I’m looking for serious advice about how to detach from how angry I feel about my job and how resentful I‘ve become. At face value, I make pretty decent money, I’m mostly left alone, and my workload is manageable. I’m out the door at 5 PM.
However, I absolutely hate the culture that I work in. It’s very ”butts in seats” so there’s zero flexibility, not even to get up and grab a coffee from the cafeteria.
Recently an email was sent around, scolding all of us because one of my coworkers, who is an excellent worker, left 15 minutes early one day. They had worked seeing clients over the weekend so they left 15 minutes early during the week. This apparently was so offensive to the head of our department that they sent out an email to everyone saying that no one should be leaving even five minutes early and that ”our generosity was being taken advantage of”
At our meeting this year to open our new fiscal year, the head of our department said we had a record-breaking year financially. In her next sentence, she said she didn’t like that people use the remote days that they’ve been given and that she expected to see more in office presence. She also went on some rant about how she expected the highest of standards from all of us and didn’t want to see anyone not meeting that standard. All of my colleagues are great people who work extremely hard so it bothers me to be given speeches like this.
I also have a serious issue with my supervisor. I can’t even get into every single thing about her, but she gets highly emotional and extremely nasty when she is upset. I don’t know that I’ve ever actually made a genuine mistake when she’s come flying into my office in a total rage. If I had made a mistake, I would obviously admit to it, but usually it’s something that she’s messed up that she’s turning to blame on me.
She is extremely heartless— for example she is constantly hassling my coworker when she occasionally needs to take days off for her kids being sick or having off from school. My coworker isn’t asking for any extra flexibility. She’s just taking PTO that she’s earned. However, my supervisor will ask why her husband can’t just take care of the kids.
Recently, my supervisor made us do an eight hour long retreat for just my small team. It was awful, but in it, my coworker, the same one with the kids, said she felt the working environment could be improved if there could be some understanding occasionally a colleague was going through a hard time outside of work. My supervisor literally said “If you have an issue, take a day off and deal with it and come back when you’re ready to get back to work. Don’t bring your personal issues into work.”
I recently had a death in the family and it has been hard on me as it was someone. I was very close with. I told my boss I had to take off for the funeral. The next day she came in and saw me and said “I’m gonna come to your office.“ I thought it was going to be to at least say “I’m sorry“ or “how are you doing?” Instead without even asking how I was she launched into diatribe about how she wasn’t happy with something I had recently worked on.
Then in our team meeting, she was like “so what’s new everyone?” And then turned to me and said “I guess what’s new is that you’re taking vacation!” She was super annoyed and snippy with me all day and I’m not sure if it’s because I was taking the day off for a funeral.
I just need to find a way to detach and not get so angry by this behavior. I need to obviously keep working and keep my job but it’s leaking into my personal life. I come home angry and bitter. I also feel anxious all the time when I think about work.
The thing is my job is not actually that hard so I know I need to just be patient and calm if I can. Has anyone else ever dealt with this just a very petty, passive aggressive workplace that you’re just kept your head down and did your job and survived?