To ask if any of you have jobs like this?

[wwiep]

For some background, I have worked at my company (financial sector) for 4 years. I have generally enjoyed it for most of the time but since lockdown it's really started to affect my mental health, due to a few different issues and I'm wondering if it's even worth it.

We are scrutinised for every little thing, things such as typos, not responding to an email with an hour etc. Everything is logged and tracked. I feel like the pressure to be perfect is immense and I'm struggling to cope with it. It seems like they are micro managing us.

Management have become awful. So unapproachable, condescending, shit at communication and generally just quite negative. I could count on one hand how many times they've given any of us positive feed back this year.

I'm just starting to feel fed up. In an ideal world I'd like to get a new job but have no idea what I would do and I suffer from severe anxiety so the though of change makes me feel so much worse.

Has anybody else worked somewhere like this before? How did you manage? I'm struggling with it massively and I'm so so tempted to go to my Gp and get signed off, even if just for a week or so because my mental health is shot

My DH's employers are like this. It's been horrible to witness, sitting opposite him as we work from home. His mental health is shocking because of it and this morning I pleaded with him to go to the Dr to get signed off. He won't though. I fear he's heading for a breakdown. ☹️

Sounds like it's the company that's the problem not necessarily the role. Can you do a similar role in a different company?

Yes, I've worked somewhere like that. You could do 100 things perfectly but the tiniest mistake on the 101st thing and it was like the end of the world. I remember being called into a meeting to explain myself for the 'crime' of accidentally putting a cupboard key in the wrong place. Two managers taking notes and asking me to talk them through the incident and explain exactly why I had mixed up the two identical key boxes. That were stored next to each other in a locked safe. The only risk to the business was that someone had to open both boxes the next day to get the right key instead of one. Totally toxic. I had a breakdown and left and it's only many years later that my confidence is starting to return.

My advice would be to find a new job as places like this don't seem to magically change.

Yes. Teaching.

yes i've experienced similar, but it only got worse over time, to the point that i was suicidal, and no one around me knew (not even DH) because i put on a good front. i totally lost it after about a year of working in that toxic place. years and years later i still am on the verge of tears thinking about that office space and the environment.

i should have been signed off with stress/sick months before i eventually just qut (without any new job to go to, and the only one with a job at the time too!!!). it wasn't worth the long term mental damage done to me. honestly, i'd have rather been homeless. it was that bad. funnily enough also in financial services.

i look back and wonder why i took it for so long - i wasn't on mega bucks in that job, we were living hand to mouth, they really fucked me up mentally to the point i didn't know that i always had escape options, i just felt so trapped.

my advice on the back of that is: get signed off. look for anothr job. it's highly highly highly unlikely that your new place will be worse. and if you can get a feel for the individual manager/leadership beforehand (do you know anyone in the org already that you can have an off the record chat with) that would help de-risk it.

Yes manager once had a major go at me in front of full office because a total on a spreadsheet didn't have .00 , even though added up and was for internal use only. Refused to sign off the file till I put .00 and reprinted it! Tried to explain made no difference and was a waste of time and paper. I also dared to use blue not black pen. He actually kept a log of all my errors. All of which made absolutely no difference to out come of work. And meant he took more time unpicking what I had done than looking into his own average work (often found similar he had done) Best bit hes still at same level and Ive leap frogged over him!
Some people feel the way to warrant their place on team is to high light others "mistakes" . Just shows them up but when you are the one they are targeting it is very stressful and does make you doubt your own abilities.
Rise above it.

Yup. I work in a college. It’s got progressively worse over the past few years.

Yes. One that stands out as the worst job I have ever had by a country mile:

A restaurant job, I was employed as a waitress for about a year. It was a family run business which at the time was doing quite well, and they were absolute cunts. Full retail price deducted from the tips jar for any mistake made by any member of staff, with the offender named and shamed. Forced to wear full makeup and a long sleeve shit plus waistcoat in a hot environment. A gropey, inappropriate boss who brought his spoilt brat 10yo son into work and who would boss us to make him food and ice cream like we were his personal slaves - we had to comply. And make him a new one when he randomly decided he had changed his mind halfway through whatever ridiculous concoction he had requested.

All staff were kept on without pay for even the tiniest speck of dust in the kitchen each night, again the offender was always named and shamed - we were encouraged to bully people for silly mistakes. (It didn't work, we had a great camaraderie based on our shared hatred of them).

They once had a thief who was taking money from people's bags in the changing room and narrowed it down to five or six of us. Their method of "investigating" was to bring each one of us into the office and accuse us "WE KNOW YOU DID IT" at full volume, etc etc to try and elicit a confession. I never did get an apology when the thief was eventually caught. Staff were randomly fired for minor infractions, you could never show so much as a slight frown on your face at any time.

When I eventually resigned to go to a better job, they begged me to stay and even offered to better the new hourly rate I was getting. I laughed in their face and said that double wouldn't be enough! When they went bust a couple of years later I literally celebrated that night - they deserved it, a thousand times over.

Professionally, I've not experienced anything quite that bad since graduating and moving into white collar jobs but a few have been close. I'm currently working on a project with another department within the same company that has a strong culture of bullying, sounds very similar to what you describe OP - they are vile to their junior team members and humiliate them on calls with our department, demand that they work whilst on leave etc. We are effectively their supplier - I cringe for them, its awful.

Yes at my last place, also financial services. All errors no matter how minor were recorded and used to lower your ‘rating’ so your bonus was then reduced. It could be as simple as a date typo or an amount and you couldn’t change it. You had to document it and send it to a team leader to get them to correct it then they stored the forms. So in your appraisal out came errors log, your absence etc and you could not argue any of them. I was so demoralised I had to walk.

@pinkflipflop85 jinx

My boss does this. I don't even think he means to do it but just cannot help himself. Every morning meeting gets in a snide dig about getting things 1px off this way or that way. Likes to publically harangue you for not having completed things in ridiculous timescales like 4 hours to design and code an entire feature with 60 variations. Wants everything time tracked to the second. The worst thing is how he just brings it up and over and over, like you've done it on purpose to wound him. No faith that you've tried your best. I do find it difficult as I'm recovered from OCD with scrupulosity (recovery is possible!) so the combination of perfectionism and moralising is pretty toxic for me.

I mostly ignore it in the moment. I just don't respond, as best as I can manage. The job is convenient for the time being. I will leave when I can though. I think ultimately you just have to keep looking and interviewing.