HR Director (me) Snaps and Sends Unhinged Email: Why I Didn't Follow My Own Advice and Why I Don't Regret It
Yesterday I sent an email. It was unhinged. It was rude. It was passionate. It was emotional. It was defensive. It was imperfect. And it was kind of messy. It was not the type of thing I ever advise anyone to send. I broke my own rule of waiting 24 hours to send a high-stakes email.
It was to the Board of Trustees of my former employer. The board is comprised almost entirely of wealthy, white influential people. These are people that I don’t know personally. But I’ve personally felt and dealt with the hits and the deep chaos that resulted from their decisions about people, in which the actual people did not appear to be considered.
They are not unlike other boards who are rooted in the philanthropic tradition and do not understand the day-to-day grind of being underpaid and overworked. They only see the literal bottom line from a distance. People? There are no people in decisions. Only money and the three-day-long wine-drinking festival, I mean board meeting, once a quarter. They aren’t bad people. But they are usually not in touch with the reality of the working-class and the struggles that are faced on a minute-by-minute basis by the majority of Americans enacting and living with the decisions of out-of-touch boards.
Recently, the faculty at my former place of employment did a vote of no confidence for the CFO, my former boss. Now whether they were “authorized” under the governance rules to even do a vote of no confidence for the CFO, whether it was a good strategic move? I have no idea. But as a former HR director, I can tell you that that doesn’t even really matter when we are looking at the culture of the organization.
What matters is that employees brought forth concerns to the Board after an extended period of time being frustrated with the inaction from the administration. The Board’s response was to outright condemn the action. There was no curiosity. There was no interest in hearing the basis for concerns. There was no appetite in the least for feedback or criticism. There was stoic support of the administration - no questions asked.
Reminds me of organizations that obsess about taking negative reviews down, but refuse to acknowledge the consistent feedback that is written in those reviews. They want to stop the mechanism of reporting bad behavior, but not the actual bad behavior. But I digress.
This blind following of traditional hierarchy is gross to me. I’ve never been one to just follow along without questioning - and in higher ed, you would think that critical thinking, data-informed decisions - you would think those would be part of the playbook for administration. But they are absolutely not. The playbook, from my vantage point in HR, is comprised of ego, power, money and status, cloaked in the often seen intellectual self-importance of academia.
There’s a problem when the mission of the organization is benevolent - like the education of young people - but the values with which the organization is run are based in proximity to power and money. You see the people with the big hearts, working an insane amount of hours to get their work done with outdated tools, insufficient staffing, insufficient resources while the executives work exactly 8-5, making 5 or 6 times what a staff member makes, spending their evenings drinking expensive wine with expensive people for “networking.”
What that translates to, in people-speak, is an administration that is operating blindly because they: know very little of the day to day work, know very little of what the employees need to be successful, and know very little about the impact of their decisions on the faculty, staff and students. And this doesn’t seem to be limited to one liberal arts college. This dynamic appears to be common in many institutions across the country, maybe even the world.
Unmanaged [https://unmanagedpeople.com] was started because of my experience at this institution. But my passion for stopping abuse goes back more than 20 years. That was when I started being able to identify patterns of abuse instead of only seeing individual incidents. It was when I started clocking the impact on relationships, on self-esteem. And this wasn’t workplace abuse that I was dealing with then. But the truth is, people who abuse others use the same tactics over and over again. It’s not new. The setting changes, but the motivations, the treatment, the consequences of not following through - they all look remarkably the same.
It was with the lens of my 20+ year fight against abuse that I looked at my computer screen yesterday morning and decided to write the email. It was with the memory of unequivocal physical and mental exhaustion in the not so distant past. It was with the memory of the tortured mind that prevented me from sleeping while it was trying to figure out what I did wrong. I sat at my computer and I wrote: Dear Board of Trustees.
One specific memory was driving me. The memory of the president calling me into his office to chastise me for using the word “indirect” to describe the feedback mechanism of people going to the president to give feedback about me, instead of to me directly. I was rude, unprofessional, insubordinate and presumptuous, he had said. Genuinely confused, I inquired as to what I did wrong. “You are assuming that I am not doing my job.”
What? No, I mean genuinely. WHAT?
