The one I mistakenly posted after my relationship one in the other thread.
- I was ‘assistant LAN administrator’ in addition to my other duties. Cow-orker was LAN Administrator. I did most of the actual work. We handled our own LANs, despite some issues with Corporate over it. Then, six of the eight people in the Corp LAN support area quit, including the manager. They move cow-orker to that area.
Less than a month later, I’m at a user conference giving a big presentation to 25 to 30 regional office people. Another co-worker, friend of the cow-orker, interrupts and reams me about in front of everyone about some problem with a regional office LAN that I have no knowledge of, having been at the conference all day. Seems cow-orker laid the blame on my doorstep.
Turned out that cow-orker was too busy and so had given the supervisor password to one of the helpdesk people, who promptly trashed the server. Cow-orker attempted to blame me to hide her complicity and violation of security standards.
One week later, cow-orker’s boss asks me if I am aware of any security violations. I lay out what happened. MORON then forwards the entire thing to cow-orker, with no header on it. Cow-orker responds with 3 page sysm (pre e-mail mainframe e-mail package) threatening my life, my health, my car, my personal life, threatens to destroy me in every way possible, make my career a living hell and my personal life a nightmare. That’s IN WRITING, folks! I complain to my director, who is a radical feminist. She tells me to “take it like a man and just put up with it” and they all refuse to do a damned thing to cow-orker because they claim they can’t afford to fire her.
I walked out the door that day. Should have sued.
Last IT Job, 2001: I was burned out. My company was going through monthy layoffs and everyone was being pressured to work 70+ hours a week to prove our worth. I noted that it wasn’t stopping them from laying anyone off. They sent someone they knew I had high regard for to tell me I needed to work more hours. They laid him off the next week. Yup, message recieved, and it isn’t the one you thought it was. In addition, my idiot manager had messed up a database design that I should have done, but he insisted on doing because it would look good on his resume, then overpromised delivery in three months when my estimate was about a year!
Then I had a major, stress related back injury. I was at my 39th birthday, laid up, high blood pressure, burned out, stressed out, freaked out. I knew that if I continued that path, I would be dead before my 40th birthday.
The week after my birthday, I only worked 35 hours because I had an MRI, a doctor’s appointment and two chiropractor appointments. I was in a lot of pain and on a lot of pain meds. I foolishly snapped at a co-worker who complained that I wasn’t working hard enough on one of the three major projects I was assigned.
I was told that I would not be allowed to go to the doctor anymore. That I would be required to work every single day, weekends and holidays included, until the end of the year. That I wouldn’t be allowed to take any vacation or sick time. I was given a bullshit written warning for snapping at my co-worker and for having gone home on the 4th of July “without telling anyone”, which was patently false. The written warning cost me my quarterly bonus of around $1500. Even the co-worker I had snapped at felt that they were using the situation as an excuse to get rid of me and that it didn’t warrant any kind of warning.
I said: “I can’t do this anymore. I’ll be dead.”
I put in a month’s notice in late July. My last day was August 21, 2001. About three weeks before 9-11. When I went to look for another job about six months later, there weren’t any. Then I went into the whole marriage to a psycho thing and well, seven years later my skills are antiquated and no one will touch me in IT.