I’ve been working at this healthcare facility in a supervisor role for about 3 years now. I work with a veteran crew who has been working together for over 15 years. Due to high supervisor turnover, my boss has taught the crew how to do supervisor work (but they can’t be supervisors without a license). Bossman has been in his position close to 30 years. He’s very experienced and was once part of the Board of Directors until company went private. Bossman has at least one other full time job in with same job title (he’s also Bossman at his other location) and as such he has plenty of meetings, sometimes attending those meetings remotely at our location. Due to his schedule always being full, Boss assigns one specific individual, Richard, to be “his eyes and ears”. Richard pretends to be nice but once you turn your back he will backstab you to Bossman. Richard has been with company for over 20 years. He rose the ranks by brown nosing and bad talking and he people who were there before him. Richard is in charge of making eveyone’s schedule, including his direct supervisor’s schedule and also has the liberty to adjust hours as needed. Richard and boss man have this bad habit of only releasing a partial schedule at a time, for the example he released partial July schedule on 6/30, which gives everyone little time to prepare ahead for appointments or what not. You can submit PTO requests but you have to put a reason, and also do NOT tell you if the PTO is approved or denied until a day before.
Anyways, once I found out that my wife was pregnant, I tried talking to my boss to see if we could accommodate (since there are only 2 of us at my position), by doing some limites remote work, etc., but I noticed my boss wasn’t too pleased about that and he would just “let me know.” Richard comes in and tells me that my FMLA request can be denied in specific circumstances, etc. That forced me to go to HR and call corporate to see what reqs I needed for FMLA. Lo and behold, my FMLA was approved! Before I requested my FMLA, I would go to meetings and was basically the 3rd in command, but ever since I requested FMLA I was pulled from those meetings and noticed Bossman wasn’t talking to me as much.
The week that my wife gave birth (baby came in 6 days earlier that expected date), I worked due to being short staffed. Richard kept making comments on how he only took days off when his wife gave birth. Good for him, everyone is different. I was only going to request 2 weeks off but earlier in the year when I requested my anniversary week off, from 2/8-2/12 but Richard informed me on 2/10 that my request was approved. I didn’t not have to use PTO because I worked 13 days straight was was actually over on hours (did make some OT).
What really got to me was Richard saying he only needed 3 days off when his son was born because his wife was strong. That pissed me off enough to go to my local HR and mentioning this to them without naming names. I started writing down notes and time stamping them just in case.
This environment has started giving me anxiety. I go to work and feel my heart pounding and feel nauseated. It’s a great job and I love what I do, but Richard and boss man make it really hard for me to want to stay there. I’m hoping to get some advice from this sub on how to approach the situation.
Thank you in advance and I apologize for the long read.