To quit my job over this woman?

[wrongrabbithole]

Ok so it’s not personal to me as I’ve seen her do it to others but wow …

This woman will escalate every single tiny thing we do that she doesn’t like. If I use a font size she doesn’t like she escalates it to my manager, I’ve seen her make my colleague cry with frustration.

I have to submit my work to her as part of risk management and even my manager has admitted she’s now just looking for anything to escalate.

it’s draining. I’m tired. This woman is protected and been there a long time. Numerous others have quit before her.

I’m at the point where I’m going to sleep and waking up with anxiety.

Depends if you can afford to quit your job .

I would work on improving my own resilience first. I’m not one to let other people get to me though.

I have to submit my work to her as part of risk management and even my manager has admitted she’s now just looking for anything to escalate.

Is your manager her manager?

I’d just spend my days winding her up, but I’m petty.

Why’s she protected

That’s not right and it shouldn’t be allowed to continue. Have you followed the grievance process?

yeah me too. my fonts would be all over the place! Honestly I would deliberately do things to make her escalate. If managers won’t manage her then let them have to deal with all her petty complaints.

I would not let this get to me. I'd simply keep doing my job and let her escalate her ridiculous shit to the manager and allow him to deal with it.

Not your circus. The manager can deal with her insane escalations. Font size? Really?

No, my manager is not her manager and my manager is higher..

dont quit. It is hard to get jobs these days. Just ignore her. Submit in any font size you like, ideally a mixture! If you get pulled up, ask your manager for clarification on why this matters and why difficult woman is delaying your project.

Two words-comic sans. But I can be petty.

That’s terrible of your manager. They need to speak to her manager and rein her in.

I couldn’t let this bother me, why are you letting it give you anxiety? What actually happens when she escalates things? Surely management are just as fed up with her if she's constantly doing it to everyone.
Just carry on doing your job which I assume your fully capable of doing and let her nit pick what she likes.

Sorry I should have said she gives me feedback too, and that’s why I get anxiety because even when everything is right she will still find something (like I said the font size for example) and these emails include other people - so it’s a bit public shaming style.

Like I said, I’m just drained. To know you can spend hours on something, review ot multiple times but it will always be “wrong” starts to eat away at you,

Document everything and raise a grievance with HR.

I thankfully have two interviews lined up for this week.

So, what's protected about her - does that protection cover her unreasonable behaviour. Personally I'd be making a complaint about bullying especially if there's nothing the matter with your work.

If she's being critical because your work' s not following company processes eg a specific font and size for all work that will be seen by a client or the public then make sure you give her no reason to be.

Tell her to put it in writing and use it as evidence.

Your manager is useless if they aren't addressing with her with her directly.

They should be asking her to send all feedback through them at this stage and challenging it where it's uncessary rubbish

People like this drive me crazy and I typically write back something along the lines of

Thank you for your feedback.

Just for my own understanding, can you please provide the document or policy which outline font size criteria? I can't seem to find it on the system.

1. Can you also confirm that font size has had no impact on the underlying risk which is the most important aspect of the submission?

Yes, I know it's passive agressive but I don't care.

Your manager is not managing this at all.

Play her at her own game. Start reporting everything she does. Start a bullying complaint.

I would get advice from ACAS. I would also be thinking about a constructive dismissal claim if you feel you're being forced to leave because of her behaviour.

First step is raising a formal grievance though. Without that there is no evidence it's been an issue, and it's not given the company a chance to deal with it.

Has anyone ever raised a grievance or do they just leave?

There is no documented process/policy 😅 that’s what’s actually ridiculous.

There is employment law to protect you being forced out your job though.

You'd be better elsewhere, but it would stop it happening to others!

ETA - not that it's your responsibility, but would hopefully teach her and the rest of management a bloody good lesson on how to treat their staff.

Is her feedback via email? I’d just give a little thumbs up emoji on the email header and not change a thing.

If it’s spoken feedback, I’d just give a big smile, and say, ‘thanks for the feedback’, and again not change a thing.

I know (& she does too).

Continue to push back.

Make work for her.
Make her justify her bullshit.

Even better get your boss to do it.

We had a micro manager. She used to correct my emails (often after they'd been sent to clients), time our lunch breaks, she would ask us to list all our daily tasks so she could allocate time values to them and a whole other multitude of nonsense. In the end my colleague and I got so fed up of this shit we started to ask her to check our emails before we sent them, we'd start teams messaging when we were popping to the loo "in-case anything urgent came up". We started listing tasks in such minute detail ("liase with accounts for copy invoices from w/c 1st Sept became "send email to Janice in accounts asking for copies of invoice numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 etc on 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th September" but I would put every invoice number as a separate "task".

She'd been such a nightmare about holidays I sent her my holiday allowance left for the year and told her to tell me when to take it. I said something along the lines of "as you have much more insight into current business needs please advise when I can take the 10 days of annual leave I have left this year".

I actually took great delight in thinking up new ways to "defer to her expertise" or to "check in advance she was happy with my communication to xyz client". My colleague and I used to bcc each other in.

In the end she got the message. Things like the holiday allowance for example she came back to me and said 'just book the days you want in the company booking system and we'll make it work'

She thankfully fucked off a few months later and we've since been overseen by a manager in the US who only ever contacts us for a reason.

Sometimes petty works or is a necessary tool in maintaining your sanity.