I think the title explains the post, but I hope I can share one of my experiences that did not go so well in the hopes anybody struggling on here can take some inspiration from it.
So going back to about 2018, one of my old jobs was overseeing the daily picking of orders and managing pulls of product throughout several warehouses. I had been training a new employee for a couple of months to pull orders from a couple systems, and he was doing a pretty good job at the time. However, he had been pulled off on occasion to learn other tricks of the trade, such as assisting with the actual shipping of orders. It was never a problem because it did help him to learn more and be more useful, but it was never his full-time role to begin with. After the couple months I was training this guy, I had a long weekend I was taking off. The new guy was ready to pull the orders himself, but I spoke to the CEO and VP of Operations and told them that I had concerns they wanted to cover the shipping of orders while I was gone. I warned them that as it was not his normal job, I had concerns that he might get overwhelmed and fall behind.
Unfortunately, upper management tended to micromanage their own managers, so I was given no choice but to go along with their plan. Even my senior manager (whom I was good with) agreed on this, but they proceeded with the plan anyway, providing assurances that the new guy would have backup to help him in case things got crazy busy. And so with that, I went off on my long weekend, ready to relax and get away from work for a while.
Sadly, not speaking up more was a huge mistake.
The long weekend goes fine: I didn't look at e-mails and enjoyed my time off. With a long train ride back home, I took a quick glance at my e-mails to see what was going on. After reviewing everything briefly, I noticed that over 3/4 of the orders that came in over a span of 2-3 days were not even pulled. I had no idea what happened, but I busted my butt on Monday in the office to pull the missing orders so we wouldn't fall too far behind, and we were back on track. I didn't hear much from management that day, so I assumed things weren't too bad.
But the next day, Tuesday, I go into the warehouse to manage the orders there, and I'm immediately confronted by the CEO, the VP of Ops and CFO, all of whom are calling me out on not a good manager because the guy I was training fell so far behind while I was gone, so I obviously hadn't taught him well. I was furious because I had not been advised of what the issues were and was being called out for untold reasons. Thankfully, my senior manager stepped in and spoke to them before I blew a gasket. I went about my day doing my work, and I had a meeting with my senior manager later that day to discuss what had happened while I was gone.
As it turned out, the new guy didn't have any backup while I was gone. When I spoke to upper management, they told me some senior people were being pulled for a warehouse project, which was part of the reason I told them that I was concerned that if the new guy didn't have any backup, he wouldn't be in a position to succeed on his own. Turns out…they pulled EVERY SENIOR PERSON to the warehouse, leaving the poor new guy was on his own, and because he had to prioritize shipping the orders out (which was not what he was hired for), he fell behind on the job I was training for. So as a result, I'm getting called out for not training the guy properly, but he wasn't even able to do his job because they wanted him to do something else.
I felt devastated because I had busted my butt to help put the company in a position to succeed, but upper management did not respect the opinions I had. I should have given my notice right there and then, but as I didn't have a new job lined up at the time, I hunkered down and continued working for another couple of weeks before eventually getting a new position and leaving.
The moral of the story: know what you're worth to a company, and do not be afraid to speak up if you know you are being wronged. I failed all those years ago to speak up, and while I ended up moving on to bigger and better things in the end, I left that company with a sour taste in my mouth because I felt I didn't stand up enough for myself at the time.
To those of you I've seen on here who have spoken up to toxic cultures/bosses/co-workers or have stood their ground when being wronged at a job, I salute you and am inspired by you. Never settle for anything less than what you know you are worth!