How would you deal with this awful manager?

[Tsc2011]

I have a senior role in a mid- size company and my role is very technical. I’ve been here 5 years and mostly enjoy it (I work from home, good salary and benefits and a lot of flexibility). A few years ago a competitor asked me to interview with them and I went out of curiosity. There I met, we’ll call her ‘Sally’, who I immediately got bad vibes from and I decided the job wasn’t for me.
Cut to two years later and Sally joins our company and is immediately vile. What was a very friendly, supportive team suddenly had this woman who was aggressively competitive and uncomfortable to work with. I find her very competitive with me whilst I mostly try to avoid her. She was also best mates with our manager.
Three months in to her contract, and not even through probation, we get told she’s been promoted to be our line manager (an extra layer of management we’ve not had before).
I’m still not clear what her role as line manager is. She has very little to do with us (which I count as a good thing), and as I work from home I avoid her as much as possible. Her inexperience has shone through many times and we’ve all witnessed how much she likes to be right and agreed with, even when she’s wrong. Some of the interactions I’ve witnessed are just wrong and she’s not well liked.

Now, over the last few months I’ve been working on a very stressful project. I’ve also had loads of extra work piled on me by her whilst others on the team, including her, are doing barely anything. I’ve told her it’s stressful and I’ve asked for an extra pair of hands but none have been forthcoming. We’d warned management that the volume of work and the tight timeframe left us open to errors creeping in but they did nothing. The huge amount of stress and very long hours have led to a slight back injury becoming a lot worse and I ended up in hospital where I’ve been told that the tension has damaged nerves and I may now need an operation- all very stressful and painful.

I came back to work this week and in a call with her I asked how the stressful project was going. She told me that she’d taken it on and in the tens of thousands of calculations I’d done she’d found 4 mistakes (which should have been picked up by another colleague in review), she therefore didn’t trust my work so deleted it all and started again. For context we all review each others work and I always find countless mistakes in hers but she gets very snippy of you point them out. I was shocked. It was around 50 hours of work and 4/10000 is pretty good going in our line of work. She was obviously loving telling me this and said she’d informed her boss as well and had written a list of errors so that we can sit down and go through them. Fine, but then she went on to emphasise how unhappy she was and how much extra work I had caused her.
This was on all in my back to work meeting, where stress had played a big factor in my time off.

I feel really down. I’ve been working so hard with no thanks or appreciation so to pick me up on minor errors and make out they were worse than errors usually found in these projects has been gutting.

How would you deal with her when she wants to discuss this. She really makes my blood boil and I’m worried about how to take this.

I used to be a grievance investigator. If you do go down the grievance route here are a few pointers:

1. Be aware that it is likely the nuclear option. Also be aware that once you say to anything to anyone, including HR, that control of that information is out of your hands and you have no say in how it will be used, including against you, so keep your powder dry.
2. Document everything. Write a reflective journal - keep to the facts and how they made you feel. Keep notes of meetings.
3. Forward all emails to a personal account just in case they do something stupid like sack you and you lose access to them.
4. Create a narrative across a timeline that can clearly evidence the reason for the grievance. Insert failure of the company/her at the relevant points.
5. Acknowledge your own failings and establish the extent to which they were reasonable - acceptable margin of error, comparison of performance with other members in your team, examples of consistent good performance, etc.
6. Get support. If you do discuss it with people in the organisation make sure you’re not being bitchy (I’m not saying you would be) but it needs to be obvious that you’re not out to get her or make her look bad.
7. Be as reasonable as you possibly can be without being a pushover. Your credibility and reputation are important facet of how they will deal with you.

All these will help should you need to prepare a case with a solicitor. Be absolutely explicit across these. You want to give them as little opportunity to refute the allegations. Be prepared for her to raise a counter grievance - this happens frequently so make sure you can clearly address each of her anticipated allegations.

‘Winning’ a grievance rarely means things will return to normal. What often happens is that one or other of you moves to a different department, or the organisation will want to negotiate a severance package (likely with you) including a gagging order.

I’d also suggest seeing a counsellor to talk through these reasons for your depression. It demonstrates that you e been proactive in managing your stress, and the counsellor may be a useful witness if things go to tribunal. They mostly don’t get that far and a settlement is usually agreed in advance.

@Livingtothefull yeah, so I asked before the meeting why he was there and she said it was because he was my team leader and worked on the same project so could give feedback.

I asked if I could bring someone and she said yes but then it was so last minute I couldn’t find anyone available.

the bonus policy says people who are on or have been on a PIp that year are not eligible.

I raised an objective to minute all meetings from now on. The meeting was on Thursday so not that long ago- I haven’t received minutes (is it too soon to criticise that?)

