Confrontation at Work

by Charity, Drew, and Rachel

[A forum post in response to someone else's recent experience.]

We empathize with OP and are dealing with a situation now ourselves. Our boss supervises six people including us. When she is under stress, she micromanages, acts controlling, expects us to know things that she doesn't tell us, and keeps information from us that she doesn't think we need to do our job, but which we do. Talking with her rationally has not solved the problem.

We thought it was just us. We made an appointment to talk to the head of the department (her boss) tomorrow at 10am. Yesterday we found out that two of the other five, with whom we work closely, have been having the same experience. Co-worker 1 ("CW1") is someone that we have worked with closely for many years told us that he and CW2, a new person doing similar work with him, are having the same problem. We do not work closely with CWs 3-5 and do not know what they are experiencing, and we do not plan to approach them about this.

Yesterday we told CW1, who is on vacation from 7/15-7/31, that we would be speaking to the head of the department. We said that we would not be speaking for him and CW2 officially, but that we would let her know that the two of them were also having these problems. We also told CW1 that we would report the results of the meeting to him when he returns.

We hate confrontations. We hate "reporting." Even if it's justified, it still feels to us like we're being difficult and that we're putting ourselves in danger. We know that we're not alone in what we're experiencing, and we also know that our company has a no-retaliation policy. But having a policy in place doesn't guarantee that people won't find their own subtle ways of making things difficult.

We know that our feelings are not necessarily in line with the facts and rational view of the situation. But our feelings are still valid simply because they exist. We struggle with validation on a moment-to-moment basis. But we have to steady ourselves, go in to work tomorrow even though we're still probably going to be sick, and deal with this.