This is mostly just a rant.
I started a new job recently in a super uptight corporate environment, and initially I thought the department head (two supervisors above me) was nice/very professional, but it's become clear that she's just looking for reasons to fire/discipline people. She is a very nice, calm person and never raises her voice, but she micromanages EVERYTHING to the point that it's legitimately very creepy. She checks in on the exact time everyone on the team arrives at work every morning (we're all salaried), the time we leave, and whether we go over our lunch breaks by more than a minute or two. We have to report our daily tasks to her multiple times per day and she checks everything to make sure we're being truthful. Thank god she isn't my immediate boss because I would probably be having panic attacks every day, but I still feel like I'm walking on eggshells around her every time I'm at work.
That is all very annoying, but the biggest problem for me is that I'm autistic, meaning I tend to take things very literally and I don't read between the lines very well so I cannot for the life of me understand “corporate speak.” Obviously I can't tell my work that I'm autistic, but I HAVE told them (nicely) that I need them to be very direct in how they speak with me if I make a mistake in my work or conduct, and that I am very receptive to direct constructive criticism. I told her this on day one, which she seemed very receptive to. But lo and behold, I made a (very small) mistake recently and she waited an entire week to notify me of it, in turn making it into a much bigger deal than it needed to be. I'm absolutely going to bring this up to her again and politely request that she simply tell me directly if I make a mistake, but it really does feel like she's sort of just waiting for me to screw up.
So now I'm just sitting here being an anxious mess because I have no idea whether I'm doing things correctly and I have no idea how to explain why they can't rely on “corporate speak” getting through to me.
Note: In case anyone's response is “just quit,” I'm not going to do that. Honestly I really like my immediate boss and I do like the job for the most part. Plus, the job-hunting process was absolute hell and I'm not putting myself through that again for at least a year.