AIBU to think I am being treated horribly?

[CompletelyBroken]

(I've changed my name to post this thread)

I'm a grown woman who has returned from work in tears because I am being bullied so badly :(

The training process has been horrible. There's no other way to describe it.

The girl who was asked to train me first is rude, patronising, and deliberately argumentative. She talks to me like I am a child, looks for ways to make me feel stupid and is extremely rude and snappy.

She explains many things halfway and then when I ask follow up questions, she insists that she's already covered it with me. Apparently explaining something in detail and mentioning something in passing are now the same things.

If I encounter something new, she either says 'I've done this with you' or she starts a guessing game- 'So.What do you think you should do?'
I appreciate that nobody wants to spoon-feed me (and I don't want that either!) but there are some things that I have virtually no way of knowing unless someone tells me. There are other times when I'll figure out 90% of what to do and just a need a confirmation regarding the next step. In these scenarios, especially with deadline-driven tasks, it is neither efficient nor effective to get me to sit there for an hour trying to "guess" what to do next.

On most occasions when I ask questions I am made to feel like a stupid nuisance. Often I am given vague answers like "You need to look into it" with no description whatsoever of how to go about it.

I feel small and humiliated and my work is affected because I dread having to ask a question or confirm something with a colleague.

I had one ally in the team but lately he has also become irritable and patronising with me. He has always maintained that this other colleague is very rude and awful (she is like that with him as well) but he has now stared ganging up against me with her.

A couple of days ago both of them refused to clarify something for me ( I had already figured out the issue and the solution, I merely wanted details of a contact that I had no way of knowing). My female colleague first started the usual guessing game with me- who do you think the contact is? What would you do?

I admit I was quite exasperated with all this, and I just cut myself away from the situation by saying "Thanks, i'll figure it out". She kept going after me and smirking and saying " Oh but X, what do you think you should do? Didn't I just explain this to you? that's what I'm saying.... blah blah". I didn't respond and I cut her short because I didn't see the point of this pointless back and forth. I had just about had it.

I emailed the colleague I thought was my friend to ask him for help but to my shock he started the same guessing game and was equally patronising with me. It was evident that he didn't even understand the issue because response I got was completely unrelated.

I finally had to confirm with third person only to have this colleague email me back to say that I had offended him and the other girl because I had "gone against" them by asking a third person. He said that this was their way of teaching me and I should figure it out myself no matter how long it takes.

Now I completely agree that I need to figure it out myself (and that is what I do), but there are times when the issue will be something I have no way of figuring out myself and someone will have to tell me. There will be other times when it isn't feasible to have me or anyone else sitting there trying to guess something for hours on end.

I am tired of being spoken to badly, humiliated and feeling constantly scared and afraid of asking questions or worrying about what someone is going to say to me next. Every time I object, I am patronised and told it's all for "my own good" and this is how I'll learn. Colleagues who are on the same level as I am act like my managers and the whole thing is very paternalistic.

I haven't stopped crying since I came home and I am absolutely miserable.

I am self confident, experienced and good at my job.

I would be reduced to a wreck in a very short time in the face of the sort of treatment you have written about here.

This may be the job of your dreams on paper, but it sounds as if you've fallen into a truly poisonous environment that will destroy you if you're not careful.

I'm worried that there may be nothing you can do to improve the situation, as the management sound as crap as your trainer.

I think you should be planning your escape.

I've always been a confident and very outgoing person myself. I've been confident of my opinions and I've loved healthy discussions and debates. I've never been someone who is easily intimidated and my friends and family turn to me for advice on how to handle people.

But these experiences have definitely killed my confidence and I can't help thinking that there is something wrong with me for me to treated like this. :(

It may well be a bad phase, because I am even being bullied on social media Not by my colleagues obviously but by some acquaintances who have taken an objection the some of the causes I support. I have only to post the slightest thing and they start to poke and attempt to pull me into argument and nit-pick on everything that I have to say.

I've pulled away from social media because I am not in the right frame of mind to deal with any more toxic people.

OP - there is NOTHING wrong with you! Trust me. The bully is who has the problem, here.

