I'm still trying to wrap my head around how crazy this whole situation is. The tldr version: me and my coworker who are both new asked for the employee handbook, my coworker gets pulled into a impromptu meeting with the CEO and controller to ask why she wanted the handbook, later she sends a follow up email for that meeting with our actual boss CC'd which pisses off CEO and he threatens to fire her over it.
So some background information first, I recently started a new job a few weeks ago but already want to leave due to crappy management and high school drama in an office setting no less!
The first sign something was up was when I interviewed for the job and the interview only lasted 5 minutes and on the drive home I got a call saying I got the job. I was happy but also suspicious why the hiring process was so quick and figured something must be up for them to hire me so fast.
When I started working I was immediately put in charge of the entire freight billing without any training and no support from management so I had to figure out how to do my job and not fall behind on paying bills, which I did because of course.
To make things worse my boss, at least I think he's my direct boss since there's two controllers that I answer to but the one that hired me would be my direct boss I guess, he wants to change the process from how it worked before and wants so much detail it'll triple the amount of work that I have. It was so bad that I had to ask my co worker (who just started a week before me and didn't have a clue what she was supposed to be doing because no one told her) and even with her help we're barely able to keep up with the work.
Here's where the fun part starts though. The top HR lady and the lady controller (not my direct boss) both sit in the next room over and since there's no door between the rooms, me and my coworker can hear every conversation they have and we always hear them talking shit about us and the other controller (my boss) all the time. Any small mistake is laughed at and gossiped about between these two boomers and its become a daily thing to hear them gossiping about us. Normally I would make a complaint about them but since one of them is the head of HR I feel like that would only add fuel to the fire and make things worse.
Now to the main tipping point for me wanting to quit and the reason for the title of this post. Since me and my coworker are new we weren't sure what holidays we had off and were curious about some procedures/rules in general. We never got a employee handbook when we started so we went to ask the assistant HR lady (she works under the head HR chick that talks shit about us) for copies of the handbook. She said that she'll have to look for it since they only give it out when asked for it and she'll get it to us tomorrow. No big deal we thought but apparently asking for the handbook is a big no no.
The next day we get the handbook in our emails but around noon my coworker gets pulled into an impromptu meeting with the gossiping controller and the CEO asking her why she wanted the handbook and if she was happy there. The way she described it was that it seemed like they were trying to intimidate her by holding the meeting a dark room without our actual boss there to back her up. They asked her about me as well, wanting to know if I was a good worker and she responded by telling them to come to me if they wanted to know that (they never did).
During lunch is when my coworker told me about what happened during the meeting and that she felt uncomfortable about the whole thing. I told her to email them to follow up about the meeting so she has something in writing that the meeting occurred but to also CC our boss on the email so he knows what's going on.
She sent the email out after her lunch and an hour later the CEO comes in looking super pissed off. He asked her in an angry tone why did she send that email and that he didn't like that. Before she could even answer he told her to not do that again and that's the last time before he stormed out. I looked over and locked eyes with my coworker and we both shook our heads in shock and disbelief about what just happened.
We couldn't talk right away because we didn't want the rest of the office to hear but we immediately started texting each other that we'll both be trying to get new jobs. I'm still in disbelief this whole thing happened because we wanted a copy of the employee handbook!! I already put in a ton of applications in since I got home but I don't even want to go back tomorrow because I'm just disgusted by the whole experience.
Sorry for the long post and any spelling errors. I could go into a bit more detail but for the sake of trying to keep this post short I'll end things here. I hope you enjoyed my rant and if you have any suggestions or helpful links please let me know. I work in California if anyone wants to post any labor laws or phone numbers we can call that can help our situation.