You spend a lot of time at work, so you want things to run as smoothly as possible.

What would you do if you had a terrible manager who refused to accept that her ‘top’ employees could do anything wrong and would never tell you directly if she didn’t like the way you did something?

That is the situation that the worker in this story is in, so he got with several other employees to make a list of issues that they could present to the manager. Unfortunately, the manager found out about it first and fired one guy and banned workplace gossip without making meaningful changes. Now this worker isn’t sure what to do next.

Personally, I think he should look for another job, and until then, just do his best in the situation he is in. Read through the full story below and see if you agree.

My Boss Bans Gossip in response to an unfair working environment

I have worked at this restaurant business for 2 years (I cannot name the brand as I could get fired, just know it’s a restaurant with a store attached).

Getting enough hours is essential at any job.

I love my coworkers, met my fiancee and have many memories there. We have always had an issue on and off during the year from season to season when hours become scarce.

In an effort to gain more hours, I switched from working just on the restaurant side to both the retail and restaurant.

It takes time to get up to speed at any job.

Retail is a mess to put it nicely. The job is incredibly complex and contradictory in many instances. If you fall short in anything at all, you get judged for it by both the manager and your fellow retail coworkers.

I’ve only been working in retail for maybe 4 months by now and of course I still have questions from time to time, but I have a general gist of the job and can complete almost all tasks on my own.

This is a horrible way to manage a team.

I had learned time and time again that my manager was complaining about me while I was learning the job, but she never came to talk to me about the mistakes I was making or how to correct them.

Instead, I had to learn from the coworkers she was venting to about what she was saying so I could fix my mistakes.

He should not have to go to his coworkers to learn what his boss thinks of his performance.

Apparently, she has a bad habit of not talking to any of my other coworkers, besides the few she vents to, as there are many coworkers who make the same mistakes I do.

These coworkers have been working for years, or at least all longer than I have, and when I talk to them about those mistakes, they don’t change.

I’m sure there are lots of people who aren’t happy with this.

As I adjust to fix my own mistakes, I continue to get in trouble for them because I’m “new” and those coworkers know better, “so it can’t possibly be them”. Of course, I get frustrated with this.

I start to vent my frustrations about this lack of attention to who needs help adjusting to the job and who doesn’t and find there are others who are struggling with the same thing.

Trying to tell your boss how to do their job doesn’t always go over well.

After weeks of talking about this, we finally decide it’s time to bring it up to our boss. We begin to make a list of all the things that we found needed to change in order to make working feel gratifying and fair for everyone.

If someone made a mistake, they would be talked to individually rather than just blaming the newbie for it; getting appreciated for doing your job when you did it right (which is something done in the restaurant side, so I know it works); stuff like that.

You really can’t trust anyone.

We also planned to possibly take a weekend off of work together to prove none of us were making mistakes, that it was in fact all those people she thought knew better.

The week leading up to the weekend we planned to reveal all of this to her in a meeting, everything was leaked. Everything. The chats, the list, the plans to not be there for the weekend, everything.

How unprofessional.

A coworker we reached out to had told everything to our boss, painting us like we hated the restaurant and wanted to see its downfall, all so she could secure her promotion.

Our boss cornered one of the teen girls in the group on her shift and baraded her for 2 hours to get the rest of the plan out of her and the “truth of it all”.

The manager approached this young lady for a reason.

She’s under 18, nervous, and still learning how to speak publicly. Of course she wasn’t going to be able to stand a chance of reason against a middle-aged, experienced woman.

She wasn’t able to give our cause justice and I don’t blame her. Where I draw the line is my manager was blaming everything on one of my coworkers, a teenage boy she never liked from the start.

Well, of course the boss wants to put an end to this type of thing.

She claimed the teenage girl had her mind “poisoned” by him and that she never acted like this before talking with him. Her response to the list was “Wow, you must really hate working here”.

After all this came to light, our boss wants to fire the hardworking teen boy and banned gossip at work, especially talking about other coworkers claiming “we are all a team” and “negativity ruins the shift”.

It really doesn’t seem like the manager wants to change.

The only reason we ever talked about how coworkers were working was because we were having to constantly cover mistakes of those coworkers to prevent being yelled at as if we had made the mistake in the first place.

At least with this new rule, I hope the massive judgement for making a mistake will die down, even though the “one team” mantra might continue to let her ignore coworkers’ negligence altogether,expecting everyone else to pick up the slack and never talking to them about what they need to change.

Maybe with a promotion, they would get a better manager.

If she won’t listen to us, I hope she’ll see who needs to be talked to organically on her own. I really don’t hate her, she just feels… Distracted.

She has wanted a promotion to be the district/regional retail manager for years and she gets closer and closer with each passing day.

He shouldn’t give up the retail side and lose those hours.

If it weren’t for the unfair treatment and trying to find ways to fire people she doesn’t like (a story for maybe another time), I wouldn’t mind working for my boss.

Still, all this has made me give up working on the retail side. I’m tempted to turn myself in as one of the people who thought of the plans and made the list.

Don’t worry about the guy she fired; he will find another job.

I just want to stop her from possibly blacklisting the young boy she’s blaming this on. He has so much potential to be an amazing worker in any field he goes in.

It sounds like he wants to stop working for her anyway, but at least if I turn myself in, maybe she’ll change her target?

This is clearly a difficult situation, but it is just a restaurant job, so he shouldn’t worry about it too much. Do what is best for him and let the rest work itself out.

Let’s see what the people in the comments recommend.

Here is a commenter who says he should file a formal complaint.

This commenter also thinks he should go to the labor board.

It is time to find a new job because this one is a dead end. No matter how much he would like to change the culture at this workplace, it isn’t likely to happen.

One nice thing about restaurant and retail jobs is that there are lots of places to work, so you don’t have to stay somewhere you hate.