“You’ve done something wrong,” you told me on my first afternoon, after I had clicked on the wrong icon on the screen. “How does that make you feel?”
I was speechless. Your comments had become increasingly condescending, despite the fact that my first day was spent simply being shown the company’s online systems.
“What did you say?” I replied after a pause. You then dismissed my question entirely, turning the situation into a personal attack. During my first week, every time I asked a question about the work you snorted “what a mess”, before saying: “You’re a bad person.”
You spend day-in day-out sitting alone at a computer and seem to have no social awareness. You repeatedly mock my youth with sarcastic references to “big words” and “homework tasks”, but I am old enough to know when I am being mistreated. You shouldn’t make character assassinations to my face, or belittle me with personal jibes.
As the only two people in our team, there is no one else to hear you when you mock or insult me for asking a question because I am trying to understand your poorly-articulated rants.
When you type “verbal abuse” into a search engine, you are met with thousands of articles and advice blogs telling you how to recognise a verbally abusive partner, and how to extricate yourself from unhealthy relationships.
When you research bullying or harassment in the workplace, official guidelines advise you to consult your manager, the HR department or talk to your trade union representative.
But what happens if you are an employee in a small business without its own HR department or management structure, and the perpetrator is the company director?
You are my manager, my director and my HR department. You are utterly in control in this company – with no one to hold you to account, apart from those rare moments when I pluck up the courage to defend myself. And you know this.
Making your employee too afraid to ask you questions for fear of being insulted, is not a reflection of my poor intelligence (as you say), but rather poor management skills.
You oscillate between sarcastically calling me “a VIP” in reference to my achievements outside of this workplace, to condescendingly telling me how even the smallest task is “too complicated” for me.
You’re also wildly inappropriate: when I asked about company dress codes, you made a crude joke about my underwear.
It is this type of exploitative power dynamic that crosses the line from being an unpleasant boss to someone who mistreats their employee.
Of course, we have all experienced working with people that we don’t like, but there is a certain measure of respect and courtesy that everyone expects both in and out of the workplace.
If you want to see the business that you have built up yourself for years grow and expand, you need to re-examine how you treat the person you work with.
- Would you like to write an anonymous letter to your boss for this series? Get in touch by emailing careers.desk@theguardian.com
