The short story is that I lost my mind with how I was being treated and how things were being run. I brought up my issues at a Monthly meeting.

Then I brought up even more issues with the fairness committee member which included racism, sexism, ageism, abusive managers, unfair treatment of contractors (I was a full time employee), work culture and a few other things.

That lead to a 3.5 hour meeting with the HR manager and the fairness committee member where I was basically blamed for all the company’s lack effort to do anything.

Enter more mental breakdown.

Eventually we had an employee survey where I emailed the corporate HR manager about my company’s horrible management. Made friends and gained the trust of corporate HR by proving I was able to work with corporate to change the work culture instead of seeking retribution.

My company HR terminated me. I emailed corporate HR, then got a lawyer. Nearly a year later I filed for wrongful termination (my lawyer caught covid and was delayed). One month after filing for wrongful termination, my old HR manager was forced into early retirement and she was back in her home country of Barbados before I had my meeting with the Labour Board and my old company.

Because I made friends with corporate HR, I brought a lot of attention to my old company after my termination. That place was forced to make very expensive changes and upgrades, there was a huge crackdown on safety which caused even more costs, HR became such a useless mess because the replacement HR manager inherited an absolute shit show, and management began to crumble without the old HR manager who used to hold all the corruption in place.

The cost of all the changes, upgrades, safety, external lawyers (they needed better lawyers than they had in house) and my severance came directly out of the pocket of the General Manager who was top position at that company. This place had over 300 employees and 300+ contractors over Canada, America and Mexico at the time.

That HR manager was so fucking petty. I’m not a petty person but my sister taught me everything I needed to know about pettiness. When people play petty games everyone loses. The petty person is naturally a loser and the person on the receiving end loses because they are forced to deal with the petty game bullshit. If I was going going to be petty, I had to lose before I even started.

It took me 10 months to get terminated. Early on I decided I wasn’t goint to quit silently. They were going to have to pay to get rid of me. Even if we both lost our jobs, I still feel like a winner.