I realize I've spent over a year in an organization where things kept falling apart because, ultimately, people in the organization just plain didn't like me.
It started, perhaps, when I brought up that HR's onboarding process made me uncomfortable because it involved a third-party sending out a third-party email to go to a third-party website to entire our personal information. Since this was a training by the larger corporate IT department, and we had just finished talking about the dangers of phishing, I thought it was a good time to mention it.
Mistake.
The next week I was visited by someone who took issue with, "not what I said, but the way I said it". Lesson: don't embarass HR in company-wide trainings.
Anyway, after a few similar call outs by me, I was labelled a trouble-maker, sidelined, ignored, and mistreated. This is an organization, I note, that assiduously avoids contradicting or discomfiting superiors in ANY way. That is deffos not my style.
Anyway, my question really isn't about my toxic workplace, but what you learned about YOURSELF by working in a place that didn't like you.
I'll give you two more stories:
1
When I just graduated from school, I started working with a team model. I was paired with someone with fewer certifications, and I was to lead us boldly on our mission. The person I was assigned was a very beaten-down older, brown woman in a field dominated by young white women (seemingly universally with long, straight hair). She seemed to be universally disliked and disrespected by everyone. Because I was incompetent both at my job and my Spanish (sabo kid in denial), this woman essentially did my job and HERS and still got treated like absolute shit.
She invited me to an event that had nothing to do with work, an event for an organization she volunteered for where she was on the board. People treated her with respect and, in return, she was bright and bubbly. I saw a completely different side of her that night.
Lesson: Where we are beaten down, we get small. Where we are supported, we flourish.
(Kind of an aside, she was from a small country, and when I told her I was visiting, she INSISTED I go see one of her family members; he turned out to be an extremely well placed person in the government; she wasn't royalty, exactly, but she had a social prestige in her country that was unsustainable as a middle-aged brown woman with an accent in the USA.)
2
I was working retail at one store. I'd been there for maybe two years. I always lived in fear of being fired, and when I made mistakes that I worried about getting me fired, nothing happened. I learned that, ultimately, what mattered is if people liked you, and, there, people liked me.
I eventually had to leave because of some restructuring but the manager found me the EXACT SAME POSITION at a nearby store. After a few weeks, I noticed people did NOT like me. Conversations were kept short, nobody ever volunteered to talk to me,. I got along with exactly one cashier, who was an awesome dude. It wasn't a horrible experience, I was allowed to do my job and I did, but there was always an empty, hollow feeling.
Then the original store invited me back and it was like night and day. "Oh, so this is how people act when they like you." I'd almost forgotten. I loved going into to work to see my work buddies and I loved shooting the shit with them during downtime.
I don't want this whole thread to be about me and my situation, but, yes, I do consider my role in things, absolutely. I also consider the whole context, too, and sometimes I'm reacting in a way that seems bad in isolation, but looked at in context makes TOTAL sense.
A good workplace will work through things with you and listen.
Three weeks ago, I had an issue with a boss making an emotionally-charged and urgent demand on me that was a total reversal of previous policy. I told him I didn't appreciate it, and he got mad, basically threatening to fire me if I continued the conversation, "be very careful what you say next." He's also said the phrase, "You work for me," more than once to end conversations.
This week he called me into his office to say, "I sense there is something personal between us. Would you like to talk about it?"
And I said, honestly, "No, I'm not comfortable talking with you alone about it."
And he said, "OK," with a sense of relief.
So basically, I said "You've created a work environment so hostile I am uncomfortable criticizing you in any way for fear of getting fired." And his response was basically, "Well, thank G*d I don't have to do anything more about that."
I mean, ok, I get it, I can be a little rough around the edges, and I'm autistic enough to have been evaluated for autism but not autistic enough to have gotten the diagnosis, but toxic work environments DO exist, and I suspect I am in one.
Edit: I can also add today's story, where I had a bad reaction to a coworker from another department telling me to do something against policy. She was very rude about it and dismissive and refused to give me an even minimal exception that would justify me violating the policy. I stormed out (autistically?) while my supervisor observed the whole thing.
Later, I asked why my supervisor why she didn't back me up; she said I overreacted and asked her what exactly I expected of her. I told her I expected her to not let someone from another department harass one of her workers into violating policy. My supervisor just ended the conversation, literally refusing to hear my side of it.
So, like, I'm totally willing to look at my side of things. I shouldn't have stormed off. But what really irked me more than the disrespect I got from the co-worker was the placid non-defense I got from my supervisor. It just reinforces that people don't like me there and are perfectly fine treating me like garbage.
Anyway, I also reached out to someone else involved and apparently there WAS a reason behind the request; I don't think it rose to an exception and I would have refused just the same, but it's just yet another example of the total lack of respect I get at this workplace that I was expected to violate policy just because someone was telling me to.
This is fine. Everything is fine.
That’s a very thoughtful reply, and I just want to apologize for implying you are a problem at all. Good that this crosses your mind. I’ve definitely been in similar situations, and sometimes I come away thinking, “maybe I was wrong here,” where other times it’s more, “they’re so wrong.” So it goes both ways. I really didn’t mean to make it about you.
But my actual key learning in decades of work is about my own introspection. Recognizing one’s own biases and considering one’s own role in bad vibes is very helpful. Sounds like you do that too.
As an aside, I’ve also found sometimes a situation gets ahead of its own skiis and it is very difficult to change course. I’ve been in workplaces where a group really hates me, and it bums me out because I can sometimes see where it went of the rails… but there is just no putting the train back on the track sometimes and it sucks.
I remember hearing a story about a kid that was getting bullied. The mom tried everything and nothing worked. Was the kid somehow manifesting the bullying? Was it just something about him? They moved the kid to a different school, and, voila, everything was solved.
Sometimes you're just the scapegoat, the outsider, and there ain't shit you can do about that. Scapegoating is a powerful social glue.
When I started where I am, there was a woman who was being treated like trash. She was treated with such contempt that she chose to ghost us rather than quit, so HR dragged out her firing for months. Well, guess what happened once she was gone? I became the new scapegoat. It's just how things work there.