Hello everyone, I am writing this as an opportunity to vent. I can't express enough how upset I am by this whole situation. I am sorry this is long I just need an outlet to let this out.
I am a recent graduate with an Associates Degree and got the opportunity of a life time. I was offered a job as an operations manager, $70K a year. I thought it was a little odd they offered me the job when I have barley any experience but pushed that aside to be excited for my future which would be able to start sooner.
The job started and they never really trained me. My boss used to be an operations manager 4 years ago and he would half teach me things as he would go along. He was also a new hire and stated that he only took the job because he was promised a full team (Most AV event companies are insanely understaffed and rely on outside labor a lot.) He seemed like he was very excited to shove everything onto me so he didn't have to worry about it anymore. This is when things started falling apart immediately. I wasn't able to function at full capacity quick enough for him and he began getting very frustrated. He left me in charge of a huge event on my third week, I made a pretty large mistake which caused us to lose money. He immediately came at me sating that the General Manager of the hotel wanted me fired and that my job was in jeopardy. Ever since then every mistake was met with a lot of frustration and passive aggressiveness. When I would apologize for making mistakes he would get angrier and told that my apologies “Were annoying”. He called a higher up to talk to me saying that I need to talk less. I don't have an issue with talking to anyone, I don't have friends here, they believe if I talk less then I will listen and learn better.
This was my first month. After this busy season started and I was working 6-7 days a week 10-18 hours a day. This hotel is also incredibly unorganized and the hotel will sell events with barley any notice to us making things incredible stressful and last minute. With more mistakes happening I keep being told by him that higher ups are saying “I'm not up to the job” or “Don't have what it takes”. This has been so detrimental to my mental health. I have never been someone who is really affected by stress but this started to make me loose sleep, and I started feeling like I needed to vomit when I would think about work. I couldn't focus on anything because I was always anxious of the mistakes I could have made that I didn't realize, when I got home or had a day off I would just lay in bed and wait to be called to be yelled at.
This all came to a peak two weeks ago. I had huge plans on a Sunday, I am a very big fair person and was dying to go to my towns local fair. I was talking about it since I got hired. Well the day of the fair comes around and people having an event needed more equipment that they originally ordered, equipment I only know how to set up. I am okay with this and figure it wont take that long, I go in and set it up relatively quickly. (Side note the equipment I have to set up is a 60amp power distro which you need a certification to set up. I was never certified but my boss made it very clear that he doesn't care and expects me to set them up because he showed me how to do it quickly one day. You need to be certified because if you do it wrong it could kill you. Every time I expressed anxiety about this he never cared.) After I set it up and am getting ready to leave another group orders more equipment that needs my attention because all of my guys already working were very busy doing other set ups. This takes an very long time to set up and trouble shoot. When this is done one of my employees calls me to tell me he can't come in that night to train and do set ups with our brand new employee of two weeks. I don't want to leave this kid alone with a huge set up and by himself so soon so I decide to stay and help him out. I ended up working from 7am-11pm.
The next day I arrive at my usual 7am. We have a huge set up that night and me and my boss talk and realize that none of our guys can really be trusted alone to get this set up done without supervision. All of our employees are relatively new, the most veteran among them has only worked for about two months. So I am somewhat coaxed somewhat agree into staying to make sure they finish their work until the end of their shift at midnight. The entire night goes off very well until the very end, there is something critically wrong with the video set up we did and none of us can figure it out. At the point where all of us were completely lost was 1am when I decided to send everyone home. I text my boss, who was already going in early the next day, that there is something very wrong with the set up and I need him to help fix it the next morning. I also want to make sure I am there to help, I hate leaving my mistakes for other, so I will also be there for 6am to help him with whatever he needs. I get home around 1:40am and sleep until 4am when I get up to go back to work. My boss is furious and is ripping me apart all morning. We need someone to sit in the room to assist our new employee run the event. I volunteer hoping to make up for what went wrong the night before and my boss having to fix my mistake. My employee running the event had no idea what he was doing and I had to fix almost everything that went wrong and run the event myself. I was screamed at the event coordinators the entire time.
12 hours later the event ends and I walk into my bosses office saying I need the next day off, he obviously very annoyed says “okay” like it doesn't make sense. I have a call with HR that basically goes nowhere. When I return to work he has a meeting with me saying that everyone at the event says I was horrible at my job, had no energy and “Wasn't cut out for this line of work”. He also says he is writing me up, I kinda go off on him saying how ridiculous this is and a lot of the other things that frustrate me with the way I am treated here. He relents and half apologizes but continues to explain that if he was in my position none of this would have happened and I should have know how to handle it better. But ultimately he never writes me up, I think he still plans to but it hasn't come yet.
The week ends and I work more very long shifts. I am so exhausted I get very sick and am bedridden. This was last week. I call out the entire week, talking to HR to explain why and hoping for a follow up on out initial talk about how I am being treated at work. They tell me they will give me the week but will not talk to me until I return. I express how I would really like to talk immediately and they completely ignore me. I have never felt so much anxiety and a such a sense of dread in my entire life than in that week. While in bed I applied for a lot of jobs and interviewed on zoom for some, no bites yet though.
I am back at work now, writing this at my desk. When I returned on Monday I saw that I had an invite for a meeting with HR and my Boss's Boss tomorrow. Confused I RSVP to see an automated message from my HR person that they are on vacation until tomorrow. I feel so completely abandoned and not cared for. I have made a pretty strong case about the abuse I have received here and think I think I will ask for a severance package at my meeting in 4 hours.
I just can't handle it anymore. I can't sleep, I am just so incredibly unhappy with the way I am being treated. I am not writing this as a cry for attention, I don't want apologies or compliments, I want anyone who reads this to tell me if I am being a baby and should just suck it up. Am I in the wrong? Should I actually leave?