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Antiwork

Manager shocked that I don’t enjoy toxic work environment

TL;DR at the end. I work for a business-to-business sales company, name doesn't matter 'cause the company employs like 80 people and overall, as far as things go, they're a decent company to work for. Essentially, they hire sales people and then align them to their customers, so we sell for the customers rather than the company itself. This means that in some teams, you have one person selling one product, two selling another, etc. I work for our company's 2nd biggest client so my whole team actually sells the same product, which is helpful as we can discuss strategies, share product knowledge, update each other, etc. The only difference is that we are all responsible for different countries (in my case, I sell to companies based in Germany). I was hired to replace my current manager. She was promoted into the managerial role at the start of the year,…


TL;DR at the end.

I work for a business-to-business sales company, name doesn't matter 'cause the company employs like 80 people and overall, as far as things go, they're a decent company to work for. Essentially, they hire sales people and then align them to their customers, so we sell for the customers rather than the company itself.

This means that in some teams, you have one person selling one product, two selling another, etc.

I work for our company's 2nd biggest client so my whole team actually sells the same product, which is helpful as we can discuss strategies, share product knowledge, update each other, etc. The only difference is that we are all responsible for different countries (in my case, I sell to companies based in Germany).

I was hired to replace my current manager. She was promoted into the managerial role at the start of the year, so they needed to find someone to sell to Germany. That means we've worked really closely, she was there with me when I got to meet our customer, she provided me with a lot of insights, her old messaging documents, gave me the names, numbers and email addresses of her previous contacts, etc. She set me up for success really nicely.

Ever since I started, management (herself and her higher ups) have always made it a point in team meetings to praise the success of the German region, how well we're doing, etc. This is nice, but over the last month or two, I felt that this has always been juxtaposed with the lack of success with the UK-focused colleagues. Whenever my colleagues complained about something, my managers would say, “Well, it's working for Germany, why can't you do it?” and “[Customer] always praises Germany, can't you be more like them?”

I've been thinking about this a lot lately and it's started to bother me. Yesterday, I had my 7-month review with my manager's boss's boss. As I said, company on the whole is nice, so I felt comfortable enough telling him that I'm starting to feel uncomfortable about my success being used against my colleagues. I don't want the environment to be toxic.

After that discussion, I also called my manager and told her what I'd said to her boss's boss 'cause I didn't want her to feel blindsided and like I'd gone behind her back, couldn't talk to her directly, etc. She was genuinely shocked, asked me if the others had been hostile towards me or why did I feel like it was a toxic environment? She did say she will take on the feedback but I could just tell she did feel awkward about it.

TLDR: Management has been praising me but always at the expense of my team mates. I brought up that I felt uncomfortable and didn't want to create a toxic environment. Manager was shocked that I didn't enjoy the attention.

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