So I’ve posted a few things about my chaos demon boss in the Workplace Rants thread. She’s been my boss for almost nine months, and I’ve thought from the beginning that she wants to get rid of me. Unfortunately for her, she can’t just fire me, so I think she’s trying to make me leave. For reasons I don’t want to get into here, I want to keep my job for 2 or 3 months. She has been writing PIP-style memos, but I’m not on a PIP. She has taken away work I used to do on a regular basis, and I think she’s trying to make it so I don’t have any work to do. In the last non-PIP memor, she has asked me to go through a process to get any requests from other staff approved by her, and I think her goals are to make it difficult for me to get her approval, and to not approve those requests so I don’t have anything to work on.
I would be grateful for any advice on this. I can give more details, but I didn’t want to make this post TLDR. I’m trying very hard to have a good attitude and not be bitter about this, but it’s hard when someone is trying to destroy my life.
Start BCCing your replies to whoever she reports to? Make sure someone higher than her is aware of her behavior, even if you’re a bit passive aggressive about it. For example “Per your previous email requiring all requests to be personally approved by you, here’s the items that need approving”, and then BCC her boss and maybe someone else that would have some authority over her. HR might be interested.
Performance Improvement Plan is what I found. I assume that’s what it is.
I would consider going to HR with this, especially if she’s writing PIP-style memos. If you are not on a PIP and that has never come up at any of your reviews, HR may well be interested in her reasons for that course of action/attitude.
Her process of wanting to approve requests from other staff could be viewed as her wanting to ensure you’re being asked to undertake appropriate tasks, but not if you have nothing to do and she’s actively preventing you from doing things.
What is a PIP?
Basically, it’s a formal process with HR involvement, and it’s the last stop before firing.
I have talked to my HR representative, and it wasn’t helpful. She has asked me to use a free app instead of the software that’s appropriate for the work I do, and HR’s response was that I should try to use the free app. Which I have done, and I can’t even do most of my work with it. I tried to explain this to her, but she was completely uninterested and is still unhappy that I won’t use the app.
She’s in this job because she’s a friend of the top person, and she’s way over her head, so HR and senior management want to give her a break. It seems like it’s a talking point that’s coming from upper levels of management. They’re impressed with what she says, but from my perspective, what she says and what she does are complete opposites. She was given the job without interviews or any kind of competitive recruitment process even though she doesn’t have much experience with doing this kind of work, and has never done it as her main job before this.
I’m checking out open jobs in my organization, but there aren’t any other jobs that I could do that wouldn’t be a huge paycut. I am a little unhappy that I have to leave a job I like because of one person. (Sorry I didn’t respond to people individually, but there’s a lot of overlap, and I do appreciate everyone’s input).
This point doesn’t seem unreasonable. In most organizations, your manager is the one who assigns work to you. If other people want you to do work for them, they should go through your manager. It seems like it would be a good thing if she declined having you do work for other people. And it will help you in the long run. If these other people can’t get the tasks completed without your help, word will get around that you are essential to getting these tasks done. If you end up sitting around doing nothing while your manager is denying the requests from the other people, the blame will fall to your manager
If the OP is having to fill out a timesheet, in which they indicate how much of their time is spent on various tasks (especially if they are “billable” tasks), and if their timesheets are looking like they aren’t busy, this is something that HR and finance can and will notice, and will start thinking, “maybe we don’t need this person.”
Bad boss aside, in most organizations, unless we’re talking about extremely junior employees, the assumption that’s typically made is that the individual employee is responsible for managing their own workload.
In this case, based on the OP’s description, it certainly sounds like the boss is gatekeeping their workload. But, if HR or finance decide to get rid of the OP because they aren’t busy enough, it may be too late to point out to them, “I’m not busy because my boss won’t assign work to me!”
filmore, the situation is a little different from this. I have special skills that no one else in the org can do, so a good part of my job is helping out other departments (I work for one department, and other departments are like my clients for specific projects). I have one big project I work on on a regular basis, and I don’t think she likes that either, but I am committed to working on it, and if I can’t do that any more, someone else will need to replace me.
