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I was working for a local government community development department. I had been there for about seven and a half years, and this was my first job out of school. It was kind of an entry-level position.
This is Josh. Josh worked as a planning technician for a small Midwest town after graduating with two master's degrees from a prestigious college, one in urban planning and the other in social work.
It was so small that it really didn't allow me to grow. I had reached the end of the road at this job, and I wanted to get a role where I can grow into and actually do some sort of planning.
So I applied to a job. It's a suburb of a major American city, and it's a burgeoning suburb. Quite frankly, it used to be kind of like a horse town in a lot of ways, and there's a lot of vacant land.
So I felt like I really have a big, meaningful role in kind of shaping what this town is going to look like through reviewing plans, buildings, and things like that.
This new position would be a great career leap from the planning technician role Josh had back in the Midwest. He was excited for the opportunity to help shape the landscape of an up-and-coming suburban area.
But what Josh couldn't see was the mountain of work that would soon bury him and the directors who would push him relentlessly to his breaking point.
My name's Carly, and this is Toxic Workplace, a podcast that gives a platform to those who have survived highly toxic work experiences only to come out with newfound wisdom and a renewed sense of self.
A toxic workplace is more than just the daily grind. It's a soul-crushing experience that will chip away at your sanity until you're about to lose your mind.
It's an abusive relationship that's hard to leave, and the longer you stay, the more you lose sight of who you set out to be.
The interview went well. It felt really good. I got hired. My first week in that position, the guy who hired me got fired.
He was the director of my department. He was the one who made the decision to hire me. He was fired by the town administrator who was the sociopath, I feel like.
I'm sitting in my desk, and I noticed that seven or eight people are gathered around the desk of the woman I sat across from, and she's like crying.
And I'm like, what's going on? And you know, when you're in your first week of your job, you don't want to delve into negativity.
Have you ever heard the term, like, don't piss in my pool? It's like you're bathing in the good vibes, and you don't want anyone to upset that.
But she was crying. The guy was actually a very nice guy. I think the town administrator who fired him was a lunatic.
And it was just like, what's kind of going on here? I just felt like, I want to stay positive. I'm just hired into this new job.
I'm sorry that that happened, but I don't know any background. And I guess I just thought, I guess I'm going to get somebody new in here, you know, a new boss.
So that was a big red flag.
Despite the big red flag, Josh was optimistic about his new position because of the opportunities that came with planning and laying out a new city.
But shortly into this new role, he realized that the career move he made was more of a lateral move than a step up from his previous job.
Luckily, an internal position within this agency presented itself that would be a step up.
I found out about the job. And, you know, by this point, I had eight years experience under my belt, but I felt like I had enough training.
And so I applied and I felt like the interview was like a hostile interrogation.
Like they were just disagreeable and contrarian the whole time and trying to throw me off a little bit.
So it was very negative. And it was one of those interviews where they just they really kind of come at you aggressively.
And I ended up getting the job. I said to myself, I'm going to work as hard as I can and do the best I can and just really work hard.
Then I ended up moving from that rural area more towards the city, which I was really excited about, too.
I'm not a rural guy. I love cities. I love the energy and everything like that.
With this promotion, Josh felt like he was starting to make some real career strides.
So he remained optimistic despite the subtle red flags that continue to pop up.
His new director seemed to be something of a bully, someone who wanted those below him to compete for his approval.
The new director, just to give you some a little bit of background on him, he likes to kind of be a little aggressive and macho kind of thing.
But he had a picture of Tony Soprano on his. It was a joke, but it was not really a joke.
You had to go through three people to get to him.
It's kind of like that guy in Goodfell is where you never talked to him directly.
It was you had to get through three people and he would down manage that way.
He insulated himself through all these other managers that were unnecessary.
He was antagonistic. I felt like he was very negative.
He didn't really take the time to get to know you or speak with you.
And on a personal level, one of the first things he did was he sent this email to everyone called the parable of the oranges.
And it's about two employees.
One guy has been working there really hard for five years, spending late nights and working overtime.
And then a supervisor, a managerial position comes up and then a guy who's only been there for six months gets the managerial position over him.
And the guy who's been working really hard goes to the manager and says, hey, what's going on?
