my dad is dating my boss, and they want me to go to couples therapy with them

by Alison Green on September 30, 2024

I’m off for a few days, so here’s an older post from the archives. This was originally published in 2018.

A reader writes:

My dad started dating this woman (Jill) about two years ago, after he and my stepmom amicably divorced. As this was going on, I graduated from grad school, ended my student internship, and started looking for jobs. In six months, I applied to 275 jobs and didn’t get a single interview. I was desperate for work when my dad said Jill needed a new executive assistant. Jill is the chair of a nonprofit, and the job came with a good salary and a lot new responsibilities. I had an interview and was offered the job right away.

Immediately, things were much worse than I expected:

• She tells me when to start working either late at night or in the morning. My hours aren’t terribly long, but it is impossible to schedule anything since I don’t know my schedule in advance, and my health and self-care have taken a beating. I don’t have set hours, so she calls and texts at any time, and I never know when I’m done for the day.

• One of my main roles is to work on her book, a memoir about the struggles of being a minority and a woman. My dad, a white man, is writing the entire thing secretly; she hasn’t told her publisher that a ghostwriter is involved, and he is getting no compensation or recognition as she goes around telling everyone that she’s the only woman of this ethnic group to write a book on the subject.

• When I ask clarifying questions, she belittles me (“That’s common sense” or “You know as much as I do”).

• She’s rude and cruel to me in front of others at meetings, events, and on conference calls. Once when I said the way she was talking to me was making me flustered, she yelled that this is how she manages people, that I perceive things the wrong way, and that it’s a problem with me.

• She is always coming up with elaborate rumors about our out-of-state staff. She often says that her former assistant had brain damage; her reasoning was that she was born premature and therefore must have brain damage and be “mentally handicapped.” So-and-so is obese because her kid died and now she’s too emotionally unstable to work. So-and-so must be crazy because he chose to serve on a submarine while in the Navy.

• She doesn’t do anything herself because she doesn’t know how to use Word. She makes me come to her house to print things because she doesn’t want to open them on her computer. I write columns under her name, and then we go through upwards of six drafts as she makes minuscule tweaks, forgets she made those tweaks, and changes them back to the original, all while criticizing me for not making any sense.

• She volunteered to watch her infant granddaughter twice a week, but she started leaving the baby with me while she goes to her law office. I don’t get paid extra for this; she says that would be unfair to the organization.

We go through cycles where I think everything is fine, and then I get yelled at about something small that I didn’t realize was an issue. Every time there’s some sort of problem, I try to change what I do, only to have a new problem spring up that was never an issue before. My job has become one big game of whack-a-mole that I’m being forced to play when I really just want to focus on the mountain of tasks I’ve been assigned. She wants me to be just a personal assistant, but the job responsibilities I have are a lot bigger than that (helping to plan large events and writing for our publications), and tending to her has become a distraction from my work, which I know bothers her. I try to be polite and helpful, but I have so much stuff to do that it’s hard to remind her to respond to emails, especially when usually she snaps that I should know how to respond myself, even when she needs to review things to give the final okay.

She’s also always brought my dad into things. When I first started, she’d say she cared more about me being her assistant than dating my dad, and that if she needed to devote more time to making our work relationship better, she’d end things with my dad. I was constantly terrified of doing something that would make her dump my father. In the months since, my dad has moved in, and they started seeing a couples counselor (Jill constantly threatens to end their relationship).

Last week, I forgot to do something, she reminded me, and I quickly did the task. Hours later at 11 p.m., she accused me of not doing it and started sending me long, mean texts saying, “This is becoming a problem with you,” etc. When I said I had done the task, she said she shouldn’t have had to remind me. I thought I’d just ride the storm out. Everything I said was met with a different criticism, I wasn’t sure what to do, it was late, and this wasn’t productive, so I didn’t respond to her last text (which hadn’t asked anything of me). Soon after, my dad called to say that Jill had yelled at him for half an hour about distracting me from my work. The next day, they went on a weeklong vacation to Mexico, where she had sporadic internet access. She barely emailed me the entire time, leaving me to work on her book.