A bully will target for any reason and gather evidence, other people (like a pack mentality) if they so wish, so they ground you down. This may be the first time (highly unlikely) they've bullied, it may be the 2nd, 3rd or 4th time.

You are now saying things like "killing your confidence" and "there's something wrong with me for me to be treated like this".

Unfortunately unless there's some sort of miracle it'll get worse. So like I said before and countless others have said, plan your escape route.

I am not a quitter

I'm sure you aren't. And neither was I but my tenancity got me torn to shreds and took me years (and years) to recover.

I don't think you realise what you're up against - neither did I. A lot of what posters are suggesting is theory, do please take notice of the posts form posters who have been through this process. We weren't pathetic or 'quitters' but it destroyed us. The bullying and the anti-bullying procedure. The latter was worse than the former by far.

I completely understand where you are coming from. I didn't mean to imply that anyone who left due to workplace bullying was pathetic. Not at all.

As a longterm victim of bullying (from every possible quarter) I can perhaps identify with some of the things you may be going through? Those of us who have been systematically bullied can perhaps get quite shrill in our determination to 'be ourselves' and 'not mind/overcome the bullying'. But inherent in that determination to be ourselves is a clear signal that we are going to be ourselves.. but deep down we hope we're going to be accepted for who we are this time . Sadly, it is a signal that bullies see a mile off.

imo bullying leaves very deep psychological scars. Perhaps you want to win this round because it will be the round to trump all the previous rounds: see, I did it YAY: I got the bastards, justice won I was validated . But imo it doesn't work like that and, sorry to be tiresomely repetitive, imo (and ime) it is better to FLEE the minute a dynamic like this presents itself.

Perhaps it's better to 1. work for yourself or 2. get grafted in at the top of a company so you have less exposure to thick underlings bullies. That's not to say you won't get bullies across the board, mind, but you'll have more clout.

I appreciate that you are in a bind and need to make something work (just not this - PLEASE). My advice (in your next role!) would be to be bland and blend in with the wallpaper, keep a low profile, be a yes-woman (up to a point). Don't dazzle or hope to be noticed - there'll be plenty of time for that later when you've surreptitiously climbed the ladder. But ime it is very hard for someone who has had a history of bullying to take slights - we can't help fighting primary battles that have been woven into our psyche.

Epic post coming up and I'm probably going to get flamed but, just to lend a bit of perspective, I was in a very similar situation to that described in the opening post last year, only on the other side of the fence. I know similar complaints were made about myself and my colleagues to the things you say your colleagues are doing in your opening post. I'm sure our new colleague felt the situation was awful but it was awful for us as well. To be clear, I am in no way supporting bullying, just trying to explain what may be the other colleagues' perception of the situation.

Our team had become very thin on the ground after a spate of redundancies followed by people moving on for fear of the next round. Two ladies from a third party company were assigned to the team to pad us out. One was brilliant. The other was a nightmare. To analogise...

On Monday, she would ask what two times four was. You would tell her it was eight and show her a times table. On Tuesday, she would ask how many lots of four were in eight. You would refer her back to Monday and explain how she could use the times table again. On Wednesday, she would ask what three times seven was on the basis that the numbers involved neither four nor two nor eight and this was therefore a 'new thing'. Repeat, ad nauseum. She was unable to extrapolate from one situation to the next and never thought to use the tools we'd pointed her at to work out the answer. She considered not being told the specific answer each time inadequate training on our part.

She would also expect you to provide a snap solution to any problem she had in situations where that would be impossible without you going through the whole rigmarole of investigating and testing the entire problem yourself, ie the job we had employed her to do. So, for example, if we had both been doctors, she would have brought a patient whose complaint was "I don't feel very well." to you and would have expected you to tell her off the top of your head "He stubbed his toe and it has now turned septic. You will need to clean it, sew it and dress it. By the way, he is allergic to penicillin so you will need to use erythromicin." Anything less than a complete analysis and solution laid out on a plate for her, nightmare colleague considered a guessing game. She saw her job as merely applying whatever she was told.

