bullied by my boss

 

 

How are you? What have you been doing over the bank holiday?

The issues are two fold this week. One is about work and the other is about A*. The work issue is that I feel I am being bullied by my boss. What is a bit scary about it is that I’ve been here before in a previous job at SBDC (https://hazeldurbridge.com/south-beds-district-council/) where I appointed someone, quite legitimately as the best candidate on the day and with full acknowledgement of my boss, but they didn’t want him to get the job. He had been involved in a say no to selling council housing campaign and was so successful their bid to sell off the housing stock failed. After his appointment, which in fact was only a year contract and passed without incident, things were never the same with my bosses and I couldn’t do anything right and I feel things are heading in the same way. This time I’ve done two things, which aren’t wicked or truly sacking offences, but seem to be being used to discredit me. First of all I had been charged with running a training event on strategy for a team away day and my boss said the chief exec and his boss had had a lot of experience of writing strategies. I sent a little email asking both of them if they would be prepared to speak for 10 minutes each at a training event. I said that we got a lot of help from my boss, but that it would be really good to have a bit more creative input. He went absolutely ballistic, said I had undermined him and how serious it was etc. The second thing was we have just gone through a job evaluation process where the Community Development officers scored 7. My boss wanted to appeal and get the score higher to 8 or 9. In the discussion about the job description and person spec the team and I moved the criteria about having a youth or community work qualification from desirable to essential. They did score 8, but now we are trying to recruit again none of the candidates have one and he had a right go at me on Friday saying I was egging the scoring and compromising him again. I feel very anxious about it as it just feels I can do nothing right. In the wider picture I think he feels his job is under threat and he is tense and irritable, but it makes going to work stressful at the moment. I also think that when you have been left you inevitably dissect incidents as being some fault line in yourself.

The second issue is A*. A* has fallen in love with this aussie bloke doing the world tour she met about 2 weeks ago. She has been dropping hints about not wanting to go to university for a while. She has to get 2As and a B for both her offered places and as her first exam did not go too well I think she feels she may not do it. She left school on Friday and I got home to her absolutely distraught (and A* does not cry). She says that she feels she has opened up to B and it feels like the floodgates have opened. She was always so independent and didn’t need anyone and now she just feels hopelessly vulnerable, doesn’t know what she wants to do. It was all very emotional and I was really glad that I was there, but I do feel worried for her. I truly don’t mind if she doesn’t go to university. She also had a car accident this week which didn’t help as she feels she has let me down. She had the 3 aussies in the car and pulled out in front of a flash sports car and it went into her and broke its bumper – probably a several £100 job rather than up her insurance. Poor thing – she really can’t afford it.

In between these incidents I did have nice times this week. I forced myself to go to a colleague’s leaving do on Thursday and had a great evening, meeting colleagues outside a work environment and seeing them in a different light. I also took J2, my youngest, dog racing on Saturday which he really enjoyed and won £16. I just feel I spend energy pulling myself out of an abyss only to be thrust back in it by a few careless words. The weather has also been beautiful which helps. I went horse riding on Saturday and had my weekly commune with nature which is always therapeutic.

Anyway, my boss is in Cornwall for the week so I can go back tomorrow and have peaceful times. What cases are you working on at the moment? Any more trips to military bases? I hope the treatment is working/has worked and you are feeling up to your DIY activities.