For context: Been with this company about 2.5+ years.
Mid-level manager, 6 figures/year compensation and killer benefits. No remote work, some local travel.
I’m transgender – non disclosed to my work place.
I work in a very rough environment – racist comments from our clients are something we hear pretty typically, anti female and anti LGBTQ+. Not from internally but several comments from my boss about women in the workplace over the course of the years.
About 5 months ago, my VP called me directly and asked “what’s going on” while my boss was out of town…. I had no idea what he meant, until he revealed to me that 2 other managers in my area had made complaints about my boss, his management style, us not being able to hold on to people for longer than a few months etc.
I said there were some problems but figured ‘It was just me’ and had kept my head down.
VP has decided there should be a meeting with myself, the two other managers and my boss to ‘get some things on the table’ so the following week, we all meet in person.
The meeting is uncomfortable but as we go through the past 8 people who have quit and give feedback together, the one common thing is that our common boss is the ‘problem’. His management, the way he talks to people and his need to be in everyone’s business.
It also comes up that some of the females are uncomfortable working for him and they have told us other managers in confidence.
When we break for this meeting, I leave for vacation but within 15 minutes of leaving, the boss textes me ‘I’d like to speak about your comments’.
Fast forward when I’m back, he takes me to lunch and pulls out a paper where everything I had said was written down and he goes line by line to ‘justify his intentions’ in the management.
Fast forward about 2 months, all has seemed decently well, minus a few unfriendly phone calls and emails on projects…. Cue hiring a new person, suddenly, everything is over analyzed and many emails going back and forth on ‘making them stick’ and ‘ensuring we don’t have a turn over situation’ as they train under me, but report directly to him in the management scheme of things. A few weeks later, someone else quits at a different office and my new hire is pulled from under me and given to that manager and no longer in my training.
A few weeks go by and an issue comes up with our landlord: company funds and my cc are stolen out of my office, presumably by the cleaner our landlord employes and we’ve made several complaints about the parking lot being an issue (lots of snow and ice here). After the initial complaints with the landlord go unsuccessful, boss rings me up to ‘find out what is going on because the landlord contacted him directly about me’. I let him know I had tried telling him about it the week before but he brushed it off and had ignored me, so I handled it myself. After a hour of discussing why ‘we need to just be nice and move on to more sales’ I basically said he spent too much time being friends with people then doing business and it wasn’t worth the argument anymore, I’d change the locks for the security and we’d put up with the parking lot.
In the same call, he let me know I was the only person who would get upset about things like this and I distracted myself, my team and him from making money.
Another month or two passes and there’s issues with a client account – one I bring up to the boss and he states were ‘spending a lot of time on something that makes us little money’ and tells me until we can sit and have a meeting with them, we won’t be serving this account. A few days later, a PM who works for us brings up a deal she is going to do with them and I let her know she needs to hold, as that account is right now on a service hold (all via email). Within minutes, I receive a call from my boss and this PM on 3 way, telling me that they’re going to do the deal because it’s ‘X number of sales and I need to be on board’. I’m in total shock and disbelief here but eventually after me being not open to the conversation at all, we agree the PM will reach out to the client and let them know that we will start to service but we’re still on a hold and no official sales can take place. Later that day, the PM emails me to let me know what day the sale was taking place – I reply with ‘we all agreed this wouldn’t go through before the meeting’ and I hear nothing until a week later when I’m in meetings with my boss and I see a message from that PM to him, letting him know the deal is done. He lets me know (because I receive commission on the deal) and I say ‘okay’ He asks me what I think and I say very openly ‘you all did this behind my back, after we had a call but I expected it, so nothing’.
A week later, he calls to talk about my ‘issue with the sale’ and starts it off with ‘How you’re acting can be seen as bullying and with this co worker being a female, you are coming off intimidating and I don’t want this to get to HR.” I immediately ask for a HR rep to be brought on the phone and he tells me to calm down and starts talking over me – I repeat this message multiple times (4 exactly, according to my 10 year old daughter who was with me that day) and after saying ‘That’s fine’ , he continues to sit on the phone and make me listen to ‘why this PM just needs this sale to go through and I should be happy.’
Our management team has had several calls with him leading on joint projects since and practically no one speaks on this call, for fear of speaking out. When it is silent, he calls on people and it’s usually me. I’ve learned to just stop answering and say I don’t have any issues because when I say ‘pass’ it’s way worse.
At this point, I’m pretty beaten down. I talk to my wife and decide to start looking for a new job. I go on LinkedIn and update my status to open to work, remove him and all my co workers and set my profile to private and begin the search. I update my indeed profile and start looking as well but I can’t make my resume active as he has alerts setup for anyone with the company name on their resume to come to him so when they do start looking, he can corner them – I’ve witnessed this with several people who left.