Yesterday, my father started giving me job advice: morning check-ins and updates with Jill, etc. — things I do every day and have been doing for the past 10 months. Then he said, “Would you be open to seeing our family therapist with us to help with your job?” I told him there was no way I was going to do that. I was really upset afterwards that he would try to put me in that position where they would gang up on me in their therapist’s office, especially when he knows I’ve started seeking out other jobs.

This morning, she told me to come over at 8:30 a.m. When I got there, she and my dad sat opposite me and spent 45 minutes scolding me, citing “complaints” by the out-of-state employees with whom I have great relationships and get along very well. Then she said that the only solution she can think of to deal with my communication problems is for me to join her and my father at their couples therapist. She said I hadn’t forgotten to do the task from the week before and that it was a deeper issue. I was literally cornered in her living room, and I could see from my heart rate monitor that I was at 115 bpm, frantically trying not to hyperventilate. When I said I thought it was inappropriate to go see a therapist with my boss and my dad, she said she would write it into my job requirement or put me on probation. She’s given me two days to agree to therapy or write a list of all the reasons I won’t go with them and what I’ll do to change my behavior. I seriously suspect she has narcissistic personality disorder, and I know from experience that she doesn’t respond well when I try to explain myself or disagree with her.

I’ve been depressed for months, but I’ve reached a new level of desperation. I would work anywhere else — I would do anything else. I’ve been applying to jobs for a couple weeks now, and I would be thrilled to wait tables while continuing my job hunt. My mom says that I won’t be able to get a good job if I’ve quit a job after less than a year and start doing something that isn’t on a larger career path, but all of my friends my age say that my health is more important. I feel so confused, gaslighted, abused — and then I feel like maybe I’m just being a millenial and don’t have what it takes to be successful. Am I just a bad employee? I probably don’t have the best personality for a personal assistant, but I try to work hard, keep organized and professional, and board members go out of their way to compliment me when we’re at meetings and events. Since getting this job, I never complained to my father about his girlfriend or brought her up, but Jill is constantly blurring the boundaries by asking about extremely personal things during work and bringing up work when we’re celebrating holidays and birthdays.

I am miserable and feel so trapped and confused. Is all this normal?! I have so many mixed signals about every aspect of my job, and this situation is taking over my life. What do I do when I have to give my answer to the ultimatum?

Let me say this very, very clearly: Jill and your dad are the problems here, not you.

This is a horrible, toxic, dysfunctional brew of a work situation, and not because of you.

Jill is a terrible boss, has wildly unreasonable and unrealistic expectations of you, is asking you to do things far outside the scope of what is okay to ask, and is behaving like an asshole. More specifically:

It’s not okay to give someone no set hours and just expect them to start working late at night or early in the morning with no notice, and then get angry if they’re not responsive.

It’s not okay to belittle anyone, and particularly not okay to belittle people one has power over.

It’s not okay to expect you to regularly babysit an infant — without pay! — as part of an office job and without your enthusiastic consent.

Her propensity to lie and gossip unkindly about people who work for her — and about their hardships, in particular — is, frankly, disgusting.

And it is insanely inappropriate for Jill and your dad to ask you to attend couples counseling. Insanely. And that’s before we even get into Jill’s ludicrous threat to make it a job requirement or put you on probation over it. This is liver boss / chemo boss / leave-a-work-note-at-a-grave boss level of insanity and inappropriateness.

On top of all that, Jill also sounds incompetent … and it says something that that’s the least of the problems here.

As for the immediate problem of the therapy ultimatum … If the organization has 15+ employees, it’s covered by the ADA, and thus Jill probably can’t legally order you to attend therapy. But she sounds horrible enough that she might not care if you point out that it’s illegal. If the organization is smaller than 15 people and/or she doesn’t care about the law, then try saying this to her: “If there are issues with my work performance, let’s discuss those. But I’m not attending therapy with you or my father. That’s inappropriate for a work relationship, and it’s not something I’m going to do.” If she pushes, say, “This isn’t something I’m going to continue to discuss.”

More importantly, though: please please please take any other job you can get right now so that you can quit this one.

This situation is bad enough that it might even make sense to quit now, without another job lined up, if you can afford to. But if you can’t — and there’s no shame in it if you can’t — then for whatever remaining period of time you’re stuck there, make a point of emotionally disengaging from the work. Go through the motions and do the bare minimum you need to do to keep a paycheck coming in, but don’t emotionally invest in the work or Jill’s expectations or Jill’s feedback.

