Started a new job...I think my boss is going to be problematic

[suckered]

I was looking for a job for over 8 months and finally got one. I started 3 months ago. At first my boss was really nice but has started to become more and more nitpicky.

 

Firstly, I feel like she watches over everything I do. She will often sit in on the meetings with me (when I meet clients) - this has never happened in my old job. I am experienced at what I do and this annoys me. She would often hijack the meeting and do all the talking.

 

Then she will make corrections to every tiny spelling/typo mistake I make. If I send an e-mail and misspell a letter of someone's name, she will immediately respond to correct me.

 

She is new to management and is probably lacking confidence in people she is hiring. It's like she asks herself every day if she made a mistake in hiring me and it just makes me more and more anxious.

 

We have one-one meetings at least once a week and she tells me things like that she hopes if I am unsure about how to do something, I would ask and not just take the "best guess", but she certainly won't throw me under the bus to upper management if that happens. (WTF)

 

I just find it weird. I like a lot of autonomy and this makes me dread going to work.

 

It doesn't help that our personalities are just different. I am naturally not super detail oriented and am more chaotic: I will often make typos even if I read and go over something 20 times. I am more of a big picture person and the administrative side is such a small component of this role, yet I feel that because she is hyper focused on every typo, that she will just infer that I am bad at everything else.

 

Another silly thing: one of my direct reports had an IT issue and asked me for help. My boss was off sick that day. I contacted IT support and asked for a specific person who others told me has resolved those types of issues before. I respond that David (the person I was told to contact by others) was on annual leave and contacting general IT support was unhelpful. I CC my boss in. She immediately responds to me and my direct report how David wouldn't be able to help and wasn't the right person to contact.

 

I mean, I am new. It's a huge company. I have no idea who anyone in IT support is or their internal processes.

 

What does this all sound like to you? Is my boss being unreasonable or am I over-reacting in being (inwardly) annoyed? Is this likely to make my job unbearable or will she ease up?

[MidwestUSA]

You admit you're not detail oriented. Okay.

 

Um, she's your boss, and it's a bad reflection on her if you send out typo ridden correspondence. It's her job to correct it. Misspelling someone's name? It's not only sloppy, it's disrespectful to that person. In this day and age of spell check, there's no excuse for this.

 

 

You mentioned clients, so I'll assume you're not working at McDonald's.

 

 

Chaotic and not detail oriented - it's not a wonder she's watching you. It sounds like she's trying to guide you in these one-on-one meetings (which are fairly standard procedure) and you're taking it the wrong way.

 

 

Stop giving her reasons to 'lack confidence', and she might ease up.

[d0nnivain]

Spelling clients' names wrong is not a minor mistake. People get insulted & then take their business elsewhere.

 

Your boss sees these "little" mistakes & in the course of the last 90 days has determined that because you don't pay attention to the small stuff, she can't trust you with the big stuff like having a meeting on your own. The details are important to her so you are required get better at them. Even if her style is not your style, as an underling, you have to conform to her, not the other way around.

 

Since you are new & did not have a personal relationship with David you would have been better off just contacting IT & letting that department decide the best person to fix the issue. Trust others to know their own areas.

 

Your boss is not a bad manager. She may very well be regretting hiring you because you have doubled her work load. She now has to do her job & micromanage you. She will ease up when you prove to her you can deal with details & earn her trust.

 

This company may not be a good fit for you.

[preraph]

Apparently your last job wasn't very professional. Your boss can do whatever she wants as far as overseeing you and correcting your mistakes. Putting typos in correspondence to clients is so unprofessional, and especially misspelling their names! That's just sloppy. By comparison, my boss at my part-time job reads every correspondence that goes out to clients to be sure they have no element of negativity or terseness, and he makes sure there's no punctuation or word errors and will offer suggestions to eliminate wordiness.

