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When Support Became a Strategy

 

It started with a conversation. Then a few meetings. Then, a new phrase entered the picture — one I hadn't heard before.

Performance Improvement Plan.

 

A PIP.

 

Let me be clear: I wasn’t perfect at my job. No one is. But nothing about my performance had ever been flagged as a serious concern before I spoke up. Before I disclosed what I was going through. Before I trusted them.

 

Now suddenly, after almost two years of doing everything I could to stay afloat, show up, and speak up — they had concerns. Vague ones. Convenient ones. Ones that came in just after I requested FMLA paperwork and mental health accommodations.

 

The timing wasn’t a coincidence.
It was a pattern.
And I was starting to see it.

 

The "support" I’d been promised quietly shape-shifted into formal write-ups, HR check-ins, and increased pressure. Small mistakes — or misunderstandings caused by unclear communication — were suddenly evidence. Evidence that I wasn’t performing. That I wasn’t trying. That I was a problem.

 

I started getting copied on emails that subtly questioned my judgment. Deadlines were moved without notice. Projects that had once been team efforts were handed to me solo — and then critiqued for being imperfect.

 

They weren’t helping me succeed.
They were documenting my downfall.

This wasn’t about support anymore.
It wasn’t even about performance.
It was about building a paper trail.

 

I saw it for what it was:

They were preparing to let me go.
And they wanted their receipts in order when they did.

 

👉 Next post: The day it all fell apart — what led to my firing, and how it was framed as “just business.”