Batshit Lead is the Drama
For context, I work in food service. The Dept. Shift Lead is a visibly brown woman who considers herself white. A single mom (48F) of 3* who uses food stamps and government assistance, but states she's not like "one of those people". Really weird about immigration despite being first-gen.
When my Lead was first hired, she saw my coworker and I taking our allotted 15-minute break in the morning around the work area, where my coworker was doodling.
She laughed when we jumped and said, "It's just me, guys! You can do whst you want on your break." Then maybe 20-minutes later, she reported her to our supervisor and said how "unprofessional" she was.
Then, she started using the n-word and several other racial slurs once in a while (the other girl and I are brown/Black). Due to the environment and a personal lack of boundaries, there was a lot of push and pull.
She started giving me gifts and chatting about personal things, and we helped each other with resources. I thought I saw some good in her because sometimes she WOULD understand issues and was "nice".
She would regularly ask for ideas on how to improve recipes and we would give them, to which she would ridicule until a higher up suggested the same thing. Then she would do it.
This Lead talked about her love for Candace Owens, Charlie Kirk, and Ben Shapiro. I said they promoted racial violence and she told me she didn't agree with them on that.
She asked me if it was true that "Africans sold themselves into slavery" and if I, a queer person, just wanted to go back to the "good ol' days" of women not having to work. That she believes in a "man and a woman" for marriage.
She also regularly used a specific racial slur that my coworker and I told her was a slur. She continued, saying how this ethnic minority was all "bad people".
Eventually, she turned on me right after I lost three family members in one year and wrote that I was underperforming. While some of it was true, a lot was twisted out of context or just a straight-up misrepresentation.
She never wrote a letter of my improvements or correction so it just sits in my file.
After that, her gay male friend (one of our bosses) stopped hanging with her and instead directed his attention to others in his department.
She was rightfully upset. But then she started spreading rumors that he was trying to sleep with them to the point that HR had to come and do an investigation.
Sometimes she would praise me when I did work that she didn't want to do. And other times she felt that she had to "remind me" that she was the boss. She'd point her finger in my face or tell me that I needed to care about an installation for our oven while I was grieving the loss of a family member.
Long story short, she messaged me on my day off and a holiday to accuse me of not meeting standards again (I had made over 400 fresh scones for her to use) and that I just used stale product.
I was already stressed from working multiple jobs and realizing I was in an abusive romantic relationship. So, I wrote down everything that I wrote here, in great detail. Perhaps I was too harsh, and I do somewhat regret that.
Ultimately, I think I did the right thing.
She refuses to acknowledge me now (which is fine), and only stopped her worship of a certain political figure when her food stamps were cut. I've heard from others that she badmouths me when I'm gone. The cognitive dissonance is WILD.
Anyway, I think she thought I would quit, but instead I'm in a better position in the company and mostly far from working with her.