I (F27) work at a startup with just 20 people, so no HR.
I work here for about half a year and I’m heading one of the departments. This situation happened with another head of department that was just hired a month back, “Susan” (F, late 50s).
She started really strong and I admired her confidence and even offered to help with some of her projects.
All went well before I realized that I’m doing half of her work, and she’s not even asking for help, she’s demanding things from me, even though she’s not my boss, but my peer.
When I started to get blocked on things last week, I contacted both Susan and the CEO (M40s) in the same thread, but they didn’t get back to me. I followed up earlier this week, but I felt like Susan just got irritated so she started sending me some passive aggressive messages demanding updates.
When I pointed out that I shared the updates before and that I was waiting for some things from her, she still tried to brush it off without addressing my questions.
Today we had a video call with the CEO, and while she was trying to take credit for some things I’ve done, I started bringing up details she wasn’t aware of, because she was not doing that work.
When the CEO mentioned the items I was blocked on, Susan literally started screaming that she will send it to me and she never wants to “hear about that damn thing again”.
I was taken aback. When I tried to explain that I need us to communicate better, she just kept interrupting me saying that we’re a team and I can’t bring up the things from the past. Just gaslighting.
And then she addressed the CEO saying something about how tired she is of dealing with this kind of things.
He smiled and nodded! He was smiling through the whole thing!!!
At first, I thought he was just nervous, but in the end I realized that he was finding it almost entertaining.
I felt so humiliated and disrespected. I’ve been working for up to 14 hours a day long with weekends for almost a month now (an no extra pay), and I’m just so upset.
No one even apologized.
What do I do now? I can’t even report it to anyone. And I don’t want to look like a crybaby.
I’ve been working hard to get my career and I don’t want to ruin my reputation over this.
They pay good money, and I need it. I just don’t think I have any energy for the job search now.