We were never purposely unpleasant to nightmare colleague* but we were all under a lot of pressure to get things done and it was hard to hide the exasperation every now and again. We certainly didn't deliberately belittle or bully her but I know she took a very different view of our attempts to get her to work independently. For example, we had to separate her from brilliant colleague. She saw this as an isolating tactic. The reality was that she was getting brilliant colleague to 'help' her on projects then letting brilliant colleague do all the work at the expense of her own. We later found out she had even tried to emotionally blackmail brilliant colleague into coming in over one weekend to assist nightmare colleague with work she had procrastinated over until right before the deadline. I genuinely don't think it was our method of training. As said, the brilliant colleague was excellent, once she was shown the tools and realised she had autonomy to get the job done. Brilliant colleague did continue to ask a lot of questions but they were sensible and as a means to finding out how to get the job done as opposed to getting us to do the job for her and we had no objections to taking the time out to help her.

( *At least at that stage. Then my existing colleagues then began dropping like flies with various illnesses and issues leaving me on my own with the two trainees. Nightmare colleague's response was to pull a sickie to get out of a core part of her job leaving me doing ridiculous hours at all times of the day and night, sending me insane with lack of sleep and damaging my health to the point you could see a bloody great trench growing into my fingernails. At that point I did wash my hands of her and avoided dealing with her from then until the day she left as watching her sitting there meeping and looking sorry for herself because she wasn't getting the dazzling feedback she felt she deserved whilst I was on my knees with exhaustion left me beyond fury and in my crazed, sleep deprived state I didn't trust myself to speak to her in a professional manner rather than launch into a spittle flecked rant. )

Now, I'm absolutely not saying this is like you, I'm not saying you're a nightmare colleague, I'm not saying the lady that is training you isn't horrible and I'm not saying that she hasn't crossed the line into bullying, you obviously mean well and want to do a good job whereas nightmare colleague was lazy and didn't, but we are only getting your side of this and a couple of things you have said jump out at me:

You are criticising other teams and systems and citing them as a reason for not getting your job done - Your colleagues have been there longer and probably know full well that these things need fixing but they are likely to be finding ways to work round this to get the job done and can appreciate that, however annoying, there are more pressing issues at the top of the pile that take priority. Sometimes, these things never achieve priority. You are unlikely to be telling your colleagues or your manager anything new and they will already have a handle on how much these issues really have an impact on your work. My nightmare colleague had a practice of flagging up issues to excuse undone work. It got peoples' backs up, including our manager, because we all faced the same issues, knew exactly how much impact they had and worked round them in the full knowledge they were never going to be fixed.

You have said you are doing 11 - 12 hour days and your workload is excessive. You have also said that you don't think it's appropriate to have to guess what you're meant to do as it wastes time - Not answering your questions directly "wastes time" in your view but you don't seem to have any understanding or empathy that your colleagues will also be under pressure (the stress may be why your rude colleague is so abrupt) and that if you keep asking questions they believe they've already answered it's actually their time they think you are wasting and their deadlines that are being threatened. They are likely to be landed with the more stressful and higher profile work than you at this stage, purely due to their experience, and they are likely to be cut less slack if they fail to get things done on time and to standard. The fact you completely fail to acknowledge the impact of you asking questions on your colleagues' deadlines in your message to your male colleague where you complain about your own tight deadlines may be the reason he is now alienated. It did have an impact on my time when nightmare colleague kept badgering me to help with or even do their work. Nobody minded her taking more time over it because she had less experience but her expecting us to help or even do the work at the expense of our own was exasperating as was her complaining she wasn't getting help when we thought we'd already given her a fair push in the right direction.

Your male colleague initially backed you up but has now sided with the female colleague as has your supervisor - This is the red flag, for me, that your colleagues' side of the story might be quite different. I stood up for nightmare colleague for a while, begging our manager to give her more chances after complaints by my other existing colleagues. I was eventually forced to agree with them that it wasn't working as it became apparent she was never going to be able to do what we needed her to do. On the one hand, it did feel like a betrayal as we did chat together but, on the other hand, we simply couldn't manage the workload when one team member was being carried. We do know she was complaining all the time about us to brilliant colleague and to her third party managers as brilliant colleague later confessed this. Whilst no bad language was used, yes, it was offensive for her to say we were doing it all wrong when we'd done our best to help. She didn't seem to appreciate that, far from being obstructive, we certainly were motivated to do our best to help as helping her should have helped us.

