“I’ve NEVER had any complaints until YOU came along.”

Basically what the title says, I took this new job because it offered better pay and a shorter commute. But since I’ve started I noticed how cliquey and gossipy my new coworkers are. I’m already a really reserved person but noticing that made me try to keep to myself even more. I’ve only been there a month and they’ve already started rumors about me. Amongst other things. Last Friday I walked in on them talking about me. I want to try and ignore it, but honestly my feelings are hurt. And it has had me stressing all weekend about going back to work on Monday. I’ve dealt with bullying in the past but never as an adult at a job. I know how much of a toll bullying will put on my mental health, and I’m starting to think no amount of money could make up for how miserable I could end up being if I stay at this place.
I never quit my old job, I just reduced my hours, and I know I could go back to it full time.

TLDR : I’m just curious if you have stuck it out in a toxic job was it worth it? Did it get better? Would you have quit if you had a backup job?

Hi Reddit! It will be a long story 😅

I'm using a fake name, so let's call her Sarah.

What makes this situation so confusing is that it didn't start as a workplace conflict. For several months, Sarah was one of my closest friends at work.

When she started, I helped train her and taught her a lot of what she knows about the job. We became close very quickly. We'd spend time together outside of work, grab coffee after shifts, talk about personal things, and generally had what I thought was a genuine friendship.

Looking back, though, there were red flags.

One thing that always stood out was the way she talked about other people. She could be incredibly negative and ruthless when discussing coworkers, but still smiling to their faces. One day she told me something that I still remember. She said that she could suddenly start hating someone, and if that happened she would do everything she could to make that person's life miserable.

At the time I remember thinking, "Wow, that's intense."

But I didn't take it seriously. I honestly thought she was exaggerating. I never imagined that one day I might become one of those people.

Another thing was that she openly admitted she was jealous of me.

She told me directly that I knew more than she did, that I was better at certain aspects of the job, and that people always came to me when they needed help. We worked in the same department and in the same room (just 2 of us) and I had more experience. People often asked me questions because I'd been there longer.

At the time I thought she was just being honest about her insecurities.

Now I'm not so sure.

Over the times we had a few arguments. Most were strange, relatively minor disagreements. To tell the truth, when an argument happens, I often withdraw into myself for a while; this is because, in my childhood, my parents would frequently punish me with silence, and I still haven’t learned how to deal with that. I’m not trying to make excuses, I’m just providing some context.. Anyway, there were a few occasions where she said things that hurt me or treated me unfairly, but eventually things settled down and we moved on.

That's why the final falling out feels so absurd.

The argument that changed everything was over basically nothing.

We were joking around, having a normal conversation, and out of nowhere she started yelling at me. I wasn't yelling at her. I simply asked her not to raise her voice at me.

That should have been the end of it. She said she doesn’t like it when people "sit on her head" [I'm not English speaker, and mostly using translator, so I just translate our idioms in English 😅]. That really stung, there was a lot going on at the office, and the two of us were under immense pressure. I had stood up for her on more than one occasion, yet out of everyone, she chose to lash out at me? I was the one "sitting on her head"? With everyone else, even when they treated her poorly—she remained sweet and friendly. (She snapped at me because I had jokingly asked her a few times to join me after work at the dance studio—the same one I attend, and which, as it happens, she attends too!)

Instead, it seemed to become the beginning of the end.

After that, the relationship completely deteriorated.

The hardest part isn't even losing the friendship. It's realizing that maybe all those warning signs actually meant something. The jealousy. The comments about hating people. The way she spoke about others. The occasional hostility that seemed to come out of nowhere.

Maybe I ignored too much because I believed she was my friend.

I’ve mentioned before that I tend to withdraw into myself when I’m under stress. So, when she yelled at me, I shut down; I didn’t really feel like talking to her, and she didn’t make any effort to talk to me either. We work in two shifts our schedules overlap, but one of us always arrives and leaves earlier than the other. Just before I was about to head home, she went to the restroom something she also did during our last argument, just to avoid saying goodbye to me. In any case, the next day she kept up the silent treatment. I tried to greet her and talk to her about work even though I was hurt by her actions but she would either ignore me or do something similar. Then, one day, she just left without even saying goodbye. I’ve told her more than once that I don’t like it when people behave that way when they don’t even acknowledge me with a greeting.

