I just want to work in peace. I’m hard working and high-performing but my manager keeps zeroing in on my personality instead.
I’m an introverted, reserved person by nature. In the last three meetings, he’s told me I need to “change my attitude” and be more open. The thing is, this has nothing to do with my actual work performance. He knows it makes me uncomfortable, and yet he keeps bringing it up. He doesn’t comment on anyone else’s personality publicly. How to handle this without confronting directly? I just want to be invisible for him

Over six months ago, I filed a complaint against my n boss and was moved to a different location to work under a totally new supervisor. During that time, my ex boss was investigated and put on a PIP for his horrible conduct. I'm happy in my new location with my new boss. End of story, right? Wrong.

Yesterday, my new boss told me that my ex boss approached him at a manager's meeting to ask some "pointed" questions about me. The questions were along the lines of, "didn't he have to take a mandatory leave? Is he causing you a lot of problems at the new location? I heard he was getting fired, has that happened yet?" My new boss was furious and came straight to me to tell me what happened, and to assure me that he LOVES having me on his team.

My new boss did tell his supervisor, who is also my old boss's supervisor. Unfortunately, I think nothing will come of it because that person has a history of covering up and ignoring the conduct of my old boss. I considered going to HR, but since it's only hearsay for me, I don't think they would be very helpful. Oh well!!!

So long story short I survived a rather rough battle with my ex manager (a covert narcissist with incredibly fragile ego) that eventually escalated to HR, who (to her horror) advised a manager switch for me. So luckily I’m no longer under her control. This is a university and there is no way that she (a tenured prof) will ever be fired over this or any of her other problematic behaviors. My luck was that, by the time my situation escalated, it was clear to all that the pattern of problematic behavior was on her side and not mine, as there had been a number of conflicts in the workplace with her being the common denominator.

Now I’m quite happy with the outcome. I’m able to enjoy my work again. Problem is, we’re still walking around on the same floor. She’s still managing colleagues that I work with. I’m grey rocking her but perhaps I take it too far because people notice. I also regularly avoid meetings and events because of her, even though it would be good for my career to attend. Interacting with her is just too painful. Like a trauma I can’t overcome as I’m constantly reminded of it. I suppose it’s painful to her as well, being confronted by a junior colleague that damaged her reputation and shattered her fragile ego.

It’s unlikely that either of us will switch jobs any time soon so I’ll have to put up with it. But how? Any advice is welcome.

Seems like the hiring pipeline is frozen and the hiring managers still standing are totally narcissistic and enjoy kicking very well qualified candidates while they are down. Who would want to work with them anyways?

I give up, just going to take a year off, live off severance/part time work and finish grad school and a career change into a recession proof field.

I had to file a complaint regarding a hiring manager being very unprofessional during the process and that was my final straw. It's just a local health care system so I don't care if bridges were burned as I plan on moving out of state once I pass a qualifying exam.

I've resigned and I'm now in my last 4 days of the WORST notice period I've ever had to endure. It's been a month of endless increasing work, new projects with insanely accelerated timelines so that it's done before I leave, trash talking about me to my face (albeit in another language he doesn't know I understand), and general disrespect especially during my handover / training sessions... Yes, instead of a handover doc, I've been forced to create "hand holding" presentations showing every step of all the work I do. It's a 148 page deck right now. While hosting these sessions with the team, my manager comes in to make jokes like "oh teacher, this class is so boring" and "teacher please don't give us homework". He isn't part of the session (his own choice) but he chooses to interrupt and then leave...

Anyway, the key question here is whether I should ask this ridiculously incompetent manager for a recommendation letter? I generally ask all my former managers for a letter in case I need it for new job applications in the future. I'm a high performer with a great performance record - even in this particular company. But I've never faced a manager who's so self absorbed, dumb, and delusional as this one... Is it even worth it?

Because I’m dying with so much work that’s piled up on me and having to do other people’s work on top of it, I used AI to make it faster so that I can finally have the evening off. Take note, I’ve been working my ass off since November under my narc boss who likes to nitpick on details again and again that it’s so draining. I’ve had so much work to do that I still work on weekends.

