Anna Brandberg

I was subverting the chain of command. I was undermining him. Disrupting the work of other teams. He wanted to give me another official warning. I apologised profusely, crying. My team lead convinced him to not give me a warning. 2 weeks later he decided to give me one anyway.

The new warning was so vague it's hard to even summarise what it was for, but it used the phrase "consulted the artist cohort" 5 times so that seemed to be my crime. He tied the new warning to the previous one to give it more weight. The letter threatened me with termination.

By the way, HR was obligated to offer I bring a support person into the warning meetings. He did in the first one but not the second. After the meeting I realised this and asked him in writing why. He said he did offer it and I declined. Another outright lie.

In the 2nd warning meeting I finally said I felt like he was bullying me. He said 'then I suggest you consult a lawyer'. I checked the company handbook, which said there was a 3-step internal process for dealing with bullying. Two of the steps involved talking to HR.

The final step involved the CEO. I told HR what the handbook said and that I wanted to file a bullying complaint. He told me that the handbook wasn't legally binding, refused to let me file a bullying complaint and again told me to talk to a lawyer.

So I filed a bullying complaint with the Australian Fair Work Commission. They got back to me much faster than expected, though, while I was still under scrutiny from the 2nd warning. I was worried that if the complaint went ahead I'd get fired with the warning as an excuse.

Fair Work said they couldn't prevent that from happening. I withdrew my complaint. After another couple months I couldn't take the atmosphere of fear and oppression anymore and gave my two weeks notice.

On my last day at the company, in my exit interview with HR, he told me I couldn't use anyone at the company as a reference on my resume. I was astounded -- I wasn't being fired, I had quit. I told him he couldn't do that and got up to walk out.