I have a gut feeling that something isn’t right at my new company. Everything seems bright and bubbly on the surface, but I have an itchy feeling that there’s more going on under the surface.

My first clue that something was wrong was when my contract wasn’t ready on the day I was supposed to be onboarded. My new boss apologised and told me it would be ready “soon”, but wouldn’t commit to a firm date. At the time I didn’t think too much about it, as I trusted that it was an honest mistake.

But when I finally saw my contract a full month into my employment, the terms were very different to what had been verbally agreed during my contract negotiations. I tried to follow up with the Recruitment Director who hired me, but I then found out that she’d left the company, and no-one would tell me why.

Instead, the HR Director told me that she had no record of my original agreement, and that it wouldn’t matter in any case as the company had just overhauled all its contracts and the one offered to me was the new standard for executives of my rank.

To tell you the truth, I was quite angry. I had joined the company in good faith due to its reputation, and never expected I would be messed around. But my manager reassured me that despite what the HR Director had told me, my contract terms were actually generous compared to other colleagues, and she promised that I was in a good position to reap the rewards of the company’s venture into the new market I’d been hired to help establish. So I signed, somewhat less excitedly than I’d first imagined.

But that still leaves me wondering, have I just sold my soul?