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This is horrible, and can lead to you getting fired. Yes, if you want to stay there, document EVERYTHING. But who wants to work in such a horrible environment?
If there is no other option, document everything and get ready for the lawsuit. But if you have a choice, LEAVE! Get a BETTER job. Yes, there are horrible people everywhere, but if you can leave and get a better job, why stay and deal with this stress? It will shorten your life.
A long time back, late seventies maybe, I worked as a truck driver for a multi national oil company, driving 18 wheeler tankers all over the U.K., including Northern Ireland.
There was a guy who worked there as a loader, you’d back under a gantry with multiple pipes and valves to pump varying grades of oils into the truck, and he’d insert the hose, and stop and start the flow.
The loaders worked in pairs, one guy would be on top of your truck, while his partner would phone the pumping station, to say, XX grade is finished, now start YY grade of oil.
One of the two guys who often loaded my truck was from Northern Ireland, he had to take a lot of light hearted joshing, as the IRA was bombing, or shooting people all over the place at the time, but he and I got along okay, and I never said a bad word to him.
Somehow, his co-loader got the false idea in his head that I had said something derogatory about his friend from N. Ireland, this was totally false, and the Irish guy had agreed that it was bogus.
But this other guy wouldn’t let it go, he hated me with a vengeance, and did all he could to get my back up.
One day I returned to the depot with 400 litres of oil that I’d been unable to get into a customers tank, the depot supervisor instructed me to pump this off into two 205 litre barrels.
The guy who didn’t like me was instructed to move the barrels into a store house.
When I came to work the next day, I was told that the depot manager wanted to see me.
He asked me where I’d left the barrels, I gave him a rough idea of the location, and he said that my nemesis had said that they weren’t there, and he had suggested that I’d returned empty to the depot, having sold the oil to a crooked garage owner.
Naturally nothing could be proved one way or the other, and the manager wasn’t happy, but just then another worker came in and said that he’d found the two barrels under a tarp, case dismissed, but bad vibes.
Knowing that I could have been fired over this, it was a catalyst for me.
I drove to the guy’s apartment block that evening, knowing that he was meeting friends to play darts in a pub.
I parked a couple of streets away, and waited across the road.
When he came out to get in his car I said to him, “Bob, I don’t know what your problem is, and I don’t care, but you went way over the top with that caper with the barrels, I could have been out of work because of your misguided stupidity, and I’ve got a wife, and more importantly, two kids to provide for, if you do anything remotely like that again, I will gut you like a pig, and if you think I can’t do it, try me, now.”
He said, “You’re insane”, and got in his car and drove away, but the hassling stopped dead.
The kicker was, years later, I bumped into him in a bar, he bought me a drink, and reminisced about the old working days, without once mentioning his vendetta.
This is why I avoid office and "inside jobs" like the plague that they are. I am a cattle rancher and horse trainer by trade. The one office job I had was an absolute fukkin nightmare. I was not very savvy with how that world works, but thankfully I was smart enough to do everything by email and DOCUMENT. It saved my azz when two people, who were inseparable BFs in the company, decided they didn't want me there after a month of working. This was a $70k a year job in Southern CA that I quit because of this kind of evil lunatic, like it has been mentioned....which was funny btw LOL! I have had some pretty stellar days in my life, but one of top my 5 was walking into mu supervisor's office and telling him in no uncertain terms what a POS he was and that I was giving my two weeks. About an hour later, the HR person came and got me from my desk, handed me 6 months severance check and told me I could go that day if I chose and that I would have a great reference. LMAO!!
My point is, keep your integrity, document EVERYTHING. I learned that people are pretty self and narcissistic. If they don't like you out of jealousy or because you don't "fit" their little sorry world, they can go to great lengths to make your life miserable. I lasted a year there. I was never late and I never missed a day. I was a model employee and that helped. I could see it going down long before it actually did. I did find out through my ONE friend in the company that both those idiots were fired about a week after I left. One guy was stealing equipment and the other was just useless. Anyways, I hope the best for you. The workplace should be just that...a WORK place. I am not sure how all the other horsechit came into play.
I love everything about this post. If we all learned a trade, the world would be a better place. Idle hands are tools for the devil.
When he came out to get in his car I said to him, “Bob, I don’t know what your problem is, and I don’t care, but you went way over the top with that caper with the barrels, I could have been out of work because of your misguided stupidity, and I’ve got a wife, and more importantly, two kids to provide for, if you do anything remotely like that again, I will gut you like a pig, and if you think I can’t do it, try me, now.”
He said, “You’re insane”, and got in his car and drove away, but the hassling stopped dead.
The kicker was, years later, I bumped into him in a bar, he bought me a drink, and reminisced about the old working days, without once mentioning his vendetta.
My first professional job was in a very nice physical facility in a pleasant neighborhood. The supervisor was an older woman. Most of her staff were also older women (55-70, I'd guess). I was 22 and fresh out of grad. school.
What I didn't know when I accepted the job was that five other individuals had held that position during the preceding three years, and all had either left or been transferred at their own requests.
