Anonymous Toxic Workplace Stories are real and anonymous workplace stories. Gain unique insights and drama as we share firsthand accounts of toxic and traumatic work experiences. Discover the untold truths from employees who've lived through it all- as written by them.
At my previous workplace, because we were trainers, all of us had qualifications, accept our boss. She only had Matric and her lack was evident in how she managed us as everything was delegated to us and she just "edit" things. If you come up with suggestions, she say you must do it. It was difficult to communicate with her as she never understands what you convey and we had to explain things till she lost all interest and say do it, with the hope you get tired of your new idea and leave it. New ideas wasn't seen as innovation, but as you wanting to outshine her. She used being God fearing/Christian in many conversations to make up for her lack. We were all fearful of giving ideas as it will increase our workload. What was worse, the lazy ones, the quiet ones did not have workload issues and deliberately and boasted how the play "dumb" not to work. This was a huge joke and for those that worked it was like we stupid to do our work, for what we being paid for.
I was always given advice 2-3 hours long how I must be more emotionally mature. How I need to let things go. The more I let things go, overlooking theft, ignoring unfairness, hearing gossip entertained by bosses, the childish comments, the remarks, it chipped at my personality and over all wellbeing.
We were trained to be silent, we had meetings from 9 clock till 4 clock. She loved herself talk, repeating things, but no action, it was frustrating. There was lots of clicks at work too. She also managed us based on her feelings and mood. If she was in a bad mood she was hostile and when she is in a good mood she wants to know about your family. She always made remarks like, why are you nervous, when I say cos you the boss, she say, check yourself why and examine why you feel like that, as if something is wrong with you. Never took accountability, but preached about it. She played alot of mind games and then calls "trap" meeting to call you out on it. Fear was high, trust was low. It was exhausting, but the love for teaching was what kept me going, till I couldn't go on anymore.