I worked there for about 6 months. It was bizarre. I'll give you a couple examples:
I wore headphones sometimes. Lots of people did. My manager told me that I have to buy smaller headphones because someone higher up thought my headphones were too big. One time it was after 5, I was working late, so I put my headphones back on. And the next day my manager and her manager had a meeting with me about the size of my headphones because someone high up, who never identified themselves, were offended by my headphones. There were no rules about headphone size. They were just regular beats headphones. It's weird that some person, apparently an important one, called my boss, and her boss in, to tell them to have a meeting with me about not wearing headphones, even after hours, even away from my desk. I was not allowed to have headphones on in the building.
Not weird enough? I've got more. My manager was a sociopath so I often had to work late. At a certain point, they told me that I was not allowed to be in the building after 6. I was allowed. There was no rule against it. Others did. They just singled me out. Apparently, some prior employee had been bringing people into the office after hours to do....something with them. So they were sensitive about it.
Need more weird stuff? For about a week it smelled like a dead animal in the office and then it went away. Never found out what that was.
Need more? At one point, my manager told me that I have to tell her when I leave my desk. So, I had to tell her when I was going to the bathroom. I was 30 years old at the time.
Again, my manager was a psychopath. At one point, her boss told me that he is actually scared of her and that she had previously worked in the Parks department and had gotten at least 3 people fired.
Finally, here's when I decided to quit: My manager had a meeting with me and her boss in order to embarrass me. She brought up a project and I showed it to her. Of course she said it should be like XYZ, and I said, that's what I did the first time. She asked me to pull it up. I opened the folder with 22 drafts of this project and showed her the first one I did which was like XYZ and reminded her that she told me at the time it needed to be like ABC. She basically openly hated my guts from that point forward, and like I said, she like getting people fired. I know what it looks like when a manager is trying to get an employee they don't like fired. So I left. I get paid well over twice as much now without being abused and harassed.
Also, I won't get into specific but I was also aware of a lot of things they did that the general public would not have been happy about. At one point, a developer outbid the city for a piece of land and they decided to sue him. When asked about on what grounds, they pretty much shrugged and acknowledged it was just to eff with the guy and make him waste money in court and with lawsuits as some form of retaliation for the city not getting the land. read more