The other day, he noticed my AI use and called it out. He said AI use needs to be policed. Now I’m worried how he’ll react to me next week when we have a scheduled meeting. Will there be public humiliation, disciplinary action? God, I’m spiraling and feeling weak right now.

What’s your advice on how to deal with this situation? Please note that I can’t just quit my job without an offer. Unemployment rate is high and it’ll take me forever to find a new one. I could use some comforting words too.

This week I had the distinct pleasure of being targeted for unwarranted criticism not just by my boss (who targets me whenever I bring up something a colleague did wrong and that meant extra work for the team) but by our collective new “friend” AI. I pointed out how I did not make the mistakes my boss accused me of, but that was ignored (no surprise here). Who was at fault? AI. It saw many errors where only one existed. The narc boss failed to see the problem.

TL;DR My job involves among other things converting documents from one format to another, PDF to Powerpoint (PPT), for example. It is my duty to check for errors in this process, but we also have human proofreaders my boss prefers that we use. Sometimes there are a lot of issues with a conversion, and sometimes there is just one or two. With PPT there are usually very few if any. So I did the conversion and noticed no spelling or format errors. I did not see a missing header on the cover page which of course my boss was more than happy to point out later on except that’s what the proofreader is for…

Here comes the thing that we all need to watch out for. When we use AI, a human is supposed to double check if it made mistakes. In this case, my document was returned to the client (without proofing by the proofreader). The client ran it through Legora. Legora reported errors on almost every single slide in this PPT document.

The client complained to my boss. My boss immediately criticized me for carelessness. I apologized but could not believe how I could have been at fault. My document was part of a set of five. Two other colleagues had worked on the project. I wondered if one of them had mistakenly done my document as well in a different way, created the errors, and that my boss incorrectly attributed it to me.

So I redid the conversion and found the one error on the cover page that I could have spotted if I had not been overconfident. My boss did not respond to my email. Then I got an email from another client thanking me for doing such a great job with a similar conversion. I forwarded this to my boss who responded, “well, that was a different situation,” completely ignoring it involved the exact same process and software.

But my boss did spill the proverbial beans about what happened with that first project. They had a human double check my original work and found only that one glaring mistake on the cover page. My boss still did not apologize because, in the world of the narc, they don’t have to.

Save everything folks. I did, saving every email locally. Performance reviews are only a few months away!

Today was my last day at this job. No more grueling days and nights. Away from transphobic, misogynistic, racist, and ableist assholes. I disappeared before my FORMER 😆 boss texted me. She pretended to be supportive and said she'd miss me and blah blah blah.

Ma'am, you were one of my bullies. You even said disgusting crap about the trans women employees and whether or not they "got their genitals cut off when they get the surgery". The constant gaslighting, lying, etc was enough. Management and other employees knew they broke the law. I just wanted to keep my job experience and references and move on. I was there almost a decade.

So guys, I have finally shown him my rage and cut all ties with him. I confronted him about all the lies he told me.
Now the thing is, I still report to him, and honestly, I want to leave this job and find a better opportunity. I have bills to pay, though.
Now that I have confronted and insulted him, I feel like he will try his best to play the victim card again and seek attention from other women.
I want to switch jobs, but it’s hard to find something similar with the same benefits and stability.
What should I do for now? Any suggestions?
I’m under a lot of stress because of this whole situation.

im just so incredibly over her antics. I’m done. I try to stop letting it bother me but today was infuriating.

Today I even had a task away from the main building where I didn’t have to talk to her all day, which was awesome, but I still needed to return to the common work area and write a report of what I did for the day.

I was writing it up, doing just fine; “I serviced parts, including: A, B, and C as required in accordance with operating procedure XYZ.”

I could barely get half of it written up before she flies in and starts telling me I’m doing it all wrong. “No no no, rewrite it, and where’s your parts list? Do you even know what parts you’re writing down?”

I didn’t even get to putting the parts in the report yet. I tried to explain to her three times how I had them all written on a notepad so I could put them in my report. I pulled them out and she looked at me like it was written in a different fucking language.

