Human Resources is Not Your Friend
Anonymous*
*A note on anonymity: From the outset of MMF’s work, we have recognized the fundamental lack of trust in our field, borne from decades of un/under-addressed harm. We allow authors to publish anonymously when their current circumstances make them unable to publish with their names attached. In such cases, MMF verifies the author’s identity and employment history.
In 2021, I was employed by a large, highly resourced museum. I arrived with a master’s degree specific to the work I was hired to do and over a decade of experience at for-profit corporations. I had also held similar positions for several years at other arts and culture organizations. The hiring process included many multi-hour interviews where we discussed my background and ideas for the position in detail, and my eventual supervisor was present at each one.
Soon after I was hired, I started having trouble with my supervisor. They repeatedly implied that all I had learned up to that point was incorrect. In my nearly twenty-year career, I had never met such resistance from a supervisor. The situation became so untenable that I enrolled in a professional development course, using much of my free time to try to improve upon areas in which my supervisor said I was lacking. I took what was taught in the course and applied it to my work, but my supervisor said that my skills had not improved and my work didn’t meet institutional standards.
When I started at this museum, I found that the organization lacked diversity initiatives. I found a group of like-minded fellow employees and formed a museum-sponsored Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI) group to bring about actionable changes. The group was volunteer-based, and we spent most of our time working on it outside the office. My supervisor begrudgingly allowed me to be involved with this DEI group, but on several occasions, they said my time spent with the group took away from the work of the job they hired me for.
My supervisor regularly said my work was better suited for the general public rather than a museum audience, but they never offered any suggestions on how to reorient my work. Halfway through my employment, I was told by my supervisor that they were hiring a new team member, one that would be working to engage the general public. I was confused and suggested that they consider me for this new role because my supervisor had previously told me my work was more suited for this audience. They said that I was not being considered.
The relationship with my supervisor reached a low point when, at the end of the day on a Friday, they copied a member of our departmental leadership—who works closely with human resources (HR)—on a response to an email I’d written to summarize a meeting, saying my approach to the meeting was wrong but offered no feedback about what was wrong or how to improve. I tried to contact my supervisor for an explanation, but my calls went straight to voicemail, and my Slack message was ignored. Copying this intermediary was an act of intimidation, and the message insinuated I would be fired the coming Monday. While I wasn’t fired on that Monday, my supervisor told me they needed to show proof to other parties of how my work was incorrect. After this incident, I wrote to my organization’s HR department with a complaint, hoping they could step in and do something to alleviate my supervisor’s aggressive behavior.
I asked HR if there was any formal way for me to submit a complaint about my supervisor that would be kept on file. HR requested a Zoom meeting with me, and during the meeting they said they’d keep my initial email on file and would start an investigation into my supervisor’s conduct. I never received a written summation of our meeting or response to my complaint. HR conducted meetings on Zoom or in person; nothing of substance was ever written to avoid a paper trail. I still don’t know if they ever investigated my supervisor or even talked to them. After I alerted HR, my supervisor’s aggressive, toxic behavior continued: they took me off all of the projects I was working on except for administrative tasks like organizing filing cabinets and transcribing notes.
The museum where we worked had a process of regular performance reviews, which were linked to benefits, pay raises, and continued employment. Unsurprisingly, my supervisor consistently gave me negative performance reviews, and there was no system in place for employees to review their managers. HR said I could write a challenge for my performance reviews, which I did. I later found that HR did not keep this written challenge to my performance review in my personnel file, nor my original letter bringing up concerns about my supervisor’s behavior. HR should keep all records on file for employee disputes so all parties can reference them when needed.
I have since learned about the technique of manufacturing problems to “paper the file.” Employers paper the file by establishing a poor performance record when they have decided they are going to fire an employee and want to avoid any potential legal claims from the employee. Additionally, the museum’s use of performance appraisals and a manager’s unchecked ability to write whatever they want about their employees is a blatant way to paper the file.
My supervisor took this technique to a treacherous level by assigning me an enormous, vague task, one they knew I had no experience doing. I was given less than a month to complete the task and no guidance on what content or format my supervisor wanted. The work was assigned one week before I had a previously scheduled two-week vacation. When I returned from vacation, I attempted many times to show my supervisor my work, but they said they did not have time to review it. Nonetheless, I created a detailed 200-page document based on the assignment. When I presented my work, my supervisor said it was unsatisfactory. In effect, my supervisor created an opaque project with no guidelines and little time to complete it, thus manufacturing a major problem to note.
