I work for a small family run business. The owner passed away a couple of years back and the business was passed down to his son....who has no leadership capabilities, or people management skills, he is also a recovering alcoholic who has been known to come into work ‘under the influence’ many a time.
He regularly explodes at people, he’s the ‘leave the door open and shout as loud as possible for people to hear’ type of person. He shouts, argues, belittles and intimidates people regularly and seems to get a kick out of it (swaggers about the office with his chest puffed out after it) and regularly negatively talks about colleagues to other colleagues.
I seem to be on the receiving end of it quite a lot as my type of work/department is quite subjective. He’ll regularly agree to things (more than likely under the influence but I can’t prove it) and then later once I’ve completed the work he’ll decide that wasn’t what was agreed and my procedure/work was wrong and he will go through me. Today he called me shouting down the phone, talking over me, not letting me give my point of view and generally making me a bit of a stuttering mess because he is so erratic and intimidating. He provides no direction, changes his mind often, we have no performance reviews, and he never ever gives you positive feedback, he only picks up the negatives. Trying to get him to answer his emails is also a nightmare, I’ve tried to converse through email to keep everything documented but it just doesn’t work.
HR consists of one person, who is best friends with the CEO, and has no HR qualifications and was brought it through being a ‘friend’ of the late owner. So complaining is completely useless and will do more harm than good. I just don’t know what to do, sticking up for myself didn’t bode well for me in the past with him, in fact I became a target for a good month or so. He is chauvinistic and I know a few people who are equally unhappy but aren’t prepared to do anything because ‘there is no point’. I am currently job searching but there isn’t anything at the moment. My confidence and self esteem is pretty low after years of him grinding it down. Am I overreacting or is this a form of bullying? How do you handle these types of people?