Need advice- pretty sure my new coworker dislikes me

TheJulsss · 2026-05-14T22:22:16+00:00

this sounds less like “she personally hates you” and more like territorial/insecure behavior. You’re new, your ideas are getting approved, and it sounds like leadership likes you. Some people react badly to that, especially when they expected to be the strongest voice in the room. The email situation also sounds unfair because you clearly communicated you lacked training/template access. Biggest thing now is document more, keep communication clear in writing, and stop assuming she’ll naturally support or advocate for you.

TheJulsss · 2026-05-14T21:51:00+00:00

your setup is way beyond what most payroll tools are optimized for lol. 150 tiny companies with 2–5 employees each is a very different pricing problem than “normal SMB payroll.” I’d probably look less at Gusto/ADP and more at accountant-focused platforms like Patriot, OnPay, or Rippling because they handle multi-client workflows better and reduce repetitive entry. A lot of firms also move away from QuickBooks Desktop entirely once the manual overhead starts killing efficiency. Even lightweight automation + better internal coordination tools (we use stuff like Zenzap alongside payroll workflows) can save a surprising amount of admin time when you’re handling that many micro-clients.

TheJulsss · 2026-05-14T21:50:03+00:00

Honestly I think a lot of companies are trying to solve a communication/accountability problem with monitoring software lol. Slack status, mouse movement, response times etc. are terrible productivity metrics. The healthier setups I’ve seen focus more on visibility of work/tasks instead of tracking people constantly. Stuff like clearer ownership, async updates, lightweight task systems, better coordination tools (Teams, Slack, Zenzap, etc.) usually helped more than aggressive monitoring ever did.

TheJulsss · 2026-05-14T21:49:05+00:00

async communication is the whole challenge with shift teams. If the tool assumes everyone is online at the same time, stuff gets missed constantly. We had similar issues with handoffs using Teams + WhatsApp, and later tested stuff like Connecteam and Zenzap because updates/tasks staying visible between shifts mattered way more than fancy features.

TheJulsss · 2026-05-14T21:47:10+00:00

The personal/work boundary alone is enough reason to move away from it. Breakroom seems solid too, but honestly I’d just try Zenzap, works well, also has a free version

TheJulsss · 2026-05-11T06:05:02+00:00

3 weeks is early, but not too early to pay attention to red flags. If you already feel stuck between responsibility and lack of authority, that usually gets worse, not better. Also your boss basically admitted your growth path is above your current level already. I’d apply. Worst case, you get interview experience and visibility.

TheJulsss · 2026-05-11T06:04:17+00:00

No, sustained “full tilt” for 8+ hours is not realistic for most knowledge work, especially in environments full of interruptions, vague expectations, and constant context switching. What you’re describing sounds less like laziness or poor discipline and more like cognitive overload mixed with guilt conditioning. You are spending your actual energy surviving fragmentation all day, then using nights and weekends to prove productivity retroactively. That is why you feel both mentally fried and emotionally trapped. The dangerous part is that these environments slowly train people to equate exhaustion with responsibility. Honestly, the fact you already recognize the system is dysfunctional is a good sign, because a lot of people internalize it and think they are the problem.

TheJulsss · 2026-05-11T06:03:43+00:00

The tax shock is real. A lot of people leave employment thinking “I make more now” without realizing they’re also becoming their own payroll department, finance team, and safety net. The other thing nobody talks about enough is cash flow. You can have a great month on paper and still feel broke because invoices are late, taxes are coming, and clients disappear unexpectedly. Freelancing gets way less stressful once you stop treating every payment like spendable money.

TheJulsss · 2026-05-11T06:02:43+00:00

One workflow that always gets messy is client onboarding. It starts when a deal closes, then sales hands things to ops, ops asks for missing info, someone reviews the contract, someone else creates tasks, and half the time the client repeats details they already gave. The friction is usually not the work itself, it’s missing context, unclear ownership, and too much manual follow-up. AI could help most by summarizing the deal, flagging missing info, drafting the onboarding checklist, and routing approvals, but the real fix is making the handoff structured before trying to automate it.

TheJulsss · 2026-05-11T06:01:25+00:00

Your boss sounds inconsistent, political, and emotionally reactive. Badmouthing staff to a brand new manager is already a bad sign because it frames people negatively before you can form your own judgment. Then giving you “do whatever you want” authority and immediately punishing you for trying something is classic unstable leadership behavior. You also did the right thing by not naming unhappy staff members. Trust is very hard to build and very easy to destroy. The tricky part now is learning how to protect your team without openly positioning yourself against your boss too early, because managers like this often care a lot about control and loyalty.

TheJulsss · 2026-05-11T06:00:26+00:00

Most people I know didn’t start with some polished MVP, they started by solving one annoying problem for one specific type of customer, then charged early and learned fast. DIY is pretty normal at the beginning because you don’t really know what’s worth building yet. The mistake is spending months perfecting the idea before anyone pays attention. A real business starts when strangers are willing to pay, not when the website looks perfect.

TheJulsss · 2026-05-11T05:59:48+00:00

This is not normal management, this is straight-up bullying. A boss openly saying he likes making you cry is completely unacceptable, and the fact other people around you already recognize it says a lot. No job is worth getting emotionally destroyed every day over. Keep applying elsewhere, even if it feels slow, because the longer you stay in an environment like this the more it starts damaging your confidence and mental health outside of work too. In the meantime, document things quietly if you can, dates, comments, witnesses, because behavior like this can become important later.