 

You can never expect your next job to be just like your last one. She's not being at all unreasonable from what you've told me, and is just trying to get you to be more accurate and professional. She'd be remiss if she didn't sit in on your meetings until she could judge if she knew whether you were representing the company in an acceptable manner and conducting yourself correctly. Each new boss you will have has not only the right but the obligation to train you up to the standards the company operates under. Until you start doing it her way, you will always be monitored and she won't like that because it's a waste of her valuable time.

[Lotsgoingon]

Sounds high pressured and I get why you are not feeling great about this boss.

 

On the other hand, you definitely can't have typos on people's names, especially client names or names of coworkers.. I too am not a details person, but getting names wrong these days is major.

 

The reason: you can simply go to the company site ... and copy and paste someone's name. Since you can copy and paste, there's no longer any reason to get someone's name wrong.

 

Sounds like one of your tasks is to create a file with everyone's name spelled out ... again get this from the company or from their emails ... copy and paste these names. Don't write them out yourself!

 

Then when you need to send an email, you'll have that names file open and you copy and paste the person's name.

 

You want to come up with other ways to counter your weaknesses. Think of how you can overcome the weakness not through hard work ... but through simplicity--like copying names.

 

You can also find a friend in the company, tell them of your situation and your weaknesses and get them to proof your emails before you send them out. I had a buddy in college who was an amazing writer and editor. For really big assignments, I would have him read over my work before submitting.

 

Another strategy that might help you ... is to go to lunch with your boss and own up to your weaknesses but also identify and announce your strengths. What are you strengths in this job? How can you focus more on your strengths? And over time ... and over lunch ... maybe several lunches or meetings with this bossy boss, you want to come to an agreement about your particular and quirky strengths ...

 

Also are you making friends with coworkers? ... You want to be having lunch and having chats with people who also work for this woman--assuming there are others. You will pick up tips from them.

 

I too am not naturally organized ... but a few years back, I met a woman who was literally and organization coach. I saw her for 8 sessions--over the phone of all things ... and she was amazing. The big takeaway I got from this coach, who herself was amazingly organized and detail oriented, is that she had systems for being organized.

 

In other words, organized people don't just remember everything. They think about how best to do a task. They write out all kinds of reminders and dates and due dates and start dates ... and they think about the EASIEST way to complete a task. So let your mind think of the most shamelessly easy way to do a task ... or not do a task if it's not one of your strengths and instead do tasks focused on your strengths.

 

Anyway good luck ... it's really distracting to have a boss like you have ... but you didn't mention that she calls you names or is abusive in her feedback. So that tells me that there is room for working things out with this person.

 

We all have different skillsets and one of the things highly successful people do is leverage and use their skillsets to the max. Sometimes this may require them to partner with others. Not unusual for a business to have a charismatic person who is good with people and with promotion ... who pairs up with a detailed person who goes over the bills.

 

By the way, I'll ask: what are you strengths? What are you good at that your boss isn't good at? What strengths do you have that you can share with your boss?

 

Of course, none of this is guaranteed to work, and you might just have a bad fit with your boss or with the job. But you want to at least try out some strategies before calling it quits.

[Mr. Lucky]

I was looking for a job for over 8 months and finally got one. I started 3 months ago. At first my boss was really nice but has started to become more and more nitpicky.

 

Firstly, I feel like she watches over everything I do. She will often sit in on the meetings with me (when I meet clients) - this has never happened in my old job. I am experienced at what I do and this annoys me. She would often hijack the meeting and do all the talking.

 

Then she will make corrections to every tiny spelling/typo mistake I make. If I send an e-mail and misspell a letter of someone's name, she will immediately respond to correct me.

 

I'll just echo what others have said and state this isn't an unusual level of oversight in the first 3 months of a client-facing position. Little things matter.

 

One thing you might try is identify someone who's been there a while and whose performance the boss respects, and ask that person to mentor you. The boss may feel you're in good hands and back off, giving you more time to grow into the position...

 

Mr. Lucky