Where do I start? Firstly, I had only been there for a month and realised how toxic the team was within 2 weeks and how unprofessional the manager was.
At first I thought it was a joke when he would say things like "you can easily be shunned from the group if you don't fit in, it's not intentional it just happens".
Sadly this wasn't a joke. He would gossip regularly about other members of staff on Slack and because I wouldn't join in, I was accused of not making an effort to talk and not fitting in with the group. Every morning he would moan about something, whether it was about his health, the weather, gossiping and slating someone from another team or how his grinder dates aren't working out. Everything was always a negative start and it becomes draining to constantly listen to someone moan every morning.
Insufficient training was given to me, while I tried my best to get everything done to a high standard which I hold myself accountable for. Then out of nowhere I was suddenly under performing and blamed for the past SLAs not being met. Things escalated very quickly and I only heard from others that I was supposedly underperforming.
All of this bullying happened just after I didn't take a 4 hour trip to his home for a weekend group BBQ. So it doesn't take a genius to figure out this was a personal attack on me, but tried to get me on underperformance as you still need a good reason to let someone go on probation.
Senior management was made aware of this behaviour and was even shown evidence of gossiping and saying nasty things about others (who I didn't get a chance to know), but instead of disciplinary action he got a slap on the wrist and talking to for his unprofessional and discriminative behaviour.
I've worked for some of the most reputable companies in the past and worked with truly great management who help others to grow in every aspects of their life. I've always excelled in every job I've done and with a track record of achievement, to then be told I'm underperforming within 4 weeks of work, I'm not going to accept that. If this was the case, why was I asked to also create the new starter training along side my daily tasks, if I'm so bad at my job?!
When I needed help, they were off on private meetings to discuss their weekend meet up and thought I didn't know what they were up to. Instead they opted to pretend to me and say they were in a meeting with the manager about work. But yet I was the only one not invited to this team meeting and their calendar said "to discuss BBQ".
I was being micro-managed from behind the scene and only told afterwards that every email I've sent to clients were being monitored, which would explain how someone who wasn't in on the day knew about an email I sent to a client first thing in the morning.
The feedback I received was "I've been sneakily checking on your emails but they seem good so far" this came from my colleague who has the same job title as me. (The manager's puppet who went along with everything the manager said because according to my colleague, he's "the best manager". Either he's never experienced what the best looks like or he's genuinely treated well and considering I was the only person of colour on the team, makes me question whether this has something to do with the preferential treatment).
How patronising! I've been in the industry for over 10 years with extensive customer service experience and you think I can't compose a simple email?!
Why was I even hired in the first place if you don't know how to trust or motivate your staff?
Further insult to this, was it was the managers style to "bring you down a few pegs so you don't think you're good at your job". If you think this is a motivational tactic, you don't deserve to be in any form of leadership! Hence the reason why I've left. I will not be treated in this way to think you're motivating me by degrading me and thinking I'm just going to say 'yes master'.
Also I doubt the feedback system is anonymous, because everytime I would feedback improvement ideas, the manager would be off-key with me on that day. In a small group of 4 when the manager's best friends with each person except me, makes it obvious who would of wrote the feedback.
They say they embrace feedback, but instead you're scrutinised for it. Others who were best buddies on this team, thought they'll chime in on strategy "get her on under performance", as one of their friends (on another team) thought she'd give me feedback twice in a row and add someone on my team to the conversation. Now why would you feel the need to add someone else on the feedback you're giving ME specifically? Clearly staff need to be trained on how to give feedback and next time ask if someone has the time or in the right mind to receive your feedback.
First feedback was cc'ing in a group email when sending out a particular email. When I asked her what email should I have added? She claimed she would have added in the email address herself so no need to know which email address. So why bring it up as feedback to me! Then later that day her feedback was "next time can you place this document under this folder, instead of the general folder". OK so again why did you need to include one of my colleague in on that simple feedback? Clearly they were talking about my 'underperformance' and she was doing her bit in trying to make me look incompetent.
And just for the record, just because on paper I don't have a managerial title, doesn't mean I don't have leadership skills. I could do a better job than this so called manager, but my aim isn't to be in management and instead I advocate for my fellow colleagues rather than pulling them down. But I will not stand for anyone trying to pull me down! I have way too much respect for myself.
Fortunately I know my worth and I know when there's poor management. I'm not going to continue to waste my precious time or my wellbeing for somewhere that doesn't care about their employees and rather stick up for toxic humans because they've been there longer.
This was also clearly reflected in their pay offer. I took a pay cut AND had to work extra hours compared to my last job. I did this because I was duped into thinking this would be one of the best culture and team I'd work with.
The manager did mention "How would you deal with difficult people in the business, because there's a few difficult people" as an interview question, then rolled his eyes and I should have took this as a sign that he would be the difficult one to work with. So that was on me for making a poor judgement of character and giving them the benefit of the doubt.
At the beginning of my journey he would rant and rave about me, boasting about how he always hires the best to I'm underperforming very quickly after just boasting (which he still never brought up with me about my "underperformance"). So how do you suppose someone can improve and grow in their work, if you can't even be bothered to give this feedback? Clearly it wasn't a performance issue and a personal one as I said. What was his plan when my probation was up? "Oh sorry, you didn't pass your probation because you were underperforming, I just didn't tell you so you didn't know until now. I didn't want you to do better so kept it to myself and get you on performance". Well no, you couldn't have. I could of stayed and fought this, but why would I fight for a job just to continue to work for an incompetent person, who likes to bring people down?
As another note to my experience, the company is not diverse at all. The manager said the company is very diverse in terms of having others from other European countries. This is not what you call diversity. He also mentioned he doesn't hire young person, which is another form of discrimination other than the ones already mentioned above and against the law, just in case you didn't know that already.
Unfortunately for someone who has such a broad interest in things, I couldn't find a single similarity to my team other than we're human beings (questionable).
