I got hired by a non-profit organization mid September. I spent the first four days doing different trainings for four hours at a time. Once they felt I had enough training (which I didn’t), I was placed at the school where I would be doing most of my work.
Since I got there, I have been working my butt off trying to get things running smoothly. I set up a meeting with the front office staff, slowly got to meet the teachers, did additional trainings on my own, started sending out flyers, and doing everything else in between.
Before I knew it, October ended and November began. At that point, I had been sending out emails out to my support team at the school, and will never receive a reply back. I would ask them personally and they were never give me a direct answer. My supervisor started asking me if I knew anything about it and I told her that I was never getting a direct answer.
So this past Monday my supervisor stopped by the school to have a meeting with me. She wanted to meet with me, because according to her sources, I wasn’t doing my job. According to some emails I’ve sent out I was being too formal and not friendly enough. Additionally, I had not been spending much time with the students. How could she expect me to be with the students if I was constantly in meetings, trying to hunt down the principal or the counselor and never getting a response and trying to do everything in between?
So in that meeting, she put together a plan to check every email I wanted to send out. Additionally, she wanted me to start meeting students more often. I made it clear to her that I have been trying to meet with students but it’s been difficult with the chaotic schedule. She basically insinuated that I should figure it out on my own. I can’t do everything by myself if I’m not getting a response from the director or the counselor. And if my supervisor is going to rise every email that I sent out things are not going to get done in time. At the end of the meeting, she said “If things don’t seem to improve by the end of the month, we’re going to have to let you go.“
Since that meeting, she’s been constantly calling me to check up on what I’ve been doing. She’s basically micromanaging me, some thing I’ve been trying to run away from.
After thinking things through, I knew I only had two choices at that point: work under constant pressure and disappointment, and hope they don’t fire me or resign before things got worse. I spoke with my friends and family members, and they all advise me to leave before I was fired for something that wasn’t my fault.
So I recently turned in my resignation letter, and my last day of work is supposed to be November 17th. Can you believe it? They were willing to fire me within two months of my hiring date over something that wasn’t even my fault.
If you’re in a similar situation, don’t wait for something or someone to change. In the end, you only have yourself to depend on.