This is my second “real” professional job after graduating. I actually enjoy my job (engaging work, autonomy, flexible, payment aligns with market), but my boss is very manipulative to me despite me being the most senior/highest ranked person in my small department (4 years at the company).
She isn't the same person who hired me too, so I think that might play a role (pride for the people she did hire) into this. Although, she became my boss a year after I stated anyway. Here are some recent things that have rubbed me the wrong way (feel free to call me out if I am being too sensitive).
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Praises my male coworkers who she hired directly for completing basic tasks, but reprimands me in front of them for any minor mistake. Will excuse my male coworkers when they make mistakes or exhibit bad habits, but will drill into me if I were to do something similar. I've noticed when she first started at the company she would praise my work in a similar way and over the years the positive feedback and encouragement progressively declined.
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I am given the largest workload in my department and get blamed for not meeting deadlines, despite my boss being aware of everything I am taking on. She will even say of x coworker does such a good job managing a project knowing I am the one who is given the most work. I feel like if I was given the same amount of work then I too could focus on the snowballing deadlines. This also carries over to how are days look, mine is full of meetings while still being given multiple projects/tasks at once, where my male coworkers only have 1/2 (or less going on). My boss supports them taking personal time off/leaving early/studying for certifications, but I struggle to find time to even organize my files/emails given the amount of work I am expected to complete.
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Even when I do meet deadlines, the work is never good enough and my boss always has some gripe about the way something was performed. While I appreciate the little to no direction my boss gives me, it's very irritating when I keep her updated (we meet almost daily) on my tasks and next steps, then she turns around and uses it against me later on. Why didn't you do x, y, z thing?? How did you miss this? Why didn't you do this instead? Moving targets. Lately she has been setting up checkpoint meetings with me for every single milestone (this is fine), but when she asks about timing to complete something she will reduce it in half. I try to push back and she minimizes it saying x,y,z thing is so easy and just get it done, etc. Then will turn around when I don't make that date to say we need to be more realistic…!!
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She can be very two faced, she is very nice to other leaders in the company in person, but then will speak poorly about them to me behind their back. This is usually a personal attack (she's even made fun of one for a medical condition and subtly jokes about one being gay) or she will tell me confidential things they tell her. She also does this with my coworkers (the ones she supposedly thinks are so amazing) when they make mistakes or make certain personal life choices. I am sure she does the same to me with them.
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I find when she isn't pretending to be my friend she will quickly get into a mood and be very rude to me. She will make passive remarks like did you even get to this thing yet? Or she will have a combative tone with me and this even carries into meetings with other employees. It really makes me feel unsupported and almost like she is not in my corner. I'm starting to feel like I constantly need to have a justification for her on any little thing. I have even started screenshotting my conversations to have proof that certain things happened in case she tries to corner me.
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I get this feeling that other employees and leaders in the company think highly of me (my boss has actually informed me of feedback numerous times), but for whatever reason my own boss doesn't see it that way and is pushing me away.