My boss literally looks over my shoulder at work. How do I make them stop?
My direct manager looks over my shoulder at work. I don’t mean that in a metaphorical way – I mean they quite literally look over my shoulder while I do certain tasks and then comment on the speed or quality of my work. In fairness, sometimes their comments are flattering. But mostly they are neutral or critical.
I am a shy person and I don’t like confrontation, but this is infuriating, and I can feel myself getting more and more frustrated. My first question to you would be, “Is this normal?” And my second is, “What can I do to stop them from doing this before I lose my cool?”
This kind of unsubtle micromanagement is unfortunately extremely common in the workplace, and can be difficult to combat.Credit: John Shakespeare
There are certainly jobs where a boss asking someone to perform a task and then rating their performance there and then would be considered acceptable or even typical. Yours, which I won’t mention, is not one of them.
In fact, everything you’ve told me about your case in your longer email leads me to suspect these are the actions of a boss unmoored from reality. Demanding a show of skill with no warning and with everyone else around you watching is something you’d expect to see in an “unscripted” fly-on-the-wall TV show, one where office workers are treated like apprentice chefs.
The boss, in their “bad cop” phase, puts the worker under cartoonishly intense pressure and then ridicules them for their unfathomable “incompetence”. Unfortunately for you, there’s no “good cop” phase or tear-jerking conclusion where you realise the remedial brilliance of their tough love approach and thank them for humiliating you … because you live in the real world.
No, I don’t think this is normal. But the metaphorical version you hinted at in the first part of your email – a kind of unsubtle micromanagement – is extremely common.
A radical alternative might be to open up a word-processing app the next time your boss watches you and write “I quit” in 150-point Helvetica.
It sounds like what you’re experiencing is somewhere in between: much worse than run-of-the-mill unwanted boss intrusion but not quite the full on Gordon Ramsay’s Office Nightmares. And I don’t blame you for boiling with silent rage. This kind of thing is maddening no matter the intention behind it.
Even still, my advice would be to proceed based on what you think that objective might be.