I don’t know of she’s kept records of previous meetings but I have NEVER been sent any for any meetings (so does that mean it’s a no if I haven’t reviewed and agreed with them- just thinking she might suddenly “produce some out of nowhere”)

I asked for support in the first meeting and she got a colleague to help but they were useless- I fed this back to her and the colleague was removed- no other help given. She “can’t remember me raising this”.

A lot of interactions were face to face and not documented, however she slipped up and wrote in an email last week that she was “aware I felt under a lot of pressure from this project”. If that wa the case and I had already notified them of MH issues she should have a risk assessment have notified HR and set out a clearly agreed plan- none of that happened.

It might be a good idea to collect any evidence you might need before it disappears. I saw your other thread, and I'd save that work allocation spreadsheet showing your allocated 500 hours against other peoples 150 (and her 24!). Make sure you've also got copies of all your appraisals, annual reviews, one to ones, any details of bonuses, company handbook, contract of employment, plus any meeting notes you can lay your hands on. If you find yourself locked out of the server it will be too late, so I'd be doings all this now if you can.

@Fallenangelofthenorth do you know what I do about confidential documents? Emails contain client names etc. They apparently monitor what we do and I don’t want to fall foul of breaching that.

I did think about GDPR and wondered if you could save things like that on the desktop of your work laptop? But I don't know if that's a breach or not. Or could it be saved with confidential details redacted?

I don't know unfortunately, but hopefully someone more knowledgeable can advise.

Would it be an option to redact the documents on your records, and remove sensitive details (3rd party names, confidential work projects)?

What does your confidentiality/data protection policy say?

It says everything’s owned by the company and we can’t share any of it.

Cam you screenshot relevant docs on your mobile phone? And only use them down the line if you have to - but just refer to them meanwhile simply as if you have good memory of them?

I agree with this. Completely inappropriate to berate you about a few errors during your return to work interview, which should be about supporting you as you return to work following a stress related illness.

these situations have a way of sorting themselves out in my experience - see if you can dig deep and be patient - incompetence above you will work its way through the system - the old Indian saying “if you sit by the river long enough the body of your enemy will float by” - just get perspective and be patient

I'm sorry you are going through this.

I am in a similar situation being bullied by my manager. Probably worse as he's been there a lot longer than me and is CEO, and I don't have your track record.
I don't have advice but good luck!

I'm so sorry this is happening to you @Tsc2011. It's horrible and can really affect your life outside of work too.

It's clearly bullying, but sadly - given her relationship to her boss - I think it's unlikely anything will change.

I've just had a very similar situation at work and resigned. For a while I moved to a different team, but eventually the problem followed me there. I took some time over Christmas and wrote a list of everything that's happened over the past year and how it made me feel, and I realised how awful it all was. Like you, I think it's jealousy since it was mostly aimed at me. And like you, I loved the job before and it had good flexibility and benefits. But the stress and worry was impacting my whole life. I've now started a new job and it's so nice to be in a safe, calm environment where I'm not constantly dreading something.

All that to say, I recommend leaving and starting somewhere new if you can. It sounds like there are lots of positives you can take from this job going forward e.g. you have a high accuracy rate, trusted to work with important clients...? I wish you the best whatever you choose to do. 🌺

@BossInBoots so sorry to hear that happened to you but I’m glad it worked out.

How did you feel after resigning and did you work a notice period? I’m worried because there aren’t a lot of job opportunities at the moment in my field. Both brother-in-laws were made redundant from very senior jobs last year, were happy to take a few months off and assumed they’d easily move on but 9 months later they were both panicking and had to settle for jobs with much lower pay and seniority.

Well that is shocking and no wonder you were devastated - she is going all out, with HR obligingly following along. But however bad it is, try not to panic. That's easy to say but I mean in the sense that you won't suddenly be out on the street with no job no income and unable to pay the bills. They will keep you on this PIP thing and you will have time to work through to whatever outcome you eventually decide on, whether finding an alternative job or going through your rights and grievance for various infringements of procedures, law etc.

You have plenty to go against them since everything seems very slapdash and your treatment re health and wellbeing and your ridiculous appraisal seem fundamentally unjust. Should you decide to resign and claim constructive dismissal, you will still be able to get a job even if it isn't exactly the job you want or at the same level.

