Thanks for understanding. I am sorry that you are going through such treatment at work. It really is discrimination at its worst. And that is just the legality of it. The emotional side is truly devastating. Please accept my heartfelt condolences that you are dealing with this.
My situation is a very strange one. I work at a non-profit cemetery. I have for 14 years now. We are a very small office with only my boss and myself. It is literally right down the street from where I live, so I have NO commute to speak of and the dress code is so relaxed that I can wear jeans every day (even capri pants in the summer). I LIKE what I do and I am continuously told how good I am at my job. I see a lot of families at some of the worst times in their lives and do my utmost to help them navigate a situation that most of them have no experience with previously. Being a non-profit cemetery, I never have to push people to purchase things they don't need or get them to "add-on" things to jack up the sales figures. I couldn't have done this all this time if that had been the case.
As we have gotten older in the job, I have certainly struggled with getting up and down with overstuffed file drawers - we have hard copies of files going back 79+ years. It is nearly impossible to squeeze anything into those drawers, let alone open them when the tallest file drawer is above my head! I fully admit that I am slower than I was when I started all those years ago. I offer (and do) stay after work to get the job caught up/finished. Then I get in trouble for costing the office more hours in salary. I think the worst thing about her criticism is the unfairness of it all. Since the beginning of 2015, my boss and her husband, who is both our boss,(yes, I work in a situation where my boss and her boss are married, so guess who's side of the story he always hears) As I was saying, the boss's boss and my boss have been out of the office for approximately 75% of the time since the beginning of the year due to his mother being in very ill health. Many doctor appointments, banking things to oversee, medication to be overseen, etc. It has been very hard on both of them. Then the mother died in July and there was the funeral to arrange and get past, then the estate to handle, etc. All required my boss to be with him. I got all that at the time and I still do. It is a hard thing to lose a parent, even an elderly one, so these were all legitimate reasons to be gone from the office. I, however, continued to work and struggle along as best I could for months being on my own. When that all blew over, she was back to work, but she has a very skewed theory on what working hard means. She is a smoker and like every other public building in the US, we do not allow smoking in the building. I had to remind her of that when I first started to work there. I told her I would have to discontinue my employment there if she was going to smoke in the office. She explained that the previous person who held my position had smoked, too, and she (the boss) had slid into the habit of smoking at her desk. She immediately stopped smoking in the building. Now, however, she goes outside to smoke and, it is no exaggeration that within 15 minutes of arriving at work, she will be outside for her first of many smoking breaks of the day. Her husband and her son both work there, so most times you can find the 3 of them gathered outside the office door smoking and/or drinking coffee. I have not taken a coffee break in 14 years. We are only there 3 hours in the morning, out for lunch for an hour, back for 3 more hours. We started alternating Saturday mornings working them alone, so that we can get a full weekend off twice a month. My point with all this is that even when she is there, she isn't there to help with the work that we are getting further and further behind on. They are on vacation this week and I have been there alone again. The standing rule in our office is that the burials come first and the rest falls into line when we can get to it. That is exactly as it should be, but the rest - filing, ordering markers, processing deeds for the graves sold and mailing them out to families takes longer and longer to get on the list, let alone done! So, when she started talking to me one day and saying that I really wasn't working up to my potential and she was really disappointed in seeing how I had apparently lost my initiative and drive to get the work done, I nearly fell out of my chair. She even mentioned that she has no problem with "people" looking online at work, as long as their jobs are current! It was all I could do to not just let loose with all this and ask her what she thought she was doing pinning all this on me! But, practicality took over and reminded me that I am not financially ready to retire yet. That I still need to work and, at 58, I don't want to start over somewhere else to work for someone half my age. It sounds completely exhausting! Whenever she has found me looking at something online while at work, that has been my "coffee breaks" and they don't last for hours and hours!
I am trying to remind myself almost constantly that, as a Christian, I need really only concern myself about MY job and how I am doing - if I am doing the best I can while I am at work. But, I am a regular person, who fails to attain that goal many times and I get caught up in "but she". That is not my business, but it becomes so when she blames me for not getting this or that finished in as timely a manner as I may have in previous years. I know, I am rationalizing, but again, human.
Wow, aren't you glad you responded to my post??!!!? As I said, I really miss the old friends that I could vent to all this about and they would make me laugh and it would be okay. Until it all started up again at work - you know, the next day!
Now that I have that out - I really do empathize with your situation. And, yes, it is a cruel world and, some days, people are just the worst beings on the planet. That is why there are cookies, or ice cream, or whatever emotional eating you use to see you through the rough times. I don't have many friends on this site, either. Mostly because I go so long in between visits that I haven't really gotten around to that. I would love to add you to my list of friends. Do you know how to do that? I don't seem to recall. Anyways, thanks for "listening."
I was really crushed. I felt horrible and just wanted to leave. Of course, she said this to me when we first got to work. She is rather a passive-aggressive "office manager" and likes to point out mistakes that I have made - in front of other employees. About a year ago, I did call her out on that. I said I can accept her telling me of something I had done that she would like me to handle in another manner, but I would appreciate her doing it when there was only she and I in the office. She will do this in front of her boss, big surprise, but the day I spoke up about it, she had done this in front of one of the groundskeepers. "She wasn't aware that she did that" was her response. I told her that she absolutely does. I pointed out that she makes plenty of mistakes herself, but I don't come over to her office while her boss or her son or anyone is there and point them out to her at length! I just wanted to be treated fairly. So, then I get this period of her making an issue of how she speaks to me ... do I feel okay about her talking to me now, or should she wait, kind of thing. She doesn't want to appear as if she is uncaring about my feelings, kind of thing. It is so draining to have to try to just let those things go and not let it effect my day, but it does.
I now have stomach ulcers - never had those before. So, apparently I am not being very successful at just "going with it". We all know how the FM takes a toll on the quality of our sleep, or the ability to sleep at all. I have had so many migraines of late and am up in the middle of the night because of the pain. So, the next day I am not at my best because of so little rest. It is becoming a vicious cycle.
jannytheresa said:
Hi
I am going through the same thing at work. It is killing me emotionally. I am being micromanaged, criticized and humiliated due to my FM and other illnesses.
I took some time off already and need to see a shrink tomorrow. I don't think I can handle the constant criticism any more. It breaks my heart because I am proud to be a member of my profession and to be able to contribute toward my family. I have a son in college and I am so hurt that I can't help him and that he has to see me going through this.
Not to mention the financial devastation. My boss is heartless and cruel. She has done nothing to help and in fact says that she has been through this herself. In the meantime I feel that any professional credibility that I have has been ruined. It hurts so much, my heart is broken and nobody seems to care at all at work. I never knew that we lived in such a cruel world.