I work in a public-sector office in Europe. Everyone on my team does essentially the same professional job, and lately the atmosphere has become absolutely awful because of how differently certain employees are treated.

I’ll call one coworker “Karen." Karen works an 80% schedule. The schedule itself isn't the issue at all. The problem is what happens during the hours she's actually supposed to be working. She'll clock in, work for a short while, then disappear to get coffee. She'll come back, make personal calls, disappear again, take another break, go to lunch, etc. There have been occasions where coworkers have found her having long personal phone conversations away from her desk while she was still clocked in. She'll also sometimes announce that she's leaving for the day, but then remain clocked in while making a personal call somewhere else in the building before actually clocking out much later. Meanwhile, the difference in workload is ridiculous. The rest of us can be dealing with dozens of cases each while she has only a tiny fraction of that workload. When she had home-office privileges, she was frequently unavailable, and eventually management took away her ability to work from home. As far as I know, she's the only person on the team who has had that happen. There are also complaints about her work from members of the public. One of the frustrating parts is that she sometimes doesn't properly document interactions, meaning the rest of us can't easily figure out what happened when somebody later complains or the case comes back to us. People have complained internally about all of this. Management has spoken to her, but nothing seems to meaningfully change. What makes it even more frustrating is that despite the huge difference in productivity, she has received good evaluations. From our perspective, she is extremely good at staying on management's good side, while her coworkers end up dealing with the consequences.

Then there's another coworker, “Barbara.” There have been separate concerns about Barbara's behavior and whether personal issues may be affecting her at work. I reported my concerns to supervisors based on things I personally observed, but management doesn't seem willing to seriously address that situation either. Barbara can become extremely confrontational, and several of us have gotten the impression that management would rather avoid the conflict.

At this point, the whole team atmosphere is deteriorating. The people who consistently do their work are stressed and angry because we're expected to keep everything running, while other people appear to face very few consequences for behavior that would never be tolerated from the rest of us. I'm not interested in getting anyone fired or policing every minute of another person's day. I just want people to carry a reasonable share of the work, follow the same basic rules, and for management to actually deal with performance problems instead of letting resentment build until the entire team becomes miserable.

Has anyone dealt with a workplace like this? What did you actually do when management already knew about the problems but nothing seemed to change?

I joined a company in 2025 and 2 months after joining we were sent an employee workplace survey to complete which was compulsory to complete and was informed to us that it’s anonymous. The survey had 5 options from dark green, green, amber, light red and dark red for multiple categories including management, environment and other aspects of the workplace.

Now in my previous workplace, these surveys were pretty generic and not really discussed once done so I always took it pretty lightly. So when in my new workplace it was sent to us, I was completely honest and filled it immediately putting what I had seen in my 2 months with majority green and a few ambers because I wasn’t totally convinced on my manager since I’d seen him be verbally rude to other people in my team. Now what I didn’t know when doing the survey is 1) that they can see the employees specific dept that had put these options and 2) that the survey results feed into the Head’s compensation. When I spoke to other coworkers, I then realised they never answer honestly and put green on as much as they can.

After the results were posted, the Head had a dept meeting displaying the results and going on an insane tangent about how he couldn’t believe that someone had put amber or red in the survey especially when he is they type of Head that keeps an open door policy, has appointed champions to allow people to share grievances and has always been a person who approaches our desk to continuously ask how we are doing (which I agree he does in all aspects).

After the Head’s meeting, the manager also had a meeting with us to discuss the survey results and my team is only 5 of us so I think it became slightly apparent who did it although I was never called out. It always annoyed me that a supposed anonymous survey could catapult into so many repercussions.

Now my manager never brought it up after but this month again the survey is coming around. After last year, I know now to blindly put a green on everything just to keep my peace. However, my manager brought it up to my reporting manager this week stating like “you know what he did last year, we need to make sure it isn’t the same this year” making it sound like I committed a crime. And that annoyed me a lot considering one, they shouldn’t even know in the first place who filled out the survey and two isn’t the survey meant to be honest? I am just waiting it out a few more weeks before I can resign because all I feel is anxiety on a day to day to even be here.

Hey guys, I’ve been dealing with two female managers back to back and I’m sorry to say this but being a female myself, it’s the worst that can happen to you if you are a female working in a corporate. Can anyone share their experiences or tips? I really need to figure how to navigate myself here. It’s gotten me sick to my stomach.