Get yourself a solicitor to guide and bat for you. A decent one will know what to pick them up on, remind them of re their duty and legal obligations and can negotiate better arrangements and terms for you, whether you stay or go. You have a well organised grasp and account of everything with which to brief a solicitor. I've been trying to think of the specialist employment firms and Leigh Day is a well known name that came to mind. A quick search also brought up one I hadn't heard of but which will consider no win no fee arrangements. Here is a link. https://landaulaw.co.u

Also you might ring ACAS. As well as advising on cases, procedures, codes of practice, fairness, discrimination etc they like to know what's going on in real world employment places and have an interest in knowing about good and bad practice in individual firms and sectors as they monitor the operation of the statutory codes.

Thank you. I sent landau law a message last night (2 in the morning!) so I’m hoping they come back to me tomorrow. They seem to have excellent reviews. Many thanks for the other recommendation, I’ll get in touch with them.

Inspired by you, I have also just contacted a lawyer. Rubbish though isn't it that we are forced to go down this route.

@Blacknailer oh, good luck! Let me know how it all goes. Bastards aren’t they! I hate bullying managers, they’re so spineless, hiding behind their seniority.

My mum has just arrived to help me get through this week and she wrote my grievance in an hour which took me 23 hours of my weekend to do 🤦🏻‍♀️ I’m all over the place and can’t think but she’s put together a very concise but damning account of the events. I’m planning to send that and my 10-page overly detailed timeline to the solicitor tomorrow.

The solicitor will probably advise that you *could resign and claim constructive unfair dismissal. The problem with this is that you need to resign as soon as possible once the incident occurs and without notice to show that you had no choice. These claims are unfortunately difficult to win at a tribunal.

*they will never advise you to actually do that

They will probably suggest you follow the grievance procedure as a next step, to either informally or formally resolve your issues.

If you have written a grievance have you stated on that what you want to get out of this? Would it be possible to be moved to another department if you want to stay with the company?

Thank you @Greenergrass40.

I just felt relief after resigning, even though I didn't have anything else lined up. That's actually really unusual for me - normally I like to have everything planned out. But once I'd made up my mind to go, I was desperate to leave asap.

There are still some job openings in my industry, although it has definitely decreased in the past few years. I did take a pay cut and I was prepared to take an even bigger one to get out of the previous job. Sorry to hear about your BILs. It is tough out there at the moment. Glad that they found something in the end and I hope they can work their way back up again. I wonder if it is harder to find new jobs at senior levels. I'm not that senior, so maybe that helped me.

I worked half of my notice period in the end - entirely from home. I think both sides were happy for me to leave earlier.

Just read your updates @Greenergrass40 (didn't notice the name change earlier, sorry 🙈).

Wow, she is really doubling down on her appalling behaviour. The working climate sounds like it's turned pretty toxic now. It's when things go wrong you realise if a company has good structure and practices in place. Not having a PIP policy doesn't sound good from their side.

Wishing you the best with the legal side. 🌷 It sounds like you should have a very strong case but I know how the process can grind you down and how stressful it is to have to have proof of absolutely everything. I agree with PP's suggestion of forwarding all emails to your personal account and taking copies of what you can. Also great that you requested minutes.

Are the statistics related to the errors shared amongst your group for everyone to see weekly, monthly ?

What can be done, by all the group to improve the stats ?

Surely, improvement has to be shared with your whole group ?

@Generationxyzqwr actually none of that is assessed. She just happened to have been the peer reviewer on this project. She admitted she hadn’t seen and hasn’t looked in to the other 11 projects I worked in last year so had no idea how I performed in those.

@Greenergrass40

I agree with PP's suggestion of forwarding all emails to your personal account and taking copies of what you can. Also great that you requested minutes.

Send those emails, etc as a blind carbon copy (bcc field). Also take as many screenshots from your personal phone as possible as it's entirely possible for them/their IT dept to see what you've printed or forwarded. 🌹

Quick update- I’ve been signed off sick.

I spent last night in a panic wandering around the house because I couldn’t stay still.

I spent all weekend freaking out and came back to work on Monday to face a big cock up by a colleague which me and a colleague had to front out to a client, the to be told I had to complete a big project by the next day. There was so much left to do. I was reviewing it all this morning ready to send to our reviewer and found one tiny mistake and had a panic attack.

The whole point of me reviewing was to correct mistakes etc and small mistakes used to accepted as a given as the work we do is so vast and complicated but they have me so paranoid now I couldn’t stop crying.

I don’t feel good about being signed off, I’m dreading their reaction tomorrow and the consequences and I have some lovely colleagues who were relying on me so I feel dreadful about letting them down. I’m also sure they’ll double down now trying to protect themselves.

I’m still drafting the grievance (on version 3 now and they’re all different!) but this hopefully gives me a bit of breathing space to do it.

I know feck all about employment law or anything useful, but I just wanted to send you a big unmumsnetty hug. HUG!!