I joined a family company full of psychos.
By: Kawther Abdulla
Tags: Engineering, Depression, Storytelling, Stories, Community

Hello to you wherever in the world you’re reading this at any given time of the day.

This is my story it happened in a small island where job opportunities are very rare with a high percentages of unemployment.

Very random island from the internet.

Speaking of my experience as a female engineer I've spent 2 years battling at home constantly applying and not hearing anything back and suddenly ! A company came to the island and wanted to hire some engineers.

Cool ! I go to the interview which went very well very smooth i got excepted and started work immediately.

everything was going great i can see small signs but they were nothing to me as i was so happy to land a job even though i was working for a minimum wage. Some of the signs were :

A company full of family and friends except us the engineers. The boss’s wife calls him Sir ? Everyone was a manger myself included (Spoiler alert). No one has a degree except engineers in an industrial company selling industrial size equipment to other industrial companies. Lots of meetings with nothing done. No actual customers ? Everything is urgent.

So didn't think anything of it since this was my first job and thought every company was like that I mean, is it not normal for a company family friend to come up to you asking you to call everyone Sir for no reason ?

the days go by and I've proven myself and my skills to everyone so i got promoted to head of engineering/team leader/manager/senior engineer. (my position depended on who was speaking to me).

I was a manger /team leader but didn't have all the authorities of one nor a salary of one where i was still getting the minimum wage and I wasn't allowed to assign tasks, set deadlines or even suggest new ideas. Shouting was normal there you would see cousins backstabbing other family members and threatening of sending them back to their home country.

You can say i was never board there at all and every meeting had a new fight as if we were in a reality TV show it was very entertaining not going to lie LOL.

Now, this is where the pandemic hit all over the world and our company didn't care and instructed us not to ware a mask because Covied-19 was just a lie? and if any government official came to inspect the factory we would tell them “this is a privet property and not a company so we don't have to comply”.

Full lockdown mode in the island and we ( employees) didn't even receive any hand sanitizers in a time where it was mandatory for companies to give them to employees.

The CEO’s daughter decides to fly in from Canada she is an engineering student and I was told to “Split responsibilities with her” but, I didn't have any decision making role as a manager and was only managing 5 people but okaaaay ?(Tiktok phrase LOL)

So the week of her arrival i got Covid-19 symptoms and got tested for the first time which was traumatizing to me even though I was tested negative but, my family was scared they didn't want to touch me for a week ! It was hard but, while I was in 5-day quarantine the CEO’s daughter arrives as my team told me people were dying to be her friend and everyone was talking to her like a high school situation.

My quarantine is done and I came back to work where everyone was already addressing her as team manager if anyone had any concerns and doubts they would ignore me and go to her.

In meetings they would ask her about the progress of the team to which she had no idea at all and in the mean time i would teach her A to Z what is happening how to work in her dad’s company and what we had to do next.

A week after her dad’s best friend calls me in to a privet meeting i was expecting him to tell me that they moved me to manage another department as the engineering department doesn't need 2 managers. He calls me in and to my surprise saying “This has not been working i am sad to tell that you’re no longer a team leader do not come to any of the meetings please pack up your office were moving you back to be a normal engineer this is a final decision made by our CEO”. I was devastated and surprised as what they're doing is illegal and immediately asked why ? he starts shifting the blame on my team saying your team is always late for submissions, they don't follow instructions and some of them come 10 minutes late in the morning and you know this doesn't work out here”. Me fully knowing they did this because of his daughter I smirked to his face and told him you could’ve replaced me with anyone if you think that i am the problem we have more than capable engineers around why did you do this ? he told me “Ill proceed this to the CEO if you don’t pack your stuff and leave and if you don’t have the courage I will go tell the team you’re no longer their manager.

No I'm strong enough to tell them on my own. That's what I did.

I took it like a champ and was so strong but, i was crying on the inside and doing my best not to show it to anyone.

One day the weather was warm and we sat with our backs facing the all window wall similar to the picture below in the middle of summer with the A/C unit not working.

Sure I couldn't function properly so I told our new manager ( CEO’s Daughter) multiple times about the situation and she did nothing about so after 10 days i went to one of the company’s offices (1 minute drive from my desk) and left a note on my table saying where I was and this was the note :

I also sent her a WhatsApp message which I will not publish to keep her identity privet but she received and saw the message. During the day the CEO, her mom, 3 of family friends. The end of the day come and the COO is at my desk (CEO’s best friend) and proceed to tell me that my manager has NO IDEA where I am and she can’t find me.

This was funny to me as I made sure she was aware so, I went looking for her and surprise she was at the same floor so I asked her “Hello did you see the note I left on my desk ? and the WhatsApp message ?”

She says yes I did.

I told her what the CEO said to me and she says “ohh, surly its misunderstanding we will resolve it don't worry”.

I come back after the weekend they call me for an investigation the mom, the daughter and the COO recorded my answer to 10 questions and gave me a warning letter by threatening me to sign it saying “I can make this worse for you and fire you from this job if you don't sign”.

getting fired is one of my worst nightmares so I signed.

To make a very long story short 3 months later I was fired without any notice and no obvious reason.

I got very depressed it took me months to recover, to this day I can’t get my old self back and its still very difficult talking and writing about it.

The day after Covid-19 hit one of the employees me and 16 others went into quarantine and 4 other got Covid-19 at the same time the company was doing some suspicious money laundering activities and the bank blocked their account.

I might go into detail in my upcoming articles but, that is it for now thank you for reading the story of the worst period of my life.