I apologize for the long rant but I felt like I had to talk about it somewhere. Made a throwaway since I don't want it coming back to bite me.
I worked for a smaller but known company for a few months. I was recently let go because I “wasn’t at the level of efficiency they needed”
I worked on a Team with multiple people; hardly had to work closely with my manager but did work often with Account Execs.
My main job was to assist the AEs and whoever else above them within the sales process using mostly Excel. At the end of the day I know I was getting paid far less than most people in this company and was expected to do hard work for it. Even though there are people in the same city making at least 15K more for the same job title, I took the role to at least get my foot in the door.
The issue in itself wasn’t even the work; It was working with one specific AE.
Everything I did was not good enough for this person. If there was ever a minor detail that was not perfect, they’d bring it up within a three-way group chat my manager was in. I felt like I was this person’s secretary since I had to focus so much on their work even when I had to help other AE’s with bigger campaigns. I had a To Do list that everyone on that team had access to and this person didn’t look at it since APRIL. That was 5 months ago; They never even bothered to attempt to look at my workload and made me feel like I wasn’t up to par if I didn’t get to their thing fast enough.
This same person would take hours to multiple days to review the excel sheets I sent their way and when I would still be waiting for them to review, I would of course move on to other things that need to be done. I decided to start putting the sheets in group chats instead of sending them directly to this person, to at least make it known I’m not the one dragging their feet. Even when I tried to start working on something due on a Monday on a Thursday and sharing within the group, they would @ me saying “XYZ is due to date, is that in a good place to review?” Yes, person, it was since Tuesday.
Even when this person made a mistake, I felt the need to apologize. They worked on something (For once) when my workload was a lot. This person, our manager, and I missed it. I put it into a client-facing doc and missed the mistake. They both still missed the mistake after that was submitted. However, I was the one who caught the mistake after the business was one and I still felt the need to say “Sorry for not catching this sooner” even though I wasn’t the person who made the initial mistake.
Sometimes this person would call me out on “Mistakes” that didn’t even exist. Or If I’m inputting new prices after working with a senior ae who has more control over the cost of things, I’d still be told I’m wrong. I know that when I was good at this role, I was great. However, the stress this job caused manifested physically with headaches and lack of focus, it did take a toll on my performance and I fully own up to where I lacked. I wasn’t able to work on all AE’s business equally since this one person practically needed me to wipe their ass and then tell me I’m not doing a good enough job right after. I worked overtime very often since this person wouldn’t have good time management and it ended up affecting my work for months.
The number of grey hairs I’ve gotten for a job that I’ve worked for less than a year is alarming. I started applying for jobs knowing I was going to be let go soon. I had asked for a meeting with HR, I was initially going to speak on my issues and use the history from teams to share how I was feeling. What set off the warning bells in my head was when I noted that the HR person asked me to come in on a certain day and meet at an exact time. This is fine; however, I can see based on their calendar that they had another meeting scheduled for that time exact time already.
I knew it was coming and I made sure to have everything I needed to return already out in the conference room; even showed up an hour earlier than normal. I wasn’t surprised when the HR person invited my Manager into the room. Even as I was leaving I got a lengthy message from the AE about something wrong I had just sent them. I just deleted the account off my phone without even reading it all.
The biggest surprise? I knew they were hiring another person for the same position. What I did not expect was for the person who was my replacement, to message me on Linkedin the next week and be someone that I have met through mutual friends a few years ago. Glad to know someone's using my connections on there for something though.
At the end of the day, I left that job smiling. Not even kidding, I thought I would be leaving in tears but instead, I had a huge smile on my face. That's when you know it was the right thing in the end. I felt like so much was lifted off my shoulders. It’s been about a month now since my last day and I know I’ll be fine. I believe things happen for a reason; I’ve been interviewing with multiple fortune 500 companies that wouldn't have batted an eyelash at me last year but are now trying to sell me on opportunities. I wouldn’t have found the time to do this; let alone breathe if I was still working for that smaller company.
Just thought we could all use a reminder on one door closing, god opening a window. Not even religious but it's true. I WILL have a full-time job offer by the end of Oct. That's the only thing I know for sure at the moment. Thanks for listening to my rant!