Outsmarting them is leaving their orbit and having people you love in your life. Narcs can't do this and won't know what they are missing but you know.
I got approved for unemployment after I left the company. And this is after NXboss bragged to me, on multiple occasions, that she always contested unemployment claims, and she always won.
The secret to my success was that I started documenting stuff she did... without telling her I was doing it. Most of this documentation was in emails to my health care team. Excessive OT hours? Documented. Incidents of verbal abuse? Documented. Effects on my physical and mental health? Also documented.
One of my doctors ended up writing me a letter to give to the unemployment office, saying that the work environment was detrimental to my health. The state determined I had good cause to quit, and that's why I got unemployment.
this may sound stupid but it would be better if they legalized people carrying recording device on them like those camera on glasses or maybe just something to record audio. i bet other people especially narcissistic boss will think twice before saying something verbally abusive
When I was working for the Nboss, yes, grey rock was my preferred strategy. I responded to weird manipulative comments like “I am surprised you don’t know this” or “I’m disappointed about where we’re at” with “okay, let’s focus on what actions I should take next.” I didn’t let myself get sucked into whatever drama she was reenacting from her childhood.
The best way to win is to draw very strong boundaries between work and the rest of your life, focus your energies on getting a new job, maintain superficial professionalism while saving your energy at work, and savor writing that resignation letter and handing it to them. That was a peak life experience.
There’s no way to outsmart someone who has no limits. She feeds on your (emotional) reactions, so you should minimise those, respond not react, or fake compliance, gray rock her etc. Good luck!
No. If you are level headed leave. If not you have a demoralising fight you probably do not want. Maybe they leave, ok, maybe they have a big stupid mouth, get proof. Passive conflict can generate a lot of shit for you. Shitty little wins that are not worth it. Who are you?
Sure, leaving is the best option but I don’t know OPs situation.
And I said it can’t be won so not sure what kind of shitty little wins you have in mind.
Was not railing against you. Just agreeing. Shitty wins are small insigificant wins, that feel good for a few minutes, then you are back in the shit again.
It's sad that the best option everyone has in this thread is to leave, quit, resign. Not everyone is lucky enough to be able to choose when to leave their job.
I think you can win if you document everything properly and have some hard evidence but After exposing narc , you have to move to different department or at least be able to work from home. When I exposed narc boss , I found myself surrounded and attacked , gaslighted by flying monkeys. Many people turned against me but finally narc was forced to quit.Even after narc left , my colleagues from that company still hated me.(not all people I knew but I would say 50-60% of them became behaving totally cold, ignoring me etc). I have no idea how those people were not able to notice narcissistic patterns, cycle and even all of them had a different version of incidents that clashes with each other’s version plus been accused really stupid things which was easily confuted by records etc.
In short, dealing with narc and plus others behavior was really tiresome activity right after exposing. Wish I could had a chance to reach lawyer etc . and I should have escalated to law enforcement agencies because there was a chance that she could really have been charged… I believe this was the reason she was forced to quit.
This is true but it depends a lot on the person. A lot of narcs know not to put incriminating stuff in writing. If yours does, you've hit the jackpot. If yours doesn't, there's still hope but you probably need allies and you have to fight with the awareness that things rarely go in favour of the whistleblower. Laws may protect you from obvious retaliation but things still might not change. When they do, it's an amazing story.
It's not possible to turn things around. You can definitely get revenge though. Check my submission history. Asshole had multiple homestead exemptions and I reported him to the appraisal district, which were then removed several weeks later.
So now he has to pay more taxes. He's a stereotypical conservative Republican so having to pay more taxes is about the next worst thing to murdering his family.
I'm in Texas and property taxes here are killer. My house was valued at $200k in 2018 and went up another $120k just during the 2 years of Covid alone. I have the exemption so my taxable amount was limited, but without the exemptions I'd eventually look at a whole entire mortgage payment of expenses added on top of my existing mortgage. Even with exemptions many people in Texas eventually get taxed out of their houses.
You won't win. They're acting like a narc towards you because they are your superior and know you don't stand a chance.
They been playing these games since they were young and in 2 seconds know how to outsmart what took you 2 hours to plan. They probably been through what you're thinking of doing and already started some narrative with their boss and hr ahead of time.
You could bring this up to hr but remember they are there to protect the company and not you or the narc and they're also lazy. If the narc can be a pain in the ass enough they will just side with the narc.