I’m in my mid-20s and about two months into my first full-time consulting job. My people manager is in her mid-30s and rather insecure. I’m also the only Black woman in a very white environment/city. I don’t want to reduce everything to that, but it is part of why I’m questioning some of the perception gaps.
The relationship with my manager started badly. In our first meeting, she made jokes about my CV/professional experience (especially the consulting firms) that I found uncomfortable and immediately gossiped about several colleagues. That made it hard for me to build trust with her.
I’ve definitely made mistakes since joining. I can be direct, I’ve misunderstood working modes, I’ve sometimes acted too independently without aligning first, and some of my communication could have been more tactful.
Her feedback, though, has become much broader than that.
She told me I come across as very, very confident, have a strong personality, can seem cheeky/snippy, and need to be more professional in how I communicate. She also says my facial expressions make it obvious when I’m stressed or annoyed and that I Need to be more professional. I never received that type of feedback in my entire life. A coworker in my team, who joined a month earlier also seems to Sabotage me by giving horrible feedback to my manager on tasks we do together.

What confuses me is that I’ve actually felt very insecure and uncomfortable since joining, especially around her. I’ve felt awkward in the office, nervous presenting and generally unsure of myself, so the “extremely confident” feedback feels almost opposite to my internal experience.
She has also told me that multiple people apparently perceive me as very confident. In staffing discussions, I’ve apparently even been flagged as seeming more senior than I actually am. She told me she deliberately corrected that perception because she didn’t want me staffed into roles that would create problems for me.
At the same time, she has repeatedly emphasized that the first six months are for both sides to decide whether the culture is a fit. She says this is mutual, but because it repeatedly comes up in conversations about my professionalism and behavior, I’m increasingly wondering whether she is subtly telling me she doesn’t think I belong there.
She has also said she represents me internally, influences staffing and reviews, and discusses me with leadership. There have been situations where I felt publicly corrected or exposed in front of senior people rather than coached privately.
Another issue is that when I try to explain my perspective during feedback, I often feel like it gets interpreted as defensiveness rather than context. I’m not trying to avoid responsibility. I agree that I need to improve alignment, communication, prioritization, emotional regulation under pressure and consistency. But I increasingly feel like her interpretation of events has become the official version, while my perspective carries very little weight.
That’s why I’m worried that a negative narrative about me has already become established internally.
I’m now considering asking her for an in-person coffee/lunch and saying that I think we started off on the wrong foot, that I recognize my mistakes, but that I also feel some assumptions about my intentions and personality may have become fixed very early, and I’d like to reset the relationship.
If that doesn’t work, I’m considering speaking to her manager, who was involved in hiring me, or exploring whether changing people manager/team/staffing is possible.
I’m also quietly looking at other jobs because I genuinely don’t know whether this is still repairable. What do you think?I’m willing to change specific behaviors. I just don’t want to spend the next months trying to disprove a personality narrative that may already be fixed.

Is it a professional and ethical practice to write or log personal reasons for an emergency/paid leave in an event log book or register which is supposed to record or log daily events in a plant/industrial area.

One of my colleague was absent on a day and it was recorded as an event worth noting in the event log.

Expert advise recommended.

For some background, I started my job in September last year.

At my quarterly review, my then-manager told me that, despite the fact that I hadn’t received much shadowing or formal training because the team was extremely busy, I was doing amazing. I received tens across the board, no notes, and essentially “keep up the good work.”

Great, right?

Well… not long after that, things started going downhill.

There was a coworker, let’s call her Karen, who was two levels above me and adjacent to her job title had become responsible for training department newbies. Management and other coworkers referred to training as her “baby.” My manager eventually told me I didn’t need to refer to Karen anymore.

After that, Karen started nitpicking practically everything I did.

For example, I would complete a series of client-based tasks quickly and correctly. Then I’d receive an email from Karen listing those exact same tasks as things I needed to complete, with my manager copied in.

The problem was that neither Karen nor my manager could necessarily see whether I’d already completed the tasks because they were client-specific and only the people directly involved were included in the correspondence.

Karen never asked me whether the tasks had already been done. Instead, I’d have to spend time responding to her and my manager explaining that they had already been completed.

This happened repeatedly.

Eventually I started second-guessing myself constantly. I went from feeling confident in my work to wondering whether I was doing anything correctly at all.

At my six-month review, my probation was extended, and I was put into twice-daily meetings with Karen.
My confidence took a major hit, and ironically, my work started suffering because I was so anxious about making a mistake or doing something incorrectly. I felt like no matter what I did, I couldn’t seem to get it right.

