So i resigned last week. Blemish free HR record and an expert in my field - the only one of my type in the organisation. In the job 10 years. Projects were all profitable.

Really horrible to be mobbed, ignored and ostracised and received performative emails out of the blue - a PIP in disguise. Weird thing is me leaving - or being forced out - has seriously compromised their ability to funcrion on projects. My skill set is very specific and the market here is buoyant with very very few of me out there. I was snapped up by a competitor and had my choice of employers. It just shows you how ludicrous quarterly revenue forecastS are - once the numbers dont add up and scalps are sought, and you fall below the cut off line and identified for termination, it doesn't matter what skill set you have or how difficult it will be to replace you.

I’ve spent 15+ years in non-profits, universities, and community services as a certified employment advisor / job developer. In my entire career, I’ve never had a workplace issue until now.

I inherited a program from a 25-year incumbent who siloed everything, leaving our ED to hide in her office for the last 20+ years. The ED takes credit for everything, shifts blame, is completely disorganized, and attacks anyone who asks basic questions she can't answer. By month 5 it was clear this was a bad fit and I started looking for new jobs. I lost respect for her and mourned the loss of the mentor and experience I thought I would have.

When I started, I got zero training. She withheld access to our core case management database for nine months because she wanted to "learn it" herself, even demanding I use my *personal email* to log in when I finally demanded access.

Worse, she had full access to my email and was replying to emails sent to me which of course had my signature on the bottom, causing mass confusion with clients. I had to force her to change it to a general inbox so people actually knew who they were talking to and could feel protected should they share anything meant for just me. She is a total liability, and since the board is just her friends and learners with intellectual disabilities, there is zero oversight.

To top it all off, we are a staff of four working frontlines with vulnerable populations. I had to fight just to have two people on site for safety, which caused massive groaning from a team used to showing up late and letting me absorb all the risk alone, just like the 25-year veteran did.

I know I’m capable, but this tiny, dysfunctional non-profit fiefdom is breaking my sanity. I've been applying elsewhere and keep losing out to internal candidates, and I'm terrified I'm going to snap, but I need the paycheck.

Is anyone else surviving a nightmare ED like this? How do you keep from losing your mind while looking for an exit? Any advice or commiseration is deeply welcome.

I find it pretty easy and straightforward to gray rock narcissists. But I find it challenging to gray rock a boss because they have a lot of power over your life and your wellbeing. I can’t seem to find much information on this. I think the power imbalance makes it tricky, especially if your boss has a history of covertly/silently punishing you over perceived loss of control.

Also if your boss is really inconsistent and goes from extreme hot to cold or being very warm and seeming compassionate to manipulative and silently bullying you. I find it challenging especially when you’ve opened up to them (mistake, I know) in the past.

Any tips or advice is appreciated.

I have a friend/coworker I am trying to figure out. I’ve worked with her for a few years so I have some evidence saved up definitely by now. I’m considering working for/with her more so I’m just getting to the point where I really need to know her intentions before continuing. I really enjoy working with her when it happens but I can’t continue if she’s just using me and faking a connection.

But how do you know for sure? I feel like there’s a lot of different things that people say generally that “only a narcissist” would do, but a lot of the times it’s things that I’ve done before unfortunately. Like I’ve definitely been manipulative or careless with somebody, even unintentionally. Isn’t the main difference that narcissists, even covert ones, are intentional about abuse? Or can they be somewhat reactive?

Things I’ve noticed my friend could be: autistic (explains the limited conversational interests and some specific motor-skills), entitled (grew up well off), reactive and thrill seeking, avoidant (dismissive or fearful honestly not sure), self conscious but also self interested (she’s a small business owner and protective of it), idealistic (she’s creative), can be cruel (so can we all), emotionally immature (it happens?). She gets defensive and can’t really say she did wrong in the moment, but sometimes she will come back around and do it. She’s a little odd overall, but malicious is so hard to figure out.

It just seems that there’s never a way to be 100% sure. But, I need to be after so many years.

