Been in my admin assistant role for around 1.5 years. It’s salaried, my boss was chill, if I was 5 minutes late she didn’t mind, she didn’t monitor my breaks, if all the work got done she’d let us leave half hour etc as there’s no point just sitting around. I respected her and would arrive on time, be respectful with my breaks, always got my work done and made sure my workload was complete before taking breaks.
My boss has moved on and have got a new one, already I need to report to them frequently throughout the day. All I do is monitor an email inbox, it’s super chill and I’m fairly rewarded with minimum wage, I suffer anxiety so I’m fine with the lower pay for a more relaxed environment. Recently I’ve been asked to message her when I arrive, leave work, go on breaks return etc. I’ll do it but I find it really stressful, for my breaks I meditate or walk to ease my mind, now I’m just freaking out the whole time not wanting to be late. They’ve told me it’s because they need to know when I’m not at my desk in case they need me, fair enough, I told them I’ll take set breaks so they know when to not expect me, they said to still message so I highly presume it’s to time me. I should note she speaks to me very kindly and has always been nice to me, just this management style feels a bit much to me.
Anyway I haven’t had a manager like this before, maybe I’ve been lucky and this is the norm? At this point now it’s a close to minimum wage job that stresses me, before it was a low wage job but I felt happy