Dear Ms. {boss’ boss},

Thank you for our brief conversation earlier today. This is a follow up.

I apologize in advance for a few things. First, this may be lengthy. Second, I honestly dislike attention getting displays, and I'm sure you have enough to do without me throwing more on top of your in-box. So, I genuinely regret taking up your time and your attention, and it may be, in the end, that any action taken regarding this will be to my detriment. Still, it's getting to the point in my current situation where unemployment would almost be a relief.

I'm not sure where to start with this. We just had a team meeting and I aired my most recent grievance with {my boss}. It did not go well. Mostly the latest problem has been that a subclique on the team has taken it on themselves to police the rest of the team. Every time one of us logs out of KANA, or says anything not immediately work related to someone else not in this little sub clique, or gets up from our chair, we immediately get asked by one of these three (they call themselves 'the triplets', it's {bitch 3}, {bitch 2}, and especially {bitch 1}) 'are you on break?' in the snottiest tones imaginable.

This has been going on all week. They claim they are only kidding, but thirty times a day isn't kidding, or at least, it isn't funny. Last night {bitch 1} informed {a co-worker} and I, in tones of great self importance, "I am {my boss}'s eyes and ears when she is out of the room, and I send her 20 emails a day about stuff I see people doing".

Today, when I asked {my boss} directly if she had delegated her management duties to {bitch 1}, {bitch 2}, or {bitch 3}, she avoided the question, and when I pressed her, and {bitch 1} became vituperative with me (declaring "I don't like him" and then demanding {my boss} write me up because I stupidly put on one of my two pairs of shoes this morning without thinking about it, and they're sneakers), {my boss} just threw up her hands and said "Okay, keep sending me emails" to {bitch 1}, and then looked at me and siad "I can do write ups if that's how you want it, {happy little me}. If you get up and go the bathroom 20 times a day, there's a problem. Have you had a doctor look at it?"

So, that's how that went.

{my boss} and I have never gotten along well, but I've tried to be professional. She called me stupid in front of the entire team in a team meeting last summer, but I talked to her about it afterwards and she's been more careful with me since then. I believe I meet my goals, and she gave me a positive year's review a month ago. I got a raise, anyway. She has never said one word to me, much less written me up, for me getting up from my desk to use the bathroom. But if it's a problem, well, she's my boss, and I'll listen. I simply do not feel I have to listen to {bitch 1}, {bitch 2}, and {bitch 3}, unless {my boss} specifically delegates authority to them to chastise me. Which she has not, when I asked her directly. She simply told them to keep sending her emails about me.

Let me pause for a moment and say I realize all this sounds very petty, and I am sorry it seems that way. This is why I haven't brought this up before with anyone; it just sounds extremely childish. And it is. But here's the overall situation:

I can deal with {my boss}. I've been on E-care 8 months, I was on the floor 6 months, and I did temp work throughout the 90s. I have worked probably in 60 different offices and had probably 60 different bosses. Before I worked here I did two years in the Tampa City Clerk's office, where the office politics are nearly as bad as they are here. I can work with anyone if they are at all mature or professional. But the problems that we've had on this team since {my boss} brought {bitch 1} in are just horrible, and talking to {my boss} about it... well, as I say, I suspect I'm about to get written up a LOT. At least, that's the direct inference.

Last week, {my boss} called us all together, told us she was tired of having to treat us like children, and announced that any privileges we might have once had were now revoked. She said that in the military, if one person in a unit screwed up, they punished the unit, and she was going to do the same to us, as E-care is a unit. She then handed us all official schedules, like everyone on the floor has, detailing our breaks and our lunches, and telling us we could now be written up for non-adherence.

{my boss} never says we WILL be written up. She says we now CAN be written up. I guess this preserves her options.

Since then, we have been required to stick to our schedules... I guess. Today, I came in and {my boss}, and the triplets, were all off on a long lunch. So I'm assuming that they don't have to stick to their schedules. Maybe I should email {my boss} about it. I'm thinking that wouldn't be effective. I'm sorry. I'm jumping around here. I should be more organized. Let me say this:

For much of January, {bitch 1} was playing mean practical jokes on various people on the team she didn't like. It was petty stuff, different for each person, designed for maximum annoyance. For me, she turned my computer off every day before I got here, so I would have to reopen all my programs. She knew this aggravated me, so she started doing it. For {another co-worker}, who is older and has a bad back, {bitch 1} kept readjusting the back of {another co-worker}'s chair while she was out of the room. She accused {a co-worker} of stealing stuff from her desk, and {a co-worker} is the least likely person in the world to do that, and she knew that, which was why she did it. She picked a fight with {yet another co-worker} by stealing her chair, refusing to give it back when asked, calling {yet another co-worker} a 'retard on medicine'... and then {yet another co-worker} got written up for it.

