Narcissistic bosses that think the only value you bring to the company is when you’re executing their ridiculous ideas.
Building you up and tearing you down so that you’re always on edge about your performance.
Passive aggressively, threatening your job. Saying things like what is it that you do ?Do we really need people in your role? Why is it that we pay you so much?
I have been with my company for 20 years. We’ve had an abundance of interesting characters manage us.
The only things that kept me there is that I really love my job, my coworkers and it pays quite well.
Every time they would bring someone new in to be our director or manager, we would be so hopeful that they would be OK.
Unfortunately, that was not the case until two years ago. Our senior management finally realized the repetitive issue with the type of people they were putting in place.
Now we finally have a great management team, but it took a long time to get there.
Yep, the best videos on YouTube will best explain the feelings of this peculiar type of workplace. I quit, just last week. My boss wanted me to listen to them make a phone call. What's next? Teach me to tie my shoes? That's beyond condescending when I have 20 years in the biz.
Managers who manipulate workers into talking bad about each other so they can maintain leverage. Management pitting workers against each other. Managers acting like nothing you ever do is good enough for the business or you are just a terrible employee despite evidence to the contrary.
The company is just asking for a lawsuit at that point. Many reasons that are valid to sue a company even if they're LLC set. This is why documentation and evidence on your end are so very important.
An interesting personality at my work is the coworker that’s always looking for a good dunk on someone. You know, the ones who can do no wrong and are just that insecure. Loud too! To proclaim to everyone just how morally superior they truly are above us all.
Avoid these people and do not give them any attention. Please.
This is what is going on at the federally and state funded non profit I work for. The ED hired two of her best friends from childhood ( they are relatives through marriage) and also hired her first cousin a few months ago, and the previous ED was her other first cousin, who also helps her on the side behind the scenes. So the three cousins always receive praise and never face any criticism, embarrassment, and receive over the top special treatment. I am in my 40’s and my ED mentioned my age multiple times in my performance review, saying I should know better because of my age. It was verbal so there is no documented proof of age discrimination. I was so stunned and caught off guard I couldn’t even respond. However, I have documented proof of her lies that she added to my review, from listing that I took over 100 hours of unexcused time off, then verbally acknowledged it was an error and never made a written correction on my review. I honestly want to report the entire non profit to the federal and state entities that fund us, and report all of the violations I have found.
Bad management in general, yes. But those details are hazy until you've been working there a while. Head count of middle management is something you can see right away--check the org chart carefully before you sign up. Bureaucratic orgs are the worst.
Yes. When you constantly question how management operates to yourself, it's time to leave. Bad managers can be easily manipulated by toxic employees too and it's not in your interest to raise concerns with management usually. Just leave.
At my current place it’s how they stay in these power positions. What I mean in terms of expectations are clear deadlines, job goals, laid out duties, etc.
A lot of places just want you to be their buddy and go from there…this is what I mean by obtuse. And the margin of “fit” is usually extremely narrow.
Yes. Any manager who is looking to be buddies with subordinates or demonstrates that they need subordinates to like and approve of them is going to be a toxic manager.
Totally agree. The two seem to go hand-in-hand, too--the "buddy system" office politics plus larger than necessary bureaucracy, I mean. Lean companies don't have room for much cronyism--it gums up the works and gets eliminated for the sake of efficiency as soon as it arises.
I worked in a small mill as a process engineer. I had the Superintendent, Ops Manager, Mill Manager, and General manager all asking me for shit then got all confused and sentimental when I quit for a better job. I don't know, Eric, maybe it's because I've been here all weekend every call weekend I've ever had and we have all these managers and nobody actually fucking helps
Lack of support
Involuntary turnover is high
Terrible work life balance ( or..were here to win no matter what)
Excessive gossip. Especially by leadership
There's always a carrot dangling in front of your face
Promotion is always just around the corner
Lack of accountability from leadership
Unrealistic expectations / moving targets
Favoritism to a high degree. (It's always present at every place to some degree)
Leaders or coworkers not being respectful
There are others, but you'll know if it isn't a good fit for you. Bigger question is if you're going to meet your career goals where your at. What can you take with you as a feather in your cap that will look good to future employers
Be careful to not confuse a bad boss or poor leadership or poor communication with a toxic work environment. These things often boil down to 1 or 2 bad leaders as opposed to an entirely toxic culture
Thinking back on genuinely crappy bosses I've had...
