I can feel you. I can only say, keep knocking on doors.
I remembered after I graduated, I had a hard time finding jobs. I think there was a mini recession, I went into depression & have doubts about myself. My father did not help too. He was so embarrassed that that could find a job after a few months that he will lied to others that I already have a job. That surely helped my morale...not.
I was so poor that I cannot even redrew money from ATM. I had to take money from my dad who make sure to lectured me every time he gave me money.
Eventually, I found a job after 3-4 months. I thought the worst was over, but then I was subject of workplace bullying by of one of the senior in the team. I was stuck in a rock & a hard place. If I quitted, I will go back to square one, if I complained to the manager, it could make things worst, so I have to swallowed my pride & kept going.
After 2 month or so in the job, one day another manager from the department came to me. He consoled me & told me he knew the situations & spoke to my manager as well as the senior to know what happened. Turned out the senior thought I was arrogance & refused to seek advice from them, so he try to intimidated me whenever possible. It was a miscommmunication from my Boss then (who was a Japanese, & he spoke very bad English) that said I should only get advice from a higher level engineer (which the senior is not). The senior mistaken I was the one that make the statement that he was not qualified to be my advisor.
He never apologized, but thankfully, he was gone (new job) after a while, & I was secretly happy. I went on to performed well, & became the fastest in the department to reach rank of senior Engineer in 1.5 years of work, & the rest is history. Have confidence in yourself, do not despair if things do not get your way, keep knocking. When the chance come, do the best you can.
That sucks. But no workplace is ever perfect. And the bigger the office, the more jerks there are. It's just something you, me, and everyone has to live with. And it's even worse then those guys seem to get promoted.
Best thing is to just live with it and continue on.
At some point, a job becomes all about enjoying what you do and working with great people. For me, i couldn't care about he $$$. I make enough and have enough. I'm not going to drive across the city for an extra $20,000. And most of my peers are in the same boat. Family is first, but great friends are too. Nothing makes jerks more miserable than being ignored..... nobody asks them to join them for lunch, drinks after work, or Xmas parties. They get all jealous. If you really want to piss them off, talk to good peers about drinks after work in the face, but ignore them. The jerks will stare and wait for an invite, but never get one. One ass even ask me about it and if he could come. I said no. Man was he red faced. lol
For people of similar level, another great way to get back at them is to publicly embarrass them in big meetings. You should never do this to a higher ranked person, but for similar ranked, it's fair game. I've done my share of 'throwing people under the bus" in 40 people meetings when they act like an ass. And guess what? They NEVER have done it again. That's funny, the past while you act like an ass and don't respect my work, but after that meeting we had in front of everyone.... hmmmm.... pretty interesting that the day after you are suddenly really nice to me and get your work done. Funny how that happens.
The best way to shame someone, is to portray to the crowd someone isn't doing their work, or doing poor work AND stress that's it's been the same thing for months despite doing your best effort to remind them or even help them about it. You have to ensure you communicate it in a nice and professional way. You never want to personally single out someone. But what you do is one of two ways:
1. You single out the account team (I'm still waiting for the Walmart team, but everyone else has done their job)
2. You keep it vague and hope the VP probes. (I'm almost done, but still waiting for someone to get back to me before I can finish it). The VP may then interject and say..... Really, who hasn't done it yet? Then what happens, is half the time that person will chime in and say it's them and they'll do it, because they don't want you singling them out. Then everyone stares at them as a lazy ass.
What that does is show to the crowd:
1. They don't know what they are doing
2. They are lazy and keep screwing up on their own
3. They are extra lazy and when someone is even willing to help, they still don't want to do it
4. It makes their boss look bad. So what happens is that ass gets in shyt from their boss to smarten up
5. It shows to the crowd you don't take shyt. So people smarten up and know you don't get pushed over.
6. You are clever and will let the VP do the probing and single you out
But if someone is low level, you can't push your weight around vs. higher ranks. Low level people have to suck it up. People have higher ranks, more connections and you don't want your name in the industry being known as an ass. Bu once you get to a decent level, none of that matter anymore. You get hired on creds and interviews, not based on person X or Y gossiping.
But also importantly, good coworkers are the best source for jobs. Second are recruiters. Last is family..... unless your family runs a nice business and can take you in at any time.
