I think my boss is trying to push me out the door

LegacyUser

Ive been in my current job for just under 6 and a half years, for the first 4 years i was there i would be almost excited going into work as i enjoyed my job that much, the last 2 and a half years have been a struggle though with the last 6 months being almost hell, theres only myself and my boss in the job just now, there was a 3rd guy who, by mutual agreement, left back in February, we'll get back to him shortly though......

Some info about the job first too, Sign makers/ printer and in serious financial difficulties,

I still enjoy my job but im starting to find it harder to find the motivation to want to do the job, the reason for this is the atmosphere in work, in the past month i have been working for, a 3 year old, or at least thats what i feel like im working for, when i ask questions about any jobs we have in i pretty much either get ignored or i get told to leave the work and the boss will do it himself, so, in the past month ive done very little work on customers jobs, instead ive had to do either maintainance work or cleaning/ tidying up. Ive tried talking to my boss about both work related and non work related subjects but he's not interested in talking to me, he will either claim he's too busy, or, he will just plain ignore me and walk away from me! To make matters worse his temper has a very short fuse, so on the occasions i do be allowed to do work on jobs, if i make a mistake on it he pretty much explodes with rage and starts shouting at me and calling me all sorts, his current description of me in such situations is 'useless braindead idiot!!!!!' The reasons for the mistakes is mostly due to our printer, it has never been maintained properly in the sense of if something went wrong with it we wouldnt get an engineer out to it, instead the task of fixing it fell to me and theres only so much i can do on a $500k super wide printer, this didnt matter to the boss tho as anytime i tried to explain the printer wasnt running properly i would just get the reply i was just making excuses......

Going back now to the guy who left by mutual agreement, himself and the boss agreed in Feb that he would be laid off and he would get redundancy soon after, the reason for this was the boss would barely talk to him about any jobs we had in, instead, he would make him phone the customer to get the details of the job, this would be after the boss had agreed everything verbally with the customer, our thinking here was to make the guy look stupid by having to phone the customer, he would also blame him for everything that went wrong within the job, he even kept a record of everything that this guy did wrong, i was told to read the list a few times and every time i read it i found more holes in the claims or mistakes against the guy, to me, the reason for the list was for the boss to think he had valid reasons to get rid of the other guy... Myself and the other guy had a bit of a joke going where the boss, if he thought he could get away with it, would blame the other guy for the bad weather and the recession.....

His redundancy tho, he didnt get the paperwork he was due when they had agreed he would get it, so, multiple phonecalls, texts and emails later he still had no word back, the boss was ignoring everything, i know this as i was present during some of the attempted phonecalls, this has been going on since Feb until a couple of weeks ago and still nothing has been sorted, i dont think the guy has his p45 yet either....

Coming back to my situation now, im starting to think the boss is now doing to me what he did with the other guy, he's not talking to me and he's starting to try blame me for stuff i didnt do,

Im a bit lost at what i can do now, do i just continue on with things as they are, im still getting paid weekly so im not losing out there, i cant afford to just leave so that wont be happening and plus i refuse to give in to him that easily,

Any thoughts?

Mrs OBumble

Are you job hunting? The cleanest way out of this is for you to just get a new job.

the_syco

being pushed out? wrote: »

His redundancy tho, he didnt get the paperwork he was due when they had agreed he would get it, so, multiple phonecalls, texts and emails later he still had no word back, the boss was ignoring everything, i know this as i was present during some of the attempted phonecalls, this has been going on since Feb until a couple of weeks ago and still nothing has been sorted, i dont think the guy has his p45 yet either....

The Titanic has hit the iceberg, has split in two, and about to go down. Best jump off before it does, into a more stable job. See if you can get any needed paperwork to the workmate before you go; he may be a good reference

Your boss has shown how he treats loyalty (the other guy, and his insults at you), so don't feel like you need to show any!

Buffman

being pushed out? wrote: »

Im a bit lost at what i can do now, do i just continue on with things as they are, im still getting paid weekly so im not losing out there, i cant afford to just leave so that wont be happening and plus i refuse to give in to him that easily,

In the short term, yes, I'd continue on as you are as long as you're getting paid.

But, as others have said, you should begin looking for alternatives, as by the sounds of it, the current business isn't going to last.

The boss doesn't seem to be doing his business any favors either.
Stuff like not passing on job details and making you ask the customers again only aggravates the customers and doesn't look good.

I wouldn't hold out much hope for your former colleague ever getting his redundancy from the company either, since the rebate was abolished in January the company will have to pay 100% of what he's owed.

Buffman

Buffman wrote: »

In the short term, yes, I'd continue on as you are as long as you're getting paid.

But, as others have said, you should begin looking for alternatives, as by the sounds of it, the current business isn't going to last.

The boss doesn't seem to be doing his business any favors either.
Stuff like not passing on job details and making you ask the customers again only aggravates the customers and doesn't look good.

I wouldn't hold out much hope for your former colleague ever getting his redundancy from the company either, since the rebate was abolished in January the company will have to pay 100% of what he's owed.

Agree with this post. Could you and the other guy start up on your own in competition? Hanging on for redundancy is difficult and may not be worth the effort.

