I thought my mom situation was under control

First I need to explain the work situation a little bit so you can understand how disrespectful what happened was. I am the kitchen manager where we work, my mom is kind of the dining room manager, but somewhat unofficially. There is a new person at work who I'm having trouble getting to respect me as a manager because she is a lot older than me, and also has gone to cullinary school, and she does not really want to learn how we do things is different than how she was taught to do things. The new girl has been doing things like taking smoking breaks when I send her to get things we need, and not doing any work at all if I'm the one who goes to get something. And leaving me in the kitchen alone without telling me where she's going to take cigarette/bathroom breaks.

For a long time things between me and my mom had been extremely tense. I wasn't talking to her, and she would randomly scream at me about things I know aren't true just so she could make me feel bad. She told me no one at work likes me, including my grandpa. She told me that I needed to fix my attitude or we couldn't live together. Basically I had to change how I felt about her constantly trying to make me feel stupid and unimportant. So, I took the "pretend to like her so she will hopefully stop being so mean and unpredictable" route.

Things went well for several weeks. She was friendly to me. She addmitted how important I am to the place we work, yadda yadda yadda. Until yesterday when the new girl and I were in the kitchen together, and in walks my mother. My younger brother was washing dishes and made some joke about me and my future that I don't think was at all meant in an offensive way, and my mom said really snottily "Well, Kelly doesn't care about her future."

This is an ongoing thing between me and my mom. She disrespects me at work, brings in things about our personal lives that is not anything that I would consider professional, and then yells at me in the kitchen while I either ignore her, or cry. If she's going to do that, it needs to be contained to home. She is everything she accuses me of being. And it is true that right now I don't know what I want to do with my life, and I don't know what I'm going to do about college yet, but that doesn't mean that I don't care. After all of this time of dealing with her crap I cannot believe that she can still get to me like this. Still leave me seething into the next day.

Even after I move out I'm still going to be working with her. I can't just abandon the rest of my family because things between me and my mom are crappy... does anyone have any tips for how to deal with her? I know that confrontation doesn't work. She escalates when she gets any sort of rise out of me.

Kelly

Your mom does not sound like a very nice person. That's tough. Try not to let her get a rise out of you, if that tends to escalate things. And she certainly does sound like the kind of person who confronting would be just like banging your head against the wall. My mother is like that also.

Try to stay away from her as much as possible, but when she is around be polite if possible. When she acts unacceptable to you, mean and nasty or puts you down, just ignore her. Walk right out away from her if possible. If you can't then pretend like she isn't there. She'll start looking like the crazy mean person she is and others will respect you for not acting just as nasty or for going around crying and getting upset all the time.

That does not mean you shouldn't FEEL upset, angry and sad about your mother. You should! But it sounds like with your work situation, doing anything other than just ignoring her and walking away from, don't answer her or acknowledge her presence when she's treating you bad seems like the only way to handle the situation with any dignity and self respect on your part. She's behaving badly, not you.