I work for a very large global company. I am a direct report and “favourite” of the big boss and I’ve had a breakdown this Christmas over my treatment and I am looking for solutions to cope which are not just plan to leave as I am already planning to leave at the end of this year.
For the past 10 years I have been absolutely dedicated to my job, day and night. I have sacrificed time with my DC, friendships, compromised my relationship with DH, have become ill, been completely sleep deprived and finally had a breakdown.
Here are some examples of his behaviour from most recent:
My mother died just before Christmas (23rd Dec.) I have a meeting booked on the day of her funeral (8th Jan.) Due to religious custom and my own values, this cannot be moved. Boss would not let me move or miss the meeting. Did not acknowledge my mother’s death. Did not say he was sorry she died. When I insisted that I was going to her funeral and not to the (barely important) meeting, he stopped speaking to me and cut me off. When I sent him a text last night saying “happy new year,” trying to make things better, he replied “fuck off.” This is especially hurtful when I was asked emphatically, with tears in his eyes, by him (back when I was lower down in the company) to immediately get his EA to send an enormous bunch of flowers to another colleague whose mother had just died and for me to call her and tell her to “take as much time” as she needed.
He is either contacting me all the time (up to 50 missed calls a day, or calling via reception and multiple and withheld numbers to get me if I do not pick up on my mobile,) or completely ignoring me and “favouring” other colleagues to punish me.
Whoever is the “favourite” of the moment gets all the perks: payrises, status in the company (having his “ear” is seen as a sign of status), introductions, favours – eg getting to sit next to somebody important at a dinner, presents, getting taken out for meals. I am his favourite and have been his favourite for most of the ten years I have been at the company. It has meant I have received the best and worst treatment by him. It has meant that his expectations of me are high and beyond humane. I cannot get away with an off day or a sick day or a bereavement day. He will tell me if he thinks I look “terrible” if he doesn’t like what I am wearing and I should go home and change (he likes black and white and doesn’t like colours) he will tell me if I’ve gained or lost weight (he approves of slimness, not weight gain.) In return I have been paid well, been his confidante, know much more than I should do about the company and the people and about the business that we do. If obstacles in my life have been obstacles that directly affect him that I am prepared to move (eg DH booking a holiday when boss needed me around,) he has personally paid for DH, the DC and I to fly out first class three days later, or given us his private jet to get about. Money has never been an issue.
He lives between a big estate in the countryside and a townhouse in New York, but stays in London 2-3 nights a week. 2-3 of those evenings, in New York or London, unless he gets a better offer, he asks me to find “the latest place” to go for dinner and wants me there to eat with him and then walk him to his hotel. Most days I work from 6am-7pm, go home, put the children to bed and I’m back out by 9pm for dinner with the boss (and perhaps a client or a customer) and home at midnight. At dinner he likes to talk about himself, as you would expect. Other weeks we are in New York and I am completely at his beck and call and like a member of his house staff. When we are together, we rehash anecdotes of meetings we have been to together where he impressed someone or won business, or he goes through his phone and shows me messages people have sent him saying things like “you’re great,” or “you’re the best,” or “no-one can do it like you.” He especially likes when I talk to colleagues lower down in the company and tell him positive things they have said about him, eg “the boss is so talented, he’s such a good person, he did this small thing for me which just helped me so much. He is so charitable. He can talk to people on all levels."
As his "favourite," I get all the work. I also get a large team to delegate it to, but as it is so much work, we all become extremely overwhelmed and overworked, and as I am actually a good boss myself, when my team have boundaries with me, I respect them. Which means, at the end of the day, I end up doing half of this work myself. If I come close to missing one deadline (which I never have,) if I show any sign of distraction, tiredness, ingratitude or lack of interest, I get punished, all the work gets taken away and I have to grovel and apologise to get it back. And then I get all the work again, not just a proportion of it that I can manage.
Sometimes he will fly off the handle for no reason and stop speaking to me. We have been in cars together where he has suddenly told me to “piss off” and never speak to him again and got out and walked off or told me to get out and find my own way home. Or restaurants where he has stood up and left the table and marched out, slammed doors in my face, . What pisses him off is always along the same theme: usually if I have approached him or responded however subtlely to criticise him or offer him any kind of constructive feedback or to pass on a difficult message or to say he has hurt me or that I didn’t feel something was right, I get an immediate response of him flying off the handle. How dare I hurt him so much? How dare I criticise him when I know nothing and I’d be nothing if it were not for him? Days later, after the public punishment of ignoring, withdrawing of work and attention, having to do humiliating “handovers” to other colleagues, he is overly apologetic. Calling 50 times again, telling me he loves me, he’d do anything for me, I can never leave him, what do I need? What do I want? It is a massive head fuck. When I accept his apology and I am back “in” again, he reneges on his promises and we go back to normal: me as the doormat doing everything. Even after ten years he probably couldn’t tell you how many DC I have, what my husband’s name is, what my hobbies and interests are, what I want out of life.
He tells me everything and expects me to treat every word like gold and like he is God. Even the mundane and disgusting stuff. He thinks Tracy from accounts is ugly. He forgot to wipe his bottom when he went to the toilet and now it's itching. Those prawns from lunch are repeating on him. He's going to fire Marcel the Head of Europe. Should he buy his next home in Monaco or Geneva?
I am a perfectionist who likes to belong, who has never felt “good enough,” who will just keep jumping to the detriment of my physical and mental health as the bar is raised higher and higher. I can see that this personality cocktail falls very well into the environment my boss has created. I am not the only version of me out there. There are many (mostly) women who have the adaptability and would be willing to take my place for the financial and status gains that it brings. I don’t think I am irreplaceable, I know I have to leave and I made a promise to my DH last night that I will leave by the end of 2020. Despite all this, I somehow still get swept up into my boss’ world and his values. I feel empty and worthless when he doesn’t speak to me. I keep checking my phone to see if I am in his good books again. I feel valuable again when I am. For the few days that it lasts, when I get lovebombed, I feel on cloud 9.
I suppose what I want to ask is, why is he like this? How does he view me? How can he cry and send a big bunch of flowers to a colleague he hardly knows when her mother dies and tell me to fuck off? I can’t get over that. Am I just an object to him? A possession to control? Does he care about me at all? I am in denial that I could be so dedicated to someone and sacrifice so much of my life to this person for a decade and have him not value me at all. This is what I am struggling with the most.