My supervisor and the director of the department eventually took away several of my benefits––including my work-from-home days, cost-of-living salary increases, and even my ability to serve on the DEI group––and verbally told me I had no future at the museum. During one meeting, they told me I should call my spouse then and there about quitting my job. When I applied to transfer to the same position in another part of the organization, my supervisor told me I was barred from transferring to other positions, and HR backed this up. To my knowledge, no other employee was subjected to these restrictions.
All of my interactions with HR showcased a significant problem within this organization: HR only seemed to exist to shield management and the institution from legal liabilities and did not take employee complaints against management seriously. After my benefits were decreased, I also emailed the director of HR, asking if there was any help they would provide to mitigate the situation; they said nothing could be done because my supervisor was well within her purview and that nothing wrong had happened.
Around the same time that my benefits were taken away, my partner suffered an emergency during pregnancy and had to be rushed to the hospital. After returning home, our doctor requested that I work from home in case another emergency were to occur, and wrote a letter explaining the situation, which I gave to my supervisor and HR. At this time, all my coworkers, including my supervisor, were on hybrid schedules and could work from home several days a week. After I requested accommodations to work from home in accordance with our doctor’s recommendation, HR did not get back to me for eight days. Eventually they wrote back to tell me that they refused my request because my work-from-home benefits had been taken away.
HR taking their time to field a medical request also showed their failure to respond to things in a timely manner, which echoed the months-long process that it took to speak to them earlier when attempting to file a complaint against my supervisor. More importantly, my experience with HR showed a lack of humanity and compassion regarding how they treated their employees.
I was fired from my position less than a month after my baby was born. Because of the timing of my dismissal, I took legal action against the museum. I’m barred from sharing details because of a non-disclosure agreement, and the legal action I took is one of the reasons I chose to write this article anonymously. It was through this legal process that I was given all HR documentation about my employment and the issues with my supervisor. Reviewing these documents, I discovered that HR didn’t keep anything I submitted in their records: not the numerous emails I wrote, the letter to HR from our doctor requesting I work from home, the notes about the meetings I had with HR, or anything regarding my supervisor’s conduct.
After much reflection since my experience at this museum, I would like to share some ideas for what HR and decision-makers at other museums can do to prevent others from going through what I did. Firstly, I believe that HR must advocate for all employees, not just managers and the institution’s interests. A way to counter entrenched power structures is to have all employees offer feedback on their interactions with HR. Early on, I lost all trust in the system because HR could not provide me with any formal means to rectify my situation. Having a process whereby interactions with the HR department could be routinely reviewed by all employees could help to develop more trust for employees within the organization.
I believe that there needs to be more transparency with HR at museums regarding how and why decisions are made. I always felt frustrated after contacting HR because I did not know when my inquiries would be answered, including when I requested to work from home because of my partner’s medical emergency. During the eight days I waited for a response in the midst of an urgent situation, I reached out to as many HR personnel as possible. Everyone responded that they didn’t know enough about the situation to give me any answers. This felt to me like incompetence at best and malicious at worst. If there were formal processes or more transparency, such as a detailed explanation of how to seek out and gain approvals for these requests in the staff handbook, I wouldn’t have been so frustrated.
I was surprised when my benefits were taken away—the staff handbook for the museum is vague on employee disciplinary action, stating that the museum may use any form of discipline they see appropriate, and that discipline is under the complete control of management. If HR had been more transparent about the discipline they take against employees, such as benefit restrictions, it wouldn’t have been as jarring.
Lastly, I feel that museums need to commit to foundational values of equity and compassion, which should be more than just words in a values statement on the museum’s website. HR staff should always evaluate the fairness of a situation and reflect on whether or not they are doing anything to dehumanize the organization’s employees. In my relatively short time at this museum, I observed how dealing with noxious HR and management was a key part of what led many employees to leave the organization. This high turnover of many talented individuals would all be preventable if the actions of the museum, HR department, and senior management were actually driven by values.
If you are reading this and experiencing something similar, know it’s not your fault, but the problem of systemic failures by HR and senior management. If you are experiencing or have experienced similar situations, also know that you have rights, and it is quite possible that the organization where you work has violated them. Based on my experience, I would suggest reaching out to a labor lawyer to determine your rights and what you are entitled to. I also recommend not being silent––talk to peers or journalists, write a blog, or vent on social media. You’ll find out you’re not going through these things alone. If you are a manager at a museum or elsewhere, please use your power to create a more equitable and transparent workplace for your employees. Change happens incrementally, and if you’re a manager who actively empowers your employees and questions the inequity of your organization, we may all have a better future.