I was actually more concerned that I had lost trust with people, since they were not coming to me directly. I wasn’t even thinking about him. I asked three other people about the word indirect in that context. Okay, they were all neurodivergent, just like me, so maybe that wasn’t fair. None of them could understand what he was talking about.
The one phrase that kept going through my head as I wrote this email was earn those adjectives. I mean if the word “indirect” qualifies as rude, unprofessional, insubordinate and presumptuous, then why not live up to those words and go ahead and write in a way that doesn’t hold back. Because if they are going to call me rude, they should know what that looks like for real.
I thought about what I was trying to accomplish with this email. What was my goal? My goal was not change. I am not foolish enough to think that anything I do will inspire change in that organization. My goal was to let the board see the raw version of what I experienced. The words I heard. The gestures I saw. The tone of voice that pierced my ears. My goal was to put them on notice that their executives not only behave this way, but that the behavior is apparently sanctioned and approved by the president. My goal was to let them know that when another case comes up (because people don’t just stop this behavior), I will be happy to provide supporting documentation that they were aware of the misbehavior and chose to do nothing about it. My email would serve as documentation that they knew what I had experienced, knew the risks of employing my boss and that they actively chose to do nothing to protect the people that make their seat on the board even possible: the employees.
Most of all, without being currently employed by them, I was no longer under the pressure to conform to whatever their definition of “professional” was. I was free to be myself. If another employer finds out about this email and chooses not to hire me in the future? Okay. It’s probably not the kind of company I want to work for anyway. And also? The time for being quiet about abuse has expired. We’ve collectively seen the horrors of what happens with unchecked power and abuse in recent months. I for one, do not want to enable this to continue.
So I made a conscious decision to remove my filters. To be blunt and truthful. To be outraged in a way that words could communicate the enormity of how I felt.
CONTENT WARNING: Detailed description of abusive behavior, verbal abuse and institutional betrayal.
Dear Board of Trustees:
My name is Elizabeth Arnott. I was the Director of Human Resources at [redacted] from April 2023 - October 2025. Before getting into anything, I want to state that your names were gathered from the public [redacted] and your emails were found on the internet. At no point, did anyone provide information to me, nor I to them, about confidential information or contact information for anyone.
I am writing to make you aware of how [redacted] operates behind closed doors, when they are not in front of the Board of Trustees. To be clear, I do not expect anything to be done at this point. But I do want to know for sure that you all know about this behavior. I will save this communication for when [redacted] is inevitably sued again for the inevitable misconduct of its administrators and there is a need for corroboration of failure to address behavior problems among the executives. In this letter, I will only address my personal experience. I am not disclosing any confidential information related to the position I held, nor do I ever intend to. Despite [redacted] and [redacted] threatening to come after me “with all they’ve got” and accusing me of taking documents (completely false allegations), I have in the past and will continue to remain faithful to my agreement and the confidentiality of the role of HR and only speak about my experience, as the Oregon Workplace Fairness Act requires that I am able to do.
In the extremely unlikely case that any of you care about this situation and want to discuss my personal experience, I am open to that. My experience was so bad, so harmful, that I started a business to help people navigate toxic work environments. So just to reiterate: I LEFT MY 26-YEAR LONG CAREER IN HUMAN RESOURCES TO FIGHT TOXIC WORK ENVIRONMENTS BECAUSE OF MY EXPERIENCE AT [REDACTED].
The reason I didn't bring my situation to the board in the first place is because historically, the Board has unequivocally supported the administration, without any objective inquiry and I expect no different now. You may recall an incident that happened at Lincoln University in 2024 [https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/27/us/hbcu-lincoln-university-missouri-suicide-questions-black-mental-health], where the board of trustees of their university ignored repeated requests for help in a bullying situation because they wanted to “stay out of it.” It “wasn’t their concern”. If you are curious how that ended up, the person who was being bullied, she committed suicide [ended her own life] after being refused help from the board multiple times. Maybe think about that for a minute in conjunction with your role at [redacted] and what is expected of you by the faculty and staff when they raise concerns to you about administration, since you all are the ones in charge of hiring the president and making sure that [redacted] is fiscally sound. Your response to employees matters. [Redacted] would not exist were it not for the people they employ. And yet the treatment of them does not reflect that level of respect…
Here is my account of what happened and the corresponding dates, based upon my comments sent …regarding [redacted]'s accreditation.
