(Sorry for the wall of text.)
I was unfortunately placed on a PIP. For further context, I have severe anxiety, depression, and PTSD, which I all take medication for. I work in a very open, what seemed friendly environment, which encouraged frequent talks about these things. My manager opened up about their mental health struggles first and we got to the topic of medication. I mentioned that I felt like my current medication affects my memory. This prompted them to suggest weening off of my medication quite a few times. Sometimes this was brought up during 1-on-1's without me mentioning it.
I decided to take their advice and ween off of it at the beginning of July on the 1st (with the guidance of a doctor). Within the first 4 days of July, I made two mistakes on our project. One which was a decision error and another was a typo (it was an important and unfortunate typo dealing with refund wording). To further elaborate, I work as an email-based agent for a streaming provider. For the decision error, (and I hope this makes sense) if a customer requests assistance with payment on our site and Stripe (our payment processor) has blocked the charge, you can unblock it for them so they can make their purchase.
However, you can only unblock certain charges with specific labels/decline errors. If a charge is blocked by a person's bank, you shouldn't unblock it. There are certain charges that are marked as fraudulent that you can indeed unblock. A person's bank marks the card as fraudulent but because it has the fraudulent decline error, it's okay to unblock if the customer requests it. I unblocked a charge via Stripe to help a customer with their subscription purchase (it was $52 and per their request) because it looked similar to a fraudulent decline error, so I assumed I was handling it correctly. Their bank blocked the charge originally.
My manager knew I took this action because I left an internal note on the email stating that I had – nothing bad came out of this email. Later on, it was explained to me that as a possible scenario, a customer can reach back out claiming we unrightfully charged their card because someone reached out as them. (It's an email job, this can happen with any case but this was the reasoning provided to me.)
For the typo incident, I denied a refund request but in one sentence I, unfortunately, used the word “does” instead of “doesn't” when attempting to state, “it doesn't ensure you receive a refund”. The customer caught this typo and used it to push for a refund. The entire email was worded like a denial but with this typo, they were later refunded.
I had a required meeting with two other senior managers requesting more information about why the mistakes were made. I explained the medicine situation and that my decision-making and ability to catch mistakes were down. They made it seem like they would let HR know, they didn't. During this meeting, I specifically asked if I would receive a strike for the secondary incident (typo) and they said it doesn't count as one. Later I received paperwork from HR stating that it was a strike (they don't read the specific emails in question). Additionally, the paperwork had past meeting dates for performance issues that never occurred. The wording for the strikes were also worded in a way to make them appear worse than what they were. I didn't sign it and no one ever asked about it again.
The manager who issued the strikes told me not to go back to HR about them because challenging them could result in me being fired. She specifically stated it was a power play thing and HR will let me go for pushing it. She also mentioned sticking her neck out for me to stay and questioned why would I push things further. She said if I were to ever tell someone that she said not to go back to HR, she would immediately deny it. This manager has since been promoted and I have a new manager but again, the PIP is still active.
I really like this job. The benefits are great…and it's a very convenient job to have. I can't decide if I should stay (due to new management), leave (I have a company who wants to hire me in November but it's a pay cut), or go back to HR to mention the issue regarding medication at the time. My manager has scared me from going back to HR…while things are seemingly fine, I am restricted with a few work duties due to the PIP. What should I do?