Is my boss a CF or is this constructive dismissal?

[TooOldForASugarDaddy]

I joined an “amazing” company recently, which prides itself in its flexible working style, providing amazing training, their care for employees and customers, and above all, on being disability friendly.

This may be true around the country but not evident in my area team. I could write a book on the amount of CFing behaviour I have seen in 3 months:

1. Flexitime. Most employees are working at least 10 hours extra a week that are not paid and that they are not able to take back. My boss says this is normal, that everyone does it and that we just need to get faster even when the main slowing factor is a slow recording system.

2. If you book time off you are still expected to meet your weekly target, just cram a week of work on 3 days so you can take a couple of days off, even if you are taking the time off as sick leave, annual leave or for a hospital stay.

3. Training has been extensive but with little or no practice, and most times only put in practice weeks or months after the training session. If you ask for help they refer you back to the company’s wiki. If you ask for a reminder, they will ask you to shadow other staff for days BUT that would be on top of your already difficult to manage workload. This has meant that I have had weeks where I am working over 50 hours a week, to be able to meet my target and the extra days of shadowing.

Initially my work pattern was supposed to be 3 days working from home and 2 from local site. This has now changed repeatedly but now she says it was always meant to be 2 days at home, 1 at site and 2 away (no travel expenses paid). She says it was always expected to be like this but I asked to confirm the work pattern during interview, before I accepted the offer and have been told repeatedly that the most time away I would do would be one day a week. She says I am confused, I think she has no shame.

I have a disability and need relatively inexpensive adaptations at work. I discussed this with HR when I joined, and with my boss on the first week, but my boss told me it would take months to arrange an appointment with occupational health and asked me to go without to start with to see if I coped. It is three months since and so far they have not provided ANYTHING. 6 weeks in I was feeling so stressed due to the extra challenges my disability brings I ended up paying for my own equipment as I felt I was getting too behind. Problem is, the main piece of equipment needs to be portable, so although I had managed with my own equipment when I work at home, I am still disadvantaged at work on the 3 days I work at sites. I have brought this up several times. I know that disability is a protected characteristic but they just keep kicking the can further on this.

I have seen my boss lie, cheat and even saw her set a new employee to fail (and fire) asking her to complete processes none of us can complete on the time she gave the new employee to do. So I don’t think I can trust her.

I love the job, have got great feedback from customers and colleagues and it is not a job that I am absolutely new to, I have done similar jobs for almost 3 decades but the workload on this one is insane and my boss rules not with honey but a whip.

Shall I leave (no right to JSA if I do) or shall I wait for her to fire me (with substantial damage to my mental health)?

So far, I have got 3 occasions when my boss went ballistic because I mentioned that the extra hours were due to extra shadowing she asked me to do, because I have said that the adjustments due to disability were taking a bit too long and because I refused to have my target increased by 50% on the same week when she added 10 hours of shadowing to my week workload and after I had worked over 30 extra hours in the previous week.

What would you do? I have savings and a small source of secondary, so I expect that if I tight my belt I can just about survive for some months.but I am afraid that given my age, if I leave I won’t find another job.

WTF
How much are you being paid for this?

Who’s your boss’s boss? What’s the procedure to raise things like the contract, equipment and occupational health appointments?

Not enough, if I consider the extra unpaid hours most if ya seem to be doing, we are earning well below the minimum salary.

Blood hell op. Are you in a union?

I am still in probation and I wonder if there is a point of putting myself through the drama of complaining considering how she tries to gaslight you when she does something she shouldn’t.

I expect you can get to this point after years working with a company, but if it is this bad just in 3 months what are the chances if this improving?

interesting that you mention that… there is an internal body that acts to protect employees interests. I have been told that the representative for my area is… unavailable!

Good grief, you can’t make this up!

Start looking for another job now. In the meantime, just do your minimum contractual hours.

Your health & safety is not being managed appropriately and this is against the law.

It seems that you have nothing to loose so I would go in all guns blazing.

Start with a grievance: objectively outline what you said you required to support your disability; what has not been provided or what has changed and the impact on you. Do this for the hours, location, equipment.

Send it to your HR dept on the basis you have raised it with your manager and had no response hence the formal grievance.

