Career growth often depends on the right guidance, but some bosses tend to hold you down instead of helping you climb.

One such employee found herself constantly overlooked for projects, criticized without warning, and placed on a questionable performance plan by a her toxic boss.

But when she finally reported him to HR, she wondered if speaking up had cost her more than staying silent.

Keep reading for the full story.

AITA for reporting my boss to HR anonymously for causing a hostile work environment?

My manager has been absentee the entire time I’ve been employed for over a year. He meets with me via Zoom once a week for 25–30 minutes and is “busy” the rest of the time.

He always claims he wants to involve me in higher-level projects but never does, thus stagnating my career development. I’m in my 20s and female.

He’s always seemed to have questionable attitude toward his female colleagues.

In a meeting with me one time, he was complaining about a female coworker to me, saying she was “stepping on my toes.” For context, this coworker is 15+ years older than me and is now my new manager.

In response to these statements, I told him I liked the female coworker and thought she was an asset to the team, to which he said nothing in support.

The boss was asked to take several days off work one time due to him losing his temper and yelling in a meeting. (I wasn’t in this meeting, but his brief LOA was announced.)

But that wasn’t even the worst thing this toxic boss did.

He put myself (female, 10 years younger than him) on a performance plan with no merit or warning. One statement in the plan was actually a lie that I was able to prove to be untrue.

Some examples included me being 5 minutes late to a meeting that he moved the time at the last minute.

Or me not understanding subjective directions from him (he would tell me to do a certain task “a few” times and held me accountable for doing the task 3 times and not 4 times).

So finally this young professional decided to take her concerns to the HR deparmtnet.

I reported him one time to our team lead for gaslighting me and diminishing my knowledge. He was trying to accuse me of not understanding how to do my basic job functions and kept sending me messages on our Slack documenting these claims.

At this point, I had been in my position over a year and was fully aware of how to perform basic job functions.

Her boss was now fully giving her the silent treatment.

I tried calling him to clear the air and explain the situation at hand, but he wouldn’t take my call.

Out of fear, I called our team lead to clarify that I knew how to perform basic job functions and I didn’t want my boss to build a false narrative about me.

Ironically, the only items my boss noted that were “performance issues” with me were AFTER I met with the team lead. My boss has never previously mentioned any of the supposed “performance issues” to me prior.

She suspects foul play on this front.

I’ve always wondered if the performance plan was a retaliation from him.

He regularly has told me that the team leads in other departments “never know what’s going on” and need to have reminder notes sent to them daily.

Ultimately, her boss ended up getting rewarded instead of punished.

I included all of these above concerns in his performance review (and several more), and he ended up still getting promoted to a new team. The only people he took with him to his new team were men.

AITA for reporting my boss to HR?

Some people just aren’t management material.

What did Reddit think?

This user warns this woman of putting too much faith in the HR department.

When a workplace is this toxic, sometimes is best to just move on entirely.

Even if she is right about her boss’ mistreatment, reporting the issue could cause more harm than good.

The hard truth here is that seniority often plays a role in perceived credibility in these matters.

At the end of the day, maybe this job really is a lost cause.

There’s nothing worse than a manager who pulls the ladder up as soon as they’ve reached the top.

If you thought that was an interesting story, check this one out about a man who created a points system for his inheritance, and a family friend ends up getting almost all of it.