And he says, hey, can you go get me some oranges? My wife wants them.
So the guy goes and gets oranges and brings them back and goes, here you go.
And then the manager goes something like, well, I want to teach you a lesson.
The second guy who got the supervisor position called my wife, asked me what type of oranges I should buy and then what the price was and got me a cheaper deal.
And like, it's this really subservient kind of story about these employee who just sucks up so much.
And he was like, this is how I want you to be a good employee.
You know, really bothered me. It really got under my skin.
That was a huge red flag.
Idolizing Tony Soprano, a character notorious for his extreme narcissistic or sociopathic tendencies, is a huge red flag.
Josh says that this director emulated a similar arrogance and high self-regard as the mob boss and expected those below him to submit to his persona.
The tone at the top of this agency wasn't only tainted by the Soprano wannabe.
The town administrator also had sociopathic tendencies.
The town administrator that I referred to earlier, the kind of psychopath, you know, he really kind of set the culture, I think, in a lot of ways.
During my time there, he systematically went through every department director and either forced them to resign because he was so awful to work with or fired them.
It just seemed like that's what he wanted to do and for no reason.
What I noticed a lot of times is when I would have a question, let's say I had to go to accounting or IT or something like that, I would go into people's offices and I would notice like there would be no personal affects anywhere, like no pictures of family.
It was almost like everyone was ready to just get up and just go, you know, without having to pack up an office.
It was like everyone was like ready to just be fired.
And just to give you an example of kind of how this person was.
So your name would be put into like a lottery.
And if your name was drawn for the lottery, you would go to lunch with this person.
The purpose of the lunch, it was more like off the record, kind of socially, you know, we weren't going to talk shop while we were at this lunch.
You know, one of these years my name was drawn and about a week before the lunch, we received an email and it was just like, please identify topics that you would like to discuss during the lunch.
So you had to like respond to the email saying things like, hey, I want to talk about movies or I want to talk about non work related things.
So it's just like someone's like, can't you just talk? Are you a cyborg?
Like, can't you just like naturally, organically just talk to me about things?
Like you had to tell him beforehand, let's talk about sports, you know, or like propose things to talk about.
And I did go. It was awkward.
He was very stiff type person.
There wasn't much laughing and joking going on.
I just thought that that was very strange.
Just talk to me like a human.
Drawing a name where the grand prize is an awkward lunch with the town administrator sheds light on the magnitude of this guy's grandiosity.
These lunches weren't set up to discuss opportunities, issues or ideas within the agency.
They were meant to put the town administrator on a pedestal in front of the associates.
What's even more cringe is the required email submission of conversation topics beforehand.
Clearly, this guy didn't have the social ability to listen to or carry on a normal conversation.
Luckily, Josh didn't have to deal directly with the town administrator.
That was the least of his worries.
After his promotion, he would quickly become buried in a pile of never ending work.
Much of this work was outside the scope of his job description and professional designation.
But that didn't stop him from diving in and doing his best.
He was committed to this job and was willing to do whatever it took to get things done correctly.
First and foremost, the workload. It was impossible.
It really was impossible.
And I think I was doing the work of two people, two full time employees in that profession in particular.
Working with developers who can be difficult to work with.
A lot of egos, big egos flying around.
In their defense, time and money is their biggest thing.
Time is their enemy, really.
And you're standing in the way of their project getting approved.
Developers are difficult to work with alone.
But when you're having double the workload, you're feeling it internally as well.
My boss, his negotiation style was Tony Soprano, where blood was spilled on paper.
He pushed the limits of the code.
And he would want to push developers in these projects to the point of insanity.
I was always the one with the most projects.
So the former director of that department said that the max number of projects that planners should have would be around 20.
You know, give or take a couple.
I had at one point 52.
I would have to do public hearings, so I would work extra.
So I would stay late due to the public hearings.
I was coming in on weekends sometimes too.
Because there's so much politics involved, I can never just focus on one thing.
Like it was always the emergency of the day.
You know, someone kind of darkening my door and asking what's going on.
And I would have to stop what I'm doing.
And then I just felt like that happened all day for weeks and months on end.
I had a co-worker who went on maternity leave and then only came back part-time.