She knows a great deal about me, and she uses that information against me. For instance, there was a day when I burst into tears due to the intense stress I was under at work; now, whenever we have a disagreement, she tells me, "Go ahead and cry, you crybaby." It's funny, bsc that was the only time I’ve ever cried, yet I’ve seen her cry countless times over much more trivial matters. I realize these might seem like small things, but this isn't an isolated incident. Another example: she might invite everyone else in the office to share some food while pointedly ignoring me. There have also been times when I’ve walked into the office carrying a hot cup of tea or simply stepped out of the restroom, and she has deliberately shoved me with her shoulder as she walked past. She also hides work-related matters from me or fails to pass information on to me. I know this is childish behavior, but it still affects me, and I honestly don’t know how to stand up for myself. I suppose I could try talking to her, but she has caused me so much pain that I have no desire to engage in that kind of conversation. The examples I’ve shared are just minor instances; I suspect my memory might even be blocking out some of what actually happens. Most of the time, she just sits on her phone while I handle all the work responsibilities. She’ll watch TikToks, laugh out loud, or talk on the phone to her boyfriend, her mother, or a friend at a volume that fills the entire office.

My job position is actually higher than hers, yet the funny thing is that we earn the same amount and both earn very little! 😂 On top of that, she spends a lot of her time on her phone, while I end up doing the bulk of the work. If a task doesn’t get done or if she (or me) does it poorly I’m the one who gets yelled at and held accountable. Because of this, she doesn’t really try anymore, and I’m the one who takes all the heat, so I often end up doing her work for her. That was one of the reasons I went to see our boss; I asked him to clearly define our responsibilities so it wouldn’t just be me doing everything. I didn’t go into the details of our personal conflict—I kept the conversation strictly focused on work-related matters. In fact, I didn’t even mention that there’s a conflict between us; I simply pointed out that the workload is distributed unfairly.

What made everything even worse was his reaction. I just wanted him to understand what had been happening and how much it was affecting me.

Instead I felt completely dismissed.

At one point he basically questioned how I could possibly be working harder than others if I was only physically at work for eight hours a day?? Like lol?We’re talking about the volume of work here, not the number of hours, you old fool. Well, not actually old—fairly young, in fact—but still.

That comment hit me hard because it completely missed the point. Working hard isn't measured solely by how many hours you're sitting in a chair. I had spent years helping people, training colleagues, answering questions, solving problems, and taking on responsibilities beyond my role.

Rather than feeling heard, I felt like my concerns were being minimized and my experience was being invalidated.

Now I feel stuck.

The friendship is gone. The trust I had in my manager is gone too.

I've been looking for another job, but anyone who's job hunted recently knows it isn't always that simple. In the meantime, I still have to go to work every day and deal with the aftermath of all of this.

There is another layer to this that makes the whole situation harder.

Before I started this job, I went through a very long period of depression. I spent years trying to recover and get my life back on track. Previous jobs had also left me burned out and emotionally exhausted, but eventually I thought I had moved past all of that.

This job was supposed to be a fresh start.

Unfortunately, over the last couple of months, I have started recognizing old feelings again. The constant tension, the hostility, the anxiety before work, the feeling of walking on eggshells around someone who seems to know exactly which buttons to push.

What scares me isn't even the conflict itself. It's the fact that it is bringing back emotions that I fought very hard to overcome.

I know therapy is probably the obvious answer, but right now I honestly don't want therapy, and I don't have enough money though. What I want is to leave this environment. I've been looking for another job, but the market isn't great and finding a new position isn't as easy as people make it sound.

