I desperately need advice!

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I got complaints from the people I give services to at work, about my work taking too long to be done lately. I explained I'm having a few personal issues that prevent me from working overtime, plus I'm working on a huge new project, and at the same time I've been given additional responsibilities in another area (replacing someone who left). These people then went to my boss to complain and asked him to take away from me the replacement work I've been given. My boss was furious at me for telling them about this replacement work he's given me. He did take away the replacement job, but he's been giving me hell since then. Yelling at me all day, demanding many extra hours a day, telling me I'm a good for nothing (after he gave me a prize a couple months ago), forcing me to copy him on every email I send, and following me all day to see what I'm doing, complaining about me to everyone, and threatening all the time to fire me if I don't do much more work than I'm doing (which is already a lot, in my opinion, and the most I can do). He doesn't allow me to go to meetings and didn't allow me to go on the dept. fun day (he then changed his mind because the team said they wouldn't go without me). I'm desperate for advice, because there's no legal or HR action possible where I am, and finding another job at my age here is practically impossible. I can't function in this atmosphere of constant yelling and abuse. He's now changed my work hours to the times when the people I give service to are not at work, so they're going to go berserk and if I tell them it was my boss's decision, he'll probably give me more hell for telling them.

you know. . when things like this happen to me, and I think there is no other opportunity for me, and I just have to take it and grin and bear it, I remember times when I took a sick day and went to that appointment I made at Legal Aid and told my documented story to them.

Ah. . .they gave me a lot of advice that I never realized I could do in that situation. I wish the same for you, Green Tea. The hardest thing was realizing I wasn't in a corner after all.

all the best!
Merle

Hmmm, that's a difficult situation and I can't give you any advice for the whole of it
(I would have told you to threaten him with quitting your job, but you say you can't. I would, but as a programmer it's relative easy to find a new one...)

Anyway:
For the yelling, show him how stupid he behaves. Sit there, being demonstratively relaxed, maybe yawning a bit once in a while. Show him, that unfounded forms of critics don't hurt you (even if they do).
You must break this typical NT behavior of "solving problems" by brute force. (Yes, they can be reasonable. But only when the primitive patterns fail. Actually he KNOWS that it's his own fault, he just can't see a way to solve it and hopes to yell you into solving it for him. Seems, he can't replace you)

Do this for a while and then confront him with a sentence like:
"What exactly is your problem?"
"Yes, but that's your fault and you know that quite well"

Make clear, that everything is based on his faults and that you expect him to be realistic about the situation.
This may lead to more yelling. Then fall back to step one: Ignoring.
Until he is ready to talk reasonably (Yes, the time will come...)

You must force him into a situation, where you can go through the problems (customers can't reach you for working at wrong time...) step by step and in a matter-of-fact way.

Another detail: Isn't there a boss of your boss with whom you could talk?

Blaming the behavior of a jerk on being an NT is just silly. They aren't the only ones inflexible in their thinking.

GeenTea, I understand what you mean about not being in a good position to push back with this boss. I did find it interesting that the rest of your team seems to be on your side in the matter. Perhaps if you were able to sit down with them and ask for some help with the boss, it would do you and your boss some good.

I don't recommend a public confrontation. It sounds like this boss is the type of person who would take that very badly, as it makes him lose face. Having your whole team go to him would also be a bad idea for the same reason. (It looks like you've been talking about him behind his back. Which you have. But that doesn't mean he likes having his nose rubbed in it.)

I would have one representative from your team have a private word with the boss that it is demoralizing the whole team to see him treating you like this. This gives the boss the opportunity to change how he treats you publicly without having to admit how badly he screwed up.

I don't know where you work, but having worked for similar employers who 'manage by volume' I can tell you that the 'soft answer turns away wrath.' If you allow yourself to be goaded in to a yelling match with him, your chances of being dismissed are greatly increased, because then he will have to make an example out of the person who stood up to him.

Best Wishes.

M

Have you tried having a meeting with him to discuss the situation? My feeling is he's feeling like he's lost face and you're copping the blame for it; he's effectively just taking it out on you. Maybe schedule a meeting with him away from everyone else sometime and just say something like "Look, this atmosphere isn't very productive, and neither of us are happy working like this. So let's just talk about these issues and deal with them one by one so we can move on and work better. I understand I can be difficult to work with at times, and I'm sorry, but I am trying my best - if you could explain a few things that would maybe make it easier and help make things run smoother again?"