I'm not sure I can offer you any brilliant advice. You should not be being bullied or belittled and if that is what is happening you should carefully note each incident and get help from your supervisor and HR. Supportworker's email would be a good move and some indication you appreciate you're not the only one having a hard time and that it's not all about your needs might get your male colleague back on side. Having said this, I do feel that your expectations of the job and their expectations of you just don't match up and if you are new and your supervisor is already calling you 'difficult' that really is not a good sign. If I were in your shoes, I would start to look for another job. Something I do have enormous sympathy with on your part is that you don't feel you're getting suitable encouragement or feedback from your manager and you really should be especially if this is a new role and your first job too. That is reason alone to look elsewhere. Just because you may not be suited to this role in this company doesn't mean you wouldn't be perfect somewhere else. Whatever you decide, I wish you the best.

1. I have clarified this a couple of times already but here I go again.

I did not criticise my team or any other. Nor did I blame them for a piece of work not being done on time.

If my job was to track a payment and it wasn't made by the other team on time, then this is what I would have said, "Team X have not paid £Y on time. I have followed up with A, B and C to get this sorted. I will keep you updated with the progress"

^ What part of that is critical? I am merely informing the concerned people of something that is of importance and I am communicating the steps that I have taken to resolve it.

I do this because I am supposed to.

I don't use other teams as an excuse for my work. But if something that another team does or doesn't do causes one of our deadlines to not be met, then it's part of my job to inform my supervisor.

1. I am aware that other people also have deadlines to meet. But if I encounter something that is entirely new and that I have very little time to resolve then what should I do? I did as much of it myself as I could but then was left with no option but to ask a colleague.

Yes, they do have deadlines but if they absolutely couldn't have helped me because of that, they could have simply said so. There is no reason to be rude or patronising.

Not answering your questions directly "wastes time" in your view but you don't seem to have any understanding or empathy that your colleagues will also be under pressure

What makes you think i don't have empathy? It doesn't waste time to not answer my question, it wastes time to spend 15 minutes getting me to sit there and try to figure out something I have no way of knowing. It isn't as though they go back to their own work while I'm sitting there trying to figure this out- they stare at me expectantly or smugly. They wouldn't do this if they had a deadline of their own to meet.

Have you thought about just saying 'Oh well I haven't been trained in this, I will just speak to about it.

Really you do just need to speak to HR though and get things set up so you KNOW who you can ask if you have a question.

OP - I hate to say it - but if 3 other people on this thread have seen your colleagues' POV (this is without belittling your bullying experience) - and remember - we don't work there - you do and we have only your POV on this - then maybe we have a point.

I also say this as because every time one of us here says "bullies are bullies, you won't win etc" and "it's not you it's them" every time you seem to come back with "I'm not a quitter" etc…

I also seem to think - when you say "if they couldn't have helped me because of their own deadlines then they could have said so" - well suppose as Furkle said you aren't getting it or are rubbing them up the wrong way and holding them back - well of course they won't tell you if they're under pressure and you're hindering them!

I think they're staring because you're not getting it or you don't fit in. I'm wondering about notes etc - to be brutally honest if I had to work with you and after 3 months you weren't "getting it" then I'd be pissed off too.

I think I'll drop out of this now as you really don't seem to be listening to other people and it's all your colleagues' fault.

I think you need to get out OP. You are already banging your head against a brick wall, both at the job and on here. This leads to entrenched positions on both sides and it doesn't end well, in my experience.

My point is not that you are not being bullied. More that when relationships have broken down to this extent, you are banging your head against a brick wall trying to get people to understand how wrong and unkind they are. If you have any choice at all, get looking for another job now. If you find yourself thinking that you don't want to let them get away with it and that you want justice to be done, that's a sign that you are in a bad place and I would counsel you to stop and regain control over your life - the only bit of your life you can control - by leaving the situation. You can't change these people by explaining to them over and over again and in clearer and clearer tones why they are wrong and unfair.