Personal Experience Relevant to Institutional Systems
In Spring of 2024, as the Director of Human Resources, I observed my direct supervisor, [redacted], CFO, regularly raising his voice and pounding his fists on the table during meetings. After regular occurrences started impacting me significantly, I informed the CFO that I would need to leave the room if it happened again, due to my PTSD from previous trauma. I notified him of this on August 1, 2024, in writing. I reported this in writing to the …President at the time, [redacted]. She reportedly talked to the CFO and asked him to stop raising his voice. He reportedly agreed. On August 5, 2024, [redacted] suggested daily check ins. This is scrutiny based on my complaint against him. This could be considered retaliation.
Between August 2024 and July 2025, the CFO’s behavior worsened and it became more of a seemingly targeted attack on me and my position. Barging into my office, being physically intimidating, sneering at me, and cutting me out of meetings I needed to be in, were just some of the things I experienced. After each interaction, I raised concerns directly with my supervisor, in writing, asking him to cease this behavior and informing him of the impact it was having on me. However, his behavior became more and more intense, demanding, and included mocking information I was providing to him regarding critical situations. He seemed to think that the information re: employment law was “made up” even after I explained the context and methodology, and explained that this is how risk is evaluated in human resources.
Specific dates and events that occurred. This is not all-inclusive but does include the most egregious interactions:
August 2024 - I notified [redacted] that due to previous trauma, if he continued to raise his voice and pound on the desk, that I would need to leave because my nervous system simply cannot tolerate the outbursts. Nor should it have to while I’m at work. He acknowledged the receipt of this email and suggested that in order to “improve communication” that we meet on a daily basis every morning so that he could review my priorities and tasks. This is scrutiny based on my complaint to him about his behavior. This could be interpreted as retaliation.
October 2024 - [redacted] restricted my communication, stating that I needed to send everything through him - highly unusual for a Human Resources dept to have to get approval from the CFO. This is micromanagement based on my complaint, which could be interpreted as retaliation.
January 30 2025 -[redacted] entered my office, and in response to my communication said that people who don’t understand finances often make complaints and that the situation I was concerned about would “work itself out.” When I responded to him, I was sitting down in my office and he was standing in front of me. When I said “Okay, I will not send anymore information about this since I don’t understand it.” [redacted] leaned in to about a foot from my face, squinted his eyes and shouted “I DID NOT SAY THAT!” He then complained that “YOU WANT ME TO REACT TO EVERYTHING!” (indicating he was unfamiliar with the nature of HR work that he wanted to control.) This is hostile treatment, physical intimidation based on me raising concerns. This could be interpreted as retaliation.
January 31, 2025 [redacted] walked into my office, slammed the door and started complaining to me about one of the HR processes that he felt was “out of control.” I responded by letting him know what our legal obligations were under the federal law. He responded “BLAH BLAH BLAH I DON’T WANT TO HEAR YOUR LEGAL B******T!” He angrily paced back and forth in front of me until I asked him to leave my office. This is mistreatment based on me simply informing him what our legal obligation was for that particular law. This could be interpreted as retaliation. Later that day, [redacted] apologized for how he came across. At that point, he asked about how he could get more information about HR strategy. I gave him multiple recommendations from my own bookshelf and articles that I sent him later.
March 3, 2025 [redacted] and I met in his office so that I could show him data from my turnover analysis. [redacted] responded with “You can’t just make up information. You have to prove it.” I showed him the formula. I explained to him that this is how turnover is measured and how risk is assessed. redacted became very loud and animated and started pounding on his desk, saying things like the VPs SHOULD push back on me because I haven’t proved anything. He casually mentioned his own “HR credentials” which included managing a team and doing payroll (this is not human resources) but that “employee relations was his one weak spot.” During his “expression of his feelings” I asked him THREE times to stop the meeting, to take a break, to reconvene later. He completely ignored me. I could not even hear what he was saying at this point. I got up and walked out, right into a crowd of my colleagues gathered around his door, waiting for another meeting. He threw his notebook somewhere as I walked out of the room, as I heard him yell in frustration. This is mistreatment due to me providing the structural documentation of an issue we were discussing. This could be interpreted as retaliation for bringing up a concern.