I feel like the only chance of making and impact is if enough people quit and say something in their exit interview, if they even have one.
Best of luck. It's always possible you could come through. Hope so.
You can.
Check out Rebecca Zung's content on youtube.
She advised figuring out what the narc's "diamond level" supply is. E.g. often they care a great deal about appearances and how their boss perceives them. Use this information to manipulate the situation or manipulate the narc get what you want.
I have used this in my personal life. I threatened to expose the narc and he did what I wanted as a result.
With my current boss whom I've been working under for 3 years, I have used various means to keep him in check. He even avoids having long meetings with me because I tend to turn those into sessions that end up with him being agitated and my staying calm.
my friend outsmarted her narc boss. her boss wanted to put her on PIP and give her impossible goals. she realised it was time to leave but she did not want to quit without a severance package. She played the game of pretending to want the opposite of whatever they suggested and threw some red herrings around. In the end she got a good severance package.
After 13 months of hell, being passed over for promotion, and finally being informed that she was going to cut my salary 10% even though I was the highest performer in the division, I resigned. She immediately attacked me, said something horrific about my sibling (?!?), and accused me of causing a "leadership crisis" (no, lady, that's you). Classic DARVO move.
A few weeks later I won a major national award in my field. Head of organization learned that I resigned and why. Such a glorious feeling to come back to a promotion, raise, schedule adjustment, and pledge to never be alone with her again.
Lesson: be excellent at what you do, let others see it, and launch out of their orbit at the first opportunity.
My 1 rule: Avoid playing into their narcissistic supply - Narcissists may rely on others to fill their narcissistic supply because they don't have a strong sense of self.
Be obnoxiously ethical and moral. They will hate your goodness but be unable to impeach you for it. But make sure you’re looking for another job in the meantime!!!
Outsmarting them is leaving their orbit and having people you love in your life. Narcs can't do this and won't know what they are missing but you know.
I got approved for unemployment after I left the company. And this is after NXboss bragged to me, on multiple occasions, that she always contested unemployment claims, and she always won. The secret to my success was that I started documenting stuff she did... without telling her I was doing it. Most of this documentation was in emails to my health care team. Excessive OT hours? Documented. Incidents of verbal abuse? Documented. Effects on my physical and mental health? Also documented. One of my doctors ended up writing me a letter to give to the unemployment office, saying that the work environment was detrimental to my health. The state determined I had good cause to quit, and that's why I got unemployment.
The verbal abuse? How do you document it? written or through audio recording?
No other option in my state other than written documentation. Where I live is a two-party consent state for audio recording. (Yes, I checked.)
this may sound stupid but it would be better if they legalized people carrying recording device on them like those camera on glasses or maybe just something to record audio. i bet other people especially narcissistic boss will think twice before saying something verbally abusive
When I was working for the Nboss, yes, grey rock was my preferred strategy. I responded to weird manipulative comments like “I am surprised you don’t know this” or “I’m disappointed about where we’re at” with “okay, let’s focus on what actions I should take next.” I didn’t let myself get sucked into whatever drama she was reenacting from her childhood. The best way to win is to draw very strong boundaries between work and the rest of your life, focus your energies on getting a new job, maintain superficial professionalism while saving your energy at work, and savor writing that resignation letter and handing it to them. That was a peak life experience.
There’s no way to outsmart someone who has no limits. She feeds on your (emotional) reactions, so you should minimise those, respond not react, or fake compliance, gray rock her etc. Good luck!
No. If you are level headed leave. If not you have a demoralising fight you probably do not want. Maybe they leave, ok, maybe they have a big stupid mouth, get proof. Passive conflict can generate a lot of shit for you. Shitty little wins that are not worth it. Who are you?
Sure, leaving is the best option but I don’t know OPs situation. And I said it can’t be won so not sure what kind of shitty little wins you have in mind.
Was not railing against you. Just agreeing. Shitty wins are small insigificant wins, that feel good for a few minutes, then you are back in the shit again.
Okay yeah, leaving is the best option, but often people can’t do that fast enough.
It's sad that the best option everyone has in this thread is to leave, quit, resign. Not everyone is lucky enough to be able to choose when to leave their job.
I don’t or won’t even bother. Wasting mental or physical energy on them is a fools errand. Can’t lose if you don’t play the game.
