Abysmal time at Aus Post
Throwaway acc
Sorry for the length, I want to get all the details in but I’m probably venting too! It’s still very fresh. I joined auspost on a 12 month contract. I’m in my early 30’s and have worked in my field most of my 20’s. However this was my first, and probably my last, stint in corporate. It’s left me reeling from the unprofessionalism.
Right from the get go the onboarding was basically non-existent and the culture, or lack of, was apparent. You walk in, say good morning and no one responds, the team has two senior managers and one of them just never greeted me or spoke to me, there was no team bonding, lunches etc etc you get my drift! I had my ‘induction’ 2 months after starting, after I’d already figured out the structures and most of the ‘how to’s’ through trial and error. Not even going to delve into the attitude of the GM but the culture flows from the top down.
However, it seemed like my direct manager and I had good rapport. They seemed to like me. I received nothing but glowing reports for the first 2 and 1/2 months. Not just said to me but to other people and in team meetings too.
At the 2 1/2 month mark things rapidly changed for the worse. Almost overnight, my manager started picking on things that either were a flat out lie or something that didn’t warrant that level of hostility. They said my camera was off in a meeting when it wasn’t and I had witnesses saying it was on. I got the timings wrong to attend a culture ‘biggest morning tea’ and they were “so frustrated with me they couldn’t speak to me all day”.
Here’s where it went really bad. They sent me feedback on how frustrated they were about the morning tea (yes just a culture event) on Teams after hours. They got incredibly angry that I didn’t respond to that message, although we were in contact constantly about work. We had a 1-1 coming up that I thought would be much more appropriate.
They pushed our 1-1 back multiple times, avoided me in the office, all while I was confused on what was happening. When we did have our 1-1 they said they were disappointed that I wasn’t sending work back way before the deadline.
I asked “have I ever missed a deadline?”
“No, but you only send work back just before the deadline. It shouldn’t take you that long”
I mentioned that I use all time available to me to check my work and if there was any issue with deadlines then they needed to move the deadline forward and communicate that to me and I would accomodate.
They did not like that. And looking back at the wording they used in that meeting, I can 100% safely say they had already decided before the meeting that they were firing me, but why I have no idea!
After that meeting, we ended it “well”. There was no follow up email. There was no feedback, no working plan, NOTHING sent to me that I had to improve on. No communication that something wasn’t working etc. The only thing that remotely related to my actual work was that I wasn’t sending work back before the imaginary deadline.
The next day, they avoided me and then sent me a TEXT at around lunch time saying “It would be great to catch up at the end of the day before you head home!”
I got a meeting request for 4:45pm that said the exact same wording. No one else included in that meeting.
At 4:30pm, I received another text to my personal phone.
“By the way someone from P&C will be joining. Thought you should know”
Obviously I knew what was coming but I did not understand in the slightest. It all happened SO quickly and felt SO unfair.
In the meeting they read off their laptop and said my work wasn’t up to standard and I had to return all company property then and there.
All I said was they needed to really work on their feedback because I am incredibly confused.
I have no idea what I did, no poor work was ever discussed. Honestly it was like I’d done something horrendous. There was no talk of a reference, not one ‘thank you it just didn’t suit.’ It was absolutely vile the way I was treated and I will tell anyone who listens to stay far away from Australia Post.
I have never in my life been treated in such a way and I’m still in a state of shock to be honest. I’ve always loved my jobs, made lifelong friends with people I work with, never ever have I come across this level of unprofessionalism.
If you got this far thanks for reading, and if you work for AP (I did think other teams seemed a bit nicer), good luck!