When you start a new job, you try to make yourself look good to your new boss, and they usually try to make the position seem like a great opportunity.

What would you do if you were promised a flexible work schedule, but when you needed to adjust two days of work, they denied you for no reason?

That is what happened to the employee in this story, so he got a new job and told all the candidates who would have taken his old job how bad his boss was so they wouldn’t work for her.

Manager maliciously made me miss two days of paycheck and harassed me during her vacation

I used to work in a state owned company, and you could only become employed in it if you passed a public selection program.

I was in the first batch of people that came in, and there should be four other batches. There were a a lot of vacancies in the company as well.

This sounds like it will be a good stable job.

When I got in, people in my area of expertise got internally interviewed so we would get directed to the company sections that best suited our skills, but we would also be interviewing back the managers.

When it was my turn to ask question about management, I was ensured that there was flexibility regarding work hours, since I regularly took other selection programs away from the city and I would need to be absent from work sometimes or work remotely in different days of the week.

I was selected and my manager soon started her vacations.

This type of flexibility is very nice.

Company policy also stated that we could use our overtime hours to miss a day’s work if our managed allowed, and that work from home days could be changed at the manager’s discretion.

Not long after, I had to go do a public selection that required my absence during a Monday (trip day) and a Tuesday (exam day, would take about four hours).

If he is traveling for work, why would he need to use the OT hours at all?

I asked to use all the overtime hours I accumulated so I could miss Monday, and then asked if I could remote work from the hotel at Tuesday (since I had no flights that would allow me to get to work).

Also, because my usual work from home would also be a day in which I would have a remote class that was ordered by my manager, I had yet another reason for the change, since if it the class was any other day I would actually get two work from home days.

They should have told him about this ahead of time.

The substitute manager apparently went to check with her before allowing it, and I was told I wouldn’t be able to use my overtime to miss one work day, because of an exception to the company policy I was never told about: you could only actually use your OT hours to miss work during holiday season, and it was written in an internal document of my area.

Since I had to do that exam, because it was a much nicer position, I would take a one day hit to my paycheck.

Wow, they are really going out of their way to hurt this guy.

On Monday, which was the day previous to my exam, my manager (who was taking vacation time), texted me at 10 pm, right before I was going to sleep, and told me that I was also not allowed to change my work from home day as well, since 1. it would only be allowed on “extraordinary” circumstances, and having an exam and wasting my work from home day in a remote class wasn’t an excuse, and 2. I also would need to ask for it weeks before (no stated reason).

They are changing the rules on him.

I told her it those things were not what we discussed during the interview and that it was impossible for me to show up on the next day, because there were no flights that would allow me to get to work on time.

She also threated me with a poor review for missing two days of work, so I could actually get fired. And even I if wasn’t fired, I wouldn’t get promoted either.

I can imagine he was very stressed out because of this.

I barely slept because not only I would have a very important exam, but also because if I failed it, I would not only not take the position, but could also get fired.

At least this worked out well.

Thankfully, the scores were published on Wednesday (the day after) and I managed to get a good enough score to pass, but I likely would have gotten a better one if I had slept well (and scoring better gives you better things at the new position).

On the next week, she returned from her vacation, and I gleefully told her I was quitting in about two weeks because I passed to that much nicer position. She “congratulated” me and then almost literally went running to HR so she could ask for one person to fill my position in the next batches of the new hires.

Finding good employees isn’t always easy.

One problem though: a lot of people are not even coming to sign the contract with the company, because the pay is not that good given the requirements for the position.

So, what would be sixty people they could call from the public selection list, only about forty are going to come, and I’m the second person in two months that was quitting.

This is a really weird hiring technique.

No one knows when the next public selection process will occur. It might take years for a new one.

This might come back to bite him, but it was nice to give them a warning.

And here’s the revenge part: I told all the people of the next batches that she was a horrible manager and everything she did to undermine me.

When she tries to get someone to fill my position, no one will want it, and she is desperate for someone to work under her, because there are a lot of people that are going to retire from the company.

His boss should have thought about that when she was being a jerk.

My former position is very likely going to stay vacant for a very long time and she is going to get overworked….and my boss can only blame herself for lying to me about flexibility regarding work hours, threatening to give me a bad review and make me miss two days worth of paycheck.

Had she allowed me the flexibility I was promised, I would have told everyone how great of a position it was.

So the rules can be changed for some people, but not others. Unfair.

And to show how much of a jerk she is: in the next week, a coworker (one of the people that are going to retire) asked to change her work from home day because she had to get her dog to the vet because of an emergency.

She got the change, even though she asked it on the very same day she would miss work. Sure, getting your dog to the vet is justifiable….but so were my reasons.

It sounds to me like this boss didn’t like him for some reason and was trying to push him out.

I hate when bosses try to make a job unbearable rather than working with the employee to improve.

Let’s see what the people in the comments have to say about it.

It is a great way to get revenge.

Yeah, she didn’t want him to leave.

Being honest with new hires is doing them a kindness.

I think this commenter is correct.

This commenter thinks the manager made a terrible decision.

Why is it that managers think they should tell employees no when there isn’t a good reason for it.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a daughter who invited herself to her parents’ 40th anniversary vacation for all the wrong reasons.