The PTSD is REAL when I think back to my first full time job ever. It gets my heart racing and gives me some pretty bad anxiety at times. That being said, knowing it is SOOO long ago in the past and recognizing that my current situation is NOTHING like how it was before gives me true peace of mind. So this ALL happened right after college and it was the job I secured while still an intern at this company. During my internship, everything was great and I did truly think to myself that I would be so happy working here. Office location was perfect, I loved a bunch of my coworkers, and I did not mind the job itself… BUT
This all changed when the fire nation attacked I started my first day of work in the full time role. I knew that my job responsibilities would change but I did NOT know that my manager was also changing until I started. I went from doing social media marketing as an intern to doing email marketing as a Marketing Analyst. The job itself was fine except for the fact that my new manager was EXTREMELY RACIST, hated everyone (and was hated by everyone), and was just your typical nasty Karen. For this blog post, I will refer to this monster as ‘Karen’. I am not that sensitive of a person emotionally but when I think about conflict and especially the concept of conflict at work, that hits me pretty hard and is an overwhelming feeling. I grew some thick skin BUT nothing is thick enough for the most toxic of coworkers. At the time, me and my close coworker who we will call ‘Bill’ went to the same university as me but he was still an intern for one more semester. Our jobs were essentially the same except Bill was supporting me in the email volume and I was there as the full time email lead.
Jumping into example #1, me and Bill had our first training session with manager Karen. We were told to use a specific blue module header text and to NEVER use the one in orange but when it came time to create an email, I got LITERALLY screamed at for using the blue module instead of the orange one even though in our training session, she specifically mentioned it the other way around…how convenient. YES I cross checked my notes with Bill and we both wrote down VERY CLEARLY ‘do not use the orange module’. Oh well – NEXT!
Example #2: Me and Karen (unfortunately) were placed right next to each other so in the case we needed to chat throughout the day, it would be easy given the cubicle setup. Our office ‘cubicle sets’ held 6 employees each so our entire analyst marketing division in that location all sat together. You would think this would make communication seamless but NO – whenever Karen needed my attention she would literally stand up, turn towards me, and then SCREAM MY NAME AT FULL VOLUME as if I could not hear her…a mere 2 feet away from me. I swear to God, you would not believe the number of coworkers on my floor who came up to me privately asking if I was OK. I did not even know some of these people but the sheer unease they had for my well-being compelled them to reach out and express their concern. These coworkers could hear what was happening to me from ACROSS THE ENTIRE FLOOR and let me be clear… in this office location, the entire company was split across two floors meaning each floor is absolutely MASSIVE. This was a well known disturbing experience for a lot of us. Hilariously, the entire HR department sat RIGHT NEXT TO US yet only two of them from HR who happened to be my close coworkers came to ask if I was OK.
In all seriousness, this was definitely NOT OK and because of that one of my HR Manager friends (we will call him Alan) told me that I need to report Karen’s behavior to HR officially and that he would definitely help to manage my situation with me. (Spoiler alert: this got me ‘laid off’ approximately one month later!)
This brings us to example #3: Before going to HR, I shared my experiences and severe mental health struggles with one of my senior managers who was our HQ lead. She immediately raised this to our Marketing Director who owned the entire marketing division for the company and for only God knows why… she felt the best way to go about this was for me and Karen to go out to lunch together with Karen’s manager. This made me feel 100% isolated, alone, and ‘double teamed’. Being the type of person that does not EVER want to spark any sorts of trouble, I obviously went along with it and wow – it was absolutely miserable. We went to a local Thai food restaurant and ordered lunch engaging in small talk. Into the conversation, they are asking me about what ethnicity I am and then I tell them I am Chinese. Karen proceeds to mention that she has been to China before and for a split second, I thought ‘oh wow, that’s cool!’ UNTIL SHE PROCEEDED TO MAKE THE RACIST COMMENT OF ‘but in China you know, you have to be careful because they serve dog everywhere and you never know if you’ll accidentally eat dog’. She follows this up by giggling with her manager while I sit there absolutely stunned into silence. [For context, she visited Shanghai of all the cities and eating dog is DEFINITELY NOT COMMON in Shanghai.] My family has a dog… there are so many people in China who have dogs… there are even more CHINESE PEOPLE that would NEVER eat dog and even MORE Chinese people that HATE the fact that there are some Chinese people who eat dog. For those that are unaware, eating dog is NOT COMMON AT ALL in the large majority of China and this ‘practice’ is not only found in China but can be found throughout Asia and possibly even other continents as well. Anyway, the main thing I took out of this ‘lunch excursion’ was that Karen is not only toxic but also extremely racist. (lucky me…!)
