I posted this in 2025 Memories. This was my work grip experience last year and last month.
Wolf said:
I also had a great job with coworkers I could truly call friends and spend time with outside of work. I enjoyed the work itself as well my skills were improving as our team grew, and we did a lot of design work to support the guys in the field.
Around April, though, the company decided to cut back and eliminated our entire department, which was completely messed up.
It took a couple of months to find a new job. At my current company, I honestly don’t care for the way they operate. They feel stingy in many areas like computer equipment, software, and company policies and the owner seems to lack trust in employees. My manager is a micromanaging control freak, which I can’t stand. During the interview process, they talked about plans that aligned with my background and skills, including transitioning to Revit and moving away from AutoCAD. However, the manager is still using CAD and insists that I do the same. I’ve been proving him wrong by doing all my work in Revit and reminding him that I was hired to use specific programs and handle project coordination things we still haven’t actually implemented.
Luckily, when I came on board, one of my former coworkers was hired as well. We work well together, but even he’s fed up with the company. He recently found another job and has already put in his two weeks’ notice. I’ve been looking for a new job too, sending my resume to several places, but I haven’t had much luck so far.
New update: Once my co-worker left, work started coming in much slower, and the manager became much worse more difficult and honestly a real pain to deal with. Because of that, I’ve been desperately looking elsewhere. I started sending out my resume after the holiday season. One former co-worker I used to work with asked for my resume but I haven’t heard much back from anyone yet.
Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve had a few interviews lined up. One interview I went on seemed like it could be a good opportunity. The manager told me they need to hire at least 100 people to work on data center projects. To me, the interview went a little too well, and it felt like I would be working on a very similar project I did years ago one I really didn’t care for. Back then, I was basically worked like a robot and had no life.
A couple of hours after I got home from the interview, just as I suspected, they offered me the position with a very impressive salary. I told the manager I needed some time to think about it, and he gave me a couple of days to review everything.
In the meantime, I also had a phone interview and a video interview with a larger, well-known company that has offices scattered across the U.S. This is also the company my former co-worker I used to work with submitted my resume to. At that point, it was basically a waiting game with them.
After a couple of days, I called the first company to give them my decision. I told the manager, “Thank you for the offer, but unfortunately this role doesn’t seem like the right fit for me.” He seemed confused and asked why. I simply repeated what I had said. When he continued to question me, I ended the call.
During this same period, I had another interview for a manager role. The woman conducting the interview was very persistent calling and texting me during work hours. I asked her to please contact me after work hours, but she continued to do so. After a while, I had to firmly tell her to stop and ultimately rejected the position. When she asked why, I explained that the constant communication during work hours felt unprofessional and borderline harassment.
I was really just waiting for the right job to come along. Nearly a week went by, and all of my previous interviews were over since I had rejected those offers. The one job I truly wanted was a position where I’d be doing something similar to what I was doing last year design field work before the company eliminated the entire VDC department.
Eventually, my patience paid off. The company my former co-worker submitted my resume to the one where I had multiple interviews offered me the position, and I accepted it. The new company asked me to wait a couple of weeks while my background check cleared.
Once everything was submitted, I put in my two weeks’ notice with my manager. He was clearly shocked, though honestly he should have know I’d been visibly frustrated with him for a while.
During the first week of my notice, I suddenly started receiving work again. The manager asked me to redline drawings and clean up title blocks. After I completed everything and the project had already been submitted, he began nitpicking the smallest details. I pointed out that the work was already turned in and that we were essentially redoing the project, but he insisted the drawings needed to look a certain way. After a while, it became ridiculous.
Eventually, I told him that it felt like he was nitpicking the smallest things and creating unnecessary issues.
The next day, my supervisor told me, “We basically have no more work coming in, so today can be your last day.” I honestly laughed. He followed up by saying that I didn’t do anything wrong and that I hadn’t burned any bridges. In my mind, it was probably related to the conversation I had with that manager but either way, it didn’t matter.
I left early that day and now have a two-week “unemployment vacation” before my new position starts at the end of the month. Sorry for the long post I just needed to share my frustration, get it off my chest, and vent a bit. I actually feel a little better now.
