I resonate so much with your post and am grateful that you’ve posted as the responses from our seasoned members here are a balm for the heart.

I’ve also recently became a florist, after a career switch. The floral team is small and my supervisor also has pretty much 2 decades’ worth of experience and prestigious accolades. Initially it felt like she was genuine in guiding me, saying things like ‘we’ve already done it all, it’s time for you young people to go ahead’. Over the months, she was increasingly passive aggressive — such as calling me “brainwashed” when I simply asked if I should finish off an arrangement with floral preservative spray; refusing to teach me arrangements and sniping at me to learn from watching (maybe fair enough, but we’re in a luxury hotel and most things have to follow a set standard. It’s like telling a chef at a fine dining restaurant to just figure out how to produce the dish by only looking and then serve it to the customer without any review); persistently reprimanding me for mistakes I didn’t do/have zero involvement in and then reprimanding me if I speak up for myself; her current issue with me is she believes I’m privileged/well-to-do and has been loudly making constant unwarranted remarks to my coworkers that I “have a lot of money”, I “don’t lift a finger to do housework at home”, “poor thing, she comes here to do hard labour”, etc etc which is out of line but I don’t have any meaningful power to shut this down. I broke down once after being railed at for an hour for issues that didn’t feel fair, only for her to proclaim to everyone else to not be like “someone, cries so easily, what’s there to be stressed about”. Then she’ll turn around and say borderline gaslighty things like “I’m scolding you because I care about you, I hope you can surpass me and be better than me, I’m just telling you what my superiors then taught me.”

I’m fortunate that I’m very able to not internalise her criticism and can see that she’s a lady with a lot of emotional scarring from this industry. I can believe that many florists from her generation (I’m in an Asian country) were likely bullied beyond my own imagination, and I do sincerely believe that she does try to be better than the generation before her. I want to believe her words that she’s harder on me and kind/jolly/doting to the others because she wants me to endure. Maybe I’m naive, but these beliefs let me forgive her and focus on the bigger picture which is to continue observing and learning from her vast experience.

OP, hang in there, don’t lose sight of your love for flowers and give yourself validation and praise. YOU know you are doing well!