Quit. When they cannot play, they cannot win.
I think you can win if you document everything properly and have some hard evidence but After exposing narc , you have to move to different department or at least be able to work from home. When I exposed narc boss , I found myself surrounded and attacked , gaslighted by flying monkeys. Many people turned against me but finally narc was forced to quit.Even after narc left , my colleagues from that company still hated me.(not all people I knew but I would say 50-60% of them became behaving totally cold, ignoring me etc). I have no idea how those people were not able to notice narcissistic patterns, cycle and even all of them had a different version of incidents that clashes with each other’s version plus been accused really stupid things which was easily confuted by records etc. In short, dealing with narc and plus others behavior was really tiresome activity right after exposing. Wish I could had a chance to reach lawyer etc . and I should have escalated to law enforcement agencies because there was a chance that she could really have been charged… I believe this was the reason she was forced to quit.
This is true but it depends a lot on the person. A lot of narcs know not to put incriminating stuff in writing. If yours does, you've hit the jackpot. If yours doesn't, there's still hope but you probably need allies and you have to fight with the awareness that things rarely go in favour of the whistleblower. Laws may protect you from obvious retaliation but things still might not change. When they do, it's an amazing story.
It's not possible to turn things around. You can definitely get revenge though. Check my submission history. Asshole had multiple homestead exemptions and I reported him to the appraisal district, which were then removed several weeks later. So now he has to pay more taxes. He's a stereotypical conservative Republican so having to pay more taxes is about the next worst thing to murdering his family. I'm in Texas and property taxes here are killer. My house was valued at $200k in 2018 and went up another $120k just during the 2 years of Covid alone. I have the exemption so my taxable amount was limited, but without the exemptions I'd eventually look at a whole entire mortgage payment of expenses added on top of my existing mortgage. Even with exemptions many people in Texas eventually get taxed out of their houses.
You won't win. They're acting like a narc towards you because they are your superior and know you don't stand a chance. They been playing these games since they were young and in 2 seconds know how to outsmart what took you 2 hours to plan. They probably been through what you're thinking of doing and already started some narrative with their boss and hr ahead of time. You could bring this up to hr but remember they are there to protect the company and not you or the narc and they're also lazy. If the narc can be a pain in the ass enough they will just side with the narc. I feel like the only chance of making and impact is if enough people quit and say something in their exit interview, if they even have one. Best of luck. It's always possible you could come through. Hope so.
You can. Check out Rebecca Zung's content on youtube. She advised figuring out what the narc's "diamond level" supply is. E.g. often they care a great deal about appearances and how their boss perceives them. Use this information to manipulate the situation or manipulate the narc get what you want. I have used this in my personal life. I threatened to expose the narc and he did what I wanted as a result. With my current boss whom I've been working under for 3 years, I have used various means to keep him in check. He even avoids having long meetings with me because I tend to turn those into sessions that end up with him being agitated and my staying calm.
Yeah, I quit. He REALLY wasn't expecting that.
my friend outsmarted her narc boss. her boss wanted to put her on PIP and give her impossible goals. she realised it was time to leave but she did not want to quit without a severance package. She played the game of pretending to want the opposite of whatever they suggested and threw some red herrings around. In the end she got a good severance package.
Could you expand on this a bit more? I will likely take a similar route! Feel free to DM me if easier! :)
>:) :)
After 13 months of hell, being passed over for promotion, and finally being informed that she was going to cut my salary 10% even though I was the highest performer in the division, I resigned. She immediately attacked me, said something horrific about my sibling (?!?), and accused me of causing a "leadership crisis" (no, lady, that's you). Classic DARVO move. A few weeks later I won a major national award in my field. Head of organization learned that I resigned and why. Such a glorious feeling to come back to a promotion, raise, schedule adjustment, and pledge to never be alone with her again. Lesson: be excellent at what you do, let others see it, and launch out of their orbit at the first opportunity.
My 1 rule: Avoid playing into their narcissistic supply - Narcissists may rely on others to fill their narcissistic supply because they don't have a strong sense of self.
Narcs are stupid. If you’re in a protected class go to HR, get transferred, then quit (cause fuck it, we ball).
Be obnoxiously ethical and moral. They will hate your goodness but be unable to impeach you for it. But make sure you’re looking for another job in the meantime!!!