ZeroThreat

being pushed out? wrote: »

Ive been in my current job for just under 6 and a half years, for the first 4 years i was there i would be almost excited going into work as i enjoyed my job that much, the last 2 and a half years have been a struggle though with the last 6 months being almost hell, theres only myself and my boss in the job just now, there was a 3rd guy who, by mutual agreement, left back in February, we'll get back to him shortly though......

Some info about the job first too, Sign makers/ printer and in serious financial difficulties,

I still enjoy my job but im starting to find it harder to find the motivation to want to do the job, the reason for this is the atmosphere in work, in the past month i have been working for, a 3 year old, or at least thats what i feel like im working for, when i ask questions about any jobs we have in i pretty much either get ignored or i get told to leave the work and the boss will do it himself, so, in the past month ive done very little work on customers jobs, instead ive had to do either maintainance work or cleaning/ tidying up. Ive tried talking to my boss about both work related and non work related subjects but he's not interested in talking to me, he will either claim he's too busy, or, he will just plain ignore me and walk away from me! To make matters worse his temper has a very short fuse, so on the occasions i do be allowed to do work on jobs, if i make a mistake on it he pretty much explodes with rage and starts shouting at me and calling me all sorts, his current description of me in such situations is 'useless braindead idiot!!!!!' The reasons for the mistakes is mostly due to our printer, it has never been maintained properly in the sense of if something went wrong with it we wouldnt get an engineer out to it, instead the task of fixing it fell to me and theres only so much i can do on a $500k super wide printer, this didnt matter to the boss tho as anytime i tried to explain the printer wasnt running properly i would just get the reply i was just making excuses......

Going back now to the guy who left by mutual agreement, himself and the boss agreed in Feb that he would be laid off and he would get redundancy soon after, the reason for this was the boss would barely talk to him about any jobs we had in, instead, he would make him phone the customer to get the details of the job, this would be after the boss had agreed everything verbally with the customer, our thinking here was to make the guy look stupid by having to phone the customer, he would also blame him for everything that went wrong within the job, he even kept a record of everything that this guy did wrong, i was told to read the list a few times and every time i read it i found more holes in the claims or mistakes against the guy, to me, the reason for the list was for the boss to think he had valid reasons to get rid of the other guy... Myself and the other guy had a bit of a joke going where the boss, if he thought he could get away with it, would blame the other guy for the bad weather and the recession.....

His redundancy tho, he didnt get the paperwork he was due when they had agreed he would get it, so, multiple phonecalls, texts and emails later he still had no word back, the boss was ignoring everything, i know this as i was present during some of the attempted phonecalls, this has been going on since Feb until a couple of weeks ago and still nothing has been sorted, i dont think the guy has his p45 yet either....

Coming back to my situation now, im starting to think the boss is now doing to me what he did with the other guy, he's not talking to me and he's starting to try blame me for stuff i didnt do,

Im a bit lost at what i can do now, do i just continue on with things as they are, im still getting paid weekly so im not losing out there, i cant afford to just leave so that wont be happening and plus i refuse to give in to him that easily,

Any thoughts?

surprised he doesn't just be upfront and call you in and say he has to let you go due to finances.
Tbh he doesn't seem to have the right attitude to be running any sort of company, especially going out of his way to make his employees appear incompetent to the customer. Sounds like a self-destructive individual to me...

rovoagho

To be fair, he's probably stressed out from a falling business and just handling it badly. Ask him if you can help to fix it, and look for a new job in the meantime. It's not rocket science.

LegacyUser

Ok, the situation has now gotten worse, my boss openly admitted to me last week that he is choosing not to talk to me and that he is not letting me work on any jobs, his reasons for this were, by him doing all the work it means there will be no mess ups done on the jobs and supposedly everytime he talks to me i go into a strop..... He also says i have an attitude problem and my mood swings are out of control..... Not bad coming from someone who has admitted in the past that they should consider going for anger management classes.....

The next thing is he handed me a contract for me to take away, read over and sign, usually i wouldnt have a problem with that except ive never had a contract in the 6 years ive worked for him so im a little dubious about the reasons for him wanting me to sign a contract now... It should aslo be said now that along with never having recieved a contract when i started ive also never recieved a payslip until now despite numerous requests for such, his excuse for not giving a payslip was they are pointless waste of paper and we dont need them..... So after finally getting handed a payslip it turns out that
since the PRSI went up in January ive been getting over paid since then by a fiver a week, he told me to work out how much ive been overpaid and repay it to him this week!!!!

The final thing is way back in 2010 we were put onto protective notice, he was asking me if i still had the letter, i told him im fairly sure it was at home so to that he told me to find it and bring it in as it would save him looking for it, now obviously since it shouldnt be up to me to keep track of his paper work im not gonna bother bringing it in for him, what im wondering now tho, is since he put us on protective notice 3 years ago am i still on protective notice, there was a note on the letter saying that it would be reviewed a month after we recieved the letter but as always, there was no review (Its always been his common practice to say hes going to have a chat with us in regards to him not being happy with us then not bothering, quite often he would make us write a report of what we thought was wrong with the job and how we would fix it then not bother to read it)... So any thoughts on that?

Finally, a bit of good news, i may potentially have a new job on the horizon, it might only workout as a part time job to start with but to be perfectly honest id happily take a pay cut to get my mental / emotional health back on form....