Think manager about to start managing me out and guilty of gross misconduct

[Birdsattthewindow]

My manager has form for sacking people. In the 5 years we have worked together they have managed 4 people out and I’m pretty sure I’m next. She is a bully and highly unprofessional and I’ve been keeping detailed notes on her from almost the start as I came into the job kind of knowing what she was like.

The project we are both working on is failing, I don’t want to out myself but I have worked really hard to make it succeed and it doesn’t look as if it’s going to. The project is my whole job and part of hers and I’ve pretty much accepted that its failure will be enough for her to be able to get rid of me following the disciplinary process

My question is more about the fact that I’ve watched her behave appallingly to people in the years I’ve worked with her. Like many bullies she has her allies and scapegoats and in the years we first worked together I was definitely an ally, though new people have joined the team since and replaced me in that role.

She is genuinely one of the most unpleasant, unkind people I have ever worked with and has made peoples lives a misery at work. It has been horrible to watch,

One of the worst aspects of this was that one of the people she managed out had health issues. She shared screenshots of the person discussing these issues with me in order to mock thrm and later made several scathing cruel comments about the persons issues. I still have the screenshots, alongside Teams screenshots of confidential emails between my manager and HR regarding this person’s disciplinary process and between my manager and the person, all shared with the intention of mocking the person.

I have similar screenshots from her on
WhatsApp and Teams about other employees discussing confidential issues that were shared purely to mock/gossip.. She has broken employee confidentiality on countless occasions.

I feel that no one in mt organisation is really aware of what she is like and that once I’m gone she will find another victim. I want HR and senior management to know about her behaviour and have years worth of notes about times she has belittled and humiliated me, treated me unfairly, blamed me for things I did not do. Plus other examples of unprofessional behaviour such as slagging off the company to an important client because she was pissed off at being left out of something.

I actually do not think she is completely sane sometimes based on her behaviour, she is very unstable and works herself up into furious rages about quite minor things, ie a small comment someone made. Her ego is enormous and fragile. I go into our weekly 121s feeling sick and for my own mental heath I know I need to leave.

i also know for a fact she has shared confidential information about me with others.

My question is, will HR just view my complaint as a disgruntled employee lashing out or are they bound to treat it seriously?

Love it

You were complicit when it suited you, and now you are on the receiving end you don’t like it? You should have reported it when you first saw it. You condoned it until it affected you.

Raise it with your company by following the steps set out in your company handbook, but I’d suggest you find another job and learn a lesson from this experience.

In your current position you may find yourself with some kind of disciplinary as you didn’t report it until it affected you.

The grounds for gross misconduct are very serious. What have you done that could fall into that category?

I think OP means she has evidence of the manager’s gross misconduct in screenshotting and sharing confidential information. I had to read it twice!

I can never understand why people try to fix things. If you are unhappy find another job. I have always done that and it’s great, I am happy with work.

I'm one for looking at the end result. What do you hope to achieve? If the project is failing, can your job be saved? Are there other projects you could do? IME complaining about senior staff generally gets you nowhere. If they want to keep her they'll gloss over the issues. And you'll end up with no job and no reference.

So if you witnessed bullying you'd just look the other way? Wow.

I’ve just left a similar situation. My view is that there is little point raising the issues - that said, I did, and the whole thing was blamed on me by my manager.

I decided it was better to look for a new job than suffer the inevitable managing out - although I was civil service and it’s not easy to manage someone out like in private sector. My manager was used to being able to get rid of who she wanted as she’d mostly worked in the private sector so was approaching it like that.

It didn’t take long to find another job that’s 100% better in all respects and came with a healthy pay rise too!

You will never win against that sort of person but they can do you a lot of lasting damage (eg you mention your mental health suffering) - put your energy into getting away from them rather than leaning in with the complaints.

I'm so sorry to hear this, we have a similar situation where I work, to the extent I'm hoping I'll be moved department (if not I'm looking for another job myself) and have taken out a grievance, something I have never done before or even contemplated.

Join a union straight away - you need to have been a member for four weeks before they can represent you.

Continue keeping a record of everything she does and says with times and dates with evidence to back it up.

And, unfortunately, expect her to be promoted and lauded and HR to do sod all.

Re menopausal symptoms yes these are most likely true as I am experiencing this since 2 years, goes in step changes- every few months there is a step change usually for the worse.
she sounds like a narcissist. The only way to do it is to make her compromise herself in public. I dealt with two over the course of 5 ys in one company. I made both commit “professional suicide” - they both left shortly after. One- I knew her boss hates rudeness and will do anything to maintain corporate behavior and appearances of professionalism in meetings. So i provoked the witch to lose her shit in meetings.. it worked ! She was told to apologize to me and had a mental bdown shortly after. The other idiot also a narcissist caused me and my colleague much pain. We were all equal the 3 of us. Moron would say things like:”every time I try to btch about you to the boss he tells me to get lost “- he really said that. We provoked him with my colleague to have a public outburst at our boss(he was too lazy to provide info for audit) and we pushed back gently but persistently.
my mate delivered the mail he lost his sht over - in a call with our boss the 4 of us on it. It was brilloant. This idiot also tried to apologise 6 weeks later apparently things were not so great at home- this does not explain them being a dck ror 3 ys. So basically try to provoke a situation where you will have influential witnesses to their behavior. Long game- it was covid time so I had nowhere to go and glad I played to win. Watch your environment- find out her bosses principles and maybe there is something you can use from the company vision to trip her up. See what you can do to outsmart her and where she could compromise herself.