my supervisor is an extrovert, whereas I’m an introvert. She feels insulted if I don’t share my personal life with her and ridicules me before other coworkers because I separate private and work life and prefer to keep to myself.
I wrote mobbing because that’s what it feels to me: a ritual of hers is to always eat together, a time she uses to ask me questions I don’t want to answer. I usually answer very vaguely, which is not enough for her. If I eat alone, she’ll complaint about why am I being so unfriendly.
She doesn’t understand I need time alone to unwind.
She is convinced she is doing me a favor, but the opposite is true. It makes me dislike her even more.
I simply cannot win. It’s tiring being blamed and shamed for preferring to read a book instead of talking about dogs or sex.
It makes me want to quit.
I don’t know if I go to HR with an issue like this, because they may label me the odd one, the one who’s not a teamplayer and use it against me.
Most people are extroverted and react angrily to somebody who keeps to himself and I’ve been bullied several times for this. Extroverts don’t seem to understand that not showing interest in their sexual lives doesn’t mean disrespect, but simply that I don’t care about it.
HR isn’t the employees friend, ever.
But that’s where you start the paper trail. It’s really the safest bet
Especially if the topic is sex, as OP claims. Like WTF.
I had the luck of working at two places where HR took the real meaning of Human Resources to heart. One place saw their role as maintaining the “resources” in good stead like they would for their machines or tooling, since a broken resource can’t further your company goals. They offeres check-ins to see how things were going, any gripes, any way to spread workload.
Current one has been great too. I had one employee being quite toxic about other employees as an odd way to create internal allegiences and it was creating a difficult situation. I talked with HR rep and they took care of it. That employee now acts professionally.
Sometimes HR is OK, but read the company culture first
Boy, I’m real hesitant to go to HR. May as well ask to be fired.
It really depends on the business, culture, climate. The better places I’ve worked, this kind of interest is genuine, an attempt to foster better relationships at work. Of course, some people are just nosey Nellies…
Without knowing the environment and culture (and the questions), it’s hard to say what to do.
Best I can say is to make it clear you like to keep your work and private life well separated.
Agree, hr is more or less a one stop shop to being fired. Op is right, they’ll immediately label you someone who is willing to speak up, what’s the addage? The beach who perks up gets pruned. HR isn’t necessarily there to protect the company, but the status quo. They don’t want anyone making noise, else it is bad for everyone.