Only Certain People Matter, No Respect, Integrity, Service or Excellence - Accounts Payable Assistant CBRE Employee Review

Aside from the office itself, everything else in my experience was very poor. What happened to me at CBRE was a real shame because I felt things could have been very different if others had just been able to act like the civilised and professional adults they claimed to be. After roughly a month in my role I was already having serious problems. I had started the job and had received direct training on the various tasks that I was meant to be undertaking. I paid attention in these training sessions and made detailed notes on the steps I was supposed to take. I then carried out these tasks under supervision and asked questions about any elements that were unclear or open to interpretation. Those training me, having witnessed my work, were more than satisfied that I was performing well, one of these people was a director of the company as well. Despite this, after about a month of working in the exact way I had in the training, I received an email from my line manager telling me that I was getting lots of things wrong. I was surprised by this as I could not think what mistakes I had made and assumed that possibly something had been missed in training or I had not understood something. I answered the email to find out what I had been doing wrong but my manager never replied and so I just carried on based on the information I had in my notes. But this experience really damaged my confidence and made me feel like a failure before I had even got going in the role. Surely if the manager had seen mistakes they would want to tell me what they were so that I could address them. I was very put off as time went by as this was a recurring issue with the manager's feedback. They liked to use the word "wrong" a lot and just tell me that I was getting things wrong. However, they were rarely specific about what these things were and rarely provided any constructive and corrective feedback that I could use to improve. I worked in this role for nearly 2 years. In that time my actual line manager went on maternity leave and was therefore temporarily replaced by another, and higher level manager. The higher manager would conduct my one to ones and give me better feedback. In fact, in all the time that they were my supervisor, the majority of the feedback that I received was overwhelmingly positive, with only a few minor suggestions for improvement being made. All of that was great. Obviously hearing praise is always nice but even better was to hear that specific constructive criticism so I could understand exactly where the manager wanted me to change. I was happy to hear that because it meant I could keep getting better, doing more for the company and it showed that this manager was actually interested in supporting me. But when my real line manager came back they just went back to the same old negative tactics, just telling me stuff was wrong, I made mistakes, things were poor, all just really demoralising stuff with no real purpose to it other than to bring someone down. How could it be that after nearly 2 years in the role I was still getting all these things wrong? Why did the more senior manager not pick up on these so called mistakes? How could I have kept the job that long if I was really that bad? I wouldn't have made it through the probation period. The longer time went by the more I started to see that my manager was playing office politics. They had favourites and clearly did not like me and so did everything they could to undermine me, even making false accusations about me and showing me no humanity whatsoever when I was very ill at one point. I'm not sure why they took this attitude. I think it was because in the office I would not just always go along with the nonsense that was taking place. In this job you were routinely asked to lie to suppliers and be deceitful. You had to deliberately hold back information and be unhelpful on purpose. But I did not care about that. I just told the truth and tried to get things done right and efficiently. When some of the other people in the office were talking nonsense and too busy playing office politics to focus on the work, I would point out that the team was suffering and that the work was falling behind, We very much had a toxic team where certain people were to speak and others were to be seen and not heard, we did not matter. Only the input of some people who were seen as more important was to be heard, the rest of us were just supposed to be quiet and go along with whatever they thought. But I would never do that. I had as much right to take part in my work team as anyone else and was going to contribute positively no matter what other people tried to do. I received a backlash for this behaviour and was treated differently in the office. People started being rude to me and just blanking me when I tried to speak to them. They would walk away from me and would refuse to answer my emails and Teams messages. On certain queries where we needed to work together they would not collaborate with me which meant we were just not on the same page at all, resulting in several botched and muddled jobs which impacted our relations with our clients, it was quite embarrassing really. Then came the insults. I had to put up with all sorts of nastiness from people who took their jobs far too personally. I was openly mocked and laughed at on a regular basis. People made fun of my appearance, my personality, said that I was this evil person who would commit crimes, called me an abuser for no reason and routinely discriminated against me because of my religious beliefs. I was threatened in writing with workplace bullying and complained about it. Because