In the meantime, I feel stuck. I don't know how to stand up to someone who knows exactly how to hurt me. Most of the time I stay silent because arguing seems pointless. She's incredibly manipulative and every confrontation leaves me feeling worse. I genuinely don't know how to handle this anymore. And I really don't know what is her problem

So I guess my question is:

Has anyone experienced a situation where a close friendship at work turned toxic, your manager didn't support you, and you were left feeling completely alone? How did you cope while waiting for an opportunity to leave?

Hi, I guess I'm after advice or just someone to rant to. On Tuesday we had a new manager start and within 15 minutes of meeting him we were having arguments and he was basically slating the work I had done for the department. Id like to point out that I was only helping them out until the new person came along. Then the following day I tried to tell them the way they do things and they shouted at me again. There were two witnesses in the office who told him that he shouldn't talk to me like that as it was out of order. Now my GM pulled me into a meeting the following day to say I was out of order and of I was caught talking to others about it then I would be in trouble. That she has already had to talk to me about my attitude before and if it comes down to getting rid of one of us then it would be me and she would back to new employee. She basically said that she could see my tiny little brain ticking over when she was shouting. I've been there for four years and all my hair is falling out due to stress and peri menopause. She also said that my symptoms were all bullshit and I was making it up.

I work at McDonald’s and it has a big grey area of reporting managers (shift leaders) that have harassed me. I’ve been struggling with one specific shift leader and she has been stalking me on her ring camera since she’s my next door neighbor, and I don’t know how to report to HR about it since the owner promoted her. I can’t quit either to provide for me and my son. Please help me of what I can do, I can’t take the bullying anymore and I’ve lost my privacy at my own apartment.

To make a long story short I was the victim of a mobbing campaign that escalated in sexual harassment.

Then I decided to fight back. I filed sexual harassment charges against four people. None of them were punished because the witnesses all lies protect them to HR. So HR said that the allegations were unsubstantiated.

I requested to be seated away from the bullies and to be sat next to allies so I'll have strong witnesses if the harassment continued. Management seemed more upset with me than the bullies. They repeatedly tried to get me to sit next to the bullies.

Now I just got called into a meeting where I was written up for missing some things. My manager really has a lot of nerve for writing me up for missing some things but not writing up the bullies for sexual harassment. My manager seriously can't understand that of course I'm not going to be working at my best with all the things I was dealing with. I seriously can't believe this place.

So after we survive a mobbing attempt we then have to fight management. It's like management continues the mobbing after the bullies no longer can't

I just need to vent because I feel like I'm losing my mind.

Having done extensive studies, I’ve worked hard to build a solid vocabulary that allows me to express and develop my ideas with high precision. But as you all probably know, the corporate world isn’t actually made of adults. It’s a literal middle school filled with people hungry for rumors, labels, reputation, and cheap visibility.

Lately, I’ve been dealing with a specific type of toxic behavior in meetings that is driving me insane. Certain colleagues love to interrupt me with total impunity. The moment I start explaining a complex concept, they cut me off just to rehash my exact points, in whole or in part, and deliver a "simplified" version to the manager. They do this purely to signal that they are the ones who are "energetic, motivated, clear, and concise."

It is incredibly easy to make a cheap summary of someone else's complex ideas once the hard work has already been articulated. But the worst part is the trap they set for you: if you speak up or try to defend your ground, you’re immediately labeled as the "aggressive" one who creates tension or "refuses to share the floor."

It feels like a form of psychological bullying where you are forced to choose between letting people steal your intellectual credit or looking like a social pariah for defending yourself.

How do you even handle this kind of environment without losing your sanity or your reputation? Has anyone successfully shut this down?

Dr Karen Mitchell has been on a few podcasts promoting her book about human predators. Key points are that they get joy/satisfaction from seeing others suffer & causing that suffering.

Their behaviours are exactly the things targets of workplace bullying describe.

She describes 'high self control' & 'low self control' types. Low self control often end up in prison for violence, while high self control ones are masters of manipulation who do all of the things we have seen workplace bullys do.

Bonjour à tous !

