Exit strategy from a startup with toxic culture / borderline power-harassment & legal coverage

I work for a startup. It’s a small startup company, but it is a proper company. The company is infested with egomaniacs and psychopaths (was warned about this as common in startups before joining one). The most recent grievance was a team leader putting a team member on blast by CC’ing his performance review/feedback (all negative, telling him he has to do better or reconsider if this is the environment he wants to be in, etc.) to unrelated members. They then changed his work schedule in such a way to purposely make it difficult for him to work. Essentially they humiliated him and inconvenienced him to the point that he had to quit. The situation was such bullshit that I started recording audio, in which the team leader told me “in private” they were going to fire him anyway, implying that the actions they took were calculated to get him to quit before they had to do that.

I have a new job lined up, passed all interviews, and the offer will be coming next week. I’m going to confirm this with the next company at the offer meeting, but if they ask for a “reference check,” I want to ensure my bases are covered, as there is no one in this rotten company I can rely on for a trustworthy reference.

I’ve drafted a list of legal questions, and am sending inquiries out to lawyers through sites like coconara & kakekomu looking for a lawyer who will just take my list of questions and answer them factually from a legal standpoint. They are all fairly simple, and in fact most of them are Google’able even from a layman, but when I put in my resignation letter, I’m going to supplement it with the letter from the lawyer. I have no intention to take legal action, as I want to just focus on moving on, but I want to make it clear to them that if they wish to get their hands dirty by doing their usual (making bullshit up, creating rules on a whim, etc.), I’m not going out without a fight, if that’s the route they want to take.

“Wtf, why get a lawyer, just quit?” –> One example is, company policy requires 30 days notice. Maximum enforceable by law is 14. If I use the toxic circumstances of the company with justified reason and leave after 14, what can the company do in retaliation and how can I preemptively defend against any of it. I’m pretty sure they can’t do anything about it other than be disgruntled, and I want to ensure that my side of the story is documented by a lawyer, should it ever come up in the future somewhere else.

The list of grievances is massive, and the number of witnesses to these activities and overall toxic behavior and stress-inducing nonsense of the environment is large. There’s basically a pool of ex-employees of this place that is growing, all who support each other through issues like this.

Overall, thoughts / anyone been through something like this?

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UPDATE: Thanks for the messages of support. Today, I went through a service called Kakekomu to find a lawyer that specializes in this. Despite it being Sunday, the lawyer I found set up a 30 minute online call for about 6,000 yen. I prepared a list of about 10 questions related to this, went in, and got the answers to everything. For those in a similar situation in the future, the cost effectiveness of this 6,000 yen was tremendous as I will be sleeping well tonight. The short of it is, this company can’t do anything that I’m suspicious of them trying, I’m within my rights to quit after 14 days no matter what the company policy is, and most companies when push comes to shove will not purposely try to mess with people leaving because it will just create more trouble for themselves. Now I have an established lawyer on this \*before\* anything goes down, and if they try anything like refusing salary, manipulating remaining vacation days, etc., all I have to do is call this guy up and he’ll handle it.

Lawyer’s advice was in a nutshell, lay out your work schedule for the next couple of weeks including where vacation days will be taken, and just tell the company emotionlessly and matter-of-factly, “this is my last day, yoroshiku.” Say nothing more, and if they kick up some dirt, let them shoot themselves in the foot. As soon as anything starts going awry, bring it back to the lawyer for a detailed analysis and defense.

To those asking for the company name, I do apologize, but I can’t share that at this time. My best advice to anyone is, make proactive use of your own probation periods in company’s going forward. I saw all of the warning signs for this during my first 3 month probation period, but I chose to ignore them thinking things like, “oh it’ll get better,” etc. No, if you start to smell bullshit in that first probation period, just leave, don’t even put it on your CV, move on.

by uUqBDOqnXN

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