Turns out that your spirit can be crushed twice, and in my case, it was all by the same person.
I truly believed that the first time the MD of our company told me that “I take my job too seriously, nobody takes their jobs seriously” she actually did me a favour. This was way back in 2008 and I remember those words like it was yesterday.
I have had yet another fight with her because she didn’t do hotel payments I sent her which meant that hotels were refusing to let my clients check in because she isn’t doing her job, which creates even more work for me and which meant that I had to beg and lie, just to get my clients into hotels and my clients were thinking it was me not doing my job. At that stage I was working about 18 hour days, with no extra pay for after hours just to get through my work, and the MD not making payments was almost a daily occurrence (something that is still a huge problem).
With the MD of the company telling me they don’t care if I work hard or not, my work ethic completely changed. I didn’t care if I got through my work or if clients had to wait 4 or 5 days for me to get back to them, I worked only office hours and I refused to work as much as 1 minute later. It took a lot of stress and pressure off me.
Then, on Friday, my colleague resigned. She is lucky enough that she can spend 2 or 3 months at home to relax and recover before following her passions and working for animal shelters full time. This has been coming a long way as we are both very unhappy at this company; we haven’t received increases for over 2 years and the 2 of us have been doing the work of 4 consultants for the last 7 months and they absolutely refused to get us a third consultant. In January we complained about the lack of increases again and the MD promised that we will get “really good” increases on our March salaries. March salaries came and we got nothing. Not a cent more.
The MD called my colleague and begged her to stay, like they always do, and my colleague explained that she is not going to change her mind, she is leaving to do what she is passionate about. At 1pm on Friday afternoon, the MD calls me and tells me I must beg my colleague to stay. (Top points for professionalism). I told our MD, very politely that she cannot ask me to do that, and that I won’t beg her to stay as she is not leaving for another job in travel, she is leaving to do what she is passionate about. I also told her that she cannot expect us to remain positive and happy if they promise us things and then don’t follow through. So she was shocked and started shouting at me asking me what I was talking about. So I told her that we were promised increases in March and we got nothing. Then she got even more upset and told me, firstly, that she never promised us any increases (wow, that just makes it better). Then she completely changed her tune and told me that I wasn’t even going to get an increase because I never asked and that everybody else in the office was going to get increases on their April salaries, except for me. (Things just keep getting better especially since my sales are always the highest in the office). So I told her, that I spoke to my manager (the colleague who resigned) in January and that she requested it on my behalf, the way things are supposed to be done, but I understand that I was just going to be passed over. Then she yelled at me that I should just leave, they don’t need me, I should just leave, this on the same day that the only other consultant (and manager) resigned.
Needless to say I was shocked and I hate to admit it, but I was also very hurt. Even though I am unhappy and I refuse to work late4, I still work very hard and do my job well, as it is a reflection on me personally. This company definitely don’t deserve me. I will look for another job and hopefully I’ll be able to leave this company in the next 2 months. I really do not need to take this at all.
