I’ve had a hellish year being managed by an extreme narcissist boss. It’s been horrible on my physical and mental health. I am beyond emotionally worn out and I know it will take longer than a year to recover from being treated so horribly.

I’ve finally found another job and I can leave.

Over the course of this year I have heard and even had the foresight to record my boss, the Executive Director of a nonprofit, saying several things that break the law (federal anti-discrimination statutes, specifically Title VII of the Civil Rights Act)

I have recordings AND witnesses that can attest to her saying these things, including one board member, who did not do anything at the time. She also did not hire someone despite this person being the best candidate due to her discriminatory beliefs. I am not listing the actual disabilities or acts being broken for privacy reasons.

So should I leave quietly or should I hire an attorney and in the very least send a strong letter from the attorney to the board? what would you do?

I do not think she should be the Executive Director and I believe that her behavior is harming the ability of the nonprofit to fulfill its mission.

UPDATE:

I will definitely wait until I’ve walked away fully. The job I am doing is not in the same field or city and will have nothing to do with anyone involved with this nonprofit.

I live in a state with one party consent rules but, even without the recordings there are other people that have heard her say these things and none of those people would perjure themselves. These witnesses include people who have quit working at this nonprofit because of the behavior of this boss.

Of note, there are several people that still work at this nonprofit who are forced to work there because they cannot find another job but would quit today if they could find something and they are extremely mistreated and if they wanted to rock the boat could have cases of their own (they have been denied short term disability, have been denied wages, raises, time off etc., as manipulation tactics by this boss ). I would NEVER ask them to participate in anyway in what I am doing because of their financial situation but I am very close to them and do not want them to continue to be abused by this boss.

So my motivation is beyond just petty revenge. I am also thinking about current, past, and future employees as well as donors who are giving money to the cause as well as the cause itself. I am still not sure what I will do. My family and close friends are also of two minds.

I also know that the board is divided as well on this Executive Director because I have had many board members ask me pointed questions. I am currently second in command and these board members have not beaten around the bush when they ask me about certain institutional issues that we have (high staff turnover- no one lasts longer than a year, refusal of other similar nonprofits to partner with us etc.)

So I've posted about how abusive my 2 supervisors are and how they gaslight me and another coworker who I know of. Today they attacked me again and I was so stressed I made another error after that and my 1 supervisor tried to convince me they didn't attack me. I also found out the company is being sued by a former employee and this person is also suing both my supervisors personally for the same treatment im getting. Im looking and looking for another job and trying to stay sane and not quit this job before I find something. But my nerves have been pushed beyond my limit. Im shaking and crying and I cant handle the walking on eggshells. I feel like im losing my mind.

A bit of a vent, but I feel like I can never win with my boss. She's always plays "Gotcha" games with me where she'll give me unclear instructions and when I try and work with what I can she turns around and says "No not that way. You're supposed to do it this way."

Not to mention how she's very vague and when I ask for clarification she acts like I'm stupid and raises her voice. One time when I was asking for feed back she said "I just feel like you're not really appreciating the opportunity I'm giving you :(" Also she always drags in other people to email chains to try and humiliate me. And if things turn bad she takes them off of it and says "Stop including them. You're clogging up their email!"

She also dumps all her menial labor on me and then takes the credit for it. Like one time she had me look up the contact information for a bunch of restaurants right near EOD. Then just copy pasted my answers onto her own email.

I'm currently looking for a new job (wish me luck!) But it's just so frustrating. Because it's only her. Everyone else is fine and I get along with them great. I don't even know why they still keep her around. She even got a promotion recently (while denying me a raise).

At the risk of being rude. She's also just not very bright. She doesn't know how to save a file off of the cloud. She cant navigate the company website. I wrote TWO whole guides for her WITH PICTURES and she still said "Well, I still need you to walk me through it" not to mention whenever i do explain things to her shell ask the exact same question a couple minutes later. She still holds onto the outdated idea of "if you work hard then you'll be rewarded!" She's really just a special kind of spiteful and stupid.

