Coping With Job Stress (Being Micromanaged)

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

First let me preface this post by saying that I am very grateful that I even have a job to complain about. I recently spent 10 months unemployed and it was a special kind of hell. I also know that there are egregious workplace violations that make mine pale by comparison. Second, I’m planning to be at this job for no longer than one year. My goal is just to get through that year. I’m moving out of state, then - quitting would be stupid.

I was hired about a month ago. I’d rather not say exactly what I do, because it’s a unique service… but let’s just say intensive case management and leave it at that. Most of our clients are either homeless or nearly homeless, with some serious issues. It can be kind of an emotional roller coaster.

My boss is the only authority figure that exists for the organization - not counting the board, which we never see. She is in charge of EVERYTHING. There are three paid employees - her, me, and another social worker.

She has to be in control of everything. She needs to know everything that is going on at every second of every day. If she sees I’m on a call, she has to know who it was when I hang up, and I have to go get the person’s file and answer questions like what hospital their boyfriend went to in 2005. I spend more time telling her about cases in precise detail than I do on the phone call that prompted this interrogation.

Examples:

''Your last call must have been extremely difficult, because you were on the phone for quite a while. Tell me about it."

''Where did this person grow up? Why has she been married twice? Why has this person had an attorney for over 10 years? Why isn’t this person living with her elderly father? What’s wrong with her that she would leave the state to move in with a new husband? This person who is now retired, where did he work 20 years ago?" etc. ad nauseum.

''Are you sure we should be throwing that piece of paper away?" (It was a post-it from 1994.)

“I don’t believe what you’re telling me about this organization is true. Call this organization back and tell them you misunderstood, and ask them all the things you asked the first time, and also get me detailed information about what they do even though we will never be working with them.”

''You should send them a letter about X. It should say precisely this. What are you going to do?"
“Send a letter.”
“No, you shouldn’t send a letter. Tell me what you’re going to say to them on the phone.”
Repeat what she said.
“No, don’t say that,” etc.

It’s very hard to be productive when you expect the 3rd degree at any moment, and expectations are constantly changing.

We also spend a lot of time talking to clients we can’t help. By that I mean we have them rearrange their schedules and meet them face to face even though we are 100% certain that they are ineligible. I esitmate that about half of the interviews I do are with people we can’t help. But we aren’t allowed to tell them we can’t help them. We basically just have to lead them on until they give up and stop calling. And we have to know everything about them anyway, and keep an ongoing file on them. Even though they will never, ever be eligible for our program.

I can’t even begin to describe to you the amount of time that is wasted in this office - I’m confident that I could easily improve productivity by 50% if she agreed to some pretty simple changes. But she will not change anything, because that’s the way it’s always been done. And she will force you to do it her way, even if her way is the stupidest way imagineable. It’s not just me. My coworker has been there a year and she gets the same treatment. She says her job has made her break down and cry more than once. Same with the volunteers. It’s just the way she is.

So far I am coping with the stress by eating large quantities of food, and I am rapidly putting on weight. I have tried not discussing it outside of work, but I find myself spending the commute home just yelling at her in my head. Right around 4pm, I now get headaches. There has to be a better way to deal with this. Even if it’s just venting on an internet message board.

One thing I want to add - I actually do enjoy the work I do. I just don’t enjoy doing it twice.

2

Being me, I’d be loudly confrontational about it and probably get fired.

But there’s just no way in hell I could put up with that shit.
''You should send them a letter about X. It should say precisely this. What are you going to do?"
“I guess I’ll be sending a letter.”
“No, you shouldn’t send a letter. Blah blah blah”
“You told me to send a letter. Now you’re telling me not to send a letter. Why don’t you get back to me when you make a decision. Better yet, why don’t you stay out of it and let me do my job. I’m a fully trained adult, and I know how to do this.”

3

I dealt with this at my last job.