Last week, he sent me out of town to visit another area with other managers and train. I was quiet in the classes and realized that I had learned to not speak up anymore and make my points known… that I had been beat down enough to no longer even speak up. When one of the managers I had a relationship mentioned me being quiet, I broke and told him what had been going on… he said he knew and that others knew too and that our VP was ‘playing the long game.’
While there, one of the original managers who had made a complaint to our VP was there and said he felt similar and that our boss has said ‘Moving forward, we need to look at hiring men. Women have too many feelings and are too complicated to control. Guys just don’t care and get it and make things simple.’ He had said this two both the other managers in the first complaint…. I was stunned but not shocked, as we’ve hired all makes minus the one in my office since.
Also while I was there, a large sale came up as a result of my work. Typically, we would split the sale between myself and the other manager I helped out. In this case, the sale turned into something bigger than initially thought but since there wasn’t a technical ‘rule’ for this – I was to be shunned out of the deal. I had an issue with this and called my boss about it and he said ‘the company stands to get X off this deal’. Later that night I couldn’t sleep, so I sent him a very professional email that I would like this reviewed and I shouldn’t be penalized for the deal getting better and he responded with ‘I’ll think about it – have you talked to the other manager?’.
There were 2 more emails during that week I was gone – one about a payroll issue he missed and wanted to ‘show me how to catch it’ and when I let him know he was managing it now and I sent everything to him first, his reply was ‘take a breath’.
He also sent me an email about accounting taking expenses for 2 months on one months P&L’s and ‘mine are high’ – I let him know we were following the procedure and he had approved the expenses, however other operational expenses split along the company weren’t something we could control. While I was driving back from the other area (5 hour drive), he called me twice and I ignored both of them – I didn’t want to talk and drive and to be honest, I was still upset about the week. He sent me an email saying it wasn’t a problem and to not call back.
Saturday morning came around I get a notification he’s looking at my LinkedIn profile.
Monday morning, I came in later on. I found out that morning I would need to have surgery, a surgery that would have me out for a few weeks and wasn’t optional and something that could end up disclosing my biggest secret – I’m transgender. I wasn’t sure how I was going to get around telling him when the phone rang and it was him. He was acting fine and I said I had something to tell him and I stumbled through it, something close to ‘I’ll be having surgery soon and I need to get it scheduled and let you know about some time off’. He said his stuff wasn’t important and he just wanted to know how the last week trainings went and rushed off the phone.
About a hour later – he sent me an email asking for my time off plans, hed cancel my client meetings and then telling me to cancel my flight, hotel and seminar pass for next week at a huge management training thing in Texas. 9 other members of our team were going and the guy leading it would work on getting us a credit.
I replied back that it was premature, wasn’t sure when I was going to have surgery and would like to wait. No response ever came but about 2 hours later, the head guy leading our travel viewed my LinkedIn profile, even though we had never spoken.
Few hours later, was on a disciplinary call with him, another manager and myself, talking about the female new hires role and attendance. He asked if I had a surgery date when we first got on and I said not yet. The call proceeded as normal and we decided we’d get a write up from HR. He made a mention that ‘we all know how women can be with just having a kid’ when talking about this person – she came on to us after having her first child and he had asked previously if she was having attachment problems with leaving the child.
A few hours later – I called to tell him about the date and what I would need and before we could talk, he said ‘hold on HR is calling, I’ll call you back’ and then didn’t call me back for 45 minutes. I could tell by his calls that he was on the phone for about 40 minutes with HR, then called our VP and then called me. I let him know the surgery date (a month away) and that I’d be using 2 weeks of PTO and returning after and thst there was only 1 day we’d need additional coverage. He seemed to write it down and question the dates for coverage but didn’t say much more and we hung up.
I replied to my email prior to that and said ‘With this surgery date being so far out – I don’t see the need to cancel anything scheduled here. Are you planning on joining these client meetings Wednesday?” Almost immediately he replied back with “that’s the plan unless something changes”.
I let the worrying and thinking get the best of me – this leadership conference is huge and while the company is technically paying for it, it’s purchased with my personal card and won’t be reimbursed for the entire month – same with my flight and hotel, flight already being purchased. He can’t just suddenly cancel it, right? That’s what I kept thinking to myself. I finally decided to call the organizer who looked at my LinkedIn profile earlier and try and fish if my boss had told him to cancel anything… he seemed like he had no idea who I was or that there was a question to even cancel it. We talked about it and how good it sounded and how excited we were and he’d send me a text next week.
I haven’t been able to focus on anything else for weeks now…. Is this a toxic work environment? Is this bullying? Should I or we as managers say something? We did months ago and one of the other managers is getting similar treatment. Is it worth talking about the bullying and anti women and other comments? I personally think so but does it just put a bigger target on me at this point?
Am I being paranoid? Could my actions be warranting some HR involvement on Wednesday?
I’m a month out from surgery and need my benefits to have surgery. I make 5x the amount my wife does and secure our finances.
I’ve never been counseled or written up before here – could he be looking at just trying to get rid of me?
Any help is appreciated. I don’t think I’m going to get much sleep.