March 4, 2025 - [redacted] texted me, requesting a meeting, citing his lack of sleep due to the stress I had caused him during the previous day’s events. In the meeting, [redacted] said I stressed him out because I threatened to go to the board. Then he said “I talked to my therapist and we were both really surprised at how quickly you escalated the situation.” This is a well known abusive tactic called DARVO - Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender. By the end of the meeting, I was apologizing for triggering his outburst. He suggested that one of my colleagues who also reported to him, chaperone our 1:1s (inappropriate for HR to be disclosing information in front of another manager without need). I asked him if that was to protect him or me. He responded that it was for him, but that he’s sure it would protect me too. He also suggested recording all of our interactions - also inappropriate for HR.
March 7, 2025 - I woke up in the middle of the night with a violent nightmare - one of the things that happens when I am triggered in abusive situations, because of my history of trauma, which [redacted] was extremely aware of and had been notified of more than 7 months prior. I began having panic attacks. At this point, I wrote to [redacted incoming president], mistakenly thinking he would be an objective party who would be concerned and could possibly help me. While he acted sort of compassionately in the moment, his response was to forward my email to [redacted], who then emailed me to say that she had spoken to [redacted] a couple of times, told him to stop yelling and he reportedly agreed to stop yelling. If things didn’t get better, she said, I should do what I needed to do to take care of myself. (This is a common thing companies say when they do not intend to address toxic behavior.)
March 28, 2025 - [redacted] told me that all communication between us going forward would only be in writing. This is restricting methods of communication in response to me reporting his behavior. This could be considered retaliation.
June 26, 2025 - I wrote to [redacted] again, asking him to please consider looking at the reporting structure when he started.
July 3, 2025 - [redacted] called me into his office, with his face red and hands shaking as he yelled about my employee rescheduling a meeting to include the new president, without consulting [redacted] first. Then he said "YOU WENT BEHIND MY BACK AND ASKED FOR ANOTHER SUPERVISOR." He then told me: "YOU WILL BE REPORTING TO ME. PERIOD. THAT WILL NEVER CHANGE." I responded to him by asking him if he said that to emphasize his power. He said yes. He gave me a performance improvement plan, very poorly written and included things that should not be included in a performance improvement plan, such as to stop feeling superior about my credentials and thinking I am better than everyone else. He forbade me and my team from communicating with the President (very poor practice for an HR department), and demanded that I inform him of the contents of each HR meeting that I have (violation of confidentiality, trust, etc.) He criticized my inability to meet a deadline that had never been established. He interpreted pivoting with new information to "changing my mind" all the time, presenting it as a weakness. This entire document was an exercise in the kind of systemic misogyny that exists in higher ed. Why did he say I felt superior? Because I had reposted an article on LinkedIn about the challenges of HR reporting to finance, and because one time, in one meeting, I said I was a subject matter expert. In what world would a man be written up for any of these things? Let me help you out here - they wouldn't. Especially at [redacted].
I was explicitly told in writing in the performance improvement plan that my role was to enact decisions made by the CFO, regardless of professional disagreement. [redacted] did not provide reasons for the restrictions imposed. [redacted] repeatedly verbally stated that it would be a very long time before I would be given autonomy or authority, without explanation. He also referenced my leaving a meeting due to his behavior, after he ignored three requests to stop the meeting, as an “inappropriate reaction to feedback”, and my leaving early due to his physically and emotionally threatening behavior as “unacceptable.”
Because these disagreements involved my entitlement to respectful treatment, my request for accommodation (to stop the raised voices and pounding on the desk) due to a disability (my previous trauma, which he was informed of on August 1, 2024 and frequently reminded after that) and concerns regarding the CFO’s competence within the HR domain, I escalated the issue once again to [redacted] and specifically requested an investigation. He declined to investigate (directly against practices and policies when someone makes a complaint) and instead retained an executive coach, who was reportedly going to do mediation for us after meeting with us each separately a few times.
After five weeks of work with the coach, I asked about joint sessions and “mediation” and found that the coach had only been working with me and reporting on my progress to [redacted] and that there was not actually a plan for a mediation, but rather one meeting “to discuss communication guidelines.” Once I discovered that the coach was only working with me and that [redacted] was not actually having any discussions or meetings about HIS behavior, I asked questions about what the intent was to move forward. [Redacted] responded to my inquiries saying I needed to focus on my own work, not [my boss’], he said. He did not consider the PIP to be retaliatory and that he had the PIP to look at if he needed to. [Redacted] stated I would be reporting to the CFO permanently. I expressed that reporting to the CFO would severely negatively impact my mental and physical health. [Redacted] did not respond.
