Just looking for a sense check. It doesn't feel right and it honestly feels like constructive dismissal territory but I'm happy to be told I'm BU but I'm starting to feel like I'm in an abusive relationship with my boss.
I'm in a senior role at a company, I was promoted six months ago. I've been here for a decade and this is my third promotion. In theory I'm at the highest level of the UK branch of the company with four others at my level. In practice I'm very much the junior partner. I was told earlier this year initially I wasn't allowed any annual leave until October so I would have worked without a single day off from January to October. (I subsequently managed to negotiate out of this but it took about two weeks of me begging). All the other people at my level can choose when they go on holiday.
It's a hard-charging environment and admittedly its high pay. I'm not afraid of hard work but I increasingly feel I'm being set up to fail.
On Monday I was hauled in by my boss for a "chat" about how things were going. What followed was a very nasty bollocking centring around the following offenses:
- Sending what she described as a "panicky" and unprofessional email: I'd emailed her earlier in the day: an internal email with four or five junior team members in copy asking her, in a respectful tone, if she was also attending a meeting later in the week or if I should plan to lead it. She told me that this "sent the junior team members into disarray" in confusion. She claimed this had already been agreed internally. It hadn't and our client was asking both of us for clarity on this point. She went on to say I had an "aura of chaos" around me which was unsettling to junior staff. I know from talking to others on my team that they feel this way about her.
- Shouted at me for having failed to print out a meeting agenda: I'd asked my assistant to do it much earlier as my access to the printer wasn't working. She hadn't replied for several hours and eventually brought the documents in a minute or so after the meeting started. It was an internal meeting, so just me and her.
- Asking me what my plan was for a meeting which was taking place at our office at a time she knew I was overseas for. She is leading the meeting and I have never been slated to attend it. She shouted at me when I pointed out I wouldn't be attending and then asked my assistant (behind my back and without telling me) to arrange for me to lead it remotely when she's aware that I am not going to be in the country and will be attending a conference.
- Told me to lead the implementation of a project in the UK which was initiated at a meeting in the US which I wasn't invited to (I'm the only senior person not to have attended the meeting and I wasn't told it was going ahead until three days before it happened even though it involved people from several of my client teams being taken out of action.
- Told me that requesting another senior person sit in on a meeting when I had a clash with a pre-planned medical appointment was "grossly unprofessional" and I had to learn to behave like a senior person.
- She told me I don't work hard enough. On an average day I am logged on from 6am and I rarely finish work before 9pm. I work almost every weekend day.
I'm utterly exhausted. I can never put my phone down and I get jittery and anxious at home when I'm away from my computer for more than about half an hour. I never have a full lunch break - I rarely eat lunch before about 4pm. For financial reasons I can't leave at the moment. Obviously I'm looking for other jobs but at my level and in my industry this isn't straightforward. I just feel so bullied and disrespected and my self-esteem is on the floor and I'm starting to hate my boss. I have to pick myself up, smile and thank her for her constructive feedback in about a week because any pushback is interpreted as "failure to receive feedback". I just want to run away and jump in a river. Someone tell me it gets better.