So a lot has happened at my job all at once and now I have a long weekend to kinda catch up/mentally cover.
I work at a law firm and my boss is usually pretty great in that she complains that no one works as much as she does, but then showers us with gifts and bonuses. My team and I have figured that it's just how she shows affection/gratitude, which tbh is a pretty great way to show affection/gratitude.
I work as a “legal writer” where I basically write demand letters, make PowerPoints for mediation and trial, make brochures that go along with the letters and PowerPoints, and a lot of other stuff the attorneys and paralegals don't wanna do. My boss is like an aggressive Leslie Know in that she wants everything we do to be extremely thorough and detailed. It's a great job for people in law school or just out of it. I don't want to work in the legal field, I want to be a writer, but it's a good job to support myself until I can make my delusional dreams come true.
Well my position has me in this weird place where I have a manager as a legal writer, and a paralegal that was basically my manager for the legal team I'm on…until that paralegal got fired and now my manager has become my paralegal.
She is absolutely insane. I have long rants on reddit about her, seeking advice. I have gotten her in trouble multiple times for cornering me in private to lecture me on how worthless I am, and degrading me in front of other coworkers because our boss likes my PowerPoints and not hers. She has repeatedly tried to redesign the entire American legal system in our office so that she can cope with the fact that she went from a school principal to an entry level legal writer. I don't know the full details of how that happened, but judging from the amount of times her story changes and how her behavior changes after she talks about it, it was something bad.
On top of that, I got hit with some really rough news that I'm a terrible writer and a different paralegal told my manager that I am so bad at my job that he doesn't have time to give me feedback. I tried to read the corrections he would make to my work, but there really weren't that many corrections. Manager lady told me its because he makes the changes he needs to make my work serviceable in court and at mediations.
Despite all this mess I've been hit with today, I haven't been fired yet and my one saving grace is apparent'y I make a mean PowerPoint. However, that gets cut to bits by the other legal writers. I was forced to give a formal lesson, but they completely rejected everything I would try to tell them but their reasons as to why they do better at letters and why I do better at PowerPoints is they are more analytical, more logical, and were trained in technical writing and I have a degree in creative writing. Which I guess tracks.
Here are my questions. I hate everything, and I refuse to quit. I am tired of this toxic, confusing mess that I find myself in. How do I be the worst? I have work friends, and I like them a lot. But even they sometimes wonder why I have my job, and that hurts. I would ideally like to avoid getting fired, but I want to be a drain on my enemies/the people that praise me to my face and then have my manager tear me to pieces. Most of all, I want to be a terror to my paralegal without getting fired.
I have this issue, though, where I STRUGGLE with confrontation, especially at work. I have a lot of workplace trauma, and I'm terrified of getting fired. It's an anxiety I'm working on, but I am just barely able to afford therapy.
Any advice on how I can work my way up to being good at my job while also being the worst person I possibly can at work?
TLDR; my psychotic manager is also now my paralegal. She has tormented me for months now, and I am sick of being scared of being a bad person at work. I have had the misfortune of working with horrible people that keep their jobs no matter what they do. I specifically want to drain the life out of THOSE people. Any advice on how to do that?