[seesaw]

So, first off, my boss keeps chastising me for not doing things that she never told me to do. I'm going to confront her about this because it's becoming a pattern and I'm going to come at it from the angle of, help me understand because obviously I'm not understanding your directives sometimes. Although that's not it, she just thinks she's told me things that she hasn't. For example, I got an email that we were getting a grant. I forwarded it to her to let her know it had been approved. Her only reply was "Fantastic!" And this was while she was at a conference so we had no other discussion of the grant. But today she confronted me for not having had our database admin book it in the system, when we had never discussed that. And she's like "when I say book it, I mean have it entered into the database." And I was just confused and said "um, okay, I must have misunderstood you..." But I wasn't going to argue with her in front of the rest of our team.

This happened previously when she asked me why I hadn't sent her updated revenue numbers at our second 1:1 meeting. I had sent her the revenue figures a few days previously, but she had not mentioned or asked for them to be sent to her on a regular basis or when. So I just apologized and sent them to her right after the meeting. And I told her that I would schedule it to be sent to her every Friday afternoon so she would have them for her meetings on Mondays and Tuesdays of the next week...so that has been fine, except when I was working from home, she sent me a *****y email asking about the revenue numbers, which I reminded her that I had sent, as scheduled and agreed upon, on Friday afternoon. Eventually she did apologize for assuming I had ****ed up, but this is becoming a pattern.

Two things: In meetings I take copious notes and have specific notations for action items or follow up items. After each of my meetings with her, I send her a list of the items she asked for follow-up on, and ask her to let me know if I missed anything. This thing about booking the gift into the database is not in any of my notes and she did not add it to anything.

So clearly she thinks she is giving me instructions when she is not. For example, the first time she asked for those revenue numbers, she never said, I want an update every week before my executive committee meeting. And with the gift that she wanted booked, we had had a discussion that if we got to June 30th and the check wasn't in yet, that then we would book it based on the email. But nothing about booking it now. So clearly there is a miscommunication, and what I'm going to say is I need you to help me understand when you are directly asking for something, because clearly there we're not understanding each other.

I mean, I specifically send her my follow-up items for each meeting so she can tell me if she needs anything else or if I missed something. And I take COPIOUS notes because I'm afraid of missing something (I actually don't have a terrible memory about work stuff, but I sort of lie and say I do to justify the amount of note-taking I do and the follow-up emails). Most of my co-workers like the follow-up emails because it exactly outlines what we discussed and who is responsible for what and when.

Anyways, in addition to all of this, we just posted two new positions, which are in our department, but she didn't tell any of us there were going to be new positions, but the two positions are basically taking my co-worker's position and splitting it into two, and reassigning all her direct reports to one of the other positions. So I'm asking, is she changing positions? Is she leaving? It's all very non-transparent (which is something we are supposed to be so proud of ourselves for being) and sneaky. She has felt like she is being pushed out, and I sense that is the case, and then I wonder when it's going to happen to me.

Seesaw

Sounds like you know very well how to treat your boss. Keep up the good work. Most times it doesn't matter how hard you try or what you do, you'll never measure up for your boss because keeping you down is their way of boosting themselves up!

[seesaw]

Omg, so I investigated further on this whole 'booking' issue, and she literally never even could have told me to book the gift, based on the timeline of events. And it's making me super anxious and having panic attacks because I feel like I'm being gas lighted and also like she's trying to find fault with me to fire me. Like literally I feel like she's trying to make me crazy because she never gave me those instructions and furthermore it's impossible that she could have.

[eyesclosed]

SeeSaw your a very good worker with a great work ethic. I agree with RiasingKay.

[seesaw]

But what do I do about this pattern of gas lighting? I have to bring it up, I'm just going to try to put it in as nonconfrontational terms as possible...

[eyesclosed]

That is a very hard question and I wish I had a answer. When it was done too me and I confronted the person enabling it they used my mental health against me. It seems now it was a trap because it brought on a series of events that eventually forced me to leave under a constructive discharge. I sure can relate to all you feel because I'm feeling it again AKA PTSD. Sorry for you