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.
If you’re in a reasonably sized company, do NOT go to HR. She might get fired for her behavior, you WILL be fired for starting a fire. HR does NOT like fires.
I had the good fortune to battle the CTO of a multinational who couldn’t keep his hands off the employees. Everyone was too afraid to speak up, I was not. The CTO was fired. One day after he fired me with the full support of HR, because “you are incompetent in your job”. Mind you this was after multiple stellar reviews of my local superiors
This is terrible advice.
OP needs to set boundaries in a paper traceable way after establishing then in person (an email of “dear boss lady, I want to eat lunch alone, kthxbye”), and track violations of those boundaries (dear boss lady, today you sat with me at lunch after I asked you not to, please explain why). (Obviously be more professional).
Then after a few violations, OP can go to HR because suddenly the boss lady is starting the fire; there is a clear history of personal boundaries not being maintained, leading to a hostile work environment.
This only doesn’t work when the company is like 5 people and HR is your boss’s cousin or whatever.
Like I said, whether you should go to HR will depend a lot on your company culture. In all the jobs I’ve worked, I’ve had HR departments that would’ve taken your complaint seriously and not allowed you to be retaliated against in that way. Btw, what you’re describing does sound like retaliation, which is totally a lawsuit you could pursue