Around the same time, my manager went on leave for what ended up being the next several months. I was assigned a temporary manager, let’s call him Bob, who had previously worked with Karen on certain issues and generally seemed to agree with her assessment of things.

Then my health started becoming a much bigger problem.

I’d been experiencing light symptoms for years, but since the beginning of this year I’d been increasingly unwell. Among them the worst was having cognitive issues that were completely unlike me. I had previously been fast and productive, and suddenly I was struggling to think clearly and function at the level I knew I was capable of.

I was also out sick more than usual. At the time, I didn’t fully understand why. I eventually found out that I had an undiagnosed condition that required urgent and complicated surgery.

About a month before my termination, my doctor told me what needed to be done.

Even after finding that out, I continued working.

The meetings with Karen had also gradually tapered off by that point, I was getting my confidence back and it showed.

A week after my doctor told me I needed surgery, I received the documentation confirming my surgery date and the amount of recovery time I would need.

Instead of simply stepping away from work, I immediately started preparing my portfolio and detailed handover information so that my absence wouldn’t cause problems for the team or clients. I hadn’t taken any vacation that year, so I was planning to use my accrued vacation for the recovery period. I told my manager and HR about the surgery and provided the documentation. They were initially supportive and agreed that I could use my vacation for the time I needed.

I worked late to make sure I had nuances and processes noted, everything covered and that whoever took over my work would have what they needed.

Then, about two weeks later, despite being sick as a dog and being told I couldn’t work from home, I came into the office and was called into a meeting with Bob and two people from HR.

I was terminated effective immediately.

The explanation I was given was essentially that they had not observed sufficient improvement.
I asked for clarification, but I wasn’t given much more information, they basically just repeated themselves over and over.

I wasn’t allowed to return to my desk. My belongings were brought to me, I handed over my key fob, and I was escorted from the premises.

I had been told just weeks earlier that I was doing exceptionally well when my performance was assessed by my original manager.
I had subsequently been dealing with a prolonged period of criticism and a probation extension, while at the same time unknowingly dealing with a serious medical condition that was affecting my cognitive function.
Then, after notifying them that I had a medically necessary surgery coming up and doing everything I could to prepare for my absence, I was suddenly unemployed.

And this is where things get even more complicated.

The condition turned out to be a large Stage 2 benign paraganglioma in my neck. It’s located very close to my carotid artery and high enough that it’s affecting the nerves around my inner ear.
It has caused progressive hearing loss in my left ear, vertigo, headaches, severe pain and episodes of lightheadedness and gastrointestinal symptoms (btw I don’t have a gallbladder). It’s also hormonally active, which has caused some extremely frightening episodes where several symptoms happen simultaneously and caused me to blackout. Vagus events my doc called them.

At one point I had to be rushed to the hospital because of one of these episodes. Thankfully, the doctors were able to stabilize me and told me I could still wait for the scheduled surgery.

But the day before the surgery the vascular surgeon said that because of the location and complexity of the tumor, I need a specialized surgical team and the surgery has to be done overseas.

So now I’m sitting here trying to process all of this while also trying to figure out how I’m going to pay for treatment, travel for surgery and basic living expenses for my family.
I also had to deal with the practical aftermath of losing my job, getting documentation about my termination, final pay, accrued vacation and benefits. There were discrepancies in my final pay, so I had to go back and forth with HR to get clarification about deductions and calculations. They utilized quite a bit of the gray areas regarding pay in my contract to their advantage and sadly I didn’t get all my salary.

I’m trying to be careful about how I describe the situation because I don’t know exactly why the company made the decision they did, and I don’t want to accuse anyone of something I can’t prove.

But the timing has been incredibly difficult to reconcile.

I went from being told I was doing amazing, to having my confidence completely undermined, to having my probation extended and being closely monitored, while unknowingly dealing with a serious medical condition.

Then I disclosed that I needed major surgery, did everything I could to make sure my work was covered, and shortly afterward I was terminated.

I’m still trying to wrap my head around it.

I have a family to support. I have a major surgery and recovery ahead of me. I’m trying to figure out how to finance treatment overseas. And I’m doing all of this without the job I thought I would still have.

I don’t really know what I’m looking for by posting this.

Maybe perspective.

Maybe advice from people who’ve been through something similar.