BTW I speak as an employer who was accused of bullying. I'm sure you don't want to hear that side of the story but it was as ridiculous as what you are going through. The person concerned got more and more entrenched in her role as victim and it was very painful for everyone. She accused people of "mobbing" - we had to look it up to find out what it was. But by then it was all too late and nothing that anyone could have said could have persuaded her that this was not the case. She didn't want to leave -she wanted us to say we were wrong and she was right and she was amazing really. That was never going to happen.

I'm not at all saying that's what's happening here - but I do have alarm bells at the entrenched positions. Nothing good comes from this starting point. Even the best HR can't fix this. I would find people you click with and work with them instead. (That's happened to me too - a job I hated, working for horrible people. I tried and tried to explain my position but in the end the scales fell from my eyes and I left. Best decision ever).

Completely. I think you are being treated badly at work (and tbh by some posters on this thread). Your colleagues are being unprofessional at the very least.

SuperFly - 'if I had to work with you and after 3 months you weren't getting it then I'd be pissed off too'. That is a mean and unhelpful comment. You have no idea what the OPs job involves and how long it takes to fully understand the job. You're just kicking someone when they're down.

OP I know when you're having a horrible time at work, Sunday evenings can be awful thinking about the week ahead. So I'm hoping that you manage to have a restful evening. Maybe ask to get this moved to the Employment section - some posters in AIBU don't have the best of intentions.

There are people who have been around for over 6 months in this same job and still can't handle some situations without seeking an even more experienced colleague's advice. That's just how this job goes.

It isn't about me asking basic and obvious questions three months down the line or me not "getting it".

Oh yes, I hate Sunday evenings :( :( And I dread Monday mornings.

Sending you some good vibes for tomorrow

Just think of us Random Internet Vipers giving you a sneaky hand hold if things get shitty

I am at people who think the OP is somehow the cause of this. She has been in the job for 3 months.

Even where training was adequate (which it doesn't sound like it was here) after 3 months I would still consider a colleague very much learning the ropes and would be actively encouraging them to ask questions if they didn't understand things - not jumping down their throat and tryign to make them feel stupid. Complaining about someone after 3 months is IMO a reflection on the company and the training, not the employee.

I remember that awful fear on Sunday evenings CB It's just horrible. Poor you. Start job hunting NOW.

It sounds as if this situation is definitely not working.

The only thing I wondered is if they feel you are not trying, or not showing initiative and that is why they're getting irritated. Or being very slow?
No saying you are, but that's what happens in my work...if someone isn't pulling their weight it can be very difficult.

Other than that they are just being unhelpful...do they have time to help you or are you expected to largely get on with it now? Seems like the air needs to be cleared and both sides need to speak up about what the problem is.

CB you've done nothing wrong but you HAVE to deal with this professionally and head on. YOU CANNOT HIDE FROM THIS

I know you've said you don't feel comfortable involving HR but you have to. Show them that you are a professional and you will deal with this in a professional way, it will protect you so much.

Thank you Agent ZigZag (and everyone else) for the support and kind words :) It really helps!

I am still awake and I've thrown up twice already. I could use all the virtual hand-holding and support that I am getting.

Hopefully you're asleep by now CB

If the work is making you feel like this can you think about engaging with some sort of Exit Strategy. Jobs are not supposed to make you throw up on Sunday nights, rouse a mild feeling of what a PITA yes, but not this.

Just going on experience here, but generally speaking, HR won't do jack shit for you. They're there to protect the company from lawsuits, they're not there to be your friend. I had a problem where what my coworkers and boss were doing was technically illegal, and they just did everything they could to try and throw me under the bus to discredit me.

The best thing you can do is leave. No job is worth that amount of stress. I'm happier with less money than I was in that environment.

Good luck OP. Keep updating.

OP - you are on a hiding to nothing. I would find another job, nothing, absolutely nothing is worth going through what you are going through. I would leave whilst my health and sanity were still intact......

You are being treated badly, and I'm shocked at the point if view that some of the other posters are putting up. No one should be treated the way you have been, 3 months is not a lot of time to be in your job for, and to be completely honest, your colleagues are acting unprofessionally.

I agree with the people who say to communicate through emails, so that you have everything written down.

Good luck