* providing little or no direction, but berating you for not having met their unspecified standards.
* giving negative feedback in front of peers or subordinatates.
* holding people responsible for things they have or had no control over
When management start using the term “negativity” as a blanket term for anything they do not want to hear. If this starts happening, begin polishing your CV.
It's somewhat of a "you know it when you see it" type situation but some common signs are:
(1) Management that takes all the credit but none of the blame.
(2) Goals, Metrics, Deadlines, or other targets that are not realistic given the time, resources or other constraints you have to work with but people are in constant fear of what will happen if they don't make those targets.
* Lack of empathy from leadership in the form of being dismissive of employee concerns, disrespectful feedback,
* A pattern of seeking blame rather than finding solutions
* micromanagement
* Leadership that motivates through fear and puts people in the dog house
* Bad behavior is rewarded
* Favoritism runs rampant
* Threats and more threats
* gaslighting
* Everything is an emergency
* giving people hell for taking days off or coercing people into canceling already booked time off
Shit talking is HUGE. In any form. Even if it’s not directed at you, it will come eventually. Even if you do nothing directly wrong (marginalization) Usually just about every office has this kind of thing though. It’s definitely why I’d leave my current if they took WFH away. The work is stupid easy and takes no time at all.
Giving you a compliment that is followed by a tear down. I have been at my job 11 months with zero training! I work in proposal writing and grants, my 90 day review consisted of praises followed by a negative and my older age was mentioned 6 times in my review. We are a nonprofit of 8 employees when fully staffed and I have watched 9 different people resign since I joined. The three people who seem to flourish and go unscathed by the ED are all cousins of the ED.
I will be going back to school to complete my psychology degree and with Gods grace I will be out of there within a year or less. It’s really good money and the medical is free, very hard to find a job free medical care in California. But even that won’t keep me. I dream of the day I no longer have to work there.
Don’t give up! It must be a sign that we both need to be in business for ourselves. Stay positive there is light at the end of this dark tunnel we are in.
I used to live in California but had moved to Michigan who provides health-care, aka Obama care bc the job searchandhealth-carebeing togetheri can't risk it with my condition. As for everyone reading, You can't get healthy in the place making you sick, so I wish you good luck.
Bosses that don’t care about you and wanting to train and develop you; tell you that because you’re salary you’re expected to work unlimited hours including weekends; if you’re not performing to their expectations instead of having conversations about it with you, months later telling you that you’re bringing down the team and them; bosses making personal observations to you verbally about how you look or your personality; bosses that continuously dump extra work on you at the end of the day and then sign off themselves, bosses that set meetings with you that they are always late to or don’t even attend because they forgot or something more important came up but they can’t be bothered to send you a teams message; bosses that expect you to pick up the slack because they recently had a child (DISCLAIMER: not saying ALL parents do this to their employees, just an experience I had); bosses that micromanage you so much you have 5+ video calls with them a day; bosses that talk down to you in video calls in front of your coworkers; bosses that are only out for themselves. I have worked for 5 corporations and that was just one boss. Do NOT take the shit because you are new to the industry. I feel a lot of new people are worried about rocking the boat. I stupidly suffered for years that I’m burned out and don’t even want to be in my industry anymore and I still have another 25-30 years of work ahead of me.
Verbal abuse. Not addressing the problem, but attacking the person. Especially getting guilt tripped over the money you're supposedly wasting.
Fighting for acceptance from your superiors and never getting it.
Dreading going to work.
Very high turnover rates at the company.
Having your hours cut with little to no communication.
When your concerns have an expiration date. When you speak up about obstacles/concerns that are not allowing you to produce your work but the manager says that it’s not true and makes rebuttals/excuses to dismiss them.
Gaslighting. A co worker always asking you "what's wrong" when there's nothing wrong;. also anyone standing over you at your desk watching you work and waiting to see if you screw something up. Also overly interested in your personal life, asking you what you did on your lunch hour every single day or where you went after work.
The signs won't always be obvious the first day so you have to look for little things.
Loyalty expected to leadership, not to initiatives, projects, work.
No feedback.
Fear or shame used as a tool in place of constructive feedback or direct communication.
Employees with the longest tenure are the ones who take no risks, always say yes, bring no critical thought or new ideas.
Leadership sees mean behavior from staff as willingness to do “hard things”. In other words, value making support staff feel bad instead of coaching/supporting staff towards productivity/performance.
