My company is the worst. The owner treats everyone horribly, yelling at us for minor mistakes. Even when she’s in one of her better moods, she’ll still find a way to belittle anyone around her. She justifies herself by constantly reminding us that she’s paying our salaries, and that we’re free to quit if we’re too soft.

She also has her two children helping run the business. Her son is absolutely useless as the lead project manager. He’s a terrible leader and is pretty incompetent. It’s really frustrating to work with him because there’s always a good chance that he’ll mess the project up somehow because he doesn’t really know what he’s doing.

Meanwhile, her daughter handles the marketing and relationships with our B2B clients. She’s actually pretty competent, but she’s a dictator. She forces staff to work overtime to fulfil deliverables to clients on unreasonably tight deadlines that completely wear out the workers. She’s also inherited a little of her mother’s mean streak as a way to keep staff in line.

Under the family there’s a small group of us “assistant managers” who coordinate smaller task forces and teams. But our work can be so unpredictable because the boss never clearly defined our roles. All of us are technically answerable to all three family members, and they can’t even stay consistent amongst themselves. Sometimes they’ll contradict each other, or be so unaware of who’s doing what that certain managers get overworked by all of them whilst others aren’t given any clear direction to move forwards on anything.

I joined the company because I thought a small but expanding SME would be a great workplace for me to quickly gain experience, but the chaos at work is super stressful, especially when any given day could be an emotional roller-coaster. Help!