Hate my job and love it at the same time

amother

OP ↓

Yesterday at 4:51 pm

I love what I do but I hate hate hate the place I work. It’s a mean place, nobody is loyal to anybody. Everybody so scared of their own shadow they will do whatever it takes to get ahead or get recognized. The same person who’s crying last week that they weren’t treated fairly (and they were correct), is treating somebody else unfairly this week, because that’s the culture and it’s just an attitude of survival of the fittest and I gotta protect myself. It’s so gross I am sick of it. Any yet you wouldn’t believe how much good we do, and the families we service are the best of the best and when I’m actually doing my work I am loving every minute. I have no other work arena I can take my skill set to and have this opportunity to do so much good. If I left, it would mean leaving behind this amazing work that I love, but if I stay, it means putting up with this horrible unhealthy environment. I know there’s no good answers. Anybody else experience anything like this? Any suggestions?

amother

↑ Snow ↓

Yesterday at 6:49 pm

IME it depends on the person. There’s definitely a strong element of fear—like “what if I’m next” for the bully to attack, what can I do to fly under the radar…some people do end up jumping on the bandwagon (I guess along the lines of “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.” Some people will divert attention off themselves onto other coworkers to try to avoid getting attacked, I think as a survival instinct. And some may be clueless as to what’s wrong with a company “culture” that toxic).

The worst is a narcissistic bully who knows next to nothing about what the team members actually do but feels within his/her rights to micromanage, criticize, demean, and generally act hostile towards others, and then badmouth them to the higher-ups.

In my office we had that today…a colleague was out sick and the (micro)manager insisted on calling him, and then berated him for saying “okay” to a request since apparently his “okay” wasn’t enthusiastic enough. I’m not making this up. The micromanager said, “You should say, ‘sure, Micromanager! Great idea!’” and then after the call ended, commented to me and our other colleague that the person who is out sick “needs an attitude adjustment” because the micromanager is “getting a lot of pushback.” Um, no. The other person literally agreed to do the task. They said “okay.” They weren’t whining, protesting, etc. And they were SICK for crying out loud. But the micromanager’s ego is so large that they misinterpret anything that isn’t exactly to their liking as insubordination.

The micromanager is being nasty, aggressive, hostile, confrontational, and cruel—and this person is not stupid enough for me to believe they just don’t realize how they are coming across. I really don’t get why they think this is an effective way to try to lead a team. People deserve to be respected and treated well, not like garbage. Then again, this person is a manipulative narcissist who turns on the charm when it suits them.

The most I feel I can do is reach out to the attacked colleague (within appropriate gedarim) and say that they are a valued member of the team, they did nothing wrong, etc.

The dynamic is poisonous and painful, and does nothing to improve staff morale or energy.

amother

↑ OP ↓

Yesterday at 6:59 pm

amother Snow wrote:

Yup. This is exactly what we deal with. Add to it the insane raises we witness awful evil bosses gift themselves while telling us all there’s just no money for raises this year (hmm… heard that line last year and the year before and the year before….). Poison and painful is a good summary. I try being the supportive colleague bec it’s the right thing and because it’s the kid of person I want to be, but sadly nobody reciprocates when it’s my turn to be victim.