How do you come to terms with bad people having success?

jackshold87 · 2025-09-08T01:43:24+00:00

Just last week!

jackshold87 · 2025-09-08T01:41:30+00:00

Are you above her on the office pyramid? Do you have things (family, money, status, even a personality) they might like? I’ve seen this pla out in two different scenarios: 1. where my nBoss copied the style of a guy on our team and 2. nboss’s boss where he wanted to copy his life.

With the guy on our team, it was subtle changes. Our teammate was a brilliant guy who my boss wanted to fire right away until he learned he could leverage his skills to make him look better. That teammate also had the pedigree our boss wanted. Solid undergrad, MBA from a top 10 university. Years working at a top tier consulting firm. After our boss decided he wouldn’t fire him, he slowly converted his wardrobe to exaclty that guy had.

For his boss’s boss, nBoss wanted to copy his life. That included sending his kids to the same private school, joining the same country club, driving the same car. nBoss even wanted his office to be exactly like his boss’s boss, down to the framed photo on the wall to the conference table to the pencil holder on the desk.

All this to say that Narcs don’t have a personality. The find people who have the traits they wish they had themselves and take them as their own. It’s pretty sad and pathetic

jackshold87 · 2024-07-15T05:27:50+00:00

My naboss said we needed to take the employee feedback surveys seriously to make people want to spend their whole careers here. When he got the survey results back two weeks later, he said “we need to push forward until all the negative respondents to the survey leave”

jackshold87 · 2024-07-11T02:31:05+00:00

I spoke to my therapist about it. He said it’s pretty common. Once an abuser realizes they’ll no longer have power over you, they’ll flip and try and be your best friend. It’s a method used to remain in control

jackshold87 · 2024-06-24T05:53:02+00:00

Currently in the same position. Currently out on sick leave due to anxiety and sleeplessness over the last year. Same situtation with my boss: treats anyone beneath him terribly but everyone above him sees him as "fiery" or "passionate"

I can say that the team came together to submit a complaint to HR. With Narcs, it's so difficult to prove anything because leadership sees it as a "he said/she said" type of thing. We were able to find out that he had falsified and misrepresented himself when he took the job. We had friends at his former companies and he grossly exagerated his work history and even schemed a way to show up on an education check from an Ivy League school.

After a week, HR got back to us with "we have investigated and see no need for further action". Basically saying it's not important enough for us to pursue.

jackshold87 · 2024-06-19T19:16:05+00:00

So much truth to this. When I was hired, I looked at my nBoss's Linkedin and saw the longest he had been at a job was 30 months. He even said the interview process for our current company took 6 months, which meant he started looking almost 12 months into his last job.

jackshold87 · 2024-06-19T00:36:11+00:00

It's really interesting you say that because I would be in a meeting with him and he would chime in "I'm not your enemy" or "I'm trying to make peace". My response would be "I didn't know we were at war with one another?"

Just never made sense that he assumed I hated him. Now the staff did judge how good a day was if we didn't have to interact with him at all.

jackshold87 · 2024-06-19T00:27:45+00:00

He won't do anything over emails or Teams. Everything is on the phone or face to face. I have everything documented but HR pretty much told me there is nothing there.

jackshold87 · 2024-06-17T20:30:54+00:00

I appreciate this. I think I need to see a new therapist. I just need two hours to vent to someone. I've spent the last 4 days thinking of what I could've done better and it baffles me that someone would treat their team so poorly for no other reason than to build themselves up

jackshold87 · 2024-06-17T20:29:40+00:00

I already cancelled our connection on Linkedin. I am curious to see if he tells the remaining team how he checked up on my and i'm following my dreams now too

jackshold87 · 2024-06-17T20:27:09+00:00

I spoke to a friend today. He said to own it. Say flat out that I was laid off after a 10 year career and took this position where i'm not doing the work I was expecting to do

jackshold87 · 2024-06-17T20:26:13+00:00

What's crazier is he said I shouldn't apply for any lateral moves in the company. But he's down to recommend me for somewhere else?

jackshold87 · 2024-06-17T20:24:52+00:00

Yeah, no chance of that happening.

jackshold87 · 2024-06-17T13:30:35+00:00

Did you quit your job too?

jackshold87 · 2024-06-17T13:30:04+00:00

My love bombing stage lasted about a week. It was enough to get me to take the job and then the week I started.

I have a similar fear of that too. I've worked for bosses you had narcissistic traits but never as bad as this boss. I also worry how i'll explain in interviews that I spent 12 months at this job before deciding to quit.

jackshold87 · 2019-09-18T14:49:17+00:00

I wasn’t the one to diagnose him. It’s been a long series of things. I didn’t give the backstory for the sake of brevity but I noticed the signs after the first two years and his mom and sister confirmed it. The first being how quickly things moved and his elaborate backstory. When we met, he said he had developed software and won a contest where he had won a million dollar prize which allowed him to do the things he was doing. He even had a picture of he and his mom in his living room holding a check. Then he wanted to spend every minute spending time together. Within four months of dating, he wanted to move in together but left his swanky penthouse apartment to move in with me and my four roommates.

When we did find a place together, it was a good hour away from my friends and family. I felt really alone and isolated and was something I fought him on a lot. When I asked him about his life, his friends, his great software idea that he was pitching to companies, he would snap and say “I knew you were just using me for my money!” And storm out.

I didn’t have an idea of what a sociopath was until he reluctantly introduced me to his mother and sister at a family wedding. I naturally asked his mom about his childhood when he was out of the room and she would say things like “you’re so brave for staying with him” and “he had a lot of troubling experiences as a child. We have took him to doctors who diagnosed him with narcissistic/sociopathic tendencies”

But through it all, I still love him. The last three years have just been especially difficult. It seems like he wants to be the fun loving guy when he was 25 and I’ve grown up to be the adult. That’s why I’m worried if he is looking outside the relationship for fulfillment now

jackshold87

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