Boss Hounding Me About Details

[allesandro1]

Does anyone else have a boss who keeps hounding them about small details. i just started this job a few months ago and feel like she's always up my *** about small things. It seems to me she could just send me an email or put a note in my mailbox about these things because they are relatively small in my opinion. this is just a part time job for me and yet I feel like I'm doing so much documentation and email reading at home about relatively small things. It's a real pain the ***.

[Han123]

I had a boss like that once. He never said anything positive, just kept ******** on and on about super small things. It was usually something like 'you have to do it this way because I do it that way', even though my methods were just as efficient. He also started gossiping about me to the other employees, saying that I was 'slow' and stuff. He was used to people always saying yes to all of his complaining and I just kept debating about it. Eventually I quit working there, and now I work somewhere way more relaxed, where they appreciate my input and always thank me for working so hard.

[MindBlind]

Geez, that sounds like my last job. I was a clerical worker (I know, worst job for an ADHDer!) and I did make a lot of little mistakes. I wasn’t trained properly as they expected me to remember every single process and protocol within four weeks. That might seem like a reasonable training period, but keep in mind that after those four weeks I had shifts where I was completely on my own. That and they expected a level of proficiency that would be expected from a very experienced secretary. I was on a zero hour contract and earned minimum wage, ffs. The department didn’t even have an employee handbook until some of the previous staff actually wrote one themselves. Oh, and their health and safety record was abysmal, but that’s another story...

Anyway, my last job involved a lot of data entry and was very regimented. It could have been made more efficient had they actually hired an IT person or someone who could have simplified everything but apparently that’s more expensive than hiring someone who can barely programme a microwave to the correct setting. Despite my best efforts I often made some errors here and there, which really ****** off my bosses. For clarity, these bosses will be known as Good Cop and Bad.Cop.

Bad Cop clearly didn’t like me. He seemed to take great personal offense to these mistakes, even if they were easily rectified. One time I had the audacity to accidentally place a print out on Good Cop’s desk (even though their offices were connected and they start work at the same time). He was so ******* angry, blaming me for the slow start to the work day, and verbally abusing me in front of my colleague. Then he accused me of lying to him or something because I didn’t immediately grovel for his forgiveness the moment Good Cop told me about the mistake. Okay, but Bad Cop was busy and I couldn’t leave my colleague alone on such a busy morning. He literally expected me to slow down work even more because of his fragile ego.

My time at that job was pretty much death by a thousand cuts. I would be chastised for a mistake, then I would panic and work harder, which led me to make more mistakes, which led the Pigs to complain even more. Bad Cop ended up micromanaging everything I did by making new rules that only applied to me, without even the knowledge of Good Cop. My colleagues seemed concerned and would say to me “Yeah, next time you should ask [Bad Cop] if you need help with something because he might think you’re ignoring him”. If that’s true, that’s incredibly narcissistic and petty AF.

Good Cop was only marginally better. He was nicer and more enjoyable to be around but he was an enabler to Bad Cop. At appraisals he would flip flop between saying that my performance wasn’t that bad and saying it was atrocious. He was too afraid of being unliked that he wouldn’t give you any meaningful feedback, instead saying vague stuff like “Just try harder” or “You need to make it your own”. To his credit, he did attempt to find ways to improve my performance but he always made it seem like I was a charity case to him. It never seemed to occur to him that I wasn’t trained properly, that we were very understaffed, that we should have been using an actual database instead of opening hundreds of spreadsheets at once. He kept comparing my progress with a colleague who started at the same job at the same time, saying I should be at her level. He neglected to mention that she was already working for the company for over a year and was therefore already very knowledgeable about how and why stuff was done the way they were. I was pretty much set up to fail.

Anyway, I was the sacrificial lamb at that place to pay for the sins of two ego maniacs who preferred a terrible system to having to try new things. At least I don’t work for them anymore.

[allesandro1]

Originally Posted by MindBlind

Geez, that sounds like my last job. I was a clerical worker (I know, worst job for an ADHDer!) and I did make a lot of little mistakes. I wasn’t trained properly as they expected me to remember every single process and protocol within four weeks. That might seem like a reasonable training period, but keep in mind that after those four weeks I had shifts where I was completely on my own. That and they expected a level of proficiency that would be expected from a very experienced secretary. I was on a zero hour contract and earned minimum wage, ffs. The department didn’t even have an employee handbook until some of the previous staff actually wrote one themselves. Oh, and their health and safety record was abysmal, but that’s another story...

Anyway, my last job involved a lot of data entry and was very regimented. It could have been made more efficient had they actually hired an IT person or someone who could have simplified everything but apparently that’s more expensive than hiring someone who can barely programme a microwave to the correct setting. Despite my best efforts I often made some errors here and there, which really ****** off my bosses. For clarity, these bosses will be known as Good Cop and Bad.Cop.