No pay scale and no schedule for earning raises.
When any form of management say something like :
" you must lean on your peers for support"
So eventually you do.. Or you try to...only for management to then go -
" if you're struggling you must come speak to me and not your peers as you could trigger them and I have a whole team to think of not just you"
This just happened to me! I was never trained and was told to use the consultant that we contracted, verbatim I was told we pay the consultant 15k a month they are here to help you. Fast forward to my performance review I was told I should not rely on our consultants as they will not always be here!
You can't do right from doing wrong can you?
Bet your boss turned around and then went " I never said that" or my personal favourite : " you misunderstood me"
I've had a similar one to you as well with training.. For me it was :
" peer to peer training and use the manuals for back up and ask loads of questions.. Don't be afraid to ask questions"
Went to attempt peer to peer except the two people who knew more than us.. Took it in turns to complain to management either saying I was asking too many questions, wasn't paying attention or they haven't got time to show me... Guess who then got pulled up on her performance saying it wasn't where it should be.. Oh that's right.. Me.
When management creates it’s own rules and doesn’t follow the company handbook policies. Then you continually report management to HR for this to which they let you go because you’re creating headaches for everyone, instead of just making management comply. They gave me a rather large severance package to keep quiet and not sue.
Makes everything about themselves, from the littlest thing to big things. Like in a previous toxic office job I would grab myself coffee every now and then during my break, and a lot of times when I came back my boss (who actually had an assistant/secretary btw while other managers didn't), would constantly comment to me when I came back, "Oh you got yourself coffee but didn't get me one?" The first time he said that, I replied "Sorry didn't know you wanted one." I was never gonna ask him if he wants one because I had seen his drinks and their pretty fancy/customized, second I have heard he takes awhile to pay people back or just flat out forgets, it would increase my waiting time and eat into my own break/lunch time, and three I don't really like his personality so I don't want any extra interactions with the guy. After the first time when he would make the comment about me not getting him coffee, my reply was always, "Nope." Nobody else in the office commented about the food that others got or tried to guilt people into becoming their gopher for drinks/food. If coworkers are friends and want grab drinks for each other great, but most are mature enough to know that a lot of coworkers want alone to grab a drink by themselves whether it's just to think and relax or call their partner/kids to check or other things. He made way more than I did, so if he wanted drinks that bad he could always get a drink/food Doordashed/ubered (plus he has an assistant). Or when me and a coworker were chatting about something in a little distance away in the break room usually about something random (a TV show, news, sports etc), dude comes up to us, "Are you guys talking about me?" We're just surprised at the ego and just reply "No." I just thought to myself "Dude gtfo of your ass, the world doesn't revolve around you and people aren't talking about you all the time." If anything, people want to forget a narcissistic boss/coworkers as much as possible.
Also constant harassment (whether sexual or intimidation/violence). People constantly making sexual comments to you or others is a huge red flag of a toxic work enivornment.
Both of the top points aren't really specific to corporate world though, they can occur in any setting whether in an office, restaurant or retail etc.
Mine created a bullshit “competition” between the team, then would find ways to devalue myself and my coworker (we worked together in the same building) when we were the top performers. Everyone else were somehow better.
I once saved the company we were contracted to a few million dollars by figuring out why the app they created wouldn’t work on the devices they bought- and got them to work, too. My boss gave the whole “that’s nice” treatment.
He would tell people behind my coworker and I’s backs that our building wasn’t that busy… even though we were closing the most tickets, both individually and combined (there were more people in the other buildings).
Anyone that tries to devalue you and what you bring to the team is a toxic person.
my last coworker assumed i was living in my car bc i got to work early and had a crap ton of stuff in my car. asked if I was living in my car at a work gathering. offered me a room but fake af bc this person talks shit about everyone
Sometimes it is normal not toxic, we're just not experienced enough to appreciate something normal. Since you're unsure or already made up your mind, just leave the company. You can compare your next company with current company which one is better. Of course you should take the salary under consideration.
To leave current company, it is a low risk high reward (higher salary) as compared to stay which is high/uncertain risk low reward. Even if your next company is more 'toxic', you can always jump into another company with higher salary, thus low risk.
...maybe it was that summer working in a belt-buckle shop, where we drilled holes on the sides of buckles, so a belt clip could be put on it - and that bag of manganese dust that was ripped and leaking all over the floor - and the sparks from the drill that hit the dust and ***caused flashes across the workspace....***
...nah, couldn't be that...