After a few more weeks pass, there comes a day where I got screamed at yet again by Karen in MAX VOLUME despite me sitting two feet away. She clearly forgot to assign my task to me in the system and when she figured it out, Karen only gave me 22 minutes to create the email, setup the audience for deployment, and QA the request and campaign. This is clearly not enough time to do a good job which is what ignited that day’s screaming session. I was SO SICK AND TIRED of this behavior that the stress completely broke me down and I entered Alan’s office. I break into tears and tell Alan about how I don’t think I can take any more of this. At this point, I’ve (only) been working here for 3 months and I already felt like I was at my wits end due to the daily screaming fits, racist comments, and intense gaslighting. Half crying and half talking, I share EVERYTHING with Alan and with truly good intention, he tells me it is best for me to submit a formal complaint to HR and that he would help me through this as well. In a fit of desperation, I did it – I made a complaint to HR…but what did it get me? Unemployment.
The formal complaint was filed with all of the examples listed above and SO MANY MORE. I got testimonials from my coworkers and even some of the other coworkers who would approach me from across the floor asking if I was OK. It felt like maybe I could ‘win’ this and move forward with a better working environment. HR compiled the entire thing yet focused only on one single point – the racist comment made in the Thai restaurant. They said that there was no proof of this because when they asked Karen and Karen’s manager who were both there in person, they both (lied and) told HR that they never mentioned anything about China or Chinese people eating dog. It was truly my word against theirs and the HR department specifically refused to acknowledge my request about how we could ask the restaurant for the film as evidence given I knew exactly what date and time we were there. The HR manager set up time to discuss my case with me in person and in short told me that the testimonials and entire case was now closed because there was no evidence of the racist comment in the Thai restaurant. It seemed like they basically DID NOT CARE AT ALL about my issues and just wanted to be done with me…just like that – CASE CLOSED.
Fast forward to one month later – I get into the office that morning and within 30 minutes, my closest friend (who we will call Diana) gets called in by HR via email. Diana is told to immediately go to a conference room and meet HR there. After about another 30 minutes, Diana returns but is escorted by two security guards and the HR lead who closed my case. Diana is commanded to grab her personal belongings from her desk and leave immediately. The 5 of us left in our cubicle set were SHOCKED… did they really just fire her? Was it even necessary to bring security and then seemingly kick her out of the building? Well guess what – 1 hour later, the EXACT SAME THING HAPPENED TO ME. I get an email from HR telling me to go to a conference room. I enter the room and IMMEDIATELY knew what was happening to me. I see the lady who closed my case on my left and then the HR Director who owns the department sitting on my right at a table with me in the middle. They show me a binder and walk me through my severance pay while proceeding to tell me that this is all happening because there has been an ‘organizational restructuring’ and therefore a whopping FIVE of us are getting laid off. (Tell me why 4 of the 5 of us were minorities…) I was APPALLED so just kept nodding and saying ‘OK, I understand’ over and over again. After about 20minutes, the case closer lady escorts me to my desk and we repeat the situation of her commanding me to grab my things and leave immediately. One of my coworkers quickly passes me his business card and just like that, I was sent to the lobby and told to go home.
When I get to the lobby, I immediately grab my phone and call Kuma – I tell him ‘hey, I just got laid off… so I am going to go home now and start applying for jobs.’. Kuma is BAFFLED and asks me 10x ‘are you okay???!!!???’ despite being on the clock at his internship. We get off the phone after confirming everything is OK and for whatever reason, I was overcome by this TIDAL WAVE OF RELIEF. I NEVER HAVE TO GO BACK THERE EVER AGAIN!!! Being laid off is normally a bad and traumatic experience, and while I may have been slightly traumatized… it was one of the best things that ever happened to me.
Every night when I tried to fall asleep, my heart was slowly breaking thinking that I would have to deal with Karen again and again and again every day. I knew quitting a job with less than a year of experience was bad and especially since it was my first job ever, I felt like I didn’t have any options but to go through all of this. I was SO READY to quit at the one year mark but by a stroke of crazy luck, I was laid off! Given the circumstances it really felt like they fired me and didn’t want to deal with any more drama but I don’t even care.
I hope me sharing my experience helps to open your eyes and your heart a bit. Having gone through this, I feel SO DEEPLY for anyone that hates their job or is going through a mentally damaging period in their life. This type of thing is truly traumatizing and painful – do not underestimate the level of stress and anxiety you get from going through this type of experience.
Know that NO JOB IS WORTH YOUR MENTAL HEALTH and that there is always something else out there for you!
Thanks for reading my post and let me know if there are any other topics you’d like to see me cover. Writing this was difficult and quite literally increased my heart rate having to recall so many negative experiences but if I can help even just one person out there by sharing, I am more than happy to do so. I appreciate you and please check out my other blog posts or subscribe to my mailing list for more!