update: I’m worried that my boss and HR are laying a paper trail to fire me

It’s “where are you now?” month at Ask a Manager, and all December I’m running updates from people who had their letters here answered in the past.

Remember the letter-writer who was worried that their boss and HR were laying a paper trail to fire them (#3 at the link)? Here’s the update.

I know that people like updates, so I thought I would write back once I passed the six-month mark of that meeting (and then some), to see if there was ever the follow-up that I was told there would be. Well, there has not been any follow-up meeting scheduled or even any reference to the first meeting having happened, so I think it probably was just a one-off and my boss may have even forgotten about it.

Obviously, I’ve tried to take everything from the meeting to heart and improve — I’m much better at proactively following up with outside conservators and shippers rather than waiting for them to reply to my emails, for instance — but I’m less terrified that I’m going to get called to the carpet and summarily fired on a day-to-day basis.

I also wanted to admit to some of the details I probably should have given up-front that commenters were asking about. At the time, I was extremely paranoid that my boss or our HR person would be a reader of your site and recognize that the letter was from me, so I tried to give as few details as I could possibly get away with, but it might have made things less clear. Certainly less entertaining.

So: rather than having a regular desk job, I work in a museum, where I’m responsible for the physical care of collections, the database, cataloguing, inventory, etc. The colleague I went to HR about is about 10 years older than me and has worked there about 10 years longer than me, with a very friendly relationship with our boss: most of the time when I hear about his opinions, it’s coming to me through her. Since I started, there have been issues with her relating to me more like she’s my supervisor even though we’re on the same level of the hierarchy. In the comments, I referred to “high school mean girl behavior” on her part, which includes but is not limited to things like talking loudly and negatively about me behind my back, sending emails calling me out while cc’ing the rest of the department (when she picks up on a mistake anyone else makes, she either notifies them privately or uses passive voice to avoid naming names), and assuming that anything that goes wrong was done by me if there’s the remotest possibility of that. During a few hands-on workdays where the department was split into two groups to complete a big project, she encouraged everyone in my group to leave me to do all of the work while they hung out with her group in an office.

Most recently, she seems to have complained to our boss that I haven’t been doing a task that she claimed was required based on a set policy she was certain I was aware of, but further research revealed that the policy never existed and that some of the undone work was actually hers, and there have been a couple of times I’ve realized after the fact that she told me an outright lie about someone complaining to her about my work. Most of our coworkers are younger than either of us and one of them has shown signs of taking cues for how I should be treated from this. It all nearly drove me to a nervous breakdown last year and for a time I was fantasizing about quitting with no backup job in play, but now that things have eased somewhat (it’s not happening every single day or even every week) I’m at least at an equilibrium. I have the world’s best assistant to rely on, which helps enormously, and I’m trying to work more with other departments in ways that showcase/are built on what I’m best at.

Unfortunately, the job market in museums is a crater right now, not that it’s been healthy for about 20 years, so there are very few openings, and those that exist tend to be high level or terribly paid. I send out applications and have even had a couple of preliminary interviews, but it’s rough. I also worry that all museums are toxic work environments, and that if I leave, I’ll just end up in some fresh hell! And unfortunately my best areas are subject-matter expertise, which doesn’t translate well to jobs outside of this field. But I keep on keeping on. <3

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