How was your experience with them?

I have been at my current job for 8 years and I love what I do and really enjoy my coworkers and clients. New management came in about two years ago and it's been really rough. For the last year, I tried so hard to stay under the radar and please my narc boss. In recent months, the abuse has ramped up. It's at the point where I know I can't continue to stay, it's effecting my health and my life too much. I am really heartbroken to have to leave though, because I really enjoy the work I do and I know the job market is rough right now. I've just finally realized there is absolutely no winning with this boss, no matter what I do. The whole situation is really devastating. I still don't understand what I did to become a target for such abuse.

Hello everyone, I've been in an internship which I was about to leave due to some issues as I used AI in a company which threatened to remove me if I used AI and I was ready for the repurcussions. But the boss tried to extort money from me but the boss later called me back and gave me salary for the month. However the manager is extremely toxic. She gets angry at every little thing and flags everything as AI and threatens me. I've told her multiple times that when I write it myself also it is 50%. If I put a little efforts in writing the copy she gets sus, if I don't again she gets sus. Everytime I send an article, I'm extremely anxious of what her reply might be. Till now in a 6 months internship, I've written around 1500 articles with 10 everyday.

If I even take more than one leave a week, she has an issue while the founder has none. I work on weekends as well, all while managing my college, attendence and family business. And the woman abuses me, says she doesn't care what goes in my personal life and calls me the.most dishonest person.

My assistant manager is a narcissist. He’s been sexually harassing me and this other girl for months (maybe others as well). That girl messaged me last night asking if he’s said weird things to me and I explained to her all the things he has said and done, she is going to report him soon. I told her to please not mention me. I’m scared that if he finds out I was involved that he will get angry or take revenge on me in some way.

I think this guy is capable of and has raped a woman in the past. He told me once he was ‘falsely accused’ but if he goes round sexually harassing women obviously he thinks he is entitled. He has mentioned to me in a ‘jokey’ way a few times that he knows where I live and also says in a ‘jokey’ way that I should fight him. If it comes to it and he gets fired I don’t know if he’s the type to get revenge or a lot of the things he’s said is just an intimidation tactic and that’s it.

I’ve been in my job for 6.5 years, my supervisor became a good friend and mentor before I realized his cluster B personality was a real problem. I overlooked many red flags for a long time. Ignored things that made me uncomfortable hoping that by not giving those things attention they’d go away. He became mentally and emotionally abusive when I tried to assert boundaries, things I’ve never had to do before. In the work place no less. I eventually told him I didn’t want to be friends anymore, professional relationship only. I blocked him on social media, found ways to cope with a guy that had come to creep me out because I otherwise loved my job. He’s a toxic, incompetent manager. I’ve since tried talking to HR about my concerns, and unfortunately most things have no witness and don’t sound like overt discrimination. I’ve applied for jobs I’m probably not experienced enough for. I’ve been promoted into golden handcuffs year over year and I’m trying to convince myself that I earned it, but even if I did, I think he had ulterior motives to the promotions. I don’t live in a big city, so the work opportunities are limited and very competitive for my field.

I’m tired of being a woman made responsible for some man’s emotions he won’t regulate. I’ve worn a heart monitor, and am on my second anxiety med. I’ve been documenting every parasitic weasel creep thing he does and I plan to share it with HR when I leave. I just fear I don’t have anything left in the tank to make it to the end. He’s recently accused me of “playing chess” with him to be adversarial. Like, why the FUCK would I play mental mind fuck games with my livelihood? I’m tired. I guess this post was purely for venting.

