I recently started a new job a few months ago and while things have been going really smoothly, this last month has been particularly challenging. My manager has recently lost someone close, and was off work for a while to deal with grief and bereavement.
However, since then, things have taken a nosedive. Just today, me and a few others were accused of not showing enough ‘empathy’ to her, despite the fact that a few of us sent my manager reassuring emails when she announced her leave, telling them to rest well and to spend time with her family. I am honestly baffled as to what could’ve gone wrong or how that could’ve be construed as being non-empathetic.
My manager presents themselves as a private and independent person and constantly reminds us of this fact.
Given that new members have joined the company recently, we are all acutely aware that we should respect their boundaries and give them space to heal.
While we work in close proximity with them, we aren’t always privy to the details they share in their personal life, and the last thing we’d like to do is meddle in their life and make things worse when it seems that anything could tick my manager off these days.
As a result, things have been extremely toxic at my workplace. I personally didn’t find out the details of what’d happened to my manager regarding their loss until a senior colleague had told me. It’s completely fine that they remind and present themselves as a private person, but don’t take it out on team members (especially new ones) and accuse us of not being empathetic when we’re all deathly scared of offending them and are simply respecting their boundaries.
My manager also then started to accuse a senior employee who’s been with the company the longest (who’s frankly also been the most loyal and diligent) of being messy and unfocused in front of me.
Frankly, my manager has also been making pointed comments towards me and being genuinely quite unkind to me throughout the whole month, which is truly unlike them. There’s been a couple of times where I have asked my manager questions, and they pull odd faces at me as though the questions I’d asked were nonsensical.
My manager ALSO accused me of not bringing up an important issue at work, and said I should’ve brought up the issue and questions then, and not now. But here’s the catch: I DID bring it up at a meeting where they were absent that day – and I EVEN sent my presentation slides. I obviously didn’t fight back, I just remained quiet as I knew that clarifying and speaking the truth would only stoke the flames further.
And now because of this there’s a unspoken rule that all questions about work need to be raised on Tuesday, and not any other day. Obviously if I have questions I can’t control about when I’m unclear about my work or when difficulties arise and I need to address them.
I have been telling myself to be more patient, that this is simply grief and to really cultivate positivity but it’s difficult when every single thing you do suddenly causes so much anger, spite and blame. It’s like my whole existence causes their annoyance and offends them to no end.
Also, me and a colleague suggested we should engage in more team activities as a company to strengthen our camaraderie. My manager learnt of this and immediately wasn’t too happy, and started accusing me and others of having no empathy out of nowhere.
Personally, everyone’s been trying their best and working extremely hard. The team and people whom I work with have been nothing but extremely hard-working. We hold no malice and yes, we’re human, we do make errors, but we apologise and we learn from them. Everyone here is quite demure. We all mind our own business and we simply do the best they can.
On top of this, there’s been an abundance of miscommunication, inconsistency and hypocrisy going on, which led me to being blamed about the same thing that my manager has done in the past and still does which is utterly unreasonable.
I could go on longer but I don’t want to risk giving too much detail. All of this has really affected me psychologically and I desperately need advice on how to deal with this cordially.
PS. I don’t blame my manager: it’s clear they are going through a lot, I genuinely wish them the best.
In response to this I have basically retreated back into my shell at work – I don’t interact, make any comments, and always always use screenshots to protect myself against wrongful accusations, I try not to banter to have friendly conversations with colleagues unlike before.
I simply focus on my work. For the last few months I’ve been performing extremely well at work, but all of a sudden it seems I can’t do anything right.
TLDR: My manager at work dealt with a death recently. Ever since then, our relationship has been strained and our workplace environment has only gotten more toxic by the day. Everything’s been amazing at work for the last couple of months – I was performing well, had a good relationship with my manager. But it’s all hell breaking loose now. My words are getting completely taken out of context, I’m getting blamed left and right for everything, I’m treading and walking on eggshells, retreating into my space and getting thrown passive aggressive comments. It’s driving me crazy and I need help/advice with mending this relationship and surviving my job role in general.