Is this normal? I've worked for 13 years, different bosses and management styles. This is a new job and I live in NY. It's been less than 2 months.
My current/new manager (I've been here for less than 2 months) tells me he is very approachable for questions but when I ask a question, he either: 1) Scoffs 2)grumbles and groans 3) sighs and clicks his tongue. I asked a simple question regarding a process and he grilled me for 5 minutes saying “what do you think? No seriously. Tell me what's in your head? Why would you think that? No! Of course not.”
So I kind of stopped reaching out as much. I still do, don't get me wrong, but sometimes he's unavailable as well so one meeting, the questions just built up and he scolded me. He looked at me and said “Seriously. I'm very serious about this. Why did you wait (2 hours) to ask me this instead of via chat? This is a huge problem. You don't reach out (he's cancelled every 1:1 wish me aside from the first) and it's becoming counterproductive.”
I'm just…afraid of asking him questions because it's like every time I do, it feels like I'm defending a thesis or something.
Every few days, he reminds me that it's a luxury to have this free time (what free time?) to review my notes like I've been able to. He reminds me every few days that this training that he's providing me is a luxury and that I need to be more grateful for it. That I need to be thankful to have this from him because he and others never got this.
I also kept pushing back on a task because he has so far kept pushing back the training for it and then turning around and asking why it's still outstanding and I have to remind him that “hey man…you have yet to train me on it, remember?”
I don't know. I've been in sink or swim situations before. I understand I'm lucky to trained when you compare my past jobs to this. It's also a senior accountant position but nobody ever asked me if I've ever performed thus particular function before. They just assumed I knew and when he realized I've never performed it before, I thought he was going to fire me on the spot. It never came up before on interviews or anything.
I'm just. Struggling so hard. I've had bad bosses before. I've had toxic bosses before. I'm trying to please my new boss so hard but nothing is working and he honestly scares me a little.
I have been trained for about a month and half and expected to fully take over all pieces of this select functions by early November. I've been told that he understands there's a learning curve and that he'll be there for me but then he turns around and tells me that I need to fully understand everything by November 1st and perform without any errors. Minor errors like discovering something needs a reclass is okay. But everything else needs to be perfect because I'm wasting his time to review my work.
When it comes to reviewing my work, he doesn't believe I do things correctly and once I reported to him that I found why there's a variance in the report I was preparing. Since I was new, if he could please just do a 5 minute review with me. He ended up staying an hour in this meeting, both of us 45 minutes OT, only to come to the exact conclusion that I did and I was so amused by this that I wasn't even angry anymore.
So, am I just too sensitive for this management style? Or is something funky going on and I'm oblivious to the flags?