Hope all is well with you and your spouse in your new positions.

Better working conditions, including escaping a “hostile work environment” is often the real reason.

I’ve worked jobs I hated even though the pay was good. The way I was treated made the pay insufficient.

Good point about HR, too. They represent the interests of the institution, not the interests of workers.

Now for the formal grievance process. Forget it. I went through it and was stonewalled the whole way through. Such processes are “fa show,” and nothing else. When I made my last appeal (by the way, if you do go through the formal grievance process, you will be mired in documentation–your life will become all about documentation–I’ve got 535 pages myself.

Once you are on the other side, you are on the other side. One more story, this one from the institution both Historiann and I were employed. I was a “diversity hire” (proudly). Three years into my time there, as the department was getting ready for a search, the dean came to a department meeting to explain to our white-boy yahoos the importance of looking for diversity when hiring. He instructed us to look at “promise” over “record.” During this conversation, I explained how much I appreciated this approach. HIred 1/2-way into my dissertation, I was one of those promising candidates. The problem, however, was that with the high teaching load at this university, it was almost impossible to build a record. I suggested we include a pre-tenure leave for such hires so that they could write more productively. He responded that the university already provided leaves. Still on fairly good terms with my department and the chair, I received support in requesting a leave for myself. After my 4th-year review, however, the chair came into my office and told me that the dean had changed his mind and come up with an alternative plan: instead of being released from my 3 classes, I would be released from 2, teach 1, and “pay back” the other two by teaching for free sometime in the future before tenure. I told her I needed to think about it, and she, agitated, insisted that I tell her the next morning. That night, I spoke to the goofy guy I was dating–a sculptor going to a community college for engineering, in other words, someone with no connection to the university, no Koolaid–who responded that they were asking me to do more work for the same amount of money. He was right, and after receiving an email at 9 am the next day, I declined the offer. From that point on, the entire department stopped talking to me. No one understood why I would turn down such a “good deal.” My thought in return was that academics will go to great lengths to convince themselves that dog shit is caviar. In other words, to reference my comment from yesterday, I did not accept their definition of happiness–laying down and taking it up the ass for being a delinquent girl who, according to my chair, did not know how to budget my time (she actually sat me down with a yellow pad to make a timeline for me). Once you do not accept the terms, you are done. And, btw, so much for diversity.

Let me also say that HR is NOT your friend. These people are bots, and they are trained to be so as part of this totalitarian work climate (the HR enterprise keeps growing, btw). I could not even get my complaint filed in this person’s personnel file at the second job (although mine was loaded). I was also told during my first meeting with HR that I did not have much of a case because there were no other formal complaints. Go figure.

I hate to be so hardline, but I do think the scenario is radically grave. If we don’t confront this reality, then we will not get very far. Unions, too, are a bust. So adversarial they are not. At my last place of employment, the union would not even advocate for women faculty who felt that they were being saddled unfairly with too much committee/caretaking work. Not the answer.

While I was going through my last situation, I came across a website by Tim Field, which helped me immensely. Because he passed away, the website is no longer active. But his book, Bully in Sight, is a very good resource for understanding what happens to bully victims, and why.