By the end of the first day, it was clear that the supervisor strongly disliked and resented me - and was out to get me. She insulted me, my education (graduate degree), my adjoining native state and people from it, tore down illustrated posters I'd made to advertise my department's services, tearing them beyond repair in the process, and expected me to know everything there was to know about my new position and how things were done at her location without being told.
She tore into me because I asked where some office supplies were kept, sarcastically asking, "What did they teach you in that college, anyway"?
I replied that they'd taught me that each place was different and there was a lot one had to learn on the job (my graduate classes certainly hadn't taught me where she kept the paperclips). My rational answer hardly endeared me to her, of course - but I have never regretted having made that come-back.
After a month of suffering, I went to HER supervisor and asked for a transfer. I was told to hang tight, change would come. So I did, for a couple more months. I eventually got out - the new place was smaller - not great - and was run by another older woman, ultraconservative in the way she wanted things done and thus allowing me little flexibility and shooting down new ideas with "but we've always done it this way". But she wasn't insane - just stodgy - and I wasn't subjected to daily verbal abuse.
I was so glad to get out of that system a few years later, though by that time I had again been transferred, this time to a calm location with sane and pleasant coworkers and supervision - and a fair amount of autonomy. It was reassuring to be able to work there and realize that my previous difficulties were not of my own making, and that I was finally in a place where my work was appreciated and I could make positive contributions.
As a result of having endured that horrible first supervisor, I vowed that if I were ever in a position of authority (which I was later), I would never, ever, ever treat those whom I supervised as she had treated me and others. And I never did.
I am sure I made mistakes, largely in not allowing my assistants enough autonomy of their own in what I then viewed as "professional" tasks which I and I alone should do - I later learned to delegate and became more flexible - but I never screamed at anyone or personally insulted them or was rudely sarcastic towards them.
If anything, I was too lax with a couple of people who tended to slack off and didn't take direction well.
A couple of years after I'd left the first system, a good friend was moved into the same position I'd originally held, under the same horrible woman, and my friend received the same treatment I had received, along with nasty comments about me being their friend and having poisoned their mind about the place. I had been extremely careful to keep quiet about my difficulties there - (difficulties=crazy supervisor), but nowadays my friend and I enjoy a bit of schadenfreude from time to time reminiscing about the struggles of our younger days, and thanking our lucky stars we both eventually got out.
Addendum: My friend and I agreed that the horrible woman must have known where all the bodies were buried, as a steady stream of complaints about her resulted only in transfers of the complainees and she was allowed to remain in her well-paid position of authority. Now, of course, she is one of the "bodies" and I bet no one ever visits her grave - just as no one outside of a handful of her flunkies attended her funeral. What a miserably misspent life she lived...
Yep. Around 1998 I was a department manager and the IT manager took a dislike to me - for no reason I have ever figured out except that I was IT-literate in the days before that was common, and he was a touchy b'tard (with a facial disfigurement) who saw insult in everything around him.
So when he handed over a thick log printout showing I was surfing porn all day - from a workstation in the middle of a bullpen, continually visible to about ten people plus all passersby - I was shown the door. Because, of course, no such thing could be, y'know, faked or spoofed.
The last two years of my career were spent just trying to stay employed due to a coworker undermining me to the point of convincing the VP to replace me with him. Thankfully I was financially able to retire a couple years early or I seriously doubt I would have survived the coup.
There are snakes and weasels in all walks of life, but nowhere as common as the corporate world.
Yes.
Three years of undermining,humiliation,and covert tactics. Documenting it was a joke! She was the exec. Sec to the prez and vp. To report her was to insult them that they don't have good judgement. Yeah,she was ripe,bitter and a poster example of a wolf in lambs clothing.
Can you guys give specifics about what these people did to try to sabotage you? It would give the rest of us something to look out for.
Sure. I once had a co-worker who was "out to get me," mostly because she was mad that I - a young/fresh outside hire - got the position over an existing employee with whom she was friends. Thanks to another colleague who decided (on her own volition) to "spy" for me, I discovered she'd been keeping a document of everything I had supposedly done wrong. Of course, the majority of these things were either outright lies, or easily-explainable misunderstandings/half-truths.
The stupidest part was that she wrote this document on MY computer, since she didn't officially have her own, and forgot to clear her work afterwards. So I was able to access this document via Word, and wrote a very detailed rebuttal to every item she'd claimed. I then beat her to the punch, by contacting our supervisor to arrange a meeting and lodge a complaint... I just ended up leaving that job anyway, but at least I was able to intercept her plan and leave on a good note.
End result: That supervisor and I still keep in touch (she's actually one of my best references), and she later confided that she'd believe me over that "b" any day. I did learn to be much more cautious/guarded around colleagues after that, however, and it took years to even learn to trust co-workers again. Thankfully I am now in a much more supportive environment, and in the 6 years I've been with my current job, have never encountered anyone as conniving or evil as that woman. May karma get her one day!
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