My team was created over a year ago with two new people, myself and someone else under our manager who used to do this job for a few years.
After a few weeks, this new colleague decided it was too much pressure and quit (we are in Quality Assurance inside a pharma company and the level of pressure is insane, so I understand her).
I was then alone handling the workload of 2 people as they looked for a new hire. Fine.
The 2nd person comes in and starts not only giving me a headache because I had to coach them (less than 6 months into a very complex job, def not feeling ready for it), but also creating trouble with several employees due to sexism, including shushing a female coworker during her own meeting. There is a personal improvement plan in place so that this behaviour would change, but the person decides to quit. So there I am again doing the job of 2 persons as they look for someone else.
A 3rd person is hired and this time I am part of the interviews as they try to “get it right”. Things go sort of slow but still, tolerable. Again I am in charge of coaching with no slack in relation to my own workload.
This new person has their own guidelines on how to do the job, but insists on coming to me for questions due to wanting to not interact with our manager that much (even though our manager is mostly nice).
A few weeks ago, our manager discovers that this coworker had been lying about a specific task, and basically evaded most of our shared workload for weeks saying they had been busy doing this other thing, which was completely untouched when it got checked. Again, I was covering for someone else – unwittingly this time.
I am “fine” at first, but one day during work after I have a few cappuccinos, I almost have a panic attack. That night, I couldn't sleep and on the next day I realized I wasn't stressed about the specific tasks from work, but about this entire context from the start, especially this coworker's lies and the fact I have covered for the company's incompetence in hiring people who are fitting for the job.
As I struggled with my anger towards this coworker (who continues to ask me the most basic things non-stop), I ask my manager about a raise that had been discussed previously, as a recognition of how I have supported the team. This is then discussed with the business manager, who turns the narrative completely against me saying:
- I blackmailed them for mentioning I have received offers from other companies (I simply mentioned thinking there was room for negotiating, it was never a threat)
- My salary is “already very good” (I am a foreign worker and the government demands that a minimum is given, and this min is more than the country's minimum wage)
- “No other starter has a salary as good as yours” (again, it's the min the law demands for a foreigner)
- My manager didn't have the same start salary as me, so the BM spun the narrative to make it personal as if “I won over my own manager” if I got a raise – as if we had the same amount of years of experience, studies, and of course ignoring inflation… and I see during my meeting that my manager took it personally that I wanted more, as if it was not fair that I would have it when in the past, the start salary was lower.
- I have “only achieved what was expected of me” and therefore “no raises are justifiable” unless there is a change in position, which I thought I had as I am being trained to be a second manager – they say that if I am good, within one year this position change *might be considered*.
Knowing that before this meeting with the BM, I have only received compliments not only from my own department and others, but from my manager herself who acknowledges I put up with a lot during this crazy turnover sequence… and that I have indeed one other company sending me job descriptions constantly and another colleague in a higher position in another department who has met me several times due to “an interest in my profile”… I am trying to hold on to my silver linings, but my sleep and guts are already feeling the effects.
I feel devalued, betrayed and tossed to the side. Being a foreigner to them is clearly a point to use against me when in fact I worked a lot harder than the average citizen from here to get to where I am, since my teenage years, multiple jobs at once. Yet now I am being painted as the heartless villain because I think I deserve more.
I saw a doctor yesterday who already told me I could get some time off work to get better. I have two chronic conditions but have tried my best to be “productive” even on my worst days in the hopes I could continue learning and helping more, with fair compensation of course. But this tone-deaf company seems to want to drag my self-esteem through the mud and use the fact that I am a foreigner to make me feel worse.
What hurts more is that a few weeks ago my manager was telling me proudly that other coworkers told her “you won't find another person as good as them (me)” and now the narrative is inverted. I feel crushed.
Edited for typos