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To feel underminded at work and nothing is changing

6 replies

CurlyTop1980 · 12/08/2025 19:40

A bit of background. I work in a school in a specialised role (I am not a teacher). You need to be qualified with X amount of experience to do this role. I applied for this position approximately 3 years ago after I burned out at work. My line manager is not qualified and has worked his way up after working in the organisation for over 30 years. He has responsibility for 4 campuses as the organisational-wide lead. Each campus has someone like me employed. However, he continues to handle part of my job responsibilities on campus. This is not the way it is at the other campus. But every day I feel undermined.
An example of this is we have a student volunteer programme and one of my jobs is to ensure the volunteer coordinator ensures all risk assessments and safeguarding are up to date. In addition to leading safeguarding training for the students. I spoke with the volunteers coordinator and we agredd a date to meet and dicuss and create the presention for the studetns. But unbeknownst to me, he had gone straight to the volunteer coordinator to make all the arrangements, and then she called me, obviously confused, and as he is the organisational lead, I just got side lined . When i bought this up with him, he just said its just one less thing for me to worry about and hes sorted it.

I have spoken to him several times about this and also escalated to one of the school's deputies, but nothing has changed.

Other staff members still direct questions to him, and he also takes initiative without referring to me. I was really embarrassed, as the school year starts next week and last week he returned early as SLT. I am not SLT (although on the other campus, my contemporaries are) and I was put down with him to do a speech to the whole school about the year ahead. But I wasn't aware of this at all, and he asked that I go up with him and do part of it. Then I stood there as he waffled on about irrelevant stuff and didn't even introduce me. There are new staff and they just kept looking at me weirdly. I felt like crying after this. It was so embarrassing. After this, the staff who know me came up to me, making jokes about me being a 'trolly dolly' and WTF was that. They also complained about how boring his talk was and pointless, and they said I need to tell him to stop doing this.

I am a bit stuck in the job thouogh as my kids arttend the school on a full bursary but every time the school reconvenes after a break, i feel so ill and anxious about going back. What do i do??

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Messycoo · 13/08/2025 03:56

This is micro managing and is a form of bullying. Do you have a HR dept? If so I’d speak to them for advice .

daisychain01 · 13/08/2025 06:33

do you know if your counterparts on the other campuses are male or female? A robust way of challenging his behaviour, which sounds absolutely soul-destroying for you, would be to establish if he is exhibiting unconscious bias towards women because he doesn't treat men like that.

You could informally chat to one of your male counterparts and if they say he doesn't tend to interfere or micromanage them, you'd have a reasonable starting point with hard facts around that, you could discuss it with your HR team initially rather than confronting him directly which may feel too intimidating to do at first.

beelegal · 13/08/2025 07:16

Find a new job.
sounds like he is idolised by many, you won’t win this.

CurlyTop1980 · 13/08/2025 12:09

Hi all.

Thanks for the responses. I honestly don't know what to do as he attends all the organisational meetings that my counterparts in other campuses attend and I have no idea what is going on. I am stuck a bit as my kids are also attending the school. So i am caught in a bit of a bind.

He also attends all the HR meetings and deals with all Staff concerns.

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WeightLossGoal2024 · 13/08/2025 22:35

Has your line manager been in his role the 3 years you have? If not is he new and doesn’t understand your job description and responsibilities?

CurlyTop1980 · 14/08/2025 06:57

When I started my role, he was basically working the full time job I am in as well as the organisational.lead role for the past few years as they couldn't recruit anyone with the correct qualifications and experience (which he doesn't have). I don't know ow how his wages are formulated. I started part time. Which I was happy about as my previous job was very stressful. Then I was offered the full time role when I went to leave. but I don't think HR changed his T&C's. Plus the senior ma agent roles.above him was vacant at the time. I jave escalated this to the senior manager and we did meet the 3 of us. he also undermines the senior manager.

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