I had an old boss that handled a tough situation I was in, in the most degrading and humiliating way possible. Making it worse for herself and everyone while writing me off as the problem.
I wish I confronted things instead of just walking away and quiting. So much unsaid.
Pretend you are a manipulative and narcissistic. And please give me advice, I want a soft sweet payback i have endured a lot. I don’t wanna let her get away with this anymore.
I’m in a relationship with someone who I believe has been manipulative and emotionally controlling. From everything I’ve found out, she’s involved with multiple people at the same time. There’s one girl who, from what I understand, is providing her with financial support and a path to a visa, so I believe she stays in that relationship because it benefits her. At the same time, she’s also talking to her ex again and messaging other girls.
Recently, we had a fight. Right after I left, she contacted her ex. The next day, despite me previously telling her how much it would hurt me, she went to meet the other girl.
After our fight, I logged out of my own social media accounts. Somehow, I ended up logged into hers. I genuinely don’t know how it happened, but I had access to her account. I know I shouldn’t have looked, but I did. I saw the chats, calls, photos, and everything that confirmed what had been happening. Later, I think she realized I had accessed her account. She asked about it, I denied it, and she dropped the subject, but I think she knows I saw something.
We met yesterday. I acted completely normal and didn’t confront her. We had a drink together, and then she suddenly said, “I have to tell you something.” She told me she had gone to meet the other girl. I didn’t shout or argue. I simply pushed her away and told her not to touch me or talk to me. She seemed genuinely surprised by my reaction. Then she immediately told me to relax and claimed she was “just kidding.” She repeatedly apologized for joking and even bowed down to my feet while apologizing.
At the same time, she kept telling me how much she loves me, that she can’t stay away from me, and that she has never felt this level of comfort, love, happiness, and connection with anyone else. Part of me feels like she only brought up meeting the other girl because she suspected I already knew and wanted to see how I would react.
To make things worse, after they met, the other girl posted a picture of them wearing rings with the caption “engaged.” It was deleted later, but people who knew about my relationship with her had already seen it. I feel deeply humiliated and embarrassed.
I’m completely confused. I don’t understand what’s going on in her head. I don’t know whether she genuinely loves me, whether she’s keeping me around for emotional support, or whether she’s simply trying to keep everyone in her life for different reasons. She constantly tells me she needs my love, care, and attention and says I’m the only person who gives her those feelings, yet her actions don’t match her words.
I’m trauma bonded to this relationship, and that’s what’s making this so difficult. A part of me wants to confront her with everything I know. Another part wants to stay quiet and show no reaction. And, if I’m being completely honest, another part of me wants to make her feel the same pain she made me feel by making her dependent on me and then walking away.
I genuinely don’t know what to do anymore, and I need an honest outside perspective because I feel like I’ve completely lost myself.
Sorry if this is heavy. Someone I worked with years ago was severely abusive and really crossed boundaries and hurt me physically (not severely but in a more humiliating way) and mentally. The general environment was mostly men and some of them (unfortunately that i dealt with) were harassers and abusers. I was young, foreign female and by myself and things somehow escalated to external parties. The severe abuse stopped and I got into sort of dissociation that made me temporarily forget who did what to me, but the yelling and soft humiliation continued. It's been years since I left the job and I'm still stuck thinking about it, trying to understand, wondering if there was ever consequences. I still have memory gaps of when some inappropriateinteractions happened. I did a lot of therapy but I need personal opinions or advice. How do you move on from such an experience?
I don’t know if I have a toxic boss or I’m just a sensitive loser
So I started a job in February 2025, and I started full of energy and excited for a new challenge. I was proud of how I was progressing and putting so much effort to try and impress the team.