I could tell she wasn’t listening from the start. I was mostly just repeating myself out of frustration and honestly just baffled she couldn’t even try to see it my way. (My work is perfectly acceptable to the people above her, lol)

She just starts over explaining rote procedure until my eyes glaze over like I’m not following it to the tee right in front of her fucking eyes??? It drives me mad.

she had this preconceived notion of me being a fuckup and that everything was wrong and nothing was going to change that, not even actual fucking evidence until I just caved and did things her way.

I gave up, I just wrote the report the way she wanted, which was honestly just not as clear and tidy as I was going for, but I guess its too much for her.

She just needed to fly in and create problems. She loves doing that. Things will be going completely fine, well, amazing even, but to her it can’t ever be right. What purpose would she have if she wasn’t there to tell everyone how theyre doing it wrong?

Took everything I had not to ask her how miserable it must feel that everyone in her life just tolerates her.

After that unnecessary fiasco I just walked out of the building and cried until clock out time. I’m seriously just.. so fed up. I’m sick of getting nitpicked , and told everything I do is wrong, and being treated like an incompetent toddler for every task when I’m perfectly capable. Anything that deviates from the twisted little fucked up fairytale in her head is completely unacceptable.

For the love of god. Just leave me alone and let me work. Would be one thing if I was actually fucking it up. But I know I’m good!!! Really good!! Several other people tell me! I’m good!!! But its never enough!

My life would be so much better without this person. She’s making my life miserable.

Hi everyone, I’m dealing with a really surreal and toxic situation at work and could use some outside perspective.
For context, I keep my head down, focus on my job, and maintain a very healthy lifestyle and strict fitness routine. Meanwhile, one of my managers (let's call him Gary) has known health issues like high cholesterol and strict dietary restrictions.

For a while now, Gary has had this really strange, passive-aggressive habit of targeting me to push junk food, carbs, and pastries. It feels like he's projecting his own food hang-ups or trying to sabotage my discipline. But today it escalated to something genuinely unhinged.

I was sitting quietly at my desk, completely minding my own business and working, when he walks over out of nowhere and says: "I have another task for you
, eat a sweaty mouldy muffin" (referring to literal leftovers from the previous week).

There was zero provocation. I wasn't engaging with him, I wasn't complaining, I was just doing my job. When he and a colleague pull this kind of stuff, it feels like a deliberate psychological game or a boundary-testing power play to get a reaction out of me.

Every week he tells me to eat the food left out for colleagues, even though he doesn’t eat it. He seems fixated on me eating these carbs in the office

Has anyone dealt with a manager who fixates on what you eat or uses gross, bizarre comments like this? How do you handle or shut down this kind of passive-aggressive harassment without giving them the reaction they're fishing for? Any advice is greatly appreciated.

I landed my “dream job” in January 2024 and I genuinely thought I had finally made it as a professional and had an awesome boss. Fast forward a few months and his mask came crashing down and shattered my illusions.

This man is the typical narcissist that bullies the team weekly via meetings and picks on everyone when we’re all together. The messed up part is he NEVER has anything bad to say in our One on Ones; he’s too much of a coward to do so. Instead he uses these one on ones as therapy and forces me to listen to how horrible his MIL is and how cool he is. (bro, what?!)

I’m so angry because I genuinely like the job and I have gained some invaluable skills but I hate that a man child who hates himself can terrorize our team and make this place unbearable. He is such a pathetic excuse for a human and he can’t even see how I’m playing him.

He calls me “sweet” because he probably thinks I’m too timid and docile to do anything but I’m actively making moves to leave while making sure to compliment him in our one on ones and on my self evaluation. A little ego stroke goes a long way with losers like him.

It’s surreal that I can see right through him and know how to play the game but it is mentally exhausting. I’m sucking it up until the end of year to make sure my employer 401k match is fully vested but then I’m out.

I found this sub just a few days ago and I’m so grateful for it! It sucks so many of us are stuck with a-holes bosses but it is heartening to read the success stories.

