Stay or go?

LegacyUser

I’ll try to keep this short.

Basically, I’m having a hard time at work. My manager is becoming increasingly difficult to deal with. We have had one or two problems in the past but I have always discussed them with her as soon as I felt uncomfortable and we have moved on and got along fine.

Recently our HR Manager was dismissed and my manager took over a lot of her duties to help until a new HR manager was found. She knew I was understimulated in my role and was full of talk about how I would have loads of interesting things to do and it would be great to have my help. Of course, these never materialised – I was just given all her tasks that she did not want to do. I’m happy to be busy but it’s a bit crap to get all the less interesting things to do when I’m asking to be more challenged.

She has always been difficult but has become a lot more so since taking on these new duties. She has become incredibly demanding and controlling and moody. E.g. snapping at you for not keeping her in the loop but if you cc her on emails she snaps and says she doesn’t want to know about it, not listening to what you are saying because she is in a mood and then you go ahead and do something wrong and looking like a dick, then she comes back to you later in the day and asks you why you did that, being best friends with you one day and then only talking to you the next day to bark orders, deliberately not informing me of decisions she made at meetings I was not invited too and what frustrated me a lot today was emailing everyone, except me to say I’d done something wrong and could everyone bring something back to her so she could fix it (she had no evidence I had done anything wrong and I, in fact, hadn’t)

My dilemma is that she is pregnant and will be going on maternity leave in about 6 months. She has already spoken to me about the possibility of me taking her role while she is away. I, of course, welcome the opportunity but I have huge concerns about doing this – she has already said she wants to maintain access while she is away. This worries me, it’ll be hard enough doing her job without her breathing down by neck by email/phone about how I’m doing everything wrong. She’s so controlling, that I can’t see her being able to walk away from her role. Also, everything has to be done her way and I know that will be a huge issue for her. I’ll feel like I’m not able to fill the role fully as I know I’ll feel pressured to continue it the way she always did it and that’s not really something I’d enjoy. I think she thinks she’ll handle having a baby so well she’ll have loads of time to work from home but that’s not likely to be the case – but there is this fear at the back of my mind that it’ll be a nightmare.

I’m not sure whether to put up with being miserable for 6 months to get a temporary promotion to her role and get rid of her – when things might be just as bad.

Economic crisis aside (I don’t live in Ireland and the situation is not as bad where I am) I’m wondering whether to look for a new job and move in to it before she has to go on maternity leave just to get away from it all.