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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.”