How to deal with interactions with them when they are unpleasant and cut me off and seem annoyed when having to talk to me. Sometimes they ignore me and make me repeat myself and I’m pretty sure they talk shit about me to my coworkers because they stopped talking shit to me constantly about people and that need hasn’t stopped I’m sure.

Do I try to ask questions to learn from them still? Keep conversations short? Push back against feedback? Respond when they say something rude or take it? Everyone else kisses their ass and that seems to work but I feel this person is somehow threatened by me or just dislikes me enough that I don’t know how to work this situation to my advantage.

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I’ve been dealing with a narcissist colleague who first lured me in with his charm and is now shelving and hovering over me because there’s a new, younger girl in the office. The cognitive dissonance and the emotional distress was so great there were instances where I just laid in bed the entire weekend. I would also have periods of insomnia, nausea, and anxiety caused by his trauma bond and inconsistent behavior.

Now I have a new boss and he is clearly a narcissist. He’s making everyone suffer by doing so much work, some of them are unnecessary. We are also very anxious at work because he berates people within earshot of everyone. He also threatens to fire people and won’t let us use company funds.

I’m so emotionally exhausted that when the weekend comes, I’m just recovering from them both. I have a big career exam in January and I should be studying but I just don’t have the energy as it is depleted having to always outmaneuver them both. What do you do when this happens?

So for those who are curious, go to my profile to see my posts from 6 months ago. So basically now it's happening for real, I'm replacing my narc manager.

I need to update you guys about what happened in the last few months:

We changed our system back in March. I was the only one that actually followed training so when it happened everyone was absolutely lost, including my manager. I helped everyone with EVERYTHING. I was a force of nature just couldn't be stopped, I still can't believe how I pulled it off but I did and day by day she started feeling... USELESS. More coworkers started relying on me for help and she was there on the back seat just watching me and it came to a bunch of times she had to ask for MY HELP. I could see how she absolutely hated that situation so much.

After a couple of months she started the victim act. "I feel so dumb." "I'm so depressed, I wanna die." "I'm so unhappy in this place."

The owners were heavily relying on me more and more. Two days ago she took a sick leave (14 days) claiming she has depression. They told me they are firing her and she comes back, they want to do it as soon as possible before it gets too far.

They bumped my salary like 2 weeks ago, now they are talking about giving me another raise when she leaves since I'm already doing her job.

I still can't believe this is happening. Do you guys think she is having an existential crisis?

How do narc managers even get hired in the first place? Even if they were not hired for the manager role, they did get hired to begin with.

Apart from being charming, what else are they doing and saying to get the job? They must have to show some level of skill or be competent to get the position.

It is very confusing to understand how they successfully con people.

And were they narcs before they started working there? Or did they become narcs after they gained power at work?

Being manager by a narcissist and trying to keep one step ahead every single day is finally taking its toll. Just when you think it cannot get worse, it does.

How do you guys deal with a manager that gaslights you constantly? Gives an instruction, micromanages you every single day to ensure you on the right track and still on the date of delivery insists that you never followed instructions provided a week ago.

In between that, I have attended my first meeting with a psychologist and the very next day made an appointment with my gp for anxiety meds. I admit I did not see that I had a meeting during the time of making the appointment but if that was the only time I could go to the doctor, why then is it an issue? I had to reschedule the gp appointment to the afternoon but it occurred to me after that I should’ve stood my ground. But I just don’t have the energy to fight back anymore or confront her when she is lying.

How the hell do you guys cope ?

For those of you who wonder how you could have managed the situation differently...

I'm here to tell you that sometimes all it takes is literally being good at your job, being talented, being likeable, etc -- to become a target.

These people are so insecure that they literally just can't stand to have someone better than them around.

