My boss celebrated my 5 year anniversary with me and my team last week and then served me with a PIP the next day.
I'm not completely unsurprised, as this last year has been an absolute struggle for me personally, but the whiplash is insane.
For context, I work in a small medical office of about 10 people. I am crosstrained for two full positions and I had to learn pieces of another role when we lost a vital team member last year. From August to January, I did my job, financial duties from the person who left, and during the holidays I covered the second position I am trained for when that person was on vacation. My only backup person, our office manager, was out sick for a month and i kept the front desk rolling to ensure patients were taken care of. I also trained two different candidates during that time, one of which stayed thankfully and was able to take on the financial duties.
In February, my coworker that I covered for while on vacation was out for 8 weeks for a surgical procedure and I was told by my boss that I should just focus on managing that position while the office manager took on mine.
(I was also planning my wedding during all of this and trying to keep it out of my head while working but I will admit that it was a challenge and this I do regret.)
Four weeks into this arrangement, my office manager approaches me and admits that she could not keep up with one of the vital reports for my position and asked if I could take it back on. I had begged her to please come and talk to me if there was a problem and she waited a month to tell me she had one.
She also started asking me to come back to the front desk and resume my usual duties every time I was trying to do paperwork for my second position.
At this point, I said “screw this” and started making time to give myself breaks throughout the day because I felt so overwhelmed and I wanted everything to just f*cringe stop.
I cried to my boss and told her I felt burned out. She said they “all felt a little stressed too” and dismissed me. I tried to explain to her that I was really actually struggling and she told me to deal with it.
She makes a remark about my performance in front of the team at a staff meeting. I approach my office manager and tell her I found it inappropriate. My boss meets with me, gushes about how much she appreciates me and how thankful she is that I work for her and presents me with a gift card.
My review comes a month later and she lays into me about being on my phone during those small breaks I made for myself back when I thought I was going nuts and said she had seen me taking it into the bathroom as well in my purse and told me i was no longer allowed to do this. She says i need a better system for remembering details because my current system of keeping sticky notes out looks “messy” on my desk and she hates it. She hems and haws and says she really struggled with deciding to give me a raise but decided to give it to me anyway and I should be thankful.
This summer, I wore dressier leggings, a long tunic top and boots into the office on several occasions over the course of a month. I had worn all of these things occasionally during the previous year and it was never mentioned. She tells me that my attire is inappropriate and unprofessional and asks me to refrain from wearing anything like this again.
We get a new software system and because my boss did not want to pay extra for having the necessary functions set up, we have had to set it up ourselves. It is an incredibly time consuming process and very frustrating as there is a lot involved that we aren't equipped to handle ourselves, so lots of time is spent on the phone, meaning our usual duties don't get finished if we let the software setup take priority.
I just came back from my honeymoon on October 16th, the office manager was gone the week I came back. This Monday, my boss celebrates my five year anniversary with the company and reads a letter to me and all of my coworkers about what a valuable employee I am and how she appreciates my work so much.
Then on Tuesday, I was served with a PIP for having too many instances where I “dropped the ball” and forgot some details of documentation, etc. The stipulations of this PIP aren't quantifiable, just essentially “you will do this with zero mistakes or else”. In the meeting my boss threw her hands up and said she has “tried everything to help me”. She says she “can't understand why you're struggling with the new software and my job at the same time” because “it's not as if you're stupid” and tells me I need to “work harder and get over it”.
My PIP expires in 4 to 6 weeks and if I don't meet all of the qualifications I will be fired.
While I know I also played my own role in this coming about, I still maintain that 1. I wouldn't have burned out and screwed up if we had had adequate staffing to cover us 2. I wouldn't have burned out if my boss had listened to me when I was vulnerable and told her I was struggling and 3. She has the most insane whiplash style management I have ever seen and there isn't anything I could've done wrong that would warrant this kind of treatment after all I've done for her over the years. She loves you, then she wants you gone. It's absolutely wild.
I'm currently awaiting an offer for an interview I had this morning. She will absolutely miss me when I'm gone. 5 years of stepping up when others were sick or when coverage was needed and I should've had better boundaries for myself but it's too little too late. I've done so much for her and I can't believe I have wasted so much of my time here for it to end this way.