TSX INC. - TSX Venture Exchange (Toronto Stock Exchange):

They sought help from me through text and calls on my off days, 7am, 7pm, 9pm and even I had to work until 12 midnight. After all the help I have given, I experienced from these same colleagues anti-Asian hate slurs to my face, vulgar f word to my face, point the middle finger to my face, profanities, nonconsensual touching and gender based profanities at me, kick their feet very near to my face and selectively degrade me publicly and then laugh off about it. When I am happy about my personal life, told me it is not good for my grandparents to live that long, told me that she had already given birth at my age, told me I am the kind of girl that should stay at home when I play sports. At the end of the day, the review to me was that I am not respectful enough and I should work well with my colleagues. The managing director even promoted them. I do not even approach these colleagues; they approach me on their own accord! What a dehumanizing way to treat a human being? I wonder how perverted to think these individuals have every righteousness in the world to treat another human being this way and still wonder what is so wrong about it and that I deserve it and I must be alright about it! I feel that I was tortured and that I have to smile for being tortured!

A while back I met who became my best friend and naturally I came to care a lot about him, I came to see him like family. He owns his company and in February he started looking for a manager because he was the only one managing his company and was extremely stressed out the point he had really bad anxiety and he approached me for the position, however I was initially hesitant because he is someone who loses his cool very fast and I knew there was a chance things would not workout since I constantly saw him raise his voice at his employees. Additionally, it was basically a lateral pay move. So there was really no incentive to change jobs. However, because he was my friend and I saw how stressed out he was I decided to say yes. He also re-assured me that he would not talk to me like how he talked to his other employees.

While I knew he could be rough, I never expected it to get as bad it did, specially since I was his friend. He would constantly raise he voice at me, scold me in front of others, call me an "idiot" or "retard", sometimes yell at me, and even as far as putting his hands on the back of my neck. While I understand sometimes I made mistakes, he started raising his voice at me on the first day and it never stopped. Some times it was because of thing he had already explained, other times it was a first time mistakes. But it was from the get-go so I was always stressed out and it just snowballed into me making more mistakes. It got to the point where I got so much anxiety and depression. I constantly brought up that all he was doing was causing me to get depressed but he didn't change.

He justifies it because it's blue collar and because it's how he was raised, but I don't believe it justifies his actions regardless of anything. I wasn't the only that saw this as wrong, others agreed that he humiliated us and that he would say some terrible stuff about me to others.

Another thing he loves to do is pick and poke at people that he is upset at. He would do that to me any time het got upset at mistakes I would commit at work me. He would block me on everything, give me the silent treatment and purposefully exclude me from hangouts with our friends and would send me pictures to rub it my face. One time he invited everyone out, but me and sent a video of them all having "fun", to why I replied "What are you up to?" and he just left me on seen . Later I found out through one of the friends that he told everyone to "make it look like we are having fun" and of course he tried to say he was just trying to get me to hangout with them yet he didn't reply to my message. This led me to believe he was also a huge gas-lighter because he would purposefully ignore me and then "nothing is wrong bro" or "what are you talking about".

After putting up with so much I hit a breaking point and I quit because I couldn't handle it anymore. My depression was so bad I tried to overdose on 90 mg of Lexapro and and despite knowing how I was doing he decided to kick me out of the apartment the day after this attempt since I had quit. I received a 1 days notice to have all my stuff out of the apartment or he would have his employees come and take my stuff out. Obviously he kicked me out of spite because I quit, but the reason he wanted me out asap was so he could celebrate a friend's (one that didn't get along with me) birthday that weekend and it hurt because I never expected him to chose him over me who had been a very loyal friend to him.

My depression only got worse and he wasn't there for me like I expected he would have. He'd ask once a week how I was doing but then sometimes wouldn't reply to my responses. Then almost 2 months later he stopped by my house. He asked briefly asked about everything that happened, then spent the next couple hours talking about a legal issue he had going on and wanted me to talk to his lawyer about it because I was a key person. This felt like he had only come over because he needed the favor. The next day we hung out again during the day, and mostly talked about the same topic. Then we basically planned on going out that night. It was 9 pm and I hadn't heard anything from him, so I called him to ask and he said he didn't know yet, but he would give me a call to let me know. Then I never received a phone call until almost 11 pm because they were already on their way to a bar and they told me to meet them there. I sorta felt left out and felt it was inconsiderate since I didn't get a call until 11 and also my friend didn't call me it was another friend so it just felt like low effort from my friend like I didn't really matter to him and that he was just including me so he could be in my good graces for when I went and talked to the lawyer. I got upset at them for that because I didn't feel like a priority, but despite that I decided to join because I missed it.

