Ever had a boss who hated you for no reason?

[Rainysummersday]

I’ve always felt my (soon to be former) boss has disliked me. I’m not sure why as I’ve always been polite, and worked hard... in fact I’ve always achieved better results than anyone else in the office.

But he always avoided speaking to me, overlooked me when it came to promotions, and even sent others emails to make them give me instructions rather than tell me himself. I think there’s something about me that made him uncomfortable and I have no idea why. Anyone else ever experienced anything like this?

I had a boss once who, depending on what mood he was in, either loved me or hated me. When he loved me he made puppy dog eyes at me and on a couple of occasions tried to kiss me, when he hated me he sneered and spoke to me like crap! I must have been mad as I stuck this job for nearly 2 years !!

Yes, an Area Manager - a Yorkshireman who referred to me as a 'soft southerner' and made my life a misery. My one and only case of workplace bullying in over 40 years in the workplace. He got his comeuppance, made an extremely bad lending decision and was encouraged to retire early. My boss (who did most of the work) told him at his leaving do 'I hope you find what you're looking for!!!'

Yes. The first day she met me she said I know one of you (me or colleague) is a lying manipulative shit but I don’t know which one but I will find out and your colleague has a whole book of notes about you. She’d already met colleague so I’m pretty sure it’s clear who the lying manipulative shit was!

Yep very similar to you - he used to manage me by post-it notes rather than speak to me directly, he was a twat. At one point when I worked for him we hired a temp she was an incredibly attractive young French woman and he was embarrassingly tripping over his tongue every time he was in 20 paces of her, she was also very savvy and played him like the fool he was

I had a boss's who always had to have someone on her radar to hate. When I first joined the company I was young and felt special and trusted when she talked about them behind.tneir back to me or confided in me that she wanted them out. As I got older and more experienced I realised that this was not a good thing. She focused in and sacked/bullied out about 5 people before she turned on me, I left as soon as it started as there was only one way it was going to go!

Yes I did, she was a jealous bitch. I never gave her reason to be jealous of me but the comments she made and the way she hated me just showed she was.

So glad to be away from there, no one has treated me that way before or after her.

Not a boss but a colleague. We shared an office and apart from 'good morning' as she walked past my desk In the morning, she never spoke to me. Even when other people came into the office and drew me into the conversation, she would just ignore anything I said. if I asked her a question then she would answer me, but would never ever instigate a conversation. Fresh out of Uni, 22 years old, I had no idea what I'd done or what to do. She was really popular and well liked and completely lovely to everyone else. Still baffles me 20 odd years later.

Livedandlearned you must have had the same boss as me. She was extremely manipulative, and so good at covering it up in front of everyone else as well.

Yes!!

I'm fairly certain I was employed as a scapegoat. I can't go into it as I'll get upset.

Needless to say, it resulted in a breakdown.

Yes. She made sure I lost out on a couple of promotions, used to scream and shout at me if I ever disagreed with her about anything, and loved to threaten me.
She ended up having a breakdown and walked out one day never to be seen again. I had always suspected there was something wrong with her, but bloody hell she caused some shit.

Yes. An area manager 22 years ago when I was a retail manager. I'd been in my job for 10 years with an excellent work record, my store was used as an example of how a store should look and be run and I was very rarely absent. For some reason my new area manager suddenly took a dislike to me. I remember one training meeting where she made me look like a real idiot as she made me stand up in front of twenty other store managers and explain about frozen food orders and deliveries when my store had absolutely nothing to do with food, frozen or otherwise. Actually said that I had no knowledge of it but she just shrugged.

I had a miscarriage and had two weeks off work, supplying them with a doctor's note which she refused to believe and issued me with my first and final written warning. She said that I'd lied about the reason for my absence. When I needed time off for a hospital appointment a month or so later she refused, stating that I wasn't at a 'holiday camp'.

I loved my job before she became my area manager, but working for her turned me into a wreck. I never knew what I was going to be up against and 22 years later it still upsets and annoys me.

I joined a team of 6. I made 7 in a fairly new department. I was last in. Everyone else 6 months earlier. Turns out the 6 all live in the same area and went to the same church together. I was a complete outsider. Couldn’t be myself at all.

Silly things in conversation like saying my god or for god sake meant I was called into a meeting to discuss my offensive language with the boss who took a huge dislike to me.

I then got a written warning for saying Jesus Christ simply by accident when I hear a colleague in another department was involved in a serious accident. I left pretty quickly. It was awful.

Yes. Still no idea why. He disciplined me completely unfairly, I appealed and won hands down. The manager conducting the appeal could not understand why I was there. I had tons of evidence and my manager hadn't submitted any

It caused me no end of stress but winning the appeal was vindication at least. I still work with him, though he doesn't line manage me directly (I refused). He will say good morning and include me now but I only offer brief, polite, professional communication with the faintest hint of falseness.

The only explanation I can come up with is that he was applying for promotion and needed a disciplinary "under his belt".

Yes - several years and roles on, I still hate her because of the damage she did to my mental health. She fucked up on so many occasions and blamed it on things she said I hadn't done for her. Meetings she forgot about/missed that I had booked for her that mysteriously disappeared from her diary, blamed me for booking her the "wrong seat" on the plane for not performing when she got to the destination, not acting on her emails that she had sent overnight by 8am the next morning, and so on. The team knew my mum had a serious illness at the time, so my boss scapegoated me and put me through HR hell. If I met her in the street now I'd punch her in the face with no hesitation, I've never hated someone so much.