I got stuck with more work because of that.
So whenever you have a project, your project gets sent to inner departments.
So other departments will review it too.
I felt like I was being asked to interpret other people's reviews of these projects.
I felt like I was having to be almost like an attorney too.
And having to do these development agreements as well as the public engineering, public works engineering jobs.
I was learning on the fly.
If an engineer would write a comment on it, I wouldn't really understand.
But I would be asked to kind of interpret it.
I felt very uncomfortable doing them because they were written in very legalese.
So whenever I would have to do any sort of planning commission or town council hearing,
two or three weeks before that hearing, I would have to do a staff report.
There would be a staff report day.
And that day was always chaotic because you'd write the staff report and it would go around to everyone, including to the director.
And it would come back to my desk and it would have all these edits all over it, like just bloody red markers all over the thing.
And it was pretty much like I had to rewrite the whole thing.
And then it was almost like he would blow the project up right at the deadline.
He was one of those people who would be like he would always want to do plausible deniability.
He wouldn't get involved with the project the whole time.
And then when it would get to his desk at the deadline, he'd kind of blow it up.
And a lot of the edits would just be so insubstantial.
Like it would just be like move a word here, you know, and there.
Staff reports ended up being written like really dumbed down to you'd have to set aside the whole day, you know,
and I mean to rewrite your staff report and like, you know, you'd be calling people and stuff too.
It was just like, I don't know, it just everything felt like I was rolling a boulder up a hill.
I mean, we would have these biweekly meetings in which we would have to kind of talk about our project.
You'd sit there like on a hot seat and they would interrogate you.
They took themselves so seriously. They were so serious about it.
I mean, they would just question everything, question your judgment.
Why did you call that person? Why did you say that?
You should have said this and not saying, hey, you did good a job at this.
There was no trust whatsoever in my instinct or my judgment.
Calls on things, they just came out of fucking nowhere.
The stress of this agency wasn't just weighing on Josh.
He said the other associates were also stressed with their workload.
In the midst of it all, he thought this was probably commonplace for any planning agency.
But the red flags kept waving and they were becoming prevalent.
One of my colleagues, she was crying in her office twice.
Another one I really liked a lot too. She cried to me one time.
So I was in my office one day and the town attorney, as well as the senior planner and the deputy director,
got into this screaming match and I heard everything through the wall.
Like our walls were in his paper.
And these people, by the way, they're like the town attorney was like in his 60s.
Like he wasn't some fiery 35 year old attorney.
You know what I mean? And they were screaming at each other over the director of my department just not being responsive.
So after I see all this, I go to the deputy director.
I told him that I'm really struggling with the load.
And he just kind of nodded his head, didn't really say anything.
You know, and he just kind of said, OK, thank you for saying that.
The deputy director didn't engage in a conversation with Josh about why or how things needed to be changed.
There weren't any action items or takeaways from the meeting that would leave Josh feeling motivated that any kind of change was going to be made.
Just a few short months after that, Josh was blindsided when he was pulled into a meeting with the deputy director and other members of management.
Two or three months after that, I'm in my office.
I get a phone call from one of the conference rooms upstairs.
I pick up the phone and they're like, we need you to come upstairs.
I walk into the conference room in the planning manager.
The deputy director was there and a senior planner who they just hired like four months prior were sitting at the table.
And I was like, OK, the director was not at the table, by the way.
I walk in and they say, Josh, we don't feel like you're performing up to standard and we're going to put you on a PIP, Josh.
You know, in summary, if you don't sign this thing now, you know, you're you're done.
You're fired. And they said that my time management skills weren't good.
But whenever you give somebody twice as much work as you can, I don't fucking care what you say.
No time management is going to help.
And they sat down. It was so condescending.
And they were like, oh, you do this box of prioritization and whatever.
And I was just like, this is so ridiculous.
I was like, flabbergasted, humiliated.
I was angry. I felt betrayed.
It was so out of the blue, which I think is a red flag.
I almost had like this out of body experience of life.
I cannot believe this. It's never happened to me before.
And I never thought it would.
But I went home that night and I said, you know what?
I'm not a perfect person. You know, maybe they see these things and I'll work on these things.
