go to therapy (i was currently going generally bc of how I was treated at work and I had a few symptoms of PTSD that needed to be treated before I got actually diagnosed). I shouldn't even be telling them that I was going since it's personal and they shouldn't be meddling with it but since I had no other free time, I had to extend work hours in the middle of the week to have a half day. They were kind enough to let me but the worse thing here is that they'd even ask details about why I was going (which shouldn't be). I think I was also stigmatized around the office because I felt like they were treating me as if I can't function well enough to work just because I was going to therapy. But the truth is, I was really functioning well more because of it.
That time, I already told them that I'm resigning and I was willing to stay for a few months to train somebody and replace me. When she knew about my sessions, she went full silent and never bothered me again, which was odd because why would you just stop treating me badly once you knew I wasn't coping well? She didn't just stop treating me badly anymore, she didn't talk to me for months. When she needs something from me, she'll just email me or ask my co-worker to talk to me. I had the privilege to still seek help despite everything so I'm very grateful for that. It just really felt off especially she was a psychology major and she should know better about treating other people right, even on the bare minimum. She already knew she was the problem.
I was so close to forgiving them until she went back with her behavior once I found a replacement. I really thought she changed, turns out, she was just “tolerating” me bc she knew I'd get “triggered” immediately bc of my mental condition. My trainee was good and she didn't mind all her quirks (bc she was currently still with me and she still wasn't full on with her 'quirks'). I warned my trainee with her behavior bc I didn't want to leave the job to her not knowing what I went through. Until one time she insulted my trainee with how she was raised at home in front of me and our other boss. It was uncalled for, and wasn't necessary since we were just having a small meeting and it wasn't related to what we were talking about. Even if it was related, she shouldn't bring up how a person got raised and insult her in front of everyone. My trainee already noticed her behavior before, it was just her last straw.
We had a huge confrontation bc of that and we needed to close doors because the both of us (my trainee and I) snapped. We cried and screamed everything we needed them to hear for the longest time. The whole argument was just the very last straw for the both of us because she just spun the blame and gaslighted us “for being too sensitive” and that it wasn't her problem anymore that we didn't like how she was treating everyone. Even tried to find a way to spin our contracts against us that we weren't allowed to leave without a replacement and told us it was against the law to leave (which was not true) even though I already gave my resignation a few MONTHS ago. Did she really think I didn't know the laws on labor? As an HR officer?
To add salt to the wound, one of our co-workers even threw us out under the bus and told that her behavior “was a part of the job” even though all of us agreed and vented out on each other about our problems with her attitude.
I already reached out to a union and was really ready to take legal action because I thought she'd still not let us go despite the huge argument. I already knew that they were not allowed to hostage us into staying, I just didn't have the guts to leave immediately.
Long story short, we both quit immediately and no one was left to do our work but them, who again, didn't have no fucking clue about what their employees do. And yet they'd still treat them like garbage.
Really sorry for this long post. I just didn't know where to let this out lol. I'm just glad I had the chance to tell this.