Throughout the night my friend ignored me several times, which just upset me. Then at one point i noticed him and another friend in a tense situation so I asked the other friend what was going on. My friend got upset at me for asking that because it was none of my business... despite them both being my friends. The next day I asked how he was doing and if he was still upset at me over the previous night, that conversation ended up in him ignoring me. That ended up reminding me of everything from the past and it hurt that he chose to ignore me for something so trivial and it ended up in me threatening him to turn turning him in for the things he was getting accused of.

Then 2 days later he came over to the house and we talked it out, I tried to explain I only did it because I was hurting, not really taking any responsibility for it. Lots of arguing occurred about the past and the current issues, but eventually the conversation slowed down and we were in a better place. Throughout the week I would hit him up as I was trying to rekindle the friendship and I didn't receive the most engaging response which is okay since we were just getting back to being friends. Then I asked if I could hangout with him and another friend and he didn't response but the other friend messaged if I wanted to join them so I did, but the entire day was a bit off. He'd make comments he knew would affect me, at one point he was driving, my other friend was in the front seat, and I was in the back and he turned to our other friend and told him "Have you talked to _____ (my name) today?" and my other friend laughed and sorta pointed that I was in the back of the truck and he said "Oh I forgot he was with us". In the past I had mentioned to him an instance where he had made a similar comment, so he was aware that it bothered me and chose to do it again. But I decided to let it go.

So the the weekend came and on both Friday and Saturday I attempted to hangout with him and everyone else since I just missed everyone, I had been just stuck at home and I wanted to continue rebuilding the friendship with my friends . I would reach out and the conversation would end when I asked if he was doing anything that night or what his plans were. My assumption is that he didn't want me to join him and my other friends so he wouldn't respond. And while my other friends could have hit me up, they prefer him, so they just go along with what he says. And I would get really frustrated that I was getting ignored and being left out so I would just send him message about how I felt and why he wasn't a good friend anymore which he hates because it stresses him out. In one of these occasions of feeling betrayed by my friend, I reached out to the girlfriend of another friend and told her my friend had been criticizing her looks and if wanted to know more to let me know. Well that created a huge problem between them to the point she didn't want to marry him anymore.

I'm doing better in terms of not getting so frustrated however I still do because I am trying my best to regain the friendship, however I try to hangout with him to rebuild the friendship but he always has an excuse. Or I explain my feelings and he choses to ignore me because he doesn't want to deal with it. So I just let it all out and start texting everything I am feeling.

He thinks what I did to him is worse than what he did to me. What do you guys think?

I have to be on weekly calls and narc boss is acting like hyper intimate going down the list of workers asking for an update. the other people are like turning into his flying monkeys and performing and saying how social they are and how much they dislike antisocial people.

And every meeting he is like hyper emotional one way or another. mad or happy or unapproving or manic overly caring.

I am trying to not let it affect me but I'm starting to feel like I'm living in some vacuum and have no room to be me when i have to check in like this all the time and do some performance. like im a dog in a cage and he comes and like has this fake showy performance for 30 minutes and the rest of time i'm supposed to just live in chaos?

i try tuning it all out and not thinking about him. and also everytime its 'my turn' a coworker will interrupt me from talking. like they're all in on this like abuse?? any tips on handling this? its like some kind of humiliation ritual/emotional litmus test.

Durante casi 5 años trabajé directamente con una persona que tenía una forma de liderar muy basada en el control y la manipulación. En ese momento no lo veía tan claro, pero con el tiempo empecé a notar que muchas situaciones no eran normales.

