Luckily, I have never experienced toxic behavior or relationships in my family or friends not did I heard of it in my friends circle or relatives. However, there are some stories I heard from some friends and cousins but I don’t believe and judging by hearing about anyone especially when I don’t know them in real. It could be false or made up stories. I only believe in what I see through my naked eyes or hear something or witnessed by myself.
We spent half of our lives at workplace, living with our colleagues. It’s like the second home in my opinion. Yes, I have experienced toxic relationship with my team leader once and it gave me too many lessons and learning. It was way back in 2016 when our company got merged with another company and we (four team members of CS team) Unpremeditatedly have to join the new company as we don’t have any other option. We were welcomed there by our manager, team leader and four existing team members.
I don’t know why but our team leader from the beginning was not happy with this move and didn’t accept as the part of their company. Well, that doesn’t matter but when it comes to teaching them the way our company used to work and same will be applied here, he was not ready to learn new products or system and argued to do the same as they used to do. This was a total disaster, he was not ready to adopt the actual work we have to do now after merging and taking over our old company. Well, I thought its upto them because I am not responsible for all this nor I am on a responsible position.
He has built his own pillars with his old team members and didn’t allow to be the part of it. Its his choice, never mind. Now the twisting point, manager asked me to teach everyone with the new ways of working as I had a good product knowledge. He started politics and asked his team members to not listen to me. He was very aggressive person. I don’t have any issues with him personally but we are at workplace not to judge each other but to work for the betterment of the company.
This was challenging for me and I really had mental stress, thinking a lot, doing over times to complete all task because others don’t have much knowledge. On top of it, team leader always pointing on me that I don’t work and don’t have time management, over time wont count. On other hand, he was partial and support his old team members. Always making one of them the employee of the month to get incentives and me, doing so much getting nothing.
Full time favoritism and not discussing things about our work. Who doesn’t want extra money i.e. incentives. Somehow, I managed to absorb all that but how long and how much more I can take. Time comes when it was enough for me to take and now its time to give it back to him. I was unable to take any more tensions and stress with such a low salary package. Now, I turned myself just like him and I changed the way of talking with him. The devil inside me woke up lol
I learnt all the products new and old, and started my work in all new way. I learnt all the techniques of how to get best in KPis to get the monthly incentive. I spoke to manager to have overtime incentive for justified work and got it. He was not at all happy with this and argued with manager as well. Nothing was going on his way, he did complained of my behavior as well to higher management but everyone advised him not to take this to HR or you will get in trouble because me and him, the main argument is about work where I am all perfect and he is having loopholes. Suddenly, parameters changed and now, he is suffering my toxic behavior. It was that intensive that whenever I go on leaves, he wanted every other team member to look at my pending desk because when I will return from leaves, I am not gonna ask each and every case summary from my team leader. He literally gets scared of me and my questions. Time comes when he was unable to take any more of it and requested higher management to transfer him to other station. It was good for our department and finally, he got a good position in other city and got transfer letter as well. Later, everyone in a joking mode, always blame me for his transfer. Even if it is true, it all went well for everyone. One of the deserved person got his position who wonderfully handled the team later on.
There is a limit to endure anything. I have realized that the way I opted was not the best but I don’t have many options. I had made my mind of getting terminated of misbehaving but it never happens that way what we think of. I learnt a lot in this process of toxicity. The only thing which I cared for is the right path to follow. Things automatically gets better but practically, I have to take some harsh steps and took some tough decisions rather than just being silent and killing myself inside. This experience of being toxic to cut down toxic behavior was learning point for me and I hope I never have to face the same in my whole life again.