Hi, I'm not sure if this post belongs in this subreddit, but I have gotten great advice here just reading others posts, so I'm hoping to get an ear.
I work in an office setting, with no current direct supervisor. I have an acting supervisor, who this post is about. When I started she wasn't my acting supervisor, and we were friends (or so I thought). About two months into the job, since they hadn't hired a supervisor, they made her my acting supervisor. Last week, she comes over to my desk and says, “Hey I just want to keep it real because I don't like when people talk about me behind my back, but I told our director that I wouldn't hire you for the position permanently because you lack the authoritativeness needed for this position.” She played it off as “constructive criticism”, but since she already gave me a bad recommendation, I took it as being told on to our boss.
I emailed our director and explained how what she said didn't make sense. (My job is a support position, so I should not need any “authoritativeness”) He agreed, and reassured me that my work was fine, and as far as her “supervisor duties” went, she was simply a time card person. I don't really enjoy confrontations with people, so I decided it would probably be best if I kept to myself to avoid this situation happening again. Unfortunately, she started getting onto me about not speaking, to the point where today she came outside her office to have a huge verbal confrontation with me.
She came out of her office, telling me that she had instructed I speak to her in the morning and let her know when I was here, but I had not done so. I didn't speak because my heart was racing really fast (bad with confrontations), so I tried to take some time to compose myself. The entire time this was happening she was hounding me for answers, eventually threatening to write me up if I did not answer. When I finally got my heart under control, I told her that I did not see a reason to speak in the morning as she had seemed to realize when I was in the office just fine before last week. She picked up what I was hinting at and told me that not speaking in the morning was somehow affecting her job, as due to my lateness (I live 40 minutes away, so in the mornings I am usually 5 – 10 minutes late) she could not tell when I was in the office.
Since she was using my time against me, I told her that I would stay the time that I was late to make up for any lateness on my part. She quickly countered this, saying that would not be possible, and that she did not care if I was late because this was just a job to her. The rest of the conversation was just her trying to justify speaking to the boss about my performance, citing again that it was just “constructive criticism”. I told her that since she had threatened to write me up when I was simply trying to compose myself before speaking, that I thought it best to end our personal relationship, and keep it strictly professional and cordial.
Is there anything else I can do? It seems like if I just come in during the mornings and speak, that she will leave me alone (maybe?) but I can't help but feel being forced to say hello to someone isn't my job. I could try harder to come in on time so she couldn't use that against me, but I feel like she would just find another issue… this latest confrontation honestly has me stressed and it has left a bad taste in my mouth.