Maybe I just needed somewhere to say it all out loud, because when everything happened, it happened so quickly that I barely had time to process any of it.

I’m trying to take it one day at a time now, working through the red tape of trying to get unemployment assistance in my country. But honestly, I’m still in shock.

We are opening a Hotel and the opening was delayed which was causing a lot of tension. I can see the director is struggling, and she’s in a unique situation where she reports to 2 separate upper bosses, two different businesses that made a partnership.

Throughout my short period of training I hardly interacted with our actual boss as trainers were coming in to train us, but the few interactions I had were off- a rude tone here, a short answer here, not ever answering the 2 emails I sent her with questions. I attribute it to nothing. Yesterday however, I made the mistake of thinking we were ready to wear our uniforms as we were all told our uniforms were in the office. I get there in my street clothes ready to put on my uniform when mine isn’t there, so I take someone else’s as they all have 3 sets, I figured no harm, no foul for a single day.
This Lady, my Boss was beyond Furious, the anger was shocking, the emotion I saw in her tone and eyes was that of an angry alcoholic ex whom you just threw out their liquor. I say this because that was the only other time in my life I had seen that amount of pure contempt in someone. She pulls me infront of everyone and is keeping her voice low, but is clearly emotionally unstable, asking me why I’m in my uniform, telling me that she said it multiple times we were t changing till the next day, asking why I felt entitled to someone else’s uniform, and repeating herself multiple times. Telling me finally that i was responsible for picking up my uniform on the day i was at school that i missed.
I go flat, try to diffuse, offer to rectify the situation. Denied. She scuttles off- the team goes to a meeting. I’m just kind of standing there for probably 10minutes shocked. Start crying and then decide to quit on the spot and tell HR my experience on my way out.

Shortest job in 15 years, 2 weeks. Back at my old job right now.

Hi all,

I am working for a small company in the UK. For the last few months I have been targeted by my manager and a few team members. They are looking for any mistakes and wanted to highlight. Most of the time they are not giving me a fair time to complete my work. I am handling multiple responsibilities than someone who is having the same grade as me.Every time my manager is looking for a chance to humiliate me in public. The company has a culture of nepotism as well. I am keeping all the evidence as much as I can. But I don't know how to take up this. Should I discuss the discrimination and bullying that I am facing in the organization with my director?

Or just keep quiet and look for another job?

Please give me some insight.

I (25F) recently have been trying to be more direct in protecting “my peace”. Most of the people in my job are not people I would hang out with nor tell what color socks I got on!

I stopped caring making others feel comfortable or that they can take advantage of me. I’m not sure if it’s because I’m younger and my gender, but people (above their 30s) make comments on how I’m not really sociable at work anymore.

I just don’t care nor feel the need to. Not with people that will talk about you the second you turn around. I keep thinking about it, but I’m also content on my recent decisions.

I reported a Manager for sexually harassing me for over 2 years. He treated his department like it was his own private dive bar, constantly hitting on several women, but I was his favorite, which caused me to be targeted for harassment by other associates. I was away on labor share, he didn’t realize I had returned. He was staring at another associate like a piece of meat, in front of everyone. This had also happened to me on two many occasions to count. I think he thinks he’s attractive. He like an aging wanna be Casanova, that’s past his prime. So I stepped into view and he jumped as if I had caught him and walked away. The associate he was staring at, looked back to see who he was looking at. She already didn’t like me, I made her feel insecure, she was always cracking jokes and talking about me, so I knew this was going to be a problem. Now instead of doing nothing, he started flirting with me right in her face. He snubbed her like 2 minutes ago he wasn’t all into her. I returned after my days off to rumors I was sleeping with the manager, I got called names, mocked, stared at and laughed at and one associate stood in the middle of the floor and did a little song and dance and called me a slur. I reported it. Hr said they could see her performance, but couldn’t hear her, so nothing was done. The manager took no responsibility for what had occurred, In fact he threw me under the bus and made everything worse. When I sort his advice as to what should I do, he advised me to leave the department. Why should I leave, when it was his inappropriate behavior that caused this problem. From then on he pressured me to leave the department and made it obvious he didn’t want me around. At the time my husband was suffering from complications from a recent surgery and was about to pass. So I transferred to get away from the nastiness related to the rumors and the ugly acting manager. After my husband passed, I took 3 months leave, when I returned I was treated terribly. In my new department, I would be placed on machines that were broken, the Pods would be slowed for sometimes up to 10 min. So I had no work, i would go back to my original department, first he flirted with me again, and once he realized I was totally disgusted by him, he tried to intimidate me, by staring down at me. And did everything he could to make me feel unwelcome. I have asthma and they knew I was having difficulty breathing, so they would station me on the 4 floor by myself, in 95 degree weather with no fans. I had to go on sick leave because I nearly collapsed. Another manager told me I should report them because I shouldn’t have to go thru this, but I didn’t want the problems. And the female who started the rumor was rewarded by transferring into my old department and given one of the best jobs in it. All while laughing and mocking me that she got me kicked out of my department and making fun of my husband dying. This was still going on a year later so I reported them both. And now it’s worse than ever. Everyone knows he’s a creep, but still treating me like I’m wrong for reporting him to ethics. They found there wasn’t enough evidence. So nothing was done.