I had a crazy boss who at one point wanted me to run every e-mail I wrote by her before sending! Seriously, I’m a grown ass woman and I’m not a dolt, so why would I need her to copy edit my fucking e-mails? I briefly went along with this lunacy just to keep the peace, and also started asking her opinion in general before I did anything to get her off my back, but that got unbearably old after two weeks. My next strategy was to simply tell her what I was going to do, so that she could realize my ideas were good enough to not warrant such an unreasonable cavity search-like scrutiny. That also got exhausting, so I stopped keeping her in the loop altogether as I honestly did not have the time to explain to her every fucking thing that I did all of the time. For a while she backed off, but then got back on again because she’s crazy and it made her feel like she was important to be knee deep in people’s shit.

Ultimately I ended up quitting. I just could not take working in that kind of toxic environment anymore. It wasn’t going to get better, so I said “Balls to this!” and promptly exited Dodge. Shitty economy be damned, I started looking for a new and better job, and found it.

Probably not the advice you were looking for, but chiming in because I was in such a situation only months ago, and that’s what I did about it.

4

What happened to your gym membership?

Sorry this is so hard :frowning: I don’t have anything else to offer.

5

The gym is too far away from my office to justify going out there, so I froze the membership until September, at which point they will have opened a closer facility I can use. I know exercise will help, I’m just not sure what my next move should be in that department.

6

That sucks, I figured it was a good reason like that. Glad you have that to look forward to at least.

7

Would you consider going to the board? They really should know if their administrator is running off both employees & volunteers.
If not now, think about it for when your year is up.

8

I’m really sorry to hear that - I know you were looking for work for a long time, and this job should have been much better than this. Is there any point to sitting down with your boss and asking her to back off a bit? Is it possible she’s so hands-on right now because you’re still fairly new?

Also, even though you can’t get to the gym right now, can you do more walking or ride and exercise bike at home or something?

9

My last boss tried to micromanage me. She basically wanted to know everything I did, and to be copied on every e-mail, etc. She wanted to know every time someone came to me asking for database help, or for a custom macro, or Excel help. I told her, “I don’t work that way. These small things are one-offs. If someone asks me to develop a project that will take a great deal of time, I’ll run it past you. If I think you need to know something, I’ll include you. if I need you to intercede, I’ll ask for help.” She learned to live with it.

I don’t think the root was that she didn’t trust me, she and I just had totally different working styles, but I asked her to trust me to work in the manner that worked best for me. In the end, that difference was part of why I moved jobs. She never had a problem with the quality or quantity of my work, by she was a detailed note-taker and memo-keeper, and I pretty much work off memory. It works well for me because I have great recall and could connect seemingly unrelated things better than a note-taker might. She liked to have her written backup always at her fingers. She just didn’t understand why I couldn’t be just like her.

I guess the moral of my story is to talk to her and see if you can come to some kind of happy medium. It might not fix everything, but it might make it a little more bearable.

StG

10

Does she micromanage your co-worker the same way? I could see that with having only been there a month, she doesn’t trust you yet. Maybe in time, once she sees that you’re doing things right, she’ll back off. Or maybe not, but I think a month is too soon to tell.

11

She might think of it as “mothering” you. Just like she “mothers” her clients.

How abotu you mother her back? "Sweetheart, I know you are concerned about every client of ours, but you can’t keep it up to involve yourself so deeply in all of them. You are heading for a burnout. Somebody must take some of that weight off your shoudlers or you will collapse and where will your clients be then?
Just let us take care of so and so. Try it and see how it goes. If it goes wrong, then you can take it back. in the meantime, there are plenty of other things that need you and your involvement and your knowledge and experience and blah-butter-sweet sweet syrup. Or just go home in time for a change and put your feet up.

Besides, we would really like a chance to develop ourselves and learn, get as good as this as you are.

12

No, no, that’s not right. Go back and retype your post in Times New Roman 12.

