I had this very expressive unprofessional boss I was working for and he made it his mission to constantly act rude / shady / dismissive towards me, leave me out of functions with employees, communicate with other managers and never myself (I’m a manager,) and would find out everything second hand.
He would openly talk badly about me in front of employees who would tell me, he was inviting all members of management out for drinks after work / in front of me while it was clear I was never invited.
He came in hungover all the time and was just overall a very catty miserable person.
He apologized and wanted to start over, I agreed because I’m not like looking to get ‘vengeance’ I just want to come to work without feeling like I’m walking on egg shells.
The district leader who did our mediation confirmed he broke conduct via his actions, despite that he’s 36 and knows better than being a workplace bully I let it go on good faith that he would get his shit together.
Shortly after this I was able to transfer to a new store and get away from him.
Fast forward a few months and 2 people who transferred to his store have reached out to me expressing that they’re being bullied, he’s made one of them cry, he’s super shady/rude/talks down to them, etc, and they were asking me for advice.
So that confirms the entire mediation was BS. I found out that he’s been reported to HR by 3 other people within the company for similar things, and yet he just received a promotion to ‘area leader,’ and will now be over all the stores in my district.
He has been area leader for 3 days and has already emailed me 3x to micro manage something that he doesn’t really actually need to be reaching out to us over, and today I just blocked his work email because even seeing his name is triggering.
My question is, how should I go about handling this situation? He’s coming for a store visit in 2 weeks and I literally don’t want to even be in the same room as him much less be fake with him.
Any advice?