I expressed a concern about not being able to carry out a new task because of lack of training my manager took this as some kind of personal insult and called a rather hostile meeting where they basically tried to make out like we were in conflict when we weren't. Another time I happened to disagree with a colleague on a work matter. That led to another meeting where the manager said we had to clear up the "animosity" between them and me, even though there wasn't any, we were simply having a discussion. Everything was just made into a big drama to sustain a narrative of them being the reasonable and decent people and me being this bad influence who was just stirring up trouble and looking for issues. But I was the one on the receiving end. Mostly I was pretty quiet at work, just keeping to myself and wanting to do a good job. But when you are being threatened, facing religious discrimination, being clearly persecuted and treated differently, shouted at on the phone, sworn at, being slandered and misrepresented by people, eventually you have to say enough is enough and take a stand. I tried to let as much as possible go but felt I had to report the three individuals who threatened me, discriminated on religious grounds and openly mocked and laughed at me. The other stuff I tried to move past but those three went too far because with those actions they weren't just being unpleasant or a bit difficult anymore, they were getting into the territory of unlawful and potentially criminal behaviour, On that basis, I felt I had a duty to report as without someone doing so I could see that the behaviour would be legitimised and would then spread like a cancer. Unbelievably, me reporting the shocking behaviour of others became another reason to criticise me at a future one to one. Somehow, my completely biased manager was able to spin the narrative to say that I had brought all of those incidents on myself and that I "gave as good as I got". I want to be clear for anyone reading, I can promise that at no point in this role did I ever commit any kind of discrimination, swear at anyone, shout at anyone, insult anyone, laugh at anyone for who they were or threaten anyone. Neither did I commit any action that could be seen as workplace bullying. I want to say all that to be clear that I was a decent person at work and refute the slander of this manager who was trying to make me into some kind of almost pantomime villain like figure. Instead of saying I "gave as good as I got", the manager should have said that I did an admirable job or standing up to wrongdoing at work and that it was good of me to report behaviour that was clearly not in line with the supposed company values. I have every right to go to work and feel safe from personal attacks, whether verbal or physical, and to know that I can express and practice my faith free from prejudice and discrimination, all of this is enshrined in law and CBRE are not above the law, even if they falsely believe themselves to be. The end result of all the constant negativity, exclusion, bullying, pointless feedback that just made me feel like a loser was that my mental health went into a sudden and rapid decline. I started suffering from anxiety and depression and just after Christmas 2022 I attempted to commit suicide. Thankfully I survived that attempt, although I suspect that many of the people I worked with would wish that I had been successful given how much contempt and coldness they showed me. As I tried to recover from this life altering event, I found the process very difficult and in April 2023 became an alcoholic. After some time I was able to improve slowly but surely. I stopped being an alcoholic and, although I had some dark times along the way, my mental health has improved. I haven't made another suicide attempt since December 2022. In the midst of the hardest period, i was still going to work, trying to learn and get better. This was very difficult for me and some days I found myself having multiple panic/anxiety attacks. I did not want to show weakness in front of my enemies so would leave the office to have these episodes before they were noticed. Because I did that, I then faced comments on my return that I was wasting time and just "hiding in the bathroom" instead of working, how ridiculous. No one cared and no one made attempt to find out why this might be happening. Several times I went to roof of the building, which was very high, stood on the edge and considered jumping off. In their eyes I guess I wasted more time there and when I would step back from the edge and instead phone the workplace counselling service or Samaritins. The ironic thing about all this was, you wanted me in the office, doing more, working hard, learning, or at least that's what you said. But then your behaviour pushes me to the point of suicide and to a mental health state where I probably was not even well enough to be at work, so therefore there was no way I could possibly be my best. And rather than see the person behind the professional and this character you had made up in your heads for me, you just kept pushing, being harsh, being cold, showing me no warmth or humanity and then you had the audacity to say that working at CBRE was "all about relationships". You should have practised that instead of being hypocrites. After being mentally destroyed by working at CBRE, the story has a happy ending. I have much better job now, the best job I have ever had, I am married now and my wife is expecting our first child later this year. I want my story to be a message of hope for anyone in a similar position. Even though you can't see any hope now, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Be strong and keep going. God bless you, good will defeat evil in the end.