But then 2 months in, my line manager went on maternity leave. And her whole workload was given to me, for no additional pay of course. The team lead became my line manager
I felt confident in picking things up, but at times things were a steep learning curve. For context I am an analyst
Things started to get a bit tough and pressured but I always put in 110%, asked for help when I needed it
I thought I was doing alright. Until she phones me one afternoon and tells me that I seem distracted. And I distract others in the office (even though I’m a quiet person and she talks way more than me.) that I don’t compete tasks with a matter of urgency (when I do, that’s literally what I push for every day head down). And also that I’m on my phone too much when I knew for a fact that I barely looked at my phone, I’ve always been sensible in all my jobs and only reply to urgent messages. That week at work, my mum had fallen unwell with meningitis and my dad had been given me updates and it was a stressful time
I was shocked after the meeting and I absolutely sobbed. It was the first feedback I had and I couldn’t believe it was so different to how I thought I was working
My happiness in the job disappeared and for the last year I have been working extremely hard to try and please that manager and I haven’t been able to do so. She continues to do the following:
\- constantly checking up on me every few hours and if I have spent slightly too much time on a task, she starts telling me I dont work with a matter of urgency
\- telling me I dont ask enough questions and spend too long figuring things out myself instead of going to her, but when I do ask questions she starts accusing me of ‘this is a really simple sql command’ or ‘have you not tried to figure this out first before coming to me.
\- since she told me I talk too much and chatter is for lunchtimes only, I’ve kept quiet and avoided chatting to colleagues. But then she talks and talks sometimes non stop for 30 mins about all aspects of her personal life, she usually does this at the end of the day when I’m picking up my bag to leave as well, so I feel trapped. Sometimes the topics make me feel uncomfortable like talking about how her daughter has very heavy periods and was having an ultrasound, I don’t need to know all that
\- but a few weeks ago I think I must have been in a better mood, and I had a few friendly conversations with the girl in my team who sits next to me. It was immediately flagged by my manager who was fuming. She phoned me the next day to tell me ‘I’ve told you this before, chatter is for lunchtime only. I think if I wasn’t sat next to you in the office, you would get no work done.’ When I told her I disagree and that I join in with office chatter when it’s appropriate, she told me I am defensive.
\- I’ve noticed colleagues are sometimes allowed flexibility around office attendance for personal commitments. When I requested one additional work from home day one Wednesday (we work from home on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday) so I could support my elderly grandparents in the evening while my parents were away, I was told it was unreasonable. I wasn’t expecting special treatment, just the same discretion I’d seen applied in other circumstances.
\- she keeps going on about me seeming distracted, whilst other colleagues ask me ‘how do you focus so intensely and for so long.’ In my appraisal, she talked about when im on a teams call, i seem to be looking round the room. It annoyed me as she calls me every morning for a whole hour.
\- in the same appraisal, she told me that ‘another manager came down to tell me you’re lovely one to one, but in meetings you’re just not confident.’ She told me I lack confidence and need some coaching. I didn’t know how to tell her that the lack of confidence has come over time due to the fear of getting something wrong due to her
In fact I don’t know if I’ve hit rock bottom and burnout but I am so exhausted, drained and extremely sad. I am still pushing myself to work, but I still can’t impress her. I’ve never received any praise for anything I have done
Every day at work I feel terrified for making mistakes or if I’m terrible at what I do. I work out of anxiety and not out of enjoyment and I feel on edge pretty much all day.
Today I felt dreadful but pushed through but was still met with criticism at the end of the day. Telling me I’ve spent too long on a task she gave me this morning and asked why I didn’t reach out to someone in the another department to help. She gave me the request and never copies me into the email chain so I never know the context of the work or who needs it or who to go to for help. She tells me I can’t prioritise properly
My mental health is so bad and spending most nights crying. I have no energy to see friends or even keep friends anymore, and feel utterly ashamed of myself
Am I just too sensitive to a normal boss? Or is this lady problematic
Hi, I need to post this.
My manager is a narc who message me and blames even on my off days/ vacations and holidays.
She's also very slow in doing in her work and it takes her a month to finish everything that I ask her to deliver. That means my tasks/ projects will be delayed too. It goes on forever. She yells, and screams at me on teams. Out of nowhere she will have outburst. She is the worst person I ever worked with.