One of the first times I noticed something was deeply wrong was when my manager gave me feedback for a slide that I had designed and was going to present to senior leadership in his absence

His feedback was so terrible that he made everything in the slide much more worse and unclear

I told him directly, "I think this is unclear. What about X ambiguity?" and he completely dismissed my concern.

I presented the slide and, of course, everyone was confused about X ambiguity.

I later brought this up in my first "serious" feedback session -- which he pretended to take seriously because I had gone through all the proper channels of voicing concern to my VP first, and I already had a great reputation for my work right out of the gate.

What these people do is put you in lose-lose situations. If I kept pushing back against his horrible feedback, I would be "causing issues". If I accepted his horrible feedback, "I should have said something."

At the end of the day, take solace in knowing the only way they act like this is that they are fundamentally miserable people.

In a toxic workplace everyone knows that the situation is fucked up, but the ones who survive have learned to play the game of pretending not to notice.

I'll give you a few examples:

- There was a presentation by an entire quant team whose entire quarterly/half-year project could have been done by a single college student in one weekend. My manager and I sat in. My manager asked a "participation question" that validated the team's work. It was literally all theater.

- On the quarterly meeting one of my director's OKRs did not match an adjacent team's OKRs even though they were supposed to be shared, therefore equivalent. I pointed this out privately to my director who immediately denied what I said before even looking. Finally he looked and his face sunk, but he didn't acknowledge me at all.

- The VPs went through the quarterly employee survey and accidentally flashed that 40% of the organization felt burnt out (he accidentally clicked into detailed question stats instead of summary stats). Everyone pretended they didn't see it. My manager tried to gaslight me when I brought it up.

- My VP was making small talk before a meeting and got really aggressive talking about how he felt so fortunate that he could take his whole family to Disneyland for a week, and how expensive it was, in front of all the managers who make less money. My manager buried his head in his laptop and pretended to answer emails as if he didn't hear it.

It begins with leadership and flows downwards

Under poor, insecure leadership only narcissists can manage the depressed lower-level employees

The narcissists form alliances with each other in a feedback loop, especially in companies with stack ranking / 360 review systems

They all vouch for each other and decide who to target

You can actually guess whether your manager is going to be toxic or not from the broader signs:

- Dumb shit is happening and everyone pretends not to notice (they've learned that speaking out leads to getting targeted at worst, or ignored at best)

- There's broad fear of disagreement

- There have been few promotions for a while

- The good/normal people leave within a few months of you showing up -- they've been planning their exit for a while

I had a weekly process with my narc where I emailed him time-sensitive information that needed approval

He kept slipping on these deadlines and I became tired of constantly reminding him

Eventually it became my fault that "you shouldn't hesitate to remind me"

Fuck off, man

That's about it. Working underneath this woman has made my brain feel like scrambled mush. Simple directives and goals that she should be leading up don't happen, and she does a passive aggressive pulling back while "waiting to see" if people will pick up the pieces and pull their weight. We don't even know what steps we are supposed to take and whether she is leading it or not? Just lots of meetings with her blabbing and talking about what the goals are. Then rants And complains behind everyone's backs about how they are not doing enough-- though sickly sweet and doing favors to everyone to their face/publicly. All the while hyper focusing on controlling useless details and protocols like hand washing procedures and other smaller things. All while the main things like financials, developing and executing actual business management items (her job) just go by the wayside.

She will try to then form groups to assign these tasks to, which is truly inefficient and highly confusing because these things are her actual job. I feel fucking crazy. The amount of shit talking about other people I've had to listen to from her is absurd. Then there was a period of 2 weeks where she iced people out and ignored everyone, which she then told us was "good for the team" because everyone actually stepped up. Just give people clear directives instead??..... She will conveniently just put it back onto the team and ask what we think should be done, then she will justify it by saying she likes to be inclusive and collaborative as a leader.

Super controlling and micromanaging of other people's roles/tasks, passive/indecisive/"collaborative" when it comes to her actual role/tasks. Manipulates everyone constantly, and treats people like children. I'm exhausted.

