I’ve been having thoughts about a comparison between bad bosses, abusive relationships, and how those behaviors are encouraged in corporate culture.
So I kind of hesitate to expand upon this because I don’t want to make it sound like I’m minimizing the experiences of victims of child or spousal abuse. And I’m not trying to do that, but I have listened to a lot of people’s personal accounts of abuse and I have come to the conclusion that abusive behaviors are encouraged in corporate culture.
Hold on, this is going to be a long one.
It should be noted that I am not a psychologist and that there’s probably a more qualified person out there that’s making the same kind of conclusions than I am, but with better words. And there is probably a better-paid person with better words to say the opposite thing.
I quit my job of three years about a month ago. Retail job, generally decent but overall sucky. And in that job I had a bad boss. Some of y’all know this story- she took her stress out on us instead of taking care of her own problems. Shouting matches. Playing favorites.
We did everything we’re supposed to do- we contacted HR, we got rid of the boss, we worked to get things right again.
We got a new boss, who wasn’t entirely like the old boss, but there was still a similar vibe. Which is okay- we were kind of expecting that. Because ‘Type-A personalities’ are the kinds of people who get promotions.
Type A personality refers to a type of personality that is characterized by perfectionism, a high degree of stress, impatience and inappropriate expressions of anger or frustration. Underlying this personality type is a low self-esteem that drives a person to “overstrive” and compete.
Now, I don’t subscribe the the ‘personality type’ categorization because I don’t think that’s a fair view of the way the world is. But- perfectionism, competitiveness, and a tendency towards wanting things done as quickly as possible are qualities that many companies see in leadership roles. And a lot of companies will look for Type-A characteristics when looking for leadership roles.
These qualities are also often present in abusers.
A number of people whom I have talked to about bad bosses have said that they see many abusive characteristics in those bosses, and in some cases- every boss they’ve ever had. That is not to say that everyone with ambition is an abuser, but there’s a Venn diagram to be made.
An article I found used a phrase that I found…. disturbingly similar to abuse tactics.
“This is a paranoid culture. We want people to feel that someone’s always looking over their shoulder, ready to catch them on something. That’s what keeps them sharp.”
Some signs that you’re in an abusive relationship:
- Humiliation- (mean nick names, bringing up old mistakes, public scolding)
- Verbal insults
- Controlling behavior (”I can’t quit, I need the money.”)
- Picking at faults (that perfectionism, going into overdrive if there’s a corporate visit coming up)
- Alienating friends or family (If you call off- ‘do you want this job or not?)
- Placing the blame (’We failed the audit because of your department,’ even if their department took a bigger hit.)
- Manipulation
- Calculated outbursts (In my case, she never yelled at me unless we were alone.)
So that’s about bad bosses and companies that encourage bad bosses.
Point #2 is that a bad job affects how you see yourself.
The company I work for is much smaller. Instead of a company that makes 4.4 billion a year, my new one only makes 8.9 million a year. We have 7 locations in the midwest instead of hundreds across the country. I’m paid better. I can literally drive a couple cities over and visit the corporate office.
After about a month of being away from the old job, I am struggling to adjust. I wake up in the morning and am reluctant to get out of bed because ‘my feet hurt.’ I am conditioned to think that my feet hurt from walking around all day on a hard tile, even if I no longer walk on that hard tile. My feet don’t hurt anymore, but I’ve trained myself to think they do.
I still think: “If I mess up a little bit, I will get yelled at” even though my new boss has never been mad with me and by all accounts has never risen his voice.
I still think: “Am I going to be the favorite one today or am I going to be the one that gets the blame for all the little things?” Even though my new boss doesn’t really play favorites.
I still think that I’m going to get fired for some small thing. I still think that I’m going to get scolded or screamed at or ostracized. I think that I’m going to have someone looking over my shoulder to make sure I’m doing it right, make sure I’m not slacking off, make sure I’m not clocking out too early or too late.
For three years of my life, this job had become part of my identity so much that I’m still having trouble separating myself from it. And I wake up in the morning thinking ‘I need to quit my job.’
But I already did that.
And it was hard for me to go from a place that treated me like shit to somewhere that doesn’t. It doesn’t seem true. I’m looking for problems.
