I have been in my new job now for three months now, I am just come up to the completion of my probationary period and am due to have my review tomorrow.

I have been with the company in question for seven years and this is an internal transfer. The company I work for is very big and I do not know anyone in my new department – it has been the equivalent of moving to a new organisation, both in terms of the business and the people.

My problem is that each day that goes by, I dread going into work more and feel that not only has my new manager demotivated me, but also she has crushed every bit of confidence I had. I would like to ask if anyone has any advice of how to move forward with this, because in the current climate I am finding it very hard to find a new job and do not want her to ruin the career I have with the company.

Each morning that she comes in, she walks straight past my desk less that a meter away from me and never even acknowledges me. The makes me feel terrible. I try hard an say hello and goodbye, asking her how she is, but she remains incredibly frosty

Every piece of work I do she just tears apart. I used to manage people and if I had criticisms of their work, I would always try and highlight the good things they were doing too. I know that most people come into work to try to do a good job.

When she checks my work she just circles things and writes, “it doesn’t make sense” next to them, or “???? Err NO!” without ever writing why it doesn’t make sense or offering guidance on how to improve it. If I ask her, she will explain and usually they are just really petty things – I feel like she is picking at the tiniest things she can as if she doesn’t want me to succeed.

To name one example, on one document, I was putting together a procedure, which started of with all the job titles I would be referring to and the name of the person that holds each job. Being new, I got her title slightly wrong (calling her the manager of the department, rather than the head), when I asked her to check the document she changed her job title to the correct one at the beginning of the document, but then wrote “who is this????” next to any other reference I had made to her as a manager rather than head

She will check a piece of work for me, make me do 4 new versions, then in the 5th version find lots of criticisms that were already in the first document, but she hadn’t picked, then she will say I need to take more care in my work.Having looked at her work, it is nowhere near as thorough and tidy as mine is. I should add that her manager has complimented each bit of my work he has seen, so it can’t be that terrible.

She will hand me back documents with “needs work” written on them and nothing else, yet when I question how I’m doing, she says “fine” or “I’ll discuss it with you in your review”.

I have not had one bit of training despite not having any experience in the products we sell or the systems we use, yet every time I ask her a question she looks at me like I am some kind of idiot. I recently told her that I don’t have an understanding of something and asked her if we have any documentation so I could train myself, she just said no. If one of my subordinates had expressed a concern that they needed training, I would have trained them myself or produced some kind of guidance.

In my last position, I had the opportunity to collaborate with many external big name companies and usually people are very impressed with the thoroughness and quality of my work, I have even by offered jobs my some of them. Since I have been working for this woman, my confidence has been killed and I literally feel sick at the thought of going to work, I don’t know what has happened to the confident outspoken person I was.

Sorry that this has gone on and thank you if you have read this far. I know this site is meant more for HR professionals, but I really hope someone can help me.

Many thanks
Sam

sam Jones