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So for those that don’t know, I’ve been dealing with a boss that likes to belittle me at every turn. He’s an excellent IT administrator but I think the title of manager is a little above him.

Point in case. How we used to handle purchase requests is that I would hold on to the original ticket and would send a purchase request to my boss. fine. So a request comes in and the person sending it is wording everything so poorly that I have to ask questions because I can’t tell if they want one or two laptops. I figure out that he wants one and that we have 3 on our shelf. Easy answer. Pull one from the shelf order a replacement for shelf stock.

It was about this time that my boss jumped into the ticket to tell me not to pull from the shelf and from now on to just send him any and all purchase requests. He even worked the phrase “but I won’t hold my breath.” into the ticket.

He then proceeded to ask me how many we had on hand (something I stated in the ticket had he bothered to read it) and then told me to do exactly what I was going to do in the first place.

He constantly seconds guesses me and takes more and more responsibility from me which in turn overloads him and leads to mistakes like this.

This has been going on for a while and I’ve been putting up with it. I just came back from HR. We’ll see how this goes. Ball’s out of my court.

54 Spice ups
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Good luck. Polish up just in case.

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I wouldn’t have gone to HR first, I would have confronted the individual in an informational manner and see how things progressed or regressed. Sometimes you have to call folks on their bullshit. Micromanagers are the worst.

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Micro-managers suck!

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This is the main problem here.

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I would bounce if I were you.

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I think you did the right thing. Next time he pulls one of these, then call him on it. In fact, write him and email (so that you have proof) and clearly ask him to explain his point of view because you are having a hard time understanding it.

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i wish you lots of luck! its never fun to have micro managers. except in the lego movie, those were funny…

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Why do people stay with these types of jobs?

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Lots of reasons: My coworkers (minus my boss) are awesome people. The company culture is cool. The job isn’t too difficult or demanding. Lower on the list for me: The pay is awesome and the benefits too.

I hit a point where I was dreading Monday so much that I couldn’t sleep. The company and the work pulled me in while my boss kept pushing me away. My fiancee helped me realise the reason I hadn’t bailed yet was because I loved the job to much.

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Want to wish you all the best of luck with this, it really is horrid when you have to deal with this kind of manager. Hope everything goes well.

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This tells me that your boss is worse then everything else combined. It is time to leave.

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Lots of reasons: My coworkers (minus my boss) are awesome people. The company culture is cool. The job isn’t too difficult or demanding. Lower on the list for me: The pay is awesome and the benefits too.

I hit a point where I was dreading Monday so much that I couldn’t sleep. The company and the work pulled me in while my boss kept pushing me away. My fiancee helped me realise the reason I hadn’t bailed yet was because I loved the job to much.

Sounds like good benefits, but it will not be worth it in the long run. You’re going to lose your sanity working there over time. I’ve dealt with micro managers and the best choice i made was to leave. Fortunately i had something better waiting for me when i did. Goodluck

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Yeah, I’ve come to that conclusion myself. I just wanted to hand it to HR and let them know that this problem is with how my boss is managing and probably won’t go away by replacing me.

I care about the company enough to let them know that the IT department is broken.

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People don’t typically leave jobs. They leave managers. #justsayin

If the situation has degraded to the point where you’re actually losing sleep, it’s time to go. Remember that HR exists for the benefit of the company, not for the benefit of the employee. If you’re the only one having an issue with your boss (and by “the only one”, I mean “the only person who’s bothered to make a formal complaint”), the likelihood of things changing are slim.

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“Engineers, are not good at dealing with people.” - Tom Smykowski

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Indeed… I don’t actually expect anything except my employment to change to be honest… still… he has been called to the CEOs office on multiple occasions. Whatever happens I feel the company deserves to know that he can’t manage his way out of a paper bag.

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I love that saying.

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Good luck and hopefully HR will do something to help. @brycekatz makes some good points, but at least you tried talking with HR. I hope you provided some examples of situations to give some context. It might also be worth talking with your co-workers about it to see if they have the same opinion and to talk with HR if they do. If one person has a problem with a person, it’s easy to brush off as an issue between those two people, if more than one person says the same, then there is something else going on.

Otherwise, this is all on your manager. Yes it’s draining working with a micro-manager, but if he chooses to take everything on, don’t fight it. Just smile and nod at his requests and then vent to friends or the fiancee.