Im an accountant btw taking my CPA. I had been looking for a job for a year and can't find anything.
A former narc boss/colleague keeps trying to invite me to lunch, and I do not intend to go. I would, however, appreciate any advice on the best way to decline. I don’t want any drama; I just want the invitations to stop:
I officially retired two Decembers ago and closed my freelance business the March after my official end date; I kept the business open because by contract I had to finish up a few open projects, which required only a few hours each week and I was closing out 19 years of business records and files anyway.
I gave two months’ written notice; met her to hand her 2 boxes of hard copies before I left; uploaded thousands of project files to a shared online folder; sent company-wide emails reminding people of my last day; and included my retirement date in my email signature for months. After March, she still tried to give me new projects and I refused. Her response? She said, “I thought you weren’t serious about retiring.” ??!?
I haven’t called or emailed her since retiring, and I gave her only a P.O. Box forwarding address (I moved after I retired). She’s invited me to lunch a few times since then, but I’ve easily been able to avoid them. She still won’t stop trying to “catch up with me” and has asked other colleagues multiple times “what’s going on” with me and if they know why I'm not responding to her calls or emails. I haven’t told my colleagues much because I felt I didn’t need to drag them into it, and anyway, she’s still employing them.
The responses below are the declines I can think of, but I don’t know how effective they would be. Some might send her into a frenzy of unwanted contact. And I don’t want to be mean, but she does have a frightening ability to rewrite a narrative to her benefit—she confided in me her own mother told her that she had that talent, and I’ve seen it live multiple times.
I work in a specialized industry in a location where everyone knows everyone else. Eventually I may run into her somewhere, but I shouldn't have to engage with her since I'm retired. I just want the peace I have now to continue:
1. No, thank you
2. I can't at this time
3. Nothing new to share, perhaps next time
4. I’m going to have to decline
5. I'm still healing
(I did have to have cervical spine surgery caused in large part because of too many long hours at my computer, but I’ve since healed)
6. Sorry, too busy
7. Not interested in having lunch
8. I'd rather not
9. … or do I just continue radio silence?
Thanks for any advice.
I work in higher education in an advising/student support role, and I just need to vent to people who will understand the sheer psychological toll of working under a narcissistic management duo.
I should have known it was a nightmare from day one. When I first got hired, they had to hire *six people at the exact same time*—including myself—because the turnover before us was absolutely crazy.
Six people had just vanished from the department right before we got there: a manager, an admissions worker, and the rest were in my exact role.
The training was nonexistent, and after working here for a year, I completely understand why everyone ran for the hills.
I essentially report to two people: my actual Manager (who is a massive enabler) and her favorite subordinate, a "Supervisor" who doesn't even manage me but acts like a rogue boss and a classic flying monkey.
Here is just a taste of the toxic, retaliating behavior I’ve been dealing with:
* **Blaming the new guy for their mess:**
- When I first started, my Manager ambushed me about why there were emails from March sitting unanswered in the inbox. I started in August! I pointed out that I wasn't even an employee in March and asked why she didn't ask the coworker who has been here for 40 years. She immediately got defensive and told me "not to say that." She just wanted a scapegoat.
* **Total disrespect for my boundaries/disability:**
- I have a task-trained service dog and a sign on my closed office door that clearly says, "Do not knock, I have a service dog." The Rogue Supervisor blatantly ignores it, knocking anyway just to power trip. When she used to roll her eyes at me and I finally reported her, she switched from overt hostility to passive-aggressive retaliation.
* **Ambush tactics:**
- A while back, the Supervisor messaged me to come into her office. She pointed at her screen, aggressively interrogated me, and said, "What is this? I thought you said you were ahead." She pushed until I literally broke down and cried at my desk.
* **Weaponized workload:**
- Because I actually care about the students, they exploited me. I do my job, plus marketing, CRM data, counseling overflow, and I voluntarily took on a massive backlog of scoring applications for another drowning coworker because management refused to delegate properly. The reward? The Supervisor recently dumped a manual 1,200+ row spreadsheet audit on my desk as retaliation, and my Manager gave me a standard "meets expectations" on my review right to my face. Zero raise.
