I can’t abide regular verbal abuse from a boss. The only one who springs to mind drove me out of a job in less than three months – to be fair I was far from the first, she had been driving out new hires pretty relentlessly for years, but I’ve never just up and quit a job like that before, with nothing lined up. Not before or since.
Probably the way I was raised, but I just can’t let that shit go. Any criticism from a person in authority is going to be something I play over and over in my mind. I hate to fuck up. That said I understand that everyone fucks up sometimes and it’s not my boss’s fault for addressing that appropriately – it’s my weakness, being sensitive. However, a job where I was called names, told I was a liar, treated like an idiot, in generally just dressed down all the time – both deservedly and not, more often not – just becomes intolerable for me. Some people seem to think this keeps people on their toes – for me, it kept me in a state of high anxiety and dread most of the time. Even on weekends, I’d find myself counting down the hours I had until I had to go back. When at work, my boss didn’t work the same shift since I was overnight, so I’d sit there all night, anxious, waiting for her to come in and chew me out over something (or nothing). She generally did. If she didn’t address me at all I breathed a sigh of relief.
When I caught myself routinely wondering how serious of a car accident it would take to get me into the hospital for a few weeks but not kill me, I gave notice. Took a significantly less paying job in a high-volume call center, quite stressful, but in relative terms a break. While it was a pain, nobody ever spoke to me that way there and I never had that level of anxiety again. Never regretted it.
I’m sure it’s all personal issues and triggers, my dad was verbally and emotionally abusive to me all through childhood and being unable to escape that environment was a constant barrage on me for years and years. As an adult, I don’t care to be treated that way, and having a paycheck hanging over my head isn’t even enough. I’d rather do almost anything than put up with that, I just can’t stomach it. One of the reasons that I have such drive at work to do a good job and be self-directed is so that my boss never has the need to put me in my place, and that’s been a successful strategy with all the bosses out there since that one.
Don’t get me wrong, I get frustrated at work, I get stressed, bosses can be trying at times, but I have an absolutely zero tolerance policy for being belittled that way. If you think I’m a shitty employee, fucking fire me, don’t treat me like a wayward child who needs discipline.
I’ve honestly never had a boss just lose it as a one time thing. I’ve only ever seen this kind of thing as a pattern. I’ve worked with some bosses for years and years through thick and thin and they never screamed and yelled at me, or insulted me, or things like that, no matter what happened. I don’t see why any person would do that, I certainly never did that to anyone I managed. I got angry a few times, but it never got to the point of insulting or belittling. It was always professional – you are doing this, you cannot do this, this needs to improve kind of talks. Not “you’re a terrible fucking employee, how could you be so stupid?”. I fail to see how any reasonable boss could ever reach that point short of being in the middle of some personal crisis like the death of a spouse or child (and then they had really ought not to be in the office).