Fair warning this is going to be a long post, half venting and half asking for advice, so bear with me.
I started working at a department store back in November, around the start of the holiday season, and it seemed to be going well, albeit a bit stressful because of the rushes. One of my coworkers – who we'll refer to as J – was, at some point, promoted to manager by my boss, who we'll call M. M is cranky and old, but she has a hidden soft spot, and i usually can't fault her other than the fact that she never looks at schedules and notes to request days off and either has people down for days that they shouldn't or couldn't work, or makes the entire floor severely understaffed to the point where after a certain time of night there is literally only one person working the entire floor.
But she made a big mistake promoting J. And J is now on a massive ego trip and making my entire work life there as miserable as possible.
It started a while back, when I had told my coworkers I was going on a 15 minute break, then was going to straighten a section of the store. This was delayed as we were suddenly swamped with customers and I was literally the only one at the register. After the line clears, I do what I said I was going to do, and when I take an item to scan it out as penny stock, she comes up asking where I was and that I took a way longer break than I said I was. I calmly tell her that I took my break, then went to clean the section of the store. She doesn't listen to me at all, and tells me to take her to the section. We go over, and she tells me that the section was not straightened. At this point I'm absolutely annoyed and I tell her that I was in the process of doing so. Once again she doesn't listen to me and instead starts berating me about break times. Frustrated, I go to HR and talk with them, and they sympathize with me, agreeing that she's technically not supposed to enforce the policy. They tell me they'll talk to her. They do, and about an hour or so later she and M take me back to the fulfillment room to privately have a conversation. J proceeded to make up complete lies and skews what I said to make it look like I'm the bad guy in the situation. M sides with her, then proceeds to list all the times I asked for help because I didn't receive proper training. Apparently, because I'm autistic and need slightly more guidance, I'm a bad employee.
The situation blows over, but J steadily gets on a much higher and stronger ego trip.
She constantly badmouths me to other coworkers, which causes them to laugh at and poke fun at me. Asking her for help is out of the question, because she never properly shows me how to do things, but forces me to go through the process with minimal help – or else she'll delegate it to someone else while making subtle jabs at me (enough to make coworkers laugh). Not to mention she's transphobic as hell, constantly misgendering me even after being repeatedly reminded about my pronouns and titles, and making digs at it to other coworkers. (On a side note you're starting to sense a theme here.) This one seems a bit silly but she is selfish with a fan that she brings in. I take a medication that causes me to overheat and I live paycheck to paycheck and most of my money goes to food, rent, and bills, so I can't just buy me one. She refused to let me borrow it, and threatened me that next time I touch the fan “[she] won't be so nice about it”.
The final straw came Friday, when I was in the back organizing the shoe stockroom because it was an absolute mess and no one seems to care. J encountered me in there, then proceeded to bring in one of my coworkers as a “witness”, which makes absolutely no sense to me because why would she feel the need to bring in someone who had absolutely nothing to do with it and was simply doing her job and take time out of her day to watch me get yelled at? But anyway, J tells me that I sent a customer to her register to do a price adjustment. I only did so because I didn't know how (we rarely ever do those) and I didn't want to potentially screw things up for both myself and the customer. She proceeds to tell me that I've been there long enough to know how to do one and said in a threatening tone to never do that again. I just simply say “ok” so I can get it over with, and this seems to satisfy her and she and my coworker walks out. I then hear them and another coworker laughing about me outside.
I'm just enraged at this point. I'm too afraid to report her to HR again because I don't know what will happen. I'm finding a new job at the moment and it is all because of her.
Given all of this, should I report her anyway? Should corporate be involved as well? Any advice appreciated, I'm just so done.