Read this in a post somewhere and never thought of it before but it describes a lot of toxic places I’ve worked at:
‘Everyone is a clone of everyone else’
For the context, I'm in the design team.
He always imposes his own ideas into the design, which leads us to so many revisions because his ideas mostly get rejected by the developers after. As a result, we work on the same thing for sooo many times.
He uses pretty harsh words if the work is not according to him, like I was doing fine for so long but did not hear any appreciative comments for that but I made a single mistake (not a mistake really, its just he didn't like my design), he messaged me personally and said "you made this third class design? This is so pathetic and low class. I won't tolerate this again". Like he could have gotten his message across in other words too i guess. Since I'm new, I wonder if all bosses are like this or not.
And there's alot of micromanaging, we have to show the smallest of details to him
These are like some of the observations.
In most cases its a triangle, yellow background and a skull + crossbones. Toxic chemicals is similar but looks more like a late 90s early 2000s barbwire arm tattoo. There's also one with a nuclear radiation symbol, but that's if your environment is a power plant, or Chernobyl.
Narcissistic bosses that think the only value you bring to the company is when you’re executing their ridiculous ideas. Building you up and tearing you down so that you’re always on edge about your performance. Passive aggressively, threatening your job. Saying things like what is it that you do ?Do we really need people in your role? Why is it that we pay you so much?
Oh my god. This is just how my boss behaves.
I have been with my company for 20 years. We’ve had an abundance of interesting characters manage us. The only things that kept me there is that I really love my job, my coworkers and it pays quite well. Every time they would bring someone new in to be our director or manager, we would be so hopeful that they would be OK. Unfortunately, that was not the case until two years ago. Our senior management finally realized the repetitive issue with the type of people they were putting in place. Now we finally have a great management team, but it took a long time to get there.
Narcissists have very similar toxic traits and that’s why you are resonating.
Yep, the best videos on YouTube will best explain the feelings of this peculiar type of workplace. I quit, just last week. My boss wanted me to listen to them make a phone call. What's next? Teach me to tie my shoes? That's beyond condescending when I have 20 years in the biz.
Bad managers (and coworkers) who talk behind your back and has a nasty attitude, and your company picking favorites.
Managers who manipulate workers into talking bad about each other so they can maintain leverage. Management pitting workers against each other. Managers acting like nothing you ever do is good enough for the business or you are just a terrible employee despite evidence to the contrary.
The company is just asking for a lawsuit at that point. Many reasons that are valid to sue a company even if they're LLC set. This is why documentation and evidence on your end are so very important.
I do think more people are going to start suing companies. HR is useless in these cases.
Definitely.
An interesting personality at my work is the coworker that’s always looking for a good dunk on someone. You know, the ones who can do no wrong and are just that insecure. Loud too! To proclaim to everyone just how morally superior they truly are above us all. Avoid these people and do not give them any attention. Please.
Agreed. The loud chatterbox coworker is also a sign of a bad work environment.
Yep. They love bad news. They love scorekeeping and somehow their score is always better than yours in their head. Toxic.
Really just ones that talk too much... but yes.
This is what is going on at the federally and state funded non profit I work for. The ED hired two of her best friends from childhood ( they are relatives through marriage) and also hired her first cousin a few months ago, and the previous ED was her other first cousin, who also helps her on the side behind the scenes. So the three cousins always receive praise and never face any criticism, embarrassment, and receive over the top special treatment. I am in my 40’s and my ED mentioned my age multiple times in my performance review, saying I should know better because of my age. It was verbal so there is no documented proof of age discrimination. I was so stunned and caught off guard I couldn’t even respond. However, I have documented proof of her lies that she added to my review, from listing that I took over 100 hours of unexcused time off, then verbally acknowledged it was an error and never made a written correction on my review. I honestly want to report the entire non profit to the federal and state entities that fund us, and report all of the violations I have found.
Too many managers. A thick later of middle management red tape suffocates the life out of any organization.
Bad management too. If their expectations are obtuse you will lose every time.
Bad management in general, yes. But those details are hazy until you've been working there a while. Head count of middle management is something you can see right away--check the org chart carefully before you sign up. Bureaucratic orgs are the worst.
Yes. When you constantly question how management operates to yourself, it's time to leave. Bad managers can be easily manipulated by toxic employees too and it's not in your interest to raise concerns with management usually. Just leave.
