Employee Tip #1: If your employer gives you an ultimatum, GET OUT! If they valued you, they wouldn’t corner you.

At one of my old jobs, the management team gave me two options: I could fight for my job and enter into a contract, like in elementary school, or I could leave. This was their way of saying I wasn’t useful to them anymore.

You can find a video of this at the bottom of the page.

My team’s new manager started a system where they would track tickets completed by each person. They had an actual leader board, like a video game. They  said it would “encourage” us to work harder.

False. Within a month, it turned into a micromanagement tool. Even though we stopped taking lunch breaks just to make numbers for the week, management would constantly bother us about our progress each day.

They really should’ve looked up the meaning of “encouragement”.

Eventually, the manager sat me down and explained that I wasn’t meeting their expectations for tickets completed per week. Never mind the ranging severity of each ticket or the fact that most tickets required us to reach out to customers for more information. They wanted more points on their board. Period.

The manager gave me two options. I could enter into a contract and promise to complete a minimum of x tickets weekly…or resign from my position.

All my hard work and effort wasn’t enough for them. They still wanted more. So, I resigned.

I opposed the leader board idea from the start because I knew the metrics didn’t represent the actual work my team put into helping customers. It didn’t reflect the relationships we built with customers or the extra questions we ask to optimize our solutions.

The company didn’t support my ideas and based on the numbers, I didn’t support their environment.

Now, I wasn’t the surefooted working machine you see before you today. Back then I wanted to enjoy the perks offered at the company as well as the freedom to complete my work how I see fit.

It took a while for me to realize the importance of focusing strictly on completing the work. Over time, I built a resilience that comes with doing undesirable work. Soon I found myself knocking out tickets more efficiently and finding new ways to save time while delivering solid work.

Then they handed me an ultimatum.

During the last year of my tenure at the company, I was more involved and worked to find the best way to understand long term plans for the company and how my work was affected.

Staying informed is key in any company. In fact, the same manager who came to me about my tickets mentioned she was impressed by my improvements. Things seemed to be looking up.

You can imagine the company’s decision caught me by surprise. That’s when I realized, most companies don’t see us as individuals. They only see metrics and these rankings/ratings/reviews are a tool to be used against us at will.

Despite my bad experience, I soldiered through and did my job. In fact, I did more than I thought I was capable of and became mentally tougher. It didn’t matter to me if it wasn’t enough for them because it was beyond the expectations I had for myself.

I raised the bar on my own. If they couldn’t see it, then I had no reason to stay. My work spoke for itself.

My biggest lesson in all this was behind the scenes, a lot of businesses function like an elementary school. If you can’t fall in line with the class, detention. High marks with unsatisfactory behavior? Detention.

They give you compliments, pizza parties and treats when you grade high. Sometimes you even make honor roll and get pushed up to honors classes where you have more work. But if you don’t excel to their standards, DETENTION!

Not to worry, there are good companies out there. You’ll just have to skip class to find them.

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Coding Fanatic

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay