Yes. Oh boy, do I have a story.
First of all, I was hired for this position from another part of the company - and I moved over 1,000 miles at my own expense to Colorado to start this job. This was a job that was basically what I had been doing for the past 9 years and had gotten great performance reviews.
I was supposed to work with 3 other people but on my first day there, their manager sat with all of us at a meeting and told them all that he had no idea why I was there and that his people (that I was supposed to work with) should have nothing to do with me. But, like a dummy I stayed on.
During my year+ there, I got comments like how bad the winter/snow could be (uh, I spent 4 years in Alaska where it occasionally got below -40), how they trusted employees because they had known them for 20 years or more (as in, they did not trust me), etc. Then there was the one engineering lead who remarked that what they did was hire people with current skills then work them as many hours as they could without any additional training and then replace them when their skills became outdated. I also had a "supervisor" who would tell the site manager about a decision/course of action and then before telling me, change his mind completely and tell me something different (or not bother to tell me at all). So it always looked like were were not working together. I also noticed that not only were there very few females' that worked here (in two buildings) but the women who were over 40 experienced a lot of hostility from the management.
Talk about stress through the roof
? Then I had the audacity to have my 60th birthday. And then I really started feeling awful with difficulty focusing on my work, felt agitated at times, etc. Then one week apart, I had two incidences shortly before lunch when I essentially blacked out and have no memory of my actions.
After the second time, I was literally walked out the door on a Friday on suspension. I went to the doctor on Monday and found out that I had become diabetic and those blackouts were because my blood sugar had dropped so low that I really needed medical intervention. So I immediately went on a medical leave to ensure everything was stable. But it took 3 weeks before my stress level even started to go down. And six weeks later, I went to a psychologist for cognitive tests to verify that there were not additional problems. Even 6 weeks later, she said that although not bad, my short term and long term memory results were so different that she could tell that my stress level was still affecting my ability to work and strongly suggested that I never go back.
But, since I was on medical leave, I had to go back When everything was finally stable, I contacted my boss and said I was cleared to go back. II was told that I would be reassigned instead. Ah yes. I was assigned to a desk in another building in a room that was empty. I also had no phone, no computer - and no duties. My first full day back, my manager came with my annual performance review stating that my work was sub par, even though no mention of this the whole time I had been working there.
After six WEEKS of sitting at an empty desk each day, I was told that I did not know how to do my job (without any specifics) and my two choices were to resign or enter a retraining program so my "deficiencies could be corrected". However, I was never told what the "deficiencies" were and there was nothing set up for the "retraining" . In addition, I was told that if I did not "pass" the retraining, I would be fired immediately and would not even get severance, etc.
Can anyone say "discrimination"? Take your pick - age, gender, medical.
in addition, about a year later, I was at an event at a conservative church. I saw one of my former co-workers, he got first a surprised and then an extremely guilty look on his face (and avoided me). I attend an "open and affirming" church and for some reason, I got the impression that someone had decided to spread a rumor around the site (with a lot of very conservative/evangelical men) that I was gay.
One good thing is that when I started looking for work again, I applied for unemployment. Normally if you resign, you are not eligible and the company pushed back. I was able to prove that the resignation was forced and at the hearing, even the company lawyers did not show up to put up even a weak defense. So my guess is that they realized they had goofed big time and I got this extra money until being hired again. But unless I could get a co-worker to testify on my behalf (endangering their own job), filing a lawsuit would have been futile.
The great thing is that after working for 15 months more for another company (for ~20K higher salary), when that job got moved to another state, I was ready to walk away from work completely and with more than enough investments to live a comfortable retirement.
