I work as a liftie of sorts; I don’t want to get too detailed as I don’t want to doxx myself. I started in November. I have gone above and beyond for this company. I’ve worked 90-100 hours every pay period, worked 10-13 hour shifts almost daily, covered graveyard shifts (a genuinely dangerous job as I’m completely alone in the woods on these shifts and had no experience), I know for a fact I am one of their hardest workers and I’ve bent over backwards to prove myself to everyone in this department.
I’d quickly like to mention I have very bad issues with authority figures, particularly men, abusing their power to harm me and using their position to get away with it. This is very retraumatizing for me.
I close every night with a supervisor who I will call A. We hit it off when we first met and had some lightheartedly rude banter, we’d make fun of each other a lot and we were both fine with it for a while. Fast forward a few months, June, something changed, I don’t know what. I had an emergency early in the month and A lent me money for a cab which I paid back to him the next time I saw him. I was a little rude about it and threw it on the desk. I was extremely embarrassed and I really didn’t want to talk about it. At this point we still had a good relationship. I thanked him over text, everything seemed fine. I’m not sure if this was the catalyst to the following events.
Near the end of the month A just grew colder and more bitter. On my birthday I asked to clock out early and he said only if I get everything done first. I ran around like a headless chicken getting all the closing tasks completed within an hour while he sat in the office doing absolutely fucking nothing the entire fucking time, talking to my friend who was taking me out for drinks after my shift. He proceeded to just not fucking help me with anything for the rest of that month and throughout all of July.
What has really irked me is the whole banter thing. A started laying down boundaries, that’s fine and cool, it got to a point where it might’ve been perceived as inappropriate. So I mostly stopped. But he didn’t. He’d rip me to shreds verbally in front of other people and I would stand there saying nothing because I didn’t want him to snap at me about “disrespecting” him in front of staff. He called me out in front of a coworker and I was so hurt about it I ended up crying that night. I also tried to ask him not to make jokes about a certain topic. He agreed, and then proceeded to make jokes about that topic while I would stand there saying absolutely fucking nothing out of fear. My coworkers have called him out and told him to stop while I stood there completely silent.
He has also talked shit about me behind my back. He has told others I goof off too much (my manager disagrees with this), he has said to multiple people that I have no respect for him (A was once someone who was a huge role model to me, who I greatly respected for months, he was VERY well aware of this when he said that), I don’t doubt he’s said more shit about me. He proudly told me once “he won’t talk shit in front of other people, he’ll say it behind their back.”
Management has been brought into this. A manager and I confronted him. I was in tears the entire time, and could barely talk without sobbing. He apologized for “how I interpreted [his actions]”, he said he was “sorry [his actions] were perceived that way”. My manager said she believed his apology. I didn’t know what to think or say in the moment because I was still terrified but I am now able to discern his apology as complete fucking bullshit, especially since his actions following the confrontation do not reflect his words.
Following that, he has used every opportunity to scold me. I bit my tongue every time because I’ve just been conditioned to do that. Also I just want to mention he only has 3 months seniority over me and there’s people who have been here for years who deserve his job way more than he does.
What the fuck do I do. I don’t want to quit because 1. besides his abusive bullshit I like it here 2. how the fuck would I live, I cannot afford to quit. I asked to not be scheduled with him anymore as a temporary fix but I’ll see him during shift swap and I’ll want to rip his head off the same way I’ve wanted to every fucking day I had to work with him (which was daily) for the past month. I need to deal with this, I need him to actually apologize, but he never fucking will. I don’t know what to do. I am so goddamn tired.
TLDR because this got long: A supervisor of mine I have been working almost daily with for the past 9 months has begun to be verbally abusive towards me and talks shit about me behind my back despite how hard I've worked for this company and I don't know how to deal with it.