Bad Cop clearly didn’t like me. He seemed to take great personal offense to these mistakes, even if they were easily rectified. One time I had the audacity to accidentally place a print out on Good Cop’s desk (even though their offices were connected and they start work at the same time). He was so ******* angry, blaming me for the slow start to the work day, and verbally abusing me in front of my colleague. Then he accused me of lying to him or something because I didn’t immediately grovel for his forgiveness the moment Good Cop told me about the mistake. Okay, but Bad Cop was busy and I couldn’t leave my colleague alone on such a busy morning. He literally expected me to slow down work even more because of his fragile ego.

My time at that job was pretty much death by a thousand cuts. I would be chastised for a mistake, then I would panic and work harder, which led me to make more mistakes, which led the Pigs to complain even more. Bad Cop ended up micromanaging everything I did by making new rules that only applied to me, without even the knowledge of Good Cop. My colleagues seemed concerned and would say to me “Yeah, next time you should ask [Bad Cop] if you need help with something because he might think you’re ignoring him”. If that’s true, that’s incredibly narcissistic and petty AF.

Good Cop was only marginally better. He was nicer and more enjoyable to be around but he was an enabler to Bad Cop. At appraisals he would flip flop between saying that my performance wasn’t that bad and saying it was atrocious. He was too afraid of being unliked that he wouldn’t give you any meaningful feedback, instead saying vague stuff like “Just try harder” or “You need to make it your own”. To his credit, he did attempt to find ways to improve my performance but he always made it seem like I was a charity case to him. It never seemed to occur to him that I wasn’t trained properly, that we were very understaffed, that we should have been using an actual database instead of opening hundreds of spreadsheets at once. He kept comparing my progress with a colleague who started at the same job at the same time, saying I should be at her level. He neglected to mention that she was already working for the company for over a year and was therefore already very knowledgeable about how and why stuff was done the way they were. I was pretty much set up to fail.

Anyway, I was the sacrificial lamb at that place to pay for the sins of two ego maniacs who preferred a terrible system to having to try new things. At least I don’t work for them anymore.

Thanks so much for your story and support. I too was given virtually no training, and often had no one available for support or help, including people whose job it is to help with computer functions needed for documentation purposes. The more mistakes I made the more anxious I became which resulted in even more mistakes. I can relate to the quote "death by a thousand cuts." I too am an independent contractor ffs. The criticism, shaming, condescending reprimands led to a degree of regression and trigger of past unresolved trauma from unkind authority figures like teachers and other bosses that triggered a major depressive episode. It did force me however to interview with other companies and found that there are a good number of potential employers who are anxious to take me on. I'm being very cautious right now as I do not wish to go from the frying pan into the fire. The height of this re-triggered trauma unfortunately came during the holidays and I was so distraught I spent them alone because I didn't want family members to see how upset I was.
I'm past that now, I still work there but I am planning on leaving, and am no longer traumatized. I'm able to resume my normal functioning now and realize how s----y these people truly are. If a violation were to come up today my boss would find quite a different reaction from me because I am fully prepared to tell her to do to herself that which only an hermaphrodite can do to themselves. I would also walk out.
The positive thing that came out of this is that I came to realize how truly traumatized and bullied I was by authority figures including teachers and fellow students because of my ADD PI as well as some possible other neurological complications, of which the ADD may be a comorbid manifestation subsequent to not having this diagnosed and or treated until I was well into my thirties. Now that I am more aware, I have options about how I wish to address the trauma as well as the grief work surrounding this trauma which must be done as well.
I also found out from job hunting and other career consideration that my professional degrees and credentials have resulted in my being sought after by several other employers, and that I also have the option to work for myself and to not have to put up with people who neither appreciate or value the professional skills, credentials, and experience I have to offer.
My ego is much improved, and this boss no longer has power over me. I only hope that before I actually leave that I have justification to tell her just what I think of her. Without a trigger I do not wish to allow her to know the power she yielded over me, to the point of making me ill.
Thanks so much to you and everyone for sharing your experiences and offering support.

[acdc01]

Perfectionist, detail oriented bosses are the worst. I'd find another job. You can't change people. It's in his nature to be that way so even if you got him to stop for a little while, he'll be that way again sooner or later.

[allesandro1]

Thanks acdc01,
You're absolutely correct. My last day at that job was yesterday, though I have wanted to leave for the past six months. It brought up every ADD trauma I've ever had with regard to being demeaned and devalued because of little details as opposed to being evaluated in accordance with the bigger picture. That's exactly what had happened here, the job skills I was ostensibly hired for went completely overlooked and were even devalued because of mistakes related to computer bull---- documentation.
It really reactivated a lifetime of wounds associated with authority figures who are so reckless as to define someone's adequacy by small things athat are fixable as opposed to looking at the bigger, more important picture.