* **Mean-girl gossiping:**
- We were doing process documentation recently, and the two of them sat right in front of me yawning, complaining, and gossiping. My Manager literally whispered to the Supervisor, "Is that the one who has the stick [up their a**]..." right in front of me.
* **Complete delusion:**
- Word recently got out that I asked for a letter of recommendation because I’m leaving. Instead of taking accountability for their hostile environment, they fabricated a conspiracy theory that another helpful, kind coworker "corrupted" me by sending me Teams messages asking for help.
To survive, I’ve mastered the art of "tactical ignorance." I play dumb, act like everything is fine, and give them absolutely zero emotional reaction (Grey Rock method). I am not dumb, but they want me frantic and defensive, and I refuse to give them the fuel.
The best part? I graduate with my Master’s degree (M.Ed.) this December.
I am spending my weekend polishing my resume and applying to other universities. I am going to keep playing dumb, quietly do the bare minimum, let their unassigned backlogs pile up, and smile while I plan my exit. They think they are winning their little high-school power games, but they are going to be stuck in that miserable, broken office forever, and I am getting out.
Thanks for letting me vent. If anyone else is dealing with the "Enabler Boss + Bully Subordinate" combo, I see you, and you aren't crazy!
I am very passionate about my job. Im a perfectionist and love to dive in to problems and solve them. Ive been working under a new leader recently. They are not my direct report day to day but everyone on my team is affected by them.
We are understaffed and have been for quite some time.
There is a lot of overlap on projects and assignments.
We’ve recently hired more people to help but it doesn’t seem to be working because things are not improving and nothing is getting taken off our plates only added.
This leader gate keeps from other teams and does not collaborate, gossips, curses on meetings frequently, has emotional/angry breakdowns every other week and on our daily meetings everyone is terrified to speak up or ask for help because they know they will be met with silence or negative feedback. They give like 1 word or 1 sentence instructions with barely any context or details when requesting you to do a task, they very seldom give good feedback to anyone and only criticize. They will tell you something is extremely urgent and then later on forget about the issue and say its taken care of, which wastes time and takes your whole agenda away because you just prioritized something out of scope for hours and now they dont need it. They change projects that they arent even involved in. Then after the project is ruined, ask you to clean it up. They have had multiple HR complaints about them from our team and outsiders and nothing has happened. Multiple people have quit after 1 day, 1 week, 3 months.
I know this obvious answer is find a new job or internal position. Can anyone suggest how to navigate this type of work environment and protect my mental health while doing so? I desperately need advice.
I was humilated by leadership I trusted years ago. Written off, work erased, and constantly talked down to like I'm a moron. I hate her.
I absolutely resent her heavily. I don't know what to do.
Especially while working in a very unsafe environment for myself, with a narcissistic boss, and having been scapegoated myself. How do I calm the fuck down.
Finally… after 5 years. A few months ago her boss (who was her sponsor and protector), was moved to another organization in the company. And one of her colleagues who had experienced all her shenanigans and experienced her dark side first hand became her boss. Also her colleagues ganged up on her. Within only a month, there was a secret HR report that was being drafted. A couple of months later she shared with me “i won’t be here too long”, and i started hearing through the grapevine that they’re after her, and she started being more absent at work. Till the last minute i didn’t believe it would happen. Then one day on a monday morning she was gone, fired. Like she was never there.
I’m sharing this, to give hope to others. There are times i thought my nightmare would last forever. Then other times “no one stays forever . the situation will one day change “. In her scenario the reason she got away with so much shit is because her boss was protecting her. Although many of us went to hr and went to him, he didn’t do much. But once he left , everyone she wronged came after her. And without him she was helpless. She tried to follow him , but which organization would take someone who has an HR file ? She was branded “toxic” and while she tried to find a job in the company for 6 months, her old network of over a 100 executives didn’t offer her a raft line.