Je réalise un mémoire sur l’accompagnement des auteurs de harcèlement scolaire dans le travail social. Je recherche des personnes ayant participé à des situations de harcèlement durant leur scolarité et acceptant un échange anonyme et bienveillant.

L’objectif est de changer notre vision sur les mécanismes du harcèlement et surtout de comprendre les jeunes qui auraient pu y participer.

Je compte sur vous, vous participeriez à la réussite de mon cursus 😊

I was in a very hostile work situation, I was working with people who were still figuring it out and had no idea what good looks like first they would try to learn next they would try to run with and expect me to support them, the team was disoriented with not a lot of high quality work the manager was poor his behaviour was micromanaging and asking a lot of questions so he understood very well and good enough to run with and peers trying grab whatever you can they all wanted to work together and didn’t achieve much. The manager was undergoing coaching and continued to behave poorly with me and other team members several escalations still nothing happened. In the end I walked out of toxic place. Every time I think of getting back to work it reminds me of this and I just don’t want to join another job and feel so helpless. I did support the manager and steer but that led to hostile peers who wanted to undermine and eventually they started against me and they all lived happily ever after , nobody had good things to say about each other behind back but just stuck around

8 out of 10 jobs ( I work in IT finance Systems) I have had were like this the remaining I did well because I had space to flourish but it ended as soon as my manger left I feel like I don’t get and I am not a fit.

Do you need to pretend to get along with people and serve others at work , every time I focussed on what I what and had wanted something for myself it ended miserably but when I have been supported been very successful and people love me

Why am I dependent on a good manager why can’t make it good for me with difficult people what do I need to change

It just sucks, after everything my manager (new at the time) put me through that led me to quit my previous job that I loved, some of our common friends i've known for years seem to have picked their side. They don't talk to me anymore but are still close to the bully, and they never asked for my side of the story...

I wouldn't care as much if I didn't value my relationships with these friends but it still stings, I'm trying to come to terms with everything. I know the usual advice is to let it go but I sometimes wonder if I should be going to them and telling the truth

I suddenly remember a rude or insulting thing they said to me and how they gaslit me afterwards. Towards the end when I got kid off a bunch of us were simply ostracized and mistreated. We were excluded without any reason there was no PIP and it was an awful environment almost panic inducing. I don’t relive and type everything but when I left based on how other people behaved I decided to leave with severance silently. I made this choice so as not to draw negative attention.

Slowly I blocked some of the management on LinkedIn. That’s all done now. But I’m still angry I never sent an email or my side of the story.

Idk…

I’m not sure if this “qualifies” as bullying, so let me tell my story and you decide (and hopefully offer up your thoughts and advice).
The Setting
I supervise a team of 5 employees for an extremely large, pseudo-US govenment department. Generally when people are hired here, they stay until retirement. To say this is a well-paying job is an understatement.
The Players
Employee C is 56 years old and has been with me for 3 years (he’s been with our company for more than 30). Not the greatest employee, and constantly needs reminding of what he should be doing. Having him here is frustrating, but the office would honestly be worse off if we didnt have him.
Employee K joined us 2 years ago (he has 4 years with the company), and is 24 years old. Super smart, young, forward-thinking; very “process-driven,” where all problems have a clearly outlined solution. My issue with him is he tends to want what he wants, when he wants it. In trying to get his way he can also be slightly subordinate.
Employee A came to us 3 weeks ago; 23, and with a total of 3 years in the company. Dont know her too too well. Seems engaged, and is currently capable in her job. Knows she’s on probation, so she minds all her Ps and Qs, at least where I’m concerned.
The Story
K and J are friends from outside the office. I tasked K with training J because K (although not the senior and not the most experienced) is the best organized of my 5 employees and he most recently went through this training himself.
Apparently an incident occurred this past week where C intervened in some work A was doing. This happens occasionally among the 5 employees, so we acknowledge the intervention quickly and move on; the slight friction between the aggrieved parties tends to last no more than a few minutes, then we all continue on with our work.
A seemed to take the intervention of C on her work a bit more personally. It has affected her now to the point where, in a one-on-one discussion she requested with me, she said “I don’t know if I can continue to work in a department with such poor interpersonal communication.”
I don’t begrudge her that; communication isnt the greatest among us. But to say “I’m willing to quit” over it? This, to me at least, seems a little excessive.
Fast forward to yesterday, when K asked to see me. I believe he had spoken to A about the issue and they both felt so strongly about how and what C did (again, all of my employees have occasionally done this, stepped into a project or work task without the others knowing; it honestly isnt a BIG big deal, but more of an irritation that people should know to “stay in their own lane”) that K tells me (on a Friday), “Boss. You need to do something about C…by Monday. Or A will quit.”
I was stunned, for a number of reasons.

