Desperate for some advice - workplace problem brewing

Post Reply New Topic

Hi guys

I really need some help or advice as right now I am just feeling so confused, hurt and angry about the turn of events that is happening to me. Sorry this might be a bit long.

I have been doing my job for the past 3 years and have always been highly conscientious, dedicated, hard working, popular and received praise from bosses about my standard of work on repeated occasions including in very recent weeks.

There has been 1 colleague in my team of 4 who has always been a bit problematic in many ways - nitpicking, undermining, etc and I've found his approach difficult and upsetting quite a few times (and so have many other people) but on the whole have just tried to let it wash over me as if my bosses were happy with me and I knew in myself I was doing a good job - his antics were largely inconsequential to me and I know he is just a toxic individual who likes to mess up others for his own enjoyment.

In my private life I have had extreme challenges and it kind of reached a head last year when unfortunately I had 2 nervous breakdowns a,nd needed some time off work. (some of it was stress due to work as I was having problems managing certain things which I know now is due to my autism). Both times I had full documented medical evidence for my managers, details of new medication and was in communication with work for updates and well being meetings and also complied fully with their request for me to be seen by occupational health - who ruled me fully able to come back to my duties with no question of my capability, when I felt ready. I came back in January and worked my way up to full time again by March, once again giving it my all. At the same time of this I made my employer aware that I was undergoing assessment/diagnosis for suspected Autism (which finally was putting all of my problems under an umbrella of understanding).

I was formally diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder on Feb 10th of this year and provided my work with a written letter stating this and a copy of the page of the report that the specialist had signed. From this I was able to ask for a couple of minor accommodations to my working life which would help enormously to reduce some of the stress that had led me to have the breakdowns beforehand. I also asked tor a meeting with my colleagues to help them to understand some of my triggers in the workplace. I was promised this meeting but it never happened. I carried on doing as best as I could anyway and things seemed to be going quite well apart from a minor sense of feeling like the other team members were feeling like I was being given preferential treatment as there were some comments made. I asked my boss if everything was OK and he said that none of my collegues had a bad word to say about me and the managers were very happy with me and proud of me coming so far since I had been so ill etc.

but the other day I was accidentally sent an email from my boss with an email from my colleague (the one I had problems with) underneath it which made very personal and offensive comments about me. I was so upset and shocked I was shaking for an hour at work, lost the plot, had to go and cry in the toilets and was almost physically sick. The things said were so unfair and untrue and also the fact that my boss had just told me nobody was saying anything bad about me made it all the worse. My collegue later that day left his email account open on our shared computer and curiousity got the better of me so I read a few in his sent box. Again, horrible and nasty personal emails being sent to the boss with subject headings suggesting issues with my capability. this made me think suddenly that the boss has been ASKING this colleague to find issues with me possibly for some sort of capability dossier? I quickily took photos of a couple of the emails on the screen.

I am hurt and confused on so many levels. WHy is he sending emails like this TO OUR BOSS? has our boss asked him to? if so why? why am i being talked about negativley if they are happy with me? why have they said to my face nothing is being said about me when i saw at least 3 emails from last week about me - and i highly imagine MANY more that i didnt have time to see. i guess it is all stemming from the other team members not being happy with my accomodations but those were granted to me based on my disability and really isn't my fault.

i belong to a union and maybe should talk to them about this next week? i know i shouldnt have snooped but that is the least of my worries due to what i saw.
i don't think i can trust anyone in my team or managers now so will say very little until i am sure where i stand with this. it may be considered discrimination. but i am just so upset and my conditon is so antagnosed by things like this especially secondary depression and anxiety and cannot sleep or eat worrying about it. my family are so upset for me as everyone who knows me knows my job is my sense of self esteem (almost the only thing that gets me to leave the house) and i thought my bosses were caring and even friends but this has been happening the whole time?

Hi, I'm going to include a second posting where I include some strategy, but first and foremost personally . . .

