This Is So Not How You Keep Valuable Assets Around

I was free from work to go study during the school term, but during the summer, I was called back in. While I was gone, there was a big reorganization at the workplace, and I now had a new boss. When I started working there, I helped create a lot of the protocols as they were moving one branch from another country, and I was the one who had to make it work. Well, it was my boss back then who was responsible, but as I was the one who did the work, he ran every decision by me.

When I came back, my new boss took me into a room to ask what I was studying, which was math and making algorithms for large quantities of calculations. She then said they would get my system up and running while my coworker trained me. My coworker, who had been trained by me when he started, said not much had changed in our work and just checked if there was anything I had forgotten in the past year, which there wasn’t.

For a few days, they didn’t get the system up and running, and I tried to help my coworkers with whatever I could do without access to the system, which wasn’t much. I told my boss that if there was something I could help with, she should let me know; however, she insisted that I should listen in on calls and learn the job, which was just making more work for the others.

When my system was finally up and I started helping out properly, I did my best to do away with the work I had gotten from the others while starting to answer calls. Just after hanging up a call, I heard my boss say my name and looked in her direction.

Boss: “You didn’t have anything to do, right? You can correct this invoice which is wrong.”

Me: “Well, I actually have a lot to do now, but if it can wait, I can do it later.”

My coworker, who had the invoice job, speaks up.

Coworker: “No, that’s fine. If you’re busy, I’ll just do it myself.”

Boss: “No, she is studying math, so she can correct the invoice.”

Me: “Well, what is the issue?”

Coworker: “Oh, it is just to add and subtract amounts on the faulty items.”

Boss: “You could make a logarithm for it.”

Yes, she said, “logarithm,” but I get that mathematical terms can be confusing.

Me: “It would actually take an unnecessary amount of time to create an algorithm for subtraction and addition. Someone could just do it in Excel or with a calculator.”

Boss: “Well, what else could you be studying in math? I think you should do it. You didn’t have anything to do, you said.”

Me: “All right, I’ll fix the invoice as soon as I’m finished with everything else here.”

Just then, my old boss’s boss came up to me and we greeted each other as we always had a good relationship. Turns out he had been promoted and had moved to Europe’s head office; he was just here visiting to see how things were going.

My boss stared at me while I talked to him and afterward asked:

Boss: “You know him?”

Me: “Well, yes, he was in charge of this office when I worked here.”

Boss: “Oh.”

She left at that. However, after that, she constantly tried to find errors in my work. When she told us to lie to customers, making things sound positive rather than being honest that we couldn’t make guarantees, I refused. Every time she heard me on the phone, she yelled at me afterward, completely ignoring the fact that we’re the ones who have to take the customers’ complaints when we don’t deliver, and guess what? We didn’t manage to deliver on their overly-positive promises.

I resigned. [Boss] had gone on holiday — I hadn’t even been informed that she would be gone — and the boss handling my resignation got panicked. Apparently, they had a note in some Human Resources file somewhere that I was a valuable asset they should try to keep, so he tried to see if there was anything they could change so that I would stay, but I was already thinking of quitting before all this, so my mind was set. I did not want to work for people who thought it was all right to lie to customers.