Where to start? From the psychotic micro managing and bullying to the fear of culture created at the top and passed down the chain, it was a miserable atmosphere from start to finish. Senior people throw junior staff under the bus at every opportunity.
When I began my role I was overloaded me with work and gave no advice, support or training, I was thrown in the deep end but tried to take it in stride and give it my best shot, acknowledging I was new so inevitably going to make some mistakes along the way. Everything I did was wrong, I was constantly criticised but given no help for me to improve. I was bombarded with emails and skype messages all the time, management constantly checking in every 5 minutes and demanding I give a rota every single day detailing what I would do at what times of the day. I thought this was a bit much and maybe they just needed to see I was competent and could be left to complete my work. This micro management carried on and was quite unbearable. The management would gas light me regularly in front of other colleagues, once even shouting “what have YOU got to be stressed about?!” in front of the whole office after bombarding me all day and seeing me slightly frazzled asking if I was stressed, I replied “Yes a little” and was shouted at. I was mortified and this was my first warning sign I'd bitten into a bad apple. They would also withhold information so that I ended up looking silly in meetings and not seeming like I know what I'm doing. We worked with external agencies and I was told I was 'too friendly' to the staff at these agencies, and that what I really needed to do was "be rude to them". I was pretty shocked by this and looked to see if I could change management. I was still pretty new to the company so thought it may be one bad egg and that I'd just been unlucky.
I was only ever given administrative work. I thought - ok, this isn’t what I was hired to do but there are always times you have to roll up your sleeves and do boring stuff for a few weeks. The weeks turned into months, months of copying data from one spreadsheet to another. Thousands of items of data, I was shocked nothing was automated in the team. Not being a person with any background of data entry or data admin, I of course made human errors within these data sets and was lambasted for it. I was criticised for having a ‘lack of attention to detail’, meanwhile being shunned from any meetings with anyone from Deloitte outside of the team. I wasn’t allowed to email anyone who wasn’t in the team for the first four months of my time in the team. I felt like Harry Potter being hidden away in a cupboard under the stairs. I was so looking forward to all the great training opportunities I’d heard about when joining. These never appeared and when I asked for training I was told to look at the internal Learning platform and do online multiple choice tests.
I took a look at my original job description a few months in to check I wasn’t losing my marbles and realised I hadn’t ever been given any tasks related to what was on the description. I was strictly given spreadsheets to copy data to and from, extremely long and dry reports to read and glean highlights from, and operational admin tasks as the management decided to construct many ‘trackers’ to assess progress with tasks. We had in excess of 18 trackers, which management regularly wanted reformatting. This was the case with a lot of the work I was given too. It felt like there really wasn’t any real work to do - we were in essence digital paper pushers faffing about on spreadsheets, reformatting work over and over again until it eventually pleased our overlords. I once spent 30 hours reformatting a long slide deck, changing the layout of the slides over and over again as per management's changing requests. When I was given long, tedious admin tasks I would calculate how long they would take me and let management know I was going to be busy with it for x amount of time so might not be able to do much more until x date/time if this was really urgent. I was told that by giving management an idea of how long it would take me to complete a task, I was being disrespectful.
I feel I was deliberately held back a number of times. My probation was extended twice (9 months in total) and I was denied a coach, training and opportunities as a result of this. Before joining the company I regularly spoke at conferences and panel events. During my interview I mentioned this and asked if this would still be allowed. I was told yes, that it wouldn’t be a problem so long as the event was legitimate and not offensive in any way (a fair caveat). However 7 months into my tenure, I was invited to a virtual panel event. I was really excited so asked the head of the team if that was ok with them and they replied that it wouldn’t be ok as I was still in my probation period (despite having been with the team 7 months). I was really disappointed by this.
I was also asked to move my holiday twice and told I wasn’t allowed to take 5 days off in a row, however the management were allowed this. The environment within the team was extremely hostile and disempowering. We were notified of a change in the team and when I asked what the reason for the change was I was told it was ‘not my place’ to ask questions. The irony of this is quite something when you realise the firm claims it wants people with ‘curious’ minds. The management team lacks intrinsic logic in a lot of instances but when you ask a question or raise a point as a junior member of the team, you are shunned and told off for it. It’s a horrid atmosphere to work in.
I had 5 years experience in one area prior to joining the team and was excited to add value to projects, however both management often commented that “you won’t know about x”, rather than asking if I might know about x, and often I did. I found this really patronising and an insult to my knowledge. Ultimately, no one ever asked for my thoughts or strategic input on anything over the course of 10 months. Not once. They may as well have hired a data robot and saved some cash.
I worked hard, often 10-12 hours a day, getting up early and staying way past 5.30pm to respond to the endless emails coming through and ensure all my work was done on time (with no overtime pay as we weren’t allowed to enter this on the system according to the team lead). I was eventually invited to a ‘Development meeting’. I thought this would be a great turning point and I could finally work on some marketing projects. I asked if I should bring or prepare anything for this but was told no and that it would be casual. I joined the meeting and was presented with a spreadsheet of EVERY mistake I had made (mostly the data in the spreadsheets with the thousands of data sets) and some accusatory statements of things I definitely hadn’t done or things that seemed weird to criticise someone for ‘asking questions to management that are above my level’ and for an hour management went through this spreadsheet, attacking me, offering no support or help and throwing criticism after criticism at me. I left the call after an hour and completely broke down. I don’t know how or why these people are so cruel. I answered an ‘anonymous’ wellness survey and gave some insight into what was happening. I do not believe it was anonymous now as the bullying got worse and worse from this point. I was finally let go on the spot, given an immediate dismissal out of nowhere. No proper process was followed, no written warnings or performance review, just a straight boot out the door during a global pandemic. The company has been completely soulless in my experience. None of the management have contacted me since, not even a thank you/goodbye/good luck text from management I think I ran into the worst kind of humans here. These people are extremely damaging to the Deloitte brand, do not uphold any of the values of the company and have many internal rifts with other teams. I cannot stress enough that this was not worth the money and to anyone thinking of joining, brace yourself and prepare for the gauntlet of office politics.