13

Is there any way you could sit down with her and lay out a process for dealing with patients? That way you would (hopefully) have her buy in and also some documentation. Plus, it might be a good thing to add to your resume to demonstrate that you’re experienced in process improvement, streamlining case management and communication/collaboration with your manager.

For example, next time she asks you for details, why don’t you say something like, “I’m so glad you asked. I was thinking the other day that, because you’re so busy, it might be a good idea for us to sit down together and work out a standardized process I would adhere to that could make your life easier so you wouldn’t feel that you had to spend time getting updates.”

Then develop a communications flow you would use, along with some business rules, and set up a checklist that you could use in each file, as well as a standardized method for note-taking (notes would also be added to each file).

I’m sure she’ll deviate from it and you’ll also have exceptional cases (hell, every case is probably exceptional), but at least that way you’ll have it written down what she originally asked you to do and documentation that you followed the process.

Then you can bitch her out in your head some more when she sputters and decides that the process must be changed. :wink:

14

I feel for ya. I’m going through something similar in my NPO. I was hired to take charge of a lot of things that had never been handled, bring the company into compliance in all finance and business areas, and generaly bring it out of the $20k all-volunteer thinking and into at $2.5M arts organization.

I had some concerns because I knew the Board was hiring a new executive director in a few months and in my experience, you have a 50-50 chance of getting a micromanaging martinet with no NPO experience when the Board hires a new ED these days. I was duly assured that they specifically did not want that sort of person in the position and were looking at people with management experience in arts and fundraising who was going to be a proven team leader.

Of course, that mean they hired a micromanager with no NPO, arts, or executive management experience, and the last several months have reduced a highly experienced staff to essentially clerks who cannot make the smallest decision without her okay. Getting pretty ugly here now, with three of us who combine over 70 years of NPO management experience in our fields being treated like entry-level interns. And yes, the Board knows, and no, they don’t want to hear about it.

Not the first time I’ve seen this, unfortunately, and it seems that it takes a Board at least 3-4 years to finally admit they may have made an error. Meanwhile, many of the staff will leave in disgust. Oh well. I’ll be having an official “rate the boss” meeting with a Board officer next month. That should be some fun.

15

I’m so sorry, that does sound terrible.

Does she have clients of her own, or does she see herself as purely a manager? If she does, her problem may be having too much time and too few reports.

I don’t think going to the board is going to help. I thought about working out a standard form, but it sounds like she is all over the lot with the questions, so that wouldn’t help. So, how about micromanaging her micromanaging?

What I mean is, before you call someone go to her and say “I’m going to call Mr. X. Here are the details of the case. I’m going to find out Y and Z. What other information do you want?”
Now I know that this makes you sound like a complete nitwit, but she is treating you like a complete nitwit, so don’t worry. A few things could happen. You get the weird info she wants, and she doesn’t bug you afterward. You get the info she wants (and whatever other info makes sense - don’t be passive aggressive) and she wants something else from left field. Then you can go “Okay, but I wish you had asked for that before” and it is her mistake not yours. Or she can eventually get fed up with being asked, and stop bugging you.

Do all this with all sincerity, as if she were the font of all wisdom.

If you were staying forever you would eventually anticipate all her requests, but that doesn’t help now.

Good luck!

16

Good advice here.

A couple of things. This is my first job since I graduated with my MSW, and I don’t have a lot of experience or personal connections in this area. Going to the board would be career suicide. I’m going to need a glowing recommendation letter at some point.

She is the same way witih the other social worker and the volunteers. She drives them nuts too. Our longest volunteer has been there 10 years, and she’s the same way with him.

Today she was not so bad (She was out of the office for quite a while, though.) I’m trying to find a pattern in the types of things she asks, so that I can make sure to get certain info from clients the first time around. And some days she seems more concerned about it than others. I think I just have to see the patterns in her behavior and learn to ride out the waves.

