Still trying to get up that great Big Hill...

[Pudmuddle]

Hi Betsey

I'll try to answer your questions best I can.

My boss is relatively new to the company, hired about 4 months ago. She worked for a financial company before, which can be very aggressive management. The minute she came in she was requiring status reports and updates from the 2 people on my team that are under her. They were serious micromanagement. Then the other person that I worked with got 'let go'. Right after that she told me I didn't have to do those reports and statuses any more. First sign, that something just wasn't right about her.

Now she is often not at our daily meetings for the entire project team that I work with. But she swoops in to our major planning meetings and starts to undermine all the work I have done, saying that's not right do it this way, or do this instead.

My R with previous bosses was fine. If we had disagreements we worked them out, but that rarely happened. I've never been reported on in this manner before. Only earlier this year did I have an issue before she got there with the director who was questions my time estimates to get a project out. He was trying to tell me my estimates were off and I said I couldn't possibly do it any quicker. He kept pushing and pushing until I lost my cool. This was also about the time I was sinking into deep depression and right before I took extended time off. This came up in my mid-year review as something I needed to improve upon. My boss before my current boss reviewed this with me. Then when bully boss came in she reviewed this with me AGAIN. Like I needed to go through that again. I explained my side of the story and she SAID she likes to form her own impressions of people. I thought, well cool, because I want to put it behind me. However ever since then, she has not trusted me to do my job, tells me how to do my job and she considers this COACHING. Now she has brought up this Action Plan where she states that I become defensive and negate everything my team members say. This is totally NOT TRUE. If you were to ask my project team members none of them would agree with this. This only came up because she is now taking our disagreement to a personal level. Even after she apologized to me and then I apologized to her, it wasn't over in her mind. I was willing to move forward. She was obviously p'ed off and had to push it a little farther. She gave me no specific examples at the time, basically just handed me the form and said these were things to work on.

The think is I don't feel like there is any other manager there I can talk to, to get some advice from. The culture they have created in the last year and a half does now show any compassion from people. They are all watching out for themselves. Kind of sad.

I decided this is not a place I want to work, as it feels like a hostile work environment every day. I may go talk to someone in HR just to get some advice on what is happening and waylay my fears.

I am finishing up my resume this weekend and will be pursuing that avenue. I might quit if it gets too stressful. Even that stress would be better than this.

Thanks for listening Betsey, I know you would help me out if you could, I appreciate that thought.