A few months into my job at DREAM COMPANY, non-admin tasks started to come my way—and it was difficult. I received no background, no training, no info. Everything I learned came from my own research and digging. I struggled. You expect a support system to get on your feet, and I received little to no guidance.
Exhausting my requests to Greg, I asked his boss, Christa, if there was any sort of training materials or information that could assimilate me to my duties. She accused me of expecting my hand to be held. I expected...guidance. Give me the general structure of my duties and responsibilities, and I can fill the gaps. My four remote colleagues had been with the company over 10 years each; Cindy had been with the company for two years. I was green in every sense of the color. Christa's advice was to "manage up." I understand now that she was frustrated that Greg was not--and not capable of--managing employees, let alone himself. And me coming to complain about his lack of leadership and training pointed out the obvious that she preferred to ignore.
A text I sent to my sister about my frustration in the first few months on the job:
I have to keep my head up and assure myself that this is temporary. This whole thing…I feel like I wasn't setup to succeed. I think I almost had an anxiety attack… No, I did. Greg is VERY scatter-brained, so it's difficult to manage your manager when he faults you for not understanding him. Cindy is doing OK. She's overwhelmed too, but said she’s learned to adapt to the chaos.
After enough confusion regarding what my short- and long-term responsibilities were, I reached out to Greg with a firm request for help. I told him I was unclear about what my tasks were and how to execute them. I requested training and a plan, stating that he would need to assist me in establishing that clarity. I suggested using the job description as a guide, and Greg said that it was no longer correct (this is around September, my fourth month), and I shouldn't refer to it at all. He said he would need to revise it to be accurate, as my job changed.
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| Pretty much me in 2014 during work hours. |
Around this time, his true nature started to come forth. For those that didn't know him well, Greg was a chummy, goofy man. That was the person I interviewed with. I learned that there was a defensive, insecure, and condescending person below the facade, especially if things didn’t go his way. He would treat me more and more disrespectfully as he forced me to attend to him.
A Skype message from Cindy:
"He has a bad habit of wanting to have brain diarrhea all over you so he can shift the responsibility. I hate that… "
It’s hard to capture all the bullying instances without sufficient context. Here are some notes of how he bullied me:
- After not completing the first draft of an assignment the way Greg envisioned, he asked me, "Do you really want this job? Do you want to be here? Because your work demonstrates that you don't.” I assured him that I wanted to be there, with him repeating that I wasn't proving that to him. Upon hearing that, I feared I was going to be fired and worked through the weekend to hopefully meet his expectations.
- During a meeting, I noticed Greg didn’t understand the industry jargon someone said and whispered to him in layman's terms what they were talking about. He shushed me.
- During a meeting with two colleagues running a video campaign, I made a suggestion. Greg paused, chuckled, and continued to speak, openly ignoring what I said. When I asked him if he heard me, he said, "Yes, I heard you, and it's being ignored." Both colleagues came to talk to me afterward saying they were sorry and were made uncomfortable by the way he spoke to me. I confronted him about this later, and he told me to only speak in meetings if I discuss with him what I'll say beforehand.
- As I mentioned before, Greg told me multiple times not to speak to colleagues without him being present. And a bit further: He demanded that I should never have meetings without him in any circumstance. If he wasn't in a meeting (say, he was late), my only objective was to find him. If I attended a meeting without Greg, he would intimidate me into agreeing that I was wrong and didn't do everything in my power to help him get to that meeting. (More on that later.)
- If Greg needed to talk to me and I wasn’t at my desk, he would search the building for me. He had chased me down in other people’s cubes, in the kitchen, and once waited outside the women's restroom for me to come out. I was always on high-alert.
- I was told point blank "stop typing and pay attention" while I was taking notes during a meeting on my computer. I showed him I was taking notes, and thereafter, he said I could only bring a pad of paper and a pen to meetings since being on my computer while he spoke was disrespectful to his time.
- One day after lunch, Greg and I had a meeting at 1 o'clock. I returned to my computer at 12:55 and it wasn't turning on. I grabbed my laptop, brought it to his office, and asked if he could call into the phone conference for both of us. He said "I shouldn't be doing this. I don't want to ever have to do this again. You should have been prepared." He made me come around to his desk and input the numbers into his phone because it wasn't his job to dial into calls for me.
- He kept emailing my personal email account (and other Katie's/Kate's/Katherine's in the company) and blamed me for it happening. He accused me of phantom emailing him from my personal email account, and then switching back to my work email. After several instances and finger pointing, an IT associate and I confirmed he simply wasn’t checking email addresses as they auto-populated. IT had to remove my personal email from his address book.
- Cindy and I went out to lunch together. When we returned, we both had multiple emails from Greg asking where we were. I had a meeting with him soon, and told her I would take care of it. He berated me for being gone without telling him and that he couldn’t be productive without help from one of us. He said that from now on if we planned to go on lunch together, we had to get his approval.
- One terrible habit he had was taking both business and personal phone calls during our 1-on-1 meetings. This would range from a couple minutes to 20-30 minutes of time. “Oh, this is my dad,” and he would take the call, insisting that I stay. I’d get up to leave and he’d gesture to me to sit down. If I continued to approach the door, he’d pause his phone calls and command me not to leave. I would stare at the wall. I would stare, frozen: "This is your dream job. This is your dream. This is what you wanted..."
- I found out it wasn't just me: A colleague told me that Greg made two female co-workers cry earlier that month over project disputes. I witnessed him bring Cindy to tears, with her body visibly trembling over a task that she was uncomfortable with. She insisted that the task was not appropriate for her, and he would not relent. It was late in the day, and so to separate herself from the argument, she went to practice yoga and meditate. When Cindy came back, she called me out to the parking lot to tell me she was OK and just needed space to cool off. (I was clearly worried for her and didn't know where she went.)
Over time, this norm at work wore on me physically and mentally. My hair started to fall out in clumps and my doctor prescribed me anti-anxiety medicine specifically to manage working for Greg. I was…ashamed. What was wrong with me? Why couldn’t I handle this asshole and stand up to him?
Next up: How to Lose Sanity With Each HR Meeting.
