Just that really. I have been working in a new role for just over a year. My manager is the CEO’s PA and she has never managed anyone before. She is micro-managing me so much that I’m ready to go off sick.
She’s been horrible since Christmas and I thought I’d found a way of not letting her get to me but this week has just about finished me off. She gives me little jobs to do. Ones she doesn’t like or thinks are beneath her, mainly. She’s the boss, she can do that and that’s fine but she then checks everything I do and picks up on the minutiae. Today she’s pulled me up as there aren’t enough earl grey tea bags in the spare storage in the board’s kitchen. Dozens available for them to select from the box of fancy teas but none in the spare storage drawer. Ffs! Like people are going to die because they might have to have a normal tea next Wednesday!
What I want to say is ‘since you go round checking at this level of detail you might as well do the actual job as you’ll never be happy with the way I do it’ but I’d like it to be less blunt and appear more constructive than that.
FWIW I have previously worked in the same business at a middle management level with a small team of my own so I don’t think it’s because my skills are lacking but it’s starting to affect my confidence being nitpicked all the time. I just want to tell her to back off really.
Would be interested to hear any wisdom, even if it’s just to be told to suck it up as she’s the boss as that will prompt me to go elsewhere as her position directly into the ear of the CEO would mean I would never ‘win’ any argument.