Something like that. Be non-threatening about it, and don't say "It's all your fault" or "It's all my fault" - try and go for a 'this is just a big misunderstanding so let's work through it like grown-ups and sort it so we can all make this company work better again' middle road approach. That way he won't be automatically on the defensive with you saying "I can't work when you yell" and be forced to justify himself, and he also won't automatically slip into the boss role when you say "I'm sorry it's my fault" and think he can overpower you, as that'll just create another power scenario with you as the weaker one again, which is what you're trying to avoid and the point of the meeting anyway.

Hope that helps? Good luck anyway, it sounds like a horrible situation.

It's not a person you can have a dialogue with. He only yells at everyone, extremely offensive things. Many in the company (including big bosses) have complained about him to his boss, but nothing's changed. Some in our team have complained to his boss too.

Seeing my horrible situation, my colleagues are so scared of the same happening to them that they have started to leave the office as early as possible in the afternoon, so they won't be dumped unmanageable amounts of work on like me. We all used to work long hours, happily, before this happened. I was the most hard-working, so I got dumped on the most.

Greentea, document everything, then sue.

Remnant:

He might not be in the West where we try to solve everything with a lawyer and a lawsuit. This might actually require actual human mediation rather than a day in court.

M

We don't have laws here against abuse in the workplace.

Can you try talking to his boss about it? Go to the highest person you can speak to and explain the situation to them, again - don't go on the offensive or the defensive, just try and have a dialogue and make it clear you aren't trying to victimise or point fingers, but that you find it difficult to talk to your boss about it or you would have done, but at the same time neither of you can keep going like you are as it's affecting productivity and the atmosphere of the workplace (let alone your sanity!).

Go to your bosses boss

Is there a specific place that most of the people you work with go after work to relax? If you talk to everyone and ask how they feel about him, you might be able to find common grievances. If several of you guys feel that the conditions are unacceptable, I reccomend going to his boss as a group, and getting everyone to tell him that you just cannot work under the conditions in the office. Tell him that the employees aren't able to work as well, that he's creating conflicts in the work scheduling, and running your department into the ground.

If you can, try to have someone else be the spokesperson, though. I wouldn't envy explaining things.

But if the conditions are lowering the effectiveness of the workers, making you guys miserable and frustrated, and that cohesion between services, servicees, and servicers is going down the drain, then I'm sure that whoever you speak to is going to want to solve the problem.

Try to stay in the most trafficked areas, the places where the most people are. Make his tirades and abuses as openly done as possible. The more people see, the more they talk, the more they feel they ought to do something. The more they hear, the more they think is bad, the more they want the boss to get canned.
Try to tap into the office politics; If he's as unpopular as he is sarden mean, then people may jump at a chance to see the last of him.

Yes, I too believe that trying to bring his abuse as much into the open as possible is one way of diminishing it. The worst a victim of abuse can do is cooperate with the abuser by keeping his acts hidden and secret. The abuser always counts on the victim being so ashamed they help keep the abuse hidden.

In this country, the boss can do whatever he wants and desires to his employees, and if you complain to anyone in the company, you're fired immediately for being "difficult". Law and the court protect the boss always. Except in two cases: sexual harassment and not paying your salary. But psychological abuse is perfectly acceptable and the gov't believes if you don't like to be victimized by your boss then work your ass off and become a boss yourself, so you'll have people to abuse in turn. Everyone sees this as a perfect state of affairs and complaints about this status quo are unheard of. This is why so many women here cover their bodies in gold and diamonds to go to the office - because it's a message to the boss: "If you abuse me, I have enough savings to quit on the spot and live without working for as long as it takes to find another job."

Today I was looking at all the people smiling and talking on the corridors, and I was thinking what a horrible, horrendous world we live in, where society smiles and laughs and everything is shown as being perfectly good and friendly, while at the same time everyone knows that horrible abuse is being perpetrated on defenseless people by their bosses inside each office. And HR are there smiling and saying good morning as if the world was a wonderful place, while they turn a deaf ear when they pass my boss's office and hear the yelling from inside, the insults, the mind battering being inflicted upon me.

What a horrible world we live in, where an employee who used to be exhilarated by her job, smiling all day in happiness and enjoying her work enormeously, putting in even 15 hours a day out of love for her work and the company, is beaten and beaten until she doesn't give a damn for doing her job minimally right, or putting in even a minute of overtime. Where excellent, highest achieving employees are beaten into indifference and close to zero productivity. What a horrible world where these beaters are the successful, the leaders.

I'm not sure about the size and resources of your company, but do you have a human resources manager that you could talk to? I think I would do that if it's possible. Because they're there to protect the employees against anything unfair and unjust going on. I hate to see someone be bullied, goes on in my company too from time to time. Thank god when it happened to me they let me transfer to another store within the company. That was my only saving grace.