In regard to expenses, what does your contract say about your work location? Any work at a location other than your contractual location qualifies for expenses because you are travelling 'for' work and not 'to' work. Check your company expense policy and if they don't have one the HMRC clearly state what constitutes travel expenses.

It boils my p**s when I hear of managers behaving in this way!!!

Well then they are breaking the law.

Whether it's Constructive Dismissal (not, as you don't have 2 years' employment rights) or Discrimination (could be if you're given impossible targets and no support for your reasonable adjustments), is a moot point.

the actual point is whether it's viable for you to continue working there and feel happy, settled and productive. I read nothing in your posts that indicates anything other than hassle and stress. Totally not worth it.

If you can start looking for a new job now, you might just about be able to dodge a bullet, especially as they are likely to take a more cautious approach with you than with the employee the boss set up to fail, given you get protection rights from Day 1 linked to your protected characteristic. Try to get out before your MH is affected.

This just isn't sustainable OP.
Put all your efforts into finding another job.

Speak to ACAS for some advice.

Contact ACAS pronto.
Your company is breaking the law left, right and centre.

Your boss is beyond CFery! Have you been putting all of your requests for reasonable adjustments in writing? If you haven’t, start doing that now and cc’ing HR to create a paper trail.

Who interviewed you for the job and confirmed your working pattern? Do you have a written record of this? Email HR, remind them what you were promised at interview stage snd ask them to re-confirm your working pattern. You need to get everything in writing so that they can’t claim it was all a misunderstanding in the future.

Start looking for another job in the meantime.

I didn’t know about getting rights from day 1. Interesting, do you get the same rights for other protected characteristics, like race? If so, the woman who was fired should have been protected too.

The disability adjustments requests I have in writing but as most of the chasing up has been in one to one meetings in Teams it would be her word against mine.

She interviewed me, and again all the changes to working pattern she has carried out in Teams. My colleagues know I was never expected to work two days away but then, one has been fired (that’s why I have to do an extra day away on a permanent basis) and the other one… the woman is really struggling at the job and have been down in tears several times with me or other members of the team about the stress she is being put under but… she is the kind of person who would always suck up to the boss so I don’t think she will have the courage to back me off at all, she cannot even talk to protect herself.

Back me up, meant to say.

As @daisychain01 mention, I can’t see a way out of this mess given all that stuff has happened over 2 months.

How do I get out of there asap? I honestly do not want to stay there a day more than I have to and have so much time accrued in flexi time I may cut my notice works short but… the company insists on “letting employers organise their own time” so very conveniently there are no records about how much time or extra time each of us are working.

Start a timesheet and keep a record of exactly how many hours you work, your breaks and the location. Also keep a log of every occasion when their lack of provision for your condition means that you struggle to complete a task. Do it in a paper diary that belongs to you, and file a copy somewhere convenient at work.

I think you may have misunderstood what "protected" means. It means, for example, that you can't be dismissed because of your race or ethnic origin - not that you can't be dismissed for any other reason. Disability is a little different because it might be discrimination to have not provided the adjustments - but it seems that you may lack evidence on this from what you are saying; and besides which, I suspect that they will find a completely different reason, like underperformance, to dismiss you for. There is always a way around the law for companies like this.

Given what you said about some internal "thing" that "looks after" employees, would this be an American company by any chance? That's a common system in the US to avoid unionisation.

I think some serious job hunting is called for. And stop working extra hours - you'll never see them back. Start putting everything in writing. It may not consititute a case against them, and honestly, the stresss of a case probably isn't worth it - but it would be something to show JSA if you were sacked. Even the JobCentre aren't likley to start an argument over benefits if you have written evidence of asking for adjustments that aren't being provided.

Thus job is totally sucking any joy fir life I had before I joined. It is not the extremely long hours I am so angry at working so many hours and my needs disregarded.

How do I hand notice without making things worse for myself? I just want out before I end up having a breakdown.

Thus… that, even.

Yes, just work to rule while looking for another job. Sounds shit.

To add insult to injury… I just checked my offer letter and although it was widely discussed I was going to be working in just 2 sites (my local one and one 15 miles away) the offer letter says “North of England”

fuck them, I’m resigning tomorrow!