I worked for two months at a position that left me traumatized. I was constantly having panic attacks, but I couldn't quit because I needed the money.
Thankfully they fired me and I could collect unemployment. I really wanted to write a review on Glassdoor because my experience was so horrible. Even now I am constantly second-guessing everything I do and believing I'm stupid every time I make a mistake whether it be a typo on my resume or that I put the silverware in the dishwasher the wrong way…
I waited until I got hired somewhere else before I wrote a review. My former supervisor was super petty, and I didn't want them to do something to mess with my unemployment or to keep me from getting hired somewhere. But I'm still afraid of retaliation.
Below is the review I wrote. I saved it in a Google doc until I'm ready to post it. It's pretty clear that this was me, though. I actually cut out a LOT of details from this final draft, and it's still clear that it's me. I want everyone who applies there to know what happened, but I just have these nightmares of my old boss finding out and calling my current employer and doing some petty garbage.
Does that happen? Am I paranoid for no reason? I mean, this is a woman who wrote up an official document reprimanding me because I wanted to use OneNote and she didn't like OneNote, and made me feel like an incompetent idiot because I had to stand up from my desk for two seconds during a Zoom call and close my office door because there were housecleaners at my house.
Anyway, here's my review that I'm afraid to post:
Headline:
Most stressful job I've ever had
Pros:
The salary was decent, one person there was nice to me.
Cons:
The position was a bait and switch: The job description and the job itself were completely different things.
Micromanaged, work heavily scrutinized and mistakes called out in front of team members.
Communication with the supervisor was muddy and condescending and made me feel like I was stupid, which made me afraid to ask for more help.
Asked to do tasks I had no experience with and was reprimanded when I failed to do them well with very limited training.
HR is not a safe space. When I went to them for help because I felt I was being bullied (I was having panic attacks all the time and stomach aches because of how I was treated), I was told that was just the supervisor's management style and there was nothing they could do about it.
Advice to Management:
Micromanagement is a form of bullying. Employees should not be made to feel stupid, and when they are, it should be taken seriously by HR and not just brushed off like it's an okay style of management. Micromanagement has been proven to have damaging effects on employees. The administration needs to have something in place to keep this from happening.
The job description needs to match what the actual job is. I was being asked to perform customer service and data analytics duties, for which I had no experience and never said I did.
I got the impression that my supervisor felt that customer service was a simple job that could be done by anyone, which is an elitist attitude that needs to be abandoned (along with micromanagement). Customer service is a special skill, one that I do not have. Be honest in the job posting, and don't title the job one thing when what you really want is a completely different thing.