This is gonna be long-winded, so apologies. But curious if anyone has been in a toxic work environment and how you handled it. Note this is all from my perspective, and I am 100% aware a company/HR has their own perspective.
I started a job around 8 months ago. It's an ok company, but I was out of work for a while and needed SOMETHING so accepted their offer. I have 20 years of experience, and this job is knowingly (to the company and to me) very junior as to what I was doing previously. I don't think the work or the position was beneath me in any way.
My manager and I have a fine working relationship, but over the past few months, there is an increase of 'nitpicking' and meetings thrown on calendars to discuss what I consider maybe worthy of a quick Slack message. But I digress...it's how the company works so it's fine. It's things like 'you set your Slack notifications to mute for a few hours and that is a horrible look'. As an FYI, I am fully online, but when I'm head down and writing something I don't like to be disturbed. Anyone can message me, it's just that I won't get back to you for a bit. Also we have weekly metrics that are due every week, and company documents state 'share with manager weekly on Friday'. I share mine every week between 5 and 6...but got told that's past business hours. Fine, I can submit late afternoon.
The company also offers free mental health therapy which I think is great. Six weeks ago I scheduled my first session with a therapist and she had to reschedule, so I did. The second try, she just never joined the session. I informed HR of this and they were concerned and stated they'd flag it up to the highest people because that's not great. A month goes by. I follow up several times with HR and no updates. I schedule a different therapist, they cancel. I tell HR. It's now been six weeks and there is no update or resolve.
Manager throws calendar invites on my calendar with no agenda or topic of what it's for. To me, that is incredibly stressful. A couple of months ago, I told her I would appreciate if I had a sense of what meetings were about before heading into them. Nothing changed.
Had a meeting this morning with manager and it all went south. She brought up Slack and metrics and I said those are fair and I'll work on those, but it's frustrating to see that this types of things are huge concerns for employees but mental health doesn't seem to be. She immediately called me defensive and ended the meeting. Was I defensive? I was not happy but I was just being truthful in my stress and frustration.
She threw a meeting with me and her and HR on the calendar for this afternoon. I walked into a landmine. I stated my concerns, and HR person literally rolled her eyes and said she didn't believe me. Then asked why metrics were sent at 6:00 last week and truth be told, I was interviewing for another job, but I just said I was dealing with some personal matters and HR pressed me asking what personal stuff I was going through. I said it was private and don't have to provide that information, and she pressed me again asking specifically what I'm going through. That is, according to my HR friend I chatted with, horrible behavior for an HR professional and actually could be considered harassment.
Meeting ended with HR basically telling me I better put on my happy company face in my next meeting with colleagues, which is basically a threat.
There are countless other examples of red flags I could mention, but these were the straw that broke the camels back. I'm walking in tomorrow with documentation of what I consider a toxic work environment, and submitting my resignation effective immediately.
Am I too soft? I have never felt so disrespected for providing my view of company issues in my life. I'm too old to deal with a work environment like that.
