Got accused of insubordination for stapling a stack of photocopies together. And I'm now absolutely over this job, and I spent some idle time at my desk finalizing my exit strategy. I now fully understand why it was vacant for 18 months prior to me taking it on.
For context, I started this job about 2 months ago. Basically I'm supposed to teach anger management courses, among other skills, to a 'mandated' population, if you catch my drift.
I work alone, under 1 supervisor, for a total team of 2 people.
Now my 1 and only coworker/supervisor, is probably the biggest micromanaging psychopath I've ever dealt with.
Like for example, I had prepared a set of handouts for the next class I was supposed to do. 4-page handout, 6 copies total. I go to verify that it's the right one. Supervisor looks at it, says to take out one of the pages, but that it's fine overall.
So I say:
“Okay, I'll get these sorted and stapled up for you”
And they say:
“Okay, but you don't have to staple it”
I thought that was a little odd, since everything we hand out that's more than 1 page is stapled together, and we are allowed to give the participants things that are stapled together with metal staples.
But as I'm sitting down to remove the one page from each 4-page stack, the whole thing starts to get a bit unwieldy with loose sheets going everywhere on my tiny desk. So I just staple them in order to keep everything together, and put my copies away in the folder for the next class.
So the class starts, I'm just there to observe, but I was due to take over some of the classes in a few weeks. And when she opens the folder with the handouts in it to pass them out, supervisor has this look on their face like I left a dead baby in the folder. But the class continued as normal and everyone leaves once it's done.
When it's just us in the room, the supervisor explodes. Starts off the conversation with:
“Do you have trouble following directions?”
I'm kind of baffled and caught off guard by this, so I said:
“No, and I feel like you're insulting my intelligence by saying that. I've just been sitting here observing for an hour, what did I even do?”
Supervisor did not like that. Goes on a rant:
“You know, I'm very concerned that you're having difficulty following directives. I specifically said not to staple these, and you just went ahead and did that anyway.”
(At this point I remind them that we staple every handout we give them, and I know they had said I didn't have to staple it, but I chose to because the pages were getting everywhere as I'm sorting them)
“Well, I gave you a directive, and you disobeyed it. Since you've proven you can't follow directive, I have no choice but to leave you observing classes for the forseeable future. This is insubordinate behavior and it's affecting the classes.”
What a joke, honestly. I'm a grown adult, don't treat me like a child because of such a petty issue. Shouldn't even be an issue at all. I worked for months to get this job, because I wanted to help people succeed, and to try and save up for a nicer apartment in a good part of town, only to come into an oppresively toxic working environment with a cranky, bitchy supervisor on some sort of power trip.
I get along better with the literal rapists, murderers and child molesters I have to work with than my own boss. I'm 2 months into a 2 year contract, but I have zero intention of staying here even a second longer than I absolutely have to. It's only been 8 weeks and I've already got a laundry list of similar stupid arguments I've gotten in since I took this job. This one is just the most egregious example. This job was vacant for 18 months before I took over, and now I 100% understand why. Hopefully it stays like that long after I'm gone.