Oh yes!

He wasn't my boss to start with but eventually arselicked his way up and subsequently became so. He hated me from the first day we met but God knows why.

He spent the next 12 years making my life Hell but I rose above it each time. However, I then had a child with a life threatening illness who was left with severe learning difficulties. I never took a day off for DD's hospital stays/appointments - which were quite a few - I took them all as either holiday or unpaid even though I worked from home outside the appointment times and hospital visits so never fell behind. My DH even gave up his FT position - he was a lecturer - and just did one day per week so I could continue working with as few days off as possible.

Eventually however, it all became too much and following almost a month of no sleep with DD I ended up telling the boss exactly what I thought of him and walked out. Employment was incredibly tough at that time and because of the seniority of my previous position and the very high salary, I just could not obtain a similar post. We could have lost everything!

My only solution was to start my own business and DH returned to FT.

20 years later I sold my successful little business, took very early retirement along with DH and we have a lovely life as does my now adult DD. My former company was bought out 2 years after I walked and ex boss lost his job! He never managed to obtain another Directorship/Senior management post and has spent the last 20 odd years scraping a living doing bits and pieces. Couldn't have happened to a more worthy candidate 👺. He is lucky that his wife had a good career and she became the breadwinner. What he did to me and my family - without any justification at all - was unforgivable.

What a wonderful result @Rafflesway

Glad it all worked out for you and I bet giving him both barrels felt good at the time

Enjoy your retirement

They say "Wait long enough and you'll see yourself satisfied" StopPOP - your time will come!

Yep - mine is now leaving after several years. We're all hugely relieved but also quite traumatised. I can't actually imagine working for anyone reasonable now.

Yeah I've worked for vindictive double standards bitch, grumpy incompetent twat who didn't like that I wasn't blonde (he told me so) and didn't arselick, and liar liar pants on fire shits (I walked early on from that job). The first one nearly wrecked my life.

I did wait long enough and I have found myself satisfied. Grumpy twat got demoted and then had to move on. Vindictive bitch lost almost everyone from a key department and couldn't replace them. The liars carry on, but I had a satisfying story to that one too.

Yes. When my manager went off long-term sick, I suddenly wasn't allowed to do the job I had been doing for the last 2 years. Basically, when the manager wasn't there, I was the manager. I stuck it for a lot longer than I probably should, even though I was blamed when money went missing while I was on holiday (her relative was in charge at the time) and even told me that if she had done my initial interview, I would not have got the job as I 'wasn't the face the company wanted'. Less than a year after I left, she had to re-apply for her own job and didn't get it! I found I could bear her misfortune with a great deal of fortitude.

Not a boss, a colleague. I started a new job and she hated me from the very beginning. I've never done anything to her. I know she was gossiping about me, always tried to make me look bad in front of my boss... She was more than 20years older than me, 10 years in a company, very popular around. I think she just could not bear that I got a better position as someone much younger than her. When I got promoted after a year, you should've seen her face... After my promotion, I don't need to be anywhere near her and I'm glad. However, If you have this with your own boss, that's hard. You can either try to talk to him directly or (what I would do) search for a new job.

Yep! Worked in education and had an awful boss. She hated that I was popular with the staff and chatty, she actually used to do the ‘fingers on lips’ and say “quiet time now” like we were four years old! There was a lady who sat opposite me who joined the department at the same time I did (she was internal, I came from another industry) and we had our probation review on the same day. She got (she told me) comments like “You make such a positive contribution to morale in the office, really taken your time to speak to the others and get to know them.” I got (patronisingly) “It’s nice that you make the effort, but you chat too much and it’s really distracting”.

Her real problems were: she had been put into the job of manager, having had zero experience of managing people (she’d been a secretary to a department head previously) and she didn’t (for whatever reason) like me because I didn’t fit in to her idea of ‘the norm’ - I.e, I wasn’t married with kids, even though (shock horror) I was in my 30’s. There was another lady who she hated as well, if either of us said anything about anything, her response was always (muttered) “get a life” until one day, I asked her to repeat it. I hated going there and used to cry and feel constantly anxious. I’d given up a job I’d loved as well because of the commute. I left after a year, I heard later that she had been bullied when working there, which made her treatment of me all the worse in my eyes.

Yes, just thinking about it has triggered a wave of upsetting memories.

I was deliberately set up to fail basically and only realised when it was too late.

I did hear after I left that two former colleagues when they resigned later, each individually cited that it was the way I was treated that prompted them to look for work elsewhere.

Yes, I've had a couple. One was a serial bullier, as a PP described above. She'd been bullying a friend of mine at work, but it was only when the friend left, that I realised quite how bad it must have been! The other one, I could do nothing right for even though I knew in my heart of hearts there was nothing wrong with my work. The funny thing is, I realised even at the time that it was much more about them than about me. One had bad stuff going on at home and the other was evidently fed up with the job, as after I resigned she went off to Brazil to help people in favelas (the place we'd worked together was a marketing agency in London, so just a bit of a change).

So I think when this happens I) tell yourself it's them, not you and 2) get a new job asap!