I will try and make this post as concise as possible whilst including the most important details – please let me know if any clarifications are needed!
I (26F) am in the UK, and working in a coordination and logistics related role (lots of admin, some tasks involving meeting people onsite to give them paperwork, etc).
Some background:
For the last few months I have had mobility issues due to extreme pain in my foot which has required me to mostly work from home, as a large part of my commute is on foot. I have to walk around 20 mins to get to the bus route that goes to my work. It hurts to walk for that long. A lot. To do that walk twice a day, 5 days a week, would be agony. I have a doctor's note saying that I “may be fit to work” with “workplace adaptations” (i.e working from home). I agreed with my manager that I would work from home while I'm dealing with this, and that I would carry out extra duties from home to help out my colleague, who would now have to complete of the on-site duties by herself. As of now, after making my way through a very long waiting list, I have custom shoe insoles and physio exercises to do, as the podiatrist thought the pain is most likely related to my posture and my hips. I think I am feeling some improvement, but it will be a while before we can tell for certain whether this is helping, and I am still very cautious about walking too much.
Recently my line manager has requested that I work on-site a few times. I agreed because I felt I didn’t have much choice, and didn’t want to overburden my colleagues. The only option for me to do this has been to take a taxi for the part of my commute which I normally have to walk (no bus for this part of the journey, and I can't drive), so this has obviously caused some financial strain. Also, I've been covering just one particular building where training rooms I have to visit are close together, as this would involve the least amount of walking, but I don't have a proper desk setup there; my permanent desk is in a building on the other side of the site, so when I'm there I have to sit at a table with just my laptop, rather than having a proper desk with keyboard, mouse, monitor, etc, which makes my back and neck hurt. My manager and HR are aware of this, and I have brought up DSE guidelines to them.
Possible bullying:
There's been a few things that my manager has done/said that have made me feel like she doesn't believe me or trust me, have frustrated me, and that just don't sit well with me:
- I mentioned going on a training course with the charity I work for on weekends, and another time I mentioned that I had attended a concert at the weekend, and in a call a few weeks after, she brought these events up and said that things ‘didn’t add up’. (Concert was seated, the journeys to and from both these events included no more than 5 mins walking – totally safe with my pain, but she didn't ask for any details before telling me it 'didn't add up'.)
- When I spoke about financial difficulties caused by having to get a taxi twice a day to get to work, she told me that “everyone has to spend a lot of money for their commute to work”. This annoyed me because I know that fuel is expensive, but it's not comparable to getting a taxi twice a day.
- She said “If you can't do the job, you can ask for medical leave”. I said that I would ask for medical leave if she wanted me to, but that I hadn't previously asked for it because that would mean my colleagues would have to take on all the work I do remotely, as well as my onsite duties. Hence why we agreed that I would work from home and take on additional duties. I don't think she has mentioned me taking medical leave since I pointed that out. (Just for the record, I am entitled to 12 weeks of medical leave on full pay, so this was not a money issue, I just really didn't want to screw over my colleagues.)
- In one of my emails to her and HR I mentioned my mental health situation – I have shite mental health (anxiety, depression, and ADHD) and told them about the guilt of letting down my colleagues, being an inconvenience, etc, making my mental health a lot worse. I spoke about it a few days later on a call with just my manager, who assured me that she didn’t want me to feel guilty about it, but then proceeded to tell me again and again that the situation was unfair to my other colleague onsite. I am well aware that it isn't fair, but honestly, I don't know what else I can do. I'm limited by my mobility and lack of funds. I've been helping my colleagues out as much as possible with work that I can do from home, as this is all I can really do. She knows this, and hasn't made any suggestions as to what I can do (other than things that are financially impossible or a risk to my physical health). It kind of felt like she was just telling me how unfair it is on my colleagues to make me feel even more shit.
- She told me that one of our systems had not gone down when it definitely had, at least for me, and that the virtual desktop we use is ‘not that bad’ when I mentioned about it being slow. The virtual desktop runs extremely slowly and crashes often, and these are issues that I have discussed many times with the IT team, and my manager, colleagues, and I had even joked about how bad the systems are in team meetings in the past.
- I was asked to provide an report of my daily activities and how long it took to do them all. She said that this was so that she could pass the information to the new company to whom we are being TUPE'd, but it felt like she just didn’t trust that I was doing my work properly because as far as I know, I was the only person to be asked to do this at this time.
