Im due to RTW on Monday. I'm ok with it generally, I was quite looking forward to it in a way. My DD is settled with a CM and I know she'll be ok.
I work in a large company where your manager will be like an operations manager or whatever but also manages people. So they are employed for their qualifications in the former and not for the latter. A lot of them don't want to do the latter either but it comes with the territory.
Before I went on mat leave he was pretty poor and didn't do what he should have in terms of DSE etc but I let it slide. The company was all over the place and they had made most of the DSE people redundant anyway. He did sit down with me shortly before I left and apologised for being crap. He said we would use all the KIT days and the way he would play it was to contact me when there was something going on like training, a meeting, or something else of interest to me to see if I could make it. This was due to the fact I had no childcare (family 250 miles away) and I'd said if I had notice my mum could come down so no problem. In 9 months he hasn't let me know about anything.
He was also supposed to send me any internal JOs of interest to me. He sent me one back in October (1 month into my mat leave) but nothing else. One of my colleagues sent me some (I'll come to her in a minute) so I know there was other stuff coming up.
He said he would email me every month with updates but I only had one in October and another at Xmas.
My mum has been down twice for a week each time and both times I went into work just for a 'visit'. The first time just before xmas I let them know and my boss was very off with me when I got there, he said he'd had to contact HR to make sure I was allowed to be on site (wtf its my place of work!). The second time in March I 'surprised' him because I felt I was being misled and wanted to get an update without a load of propaganda. He said there was little he could tell me, our dept was merging with another dept, he had no idea what I'd be doing when I returned, he basically made out we would be overstaffed. Everything was in flux though so he couldn't tell me anything.
I had to let HR know 4 weeks before I came back so I called in May which gave them 6 weeks notice. I emailed them to confirm my intentions and forwarded it to my boss. He replied very briefly to say fine. I've heard nothing else since. I called HR this week to ask if everything was ok as I had had no paperwork through. They said their policy was not to send out anything and it was now in the hands of individual managers to sort things out. I said I didn't even know what my rights were re working patterns, child sickness etc and they said "discuss it with your boss or check the intranet when you get back!"
I am just crapping myself really. I don't think my job will even exist when I return and my boss's lack of contact makes me think he is afraid for some reason, sort of hiding something? They are making redundancies all the time and I feel they will give me nothing to do to get me out. I don't know what my rights are and what I should be expecting or demanding iykwim.
The colleague I mentioned (let's call her Edna) bullied me up til I went on leave and I had a terrible time. But she is very sly and would act like my best friend which made it difficult to challenge as I would've been accused of being paranoid. She would undermine me in meetings for example, and gang up with other colleagues. I think my boss believed we were the best of friends. She has emailed me a few times since I've been on leave (eg she sent me the JO which I actually believe she wanted me to go for to get me out of the picture). She also told me that we had moved offices which I otherwise wouldn't have known. She has got my laptop (which they made me hand in against my wishes). We have merged with other people and she has ingratiated herself with them, for example I can see she has added them all on Facebook but she has never added me (I know this is petty and on its own it wouldn't bother me at all). It all just makes me feel very isolated and pushed out. Maybe this is normal when you go on mat leave? Is it?
I just feel really friendless, alone, scared, dreading it. I don't know what to do or where to go on Monday. Do I turn up at my boss's desk, do I turn up in my new office? The stubborn part of me wants to go sit in my old office just to make a point... I don't know what my job is or if I even have one.
I don't know what I'm after here really. I just need to vent and get advice on how to manage things from people who have been there. Or tell me it'll all be ok. I don't know :(