Soldato
Right, bit of a semi-long read but bear with me.
Around a year and a bit ago I managed to land my dream job, at the mid point of my career and couldn't have been happier. it was a great move into something I wanted and will never get the chance to do again, it's only a five year job role.
Just before I started there was a change in management, the guy who interviewed me left and a new guy took over his role. No worries there as he seemed a nice bloke when I met him on my first day.
Around six months into a HUGE learning curve I get given my first job on my own. Was a relatively difficult bit of fault diagnosis into a system that I have never worked on before, and had already spent a couple of days trying to diagnose. I decide to ask my colleague what he thinks, as he's been there over 20 years. He's the only other person with any in-depth knowledge of the system in question.
So we're sat discussing system details etc, possible faults and the boss walks in, see's us talking and asks why it isnt fixed yet. I explain because I'm having to get advice on the fault. He starts saying how I'm taking the **** and just need to fix it. So off I go and try to do my best.
A day later my line manager says he needs a chat, calls me into the office to ask whats going on with me. I'm a bit puzzled as I thought I was doing relatively well at this point. Get told that he's been told by the boss I'm lazy and I'd rather spend time chatting to X instead of fixing the fault, citing the exact time I was trying to find the fault with X as 'chatting' instead of working. This made me fairly miserable for months.
This hit me fairly hard, I'm not lazy and I've worked my arse off to get this job in the first place. While in it I'm regularly the only person in my trade available with one subordinate compared to all of my previous roles where theres been around 5 trade supervisors and 7-10 subordinates.
Over the last 12 months or so I've had to put up with almost daily remarks about how we do no work, we can't fix faults, if something goes wrong its down to us etc. from other trades and the management in question. Majority of it I can shrug off but it wears you down as you can imagine.
Jump forwards to the last month. Again a complex fault, used all my knowledge available for the system, worked as much as I could with the other trade to try and fix it all while knowing my other work was building up behind me, still no success. They managed to fix it out of hours by changing something we had tested 3-5 times and had passed test every time, with different people testing it.
Obviously boss jumps on this and its all my fault, I've wasted 3 weeks of other people time because I 'didn't do my job properly' I literally did exactly what I was expected to and that the lads with experience would have done.
So that leads us to this week. I'm already down from the ****taking on the shop floor over the last month from previous fault, and another one crops up, reasonably simple but a job i've never done before. I get asked how long its going to take, I reply with 'I'm not sure, its takes as long as it takes'
Next thing I know I'm in the office having to explain why I'm being 'purposefully obstructive' to the maintenance manager, and accused of slowing things down on purpose, none of which is even remotely true. I explain myself as to what I meant and thought that was the end of it. Next day my line manager is called into same office and is told that he needs to 'sort my attitude out' and 'I'm an unworkable idiot'.
So here's the conundrum. All of this abuse is coming from one person in particular. There's no HR action that can be taken as he just bats it off, worse has been raised against him and been dismissed.
But ultimately, for the last 3 weeks I've been dreading going into work at my dream job because of one particular manager and the toxic work environment. I'll never get to do this job again in my life and I love it but sitting up until 2am every night dreading the abuse I'm going to get at 8am isnt easy and its affecting my health now.
To clarify I'm not in a position where I can walk out, I've got 12 months to serve submitting my notice.
So, WTF do I do? As much as I'd like to punching someone in the face is not an option, going to HR is not an option and will likely backfire on me as it has to other people.
Is there any coping mechanism for an abusive workplace?
Around a year and a bit ago I managed to land my dream job, at the mid point of my career and couldn't have been happier. it was a great move into something I wanted and will never get the chance to do again, it's only a five year job role.
Just before I started there was a change in management, the guy who interviewed me left and a new guy took over his role. No worries there as he seemed a nice bloke when I met him on my first day.
Around six months into a HUGE learning curve I get given my first job on my own. Was a relatively difficult bit of fault diagnosis into a system that I have never worked on before, and had already spent a couple of days trying to diagnose. I decide to ask my colleague what he thinks, as he's been there over 20 years. He's the only other person with any in-depth knowledge of the system in question.
So we're sat discussing system details etc, possible faults and the boss walks in, see's us talking and asks why it isnt fixed yet. I explain because I'm having to get advice on the fault. He starts saying how I'm taking the **** and just need to fix it. So off I go and try to do my best.
A day later my line manager says he needs a chat, calls me into the office to ask whats going on with me. I'm a bit puzzled as I thought I was doing relatively well at this point. Get told that he's been told by the boss I'm lazy and I'd rather spend time chatting to X instead of fixing the fault, citing the exact time I was trying to find the fault with X as 'chatting' instead of working. This made me fairly miserable for months.
This hit me fairly hard, I'm not lazy and I've worked my arse off to get this job in the first place. While in it I'm regularly the only person in my trade available with one subordinate compared to all of my previous roles where theres been around 5 trade supervisors and 7-10 subordinates.
Over the last 12 months or so I've had to put up with almost daily remarks about how we do no work, we can't fix faults, if something goes wrong its down to us etc. from other trades and the management in question. Majority of it I can shrug off but it wears you down as you can imagine.
Jump forwards to the last month. Again a complex fault, used all my knowledge available for the system, worked as much as I could with the other trade to try and fix it all while knowing my other work was building up behind me, still no success. They managed to fix it out of hours by changing something we had tested 3-5 times and had passed test every time, with different people testing it.
Obviously boss jumps on this and its all my fault, I've wasted 3 weeks of other people time because I 'didn't do my job properly' I literally did exactly what I was expected to and that the lads with experience would have done.
So that leads us to this week. I'm already down from the ****taking on the shop floor over the last month from previous fault, and another one crops up, reasonably simple but a job i've never done before. I get asked how long its going to take, I reply with 'I'm not sure, its takes as long as it takes'
Next thing I know I'm in the office having to explain why I'm being 'purposefully obstructive' to the maintenance manager, and accused of slowing things down on purpose, none of which is even remotely true. I explain myself as to what I meant and thought that was the end of it. Next day my line manager is called into same office and is told that he needs to 'sort my attitude out' and 'I'm an unworkable idiot'.
So here's the conundrum. All of this abuse is coming from one person in particular. There's no HR action that can be taken as he just bats it off, worse has been raised against him and been dismissed.
But ultimately, for the last 3 weeks I've been dreading going into work at my dream job because of one particular manager and the toxic work environment. I'll never get to do this job again in my life and I love it but sitting up until 2am every night dreading the abuse I'm going to get at 8am isnt easy and its affecting my health now.
To clarify I'm not in a position where I can walk out, I've got 12 months to serve submitting my notice.
So, WTF do I do? As much as I'd like to punching someone in the face is not an option, going to HR is not an option and will likely backfire on me as it has to other people.
Is there any coping mechanism for an abusive workplace?