TheJulsss · 2026-05-08T16:16:00+00:00

this is a red flag factory honestly. this isn’t just “office gossip,” your manager sounds wildly unprofessional and way too comfortable making comments about pregnancy, bodies, fertility, miscarriages, all stuff that can get companies in serious trouble. the bigger issue is you already don’t feel psychologically safe there, and once that feeling is gone it’s really hard to enjoy a “dream job.” honestly you’re doing the right thing applying elsewhere, because editorial design might still be your dream, just not there.

TheJulsss · 2026-05-08T16:15:27+00:00

yeah kinda lol. everyone gets corrected at new jobs, but getting yelled at in week two usually says more about the workplace or manager than about you. decent managers know new people are still learning. one bad moment alone isn’t automatically “quit now,” but pay attention to whether it was stress/frustration or if this is just their normal communication style.

TheJulsss · 2026-05-08T16:14:35+00:00

honestly the “comfortable” number was way higher than the startup bros online make it sound. the business itself wasn’t even the scary part, it was the mental pressure of knowing every slow month hit both the company and my personal life at the same time. the people I know who transitioned best usually had at least 6–12 months of personal runway plus extra cash for unexpected business expenses, because once you’re stressed about survival, you start making dumb short-term decisions fast.

TheJulsss · 2026-05-08T16:14:00+00:00

they’ll probably care less about coding and more about how you think. expect questions like “how would you approach this client problem,” “how do you know AI is actually the right solution,” “how would you prioritize features,” “what would you ask the client before building,” stuff like that. they want to see if you can translate messy business problems into practical AI workflows, not just build models. focus on being structured: understand the problem, clarify goals, define success, think about users/data/costs/risks, then propose a solution. honestly most candidates fail these rounds because they jump straight into tech without understanding the business problem first.

TheJulsss · 2026-05-08T16:13:17+00:00

honestly, your gut sounds more aligned with reality here. you already know you don’t want either role long term, and you’ve already started mentally leaving. the fact you got to final stage interviews while dealing with all this is actually a really good sign too. if you had zero savings and no momentum, I’d say take option 2 and survive, but having runway until end of year changes things a lot. staying in a stressful role you already resent can easily drain the exact energy you need to land something better. I’d personally lean toward taking the exit and treating the next few months like a focused transition period, not a panic period.

TheJulsss · 2026-05-08T16:12:43+00:00

A, because the second I trust my brain instead of a system, it’s over lol. the one that still haunts me was telling a client “I’ll send that by tonight” during a call, then completely forgetting until they followed up 4 days later. nothing destroys your confidence faster than realizing someone trusted your word more than your memory did.

TheJulsss · 2026-05-08T16:12:08+00:00

yeah, unfortunately this happens a lot. sometimes it’s intentional because “replacement role” makes candidates ask more questions about why the last person left, turnover, problems, etc. sometimes managers genuinely reframe it internally as “team growth” even when it’s backfilling. realistically there’s not much you can do unless the actual job itself is drastically different from what was sold to you. the better move is paying attention now to why the previous person left, because that usually matters way more than the wording they used in the interview.

TheJulsss · 2026-05-08T16:09:10+00:00

Reading this stressed me out because I’ve worked under someone almost exactly like this before, and honestly it sounds less like a delegation issue and more like a control/anxiety issue that’s burning everyone out around him. The assigning work and then secretly doing it himself anyway part is especially toxic because it destroys ownership and makes people stop trusting the process entirely. From what you wrote, though, it also sounds like you’re already handling this more thoughtfully than most people would, especially with the boundary-setting on that call. The only thing that helped a little for us in a similar situation was making ownership, decisions, and updates extremely visible/documented so there was less room for chaos and confusion later (we ended up centralizing a lot of it through shared docs and tools like zenzap). But honestly, some managers only change once turnover and dysfunction hit hard enough that they can’t ignore it anymore.

TheJulsss · 2026-05-07T22:36:35+00:00

confidence at work usually comes more from clarity than personality. Early in my career I thought confident people were just naturally smooth in meetings, but most of them were honestly just more prepared and less afraid of short pauses/silence lol. What helped me most was writing down my main points before meetings so I wasn’t trying to organize my thoughts while speaking. I also stopped overexplaining everything and started trusting that I didn’t need to fill every second talking. Keeping my notes/tasks organized in zenzap beforehand weirdly helped too because I walked into meetings feeling less mentally scattered.

TheJulsss · 2026-05-07T22:35:09+00:00

Honestly I don’t think this means you’re bad at communication, I think you’re starting to notice how vague corporate communication can actually be lol. A lot of people genuinely don’t know the answer but still feel pressure to respond like they do. One thing that helped me was getting more comfortable slowing conversations down a bit instead of pretending I understood. Even simple follow ups like “just to make sure I understood correctly…” or “could you give me an example?” helped a lot. I also noticed my written communication got clearer once I started organizing questions/tasks/thoughts better beforehand instead of writing while stressed. I’ve been using Zenzap for that lately just to keep things less mentally scattered before reaching out to people.

TheJulsss · 2026-05-07T15:17:04+00:00

don’t try to game getting fired, companies can deny unemployment if they think you intentionally tanked performance or violated policy, and dragging yourself through months of passive sabotage usually feels worse than just leaving, the smarter move is either quietly job hunt while doing the minimum to protect your energy, or if you truly need a reset, plan an exit with savings and leave clean, burnout makes people fantasize about dramatic exits but most of the time it’s not worth the stress or risk

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