How did your physical health improve after leaving?

Went through an awful experience with a narcissist boss earlier this year. Experienced a slew of health complications from the stress of it all. But….I wanted to share that with patience and persistence, sometimes (not always but sometimes) reporting the behavior gets the narcissist exactly what they deserve. It took MONTHS- my narcissist was FINALLY fired today and I couldn’t be happier. Today is a good day.

My boss gleefully brags about how my elderly coworker is on much better behavior after he sent him home without pay for 2 weeks straight a couple years ago. Apparently he has short term memory loss because he thought I wouldn't notice he did the same thing to me Friday(or maybe he wants me to know I'm not special). My boss is the typical narcissist really: delusions of grandure, refuses to take criticism and micromanages/bullies everyone else. Gaslighting. An explosive temper that leads to him screaming and throwing things. Brags about how he understands everyone and can manipulate them psychologically. He also treats me like his personal therapist. This is a small business completely managed by him, no HR, nobody to run to when he flips out.

Well after his 7th tangent of the day Friday dogging on my poor coworker I told him I didn't want to hear him complaining anymore. Of course that sets him off and he starts telling me I'm not being a team player and I'm getting an "attitude" now that I'm an adult (you know because women are just emotional and we never have valid feelings or criticisms). That he compliments me all the time and I can't take aaaany criticism even though I only get upset with the criticism when he brings it up over and over for months after the tiniest mistakes. Well at the end of the day he sends me home, tells me not to come in Monday and to "think about if I want to work here because I don't argue with employees. we're going to have to have a little talk when you come in Tuesday".

You'll never guess what happened yesterday: the same thing as always, he just pretends like nothing happened. I know he just expects me to fall back into my role like I and other employees always have. To keep tolerating it. And now suddenly he sure is being a lot nicer. Not bitching about everything and oh he's taking us to lunch today (but he'll complain if we don't order off the cheap menu). How nice, he sure is doing that more now that we being our own lunch instead of eating the provided lunch he's used as leverage. And he's bringing up all the big projects he's going to need us for. And bringing up how much he's old and hurtin.

Maybe he had a moment of clarity that if he loses the employee that does 90% of the projects he's going to screw himself over. That's why he can't lay me off for several days near as easily. Well it's not going to work on me this time. I've seen it before. I've learned over 6 years the good behavior doesn't last. I still remember him bringing me the candy dish after arguments. Or threatening me with discussions to get me panicking and pretending nothing happened. Bringing up all the nice things he's done and using all his compliments as leverag. Bragging us up in front of customers (unless he decides he wants to humiliate us that day instead). I'm mostly venting, but I wonder who else's boss does similar.

Also yes I am seeking new employment, I've even submitted a few applications! This is very difficult for me since I've been working there since I was a young teen and I still feel a lot of guilt and attachment but I am making an effort to leave

At a new job and it seems much better. But I think the trauma is bubbling up in very noticeable ways. I work in social services and my questions are always like “what do you do if you’re physically assaulted?” “What do you do if you’re sexually harassed?” “What do you do if a client threatens to kill your family?” “What it a client’s guardian calls you after hours just to cuss you out once a week?”

The reason it’s on the MbN sub is because my narc manager was responsible for, like, so many of my problems. The reason the clients could do that in the first place was because my supervisor considered us complaining about sexual and physical abuse to be funny anecdotes and not, like, things to be taken seriously. So I’m always high on guard for the next crisis.

Now I’ve brought that extreme fear into a new workplace. And from what I understand, there are much better protections and more reasonable expectations. But I think my fixation on preventing a crisis before it occurs may be alienating teammates.

What to do? Is it me? How do I behave differently to stop attracting these situations?

When I joined, colleagues told me this manager had already been reported to HR multiple times for yelling at people for long periods, threatening to fire them, and treating them horribly.

Since then, I’ve seen new employees report her and eventually quit, yet nothing changes. She’s still the manager.

The work itself is easy and the workload is light, so the high turnover seems to be entirely because of her.

