Thread: passive aggressive management

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (sprankified @ Mar 1 2009, 01:14 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}></div>

and on a related subject, being called the black sheep out of my 4 other coworkers really rubs me wrong. i&#39;m already the black sheep in my own fucking family, and for some reason i keep thinking about the vacations i&#39;m NOT invited on, where my brother is, and the relationship i have with my dad, which is so superficial and stupid. and it&#39;s all turning into this big ball of stress just under my right shoulder and i&#39;m getting depressed. what the fuck. i&#39;m not a bad person, i try really hard, and for some reason i find myself in these stupid situations where i just want to lay on my couch and cry. so stupid. i&#39;m totally pmsing.[/b]

oh sprank i feel so bad for you! you poor bugger that sounds really gay. i really, really hate it when managers do this. when i started working i just thought that all you had to do was be pleasant and work hard and everyone would like you, but this is obviously not the case. what really got to me was the fact that i couldn&#39;t pick what i was doing wrong, i worked myself into a state trying to figure out what i could improve. eventually i realised that she hated me & nothing i could do would change that. since then i&#39;ve just kept my head down and tried not to make any ripples.

are you going to stop working there when you graduate in May? or what will you do? you could try focusing on the fact that you only have a couple of months left and get as much out of it as you can. what i also like to do is think about the things that my manager does that really suck (in regards to her people management) and think about how i won&#39;t do them when i&#39;m a manager, and how much better i&#39;m going to be than her. i mean, if you do that, does it help? if you imagine yourself in her shoes and think about how you&#39;ll treat your staff equally, and won&#39;t hate on someone in cowardly ways and if you have a problem with them you sit down and talk to them about it like a real boss.

i also feel like i never really fit in anywhere, i think it&#39;s because i&#39;m a middle child or something. this upsets me sometimes and i try to overcome it by spending more time on my own, enjoying my own company. you should really understand though that it is not you&#39;re fault that you feel like &#39;the black sheep&#39; at work. that is a big fuck up on your managers part - her job is to encourage you all to work as a team, and ostracising you is not going to make that happen. she&#39;s supposed to do that because she&#39;s the manager...to me it seems like she&#39;s trying to make you feel shit for some petty reason. if you were actually doing anything wrong, she would have a reason to talk to you about it. but because you&#39;re only taking time off because you&#39;re allowed to and you have a life, she&#39;s going to punish you in ways that aren&#39;t really traceable to her. i don&#39;t know if you can fix it, i doubt that talking to her about it will change it. maybe she&#39;s jealous because you&#39;re so good at you&#39;re job and she&#39;s worry you&#39;ll show her up - are you better than her? apart from her staff management skills is she&#39; good at her job? could you do her job, do you reckon? if yes, she probably knows that and is trying to do whatever she can to make you leave.

like i said, it seems to me all you can really do it put your head down and your bum up and try to not take it personally. that would be really hard, though, in the kind of role that you&#39;re in (esp when she takes away naming rights). is there another manager you can talk to? or is there somewhere else you can work? or maybe you can just keep working away and show her that she isn&#39;t getting to you, and eventually she&#39;ll get over it. are you sure you can trust your co-workers? i would be a bit dubious, saying things like "you&#39;re the black sheep because you take leave" sounds a bit smarmy.

when i&#39;m at work, i pretend i&#39;m a robot. i don&#39;t do anything to annoy my manager or my asshole coworker, but i also don&#39;t joke around or socialise with them. i find that helps.

What Jet said. Bang on target.

thanks, jet. it seems i&#39;ve had so many good examples of baaad management. i&#39;ve dealt with this sort of stuff before with my job at the old folks home. and the only positive thing to do is think about how i will do things differently, like you said.
i wonder if it is that she knows i&#39;d do a better job than her- i think she&#39;s burnt out on the work. she&#39;s in her 60s and doesn&#39;t put in half the effort for the organization that i do. i asked if i could attend a board meeting almost a year ago, so i could gain a better understanding of the way a not for profit business is run- and she said she&#39;d ask the board- which she never did. there&#39;s this weird form of animosity with people in charitable situations where it&#39;s like "they can&#39;t care more than i do, that makes me look bad" kinda vibe.

i dunno. my brother&#39;s advice: "the best way to deal with passive agressive people is to confront them head on and ask why they&#39;re mad"- which may be true with, say, family members or friends- but not somebody who holds any sort of power over you. i think that could turn out very badly.
it is totally petty and retarded and frustrating.

this sort of thing is exactly why i came back to school, it&#39;s exactly WHY i&#39;m a *student*... because these other farts in their cushy office chairs have no idea how to efficiently manage a facility.

i trust what my coworker said. the boss didn&#39;t call me the black sheep or anything- that was just how my coworker summed it up in her own view. it just parallels the shit i deal with with my father, where it&#39;s almost as though if i&#39;m happy doing something i want to do, it&#39;s not good enough if i&#39;m not doing what *he* thinks i should be doing. fucker hardly spoke to me when i was a cna because i wasn&#39;t trying to get my bachelors- even tho i was doing something great, working hard, supporting myself.... and now since i&#39;m graduating, he&#39;s all about calling me every day- as long as i talk about how great excel pivot tables are, and how i can&#39;t wait to be in pharm sales. god help me if i talk about teaching my dog a new trick or how my bf helped me study.

whatever, that&#39;s neither here nor there. i guess i&#39;m just going to continue doing what i&#39;m doing, since it&#39;s the best i can do... some of the best advice i recently recieved was about letting go of the idea that i can control what other people do/say/feel- and only control how i react. which is so much easier said than done.


oh and as for the job itself- i go out of my way to keep working there. i could totally have an easier job that pays more- i&#39;m allotted a campus job thru the state program. it would be easier to get to, easier on my body, my emotions, etc... but i love the work i do for the humane society, i don&#39;t mind taking a bus to get there, or that i get paid dick. i dunno when i&#39;ll leave. i&#39;m trying to find work in this area and also up by my family, but i haven&#39;t heard anything yet. so my entire life is up in the air until someone hires me for the degree i&#39;ve earned. i think if i were to be hired for a 9-5 desk job in this area, i&#39;d stay at the kennel for saturdays or something. maybe petition the board to see if i can be a board member. who knows. the job i have there gives me a feeling of fulfillment, like i&#39;m doing something meaningful. it&#39;s very important to me. which is exactly why this petty thing hurts the way it does. blaaahhh.