Okay, this happened in 2018 when I was 26. I had just gotten out of the Air Force the year prior, and I was finishing up my bachelors degree. Since I was going to school online and was in the last semester with one class, I figured getting a job would be a good idea. In February of that year, I accepted a position working in the IT department for one of the local county governments in the metro Atlanta area. I was super excited and figured this would be a good experience. Little did I know what I was getting myself into…
I was part of a four-person team answering help desk calls from our fellow government employees. Stuff like “I need to reset my password” or “my email isn’t working” and so on. Things were okay at first, but it did not take long before my boss began to show a side of him I didn’t see in the interview. This man constantly bragged about his 30+ years of experience in the industry and tried to micromanage everything we did, but especially what I did. Every time I turned around, this guy would single me out to do special requests for IT support for users in the county who honestly were not in positions that necessitated VIP treatment.
Within a couple of months of starting the job, I ended up getting sick a couple of times which necessitated me not coming into work. The boss-man decided this was problematic for him, so he decided that my 90-day probation needed to be extended because I was “out too much” even though I had not missed much work. He said these things even though I had brought it doctor’s notes excusing me from work.
We also began to notice how this man played favorites in the office. One time, we were told to send all phone tickets to one of our coworkers who happened to be his favorite. Not long after this, he had a change of heart after she whined in his office about the policy. The same thing happened later when we were explicitly told that this lady was the project manager for a certain upgrade, and all requests were to be sent to her.
Fast-forward to August 2018…six months on the job. I had a disagreement with the boss one day, and he said something I found unprofessional for a man in his position. When I contacted HR to complain, I came to find out that he was adored by HR and pretty much every department in the county loved him because he basically went around kissing ass to anyone he met. So the HR department was not impartial when it came to this man.
Finally, everything came to a head when on a Friday that I had a whole day of endless issues with this man. The following day I happened to check my work email, and he had sent me a message the night before saying that I had been insubordinate all day and that this would be my “warning” before further action would be taken. I sat there and thought about how much my life had become a living hell because of this job, and I couldn’t take it anymore. I drove up to the office, which I had after-hours access to, cleaned out my desk, put my badge on his desk, and sent a resignation email with immediate effect. To my knowledge, the boss man wasted no time having my email account disabled. No responses, no phone calls, nothing from him. I worked for that place six months, six days, and I have never had a worse experience than that.