The excitement of starting a new job can quickly subside once signs emerge that the workplace culture is toxic. Sara McCullough recalls the excitement and anticipation she felt about a job she was looking forward to starting. However, she says that feeling faded and turned to dismay as time went on.
The number of issues in the workplace piled up, but the final straw came when her manager said she wasn't meeting her weekly goals despite working long hours. During a discussion about her performance, she learned she was being judged on goals that were double what could be realistically achieved in a week. Discussions with colleagues revealed many of them were also underperforming against what they saw as unrealistic goals.
"I thought, 'Well, that's weird." McCullough says when she pointed out the goals were unattainable, the manager dismissed her concerns by blaming the system, while she didn't find the human resources department helpful. "(The company) would support a, kind of, either consistent or occasional toxic behaviour from people in the system," said McCullough, who is now an entrepreneur, of the workplace.
"It really was very hard," McCullough recalled, as she navigated her departure from the company. "I came out of it really disoriented in a lot of ways." Feelings that your views don't matter, receiving pushback on ideas, hearing gossip or rumours, bullying and unbearable workloads are some of the signs of a toxic environment, says Nainesh Kotak, founder of Kotak Law.
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