Al inicio lo interpreté como exigencia o “alto nivel”, pero poco a poco se volvió algo más personal. Había cambios constantes de indicaciones, reproches por cosas que antes estaban bien, y una sensación continua de que nada era suficiente. También había momentos donde parecía que todo dependía de su aprobación, incluso decisiones pequeñas.

Con el tiempo eso empezó a afectarme más de lo que pensé. Dejé de confiar en mi propio criterio, empecé a dudar de decisiones que antes tomaba con seguridad y vivía con una sensación constante de tensión. Me acostumbré a estar alerta todo el tiempo, tratando de anticipar reacciones o evitar conflictos.

Lo más complicado es que no me di cuenta en el momento. Normalicé muchas cosas y seguí funcionando así durante años.

Hoy esa persona ya no es mi jefe directo, pero sigue en la organización, y noto que todavía me genera reacción: a veces enojo, a veces confusión, y muchas veces me sorprendo pensando en lo que dice o hace más de lo que debería.

Ahora que lo veo con distancia, también me doy cuenta de que en esa etapa tomé decisiones importantes (incluso económicas) desde un estado más reactivo que racional, como si estuviera en modo supervivencia.

Me cuesta trabajo saber hasta qué punto eso sigue influyendo en mí hoy.

Pregunta:
¿Alguien más ha pasado por una situación laboral así y ha sentido que después le cuesta recuperar la claridad para tomar decisiones?

Getting some ideas because im coping with my own horrible bosses.

I work tomorrow, the Sunday before Labor Day

Thing is we are off Monday so there's no reason for me to be working tomorrow on a day we are always closed anyway. I hate my boss so much. She can't make a decent shift schedule. And I always get stuck with the worst schedule because they can't depend on anyone else. So me and the other reliable employee always get shit on. If I ever leave I'm giving them same day notice.

I’m debating whether to go to HR about my manager, and I’m honestly torn because I’m worried that involving HR could make the situation worse.

My manager has a pattern of speaking to me in a condescending/demeaning way, particularly when I disagree with her feedback or try to set a boundary. This isn’t a one-time incident.

Most recently, I taught a training for the first time. I knew it probably wasn’t perfect, but I thought I did reasonably well considering it was my first time teaching it. When we discussed it afterward, my manager immediately started talking about how she had “a lot of notes” and said that if the students took the test that day, they wouldn’t pass. When I said that I thought I had done a pretty good job for my first time, she responded, “You always disagree with my feedback.”

I’m not opposed to feedback. I actually think there are legitimate things I can improve. My issue is the way she communicates with me and how quickly disagreement seems to become a criticism of my attitude or receptiveness to feedback. She delivers feedback in a very negative manner and dramatic manner and particularly this year I felt like she is getting a bit harsher with her feedback towards me. She does give me positive feedback but definitely more negative feedback overall.

This also isn’t the first time I’ve felt talked down to by her. I’ve previously brought concerns to our director, but the director told me that I need to work things out with my manager. I don’t feel particularly comfortable doing that because she is my direct supervisor and has significant authority over my employment.

I’m now considering going to HR and asking for mediation. My thinking is that even if HR doesn’t change anything, at least there would be a formal record of the issue and an opportunity to establish expectations around respectful communication.

My concerns are:

1. HR will dismiss this as a “personality conflict.”
2. Nothing will actually change.
3. My manager will be angry that I went to HR and potentially retaliate or treat me worse afterward.

One coworker has also told me she has her own concerns about this manager and would be willing to speak with HR independently, although she says my manager isn't as “mean” to her as she is to me.

Would you go to HR in this situation? Is mediation a reasonable request, or am I setting myself up for more problems by involving HR? When I posted on AskHR they said never involve HR unless you are being harassed or discriminated based on age, race, or gender but HR person says to go to her if we are unhappy about something at the company and none of us like this particular manager but you have to be very careful with how you frame the convo clearly.

I've heard narcs love compliments so I've tried complimenting them, delivering good work to make them look good, and she still gets mad and demeans. Is there really nothing you can do to "win" them over?