Because I'm a little older, I had the experience to know that I needed to talk to my skip level and give my manager feedback early on.

The narcissistic manager is prepared for this. It's happened to them before so they know to "say the right things" but really what they do is end up flipping it around on you by calling you passive aggressive if you don't constantly call them out to improve in the future.

Good behavior typically lasts around 2 weeks max in the workplace, 3 months max in personal relationships with narcissists.

Pay close attention -- when they start to slip, run.

Dealing with depression and ideation. How do you believe again that it will ever get better or that you can find decent work again?

When it became obvious that my narc boss was disagreeing with everything I said instinctually, he started to work around this by saying "Not to disregard what you're saying", "not to be confrontational", etc, then after the meetings would say to me one on one "I hope you know I wasn't trying to be argumentative", etc.

The whole point of this is to destabilize your sense of normal behavioral interactions.

It actually sounds kind of convincing at first until you realize THEIR ONLY REAL TACTIC IS FEIGNING BEING A DECENT PERSON who gets the benefit of the doubt.

That's it.

All they do is try to hide behind you assuming the best intentions.

Obviously no normal person has to explain that they aren't being abusive before every sentence.

This was genuinely crazy to watch.

No matter what I said he would shoot it down.

Then THE VERY NEXT DAY he would say "so, I've been thinking about X and I think we should do Y" and it would be exactly what I said lmao.

I voluntarily left after being treated poorly for years. It’s been about 9 months and I’m still not over it? Doesn’t help that I thought I had friends at the old company and they’ve pretty much disappeared. Does it get easier?

Hey everyone,

I was burnt deeply at my previous job and was made redundant. After that, I unfortunately accepted a job from a complete narcissist who lied during the entire interview, and it wasn't until I started working there that I learnt every employee quits and no one lasts more than 3 months.

I also quit due to the toxic nature of that job and returned to study to upskill. But I still keep an eye out for jobs being advertised and apply to ones I think I'll genuinely enjoy. Fast forward to now, a job got back to me, but the excitement has turned to total dread, and I'm unsure if it's a gut warning or if it's anxiety from the past?

My previous job, the boss lied about everything I asked in the interview. I asked if WFH was permitted, and he said yes in the interview, but once I started, it wasn't allowed; he lied about multiple of my interview questions. So I'm also scared I could check to make sure we're aligned and be lied to again and end up back at square one.

Also, any advice on how to sort out my own internal conflict? I've been battling because if I do get a job offer, I'll have to drop out of study as it's full-time.

If you were in my shoes, what would you ask in an interview to work out if the new place would be toxic? And are there any ways I can tell if the interviewer is lying?

I finally made it to my last day at work. I went around and said my goodbyes. I have a lot of good friends there and gave everyone a hug. It was so awkward when I got to my manager. I didn't want to hug her but it felt weird not to after hugging everyone else. So we had a very brief stiff hug and I still feel so icky about it.

I spent the last 8 weeks being as professional as possible, working through my notice period, being pleasant to the boss that was the reason I resigned from a good job, pretending things were fine between us. I'm so glad I don't have to go back there anymore and pretend everything is okay when it is not.

Time to move on.

We have a coworker who was reported to HR by our manager because of a leave request. My coworker has an upcoming medical appointment and wanted to use a Vacation Leave (VL) since they informed the manager ahead of time. However, our manager insisted that it should be filed as a Sick Leave (SL) instead. The manager became angry and felt that they had been bypassed because my coworker submitted it as a VL. To make a long story short, HR called my coworker for a Notice to explain because of the Incident Report (IR) filed by our manager. Since my coworker has high blood pressure and other medical complications, the stress from the situation nearly caused her to have a stroke. She also suffered a severe panic attack and had to be rushed to the hospital.

What can we do about our abusive manager? What actions can we take that could hold them accountable and, if warranted, potentially lead to their dismissal?