At a point with my boss I don't even want to talk to him.

I have 8 more years until I can retire with a good pension and health care. I have been working there for 18. Most under a truely horrible boss.

But I am utterly miserable.

My current boss I have worked with for 5 years is universally loved. Everyone thinks he is the nicest guy ever. But with every single thing he does lately, he make me angry.

Yesterday I had an appointment at 7 AM but it ran long. I told him I had not expected it to. And I couldn't get a certain aspect of my work done. But I expected to be up and running at 11. He goes.. oh do you want me to contact your boss (I have another offical boss) and tell him that you are not at your work station and ask him to make someone else do the work? The work that is entirely NOT necessary to be done until 11... but because you told me you weren't able to do it... I am not going to insist it be done immediately?

He didn't say those exact words but that was the sum of it.

Lesson learned.. never tell him anything again.

Later in the day... he asks me to get a meeting date from someone, he asked me to do this Friday. I asked the person on Friday and I was told they would give it to me Tuesday.. when it didn't come, I asked the person again on Tuesday and there was no response. So on Wednesday I told my boss I didn't think the date was coming and maybe they should just go ahead with the thing they were waiting on the date for.

Response from him? Darn you didn't even give that guy a 24 hours to give you a date? Ok now, yes, I gave him like 1/2 a week... and second, if I didn't let you know what was going on... you probably would have come back and asked me "did you get a date" (and frankly asked me to keep asking this guy).

Not a "thanks for being so efficent"

Or thanks for following up.

At all points, at everything I say, he is difficult to me. Constantly.

Every single day.

Everything I say is a fight or mockery.

We have a system whereby people are required to enter their contact information...someone didn't enter their contact information but it was due in 2 days... he insists that I send something out... so I point out that contact information isn't there and I only have to wait 2 days... we get into this massive issue... whereby I am supposed to hunt this person down for 2 days. No sorry that isn't how it works... this person is supposed to put in the information not me.

Later he points out the contact information is on a document (still not where it is supposed to be) and so I say missed that.

Why we just can't wait 2 days is beyond me.

Or more likely I know the reason... because it is me.. any there is simply ZERO support for me anymore even though I do a great job.

So you say.. stop doing a great job? Well of course, he has shown a willingness to blame me for things unfairly (he thinks this is a joke)

I don't know how I am going to make it when everything I say is subject to pushback and mockery

I had a boss like that. What you wrote brings back memories. Those times were a nightmare. Sorry you have a boss like that. Things like that can make life just miserable. Wish I knew what to say to help.

When I've had a boss like that, I did my best to detach my emotions from any interaction with him. The torture for me was getting upset at all of his antics, so deciding not to let my emotions react to his comments helped. This manager would pick out one issue out of a fully successful project and make it sound like I failed. I decided getting upset over his view of me wasn't helping me, so I treated everything he said with a logical response...for example "Yes, that was an issue, but the rest of the project was successful, and I am handling the issue".

It is a pain that he makes comments that mock and suggest things that are not true. He must be assuming things about you that are not true. Detach from his opinion if you can. It's an incorrect view of your work. You are doing a great job.

It sounds like you get caught between two people who can be lazy and disrespectful. And both tend to make you the fall guy. If it’s ongoing then you need to sit down with your boss and tell him you no longer want to bear the burden for another persons lack of respect and how can “we” change this problem and “manage” it differently? If it’s his job to Manage then HE needs to remove the pattern where an employee is asked to do something through you or someone else and fails to do as asked.

The other thing you can do is write a memo and date it and copy both your manager and the person who is asked to present something for work through you. Having it in writing and dated and copying it to both parties keeps the task up to these two individuals and keeps you from being scapegoated. 😉

Often the core is the feeling of being disrespected. There are people who actually lack the ability to genuinely respect others. You did good sharing what frustrates you and contributes to your anxiety. Once you identify certain patterns the next step is to work on changing the role you play in the scenario. I gave you an example with that one challenge you pointed out.

One thing I learned from the many years of dealing with different customers is often people have little to no knowledge about what I do and what it entails. I gradually came up with rules I would communicate to customers. People never ceased to amaze me how little they knew. What I considered basic and common sense was often simply unknown to many.

With that said, often people can be genuinely clueless when it comes to showing personal respect and genuine kindness.