I don’t know if he has mental illness issues or if he’s just a self-centered jerk with no people skills. I do know he doesn’t have the right to create a hostile, uncomfortible work environment for you. I would definitely do my best to keep from having an out-of-office assignment with this guy. I think your boss is going to have to come out of his ivory tower and do something. There is no way in the world I would go out into the Everglades with this guy after the way he’s been acting.
I hope you can get this worked out. It sucks to love your work and have it ruined because someone else doesn’t know how to behave.
That sounds like a threat of retaliation to me. You should probably tell HR about this statement as well.
As for the rest, you’re not doing yourself, the lab, or B. any favors by allowing this to continue. He needs some kind of psychiatric help. Definitely document everything that’s happened so far, and tell HR!
monstro I am assuming there is a HR department. You need to let the HR director know about this letter. As others have said, make sure you keep a copy. It’s good that your co-workers would back you up on B’s strange behaviors. He is the one creating a hostile working environment, not you. He needs to be made aware of this and be told what he needs to do to correct his problem. It is not your problem it is his. As others have also said, if B did end up losing his job over this it would not be your fault. He is causing problems not you. Just make sure you go to somebody about this. There’s no sense in you putting up with a hostile working environment.
He sounds unstable or even delusional and I again encourage you to get to HR first thing Monday morning. Don’t apologize for his behavior or minimize the distress he has caused you when you talk to them. What he’s doing has created a hostile work environment. Even if HR can’t take immediate action with the information you have now, they can start an official file and when he does the next bizarre thing you immediately go talk to the same HR person again.
It sounds as if your boss has known about these unacceptable behaviors for a long time and chooses to overlook them in favor of not having to be bothered with hiring a new supervisor. Given this, I would suggest bypassing him and going to personnel. He’s proven that he is unwilling to address B’s behaviors and, as previous poster said, has issued a not-so-oblique threat about firing whomever comes to him with problems.
If B’s behavior is making you uncomfortable, insist on having a campus police officer escort you to and from your car. In a previous email you mentioned that B. is a big guy and can be intimidating. Don’t take chances.
And, to reiterate: academic departments, including university HRs, move at glacial paces unless poked hard with a sharp stick. If you are feeling threatened and uncomfortable, review your employee/faculty handbook and use the language in the “harrassment” section. That will get their attention. Universities usually have an attorney in their judicial department that deals with sexual and gender harrassment issues; you might also cruise their website and think about talking to someone in that office.
I am an HR person, and I agree, go to HR. Also talk to your boss. It really is the boss’s job to manage the situation, and HR is primarily there to advise him on how to do it. But because there seems like a legitimate sexual harassment angle to this issue and your boss has made a statement that sounds like a threat to retaliate, you need to get this on record with HR. You may find that there is a separate faculty-type HR office and/or an equal opportunity office. Ask around, make sure you have the right one for you. Alas, I agree that they tend to ignore anything directly outside their turf.
I would also suggest you contact campus security.
With regard to your boss’s statement about someone needing to leave, that is soooo not the thing to say. Maybe he needs to leave? Seriously, the law is just as strong if not stronger protecting an employee who makes a (good-faith) complaint from retaliation as it is protecting someone from harassment.
I would not go to HR without your boss knowing that it’s going to happen beforehand. PIs can be very insular and protective of their labs and generally don’t take kindly to employees going over their head. Even though it might not be the most professional way to handle this, you need to do what you can to protect your relationship with your PI.
After you have let your colleagues in the lab know your plan and secured their support, go talk to your PI. Phrase it such that you are seeking his help, not filing a complaint. Don’t downplay the problem, but try not to sound adversarial with the PI. After all, you said that you don’t think he knows about B.'s craziness. Hopefully, he’ll be open to helping you deal with B. As the conversation is closing, tell him that you will be letting HR know about the incident, “just to protect yourself”. He really has no recourse to that. Then you can talk to HR without worrying about his reaction.
All this HR talk is making my head spin. I’m not sure who I would go to, as my hiring (and B.'s) was not really done through HR.
This is what I’m thinking too. I’ve talked to him so many times already, to no avail. Also, I’m thinking that talking to him privately is exactly what has gotten me into this predicament. He wants me to be personally affected. He’s counting on me to keep all of this between us so he continue to make this a personal matter.