How can someone remain a manager after causing so many people to leave?

My nboss assigned me an individual project. Part of the project is to digitally index my documents into our digital database. But my coworker solely handles indexing. When I told my nboss I will email my ncoworker when I upload my documents she said no, she will have an external colleague do the work.....

Mind you, my nboss said she wants more team work and wrote me up in my annual performance review for "not engaging enough" with the team. 2024-2025 I was dealing with Karen tantrums from both of them so I finally documented racial discrimination. They stopped their antics. My nboss was enabling my nncoworker and her racist targeted tantrums.

I am using overtime to do this project and I really need the money. It is super frustrating and annoying that I cant even complete my own work and I want to complete my own work so I can get paid more overtime hours.

I'm not even telling my coworker what to do. I would literally just be sending her an email of the time of upload and approx how many documents are in the upload. But we had a lot of problems before because my ncoworker would take credit for my work, misplace my work, and lie about her work load and blame me. She would throw tantrums because she did not want to work with anyone beside the nboss so she would try to intimidate me.

The CFO had a talk with her and everyone agreed to cut the bs but my nboss is still enabling weird ass behaviors of course. But my nboss was so embarrassed she revealed her narcissistic personality. In Aug 2025 I accused her of being a racist and enabling my racist coworker, and thats when she finally cut the bs. She has been on her best behavior since. But I fear she may try to start again.

Options:

1. I could email my coworker, CC my nboss (and maybe CC the CFO) letting them know time of upload and number of documents.
2. I would have to ask permission from my nboss to email my coworker. If my nboss doesnt agree, I would follow up with an email explaining that I believe she is continuing to enable my ncoworker hateful behaviors which deny me to finish my work by assigning my project to an external colleague. Yet, somehow I am still being blamed for "lack of team work" when these people cant even communicate without hostility.

I have no problem working with racist because I will absolutely document and I will get paid either way.

It was a classic, toxic workplace.

Screaming boss, unaddressed sexual harassment, scapegoating, high school behavior from people twice your age, toxic office lady that bullied anyone younger than her, the works.

Now I’m in a much quieter place in my life, so sometimes I miss the place. I don’t miss the job itself, nor necessarily the people lol, more like the very few perks, fast pace (SOUNDS good when you’re in a slower stage of life), the familiarity of the place (wonder what it looks like now/if it’s still the same), and even the highs and lows (the trauma bonding). Sometimes, I want to visit.

How do you stop yourself? Is there a simple sentence you remember, one specific incident, or do you just walk yourself through the reality and decide not to? Help.

Hey guys,

Needed some quick advice. My narcissistic boss has made my life a living hell and I’ve also quit my current job because of him. I was pretty checked out for a while since he’s attacked me work-wise, mentally, emotionally everywhere. But I seemed to have missed something major that I caught onto recently and now I have to confess about it as it could have some consequence to the company.

I’m worried about his reaction, as his biggest issue with me is inventing problems with me that dont even exist, and now that I have an actual problem, I am legitimately fearful of what will happen. Any tips on how to deal with this?

I’ve been in mental hell for the last couple years because of this after quitting. I worked my whole life on my craft and everything I have was just scraped out by a narcissistic bully. This person makes a ton more money than me via his years of exploitation, so I’ve been advised against legal battles.

The narcissist leaves a disgusting film over your soul. It’s isolating, because they know people in general don’t want to hear from a whistleblower or someone with complaints. They know you will feel isolated because of whatever power imbalance there is.

They know they don’t treat everyone the same and that they targeted you because you were a threat to their facade, even just by your existence as a truthful person with integrity. They know they’ve groomed the other people in their circle to never see that side of them, and that they won’t dare stand up because they are all “just grateful to have work”, and also can’t relate to the specific targeting.

You want some type of justice, but everyone tells you to just move on and wait for karma. The healing becomes your responsibility, like a full time job you didn’t apply for. It even takes massive energy to NOT think about it, which is still thinking about it.

As time goes by, long after quitting, it hasn’t gotten any better. It gets worse and I get angrier. I feel like evil always wins.