As if last week wasn’t bad enough, yesterday our Regional Director Desmond sent out an ‘All Staff’ email to let us know he’d be “making a few changes”.

I read the first few lines of the email …

“We are lucky enough to have some great clients that constantly are in need of awesome candidates.”

Blah blah blah …

“To help us close more deals faster, we’ve got a new consultant Belinda Frankston joining us today”.

You can’t pay my bonus, but you’re hiring a new consultant?

I just hit ‘delete’ and got on with my morning.

About half an hour later a tall blonde woman walked up to my desk.

“Hi I’m Belinda, but everybody calls me Bindi!”, she said in a Minnie Mouse voice. (No one actually has a voice that annoying, right?)

Bindi!? Is she serious?!

I politely introduced myself.

Bindi tilted her head to the side like a perplexed cocker spaniel and spilled the beans. “I’ve been assigned to help you with your clients. Desmond explained that you have been doing such a good job that you deserve some help”. I looked at her very suspiciously, as she explained that we would be splitting my desk alphabetically and she’d be taking over my accounts with last names L-Z.

Splitting my desk?

I couldn’t believe it. Half of my accounts! Just when I have spent the last 18 months of my life painstakingly building my client base from scratch and I am finally (supposedly) starting to make a decent commission, I have to hand  half of my portfolio over to a Bindi!

The worst part is I apparently have to help her with the transition and introduce her to my clients!

I wanted to burst into Desmond’s office swearing. But I thought it better to calm down and formulate my thoughts first. I emailed Desmond asking for a time to catch up and he agreed to midday.

I got very little actual work done. Instead I played political ping pong in my head all morning. Would he at least pretend to listen? Or would he just lay down the law and reiterate that ‘it is what it is’?

When the time came, I marched into his office with as much dignity in my eyes as I could muster. I was all prepared to unleash my wrath, but he anticipated my anger and side stepped the situation.

He gave me his boyish smile, and suggested we grab an early lunch. “There’s this great new sushi place I’ve been meaning to try.”

I wasn’t hungry for sushi, I was in the mood for justice.

We sat down to lunch outside in very cool (but very uncomfortable) modern lounge chairs. Clearly, he was trying to butter me up. We talked about the weather, his weekend plans (ugh) and anything else to avoid what needed to be discussed.

He finally opened up. He gave me the same sob story from last week about how the Agency has so much potential and how we are just on the cusp of great things, but money is still tight, and we all need to work together as a team to weather the storm.

What … we’re a pirate ship now?

He insisted that hiring Bindi wasn’t his idea, although he wished it was because she is “smoking hot”.

Where is HR when you need them?

He refuted each one of my points before I had a chance to air my issues, and left me with nothing more than a splitting headache (and I hadn’t even drunk any sake!)

As we walked back to the office it hit me that I’ve really been left with two (terrible) options. I can either suck it up, hold my head high and continue to grind. Or escape the agency.

I definitely do not want to give up recruiting altogether but I’m at a crossroads.

What should I do? #EscapetheAgency

This post originally appeared on the RecruitLoop Blog.