Recently I was working for a firm for a short while (6 months), when I had to ask for a 2 week leave to visit my sick uncle a 14 hour flight away. The leave was approved, by my manager, but 4 days before I was to go, my manager called me aside and asked if I could reconsider my leave. I replied that it was important that I go, but if it means losing my job I won’t. The manager replied that that was certainly not the case and instead negotiated for a 1 week leave instead.
On my return, I found that the manager was a very different person and was very confrontational with me. She began to look for excuses to fault my work. For example, catergorising the change requests that I had to work on, as “bugs”. This gave her an excuse to say that my work had a lot of “bugs”. I polietly informed her of the difference, but although privately agreeing with my view, at project meetings she would voice her incorrect intepretations. This led me to challenge them at the meetings, even in front of other managers if nessasary.
This angered her and any overtues on my part to rebuild bridges was not taken and on completion of the key areas of my work, I was made redundent citing no more work.
I know for a fact that if I hadn’t gone, this would not have happened.
How could I have handled it better?
Reuban