I have a new boss. While no one is perfect it already feels like i’m out of jail. For once I can work and live without having to look behind my shoulder. There’s hope.
I know this topic has been asked, and I’ve read all of the subs on this. But I am in desperate need of help because if I don’t get it, I think I’m gonna go crazy. And before anyone suggests it, I cannot leave my job. I am in a contract because I was relocated here for this promotion and if I were to leave, I would owe the company 25K.
My store has a new associate that we hired about a month ago. He used to own his own business in another state and has recently moved to our state within this year. He came into our store, trying to find the highest paying job he could get. And the team leader of the area really liked him and hired him right away! Everything seemed like it was great until about two weeks into the job. He started reporting every safety infraction possible.
I take safety very seriously, and I lead with empathy, which I realize was my first mistake with this guy. After his first concern, he started emailing a recap of every single conversation he would have with anybody in leadership. I even had to come in on a PTO day to take care of one of these situations. Which I tried explaining to him later this is how much I care that I came in on a PTO day, which of course he used against me. Because as I’ve learned narcissists don’t care about any kind of feelings, they’re “logical thinkers.”
My district manager is forcing me to constantly talk to this guy, but I feel like I have no support. He has sent about 10 recap emails every time we’ve had a conversation. He had an accountability conversation earlier this week which of course he saw as retaliation. Ever since he first reported this “safety infraction“ he has not been in his area working at all. He spends his entire day writing up these emails and documenting five minute conversations. When I tried talking to him about it on Monday, I told him it does not take eight hours to write the stuff up and he said I’m old and these things take me a long time. I said you can use talk to text and he said I don’t know how to do that. But the guy googles everything. So it just doesn’t make any sense. I want to hold him accountable again this week because he has spent about 24 hours upstairs just on his phone in the last week. And it’s an extremely busy week with the holiday and the store is suffering being down a person. Who’s just up there doing nothing. His team is constantly complaining and has a lot of frustrations about it.
The safety issue he brought to my attention, he submitted to ethics and it’s now gone up and into a global investigation so that’s out of our hands. But again he refuses to admit that it does not take eight hours to write one email. I have read about the gray rock method and the Jade method. But I just don’t know what else to say to this guy when I tell him that I need him to get back to work and help our customers. Because he says he is helping our customers by writing these emails and documenting all the safety infractions. I feel like I’m at such a loss and such a failure as a manager because I’ve never had to handle somebody like this. I don’t know what one liners I can say to him and in response to him thinking he needs eight hours to write one email. Because that is all opinion based.
Our district manager was even at my store this week and spoke to him and said it’s her opinion that it doesn’t take seven hours to write one email and that he needs to take care of the customers. He responded well to that and I thought OK this is done, but all day today he was upstairs just on his phone. I know I should not be afraid of him and I just need to act neutral and unbothered. I just don’t know what the right things to say are.
I apologize for a long post, but I am just at the end of my rope. I don’t know how to communicate to this guy. I don’t know how to get through to him (I know I will never actually get through to him). Any advice would be helpful. But if anybody has ever dealt with an employee taking too much time to document conversations where they’re clearly manipulating their time, please let me know. When I had him write a statement, it was 12 pages long and it took him FIVE hours to complete. And it’s not like he was coming up with original thoughts he was copying everything from the emails he had already sent to us. Nobody writes at that slow of a pace. But that’s when I knew that he is just a very manipulative person with his time.
Please, please. I need help. So bad.
I recently came to the realization that my boss is a narcissist. Long story short, my mom is also a narcissist, and I hadn't recognized until recently that my boss triggers the same survival strategies I developed as a kid, like deferring to authority to avoid conflict, accepting blame even when I wasn't objectively at fault, and believing that this person's opinion of me reflects who I really am.
I've noticed that whenever I interact with my boss, I feel like a child again. For a long time, I assumed it was because I was genuinely incompetent and needed him to "parent" me or correct my behavior.
Working through this with my therapist has helped me realize that when I'm around him, I'm mentally slipping back into the version of myself that learned those coping mechanisms in childhood because that's what once kept me safe.