During the period of time I was meeting with the coach, [redacted] and [redacted] solicited feedback from members of the executive team regarding issues that had already been addressed or had never been raised with me. These were later presented as “long-time performance issues” that I had failed to address. This was completely made up.
Impact on Health and Ability to Perform Duties
The conditions described above resulted in significant personal harm during 2025, including weeks of not eating, not sleeping, panic attacks, violent nightmares, and an inability to perform my duties. These impacts were characterized by senior leadership as my personal issue rather than a direct result of the institutional environment. This gaslighting was another form of retaliation that I experienced.
Because I know it's likely that [redacted] and [redacted] will attempt to discredit me and my account of things, let me just say one thing: what I experienced was the worst experience of my life. I was not believed. I was not helped. I was not listened to. I was not apologized to. I was punished and seemingly retaliated against quite openly and with the blessing of the new president. I left my job without another one to go to. WHY ON EARTH WOULD I VOLUNTARILY GO THROUGH THIS BY MAKING THIS UP? Why would anyone? The amount of harm done and disruption in my life, well-being and mental and physical health is significant. How many other people are going to be harmed before you all do something about this horrific culture?
Again, I send this to support documentation to the Board about [redacted]'s behavior, the dereliction of duty to investigate by [redacted] and the general nauseating culture of an old white boys club they have nurtured and maintained. Many people heard [redacted] yelling at me. They were just never asked about it. This is not a secret. But it doesn't matter. Power protects power, money protects money. I don't expect the board to act any differently. But now I have a record of informing you that this is a problem. It's your choice what you decide to do next.
Thank you.
When I went to bed last night, I felt a huge burden lifted. I knew polite and professional would not even be a blip on their radar. I had to write in a way that would get their attention. I knew that what I had written was unhinged and probably not eloquent. But I also knew the cathartic nature of telling these people in power that I do not have their backs in the future. I smiled as I fell asleep.
When I woke up this morning, I was expecting to feel that pang of regret. You know, the one that you wake up to after being dysregulated and sending an email that was of questionable value and tone? But it wasn’t there.
It wasn’t there because I was regulated when I wrote it. I knew what I was writing. I knew the stakes involved. I knew why I had to write it harshly. I knew how it would be received. I was genuinely outraged that I had to put up with this kind of behavior, AND be punished for it. I wanted to board to see what kind of impact this abusive treatment has on people. I may be regulated, but I am still definitely enraged by workplace abuse. And I hope I was pretty clear to the board that I still felt that.
So no, I didn’t follow my own advice to wait 24 hours before sending a fiery email. But I did follow my gut. And in the end, I needed to show myself that I could trust myself to do the right thing in a way that would get their attention, without needing to see a positive result from it. Because change is definitely not happening in that institution.
I have not gotten any responses, in case you are curious. I don’t expect to. But I don’t need to hear anything. I already knew they were going to disregard the letter before I started writing. Now, I can move on. I have told everyone that needed to know. I have helped where I could to protect others. My conscience is clear, my soul is at peace. I know I did the right thing. And that’s pretty much the best feeling I’ve had in a while.
Thanks for reading.
For more resources and information, please visit https://unmanagedpeople.com [https://unmanagedpeople.com].
Download Free Tools [https://unmanagedpeople.com/free-unmanaged-tools]
Join the Workplace Navigation Lab! (https://withme.so/unmanaged [https://withme.so/unmanaged])
Watch Unmanaged on YouTube. [https://www.youtube.com/@UnmanagedPeople]
Listen to Unmanaged on Spotify [https://open.spotify.com/show/7Invfmb9RyRD19MOmETLJk] or Apple Podcasts [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/unmanaged-workplace-strategy/id1893825295].
Book a free consultation [https://oncehub.com/unmanaged].
Submit an anonymous question for Fridays Off the Record. [elizabeth@unmanagedpeople.com?subject=Fridays%20Off%20the%20Record]
Contact Elizabeth [elizabeth@unmanagedpeople.com].
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit elizabetharnott1.substack.com [https://elizabetharnott1.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]