And, you know, I could always be a better employee if they want to terminate me at the end of three months, you know, whatever.
So I ended up working myself off of it.
And I was like, I'm not going to terminate me off the PIP.
But nothing changed. Like, I didn't do anything differently.
Which proves that it's bullshit.
Josh managed to work himself off the performance improvement plan.
But the stress and anxiety of being under the PIP microscope and trying to suppress the stress that naturally came with his heavy workload started to get the best of him.
If you can't control your stress and mentally push yourself through a toxic work environment, your body will take it upon itself to try and shut things down for you.
And that's exactly what happened to Josh.
My health is deteriorating at this point, too. So even though I worked myself off of it, I'm 30 pounds overweight.
I go to get a physical that year. They tell me I have fatty liver and I'm doing everything right.
I do yoga. I work out. I want to say a year after that, I get another call to the office band.
They say, we don't feel like you're performing up to standard again. We're putting you on us.
And I'm like, you've got to be kidding me. I couldn't believe it. Nothing had changed in my view.
I was still working hard slogging through those ridiculous staff report things.
They said that you only have a month to meet. So at the end of that month, I was called into the office again.
And they said, your review is incomplete at this time. They said you didn't meet the performance review, but we're really keeping an eye on you.
Like director Tony Soprano is really keeping an eye on you. And we're watching every move you make.
And I'm like, Jesus Christ, you know, so I'm like, OK, whatever.
By this time, Josh had already worked extremely hard to get off of the first PIP.
He was able to get through the heavy workload and intense micromanagement style from those overseeing his work.
But when his managers pushed him to take the sword for something that he didn't agree with, he knew something was off.
I really feel like this this incident was the straw that broke the camel's back.
I was working on a project where the definition of building height was being questioned and the code was written poorly.
It wasn't really specifying how building height should be measured.
But my deputy director just came up with a reason for how the building should be measured.
And I was just like, fine, I don't care. You know, if you want to interpret it that way, fine.
So the entire time I worked there, they kept me away from the town council.
They would say if any town council member ever contacts you, forward them on to the director.
But then I get this call one day and they're like, Josh, we want you to go to the council work session tonight and explain this building height measurement.
And it was such a transparent attempt to throw me under the bus.
They said, are you able to go to the work session tonight?
I actually did have plans, you know, I could go and they were like, can you change those plans?
And I'm like, no, they kept me away from them all that time.
But when they wanted me to do a theory of theirs about how to measure building height, they wanted me to fall on the sword for them.
They wanted to throw me under the bus. At that point, I realized they don't want me here.
It doesn't matter what I do. And I don't know why.
The constant pressure of being under the microscope, the setups for failure by management, the lack of communication and anxiety of whether he was performing to their liking, took a serious toll on Josh's mental health.
When an incredible amount of stress builds up in your life and you don't take the time out to decompress and soothe your soul, it doesn't take much to get pushed over the mental cliff.
That leads me to Labor Day. Labor Day, it's kind of like a family tradition to go backpacking on Labor Day.
It's kind of like the last opportunity to because the weather kind of turns cold.
I go home and I'm stressed out to death. I find out that it's going to be raining and really miserable that weekend.
I can't really go backpacking. I'm disappointed about that.
I think at that time I was trying to apply for another job and in the middle of the application, something happened where I'd lost everything.
It was a Saturday morning and I get up and my girlfriend's like, are you okay? And I'm like, I don't think so.
I said, I'm just going to go back to bed for a little bit. So I go to bed and I don't know how long I'm asleep for.
My girlfriend walks in and sits down on the bed next to me and she says, I'm really worried about you.
I think you really need to go on FMLA. I always thought FMLA, that's just for mothers who just had a baby.
And I think in my days I just said, what do you mean? I don't understand. She says, you could go on FMLA if you get a doctor's.
She's like, I'm really worried about you. And I said, okay, I don't know if I could do that.
The next couple of days I call in sick and my doctor's office and my therapist could not have been more supportive of me.
I got FMLA. My mental health provider was like, she was just like, I haven't seen you a long time and you've been talking about this for so long.
She said, Josh, I think this is at a breaking point. You know, I'm happy to help you in any way I can and provide a written thing.
