The industry I was in was in the hospitality industry. The setting was a hotel/country club run by a British retail giant. I worked in the housekeeping department, as did the other two parties.
It is thought to have some early roots in a check-in meeting with my then line manager just over three months into the job, in which she made some dubious allegations based on feedback from other employees (one of which was the aforementioned team leader — with whom I had a close working relationship and generally was a well-liked person). The room targets were four rooms at a time per person. I got mine knocked down to three. Working speed has always been an issue with me due to being neurodivergent. My husband, who is IOSH and NEBOSH trained, said those were unreasonable targets in addition to communal area cleaning and any other jobs needed. I also got put to work on my own if it was not too busy — a health and safety breach and one of many breaches found by my husband when I got axed. The bullying did not escalate until the summer of the following year, when line manager told me at the end of August last year she was putting me on a three-month Capability Improvement Plan. When I was told of the plan, I had a risk assessment written up (I’m neurodivergent and also have mental health issues, which were both a trigger for workplace bullying and underperformance at work — and the risk assessment should’ve been done when employment began). My weight also got brought into the equation, a breach of the Equality Act. I applied for an Access to Work grant and had to wait months for it to materialize. Ironically it did not materialize until my final days at the job; the application was considered to be nothing more than a wild goose chase. The week after the plan conversation, I was on annual leave and had suicidal thoughts to the point I texted Samaritans, a mental health counseling service. After disclosing these thoughts to a coworker, the general manager found out. When the team leader was on annual leave, I had to endure a week of the nature of “when the cat’s away, the mice come out to play” with the line manager. She gaslit and infantilized me and had trust issues with me that week. Two months into the plan, I was told by the line manager that the three months coaching was a preemptive measure and the plan would follow if there was no improvement in that time, contrary to the conversation she’d had with me. Coincidentally I was back to square one come the run-up to Christmas last year. Come February, this year the coach told me he hadn’t done a particularly good job coaching me and we were back to square one.
When I semi-formally raised a grievance against the line manager with the general manager in the run-up to Christmas last year, the vibe was that I was accused of lying, a case of “my word against someone else’s,” and both parties made me think about if being a housekeeper here was right for me. That’s after noticing I’d lost nearly two stone in the space of six months due to stress. My previous job was as a housekeeper in an eating disorder unit. I saw firsthand the impact that eating disorders have on patients and their loved ones (and to an extent, anyone involved with them professionally). When the line manager got wind of the complaint made, she tore into me and guilt-tripped me (bringing the eating disorder unit job, which had a toxic working environment, into the conversation unnecessarily) and accused me of lying. In February this year, at a performance review, when I got asked how the team management could support me in my job, I made reference to one of the garden volunteers knowing me before this job and it might be worth reaching out to her. They had ample opportunity to do so before I got axed. The month after this performance review, I got told that line manager and the coach got moved from Housekeeping to Reception on account of line manager “having too many employees to look after” (she also managed other departments as well), but I have a feeling the grievance had something to do with it. In a fit-to-work meeting in my last week in the job, the grievance against the line manager got referred to by the manager. I was told that the line manager and coach were surprised about the grievance being raised and did not see malice anywhere. Moreover, line manager said “the fact she is French needed to be used as a mitigating factor.”
At the time of dismissal I was the third person from that workplace who left One was neurodivergent, one didn’t live locally to the site, and one had non-English DNA. Two of them are also LGBT. I was since told that one was discriminated against due to workplace bullying as well. The heritage/race/nationality part is blatant double standards because our former line manager is not natively British. The company has also admitted elsewhere “they don’t want the responsibility of neurodivergent people” — it could also be implied they don’t want to take on people who don’t live locally, don’t have non-English DNA, and/or are LGBT.
Half the friends I’d made at that workplace have frozen me out or got rid of me on social media, presumably due to poison dripping. The main manager has since had a baby. There was a baby shower held (coincidentally) the day before the fit-to-work meeting, and nobody reached out to tell me the birth news, which I was upset about because not only did I have a lot of respect for her up (until she effectively shoehorned me out of my job), but because the baby shower was my idea to begin with and I invested resources (time and money) for it. I have since taken legal action against the company (I also found out the coach, who left a month before I did, was a victim of workplace bullying too). The whole experience has had a tremendous effect on my mental health, especially because this job has been the third consecutive toxic workplace I’ve been in and more so because the company was the first employer I worked at for pay.
I have spoken out about my experience on social media and also shared posts from End Workplace Abuse on LinkedIn until I was told to remove them due to ‘breaching NDA protocol’ — even though this company isn’t the sole toxic workplace I’ve been in (it’s been the third consecutive one). I haven’t shared anything else since.
Don’t keep quiet about it — whatever you do. Escalate as high in the chain as possible.