Hello, me again.......

I need to off load again and I think my husband is fed up of hearing the same rant day after day, and it is pretty much the same rant about work.

I do genuinely enjoy the work that I do (I work in IT) however I am at the end of my teather literally. I'm not saying I'm perfect or never make mistakes but I think I do my job well and I do work hard (even after te slating they gave me at my last review).

I think my issue is that there is a personality clash between my manager and me. Which I think is caused by me not just bowing down and mindlessly following instructions. I don't purposely cause issues but I get the feeling she REALLY doesn't like me for some reason (Maybe she is an Alpha female type and can't handle what she sees as competition).

She has dropped me in it a couple of times recently and I've been left to take the flack, on one occasion she sent me to a customer site and didn't tell me why I was going there. The customer was then unhappy as I arrived n site with out knowing exactly what I was supposed to be doing. I had called her once I found a parking space to find out why I was going to customer site and thought in the time it took me to walk to the building she would have called me back, but no she was in some meeting and hadn't bothered telling anyone else why I was going to this place.

Maybe I "should" have waited in the car until she graced me with a returned phone call, but it was a baking hot day and I didn't fancy having to sit in the car in the heat, plus it was a 10 min walk to customer site, again once I got to the premisis I didn't fancy standing out in the sun, I don't handle the heat well.

Then the other week I went to a customer site and no one had told me that one of my colleagues was doing some work on their system. I think the blank look on my face kind of gave it away when the customer said oh such and such is doing this and that, but again this was MY fault as I should have known, how I was supposed to know this I just don't know.

Last week she sent me a rather narky email about something she had asked me to do, I hadn't had a chance because she kept giving me more important things to do, but again it's my fault, even though she gives me too much to do.

Last Friday I was visiting another customer and even though I had loads to get on with she decided to give me another task, I explained that this new task was likely to take most of the day and I already had A, B, C, X, Y & Z to do people were relying on me to get certain things fixed for them. She really doesn't like it if you don't just say yes and follow what she has said.

I'm getting to the stage where I can't stand working with her, she nearly bit my head off when she told me something today and I said "sorry I didn't realise", she just ranted at me that she sent an email about that (My colleague and I searched our inboxes but couldn't find this email she had supposedly sent).

I have nearly turned round and told her where to go a number of times but I don't want to end my career that way as the company is a fairly good company to work for.

And just to annoy me she will often talk about me as though I am not there even when I am sitting RIGHT behind her, she doesn't even keep her voice down. I have no issues with any of my other colleagues and have what I would consider to be a good professional relationship with everyone else in the company.

ARRRRGGHGHGHGHGH

sorry for the rant but I need to leat off steam before I do say somethign I live to regret.

BM

Hi BM,
No need to explain but it makes perfect sense to come and rant on here and give others a break from it. I know what that's like having offloaded to others for ages before I ever found ivillage. Mine was all about work too at the time.

You could well be right in your assessment of your manager.

I think it might be a good idea if you can start getting instructions from her in writing first so you have proof of what you have been advised to do. Maybe you need to ask many more questions so you are more aware before following what she directs.

Could just be that she isn't very good at her job.

You now know what she is like, what she can do and you need to safeguard yourself and protect yourself against the damage she can do to you.

I remember working for a company and being given a job to do only at one stage to find myself bending over a trolley of files side by side with another woman and we were digging out the same files whereupon we discovered we'd both been given the same job to do by the same person !

Such levels of incompetence waste everyone's time and the companies money but what can you do. There's no real way of discovering what other people are working on to ensure that the manager is doing their job properly.

Your manager sounds stressed out to me. Her management skills are poor to say the least and probably in danger of getting worse. I would start keeping a record of all these mistakes just to be on the safe side should you ever need evidence in the future of the scale that things were going wrong.

Now with you being aware of these things, once you have the evidence, then maybe you can approach her and ask her to explain these things, possibly if you do it gently she might open up and tell you she's suffering but if there is already a clash between you then she might hide it all which won't be good for her. Things will get worse and she could end up haiving to take time off.

I wouldn't be surprised if she hasn't got problems at home and it's reflecting in her work. It's definitely reflecting in her attitude and temper. She's displaying signs of stress and might just need someone to be willing to listen to her although as I said she might get angry at the person asking, thinking they are implying she isn't up to the job which she must already know she isn't doing well but is trying to overcompensate for it all by trying too hard, stretching herself too much, beyond what she should be doing.

What is she like with other people ?

It could be that she feels you are so good that you could take her job off her in which case she will feel she has to protect her position and be on the defensive around you.
If she's already suffering from stress then this could make her worse.