And then my family physician was like, your adrenals are burnt out. Like I was being chased by a bear that was being attacked by a lion.
She just said, you need this. If this is the reason this exists, I was fried.
Josh was literally burnt out. From Harvard Medical School online, quote,
The adrenals are two small glands that sit on top of the kidneys and produce several hormones, among them cortisol.
When under stress, we produce and release short bursts of cortisol into the bloodstream.
The adrenal fatigue theory suggests that prolonged exposure to stress could drain the adrenals, leading to a low cortisol state.
The adrenal depletion would cause brain fog, low energy, depressive mood, salt and sweet cravings, lightheadedness and other vague symptoms, unquote.
Going on FMLA was the best solution to regain his mental and physical health.
So I go on FMLA and it's not and I just want to emphasize this right now.
It's not like, yay, vacation. It's not like that.
Like I felt extreme shame.
And I still feel this. I'm just going to be honest with you. Sometimes I still feel this that like I just couldn't make it.
Like I ran away. It just was the worst time of my life.
I was waking up in the middle of the night screaming like from nightmares.
I was like, you know, my girlfriend would be startled. It was the worst time of my life.
It really was. I had so much anger and so much resentment.
Like I just was so depressed and I ended up having to kind of check myself into a facility.
My girlfriend said, I'm worried about you and I don't think like that you're safe.
You know, that year that happened, my mom passed away. You know, I went on FMLA. My dog passed away.
That relationship that I had with my girlfriend at the time ended too.
And it just felt like like is life nothing but loss.
Josh was in a dark place when he went on FMLA.
Losing his loved ones in addition to the stress and toxicity that oozed into his daily life was mentally debilitating.
I can't imagine going through grief while working in this toxic environment.
Josh told me that while he was attending his mother's funeral, he got a voicemail from his work reminding him that his three bereavement days had expired and he had to start using his vacation days.
Three days to grieve the loss of your mom definitely isn't enough.
Josh also told me that while he was on FMLA, he didn't hear a word from his managers.
Not even a I hope everything's okay.
Josh never went back to this job after Labor Day weekend.
By December, he found a new job and sent in his resignation letter.
Even still, he didn't get a word back from his managers.
After spending six and a half years working with this agency, they couldn't even muster up a good luck or thank you for his time spent there.
I'm a very like high functioning person.
Like I struggle with with everything like everyone else does, you know, but I've also accomplished a lot in my life.
Like I went to a great school.
I've like done two marathons and like I play hockey, you know, and I have great friends.
And stuff and I just this just happened to me and it just was such a watershed moment in my life.
And I didn't think anything like this would ever happen.
I just I don't know. It's so crazy.
It took me years for the anger to die down.
Like and like I'm finally at a point now where I just don't think about it too much, which is a really good thing.
I feel like the life lesson I learned was believe in your abilities and believe in your worth, your value and trust your gut.
Always be active with your career. Keep your resume up to date.
I know this is like all cliche stuff.
I just think that you could be going on great in a job and have a great manager, but that manager may leave and a new one could come in and they may not like you for no reason.
You know, and just have your resume ready to fire off and start applying for new jobs.
You know, I was so passive and so loyal. I really was too much.
Loyalty is an admirable trait, but too much of a good thing can work against you.
Josh learned to start trusting his gut and not to blindly follow whatever his employer demands him to do.
He's in a much better place physically and mentally, and he can finally look back and not hold the anger and resentment that brought him into a downward spiral.
Josh emailed me after we wrapped up the recording and said he recently drove through the town this agency planned for,
which he hadn't been back to in a few years and saw building after building, project after project that he worked on and he felt a great sense of accomplishment.
His efforts weren't in vain. He was able to take away valuable life lessons, and from that, he's a better person today.
I hope you enjoyed the podcast. If you have a story you'd like to share on this show, please go to ToxicWorkplacePodcast.com and click on Be a Guest.
Your story will be shared anonymously. All names are changed to protect the employee and the company.
Next time on Toxic Workplace.
I would resort in her yelling at somebody and we would see other staff members leave, clearly upset,
and I myself left the premises entirely after some meetings in tears that I couldn't hold back because I needed to go and collect myself.