Welcome to our series The Work Diaries – a space for you to share your experiences, advice, stories about bad bosses, crazy colleagues and wild workplaces. We’ll be hearing from industry experts giving practical advice about how to navigate tricky waters in the workplace, alongside Capsule readers (You!) sharing your firsthand experiences of failures, successes and difficult situations you’ll still trying to get your head around.
Whether it’s a woman discovering her male co-worker was being paid significantly more than her; a toxic boss nightmare or the story of a woman who became friends with the boss’ girlfriend – and lost her job because of it, we’re talking about all of the workplace’s unfair and unjust situations.
If you have a topic you’d like to discuss, share your thoughts, experience or advice about, drop a line to [email protected].
This week, we speak to Dina* about a gaslighting boss who took things WAY too far. She shares her story here:
Do you remember the time before we knew what the term ‘gaslighting’ meant? When you knew someone was toying with your own resolve and truth but you didn’t know how to verbalise the fact that your very sanity was being messed with?
I do. Vividly.
It took me a long time to realise that I was being gaslit in my job, and if I’d known the signs to look for, my mental might not of taken as much of a hit as it ultimately did – uncontrollably crying in a therapist’s office.
I loved my job as a graphic designer. I thrived on the creativity, the fast pace, the team comradery and everything else about it. Well, apart from Madeline.
On the surface Madeline, a creative director in a large-scale agency, was amazing, and when I first started at the company she was brilliant.
Instantly taking an interest in me and praising my work, she endeared herself towards me by chatting about her personal life, giving me the best client assignments and proposals and taking me out for wine after the work day was over. As a classic type A millennial, desperately seeking validation so I could climb the corporate ladder as quickly as I could, I drank the Kool-Aid and lapped up the praise and adulation.
And then it turned. Boy, did it turn.
There were two things I can put the sudden change in temperature to.
First of all, the company itself. While we were a female-dominated company (the ratio was about 70-30), men occupied all of the top positions, while women were stuck at the mid-management level with nowhere else to go. With no upward movement in sight, those women – all in their 40s and 50s – turned on each other, all of them desperate to outwit, outplay and outlast their “competition” within the agency. Yup, we’re talking real Survivor shit here.
People were used as collateral damage in these women’s quest to get to the top with zero care or even thought. And while they’d successfully battled their way to mid-management through a boy’s club that should have been set on and burned a long time ago, none of them seemed to want to make sure that younger women wouldn’t have to do the same thing.
In fact, it was more like “we suffered, so you’ll have to suffer too”, and any potential ladders were firmly pulled up behind them.
And secondly, I began to get noticed by other people in the agency for being rather good at my job. I had ideas – so many ideas – that excited me so much, I was desperate to share them with my bosses. While I’m no tech whizz, I could see there were more efficient ways to get things done, and (I guess idealistically) I thought my boss would be keen to hear them.
She did not – and unless I was directly making her life easier so she could skive off for a manicure while everyone else put in 12-hour days, my talent started to become my undoing.
Enter, the gaslighting.
Gaslighting, in case you don’t know, is where someone will manipulate their victim until they begin to doubt their own sanity. It’s straight-up psychological manipulation, where they attempt to plant self-doubt and confusion in people’s minds.
I would be asked where a project was – despite never being given a project to work on, and when I brought up that I was never assigned anything, I was met with disbelief and scorn. “You must not have listened to me,” she said, shaking her head with disappointment. It led me to working the entire weekend to make up for it, and I felt terrible I’d let the team down.
I was led to believe I was getting a substantial pay rise and looked forward to the meeting with anticipation – only for it to be less than inflation (this was before these crazy cost of living times!). When I expressed my disappointment, I was told that I was “the only person getting any pay rise at all, and you should be grateful”. I found out two weeks later that that wasn’t true at all.
There was so much of it – being talked-down to in front of other, more junior staff members. I was undermined and contradicted, to the point where I started not saying anything in meetings, but then was accused of being lazy and uninspiring. I’d be set up for failure by being given the wrong information before briefings, making me look inept in front of clients and I was told wrong deadlines.
I was also pitted against another member of staff of a similar age and position, despite us being friends outside of work, which made for a wildy uncomfortable vibe in and out of the office.
I went from teacher’s pet to naughty corner almost overnight – the change so abrupt I felt like I had whiplash, and I was desperate to figure out what I had done wrong. Over the coming months, with countless instances of bullying and gaslighting – not just with me, but with other members of staff too. I could feel my mental health unravelling. Fast.
I couldn’t sleep – I’d stay awake into the early hours replaying conversations, meetings, emails. My anxiety was out of control – I couldn’t eat, and I developed nervous tics.
Eventually I met with a therapist, who, after a few mini breakdowns, helped me see what was happening in the workplace wasn’t ok, and that it wasn’t my fault. But by this point, I had absolutely no confidence left, and it took months – years, actually – of work to get it back to a stable point.
I wasn’t in the position back then to leave my job, so instead I tried my absolute best to have all communication in writing with my boss. Even when she would attempt to get me alone in person, I’d follow up our conversations with emails detailing what we talked about.
But honestly if I could have just left my job, I would have. It’s so not fair, but life is so much more than a horrible boss and the injustice, in this case, would have been worth it.
So, what happened to my old boss? Karma got her in the end – she’s not in the industry anymore. And I’m happier than ever in a very senior role in a new company that is incredibly supportive and empathetic.
One thing is for sure – I’ll never put up with a boss like that again.
*name changed to protect her identity