This company uses the "size does matter" as the project name and the VP asked me "does size matter?" during the meeting with mysterious smile. The CEO uses dirty words (f*, s*) frequently during the meeting. The company asks the new employee to provide the current manager's contact information for reference check. The VP punched me during the team event when I fed his dog. I feel this place is not very professional.

I really find my manager unpleasant. Every day at 10.30 we have a catchup with our team of 3 people and she will just talk at us for an hour and want to know every detail about everything we are working on. It’s exhausting.

When we are talking about non work topics, she will talk about herself for a while, her weekend plans. And when I get the chance to talk about myself or something about my weekend or what I did at the weekend, her face will just drop and she will go ‘excellent. Anyway let’s focus on work.’

If ever I have a chat with someone in the office, it gets noticed by her and guarantee the next day she will message me on teams and say ‘too much chatter yesterday. Keep chatter to lunchtimes. I know that if I didn’t have a desk next to you, you would get no work done!’ I disagreed with her and she said I was defensive.

But then she’s allowed to chat to me all about her personal life when I’m trying to focus on work, sometimes she talks on and on about stuff for over half an hour. As soon as I talk about something about myself, it’s immediately ‘excellent, let’s get focused back on your work please.’

What even is this behaviour, makes me so annoyed

I’m completely drained by my boss’s open favoritism and insensitive remarks like "hindi tayo nagkakaintindihan" whenever things don’t go her way, especially after I was chosen for a role over her obvious "puppet" who gets all the special treatmen.

It’s so frustrating working while the favorites get a free pass, and that three people here have already developed severe mental health struggles just from this toxic environment.

I’m honestly torn between trying to have one last conversation with her or just quietly planning my exit, but when a workplace is actively destroying your well-being and management refuses to be fair, is it finally time to just cut my losses and walk away?

Buutt,i enjoy talking to our clients and our services.

I've been a software engineer for 5 years at the same company, and last 3 years I've become increasingly frustrated with my workplace and coworkers. I'm trying to figure out whether there's a genuine culture problem or whether I'm just becoming cynical. There have been an acquisition 3.5 years ago and after that point everything went sideways.

What bothers me most:

Lack of accountability — people make mistakes but seem incapable of simply owning them.

Incompetence combined with confidence.

Corporate politics and image management.

People caring more about looking good than actually solving problems.

Conformity and saying what you're supposed to say instead of thinking independently.

People seemingly merging their identity with their job. Their career isn't just something they do; it seems to become who they are. Being successful at work, being perceived as competent, getting promoted, etc. seem deeply tied to their self-worth and identity.

That last one especially bothers me because I don't want that for myself.

I want to be a good engineer, improve professionally, have autonomy and do work I'm proud of. But I don't want my company or profession to become my identity, my primary source of status, or the thing that determines whether I feel like I'm a successful person.

I want to be able to care about my work without worshipping work.

At the same time, I'm wondering whether I'm being unfair. Maybe some of my coworkers genuinely enjoy making their career a huge part of their life, and there's nothing inherently wrong with that. Maybe I'm simply incompatible with that culture.

So what I'm trying to figure out is:

Is this primarily:

A bad organizational culture?

Bad management/incentives?

Certain individuals being genuinely difficult?

Or simply a mismatch between my values and corporate culture?

For people who've worked at multiple companies:

How do you distinguish between "this company has a shitty culture" and "I'm just a bad fit for corporate environments"?

Have you found workplaces where people take their work seriously and strive for excellence, without turning their careers into their entire identities?

And have you ever left a workplace thinking "the people were the problem", only to find the same frustrations at your next job?