I'm curious if anyone else has experienced something similar.
Well, it's official. I've been diagnosed with PTSD from my job and my NBoss's behavior.
I don't know if I can go back to work in that environment. My employer is big enough they could reassign me as an accommodation for PTSD but they are stingy about that, so I'm not holding my breath.
I've shared about my NBoss here before but not what happened that gave me PTSD. I saw horrific things at work after NBoss decided we would all be doing emergency work (it was not originally) I told him it was traumatizing me, he told me I had to learn to cope.
Everything under that boss now has to do with emergency work, there's no way to modify it. I don't want to quit because I need the income, it's all so demoralizing.
I'm trying so hard to find another job but I'm coming up dry, which has never happened to me before.
I pray things change soon.
After 15 years of giving everything to this man and losing all my friends and respect from my family… In 2022 I noticed how bad my health started to decline out of nowhere and a lot of very bizarre symptoms started to surface one after another. A doctor since then has yet to diagnose me. September of 2024 he spent 6 hours straight verbally assaulting me in the worst ways, I had already been use to the abuse but this was different….he begs and pleads with me that our 8 year old daughter would be better off if I killed myself. He then beat me with the pistol because I didn’t shoot myself with it. At this point I had already been struggling nonstop with loss of sleep, numbness in both arms, constant pain in my neck, and horrible lesions on my face and body. My doctor literally prescribed me the medication for EVERYTHING , dosed me up with steroids, and asked if my husband had a primary physician yet because they were taking on new patients. I later found out that some blood work came back showing that I had been infected with a serious disease,also very sick with a bacterial infection that was not only affecting my kidneys, skin, breast tissue, aging,memory loss, muscle loss, brain fog, extreme hydration, constant headaches, skin irritations that wouldn’t clear up. Dizzy spells, nausea, constipation, bloating, hair loss, it was affecting each and every aspect of my life. Now he is alienating our little girl, and keeps claiming that if I do something about it… I will only go down for a drug test using hair. I do not use drugs and now I fear what he has been doing. I was told to go get a drug test immediately from the hospital. Like today. About 4 hours ago my daughter told me of a small glass vial of light blue liquid she found while helping us move that was hidden in a secret compartment under the bathroom cabinet on far back…. With gloves and dropper. Does anyone know what this could be and how would he use it to get it in my system? The only things I have noticed off are my skincare serums.
It can be really shocking, right? I know. A narcissist will become nice to you all of a sudden for one of four reasons.
Don’t be fooled. They have shown you who they are.
Hi all,
I’ve been working in law firms for the last 3 years and I have been in my current law firm for the last 1 year. I’ve been fairly good at my job and the profession, and I was doing particularly well in the current firm for 8 months with a specific supervisor, who was a gem of a person. Unfortunately, she abruptly left and we’ve received this horrendous narcissist as a supervisor who is decimating the functional systems in the workplace. His whole life at work is trackers and to do lists and trackers for trackers, with little to no meaningful work done. He also works 24/7, with 100s of emails and messages coming in at every hour of the day over frivolous tasks.
But I think the worst part for me is that he’s latched onto me as a target for harassment and abuse. He has called everything I have done so far as shit, and has endless 1-2 hour conversations with me ONLY about maintaining trackers and lists and making his life easier for folders. Also, he’s refusing to accept my leave requests for a trip in November as the team is stretched too thin to send someone away for 2-ish weeks.
The low blow is this - he’s made a “Mistakes tracker”, where he’s put across ALL mistakes that I’ve made (even if they weren’t) into a public sheet, and numbered them chronologically for everyone to see. He’s also gone bonkers about how I spend my time and wants to see my timesheets everyday for a whole week, even though he isn’t actually my ultimate reporting partner who has the authority to do this.
Disclaimer - NONE of this is happening to my colleague on the team.
I feel like I am actively being pushed out of the firm. But unfortunately quitting is not an option, at least for the next 3-4 months. How do I survive this without being miserable? Any tools, tips, tricks, even empathy or similar stories would help :)I’m just a desperate depressed person looking for some comfort and advice in this awful situation.
