I work in a completely male driven environment. I am not a director but a very senior person in the company.
All the directors have SAH wives and they work stupid hours, have pledged their 'lives' to the company it seems and are always prepared to take work calls etc. I am the first senior woman with children they have ever employed.
For example, one of them had a new baby this year. He immediately announced how he was sleeping in a different part of the house so his sleep wasn't disturbed so he could keep sharp to carry on working.
Last week, a director of our company but one who does not work in the UK but happens to be CEO of the whole group asked me for a piece of information. I tried to call the CEO and director of my company but he was abroad and in a meeting so barked at me to call back the next day. Group CEO told me this info was urgent so I gave it to him but made him aware that my director/CEO had not had a chance to approve this info going out.
He said yes yes yes. He then took this info, showed it to a 3rd party and essentially, signed the group up for a large contract without my director/CEO being aware.
I was ripped to pieces by my director. He has a habit of flying off the handle and he reduced me to tears in the space of 5 mins. Although I am not a cryer, this is his way of handling people. He thinks screaming at them gets a point across and I'm finding it harder and harder to deal with it.
I went away, thought long and hard about it, then wrote him a very measured email saying that I had warned the group CEO (unfortunately only verbally) he had not seen the info, had not copied him on the mail where I sent this info as I had not had a chance to speak to him so it would not have made sense if I had and that if there were political issues between the directors, I was not aware of these and as this man was CEO of the whole group (so more senior than him) and a director of our company, I had always taken the view that he was entitled to have this info (in fact, he is copied in on all our reports anyway).
This is the sort of situation I am dealing with every week. But I'm no political animal and I'm finding it very difficult. Everything is telling me to resign and that I cannot work under these conditions and I'm not the right type of person for this job but am I being too hard on myself? Or maybe I am just not capable of making the right judgements?
Please or to access all these features
Please
or
to access all these features
Chat with other users about all things related to working life on our Work forum.
Work
Small company, only senior woman, making very poor judgement calls and very tired but what to do.....?
31 replies
TheRealStig · 14/02/2009 10:22
OP posts:
Don’t want to miss threads like this?
Weekly
Sign up to our weekly round up and get all the best threads sent straight to your inbox!
Log in to update your newsletter preferences.
You've subscribed!
Please create an account
To comment on this thread you need to create a Mumsnet account.