Please continue to spend time with and engage with your family as it's growthful.  And also be open to their problems and issues even during this very difficult time for yourself.

And please be open to other worthwhile activities in addition to work.  For example, I use good, valid sources like CDC and WHO and contribute to wikipedia articles on health.  Now, at times it's an exercise in frustration because I really think many of my fellow wikipedians are teenagers, and people generally take the view, the formality of the writing trumps everything, even accuracy and breadth of coverage.  All the same, I feel I've done some good work which I'm proud of.

I've tried to get involved in peace activism, often disorganized and hierarchical.  With volunteer work, they cherry-pick and seem to look for 'normalist' and 'perfect' people.  It's as hard as starting a business, or as much as finding a niche.

My internist once told me that at least some studies have shown that depressed persons are actually more realist than non-depressed persons.  Almost as if we need an optimism bias to keep making one unlikely attempt after another, in hopes that one will come in.

Please continue to look for good reasons to get out of the house.

Your boss may not understand autism, that it's sensory issues, that it's patchy skills, but people on the Spectrum can accomplish a whole lot with a little help along the way.

He may half-believe this negative stuff this other guy is saying or he may not know how to handle a situation where someone is seemingly making some relevant complaints.  I mean, this other guy sounds like a first-rate office saboteur.  He really does.

Generally, underplay the hand with your boss.

And maybe play a little bit of Mr. Scott from Star Trek, where he would over-estimate the time and difficult and then get a reputation as a miracle worker.  Just don't over do this.  Be middle of the road, but do give them a chance to appreciate the good work you do.

Maybe casually and nonchalantly think of the five best things you've done in the last six months.  And maybe be prepared to casually mention numbers three and four, thereby keeping some aces in your hand.

Some strategy suggestions . . . 

Generally I think you want to take the approach of a politician under siege in a scandal, and have the public front of continuing with other positives as if you aren't particularly bothered by it.  And the merits of the scandal, how serious it actually is, have relatively little to do with how it's perceived.  For example, look at New Jersey governor Chris Christy continuing on in spite of 'bridge-gate.'

Okay, your boss may take the approach, Mr. Nitpicker is not very accurate but once he brings up a problem, he (your boss) is kind of duty-bound to hear it out.  Now, I'd go with your poker read that this guy is a saboteur and if he's successful at putting on a different front to your boss and to other people in positions of authority, you may well end up losing.

But---and this is important---even in self-defense, you risk adding weight to his case. If you overdo and make too big a deal. Shouldn't be this way, but probably is.

So, maybe something like this, Monday mid-morning try to talk to your boss and say something like, 'Yes, I did get this email you sent me.  And yeah, he can be kind of a negative individual . . . '

And if this conversation is a grand total of 2 minutes, that's maybe ideal.  3 or 4 minutes is okay.  Anything more than that risks getting into a bunch of other issues.

It is serious.  And these kind of sub rosa workplace attacks can really bother me and rattle me.  But you kind of want a public front that you're not all that bothered.

And please realize, he may have left his email open on purpose.  One, to rub your nose in it.  Two, to have something specific to 'bust' you on.

Raf 19, where you say snooping is the least of your worries, that's the one area where I might disagree with you. Humans in general are better at the small rules than the big goals of trying to be constructive and a builder. This is the one thing that might come back to bite you in the butt.

When you say screen shoots, I don't know if that's a physical copy or a picture on a computer. Without panicking, I'd keep either one away from work.

And it's unnecessary. Even if you decide to go formal with the union rep, the email sent to you accidentally provides plenty of material for discussion.

thanks so much for these replies, i am so appreciative of the valuable input and have taken all of the points made on board.

i am keen not to charge in to this with emotional feelings and rather yes, play it out cooly and calmly and collect all the evidence for my hand before making any formal moves, which then to them, will be a surprise. i am also keen to not let them know how upset i am etc or how much i am on their trail, so not to give them any scope to make up a story or delete valuable emails.