It is often that an abuse survivor will go from one abusive relationship to another abusive relationship. It’s a cycle of behavior that’s very common. It is actually mentioned in this article about abusive jobs. It also mentions that you shouldn’t try to change the abusive atmosphere- your best option is to leave.
Sounds familiar.
I was hesitant to apply for the job I now have. Why? Plenty of overtime, decent pay, health coverage, dental coverage, and a good score on Glassdoor.com?
It sounded too good to be true. I didn’t think I deserved it. Because all those years in a bad job changed the way I saw myself.
Point #3, which I guess is tangental to point #1-
Co-dependency, and imbalance of power.
Companies rely on their low-tier workers to keep their business running. We do all the hard work that the company needs done but doesn’t want to do. We provide the service.
We need this job to live.
They need us so that they can stay in business. Staying in business isn’t a requirement for them to live. Having a job, for us, is. But it seems like most jobs of this kind that I’ve been in have seen us as more or less disposable. And if they feel like we might be getting ready to take a stand, they threaten us with replacements (scabs, robots, a more naive workforce) while we’re out on the street with no income.
I felt guilty leaving my old job. Not because I didn’t know how I was going to pay the bills but because I felt that they needed me. I felt like I was screwing people over by not staying. I felt sympathy for people who couldn’t pay me enough to survive. I felt like I was letting them down, even though they’d let me down millions of times before.
That sounds familiar, too.
Once again, all of this is anecdotal- based on my experiences and experiences of other people on the relationship of the two topics. I’m not a psychologist or any kind of professional in the fields applicable here- I’m just a person who sees a similarity, and possible correlation, between two things.
And those are my thoughts.
Full disclosure: I don’t work retail. I work in an office. I hope it’s still ok to jump in.
The way I realized my working situation wasn’t normal was because I started relating hardcore- like sometimes to the point of tears- with stories and checklists of abuse. Only I’d never been abused. So this felt very strange (and I felt very guilty, like I was co-opting someone else’s pain, even though it resonated in me like my own). And then I realized the person in whom I saw so much of this behavior was my team lead, who at the time was also functionally if not officially my boss.
I mean, I’d joked before that my job was my abusive spouse because of how bad it made me feel, how often I took an emotional or mental hit. Also the fact that I’d quit and come back several times. It didn’t occur to me how fucked up that was until later- that it was a way of trying to cope with what was actually happening. And like you, I don’t want to give the impression that this is the same as domestic abuse, but at the same time… I spent much of my waking life there.
And I felt terrified.
It was a different sort of terror from physical violence. This person had reduced me to nothing, made me believe down to my marrow I was incompetent, worthless, that I shouldn’t even have a job here much less anywhere else. His hatred poisoned every day. I lived in dread of times I needed to speak with him, while at the same time, I would slave over work he would see to the point of obsession in hopes that this time he’d be happy and find some merit in it.
Every day I was afraid I’d lose my job, even as I fantasized constantly about quitting. Because I thought I’d never be able to get another. I mean, who would have weak, broken, skill-less shitstain like me?
And it’s not about the job. It’s NEVER about the job. It’s about whether or not you’re able to survive in this hellhole civilization we’ve built. I can’t really describe what it feels like to really, truly believe someone who hates you holds the power of survival over you.
It’s not like other people didn’t know. Sometimes his public mask would slip, in a team meeting, in a passing comment, to the point my coworkers would ask me about it or express their disgust. Never in front of him, of course. Nobody wanted to be a target.
Nor was I his only victim. He ran at least three other people out of the team that I know of. He’s been evil to several more who stayed. One of them- my former manager- became physically ill and quit on her doctor’s advice. Another warning sign; my stress load grew so high at one point that not only was I having serious physical symptoms and daily breakdowns, my brain seemed to stop working. I literally couldn’t think. I had no short-term memory, I couldn’t string even two simple ideas together, I couldn’t form sentences when I tried to speak.
Naturally, that was a fresh dose of fear.
It’s worth mentioning my ASD and history of depression (which became re-activated depression) played into this considerably. But he’s still the one who caused it. He doesn’t get exonerated because I happened to have mental issues that made me feel even worse.
