u/stormer_wallet

For the last 4 years, I've been working with a manager from hell. An arrogant, narcissistic person who is terrifyingly psychologically and emotionally abusive. After 4 years of dealing with his bullshit, including making me cry more than once because he would insult and berate me in front of people during team meetings, I finally found a new job and verbally told him I was resigning.

He spent about 90 minutes guilt-tripping me and talking about how much time and money he had spent on me, and all that nonsense. I almost felt guilty for a second, until I remembered how he treats me every day. He also wrote down the name of the new company and the name of my new manager, then started saying he knows a few senior people there and has a good relationship with them - and I'm sure that was meant to scare me.

Fast forward to this morning. Since that conversation, a few other people have handed in their resignations too, from a team that only has 6 people to begin with, and for pretty much the same reasons. He clearly didn't take it well, so he decided the totally normal thing to do was to call the managers at my new company and complain about me - saying they stole me from him, that he's going to send them an invoice for all the write-offs that happened while I was training here, that hiring me was a mistake, and all that.

He told me about the call like it was some kind of flex, and said they never would have offered me the job if they'd known I was working for him. Of course, he left out the part where he was trashing my reputation. I only found out what was really said because a colleague overheard the call and told me afterward.

I honestly still can't believe this guy treats people like garbage and somehow can't connect the dots and understand why he's losing most of his employees. Anyway, rant over. I have 4 more days left to deal with this POS.

This was a while ago, and I still think about how weird the situation was. I was looking for another IT job, and someone referred me to a company very close to my house. I went through several interviews and they all seemed to be going well, so for a while I felt like it might work out. But there were a few red flags that showed up early: they dodged the question every time I asked about salary, and the main guy interviewing me was honestly... Really difficult. He was younger, only slightly ahead of me in his career, and acted like he was doing me a personal favor by talking to me.

After the final interview, they finally sent me an offer with the starting pay. It was clearly lower than what I had been making at my last job. I tried to negotiate, and of course, the biggest credit for what I’ve learned about negotiation goes to the Tips I’ve read and the experience I’ve gained from attending numerous interviews, but there was no flexibility at all. The interviewer basically told me: "You're probably used to those comfortable city jobs. Here you can't expect the same money." The funny thing is that "here" was not some small office in a rural area at all. It was an expensive corporate park, with landscaping better than a lot of neighborhoods. I told him I needed to think about it, and his voice made it very clear he was confident I would say yes.

Fast forward about five days, and I had a call scheduled with him to give them my answer. For some reason, his manager was also on the call, which I imagine was so he could hear the big successful close or whatever. The interviewer came in with the same condescending tone, and it was very obvious he thought I was going to accept, so when I said I was declining, he sounded shocked.

Then things got awkward. First he asked me if I was serious. Then he started getting worked up and told me I probably wouldn't find anything better than what they were offering. After that little speech, he went quiet for a bit and said he would respect my decision if I was sure, but he needed to ask me one question. Then he asked me directly: "Is it because of me? Did I mess something up?"

At the same time, his boss was sitting there silently listening to all of this. I told him the pay wasn't suitable for me, and left it at that. He genuinely seemed upset, which was very strange, especially considering he had been pushy and condescending the whole time. Honestly, I found the whole thing kind of funny.

Has anyone else ever dealt with an interviewer or recruiter who took it weirdly personally after you turned down an offer?

There are a lot of posts these days about people leaving their jobs or getting fired in a very dramatic way, and I understand why those things spread. So I thought I'd share something a little calmer.

I recently left a job that was paying me $92k/year, and accepted a role at a small nonprofit. The old job paid well, but it was literally eating my brain every hour I was awake.

The nonprofit offered $76k/year, and instead of pushing them on salary, I asked about time. In the end, we agreed on $76k/year for 34h/week. So yeah, what I take home is less, but I genuinely got back space to breathe (and if you do the math, it comes out to about 12% more per hour). I had also prepared myself with research and numbers, but I focused on work/life balance and productivity instead of market rates.

Honestly, I feel like I'm flying now:)

I'm saying this while knowing that I'm already in a comfortable position, and that people closer to minimum wage often don't have this kind of choice. But when we do have room to push, I think we need to push for more than just salary.

Try to remember that antiwork isn't just about giving your boss the finger. It's about changing the way work exists in our lives, and making negotiating hours as normal as negotiating salary.

The job hunt had been exhausting me for about 18 months straight, and believe me, I applied everywhere I could possibly be even slightly qualified for. A few months ago, I received an offer that seemed like a dream. But when the actual contract , it was completely different from what we had agreed upon in the interview. It took them four days to get back to me, just to confirm, 'Yes, this is the agreement.' I felt cornered, so I accepted. It was a nightmare. In the end, enough was enough; I told myself that no income is better than sacrificing my dignity and constantly feeling like an idiot.

So I went back to searching, and found myself looking at a specific company here in the country that I had applied to several times before. Honestly, I racked my brain trying to recall all the confusion that happened with them late last year. I had applied for a specific position in September. In November and early December, I went through four interview stages. Not to praise myself, but I felt I did very well in them; each stage was with different people, and in one of the middle stages, I managed to break the ice with someone who was initially very grim, and by the end, we were talking normally and joking. In my last interview, they told me they would get back to me in the coming days, and said there were 'internal adjustments to the salary structures for this specific position.'

After that, there was no sign or news. Not a word about the job. About five weeks later, I saw the exact same job advertisement posted again, but this time there was a clear $12,000 deduction from the advertised salary. I scratched my head, really thinking about this. Was I too expensive, or did they hire someone who didn't last a few weeks? Out of curiosity, I applied again, just to see, but as I expected, no one responded to me, even after I had gone through those four interview stages.

Anyway, I had completely forgotten about this strange matter. But it all came back to me this morning when I was applying to the same company again. I opened my old applications, and here was the real surprise. Any other job I had applied for there simply stated 'Application Rejected'. But for *this specific job*, the one where I went through four interview stages? It said 'Status: Position Suspended.' And from what I know from others in the field, this is companies' polite way of saying, 'You're fired.'

My mind is still reeling from all the questions. Honestly, a part of me wishes they would call me for an interview for *this new* application, just so I could calmly ask about the time I apparently joined their team and then was let go, all without ever stepping foot in their office. This whole thing was so bizarre that I just had to tell you all about it. Seriously, who comes up with this stuff? Good luck to me, in this never-ending job hunt!

After eleven months at my job, I've come to the inevitable conclusion that they hired the wrong person. I have 17 years of experience, a few certifications, and an MBA. The interviews went well, and on paper, it seemed like a perfect fit. But I was hired to oversee strategic partnerships and client relations, while what they really needed was a data scientist or a senior developer to solve complex technical problems. Every time a new project or issue comes up, my only real contribution is setting up calls with the actual technical experts. I'm basically a human scheduler.

My weekly check-ins with my manager have become very awkward. I never have any real progress to report. I've tried to suggest other projects where my experience would be more useful, but I'm told to stay in my lane and that I wasn't hired to do that.

I've started applying for other jobs, but the market is tough and the short time I've spent here isn't helping. So for now, I'm just trying to look busy. I take online courses, read our internal wikis, and constantly check the internal job board for any openings. It's gotten to the point where I bring in donuts every couple of weeks just to try and ease the awkwardness my presence creates. Honestly, I feel like an imposter stealing a salary.

My annual review is next month. Should I bring up the obvious mismatch first? Or should I wait for them to say something? Could I try to negotiate a resignation with some severance? Or should I just keep going until they let me go and see what they offer then? If you were in my shoes, what would you do in a situation like this?