This is an update to my post from a few months ago:
TL;DR: After leaving work for a month, I returned refreshed and renewed. Came back in just the right amount of time to get my decade award and pin, and then gave them all the finger.
I started off by immediately setting a meeting with my shitty dean, and she immediately expressed that me leaving abruptly on medical leave was something I was fully allowed to do, I explained to her that i was well aware of my rights and that i feel like we needed to start fresh. She agreed, called it a clean slate, and i thought that was that. i was wrong.
My clean slate lasted about 5 business days, and on a random afternoon i received an email from her that was a 4 page “Coaching and counselling memo”, which she made sure to tell me was non-disciplinary. in the memo she had written every example in the last 2 years of my refusal to lick her boot, down to even mentioning days where she had been in the building briefly and could not find me. i have no set hours for breaks or lunches, and part of my job includes leaving for errands, so it was damn petty of her to do that.
The biggest point of contention was between myself, the dean, and a new instructor they hired (who is by all accounts the dumbest person I've encountered in all my years in higher ed) who is convinced she doesn't make errors. Well a few months ago she requested some growing medium i had never made before, she gave me instructions, i followed them, and after a few weeks of said medium being on a classroom counter, they grew mold. My lab has an autoclave. i prep for microbiology more than anything else. i never have mold.
Rather than talk to me, the instructor went straight to the dean and said i don't know what I'm doing. dean started a committee to deal with “training me” and surprise surprise, the only two interested in it were the dean and the moldy instructor. Our actual microbiology instructor told them it was not necessary, in this manner: “contaminates are encountered so low that we don't calculate it. less than 1%, totally within the normal range which does not indicate performance error” Dean and Moldy didnt care, they pressed on, and i pushed back.
Well, in this “Coaching and counselling memo” She wrote that she is my supervisor and its her decision. i will be trained by the moldy instructor, 12 full months with end of month deliverables and assignments, and that regardless of the fact that one instructor indicated he encounters a “normal” level of contamination, it didn't matter, it was not up to him.
The memo said i needed to sign it and return to her at our next meeting.
When that meeting rolled around, i let her talk for over an hour about all the things i needed to get done over summer while everyone was away, so that the instructors have everything they need to succeed etc etc…. then after all of that i handed her a two week notice, which to my luck, ended while she was away on vacation for a week and a half.
a few days later she sent me a 3 page to do list, color coordinated, that i absolutely was not doing for her. she wanted every note id ever taken on how to prepare for each instructors class, how to run the autoclave and who i use for services, all my account names and passwords for ordering, every vendor i use and what i use them for, and how to run the greenhouse control units. she wanted me to basically give her everything i had been trained to do before she came along and pushed me out. hell to the naw.
instead, i used up all my sick time, i cleaned out my office, and i wrote a big long fuck you email on my last day. 3 more people are looking for work elsewhere, instructors included. she ruined our division, and i hope she knows its all her fault.
now, i make and sell art from my home. Im the happiest ive been in YEARS. NO. RAGRETS.