I am away from work at the moment because of anxiety. On Tuesday I had a huge panic attack at work (I went to the loo and managed to calm myself down) but since then I have been feeling awful - my heart is racing, I am shaky, i can't breath properly and I have pins and needles in my arms and legs. The cause is my manager and the amount of work that she gives me to do. Or rather not the amount of work but the deadlines she imposes, and because all the while she is micro-managing, constantly checking.
Until two weeks ago I used to arrive at work 45 minutes early - to get a cuppa, make a plan for the day, make sure my pencils are sharp etc. But it got so that as soon as I got there, before I'd even taken my coat off she was out of her office asking for something to be done. So now I sit in my car until 5 minutes before my official starting time. She interrupts my breaks and my lunch time to discuss work. I never used to mind but the more I see how badly paid I am, the more I resent it, particularly as I am not paid for my breaks.
She doesn't realise how complex and time consuming tasks are. She is very good at delegating and spends most of her day thinking up ill-thought out ideas which I have to put into practise. She has no project management skills and gives only an outline of an idea with the sparest of instructions. She comes up with 2 or 3 of these everyday which I am trying to juggle alongside the rest of my job, which is student welfare. I feel like I end the week with a set of unfinished tasks and find myself being so harried that I make mistakes.
Two weeks ago I went to see a much more senior person because I think I am not paid for the responsibility that I shoulder. I am on secondment from another job with same manager. Initially this was for 6 months but it's now 18 months later and I don't have a contract for this seconded job. It is a promotion from the other work I did and i feel that if i kick up any sort of fuss she will just take away the job, although for the small amount of extra money I get for the stress I'm have I wonder if its worth it.
The senior person that I went to see said to me "I know you do a lot of x's work" ( x being manager) and he said he was going to look into my pay grade etc. My manager doesn't have a good reputation among other staff (those she manages and those she doesn't) - to give you some idea she is known amongst other things as "the smiling assassin". She is very nice to my face - constantly asking if I want tea etc and she also confides in me about difficulties she has with other managers, and I find this puts me in a difficult position because I know how she manipulates and dumps people in it. But I just cant trust her. One member of our team has just left due to enduring MH problems which he blames her for causing. I feel like I'm going the same way. I don't know what to do - I love the students, my colleagues, even the work which is interesting, challenging etc. What I can't cope with are her impossible demands, that I can't trust her, her ill-thought out projects (which would be ok if they were done properly). It's not like I work in a high-pressure environment - I work in FE, for goodness sake!
Any advice/thoughts would be very much appreciated.