I tried to shield other people on my team. I felt like it was my duty. Like I could take it, like at least he wasn’t killing all of us. I tried to pretend it was a game and get some petty satisfaction out of every round I “won” even though I knew it only made things worse.
Eventually, I broke. I told my department head. Previously I’d spoken to her about twice; I’m not sure she even knew my name; and then one summer afternoon I spent an hour sobbing in a conference room while I told her everything.
Here’s what I found out: Everybody knew.
Not about me specifically, but about him. They knew he terrorized people until they quit. They knew he had serious issues with female employees in particular. That he was petty and vindictive and a bad manager.
To her credit (and I mean this with all my heart), she got me out of that group by moving me to another project. She sat down with him, despite not being in his management chain, and told him this shit was at an end; he had to go to special classes, most of his direct reports were removed and he knows he has to tow a certain line now.
But he’s still there. He’s still employed, he wasn’t even demoted. And then he got cancer, so nobody is allowed to say anything “mean” about him again, even if it’s true.
Some days it almost seems surreal. Like did this even happen, was it really that bad? And I have to remember all over again that it did, and it was.
I still think about leaving. I still don’t think I can. That even if I tricked another company into hiring me, they’d soon realize their mistake. That it would be the same there, or worse. At least I’ve learned how to survive here; there I won’t know.
Two things I hate about myself:
1. This still effects me years later. I’m still not back to where I was before. I doubt myself all the time. I think every mistake will be the end. I people please and I never was a people-pleaser. I still don’t have back the friendships I lost when I was too emotionally dead to keep up. I still deal with regular bouts of anxiety (which I never had before), depression (more regularly than before), and manufactured stress.
2. I wish the cancer had killed him. I tell people I don’t, but I do. I’m now the kind of person who is capable of wishing that on someone else. Like his poison stained me and now I’m a bad person.
1. Don’t worry, you’re not derailing. This is the kind of crap that I’m talking about. It goes on in all kinds of work environments- not just retail or food service, but in the kinds of jobs that people think are ‘cushy.’ It’s not the job- it’s the boss, its the corporate culture, it’s the way that we expect people in charge to be pushy, abusive, demanding, and devoid of compassion.
2. You’re not a bad person for this. He impacted your life in a way that affects your ability to function as an adult, which will take years of self-work to get back. Like honestly? I would have done the same.
So, I dont have a job yet, but this seems related.
The same thing happens in schools. I also felt terrible for seeing checklists of abuse, and relating even though I havent been abused, but reading this post I noticed a lot of this in my old principles and even teachers.
I had one teacher who pretended to care until I got close to feeling confortable enough to talk to other people about it, then reduced me to nothing. Ive had pricples who have actually told me that Im terrible at my ‘job’ (how they actually referred to it) for missing a single assignment.
Teachers who told me that I wouldnt go anywhere because I was an idiot. Why did she say that? Because I couldnt write in cursive. Then they pretended to care. And I felt bad for hating them. Like the other two, I know that this isnt the same as domestic violence, but it still scared me.
I had one teacher, and at this school emotions were high, even for an 8th grade school. And so multiple people had breakdowns in class, and she essentially told them all to ‘suck it up’. Then pretended to care and made us all feel like shit for hating her.
And the principles were even worse. Going so far as invaldating my anxiety, and telling me Id get nowhere in life, in the same goddamned sentence.
My point here is that, all jobs breed this behavior. Even the ones that are supposed to be about other people. Sorry if I derailed, but its important to note its all jobs, not only a few.
I think that school dynamics could be a study on its own. I’ve got family members who have been teachers and administrators at public schools and the environment is bad for students and teachers alike. I still get nightmares about middle school and I’m 31 years old. The way we conduct teaching and the people we accept as teachers needs evaluation.
Apparently multiple doctors have told my coworker that she has legitimate PTSD from working under this one horrible manager. She worked under them for a solid few years and routinely cried at work as this person is very abusive in their actions, gaslights, holds up entire processes because she’s slow but blames everyone else, and is incapable of every admitting wrongness…so I’d say there is something here
(Everyone knows also but because of interpersonal connections they can’t be fired)
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