Additionally, I realize I’ve been using pretty piss poor coping methods (I ate ilke three breakfasts this morning.) The best way I can deal with this, probably, is acceptance, so maybe some meditation, and some exercise, and an occasional green bean or something. It doesn’t have to be the end of the world.

Just hearing about other people’s experiences has really validated my frustration about this, and that helps a lot.

17

No idea what to tell you, I’m dealing with something similar but not as bad (because my supervisor is off site). My supervisor is an emotionally disturbed woman who can blow up with anger at arbitrary moments. Luckily she is off site virtually all the time so the only communication I have with her is via email. I try to avoid her whenever possible.

But it is not uncommon for me to send her an email about a problem, have her not even read it, then have her give me the wrong advice because of it. I then write back saying ‘are you sure that is the proper way to proceed’ because her reply makes me think she didn’t read it? Then she writes back and blames me for not being clear despite the fact that I was clear, she just didn’t bother to read it.

Or the time she yelled at me for ‘assuming’ something, when she has assumed incorrect info (and is emotionally abusive based on her bullshit assumptions) more than once.

Or the time she yelled at me because she screwed something up and I asked her about it, asked her if she wanted me to fix it.

I really admire people who don’t put up with that shit and don’t deal with the pettiness of emotionally abusive, hypocritical or inept bosses. But I have also faced bouts of long term unemployment and that is more stressful and miserable than dealing with crazy, toxic people. I just avoid this person whenever possible and get help from anyone but them when I need it. Its not so bad, I have a bad experience maybe once every 2 weeks. It isn’t a daily thing, if it were daily it would bother me a lot more (I get the impression most other people with toxic bosses face this crap all day every day).

Reporting these people to supervisors means nothing. I don’t know what to do.

18

My mother ran a non-profit for decades before she retired. I have a sinking feeling that she micromanaged her staff because sometimes she’d take her management style back home with her.

My dad’s hypothesis is that her clientele were uneducated, unsophisticated, and no doubt in need of some hovering. What may have been caring and mothering behavior to them came across as condescending and annoying as hell to the rest of us. My WAG is that, probably more so than in the private sector, non-profit executive directors develop a Mother Theresa complex. “Only I know how to handle THESE people!” It doesn’t help that everyone (especially the board) is constantly telling them how great they are and how the whole world would fall apart without them. I think this explains why my mother was a workaholic. It IS hard work, don’t get me wrong, but it also fed her ego big-time. She loved being superwoman.

I have no advice other than just to say hang in there and don’t take it personally. Maybe eventually she’ll lighten up when she gets a chance to see how competent you are.

19

Whoa whoa whoa… I didn’t say I was competent. Let’s not get carried away here.

(Thanks)

I got pissed off again today, because a stupid policy and its stupid manifestation happens to be screwing with some clients that really deserve better treatment. Of course it’s me that looks like the crazypants. And I’m the one who is going to have to deal with the fallout. I fantasized about everything I would say to her when I quit.

But I talked to my coworker too, and she could relate to so much of what I was feeling. And I do like the clients. So I’m thinking, I can handle being stressed for another month. I’ll give it a month and if things don’t seem better by then, I’ll find another job. Preferably one in development, because what I really want to be doing is writing grants.

20

Yeah, it definitely helps when you realize your coworkers feel the same way about your boss. Makes you realize that it’s not you taking the crazy pills; it’s her. At my old gig, I felt an incredible sense of relief to discover the entire office hated the Seaward Boss, and for the exact same reasons as I did. I once mentioned offhand Seaward’s bizarrely hostile reaction to something I’d done, and the people I was talking to all nodded with knowing eyes, then relayed their stories of woe to me. One girl told me the boss was both controlling and downright mean to her everyday for a full year! How does that make any sense?

Didn’t make the job suck less knowing this, but it made me feel better about my performance and job security. I put up with that shit for eight months, three of which I was looking for a job like a madwoman.

Best wishes to you.