Could a bad boss be more stressful than war?

Lizzy - I can identify. I recently left a job that I loved because I could not stand to deal with my Dept Manager & her own set of rules any longer. When the co 1st hired her & she was moved to our dept, we were informed that she was coming in as a co-worker (we needed the assistance as we were all working 12-14 hour days). We were a small group of 10 & immediately tried to welcome her & bring her up to speed with what we do. She rebuffed any friendly overtures & acted like she knew more about what we did than our entire dept combined. We ended up losing 12 major law firms that we worked with in light of her behavior. Unfortunately, her direct boss chalked it up to "growing pains" & not as a result of her antics.
It wasn't long after that that she was made our dept head. The office atmosphere changed immediately from fast-paced & friendly to tense & stressful. Other than "managing", she did not pick up any of our case load, but she did cut overtime to 1 hour only each day (we were still expected to maintain the same number of closed files each week, however, & had to produce a Daily Mgmt Report for her. Talk about a waste of time & paper! Each of us spent the last 30 minutes of every work day preparing one for her that we could NOT email. We had to print them out & personally hand them in. She would peruse them (30 seconds at the most) & then crumple them up & throw them away. In addition, she re-organized our case load so that each of us were dealing with a new group of clients. Not necessarily a bad idea except that each of us had built up our own relationships with these individuals. At least 40% of our client base made complaints to higher mgmt. A month later she changed everything back - a good idea in light of the complaints, but we lost a lot of ground in the meantime while trying to build new connections & accomplish what we needed to do.
Unfortunately, things did not stop there. She, too, implemented a cell-free zone - while leaving her's on prominent display in the center of her desk. She spent at least 3 hours of each work day sexting her boyfriend. We were not even allowed to use cells at lunch unless we left the building (several of us grabbed lunch at our desk in light of the demands of the office.) Btw...leaving the building to take a call was not an option as it took 10 minutes in any direction to exit the building. When she was made mgr, she changed the 1 hour lunch to 2 15 minute breaks and a 30 minute lunch (she was a smoker). My entire dept was females & the majority mothers who would use the 1 hour lunch to run home & put the crockpot on or pick up prescriptions for their children, etc, while us non-mothers stayed behind & took care of answering any calls that came in (as we were friendly, it was a system that worked for all of us.) Her new lunch implementation changed all of that.
Beyond poor managing was her micro-managing. Emailing & responding to clients was a large part of our day. She decided that she needed to read each of the emails that we sent before we sent them. Yes, you can imagine how much wasted time occurred by emailing her a copy of every email we sent for her to review & then sending back an "okay" before we could send it. We are not talking about an office of high school drop-outs. All of my former team had at least an Associates degree, our manager included. I myself have 2 BAs & am working on my Master's so I do acknowledge that I was a bit more frustrated with that new rule. In addition, she had our tech team put effort into a weekly "dump" of our emails - to see if we were sending any personal emails (no one in the co sent personal emails via company email!) & to double-ck that none of us were sending any client emails without going through her. Talk about paranoid!! In addition, all of our phone calls were recorded. Not for the company's protection - but so she could check our phone calls as well. We went to upper mgmt regarding her behavior. Nothing was done.
While in the office 1 day, she publicly humiliated (we also had 2 clients visiting our office at that time) a co-worker by telling her that she used the wrong word choice and that she noticed it in an email as well and that she was also misspelling the word. Her behavior was an embarrassment to the entire office - not just for the obvious, but because her vocabulary precluded the word my co-worker had used. The co-worker in question ended up bringing the email to me & after our guests left, I insisted on a meeting with my dept mgr. She denied her behavior (with a roomful that witnessed it) & insisted that we were not as educated as we thought we were. Yes, she went there - all because she was not familiar with the word! I insisted on a meeting with her, upper mgmt, & HR because of her poor attitude. She was chastised & had to go through a 2 week workshop about tolerance & employee treatment.
To make a long story short, it wasn't long after that a similar situation arose & she was chastised again. In the meantime, I had had my resume out & quit as soon as I found another job. Four employees followed shortly after my exit. I keep in occasional contact with my old co-workers & have since learned that she (my former dept mgr) was severely reprimanded again by upper mgmt - she violated HIPAA privacy laws by demanding to see the bloodtest results of 1 of her employees who had been off work & ill. What boggles my mind is that the company still has her as an employee, let alone a manager!!

Wow, wow, wow! How does behavior like this continue to be allowed?!? How many more clients would your company have had to lose before doing something about this tyrant? I want to share this story (anonymously of course) with our readers, so look out for it in a future post. Thanks for sharing and I hope after reading your story Lizzy realizes she's not alone when it comes to dealing with really bad bosses.

There has to be some type of answer to this problem. Someone needs to rewrite the law on what goes on in the workplace, whether it is harrassment or bullying. Where I work, we encounter harrassment and bullying by the office manager. This office manager is the savior of the world and we are nothing. There are two sets of rules the office employees must follow one for her and the other for us. No personel phone calls only at lunch time and no cell phone use during the day. But it is ok for this office manager to receive personal phone calls during the course of the work day and her cell phone goes off (personal calls) and she leaves the office the speak to whoever and does not come back to work for 1/2 hr later. In my review I was reminded that personal calls were not allowed and I told the office manager that when doctors calls I must speak to them, it's when they are available for me to talk to them not when I'm available. My husband is very sick and I need to discuss things with them. You speak to doctors when they are available not when you are available. She told me that the doctors should call my husband and not me. But it is ok for the office managers doctors to call about her, her husband, siser-in-law, etc. I can go on and on but I won't. I need some type of help regarding this situation. Can u help me?

Wow Lizzy, sounds like you're in a horrible environment. My first suggestion would be to talk to someone in HR, if your office even has an HR department. Unfortunately, even if it does, sometimes HR is not much better than management. As a temporary measure, if you have access to text message or instant messaging throughout the day, is it possible to communicate with your husband's doctors that way, at least until you can talk to someone in HR?

I would also suggest that you put your request to use the cell phone for medical reasons in writing to your managers and ask them to respond to your request in writing. I would suggest contacting the EEOC, but as far as I can tell, your bosses aren't breaking any laws - they're major jerks, but fortunately for them, that's not illegal.

We're also all too familiar with bosses having their own set of rules while enforcing a second set for employees. The economy is tough, and with all that's going on in your personal life now is probably the worst time for you to even think about finding a new job, especially if your husband is on your health insurance, but I'm afraid that eventually that's what you're going to have to do.

Please keep us updated on your progress and hang in there!