Overheard my manager telling her manager that I'm 'too soft' so they proceeded to mob me

Just wanted to honestly find out how much am i to blame for being mobbed in the workplace. At about 8 months into the job my manager ended our 1:1 abruptly while raising her voice and saying 'is there anything work related that you'd like to ask me' and just straight on stood up and went to the door and didn't even wait for my answer(which would've been 'no' of course). I asked her about the upcoming sports team building event that our company was going to partake in(which has been discussed several times in team meetings). I didn't expect that she would consider that as crossing boundaries because she has disclosed much more personal things about her in our team meetings.

After the team building event had ended she even asked in our team chat 'how did it go?' That's when i messaged her to talk to her in person asking have i done anything to upset her , because she ended our last meeting abruptly and hasn't said anything since. She proceeded to tell me that she wasn't obligated to talk to people while not on the job(even though we've discussed this team building several times at work) and that she ended the meeting abruptly because she was in a hurry. I proceeded to tell her that if there's anything at all that she can advise me on to improve our 1:1 sessions that I'm all ears.

A week later we had our teambuilding event in the countryside where I was travelling with my mentor(we're from the same team) and our manager told him to come pick them up with another manager. When they entered the car my manager said , 'Oh hello there, we haven't talked to each other at all today because we're enemies.' Ever since that happened that other manager is no longer smiling at me and greeting me like before, so I took it as an attack on my reputation from my manager(back then i mostly thought of it as a joke, so i proceeded to answer neutrally and that was it.)

At that point I felt pretty helpless about the whole situation because i genuinely wanted to get some feedback without her harming my reputation. She was my first manager so i had no idea how an optimal 1:1 session should be conducted. In my eyes it was going great I was always preparing with topics to discuss and was always entering on time, never made her stay more than the 30 minutes which we had for a 1:1 and all of a sudden she has already raised her voice and saying passive-aggressive stuff to me twice already and I've seen team members(her subordinates) raising their voice and lashing out at her and she never responded to them in kind.

I could say that i have some learned helplessness instilled in me which at this point had kicked in, so I began overexplaining myself way too much and seeking her validation way too frequently and asking her for help/opinion on all kinds of work-related stuff. I was being very submissive towards her( I think it's a defense mechanism to get in her good books or something)

She started mocking me more and more with each 1:1 that passed by until one day 16 days had passed from our last 1:1( we have 1 on every 2 weeks). So i went up to her asking 'hey, how's it going?' And she lashed out at me saying she's fine and i didn't proceed with asking about my 1:1 and just retreated to my place. However, a third person saw that interaction and possibly encouraged her to take action against me.

On the following week I saw my manager come in the office for the day and directly went inside the main conference room. Shortly after i heard a gasp by most of the people in the office, so i thought something's not right and it's probably about me. Then one of the female colleagues said out loud 'Look at that little boy how he's attacking her'. From then on people started avoiding me.

Three days i decided I couldn't work like this in such a tense environment so i told my manager's manager that I'm quitting(my manager was in PTO during that time). She told me to write to HR for that to happen and so i did, but in the meantime another senior manager booked a 'chat' with me on teams. He talked me into staying and that's when all hell broke loose because i heard the boss saying 'everyone will know that he's a little faggot'.

They proceeded to mob me for a couple of months until I eventually quit. I'd like your opinion on how much am I to blame for this when taking into account that I started whining after that abrupt 1:1 ending and my tone of voice gradually started getting thinner and thinner. I started venting to her things like 'I'd like you to know that you can talk to me' (implying that if she's in a hurry he can just tell me and when can skip a meeting - no problem) I think she thought I romantically liked her when in fact I just have this weird big respect for authority figures in my life(a type of limerence even you could say towards them)

She never expressed her dislike of this situation verbally until the very last time she lashed out at me.

tl'dr: Passive-aggressive manager, wanted genuine feedback because I thought her frustration came from me not knowing how i should conduct 1:1(she's my first manager)She proceeded to harm my reputation by disclosing to another manager that I had confronted her on her behavior. Learned helplessness kicked in so i started acting like a weakling and showing even bigger co-dependent behavior and constantly overexplaining myself. All of the managers got word of this and they started mobbing me until I quit, because they most likely thought I was in love with her or seeking her attention just because. How much am I to blame for this exactly, considering she never expressed her frustation with the situation verbally and directly to me and just threw me under the bus without trying to fix things.

Posted Dec 2, 2025, 5:58 PM UTC

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