My manager always speaks in very indirect terms. I’ve been at my job for 10 months now and never once have I heard direct feedback. I’ve had to read between the lines of what she meant or would rather I do.
She always tells stories of “oh this employee did blah blah blah and eeek I feel so bad I have to go confront them that we don’t do things that way!! Ugh I feel so bad I hate being the bad guy wish me luck!!!” But it would be something I did last week or something.
Yesterday we got an email to remind us not to be on our phones… my job is SO slow. Im the only one on shift, I see my manager like once a month when she visits my location. I see maybe 10 customers in a whole 8 hour shift, so yes I’m on my phone. I put it away before the customer ever comes to the door but maybe got caught by surprise like once last week. Then later that day she told me a story of how her boss saw her employees doing stuff they’re not supposed to on a camera and when she went to walk up to talk to her own boss oh no she spilt coffee on her boss!!! And the whole story was then changed to how bad she felt for spilling coffee on her boss. As if that happened, she was just trying to tell me people watch me on the cameras I guess?
Then like 20 minutes later she says the other manager quit, and I said oh no that’s a lot of extra work on you huh? And she said “it’s not bad except when my employees don’t do their part” and then she saw my confused face and said “oh calling in sick is inevitable I’m just talking about how I wish the ones who didn’t actually care to do their jobs right would just quit and find a job better suited for them” and I was like uhuh okay. Then wondering if she’s talking about me.
My job is really simple but can include a lot of physical labor, and with a chronic illness I can admit I take short cuts as to not push myself into a flare. Do you think her comment was a warning that they’re thinking of firing me or was she actually talking about other people? It’s hard to read her because she talks so passive aggressively I’m always left confused about what we’re actually talking about. She’s very indirect with feedback because she always acts like she’s talking about someone else.