Be sure to document, document, document along the way and before going to HR. Be sure to have a set of physically printed copies of the paperwork at home.
When you do go to HR, or whatever reporting you do, let each party you report to know you have a thorough paper trail of the treatment, and that includes why the treatment doesn’t fit core values of the workplace, and why the treatment is irregular, and why the treatment has also been directed at sabotaging your work, undermining your abilities, and creating obstacles at focusing on the rest of your work while feeling harassing toward you.
Don’t be surprised if that nice male boss is involved. I also would not be surprised if you have protected, covered disability you haven’t shared. Older women have lots of insight from lived experience. Sadly, there are so-called progressive workplace that go to great lengths to shed employees with invisible physical, sensory, and mental health disabilities because they view you as expensive and a lot of employers teach staff that asking for accommodation (for invisible disabilities) is gaming the system.
What ultimately happens in these slick, engineered workplaces is the assumptions about disability symptoms and side effects get attacked until you have one moment of lack of composure that gets used as discipline against you.
It’s the fact that you’re 40 that leads me to this suspicion, so do some reading.
Most of all save those documents and be aware that your IT team can FWD all the emails you send and receive to a 3rd party in your office without you knowing and even if it violates the “normal course of business provision.”
Last, keep the first and second drafts of everything you write, and print out all the changes sent to you and the final product. No kidding my female boss in her 40’s when i was almost 23 in an elite fellowship began editing my material ruthlessly. I tutored at a writing center for 3 yrs. She comes to my office after 5 pm with the almost final draft (8 versions later with just two red pen marks.) She said she didn’t realize i was such a bad writer.
I pulled out the first draft to her since I caught on to what was happening and i already practiced document control. I told her the way she treated me was unacceptable and to never do it again. Her jaw dropped, then closed, and she never pulled that again. Sure she might have edits, but either 0-2 pass backs and that was it.
I wish i wouldn’t have let other women steal my moxy as I aged. The worst us when at 35 you look 25 and the men and women around you, of the same age and older treat you like a crappy upstart who thinks they are a know-it-all who hasn’t earned their strips.
In hindsight i would have hung all my dated diplomas, awards, and professional certifications, and hey, maybe even my age, to be treated as the subject matter expert i was hired there to be.
My major female boss there was less than one year older than me. She had dull thin skin, brittle and dry hair, and sort of sunken eyes from a clear addition to under-eating and over-running. Her job dropped too, when she learned my age.
We all have our demons. The point is to not actively target people.
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