Hi -- first things first, do not say you were snooping, do not mention the email you snooped. And don't do that again. That's going to be a serious issue if it's known, and it'll become a focus, which you don't want. If I had an employee doing that, I'd fire that employee no matter how capable.

Do focus on the one you were sent accidentally, and do not become paranoid. You do not know what's in your other colleagues' minds, and absolutely no good comes of deciding ahead of time that people are out to get you.

Your boss would have done wrong to mention the emails from your colleague. Bosses get nervous too, and in an effort to assuage your fears may have said "nobody is displeased" when s/he meant "my bosses and I are not displeased". A good boss will encourage an employee coming back from a difficult spot, and that's exactly what's happened.

Bosses get subordinates carping about each other all the time. One of the boss jobs is "playground monitor". It's wholly destructive for a boss to start telling a good employee what nasty things someone else is saying about him or her.

If I were you, I would go to your union rep (assuming this rep is understanding about disabilities) and show the email you received. Do not, I repeat, do not even mention the existence of other emails. Then the two of you go together to your boss. Your being sent that email by your boss was a serious accident -- and by serious I mean it was a bad act of management -- and some kind of damage control will have to happen. It's possible you just can't work with that guy anymore, and the boss will have to find another project for you, or in whatever way separate you so that you're not working together. The union rep may need to work with the boss, for whom this will be a real PITA, but a self-generated one. And the boss may need help in learning to navigate the situation. The positive goal is for the unit to become more aware of and better able to work productively and understandingly with employes with disabilities. It may lead to a bit of shakeup, where people who get bitter about that have it made plain that this isn't how we do business, find a way to get along, and get creative about how we can work together.

The only way to bring up the other emails, and I'm not recommending you do so, would be if you started out in the other persons email by mistake, as it is a shared computer.

I would have a tough time working that closely, sharing a computer someone else used to send garbage about me.

Hold your head up end endeavor to speak positively about anything you can. Do your best to express only confusion about anything that shouldn't be happening. Try REALLY hard to avoid saying anything derogatory about anyone else that could be used to label this squabbling between people who deserve each other.

If you can find a more positive work environment you will likely be better off.

thanks for all of this

today i submitted a summary of everything to my union along with info about my disability so that he can advise me on how to handle it.

regarding the ''snooping'' we share a computer in the same small office and he had left it logged in with the emails open ,no serious act was taken by me to see the emails they were more or less right in front of my face due to his carelessness to not log out - something he has been previously warned to make sure and do after using the computer (we have an account each).

Raf, if you had to click on anything on his computer to read anything, if it wasn't just sitting there in plain view where anyone might walk by, you were snooping. Do not mention it. Period.

Hi Raf 19, it sounds like you've told the union the entire situation including reading several of Mr. Toxic's open emails on the shared computer. And okay, that's fine. It does like you're kind of treating the union a bit like a lawyer, which might be taking a chance, but it might also work out really well. The union representative will know how important this is to you and will know some of the broader background.

Do you think you can ask the union rep to only focus on the one email sent to you by mistake, and not mention the ones on the shared computer?

And I accept your judgment that this co-worker is toxic. I have certainly known people like that. And bosses have tended not to take it seriously, largely because they were not the ones on the receiving end.

You didn't head over and sneak onto someone else's computer, you sat down at your computer he'd failed to sign out of and clicked on your keyboard, your computer.

Not great you looked. But when I go into my computer at work, I don't check the name I just assume it's me. Occasionally it isn't, but we are password protected so I can't get in until I change to my name.

You did this on purpose. But it could have been an accident. Makes his sending this stuff much worse that he did not make the extra effort to sign out knowing what you might see. Behave with dignity, you still have some. This person does not.

And I still recommend being open to adding free positives to your life, yes, now more than ever.

For example, if you've ever thought about learning the guitar, now might actually be a good time.

I've visited both Democratic and Republican parties very politely to listen and learn.

And I've attended both Sierra Club meetings and some of the hikes which can be rather lengthy.