Hugs
Owly x

From Owly x

"The harder you fall, the higher you bounce."

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HI Owly,

Thanks for your message.

I think you're right, my boss is stressed however I don't think talking to her will make any difference and will make her angry/ bite my head off again.

I have tried requesting more information/ clarification but she's one of these people who is always so "busy" she doesn't have time for anyone and will get annoyed that you didn't just scurry off and follow her orders with out question. She seems to view questions as either you are questioning her authority or you are to stupid to understand what she has asked you to do.

There was another incident today where something had not been properly communicated to me. (I'm now keeping a record of these incidents, thanks for the suggestion).

The other day Her and another manager were discussing something they want me to do on site tomorrow, however they were discussing it as though I wasn't even there (I sit right behind her). This started stressing me out as they were going on and on about what I was supposed to be doing but not actually explaining anything to ME. This particular customer is lets just say high maintenence, and the fact that as far as I could tell I would be testing some new way of doing stuff (the other manager was actually trying to get a more senior engineer to do the call out).

Today I asked for clarification and for some one to actually tell me what they wanted me to do on site as if I was actually going to do the stuff they had discussed I would need to travel to a different site. My boss emailed me back acting again as though I should have already known what I was supposed to be doing, even though no one had actually discussed it with ME.

Note to self, I must request that training course in telepathy as it seems to be a requirement of my job.

I am thinking of speaking to HR to see if they can speak with her as everything is fine when she is not in the office. She does treat some of my colleagues in a similar way however she also seems to have her favorites who don't get any of her rubbish.

thanks for listening and aloowing me to let of steam.

BM

Hi BM,
It's a funny thing but the moment we start logging evidence of a problem they can't happen often enough.. lol
I have gathered evidence of noisy neighbours in the past and I needed as much evidence as possible so then the more they did the better for my cause.

I got the picture of the nature of your manager. I could clearly imagine the type of person she is and how she's behaving. How long has she been like this for ?
Just that I would expect her to crash at some point and need a lot of time off if she's pushing herself so hard and causing so many mistakes.

If people talk about you like they did in front of you and don't involve you then you'd be free to walk away so that your manager knows you didn't hear any of it. Knowing you could overhear could have made her believe you would gather enough info to save her the job of having to explain to you.

If you can't walk off then maybe you could contact the other manager or tell your manager that you'll be contacting the other one if she cannot explain things to you because you need to know.

Is there anyone else who would know what this woman was like, possibly someone higher up who you could have a quiet word with, set up a meeting etc and talk about the difficulties you are experiencing with your manager. Maybe do it when you have gathered more evidence.

Ah as I read on I see that you're thinking of speaking to HR anyway. I reply as I read through messages once I've found something in the message to trigger my reply, so I don't always know what's coming next as I write.

Good luck and if anything develops please let me know.
Hugs
Owly x

From Owly x

"The harder you fall, the higher you bounce."

CL on :-

Coping with Depression

Overcoming Stress

Paranormal Experiences

Astrology & You

Carers & Cared For

 

HI Owly,

Thought I would post an update.

This week has been quite bad. I have clashed with manager a number of times.

I voulenteered some useful information about a customer system, one of my colleagues wanted to do something with the customers system however I knew that one of us needed to be on site before this happened otherwise the system would no longer work. Rather than appreciating that I provided this information she just accused me of not raising this as an issue with their system.

I was able to locate an email from about a month ago where I raised this issue, but nothing had been done. One of my Colleagues had also raised this issue previously and nothing had been done. I'm not going to sit there and just take that from her.

She has no concept of how long tasks wil actually take and seems to think everything is a 5 min job. I've even had senior engineers backing me up when she has been hassling me over getting stuff done but not allowing any time. Maybe if she spent less time hassling me I would actually have more time to get the work done.

She seems to assume that unless she has just given me a task to complete that I am just sitting with my feet up doing nothing. She will then give me a task, I will just start that task and before I have even managed to lift the phone to call the customer (regarding the task she has just assigned me) she will be hassling me over a task that I. didn't get a chance to complete the day before, most probably because she assigned me another "more important" task.

Well today I had a meeting with the HR manager, was not supposed to be related to this but I raised the issue. The HR manager is going to speak with my boss and hopefully get her to back off a bit.

HR said they will speak to me in a week or so. I have been keeping a log each day like a diary if things don't improve I will take this to HR for specifics.

I feel much better for taking action and now that I have raised the issue I feel I may be able to stand up to her as others will already be aware of the issue so will be less likely to just take her side.

Hoping things will improve over the next week or so.

BM