I remember my first day at this company. The first team meeting was insane, and I couldn’t really fathom why everyone was deathly silent and miserable. I should have seen the red flags then and done a runner, but you know how it goes.
I was working on a creative team. There was me, my colleague and my boss. I noticed how my colleague barely ever made contact, was constantly distressed, fighting with everyone and being humiliated and talked down to my narc boss. To make matters worse, after a week of me being there she fired the entire team, leaving only her and I before she started to hire new people.
Here’s what followed after about 5-6 months of being there:
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She completely isolated me from all other members of the team. (It was super odd how I felt my colleagues were with me, almost like they had been warned not to respond.)
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People who had worked with me in a friendly manner were now cold and rude.
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She began to write all over my finished work and allow my colleagues to do the same, and when I became offended, it would be “there’s too much repetition” or “people would be bored to read this.”
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She would micro-manage the he-l out of me. Bombarding me with requests during my break and out of hours.
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She hired a new writer and basically made it as a clear as the day that he was her golden boy. Every call we’d have she’d openly say “I am not satisfied with what you’re producing so I am handing that over to X” and did this constantly and would create these horribly comparitive situations.
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She started to host meetings, where she’d call out my mistakes in front of the entire team.
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She even began getting my colleagues to use the same insults on me: “you’re too repetitive” or “this is boring” or “this is too complex” and you could tell it’s not their own words.
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She completely cleared my work load last week, with no explanation and left me dangling in confusion.
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When I worked hard to give her quality, she told me I was doing “too much” and “making work for other people” and that I need to give less effort because nobody cares. When I sent her ideas she completely ignored them and would find a mistake that’s unrelated to focus on.
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Last week they gave me a warning in front of my face, bringing in a new starter which I had a feeling was there to replace me. The other colleague even decided to rub in my face “Oh he’s already performing really well.”
They fired me yesterday, giving the reason: “the company is having to make cutbacks.” When they’d just hired a new guy in front of my face. What a fu----g joke!
Any advice world? I feel like utter sh-t for allowing myself to be so badly degraded despite being a smart and competent woman.