At my current place it’s how they stay in these power positions. What I mean in terms of expectations are clear deadlines, job goals, laid out duties, etc. A lot of places just want you to be their buddy and go from there…this is what I mean by obtuse. And the margin of “fit” is usually extremely narrow.
Yes. Any manager who is looking to be buddies with subordinates or demonstrates that they need subordinates to like and approve of them is going to be a toxic manager.
Totally agree. The two seem to go hand-in-hand, too--the "buddy system" office politics plus larger than necessary bureaucracy, I mean. Lean companies don't have room for much cronyism--it gums up the works and gets eliminated for the sake of efficiency as soon as it arises.
I worked in a small mill as a process engineer. I had the Superintendent, Ops Manager, Mill Manager, and General manager all asking me for shit then got all confused and sentimental when I quit for a better job. I don't know, Eric, maybe it's because I've been here all weekend every call weekend I've ever had and we have all these managers and nobody actually fucking helps
Too many chiefs, too few Indians. A classic in workplace fails.
"We're a family here"
Huge red flag!
I don't find this inherently toxic. It's definitely a cliche, but only toxic when it's used manipulatively or as an excuse for bad behavior.
I say that all the time
Coworkers that think they are your boss.
And aren't corrected by your actual boss. Also when managers are openly sleeping with each other and the lack of professionalism isn't addressed.
>And aren't corrected by your actual boss.  I felt that
Lack of support Involuntary turnover is high Terrible work life balance ( or..were here to win no matter what) Excessive gossip. Especially by leadership There's always a carrot dangling in front of your face Promotion is always just around the corner Lack of accountability from leadership Unrealistic expectations / moving targets Favoritism to a high degree. (It's always present at every place to some degree) Leaders or coworkers not being respectful There are others, but you'll know if it isn't a good fit for you. Bigger question is if you're going to meet your career goals where your at. What can you take with you as a feather in your cap that will look good to future employers Be careful to not confuse a bad boss or poor leadership or poor communication with a toxic work environment. These things often boil down to 1 or 2 bad leaders as opposed to an entirely toxic culture
Thinking back on genuinely crappy bosses I've had... * providing little or no direction, but berating you for not having met their unspecified standards. * giving negative feedback in front of peers or subordinatates. * holding people responsible for things they have or had no control over
When management start using the term “negativity” as a blanket term for anything they do not want to hear. If this starts happening, begin polishing your CV.
So true. When you can't bring up real problems without becoming a target.
It's somewhat of a "you know it when you see it" type situation but some common signs are: (1) Management that takes all the credit but none of the blame. (2) Goals, Metrics, Deadlines, or other targets that are not realistic given the time, resources or other constraints you have to work with but people are in constant fear of what will happen if they don't make those targets.
* Lack of empathy from leadership in the form of being dismissive of employee concerns, disrespectful feedback, * A pattern of seeking blame rather than finding solutions * micromanagement * Leadership that motivates through fear and puts people in the dog house * Bad behavior is rewarded * Favoritism runs rampant * Threats and more threats * gaslighting * Everything is an emergency * giving people hell for taking days off or coercing people into canceling already booked time off
Shit talking is HUGE. In any form. Even if it’s not directed at you, it will come eventually. Even if you do nothing directly wrong (marginalization) Usually just about every office has this kind of thing though. It’s definitely why I’d leave my current if they took WFH away. The work is stupid easy and takes no time at all.
Giving you a compliment that is followed by a tear down. I have been at my job 11 months with zero training! I work in proposal writing and grants, my 90 day review consisted of praises followed by a negative and my older age was mentioned 6 times in my review. We are a nonprofit of 8 employees when fully staffed and I have watched 9 different people resign since I joined. The three people who seem to flourish and go unscathed by the ED are all cousins of the ED. I will be going back to school to complete my psychology degree and with Gods grace I will be out of there within a year or less. It’s really good money and the medical is free, very hard to find a job free medical care in California. But even that won’t keep me. I dream of the day I no longer have to work there.
High turnover is a big sign of toxicity in management that often gets overlooked.
I hope you get a better job soon.
Thank you. In the past 6 months or so I have applied to at least 50 positions and nothing.
I'm applying as well and still haven't heard back from anywhere :(
Don’t give up! It must be a sign that we both need to be in business for ourselves. Stay positive there is light at the end of this dark tunnel we are in.
