[NY] HR Manager seems to hate me
Background : I work for a young company (~3 years old), previously HR issues were handled by our Director of Operations (Manufacturing Facility) who I reported to directly. We got our first official HR Manager last May, shortly after our Director of Ops resigned to start his own business. I now report directly to our COO, as does the HR Manager.
I am the Office Coordinator on paper, but my tasks include Supply Chain/Logistics, Marketing, light HR duties (tracking PTO, making keys for new employees, light onboarding assistance when needed) and Office Admin.
It seems that I got off on the wrong foot with our HR Manager on her first day, and I still don’t know why. She immediately and forcefully took over some of my tasks that our COO did not want her involved in, and has repeatedly made rude and dismissive comments to me in front of our colleagues. Over Thanksgiving, our company had a shut down for multiple days, our production staff is on 12 hr shifts, I am on 8 hr shifts. I noticed my time sheet had 12 hours of Holiday Pay scheduled. In the spirit of transparency, I asked her if this was correct, she responded that I am "just like an other hourly employee, but I will gladly change it to 8" in a very aggressive tone. I apologized and explained that I just wanted to make sure. Upon running that payroll, I was paid for 8 hours. All other support staff on 8 hr shifts received 12 hrs of Holiday Pay. I had bit my tongue for months, but I thought messing with my pay just because I asked a question had crossed too far over the line for my comfort. I reported the situation and the long standing issues I'd been having to our COO. He assured me that he would instruct her to add the additional 4 hours of pay into my next check, and that he was sorry her behavior made me uncomfortable and he would speak to her about it.
Since then, things have been better, we are not friendly but she has calmed her comments down quite a bit, until this week. She barged into a meeting I was in and demanded I tend to the people at the door ringing the bell ( that has not ever been my sole responsibility, and there were other people present who could take care of it ) she only left when my coworker told her I couldn't leave the meeting as we were short on time. The following day in our office common area, she was discussing the issues she's experienced getting production employees hired and onboarded, and attributed part of the struggle to our area (low income, high crime, in a rural area, lots of d-r-u-g use), I jokingly said "You know what got me here?" intending to follow up that the job listing was posted for a nearby city and I didn't find out where it was until my in-person interview. She responded before I finished by saying "Why? Because (Director of Operations) thought you were cute? Please, tell me what you think got you here". I was absolutely floored. She has said some pretty nasty things, but to imply that I got the job because of my appearance was something I never expected to come out of my HR manager's mouth. How am I supposed to move forward? I don't feel that I should email my boss every time something happens, but this was particularly egregious in my opinion.
I've started an incident log and have made entries for these recent issues, thinking once I got a few more I'd send it along as another formal complaint. Advice please!!
Posted Mar 6, 2026, 3:46 PM UTC