We do have other processes for requesting my assistance with projects, so she’s adding hoops for me to jump through with each one of these memos, which will decrease my productivity because it takes time and focus away from doing actual work. I expect that other people will eventually catch on that she’s a roadblock, but by then I’ll be gone and it will be too late to do me any good.
Another issue with this is that she won’t respond to emails about new projects. I’m pretty sure she does read my emails, but I think it’s a power thing that she doesn’t respond. We had a request for a new project, and I emailed her and other people emailed her, and she didn’t respond to anything, so nothing happened for several weeks. I really think that’s not acceptable. I’m used to being able to get work done quickly for other staff, and it bothers me that I can’t do that now.
kenobi_65, she has asked me to send her a summary of the time I spend working on different tasks every day. To make things worse, she’s trying to micromanage a job she doesn’t understand and doesn’t want to understand, and she doesn’t like it that I spend hours working on things that she doesn’t think should take that long. And yes, I do think she is trying to gatekeep my workload and prevent me from having work to do. I’m trying to get ahead of this so I can buy myself a little more time. I would really rather leave this job on my own terms instead of getting fired.
Not if you tell them who the roadblock is, the moment they encounter it. Don’t leave them to figure it out; make it clear (forward your own notice about this if you have to) that this is not your idea or your fault. If they care to get their own projects done and your inability to participate hurts that, they can go to your manager and insist they get the actual fuck out of the way.
External leverage seems to be the only thing you have.
People who are not management are seeing the problem. Upper management is not seeing it yet, and there aren’t any people in upper management who I think will believe me and take any kind of action.
Our org chart is:
Head Cheese (good buddies with my boss and the person who handed her the job)
Deputy Head Cheese (who I don’t trust and it might be dangerous for me to talk to)
Chaos Demon Boss
HR is not listening, and upper management is not listening. I think HR knows that she’s a problem, but there’s not much they can do, and they have pressure from upper management. We do have an ombuds, but I don’t trust him either. I did talk to our former ombuds, but that was before a lot of these developments happened. She’s still with us in a different job, but I’m going to talk to her because she’s a wise and insightful person.
I haven’t mentioned before that I do good work and most of the people I’ve worked with have no complaints. I’ve been working at the same place for more than 15 years.
If your assessment is accurate, this is the real problem, and your ability to effect any change may, unfortunately, be limited.
I just came from a situation where I had a horrible boss (and most everyone under him knew he was a horrible, not-to-be-trusted person), but he was clearly favored by company ownership. I had a number of conversations with my fellow directors about what, if anything, we might be able to do to change things, but we also knew that the company owner liked the guy, and there was a high likelihood that the owner would not take our side in a dispute.
This is a big problem, too. In most organizations, HR is not really there to advocate for the employee; they are there to serve the company’s best interests, which are typically defined as “what makes ownership/leadership happy.” And, in this case, if “what makes leadership happy” is “keep the incompetent friend of the big boss happily employed,” HR simply isn’t going to side with you.
kenobi_65, yes to all of that. I don’t want to stay in this situation indefinitely, but I’m just trying to figure out how to work with it for a little longer. I’m trying to avoid starting a grievance process, because that is an option, but I think she will get very nasty. I don’t have the emotional strength to deal with that.
If you are 4 steps removed from the Head Cheese, we are talking a tiny organization (or sub-organization) where there is evidently zero culture of professionalism. And where HR (or at least the local rep) is a rubber-stamp for the HeadCheese’s whims.
You are 100% along for the ride here. You have exactly zero influence over what your boss or her upline does or doesn’t do.
What you can do now is get another job lined up. You say you want to keep this job for 2 or 3 more months. I accept that desire at face value. But understand you cannot influence when or how they chop you, nor how hard they try to make your life miserable every day for those 90 days. They can make you “earn” that money in painful ways you can’t even yet imagine. Which is another way of saying any effort spent to trim the 90 to 60 to 30 is more beneficial to you than is any effort spent trying (and failing) to improve your lot here.