A lot of us got fed up with it and were going to go to HR, and {my boss} became aware of that, and {bitch 1} stopped... that stuff. However, recently she has started up this 'are you on break' nonsense, which I've already mentioned. The other two, {bitch 2} and {bitch 3}, follow her example enthusiastically. And how they have the time while they are supposed to be working to keep track of everyone else, and, by the way, talk to each other all day long, I could not tell you. The thinking seems to be, since they stay in KANA while conversing with each other and snapping at the rest of the team, it's okay. If we close out of KANA, though, we're stealing from the company, or something.

Anyway, ever since {bitch 1} started doing that nonsense with our equipment and false accusations and using wildly inappropriate language to her teammates and picking fights, and then stopped, {my boss} has at least three times while I've been watching gone up to {bitch 1}, touched her (squeezed her shoulder, touched her hair, something) and said "I'm so proud of you". That's a direct quote. She says it every time. She then usually says something like "personal growth takes a lot of work, you are doing such a good job".

Now, a couple of things about this:

I have been on this team 8 months and I have never seen {my boss} initiate any sort of positive feedback with anyone else on the team. Seeing her do this with {bitch 1} is, frankly, astounding. It is totally out of character and utterly baffling. Honestly, it's kind of freaky.

Secondly, in an environment in which no one gets praised, and in which every single other member of this team comes in to work every day we are scheduled and normally behaves in a generally adult, mature, and professional manner, it strikes me as wildly unprofessional and inappropriate for our supervisor to single out for public praise, support, validation, and empowerment the one person on this team who is consistently unprofessional, immature, and deliberately unpleasant to anyone she does not like.

It also strikes me as bizarre to tell someone you are 'proud of them' for, basically, refraining from being unpleasant to your co-workers. This seems to me to be a basic and fundamental professional expectation, something one owes to one's co-workers and one's self. This is not something one should be praised for.

If {my boss} was one of these people who praises everyone for every little thing, this would be fine. But she has never, to my knowledge, praised anyone for anything. She will occasionally, politely, and obviously insincerely, thank you for something, if you call it to your attention. She rarely initiates negative feedback (and in my experience, is usually inaccurate or inconsistent when she does) and never initiates anything positive. So this is... well, it was like a bolt of lightning, honestly. And it's happened twice since then, too.

Scuttlebutt has it that {bitch 1} was actually terminated... her papers were on {our general manager}'s desk, ready to be processed... when {my boss} put her on this team. What is being said, by some people I know in Biz, is that {bitch 1} was being termed for, among other things, exactly the sort of stuff she's been doing to us. I suppose {my boss} thought she was giving {bitch 1} a second chance; {bitch 1} seems to be wasting it. But that's just my opinion.

Please believe me that approaching you is an act of... well, not desperation, but at least, determination, on my part. I have worked in enough places to realize that when you start kicking rocks downhill, you may very well get caught in the avalanche. E-care has never been the most fun place to work, but it has gotten unpleasantly worse, to the point of being unbearable, since {my boss} put {bitch 1} on the team.

I believe {bitch 1} simply enjoys making other people miserable. She thinks it's fun, she thinks she's entitled to do it, and from what I can see, {my boss} has her back and the most that will happen is that, temporarily, {my boss} will make {bitch 1} cease whatever she is doing at the moment that annoys people. But {bitch 1} will find something else that annoys people just as much and start doing that within days. It's never going to end.

Before {bitch 1} came on the team, {bitch 2} was pleasant to work with and {bitch 3} was always professional to me. Since she's joined, {bitch 2} likes to mess with people nearly as much as {bitch 1} does, and {bitch 3} is getting actively unpleasant, too. I hate coming to you or anyone else with this nonsense, and I know it really does seem childish. But I do not know what else to do.

E-care is a very hostile environment these days. If you log out of Kana, if you get up from your seat, if you take your break five minutes too late or too early, if you talk for a minute to someone you're friendly with, someone is sending an email to {my boss} about it. {my boss} clearly encourages this behavior, and I think it is terribly bad for morale.

I will close by repeating, if {my boss} has a problem with anything about me, she hasn't mentioned it to me. I haven't had any write ups from her. {my boss} has been on a tear lately about people not spending enough time in Kana while we are on the clock, and that's fine, although to the best of my knowledge, we are hitting SLA and I at least am making all my stats. Still, if {my boss} wants to discipline me, she's my boss. But when she does not seem to be treating everyone fairly, when she encourages a rotten atmosphere filled with deceit and backstabbing where her own private little cadre of informers get favorable treatment, and when she refuses to respond to a direct question in a team meeting with anything but a very thinly veiled threat at the questioner, well... I don't know what else to do.

Sorry again about the length of this novel. If you want to talk to me about this, let me know. And thanks for the time and attention.

{happy little me}
{big telecommunication company} Customer Care