I have worked with my company for 11 years. During all that time, there has always been intimidation by the office manager to cut back hours. I have never been written up, nor has any complaint ever been lodged about my work/behaviour. Whenever we have a staff meeting, even to discuss directives from head management, we are silenced into compliance by the office manager saying "maybe we should hire more people" - or our favorite "I liked it when we had 12 people". (Note: our roles used to have many people, but went to 6/7, and now 5 for the past 2 years.
If anyone has a problem, it is cc'd by the office for everyone to read about. We recently discussed and settled on workplace safety habits (ie: working late at night) but this has been completely disregarded by our office and they still book late night appointments in very unsavory areas. (Other companies utilize teams of 2 even during the day). These issues were apparently addressed by the head office in July but then we were told that the head office did not want to hear about it again (mixed signals) but did fully detail the issues to a new incoming area manager in September (who promptly left within -2 months). He did not have the time to implement any changes or resolutions-even his ideas were quickly dismissed by the local office.
I am not alone - 3/5 have been dealing with this for a number of years (5+), the other 2 are more casual workers.
My point is: we avoid the 'office' as much as possible because it is very toxic, we say nothing at any staff meetings for fear of the 'job threat', and are always on guard for who might be next in line. In the past month I have watched the brutalization of one of my co-workers through email and it was extremely distressing. This is becoming very stressful. I like my job but also have a 12 month 'gag' order from working in any related field (which is the only thing I am trained in after 11 years). I need help with the right approach to this along with my 2 colleagues and this is our basic source of income, and we do genuinely like what we do but the 'office' issues seem to be escalating. |