If by some chance the reason for the 2 or 3 months is something like a pension vesting date, rights to vacation payout at separation, etc., IOW something connected to the employer, not to your personal life, they may be almost certainly are fully aware of it and dead set on ensuring you don’t get there by any means fair, foul or both.
What can you do?
Stop trying to manage the boss or the circumstances. You can’t and the stress of trying will make you worse and anger them. Which will make them treat you worse. Which will make you worse.
Maybe they’ll all surprise you and she’ll be just as ineffective at getting rid of you as she has been at mananging her department. So you make it to your 3 months and leave for [whatever] on your own terms.
Whatever you are planning for 3 months from now, get on it with both feet. Everything about making that easier, quicker, and more certain will assist your mental health now.
One of the things prisoners learn is to not torture yourself by anticipating the next beating. They’ll deliver it when and how they want and thre’s not a damned thing you can do about it. Getting to acceptance on the italic part is essential to surviving the experience unshattered.
@MagicEyes, you have my sympathies. As you note, you’ve been there a long time, and you’re seen by your colleagues as doing a good job. I wish I had better advice for you, but maybe this: is there another senior person in the organization whom you feel you can trust, who isn’t in your direct chain of reporting, but who is senior enough that they might hold some sway with the “big cheese?”
Yes–my goal here is not to change the overall situation, but to adapt and survive for a few more months. It would not be good for me to be fired, but it’s also not good for me to find another job now for many complicated reasons. A lot of this is healthcare-related, and my life will be a lot harder if I can’t wait until September to find another job.
Very true! I’m trying very hard to be a calm rock in a river, but this has been going on for a while, it’s been a rough year for a lot of other reasons, and I’m starting to feel a little more stressed.
kenobi_65, thanks. I will be meeting with someone who is on the lower end of upper management (but probably not until week after next). At this point he also is in the “give her a break” group, so I’m not sure if it will be successful, but maybe it will plant a seed of doubt in his mind!
If they fire you for not having enough work, you should qualify for unemployment. Keep your own copies of your emails where you’re asking for more work. Print them out rather than forward them to your personal email. If you forward them, it may be in violation of some IT policy of sending work emails to a non-work email address.
From the outside, I don’t see her behavior as all that malicious. I doubt if she has some innate agenda to get out you. Maybe it’s a difference of personality, maybe she doesn’t know how to be a manager, or whatever. You have an idea of how you want your job to be and she has a different idea. I personally think you should just conform yourself to whatever would best make her happy. I don’t see that having meetings with other people will be all that productive, and may end up making you look worse. Presumably, the company put her in that role because they want her in that role. If the company doesn’t like her results, they’ll get rid of her. The issues that are bothering you seem more about a difference of personality rather than issues that the company needs to be made aware of. Be realistic about whether you actually want to get a new job. A new job in a new company will come with a bunch of new kinds of chaos. If you were financially independent and healthcare stable, then it’d be no problem to go and search for your ideal job. But in this situation, it may actually be better to just think about how you can get along with her rather than try to change the situation.
There is a website called “Ask a Manager”, if you aren’t aware of it (https://www.askamanager.org/) that is really useful and interesting.
I’ve seen a number of questions like yours and I suspect that she would answer something like this (with my apologies to Alison Green):
Ensure that your colleagues are fully aware of the situation;
Approach whatever level of authority you think is appropriate, as a group, and lay out the problems, without being emotional about it and systematically focusing on workflow implications
Also be prepared to the greatest extent possible for termination.
Beyond that, as folks have said upthread, Bcc as much as possible, while recording and clarifying your questions and boss’ responses in email trails.
If she is, as the OP describes, a good friend of a company leader, and if company leadership seems to like “what she has to say,” then even if she’s not actually good at her job, and isn’t particularly qualified for the job, she may well be allowed to stay in that role far longer than she would if she wasn’t friends with the company leader.