- Regarding the above report, I wasn't sure that I was doing it correctly in terms of how much detail I was including, and I still haven't got feedback from my manager despite asking about five times. I understand that she's been busy, but I don't feel that this was unreasonable expectation. I only need a sentence or two to tell me if it's ok or if I need to make any changes.
- At the beginning of the whole debacle she requested I “send a justification” (her exact wording) to HR regarding my mobility issues and the need to work from home, which I did straight away. I explained the foot pain, and let them know about mine and my manager's agreement for me to work from home. In a call a week or so later, manager said that she had asked me to send a doctor’s note/sick note to HR, and asked, annoyedly, me why I hadn't done it. After some discussion it transpired that she thought a “justification” was a medical note, presumably as English is not her first language. This would never normally be an issue, miscommunication just happens sometimes when there's a language barrier, but in this situation I felt like I was reprimanded on the assumption that I was being non-compliant, when I had done exactly as asked. As soon as I realised that what she actually wanted was a doctors note, I got one. I hadn't previously got one because it didn't occur to me that I would need one since I wasn't taking any time off work, just working remotely with my manager's permission.
- One of the times she asked me to work on-site, she did it while we were on a Teams call with some of my other colleagues. She said something along the lines of “I know you have a doctor's note but could you please go onsite on [date]”. It made me so uncomfortable that she'd mentioned my medical issue while on a call with other colleagues, and she was ambiguous about it, leaving it open to my colleague's speculation as to what my medical issue could be. I also felt on the spot in front of my colleagues and agreed to it because I felt pressure to do so. However, I did say that I would be able to do it as long as there would be a permanent desk for me in the building I would be covering. This brings me on to the next point.
- She's recently started doing this really annoying thing; we'll be discussing something either just between the two of us, or with other colleagues, normally trying to find a solution for some coordination issue. On at least three occasions in the last month, I've come up with a solution, explained it in detail, and asked if she was happy for me to go ahead and do that. Following this, she's come back to me and said “Em_Beadle, please can do [tasks that I just suggested]”. I know this isn't a biggie, but it just makes me feel like she thinks I'm incompetent, when she's literally giving me instructions to carry out something that I suggested.
- This is the most recent one. I've mentioned several times over the last few months to my manager and HR about the lack of permanent desk in the building i've been having to work in, and the fact that it isn't DSE compliant. She's been 'working on it' for some time now (my company is a subcontractor, I work on the site of a bigger company, not it's not as simple as just getting me an office/desk there, it's a longer process). I told her that I understood that it takes time to sort these things out, but that I'm reluctant to risk my health by sitting at table, hunched over a laptop, which hurts my neck and back, whilst I have this foot pain which is most likely related to my posture and my hips. On Friday I asked if it had been sorted out yet, as she was expecting me to be on-site for 4 days, starting tomorrow. She said that it hasn't been sorted out and asked “is working in [building] really that bad?”. I told her that, yes, it is “that bad” and explained the reasons. She then asked me “what would you do if [colleague] wasn't able to be on-site either?” and I explained what I would do (basically use the same protocol that I do for the other two sites that I manage by myself remotely). She agreed to compromise, and that I could just work onsite tomorrow, and from home the rest of the week. I just felt like she was trying to challenge me and catch me out. She seemed almost disappointed that I had a solution to her hypothetical situation!
I don't know if this stuff can be considered bullying or not. Am I just being oversensitive? I think I want to write to HR about it, but honestly, I don't know what I actually expect them to do, or what I want to happen. I just don't feel comfortable working with her as my manager, and these issues have made me feel uncomfortable around my other colleagues as well. My other colleagues are all perfectly polite to me, but we mostly work remotely from each other (with the exception of the colleague who works on the same site as me), so I sometimes wonder if they talk about how much of an inconvenience I am behind my back.
I considered just taking the medical leave, even though it would mean my other colleagues have to do extra work, but at the end of the month I will be TUPE'd over to the new company and I won't have the same medical leave entitlement on my new contract, so it would be almost impossible to manage financially if I did that.
I have been applying to hundreds of other jobs, had several interviews, but not had any offers yet. I plan to leave this job as soon as I get an offer somewhere else, but it might be a while before that happens, so I would really appreciate any advice about what to do in the meantime.
Thank you so much to anyone who read this far!!