Last year, my car died. He offered to give me his car. For free. Fortunately, despite being low on cash, I insisted I buy it from him. I’m so happy I did that, because I’m sure that could have been used against me if I hadn’t.
No doubt about that- a good manager should have procedures in place so that his or her department runs fine in their absence. He sounds like a real power tripping jerk.
If you get the chance, monstro, I’m interested in what it is you do. I live in Key Largo and my friend is a tropical biologist and is in the field a lot. I’m planning on going back to school for Marine Biology.
monstro, before escalating the situation, you should consider what kind of outcome you’re willing to accept in order to resolve this situation. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that your company will fire “Mr. B” based on your say-so. His behavior is definitely disturbing and highly inappropriate, but so far he has NOT made a “credible threat” – that’s the problem with these pseudo-stalker types, they know exactly how far they can push it without getting into legal trouble.
Your boss has dropped the hint that “someone needs to be let go,” if the issue can’t be resolved. And when deciding who to let go, only two things matter:
(1) Who’s the most valuable employee? “Mr. B” is clearly a capable worker, in fact you said yourself that the workplace is chaos when he’s not around. Plus, he outranks you.
(2) Who’s more likely, after they get fired, to show up in the street ripping their shirt and screaming “STELLA!” at the top of their lungs? In this case, the answer is clear…and it ain’t you.
It may surprise you to learn, that your boss & co-workers are probably MUCH more frightened of this person than you are. He’s probably not violent, but…who knows? Nobody knows. Plus, we live in a fear-based society where people automatically jump to the worst-case scenario, based on the stories they hear every night on the ten o’clock news.
Definitely, talk to HR…but do not make it a case of, “Either he goes or I go!” because that’s not going to happen. Instead, tell them how you feel about the situation, how it’s affecting your work, and most importantly, that you’re willing to resolve the situation without resorting to termination.
Autistic, probably not.
Sure it couldn’t be Asperger’s he meant?
Your description would sound vaguely Aspie IF it wasn’t for him basically making stuff up, although I have the same quality of evidence to diagnose him as you have to diagnose me as being diabetic.
Since he’s remembering things that you didn’t say, I’m going to assume he’s got something that’s MAKING him think you said this.
Has he ever mentioned hearing voices no one else can hear?
Oh well. Good luck. Sucks to be you, but I hope it works out well for everyone involved. I’d like to see this guy get some help, if possible.
[QUOTE=KGS]
Your boss has dropped the hint that “someone needs to be let go,” if the issue can’t be resolved. And when deciding who to let go, only two things matter:
(1) Who’s the most valuable employee? “Mr. B” is clearly a capable worker, in fact you said yourself that the workplace is chaos when he’s not around. Plus, he outranks you.
(2) Who’s more likely, after they get fired, to show up in the street ripping their shirt and screaming “STELLA!” at the top of their lungs? In this case, the answer is clear…and it ain’t you.
[QUOTE]
(3) Who can bring a lawsuit charging the lab with allowing a hostile work environment?
monstro, do you work for a university? If I know colleges and universities, they will fall all over themselves to take this seriously. They’re as afraid of B. as you are, but for a different reason - he’s a legal liability. You have rights here, and you don’t have to be afraid to speak up.
I don’t know if he’s a “power tripping jerk”. I just think he picked the wrong time to leave. Maintenance people showed up on Friday and none of us knew what needed to be fixed. We had to send them away (after the boss, unbeknowst to us, had requested them months ago). The boss kept calling to talk about stuff B. was working on, which none of us knew much about. And there are the techs, who answer directly to B., who didn’t know what needed to be done for the day (which normally doesn’t happen…we’re usually swamped with work but lately we haven’t been). So I think the problem wasn’t really him leaving. It was him leaving when he did.
(I think my email is in my profile. You can contact me if you want the scoop on the Everglades).
No, I wouldn’t bet my life on it. In fact, that’s part of the reason I was scared on Friday. I halfway expected to find my car vandalized.
This is the most frustrating thing of all. I have done absolutely nothing to him. When this craziness started happening a year or so ago, I thought maybe I was being mean to him and just wasn’t aware of it. I thought maybe I had told mean joke or a comment, or that maybe my body language was vague and he thought I was angry when I was actually not. So I started being extra nice and kind around him, never teasing him, never doing anything that could be taken the wrong way, always hiding my irritation around him when he would say something that would piss me off (like when he called my hair “steel wool”, or asked if I had “knots” in my hair as a little kid, like all black girls apparently have :rolleyes:).
