Hi all,

So I am an apprentice for an railway company and I’ve had a really really terrible time. I’ve been bullied the whole way through by managers from work and assessors from college. I’m two years in and I’ve got two years left. I have finally worked up the balls to apply for a different job. After two months of being in the application process for another apprenticeship with a much better company, I am just days away from finding out whether or not I have got the job. I’m feeling really confident that I have indeed got the job, but I won’t find out until Wednesday the 24th.

My issue is, I have a review meeting booked in with my current managers and my assessor on Monday. I really really need to get out of this meeting. It will be an hour and a half of straight up bullying and I’m afraid I might break and tell them that I’m planning on leaving. The only problem is.. if I call in sick to get out of the meeting, my boss might write about me negatively in a reference if the new company ask for one. And I really need a good reference.

There is a lot more going on in my current company as well which makes it all 10x more complicated. All I need to know is should I call in sick and risk the bad reference, or go to the meeting and be bullied and risk getting angry and losing the upper hand. Please please please give me some advice 🤞