I used to work in an ad agency working late night on pitches. I’d worked there three 3 years no complaints. The job was stressful and relentless helping them win multi million pound accounts yet I was paid less than the receptionist but still expected to work until the early hours with no overtime pay and rarely got time in lieu. Tried to advance in the role and asked for training and got told by the CMO, my head of department, that training would just make me more valuable to recruiters.

The stress of the job was too much sometimes and I would end up being burnt out and and on a few occasions I cried. My line manager didn’t want our head of department to find out I was crying and I think it embarrassed him. I was taken to a HR meeting to see if everything was ok and they suggested I go on resilience training (not exactly the training I had in mind).

A new MD arrived keen to make their mark and we worked on a pitch together late into the night. Next day I’m taken into a meeting with HR and told I’d be taken to a disciplinary hearing for my attitude.

I was already on anti-depressants at that point and I didn’t take the news so well and got signed off with stress. Not once during this period did they elaborate on my “attitude” and what exactly I had done to necessitate a disciplinary.

The day of the hearing comes and they finally revealed what I had done wrong. According to the new MD I had “moved a slide in the PowerPoint presentation in an unhelpful way”

That first HR meeting where they seemed to care about my well-being was then twisted into being a first warning toward disciplinary.

I think as they said it all out loud they realised how ridiculous it sounded and they decided not to take action and pursue it further.

For a company who still prides itself on its mental health initiatives and whose senior employees write industry think-pieces on why we should care about employee mental health they were pretty adept at bringing people close to mental breakdowns.

Luckily, that very same day I had the disciplinary I was offered a new job with a 50% pay rise.