Am I overthinking my new workplace because of a toxic previous job?
I recently started a new role in events/project management and I’m trying to figure out whether what I’m experiencing is normal, or whether my previous workplace has completely messed up my perception of what’s reasonable.
In my previous company, I lasted about four months. Everyone’s emails were tracked and client/vendor communications had to be approved, which wasn’t the issue. The issue was that I was expected to know things I had never been taught.
For example, on my second day, I was shouted at and called stupid for not understanding how they structured their work and presentations. The problem was that I hadn’t been given any training materials, previous examples, project decks, or anything else to learn from. I understood that client work was confidential, but I was still expected to somehow know how everything worked without being shown.
The general culture was very much “figure it out, but if you get it wrong, we’ll make you feel bad about it.” Over time, it made me second-guess myself constantly.
Fast forward to my current role.
The people are much nicer overall and my manager is aware of my previous experience. However, I’m finding myself confused quite often because priorities seem to change regularly and communication isn’t always consistent.
For example:
- My manager will tell me to focus on one project because it has an urgent deadline.
- Another colleague will then ask why I haven’t completed a different project yet.
- Sometimes I’m helping on tasks because I’ve been specifically asked to, and then someone else seems confused about why I’m working on them.
Another thing I’m struggling with is communication ownership. Sometimes clients, vendors, or external stakeholders email my manager directly and copy me in. The questions can be operational, financial, or related to decisions I don’t actually have enough context to answer.
When I ask whether I should reply, I sometimes get asked:
“What do you think?”
Which I understand is probably meant to encourage independent thinking.
The problem is that I’m less than a month into the role and I’m still trying to understand:
what I’m authorised to answer
what needs management approval
what should be escalated
and what I should just handle myself
So sometimes I’m genuinely asking because I don’t know the expected boundary.
My manager has also reassured me when I’ve made mistakes and recently told me:
“No worries, happens to the best of us.”
So this isn’t a post about someone being cruel or abusive.
I’m genuinely trying to work out whether I’m:
Experiencing normal first-month confusion in a fast-paced events environment, or Still carrying so much baggage from my previous workplace that I’m overthinking every interaction and constantly worrying that I’m doing something wrong.
For people who work in events, agencies, consulting, project management, etc.:
- Did you struggle to know when to reply versus escalate when you first started?
- Is it normal for priorities to shift constantly?
- Is it normal to feel like everyone has slightly different expectations when you’re new?
- At what point did you start feeling confident making decisions without checking everything first?
I’m genuinely interested in hearing whether this is just part of the learning curve.