But after all of these months of “egg-shell-walking”, I’m STILL being accused of being mean to him, as well as being blamed for things I didn’t do (like calling him a “pussy”). I’ve come to realize the guy is NUTS; his reality does not match everyone else’s. I hate sounding so defensive, but I feel like I have to be. That’s why this shit makes me so angry.
Just to set the record straight, I haven’t talked about this at all with my boss (yet). When he said this, he was talking in general. I’m not sure if he would approach this matter in such a way, but this comment has stayed with me.
He doesn’t outrank me. He has been here longer, yes, but he is not my supervisor, nor does he get paid more than I do. He’s a lab manager; I’m a post-doc. As far as I’m concerned, we are on equal footing. I’m not sure who’s the most disposable. That would be something my boss would have to answer.
As far as who will throw the biggest tantrum if they’re fired, it wouldn’t be me. But I certainly need this job more than B. does, and my boss knows this. My career is riding on it. I did a shit load of data collection last year, and my investment on this work hinges not on a paycheck, but on the papers I write. Leaving prematurely means I won’t get to see a return on my investment and that basically for the past two years I’ve been a glorified lab technician. That is not what I signed up for when I took this job or when I busted my ass in grad school. So that’s why I’m willing to fight to the tooth and nail. At this period of my life (no kids, no significant other, etc.), my work is my life, and this fiasco is threatening all of it.
Also, I think the other coworkers in the lab would fight harder for me than for B. It’s not a popularity thing, but I think we’ve all been burned by B. in some way.
You’re right, and that’s why I’m going to talk to my boss about this. All weekend I’ve been afraid of what’s going to happen. I can’t live like this much longer.
Dropping by again to say that this is an issue HR and security would want to know about. This does not sound like the typical employee spat about who heats up fish in the microwave and who took whose stapler and who didn’t wash his hands after using the restroom (all NOT HR issues, for the record). B., with his behavior, and the boss, with his statement about retaliation for complaints, both put the university at risk. And HR is in the business of protecting the university. I don’t disagree with talking with your boss, the situation is his to manage, but the statement he made previously is not a sound practice.
Just because you weren’t hired through HR doesn’t mean they don’t have a role in your employment. It may take a little tracking down, but there is an HR office somewhere on the campus responsible for your employment. Also, if you are still enrolled as a student at all, students are also protected from harassment.
I came into work today, in an attempt to get my mind off matters. But I quickly realized I’m 1)too afraid to work alone (I keep expecting B. to stroll up in here) and 2)the longer I wait, the less serious my concern appears to outside observers.
So I called the boss and asked if I could see him first thing in the morning tomorrow. He said sure, and then thirty minutes later he showed up here. To my relief, I must say.
I told him everything. I showed him the letter. Although he didn’t spend much time reading the letter, he did acknowledge its inappropriateness and told me that I was justified in feeling disturbed. I laid out my worries and concerns about having a manager who’s so unstable emotionally, and told him I feel great discomfort about the idea of me interacting with B. in the future. He listened to me throughout all of this, and assured me that he will work this thing out, somehow. Listening isn’t my boss’s strongest suit, so the simple fact that he let me say what I wanted to say–uninterupted–is helpful in itself.
One thing that he said was that he has long expected that B. would quit, because he has sensed unhappiness, and that if he did quit we would manage without him. So I’m not worried about a chaotic lab anymore. Also, he confessed that he has sensed that B. had a crush on me for a while now, but he wasn’t sure what to do about it. So at least the boss has noticed some things already and was not shocked by the story I told him. I was afraid he would be and that I would have to call up co-workers to “testify” on my behalf. He also recommended going to HR. So that’s another thing I’m going to have to do.
He thinks I should work from home for the next few days. Which I’m okay with. My cats are great coworkers, and their crazy antics make me laugh rather than cry.
I appreciate all the advice everyone here gave me. Thanks so much, ya’ll! I don’t know what I would do without you!
That is such a positive post!! The fact that your boss came in, rather than waiting until Monday, speaks highly of his regard for you. I am very glad that he is taking this seriously and not trying to blow it off as so many bosses do. Working from home…cats as co-workers…how do you get anything done? My Cricket thinks she can type better than I can, and I swear she can outwit spellcheck.
My mind is much easier over this now. I hope your is also.
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