This was my first “adult” job after I finished college. I stayed there for just over a year, despite the actual job being very different from what was advertised.
My boss was the same age as me and had no previous management experience. Initially, I naively thought “hey, maybe she has a knack for it”. She did not.
This woman was in a managerial position because her own manager quit just 6 months after she started, and promoting her was easier than training someone new. This, combined with the fact that she is naturally a control freak, created the weirdest cocktail of a job I’ve ever worked in.
We worked hybrid, and I would receive at least 3 video (never audio) calls from my boss on a daily basis where she would try to force conversation and oversee what I was doing. This reached a point where the MS Teams ringtone would drive me crazy and I would spend my days expecting unannounced video calls. Mind you, everything she rang me about could have been resolved with a text over Teams. Imagine the “it’s easier if I explain it to you over the phone” colleague on steroids.
Every morning, my day would start with a video call from my boss where she would ask me for extreme details on what I did the night before. This would be dragged out over 20 minutes, even if I emphasised that I did nothing other than eat dinner and exercise. The same thing would be amplified further on Mondays when she would force a discussion about the weekend that went on for easily 40 minutes.
Don’t get me wrong, I tried to be friends with this woman, but there’s only so far you can get when your entire workday 5 days a week starts to revolve around her need for surveillance and control. She was also interested in conservative politics and would freely discuss this, assuming that I 1. felt comfortable discussing politics in work, and 2. agreed with her conservatism.
I could have tried to get all of over this if not for how badly I was treated in a professional sense. I work in a creative industry and my ideas were never seriously considered and the end product would always consist of solely my boss’s work. Throughout my year at the company, she was convinced that we were good friends and that I was the perfect employee. Meanwhile, I was instantly a calmer person from the minute I handed in my notice. Figures!