Federal Employees: You be the Judge

You don't. And from what I have seen lately, the federal government has changed, no more nice friendly supervisors. They want Aholes.

Federal government jobs used to be nice, friendly. Not any longer.

Well, I could send you a photo of her...

But seriously, I don't know if there's any reliable way to spot them. My recent experience highlighted the importance of documenting everything. I kept a spreadsheet with dates and notes about her behavior and, when asked, was able to forward that to HR to support my claims. That means a lot more than vague statements like "She's always yelling at me" and it shows HR that you're serious.

I also forwarded every disturbing, accusatory, conflicting, and harassing email I got from her to my private email account. She made the mistake of thinking that by copying our Director in on every email that would intimidate me. All it did was allow me a vehicle to rebut her accusations. I ain't afraid of the Reply All button.

So, document everything, insulate yourself, be an island of calm because they might try to goad you into a harsh response to use against you. Don't be afraid to involve HR or your chain of command above her.

If you are going to bump this up the chain of command you need to have some concrete things that show a failure on the sup's part. With me it was she was repeatedly attacking me for not accomplishing the elements of my PD. I was able to show that she'd never provided me with my PD and had never counseled me on my roles and responsibilities. She'd not done a Performance Plan , nor had she met any of the most basic requirements of being a supervisor.

I was blessed with having worked for some great supervisors in previous gov't jobs, so I knew what a good supervisor looked like.

I see you posted this a month ago, I hope things have improved for you.

A new supervisor did that to me in state work. Everything was copied to her supervisor, which I knew was a very bad sign. I was fired after months of harassment with false accusations (trying to make me quit), all of which came through those emails and all of which both of them deleted before I could get copies via information request. I saved a few of the worst ones. I was naive in thinking they couldn't delete it, being state emails that technically should belong to the people not the managers.

I'm not naive anymore.