South Carolina, USA. Placed on a PIP for things like deleting connections from my LinkedIn friends list and alleged offences over a year old, but I’ve never been written up. I think it’s because I answered an executive’s question, can I fight this?

Location: South Carolina, United States

A couple of weeks ago now I was placed on a PIP or performance improvement plan, which we know to be the paper trail build up to a termination. The reasons stated were that I deleted a company employee from my LinkedIn connections (friends list), I gave “medical advice” to a candidate after telling them to contact the medical provider and see if they would submit a waiver (that’s done all the time, and medical can say ‘no’.)

A comment in our teams SharePoint tracker from over a year ago, June 2024 I think, that they said was unprofessional (I was never spoken to or written up for anything, let alone this comment), being late last week (it was childcare thing, and I called my supervisor that I was going to be late that morning. its a corporate office so 20 minutes late is not impactful), and being away from my desk throughout the day. People here routinely come to work late. no one ever gets a rip for it because its a corporate office, we’re salary exempt (except we’re paid hourly with a time card, its weird), and we meet our KPIs. I also have to walk from my desk often to take calls or use the bathroom. the latter because I lost my gallbladder last year and have to go a few times a day.

About a week before the pip, there was a teams all-hands meeting with the new CHRO. in that meeting she discussed wanting to find inefficiencies and choke points in our pipeline process. she opened the floor for questions. I brought up one area in the process that holds up deliverables for weeks or even months at a time, one that everyone is aware of, but the CHRO is new to the company. She said she was not aware of the problem, and asked to follow up with me at a later time for more information. she wrote my name on a pad beside her.

A week after the meeting I was placed on a pip after never having been written up here before after nearly two years. Someone suggested to me the CHRO meeting was the catalyst because “it brought scrutiny to our process from c-suite” and that pissed off the director.

Also, my LinkedIn account is my own. who I’m friends with there is none of the companies business. there’s no policy about that either. they’re calling it “unprofessional behavior.”

normally when you’re placed on a pip, you can write a rebuttal to employee relations about it, but it was inferred to me that doing so would result in my immediate term.

my wife isn’t working right now, the job market for recruiters and HR is dismal and I have a baby at home.

Part of the pip is to have a weekly meeting with my supervisor, who is on assignment out of the country. today’s meeting, he was shouting at me for how I recorded candidates in our tracker. I list all of the candidates names when I send multiple forward, which is how I’ve done it my entire tenure here. he wants the tracker to read “multiple candidates”. I misunderstood that’s what he wanted, but to shout – literally yell – at me while holding my job over my head isn’t right. is it? For record, there is no training, policy, or guide on recording in the tracker. we all just had to learn as we went.

I don’t know if an employment attorney would laugh me out of his office for stuff like this. I need advice to help me understand where I stand, what options if any that I have. I feel stuck between the proverbial rock and hard place.

If I argue any of these claims I’ll be fired on the spot. I don’t know what to do.