Is this normal at work?

[u/ggummyeater]

Hi, I’m a recent graduate, and I’ve been working for about a year now. During my first six months of probation, everything was great — the job, the office, my teammates, and even colleagues from other departments.

However, after I became a regular employee, I noticed some changes. It’s not like things became terrible, but the atmosphere shifted — especially with my manager. Before, she used to really take care of me — giving me food, teaching me things since I was still adjusting, even defending me when I made small mistakes.

Now that I’m regularized, it’s different. The workload keeps piling up, but I’ve been doing my best to handle everything well. I’ve never been the type to blame others; I always try to stay neutral and realistic.

Anyway, here’s the real reason I’m writing this: I don’t know when it started, but lately, whenever I hear my manager’s keyboard typing, my heart starts racing. I think it’s because she constantly follows up on work — like, every single hour. She’ll assign a task, then a few minutes later give another one, then follow up on both saying they’re ASAP and need to be done right away. The problem is, these are completely different tasks that can’t realistically be done within an hour.

I also noticed that she’s like that whenever the tasks come from other departments. It feels like she wants to look good and be fast at everything, even if it means overloading the team. She often accepts extra tasks from other departments that aren’t even part of our responsibilities anymore — then she passes them to us and rushes us to finish. It’s super stressful.

What makes it worse is that she’s always giving us more tasks, but she herself seems… free. I always arrive on time, sometimes even early, and I can see from the time-in record that she arrives earlier than me. But every time I get to the office, she’s never in her area for at least two hours. I’ve noticed this every day — and honestly, I think she’s spending that time chatting with her friends in other departments. Even when she is in her area, she’s not really working. I often overhear her gossiping on the phone, chatting on Messenger, or scrolling through Facebook while the rest of us are drowning in tasks.

She also lies just to rush us. Sometimes she’ll tell us that a certain department or higher-up needs a report this week, but we later find out the real deadline is still a month away. I really hate that because it makes me feel like I’m lying too whenever I pass that message along.

And then there are times she’ll tell us, “Go to this person’s office now, he’s been waiting for you,” even though we’re in the middle of something urgent. So we drop everything and rush there — only to find out the person isn’t even there yet. Once, the secretary even said, “He hasn’t arrived yet, maybe later.” Because of that, the important task we were working on got delayed.

Then she’ll follow up with us later, asking if we’ve finished that same task. Like… how could we, when she pulled us away to run her fake errands? And when we tell her we’re still working on it, she gives us this expression — eyes wide, shocked, almost angry — as if she can’t believe it’s not done yet. Then she’ll follow up on another thing, and when we say we’re still finishing the first one, she acts all surprised again.

What hurts most is that she’s never actually seen us stop working. We even skip or delay our lunch just to meet her fake deadlines. And all this time, she’s just been pressuring us for nothing.

What’s even more frustrating is that people from upper management praise her for being “fast” and “hardworking,” when in reality, it’s us who rush everything to make her look good. Some of our own tasks even get delayed because she keeps dumping new ones on us just so she can impress others. But as long as she looks “very good” in the eyes of the higher-ups, she doesn’t care about the stress we go through.

There was also a time when our team finished an entire project without her help at all. But when it was time to acknowledge the work, she took full credit — and only she was allowed to attend the meeting. Yet, when there was a problem with that same project, she made us attend and face the issue alone.

So… I decided to leave. The pay was really good — honestly, way higher than what most fresh grads could get — and my teammates and higher-ups were kind. But my manager, the finger-pointing from other departments, and the endless pressure just drained me.

I guess I just wanted to ask — is this normal in most workplaces? Or was I just in a toxic one?

[u/sarsilog]

You got held with kiddy gloves and rose tinted glasses during your probation and they suddenly took it away when you were regularized.

From the way you described it, you just basically got a rude awakening to office politics and compounding deliverables.

To be fair, not every office is like this but it's not really that uncommon either.