P.S HR is a dead end in the firm.
Hello community! I'm being managed out of my job via an unmerited PIP (unmerited because I have exceeded all my performance targets each year). Obviously I am job-hunting and hope to be able to resign with something else to go to before the PIP completes. But in the meantime I have to go along with this process.
Does anyone have any tips, techniques or suggestions for what "persona" to put on to better handle my narc boss throughout these meetings? Grey Rock is off limits to me for mental health reasons.
I would like to behave with integrity and self-respect. But I also have a sense that it would be smart to pretend that I am in awe of her power over me somehow - which feels like the opposite of integrity and self-respect... So that's why I say "persona" because then I can do it in a tongue-in-cheek way, seeing myself as simply playing a role, and maybe creating little in-jokes for myself as I do it.
I am pretty sure that part of what she wants to do with the PIP is pick my brains for my expertise/ideas and then present them as her own once I've gone. I would like to be smart about blocking this - basically "quiet quitting", or passive-aggressive stalling etc. But I am open to hearing that this goal is professionally inappropriate and that part of being professional is not withholding expertise/ideas that you're being paid for, even if your employer treats you badly throughout.
Things I've managed to pull off in the past in previous jobs:
One job with a severely dysregulated narc, I just used catch-ups in my notice period to practice techniques /vocabulary from non-violent communication or from mediation, just for my own personal/professional development. I didn't care about the outcomes of the meetings at all, so that kind of made it a "safe" way to practice the phrases / techniques!
Another job with a manipulative senior manager who was trying to undermine the trade union, when he called me into a meeting to fish for information about union plans, I just pretended to be happy to oblige but extremely stupid - too stupid to provide him with any useful information, and also too stupid to know that he was fishing inappropriately.... Basically I made myself completely useless to him while also leading him to believe I wanted to be useful.
But unlike my current situation those were not regular meetings that I had to maintain for months (as I do now with the PIP).
TIA!
I’ve found myself reporting to a toxic, lazy, and highly retaliatory micromanager. It’s devastating because I actually love the business itself—we’re in the ethical / purpose-driven space, and I genuinely care about the business and what they’re trying to do.
The core issue is that my manager has a lot of responsibility but zero adequate training or strategic capability. She just wants to keep doing things the way they’ve always been done (she literally rolled out a 2-year-old strategy last week in a rapidly evolving market).
Because I have significantly more industry experience, qualifications, and domain knowledge than she does, she feels incredibly threatened. I’m firmly in her crosshairs. She’s trying to bury me with invented performance issues, calling me "emotional" when I push back, and trying to ice me out.
Her reputation in the wider department is absolute garbage and everyone steers clear of her—but unfortunately, she’s my direct report line.
My results speak for themselves, and other teams regularly ask me to lean into projects. But every time I get a win, her targeting gets worse.
I am actively interviewing and looking for an exit, but realistically that could take a few months because the role is quite specialised.
For now, I just want to survive without being bullied into a breakdown. The stress is destroying my sleep and physical health, and I have GP certificates documenting it. I've also previously disclosed my ADHD to the company. I also have two very young kids under school age.
I know HR is there to protect the company, not me. But I’ve heard whispers that if you use the right regulatory language, HR will panic about liability and force a manager to back off.
Are there specific "magic words" or legal frameworks I should drop in an email to HR to signal that I know my rights? I'm thinking along the lines of unmanaged psychosocial hazards, adverse action, or failure to accommodate a disability.
Has anyone successfully used this approach to buy themselves time while job hunting? How do I make HR realize that *she* is the massive liability here?
Appreciate any advice.
I am about to take my first corporate job after years in small firm accounting and government (both had their own issues, namely petty dictatorships in small firms or people with actual power in government). Howeve, I have never seen the kind of cult mentality that has come across in some of these corporate interviews. it really does feel like I will be drinking kool aid. What do I need to look out for?