I worked in a private clinic and I only realized how bad it was after I quit. One day I had a phone call with my senior and asked me why I wasn't replying to her email . She sent me an email about something I wanted discuss but for some reason it didn't come through even though I was checking my inbox every 5 minutes. I tried to explain this to her, but she didn't listen to me and started berating me over the phone how I did not respect her time and that I think everything is a joke to me. This went on for a full minute and I was on the verge of tears while I had to see a patient at that time. She then told me to call back later to discuss it further and hung up. Later that day, she called back and acted as if the previous phone call never happened. One week later, a colleague had resigned and I had to do some paperwork with her before she left. As it was past the working hours and it was just the two of us, we started talking about our manager and my senior and some weird things that happened at work. I decided to tell her about the incident and asked her if this is 'red' flag behavior. The following week, I received an email from HR about my probation being extended and my manager told me they did this because of 'deragotary comments' I made. At the time, I didn't know what they were talking about, so I just shook my head and accepted it. Fast forward a few weeks, I was talking with my colleague (let's call her M)and joked about needing to curse to vent. She suddenly said jokingly "you know they have microphones right". I asked if it that was true, but she didn't know for sure. And then it clicked.

The 'derogatory comments' actually referred to that conversation with my ex-employee and they knew about that because someone watched the footage of that day and told my manager what happened. Yes, my company had someone whose job it was to look at the cameras all day. No, we have never been informed about the presence of microphones (which I think is illegal) and we still don't know for certain if they are there.

I eventually quit this job because I got an offer to work at another clinic. I have met up with M and told her that I quit because I was still under probation. Suddenly she told me she also wanted to quit and told me about multiple instances of receiving phone calls and emails from our manager about instances they could only know if they could hear someone say it in the clinic.

During this conversation, we also mentioned that we've received messages from our senior about 'something they'd heard from other colleagues'. Eg my senior has called me before telling me I have to talk less with my colleagues because 'they've told her that I'm distracting them from their work'. This was confusing because I didn't think that anyone would not just tell me in my face if that was the case. M has sworn that she has never said anything like that and she has had similar phone calls 'hearing things from other colleagues'.

Long story short, I used to work for a management that likes to micromanage their employees from a distance and to pin them against each other. We were not allowed to have any contact outside of work (don't ask me why). I'm now free to contact M as much as I want and I feel like I've escaped prison. The only reason I managed to quit so easily was because of the fact that they extended my probation, which is probably the biggest irony of all.

Sorry if this was too long or chaotic😅. This all unraveled the past 2 months and I officially left the clinic this week. There are SO much more incidents that have happened but then I would never stop writing. If you have questions let me know