I was dumb enough to take a job in a small town in California. A lot of sketchy things happen over there.
My manager was being extremely toxic and asking me to do things that weren't my job, like installing AC units or cutting wood even though I was an IT Technician.
One day, he bought a chair for himself from amazon and asked me to build it for him during my shift hours. I told him to build it himself, he started yelling at me and asked me to talk to him in his office, I refused and said we should talk to HR together.
During the meeting with HR, the HR department manager asked me not to file an official report because the whole thing was just a small misunderstanding, and that I don't have to build the chair. I naively agreed to that.
Everything went normal for 2 weeks and then the HR guy told me that they were letting go of me, I asked why and he said "why don't you try to figure that out?", I didn't say anything, I got out of the HR office to grab my stuff and go home and then I saw my manager on the way, he asked if I was going on lunch and I said "No, I just got fired. Do you know why?" and he said the exact same thing as the head of HR "I don't know, why don't you tell me?". I said "It's because you're a toxic POS".
Because I didn't file an official report, there's no proof of retaliation.
I hope this post will help others, so that they don't make the same mistake that made.