There are really only 3 options here that I can see.
One is to just keep your head down and get out as soon as you can find something else. Unfortunately in this economy, finding something else is probably going to be harder.
A second option is getting involved in the internal office politics underlying all of these actions, and I think the OP is too new at the company to go this route.
The paper trail is just a defense strategy, in case the OP is cited for either incompetence or insubordination and terminated. Termination may mean more than just a bad reference while looking for your next job. It might mean the OP would become ineligible for unemployment compensation, or for some kind of company severance package (though this is unlikely for someone so new). Having a paper trail may make a departure easier on the OP, especially if there’s any kind of corporate policies on termination processes, appeals, etc.
I think I’m probably reading the situation wrong then, and I suspect this is due to international differences in workplace culture. Please disregard the above posts, purple haze, and good luck with your situation.
I’ve worked with bosses who will simply refuse to send any kind of written communication. I had an H/R manager who refused out and out to put anything in an email. So I would write an email to these people saying, I received conflicting instructions and went with the verbal.
Companies don’t want to pay unemployment so they make you miserable so you’ll quit.
So just start looking, fortunately you found out soon enough so you didn’t waste years on this losing company.
I’m actually a little curious: how did you read the situation? What international differences might apply? Spineless jerks are spineless jerks, no matter that the culture.
Get LinkedIn with friends, ex-coworkers, ex-bosses, people in various groups.
This job is dead. Once you get that settled, you can stop worrying and get another one. Leave while you are “resigning for a better position” even if that is a Temp job.
But protections for employees are very different internationally. I suspect Mangetout was thinking in the UK context, not that of an employment-at-will US state.
The culprit is your immediate supervisor. Can you transfer to another position? Does your company have an open-door policy (i.e. do you have access to the next higher manager)?
I agree you should be looking for something else unless a miracle occurs (and sometimes they do). Maybe your supervisor will be arrested for embezzlement or something.
As others have said, document everything.
When giving conflicting directions, email for clarification.
Log the time that the manager is there to assist you.
Find out what needs to go into your employee file in your state. Ask to get a copy of it.
Find out what information is treated as confidential between you and HR/payroll in your state.
Write your resume and find another job.
But in some states if a company terminates an employee due to poor performance or disciplinary actions (real or fabricated), the company isn’t required to pay unemployment.
If the company is really trying to squeeze you out, documenting everything really isn’t going to help, unless you can catch someone falsifying or contradicting something. And if they’re on the fence about getting rid of you, aggressively documenting everything can be perceived as hostility and may also seal your fate.
You mention you may have an ally in the DM. Is this someone you feel comfortable talking to about this? I mean, any good manager that’s concerned about their balance sheet would know that it costs more to get rid of people than to keep them, and surrounding themselves with good employees is the best way to succeed. Now, if the company is riddled with bad management who only care about their jobs and not the company, you may have no one to go to. If that’s the case, quietly finding something better seems like the best option.
Don’t just document everything to save your job, but form the habit. When a boss asks about something that happened in the past, if you can say who you talked to and when, you will look on top of things. It takes little time and a decent calendar.
I remember once when we were installing a new computer system and it kept going down. we had a meeting in which the computer people said it was down less than 5 percent of the time. I had tracked it at closer to 10. They had to kick back some money to our company.
They don’t need to know that you’re documenting; this is a personal thing. But yes, documenting WILL help if they fire you for cause and attempt to deny unemployment. You should document, and in a way that they can’t take away from you (e.g. logging these problems as they occur, and what happen, and date them). This makes it much easier to contest the company’s ‘for cause’ assessment if you do get fired.
I had a manager try similar tactics with me. I’d email, and she’d respond to come to her office and would give me verbal instructions ‘because she didn’t have time to respond to emails’. If anything went wrong, she’d always blame me to avoid accountability, because she was a bad manager. I ended up sending her emails after our meetings, with a friendly-sounding explanation that, due to previous misunderstandings, I wanted to verify that this was right and that I fully understood the project. If I don’t hear anything back, I’ll do it this way. The key is the tone; you’re a helpful employee trying to make sure everything is right, not a troublemaker trying to document. I also kept personal backups of ALL of my correspondence with her, and with her manager.
I didn’t get fired. My manager started cutting out the middleman and sending me emails, found a different blame target, and eventually was moved to another department (and even more eventually, was fired).
In the end, though, if the whole company has it out for you, you’re boned – you just want to make sure that you can get unemployment in case you need it. That said, you may not be. I felt that way at the time, but I stood my ground. In the end, the situations that allowed such a bad manager to be in place caused me to find a job elsewhere, but that took over a year to do.
BCC all your documenting to a gmail account or similar personal email so that so it will be available if/when you no longer have access to your work site or office email account.
Well, to be honest, I still can’t completely grasp the situation as described (and I’ve re-read the OP several times). It seemed to me that this was a situation in which the chief issue was one of perceptions and personality clashes - and a snowballing accumulation of mistakes and misunderstandings. I don’t think it really helps for me to say more - as I said, what’s going on here is quite alien to me.
Let’s table that for now and explore it only as an option of last resort. :dubious: Short of homicide, I‘ve always derived a considerable amount of satisfaction from retaliating against people who are dishonest in their dealings with other people, and who harm other people for no other reason than their own personal gratification. It’s been my experience that people like your VP of operations almost always have an Achilles’ heel. Every time I’ve been in a situation like yours I’ve always adhered to a policy of document, document, document. If the person I have in my sights even farts in the wrong direction, I’m there with an anemometer to record its direction and amplitude. This has paid off for me over and over again. I’ve shut down companies. I’ve caused people problems that have cost them thousands of dollars to fix. People have lost their houses because of me. I was recently in a position where I was squeezed out of a job because my immediate superior wanted to gladhand my job to “his homegirl.” So I did exactly what I described above, and the end result was that he was fired and his boss was demoted. I realize that none of this will help you generate the income that you require; it will not save your job or help you get another one. It will, however, eliminate the feelings of defeat and discouragement that usually accompany being set back by somebody else’s dishonest behavior. You’ll enjoy it too; once you taste blood you’ll never just tuck tail and whimper ever again.
My husband went through that about ten years ago. And while he didn’t manage to keep his job, he did get reorganized into a new job with the same company. Frankly, he got lucky - a major reorg happened as his old boss was trying to dump him, which enabled someone looking for headcount to pluck him off the garbage heap and into a new role. But…1) He’d been at the firm for over a year which enabled him to establish a reputation 2) His reputation was obviously not universally bad - some people recognized skills that weren’t being used 3) Neither of those things wouldn’t have done any good without the reorg and the trying to staff organizations without increases to headcount.
I still have a job - go me! There have been no responses to my e-mail request for followup about the client complaint and I haven’t had any feedback lately good or bad. It’s like being blindfolded and feeling my way around in the dark. I did talk to the client again today during the course of handling some business and she gave me very positive feedback about our most recent job.
Brilliant idea about BCC-ing the e-mails that I send. If I do get tossed I’ll lose access to the paper trail of e-mails.
I see my direct manager a couple of times a week for a couple of hours each time - if I’m lucky. Today it was less than 15 minutes because I was busy and in another area of the office with a group of clients. When I ask questions via e-mail about the things that I need to know or about training (I’m very behind because I don’t have time to sit down uninterrupted) I get 'We’ll talk about that when I see you in the office" but we seldom have time to do so.
Tomorrow I’ll follow up with another e-mail ‘Sorry we didn’t get a chance to talk about the clients before you left…’. Documenting that way seems to be passive aggressive bullshit, but it’s better than nothing.
I graduate next June, and would like to hang in there until then if at all possible.
