A few years back, I accepted a position at what I thought was the “dream” job. It was in my niche specialty, in the town my husband and I wanted to move too, and it paid better than any other job in be ever had.
We moved seven hours away and started our new lives. At first I loved it. I loved the work, my coworkers, and the community. But it eventually became clear that my boss was on a different realm of existence then everyone else (it was a team of less than 10 people). Looking back, there were so many red flags that I missed because I was young and naive. My work load kept slowly increasing and since my job description was so vague, I felt like I couldn’t say anything. My boss couldn’t communicate her needs and would get annoyed if I asked questions. She bad mouthed other team members (I should have realized that meant she wouldn’t hesitate to bad mouth me) and sucked up to our board of directors.
Eventually, I was drowning in so many massive projects and when I asked for supports she’d tell me to “figure it out.” I wound up having to go on emergency medical leave and when I got back she formally disciplined me (within the hour). She gave me no notice and I was unionized so I started the process of filing multiple grievances. Unfortunately, I had to extend my medical leave and she refused. She said I could come back to work or quit. Now obviously she couldn’t do that and had a duty to accommodate me, but I was done at that point so I quit. I didn’t want to work at such a toxic place and my husband and I wanted to move closer to home anyway as we didn’t like being so far away. I worked there for a year.
A few months later, my former coworkers (all of which are amazing people) reached out to me. They were filing joint grievances and law suits with our workplace governing body. I wrote a lengthy letter detailing how I was treated and supporting my coworkers. I included 23 supporting documents including emails, texts, union grievances etc. My boss had no idea that I kept every piece of correspondence on my personal email.
Apparently, my boss treated all my coworkers terribly, never communicated and would lie constantly, and she embezzled money from the organization. I wasn’t the only person who left the organization abruptly. Half the board of directors had to resign and my boss suddenly “retired.” One of my incredibly capable coworkers took her place and restructured the whole organization. They’re still trying to recover, but I hope they’re doing well.
My boss is trying to sue for lost wages, but I doubt that she’ll be successful. If anything, she’s going to get in trouble for mismanaging funds. At the end of the day, writing that letter was so cathartic and it felt so good to put that nail in her coffin.