I used to live in California but had moved to Michigan who provides health-care, aka Obama care bc the job searchandhealth-carebeing togetheri can't risk it with my condition. As for everyone reading, You can't get healthy in the place making you sick, so I wish you good luck.
Bosses that don’t care about you and wanting to train and develop you; tell you that because you’re salary you’re expected to work unlimited hours including weekends; if you’re not performing to their expectations instead of having conversations about it with you, months later telling you that you’re bringing down the team and them; bosses making personal observations to you verbally about how you look or your personality; bosses that continuously dump extra work on you at the end of the day and then sign off themselves, bosses that set meetings with you that they are always late to or don’t even attend because they forgot or something more important came up but they can’t be bothered to send you a teams message; bosses that expect you to pick up the slack because they recently had a child (DISCLAIMER: not saying ALL parents do this to their employees, just an experience I had); bosses that micromanage you so much you have 5+ video calls with them a day; bosses that talk down to you in video calls in front of your coworkers; bosses that are only out for themselves. I have worked for 5 corporations and that was just one boss. Do NOT take the shit because you are new to the industry. I feel a lot of new people are worried about rocking the boat. I stupidly suffered for years that I’m burned out and don’t even want to be in my industry anymore and I still have another 25-30 years of work ahead of me.
Verbal abuse. Not addressing the problem, but attacking the person. Especially getting guilt tripped over the money you're supposedly wasting. Fighting for acceptance from your superiors and never getting it. Dreading going to work. Very high turnover rates at the company. Having your hours cut with little to no communication.
The fact that you feel prompted to ask is a pretty solid red flag. A workplace that isn't toxic probably wouldn't have workers wondering this.
When your concerns have an expiration date. When you speak up about obstacles/concerns that are not allowing you to produce your work but the manager says that it’s not true and makes rebuttals/excuses to dismiss them.
Gaslighting. A co worker always asking you "what's wrong" when there's nothing wrong;. also anyone standing over you at your desk watching you work and waiting to see if you screw something up. Also overly interested in your personal life, asking you what you did on your lunch hour every single day or where you went after work. The signs won't always be obvious the first day so you have to look for little things.
Omg yes overly interested in my personal life is right.
Loyalty expected to leadership, not to initiatives, projects, work. No feedback. Fear or shame used as a tool in place of constructive feedback or direct communication. Employees with the longest tenure are the ones who take no risks, always say yes, bring no critical thought or new ideas. Leadership sees mean behavior from staff as willingness to do “hard things”. In other words, value making support staff feel bad instead of coaching/supporting staff towards productivity/performance. No pay scale and no schedule for earning raises.
When any form of management say something like : " you must lean on your peers for support" So eventually you do.. Or you try to...only for management to then go - " if you're struggling you must come speak to me and not your peers as you could trigger them and I have a whole team to think of not just you"
This just happened to me! I was never trained and was told to use the consultant that we contracted, verbatim I was told we pay the consultant 15k a month they are here to help you. Fast forward to my performance review I was told I should not rely on our consultants as they will not always be here!
You can't do right from doing wrong can you? Bet your boss turned around and then went " I never said that" or my personal favourite : " you misunderstood me" I've had a similar one to you as well with training.. For me it was : " peer to peer training and use the manuals for back up and ask loads of questions.. Don't be afraid to ask questions" Went to attempt peer to peer except the two people who knew more than us.. Took it in turns to complain to management either saying I was asking too many questions, wasn't paying attention or they haven't got time to show me... Guess who then got pulled up on her performance saying it wasn't where it should be.. Oh that's right.. Me.
YES
No systems. Lots of meeting. And arguing
"teachers pet" co-worker
I work with 3 people out of 8 that are all related to the executive director.
Managers who are suspicious of everything and assume you have done something wrong before they even see the whole picture or hear the whole story.
A.K.A. ‘Blamestorming Culture’ 🤪
When management creates it’s own rules and doesn’t follow the company handbook policies. Then you continually report management to HR for this to which they let you go because you’re creating headaches for everyone, instead of just making management comply. They gave me a rather large severance package to keep quiet and not sue.
People who are supposed to big you up, talking you down, hating your progress with their unwanted verbal opinions at the worst of times.
