I was interviewed and hired for a job in which I have plenty of experience, except the software platform I hadn’t worked in for a long time. I was promised training to get me back up to speed. When I arrived, the person assigned to train me was both bad at training and hostile towards me. I decided I was better off retraining myself from home as I was allowed to work remotely. I took the approach she had described, although it bypassed all critical functioning of a GIS platform. At the same time, I was asked to work on traffic control plans, which I had never done before. I continued to question the workflow and platform for performing this work and made a case for using AutoCAD instead. Also the work was taking far too long to refresh so I reported these issues to IT multiple times. My boss began questioning my productivity right away (although I don’t understand his expectations considering the learning curve and his hands off approach to me). I couldn’t process a plan at the same rate of speed of my counterpart. Now before my first plan was even approved, the entire backlog of traffic control plans (all of which were already past due) was dropped in my lap and they began treating me as the TCP BACKLOG MGR. I was bombarded with emails and phone calls and conflicting priority projects all day, every day. I had to assume that I was a decision maker, coordinator, sole drafter and liaison for the project. Although when I began asserting myself in the role, my boss would reprimand me (out of the blue) for every decision made and every conversation initiated. Keep in mind, this is literally the only time he would converse or consult with me. I wasn’t even introduced to my counterparts. He called me slow and questioned my experience on a regular basis, meanwhile, nothing slowed down except my productivity. His ‘advice’ never panned out in the end. Everything I was reprimanded for, I was also vindicated for in the end. He would catch me off guard and start throwing ‘facts and figures’ about that I could neither deny nor confirm without research after the fact. I would just have to stand there and listen to him embarrass me and later do the research. He was NEVER correct. He accused me of padding my timesheet when in fact I would work through the night and all weekend to try and get a handle on the backlog and only bill for a small percentage of my overtime. I told his boss that I was working off the clock and he just said he didn’t want to know about it as the labor board would not approve. He refused to defend me or question my boss. After researching his accusations, it seemed like water under the bridge and a battle I didn’t find appropriate to rehash so most of his fake reprimands went unchallenged (he put nothing in writing, so plausible deniability was on his side anyway). I worked my ass off and the pile of work would just keep growing underneath me. My coworker made it clear through hostile expressions, silence and body language that she would not be a resource to me. Although, she was the only other person who had experience in my work process and in fact, invented it. My boss, pleaded complete ignorance of my project, was apparently unqualified to review or approve my work, but his name appeared on every plan as the Engineer of account. His boss did exactly the same thing. Don’t ask me questions, I know nothing about traffic control. No wonder he underbid the work by a mile. He continued to be the face and authority for accepting and bidding work and never asked for input from the people in the trenches. I had two field engineers feeding me data in completely different formats and one of them didn’t even have access to our company network or software. No one told me of this anomaly which caused a whole other set of problems.

After several confrontations from my boss, each tying my hands , restricting my authority and binding my decision-making in ways that didn’t even make sense, I became less productive as time went on. Ultimately, my boss reported me to HR and gave me a corrective action plan that was completely made up. I attempted to qdispute his accusations in that meeting (which I was also blindsided by), to no avail. He had a hostile retort for everything. I signed it and went back to work. Now I would track my productivity, which was bad for him. When I exceeded his stated expectations, he would call his benchmarks entry level and symbolic of underachievement. After two weeks of exceeding these, he assigned me to take over my coworkers TCP work in addition to the backlog project, which was still underwater. Her TCPs would have a 2 day turnaround instead of the normal 5 day turnaround, but they were not to take priority over my 5 day projects?! Riiiiight.

At about this time, corporate GIS department had been recruited by IT to find out what was going on with my computer. As soon as I had Emily on the phone, she asked me my opinion of the group under which I was assigned. I gave her a nutshell of my frustration and predicament. She asked because she had spent several weeks training my coworker and setting up the workflow for the department with permissions to acces client data only to be snubbed and dismissed by my boss. Her efforts were completely discarded by my boss and my coworker tasked with developing the workflow herself. This is what I had been ‘trained’ to use, against corporate advice. She further informed me that my boss declined my onboard GIS training. My boss repeatedly told me that my coworker had received no training or support of any kind since she had started working there (as part of comparing our productivity and competence in general. Kelly being the star of the show and I the soon to be replaced understudy). Once Emily took remote control of my computer, she immediately discovered I I was working in a dummy version of GIS with no access to the network where everyone else was working. I don’t know how many times I questioned this.

She sent an email to my management chain asking them to cease and desist in applying current production standards as my system was incapable of meeting them currently. I pounced on my boses boss and told him to reassign Kelly’s work back to her in light of the confirmed adverse conditions I was under. He refused to acknowledge that anything had changed and denied my request. No consideration for lifting the corrective action plan either. I refused to take no for his answer and involved HR. He thereafter relented but called a meeting with himself, my boss and me. I would be the subject. They were inviting me into the lions den to gang up on me! The meeting was set for 830, the time I arrived to work that day. Under normal circumstance, when working at the office, this would be considered a late start time, although not a spoken rule. I arrived to a locked office door, for which I had no key. I knocked on the door and waited. Meanwhile, my boss calls my phone to reprimand me for being “late”! I asked him to open the door and he kept talking. I finally asked in exasperation if I should just leave. He cane to open the door, I thanked him and headed to my desk. No sooner did I sit down than he called me into his office to reprimand me for giving him attitude. Reminding me that I was already on his radar and under HR probation. To which I countered, “John, I just can’t work for you anymore.” He started grasping at me metaphorically and by calling HR to report the ‘incident’ trying to commnicate that I was somehow under his custody and not free to leave of my own accord or make decisions for myself. I turned and walked over to my desk, cleaned it out and left the building.

Is there a lawyer in the house? What would you do if you were me? Thanks, guys!