My partner Josie moved to Australia from the US just before the plague hit a few years back. After moving out of my parents house, we found a duplex to rent and started the arduous task of finding her a job in a very tight market. After painfully searching for over 6 months, she grabbed a position as a Finance Officer at a company called Monsters Inc.
She started her training but something felt off right away. Her co-workers were tasked in training her, but they were extremely busy and didn't have the time to give her the guidance she needed. There were not any proper training materials to reference, not to mention the incredibly outdated and complicated software that was decades old. In her second week at Monsters Inc, one of the other Finance Officers quit with no notice. The work was put onto my partner's desk, and she was now just expected to do the work of two people.
Josie took it in her stride, but she was definitely struggling with the huge increase in work. Her new boss (Bad Boss) was also incredibly condescending, rude, and would send her massively complex tasks late in the afternoon expecting them to be done before end of day. Bad Boss would disappear off the face of the planet for most of the work day, not being contactable or able to give any details for the tasks that Josie was asked to do. Details that were given were often incorrect or outdated, and Josie would often be fielding calls from angry clients also unable to get in contact with Bad Boss.
Josie had enough. She was tired of being expected to do two people's jobs and deal with this unreasonable asshole. She compiled a document with supporting evidence and slapped it down on the HR guys desk to make a complaint about Bad Boss's behaviour.
Now before this day, the office had no official HR at all (!!!) and they had only just hired a new guy to start. Josie met him on his first day with her complaint. HR took the complaint and investigated, he managed to shuffle her workload around and disciplinary action was taken against Bad Boss. The document Josie compiled was so comprehensive and iron clad it couldn't be ignored. The other Finance Officers were ecstatic as they had all had issues with Bad Boss. Josie was practically the office hero, no one had had the courage to stand up to management in that way before. Surprisingly, the HR guy quit after his second week with no notice, and the office was back to having no HR at all.
Josie found this very disconcerting, as did I. The office had a culture of the senior management protecting one another and not liking people speaking up. Josie has a habit of speaking up over injustices which is one of the many things I love about her. We were a little on edge about how this would play out, and we were right to be concerned.
Some months pass and Josie has a fantastic performance review, she is happy with her workload and her current boss is very reasonable with their expectations. Then one Monday afternoon the CEO calls her in for an impromptu meeting, one on one. He tells her she needs to shape up, she has two weeks to “turn it around” and all her work product is absolute shit. Josie brings up her excellent performance review, which was done only a couple of weeks ago, but he doubled down and started berating her about her terrible work product. No, he could not produce any examples other than one typo in a large document. CEO also brings up the fact that no one has ever complained about Bad Boss in 20+ years and how dare Josie bring that to HR. There was no one else in this meeting, and nothing was placed in writing.
Alarm bells go off for both Josie and myself. After reading her employment contract together we realise she wasn't being given a chance to improve her work product as the CEO implied; on the contrary, CEO had tacitly given her a two weeks notice (warning) ahead of firing her. She is technically still in her probation period at this point and they need to give two weeks notice of termination, but can terminate her for any reason. Josie springs into action and applies for a few positions. Not 10 minutes after submitting an application, a recruiter calls. They have a meeting scheduled for that Wednesday.
During this time the CEO at Monsters Inc has started giving Josie a pile of complex tasks and proceeds to bring her into his office to scream at her about the most benign miscommunications. For example: She underlined parts of a document instead of circling things, she asked for help from another Finance Officer to complete a task she hadn't done before and she “shouldn't need to ask for help” etc. He was also purposefully trying to isolate her from colleagues who had all started to distance themselves from Josie. A few weeks back Josie requested a WFH arrangement like many of the other staff have. The CEO hated this and just used it as fuel for the fire.
Josie spent the rest of the week being a complete outcast. No one would speak a word to her. The rest of management was terrified to even look at her, I don't believe they've ever considered that their abusive behaviour towards the staff could come to bite them in a document like Josie had presented to HR. I've always considered Josie's writing powerful, but seeing it make the whole management team shake in their boots was incredible.
Wednesday comes and Josie goes to her meeting, filling in the recruiter on why she needs to leave ASAP. Well the recruiter was practically foaming at the mouth at the idea of placing her. She informs Josie that the market has dramatically changed since last time she was job searching, and companies are currently DESPERATE for staff, particularly in this field. She sends a list of jobs Josie would be perfect for, all with significantly better salaries and benefits. Josie picked the one she liked the most, went to her interview the following Monday and gets a job offer that afternoon for the position. She resigns from Monsters Inc only a few minutes after accepting her new job offer with no notice. Monsters Inc will now spend months looking for for someone to fill her position. Meanwhile, we are enjoying a much needed holiday together and toasting to Josie's new job, which starts when we get back after Easter!
Josie is currently doing all the onboarding for her new job, which includes a ton of anti-bullying and other workers' rights policy videos for her to work through. There is a proper HR department, and the people have all been so lovely and respectful to her already. New job even insisted on paying Josie just for showing up to the office for a two-hour orientation because they respect her time.
Always back yourself up, gather your evidence and Cover Your Ass. You can be your abusive bosses worst nightmare! I am so proud of my girl for sticking to her guns and standing up for herself.