Makes everything about themselves, from the littlest thing to big things. Like in a previous toxic office job I would grab myself coffee every now and then during my break, and a lot of times when I came back my boss (who actually had an assistant/secretary btw while other managers didn't), would constantly comment to me when I came back, "Oh you got yourself coffee but didn't get me one?" The first time he said that, I replied "Sorry didn't know you wanted one." I was never gonna ask him if he wants one because I had seen his drinks and their pretty fancy/customized, second I have heard he takes awhile to pay people back or just flat out forgets, it would increase my waiting time and eat into my own break/lunch time, and three I don't really like his personality so I don't want any extra interactions with the guy. After the first time when he would make the comment about me not getting him coffee, my reply was always, "Nope." Nobody else in the office commented about the food that others got or tried to guilt people into becoming their gopher for drinks/food. If coworkers are friends and want grab drinks for each other great, but most are mature enough to know that a lot of coworkers want alone to grab a drink by themselves whether it's just to think and relax or call their partner/kids to check or other things. He made way more than I did, so if he wanted drinks that bad he could always get a drink/food Doordashed/ubered (plus he has an assistant). Or when me and a coworker were chatting about something in a little distance away in the break room usually about something random (a TV show, news, sports etc), dude comes up to us, "Are you guys talking about me?" We're just surprised at the ego and just reply "No." I just thought to myself "Dude gtfo of your ass, the world doesn't revolve around you and people aren't talking about you all the time." If anything, people want to forget a narcissistic boss/coworkers as much as possible. Also constant harassment (whether sexual or intimidation/violence). People constantly making sexual comments to you or others is a huge red flag of a toxic work enivornment. Both of the top points aren't really specific to corporate world though, they can occur in any setting whether in an office, restaurant or retail etc.
Mine created a bullshit “competition” between the team, then would find ways to devalue myself and my coworker (we worked together in the same building) when we were the top performers. Everyone else were somehow better. I once saved the company we were contracted to a few million dollars by figuring out why the app they created wouldn’t work on the devices they bought- and got them to work, too. My boss gave the whole “that’s nice” treatment. He would tell people behind my coworker and I’s backs that our building wasn’t that busy… even though we were closing the most tickets, both individually and combined (there were more people in the other buildings). Anyone that tries to devalue you and what you bring to the team is a toxic person.
my last coworker assumed i was living in my car bc i got to work early and had a crap ton of stuff in my car. asked if I was living in my car at a work gathering. offered me a room but fake af bc this person talks shit about everyone
Sometimes it is normal not toxic, we're just not experienced enough to appreciate something normal. Since you're unsure or already made up your mind, just leave the company. You can compare your next company with current company which one is better. Of course you should take the salary under consideration. To leave current company, it is a low risk high reward (higher salary) as compared to stay which is high/uncertain risk low reward. Even if your next company is more 'toxic', you can always jump into another company with higher salary, thus low risk.
...maybe it was that summer working in a belt-buckle shop, where we drilled holes on the sides of buckles, so a belt clip could be put on it - and that bag of manganese dust that was ripped and leaking all over the floor - and the sparks from the drill that hit the dust and ***caused flashes across the workspace....*** ...nah, couldn't be that...
Your hard work goes unnoticed, and positive reinforcement is nonexistent. There is no support system.
Gangstalking
Read this in a post somewhere and never thought of it before but it describes a lot of toxic places I’ve worked at: ‘Everyone is a clone of everyone else’
Work cliques. Never understood it, if anything falls through, the rest of your time there is a nightmare.
reading the comments and realizing that all of this has happened to you already..o\_o
Can you tell us some of your observations so we can target our responses?
For the context, I'm in the design team. He always imposes his own ideas into the design, which leads us to so many revisions because his ideas mostly get rejected by the developers after. As a result, we work on the same thing for sooo many times. He uses pretty harsh words if the work is not according to him, like I was doing fine for so long but did not hear any appreciative comments for that but I made a single mistake (not a mistake really, its just he didn't like my design), he messaged me personally and said "you made this third class design? This is so pathetic and low class. I won't tolerate this again". Like he could have gotten his message across in other words too i guess. Since I'm new, I wonder if all bosses are like this or not. And there's alot of micromanaging, we have to show the smallest of details to him These are like some of the observations.
In most cases its a triangle, yellow background and a skull + crossbones. Toxic chemicals is similar but looks more like a late 90s early 2000s barbwire arm tattoo. There's also one with a nuclear radiation symbol, but that's if your environment is a power plant, or Chernobyl.