Toxic Relationships: How to Get Away –

When the toxic relationship is at work

– (John M Lund Photography Inc/Getty Images)

PP*

I got signed to the second largest beauty site in the country and I was so excited. I had heard stories of how this boss (well known in the business) was troublesome but it’s different when you have firsthand experience.

She was extremely controlling with the appearance of the employees. Once, I went to work without makeup and she said I couldn’t leave the house without being dressed up because now I represented the company. She also once took a bag of cookies from an employee she considered fat and was known to make employees go home to change because she didn’t like their clothes.

“She once snatched a bag of crackers from an employee she thought was fat because ‘I don’t think you need to eat that, do you?’”

I started to get close to my team and she told me that it was “bad” for me to have lunch with people below me. One day, I got sick and didn’t go to the company. The girls on my team went to a bar and tagged me in the toast photo, “missed you” style. This boss spent the rest of the week trying to manipulate me into “telling the truth” because she “knew” that I wasn’t really sick that day. It was then that we found out that she also controlled the employees’ personal networks.

“The toxic boss had a reputation for calling where quitting employees went and coming up with something that would stop them from being hired.”

When I went elsewhere, my new boss, who had worked with the previous one, told me not to say where I was going, as the toxic boss had a reputation for calling where quitting employees went and come up with something that would prevent hiring. I didn’t say (even though she insisted) and just asked if I had to talk to HR about my termination. She said no, that she would advise that I was already serving my notice. When I ran into the HR lady two weeks later and told her about my departure, she didn’t know anything. For the company’s system, I was not serving notice and would not have the rights relating to it upon leaving. Luckily, this colleague, knowing that the boss used these “tricks”, asked me to write a handwritten letter informing my resignation and putting the date of when I actually asked, so I managed to guarantee part of the benefits of the prior notice. “Part” because I didn’t stay until the end of the month to receive it in full. That same day, I did what I could to not harm the team, I thanked the opportunity, took my things and left.

ED*

I’ve been working for the same person for over 15 years and I’ve suffered a series of toxic situations with him. One of them happened when my daughter’s father passed away, when she was still a child, aged 11.

Four days after the burial, I told her that I would have to go back to work the next day, but she asked if I could spend another day at home. Knowing how things were at my job, she went so far as to say that if she needed it, she would call my boss herself to ask for it.

I talked to my superior and explained the situation, but he said he didn’t think it was good for me to be away another day because of what people in the office might say. As I was divorced, by law I was not entitled to leave, so I told him that if that was his concern, he could deduct my absences from the 45 days of overdue vacation that the company had not let me take until then. He just said “okay”.

“My partner died and my boss said he thought I must have a lot of problems, but that regardless, the company came first.”

After 20 days, I had my mid-year review. During our meeting, he said that he imagined that I must have a lot of problems, since having only one marriage already meant having a lot of problems, let alone two (since I had been married before), but that, regardless of that, the company came first.

*the interviewees did not want to reveal their identity