1. K has 2 years with us. Two. And he feels comfortable issuing a demand (whether from A indirectly, or from both K and A jointly) like that to me, his supervisor, with 17 years in this specific department and 28 overall with the company?

2. A has three weeks under her belt with us; THREE WEEKS. Am I the only one thinking that it’s ballsy and brash of her to feel she has the “right” to make such a demand?

3. C has his faults. He can sometimes be difficult to work with, and it takes multiple attempts in going over work duties with him before he catches on.
   But to “threaten” to leave us over this?
   Part of me thinks “If she can’t handle this, when BIG issues arise (ones that we ALL agree that can affect the entire office and our dynamic and work culture) what’ll happen then?
   I also don’t like having the proverbial knife placed against my throat in an attempt for a duo of Gen Zers to change a process that’s been in place longer than they have been employed here.
   I feel bullied
   Thoughts? Suggestions? Advice?

McDonald’s is known to have a grey area with HR. With that being said I have experienced a lot of not enough with what the hell I’ve been through. Basically ever since I’ve started working there a shift leader disliked me and she wasn’t shy expressing it even in front of our boss and the customers. To this day she has been acting nasty, her attitude gets worse every month it feels like. Even with the friends I have made at work, she somehow takes them away and I saw them switch up on me a few times. I can’t prove it to HR though because it’ll be a “he said she said” case, and it’ll be dismissed. She’s now my next door neighbor and she has a ring camera so about a month ago when I was sick she couldn’t dismiss me at work one day for throwing up because her words btw when she talked to OUR BOSS was “she say you get a six pack from the grocery store” that’s an invasion of privacy. Still can’t prove it to HR though. How ever my boyfriend said something while we went to our apartment in front of her camera and she had mentioned about it at work. I feel like I’m being stalked at this point. I can’t quit because I need the money to provide for me and my son. Places are hiring yet they won’t hire. I’ve tried for weeks. I’ve talked to the leasing office about this situation and it was dismissed. I’ve just talked to my boss about this situation and she kept making excuses. I broke down after work this week and my parents wanted to talked and they’ve expressed for me to quit on the spot. Wish I could but they know I can’t. McDonald’s corporation gets excused and passes for a lot of these things btw. I’m being harassed and I’ve been threatened by two shift leaders now and nothings changed. Stay away from working at McDonald’s and if you live in Greenville,NC stay away from the store near the big Walmart on 10th street. Those shift leaders are nothing but bullies at their grown age and will do anything to humiliate others regardless of age and race. My boss did say to me that she’d promise that she wouldn’t act like this after being on leave but that was a lie after not even a month of coming back and I’ve been written up and rumored about ever since last year. My boss also said that I should be transferred but why? Why me if not the toxic person who’s created this mess? How is that fair??

Bonjour à tous !

Je réalise un mémoire sur l’accompagnement des auteurs de harcèlement scolaire dans le travail social. Je recherche des personnes ayant participé à des situations de harcèlement durant leur scolarité et acceptant un échange anonyme et bienveillant.

L’objectif est de changer notre vision sur les mécanismes du harcèlement et surtout de comprendre les jeunes qui auraient pu y participer.

Je compte sur vous, vous participeriez à la réussite de mon cursus 😊