Hey everyone,
I'm here to share my story, and if you're interested, you can read along. I joined this company about a year and a half ago as an intern. It was my first job after graduating, so I wasn't exactly experienced in standing up for myself. My cousin, who is friends with my boss, referred me for the position. He often advised me about how going above and beyond could help me climb the ladder. I took his advice seriously and put it into practice.
Initially, I really liked working here. There were five of us in the office – two bosses, a colleague who's a coordinator, the cleaning lady, and myself. The job they were doing aligned with my interests, and I was trying my best to learn everything I could. However, despite my efforts, I never received any significant tasks or responsibilities directly related to their core activities. I was given guidebooks, presentations, and random assignments that weren't directly relevant to my field (Logistics). I learned a lot along the way, but I wasn't getting hands-on experience in what I was really interested in.
Around six months in, I was assigned to prepare some paperwork for a contract. I completed it, but they claimed it was taking too long due to some legal issues with their status (which turned out to be a lie). Additionally, I started noticing a change in their behavior towards me. They began ignoring me, stopped giving me tasks, and became dismissive in their communication. They would speak in coded language, and I later learned that my boss had been spreading rumors about me to create a reason to fire me. It was a terrible situation because I didn't have much to do. Even when I asked for tasks, they would brush me off with vague responses like “come back later” or “let's finish this later.”
I found myself in a situation where I had a lot of free time. I began taking online courses and reading PDFs to keep myself occupied. Sometimes, I'd use my phone or even doze off because there simply wasn't enough work. Fast forward to 10 months in, they finally informed me that the legal issues were resolved, and I was asked to prepare the paperwork again. I signed a 24-month internship contract (previously, I didn't mind staying without a contract since they were paying me $500 per month for the first nine months).
As time went on, I started getting some real tasks, but they weren't particularly interesting. Still, it was a start. In March 2023, my colleague (the coordinator) privately informed me that she would be leaving in a few months. She felt that she wasn't learning much and there were no growth opportunities. Despite being with the company for five years, she hadn't gained much experience or seen a significant increase in her salary ($950). They often asked her to do tasks unrelated to her role, like running personal errands for them – grocery shopping, mail delivery, even coffee runs.
At this point, my colleague started sharing all the negative things that were being said about us behind our backs. We all grew to dislike the bosses and used our lunch breaks to complain about the way they treated us and the overall work conditions.
In June 2023, they hired a new employee for the position of “manager” with a salary of $1600. They emphasized that she had 10 years of experience in the field (Spoiler alert: it was a lie). We welcomed her warmly and treated her like a part of our 'work family.' Little did we know, she was taking notes of every conversation and observing everything that was happening behind the bosses' backs.
When my colleague left in early August, the new hire secretly contacted my boss during his vacation and reported everything she had witnessed and overheard in the past two months. She even twisted the truth to make us sound like lazy workers. Just a week before that incident, they increased my salary to $800. This new hire then called my boss and claimed that I had yelled at her, expressed discontent with my salary, and even said that I hated the job (I do dislike the salary, but I had never discussed it with her). She reportedly told my boss that she had a cousin with three master's degrees who would appreciate even $500 and work harder than some other people.
I had no idea about any of this, so I continued interacting with her as usual. The following week, the bosses informed the cleaning lady about what had happened, and she shared everything with me to warn me about her. This marked a shift from a friendly office environment to a toxic one. They called a meeting to address the situation, but they didn't share the details of what she had said about us, nor did they allow us to explain ourselves fully. They simply warned us that they didn't want to hear about any more “snitching,” and that severe measures would be taken if it happened again.
To make matters worse, they installed cameras all around the office, with three of them pointed directly at me. The atmosphere quickly changed from friendly to suffocating. The cleaning lady and I stopped talking to the new hire and didn't acknowledge her existence unless it was work-related. Our lunch breaks turned into sessions where we complained about her, even though we were being recorded by the cameras. At this point, it felt like we had nothing to lose.
What bothers me the most is how my boss handled the situation. Instead of addressing it professionally, he scolded us like we were in middle school for something that wasn't entirely our fault. It's worth noting that this new hire had also clashed with clients, sending emails in languages they couldn't understand just to annoy them. Many of the agents we dealt with despised her. She had told us that she changed jobs often because of the “flexibility” she desired, but we later learned that she had been fired from her previous job due to accusations of theft. She had bragged about her role in handling money outflows and managing finances, but she lost that job under questionable circumstances. She even threatened to expose confidential files she still had on her computer.
P.S: for reference avg salary here is $300.
P.S 2: My tasks now are more interesting and I have a bit more stuff to do but not as much as I would like so I am currently looking for a change.