micro manager

[pamelanoon]

In my last workplaces i got on with my managers pretty well.

I have been in my job for three months.

In my new workplace, I find my manager to be very difficult.

We are in different offices. She doesn't speak to me face to face much.

However she sends me (and other people) constant critical and negative emails.

I was evening shifts sometimes. It is very understaffed and i have to do so many things. I prioritise to do the most urgent things on the day, and the other things on the next day.

Every day i come in to emails from her saying "why wasnt this done last night" or i get emails from her saying "why was this email not replied to"

I will give you an example. I had a very busy evening shift with lots of tasks. People were also sending me emails during this time. I replied to the urgent ones.

An internal colleague sent me an email about a very non urgent issue. It really was non urgent. I was going to reply to it when i had time. The email was sent to a group email address that we use, so my boss saw it aswell.

The next day I get an email from my boss that said "i saw this email hadn't been replied to by you, was there a reason for that?.

This was about an email that had been sent ONE DAY AGO to me.

I did reply to her and I said "it was very busy yesterday, I replied to all of the urgent emails, I am replying to the rest of the emails today".

She is just always rude and critical.

Yesterday, someone sent an email to our group email asking about something.

FIFTEEN minutes later, my boss sent me an email saying "I'm just checking that you didnt miss that email?"

She doesn't just do it to me. She does it to other people, and it drives them up the wall

I couldnt meet her face to face last week as she was away from the office, but I did write in an email last week that maybe she doesnt realise that the tone of her emails can be very negative and critical, when we are extremely busy.

She wrote back "they are not intended to be critical of the person, i just make them short and to the point as we are busy".

But I think her emails are excessive in her checking up on us.

Any advice?

Copy her in to every single email you send. Every single one, every time. Bombard her with as much useless crap as you can possibly lay your hands on.

If you get a non-urgent one, then reply to it (copying her in) thanking them for their email. Send acres of useless timewasting stuff to her, including potential spam, telling her that you have received this dodgy email, are assuming it is spam and would she like to check it herself and confirm either way.

Tell her you would work a lot better/faster and make more efficient use of your time if you didnt have to stop every 5 mins to read the reams of horseshit email she is sending you asking "have you done it" etc etc.

Failing that, I would seriously look for a new job and launch a grievance on her for serial harassment. I mean her constant emails to you are a goldmine of evidence against her.

You can try and ask what would give her a level of comfort that you are on it eg weekly updates. However this is a PITA to work with. Try to continue addressing it with her (keep the emails etc) and as someone has said, if that doesn’t work raise a grievance.

She is your boss, she can check up. She sounds like she has her set way of doing things, someone new coming in is unlikely to change that.

Find another job or accept and work with.

She has actually improved since i brought up her behaviour to her last week.

I used to get abut ten negaitve emails from her every day.

Today i got one email asking could i do something

Long may it last!

Well done for saying something, great news that you have seen an improvement. Hopefully it will continue.

If she reverts back, then you should not waste a second - launch a grievance on her.