Tell her you’re not longer available for babysitting, too. Use the words “I’m not comfortable being left in charge of an infant and will no longer be able to watch her for you. I need to stick to the work I was hired to do.”

And please know that your mom is wrong that you won’t be able to get a good job if you quit this one. One seven-month stay will not be a big deal. It’s a pattern of short-term stays that’s a problem, not one of them. And if interviewers ask why you left this job, you can say, “My boss started dating my father, and it became too awkward to stay there.” Believe me, everyone will understand that. You will receive sympathy gasps.

Last, no matter what else you do, stop being terrified that you’ll do something that will make Jill dump your dad. Frankly, it might be a better outcome for everyone if she does because she is horrid — but either way, their relationship is not your responsibility. It never was, but your dad forfeited burned to ashes any claim to consideration in that realm when he became an accessory to Jill’s mistreatment of you.

Read updates to this letter here and here.

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{ 106 comments }

{ 106 comments… read them below }

  1. Pastor Petty Labelle*

    Oh heavens, this bonkers one.
    I hope Dad eventually realized who he had involved himself with and got out.
    I hope OP is in much better place now.

    1. Dawn*

      Yes, I also very vividly remember this dumpster fire. I’m so glad OP was able to get out and I hope they’re doing well.

    2. Selina Luna*

      Based on the updates, the OP is in a much better place, albeit with family members who are trying to get her to talk to her father again because fAmiLYyyyyYy.
      In the end, we all choose our family, whether by blood or by covenant. But perhaps blood should matter less than it does to some.

      1. Observer*

        Based on the updates, the OP is in a much better place, albeit with family members who are trying to get her to talk to her father again because fAmiLYyyyyYy

        True. But physical distance is still helpful. Even now, but especially a few years ago.

      2. Momma Bear*

        I hope the OP finds time other than big family events to see their grandparents if that was the issue. Not everyone needs to attend every huge family gathering. More quality time is possible outside holidays.

      3. Ally McBeal*

        Based on the final update in fall 2019, OP was accepted into a nurse/midwife school and was moving to a big new city in the spring! …….. in the spring of 2020.

        I really, really hope OP is doing well.

        1. Selina Luna*

          Yeah, when I wrote that, I didn’t actually look at the original date, but I still think they’ll be okay. If their move was already pretty set in stone, getting into the health field makes some things much more difficult, but it’s not more difficult to find employment, and as horribly toxic as some healthcare employers are, Jill might actually be more insane than that.

    3. Observer*

      I hope Dad eventually realized who he had involved himself with and got out.

      I think it’s going to take more than that to repair his relationship with the LW, though. Because his behavior was just sooooooo wrong here.

  2. Caramel & Cheddar*

    I honestly can’t believe this one is from so long ago! LW, I hope everything is infinitely better now than when we last heard from you in 2019 and I hope that trip to Egypt is still in the cards for you.

    1. Nicosloanica*

      I think this is the one that Captain Awkward also responded to during that fun period where they did a collab :D My two faves hanging out! To me that’s like how all celebrities seem to kind of know each other.

      1. Liane*

        It wasn’t a collaboration but a “Wow, did you see this?” post*. Captain Awkward’s comparison of the Dad to Theodén King under Wormtongue’s influence is spot on, except Dad, unlike the King, doesn’t seem to come to his senses, alas.

        *The OP links it in one of her updates.

    2. Dawn*

      I’m on May, 2011 right now in the archives, and it’s an absolute trip seeing just how far back some of the most famous letters are – and how differently some of them would have been answered today.

        1. Dawn*

          No, not at all, and I’m not suggesting that. Her tone hasn’t changed a whole lot since 2018.

          The pre-2016 era was very different.

          1. Grimalkin*

            And of course the world itself has shifted a fair bit over the years…
            My first thought went to the pandemic and how forced work-from-home for so many office jobs has shaken out, for better or for worse. Advice on anything related to WFH/remote work, or anything where WFH/remote work could be a way to avoid an in-office problem, is going to be significantly different than it would have been in 2019, not due to any change in Alison but due to changes in the workplace in general. (And even then, advice in 2020 or 2021 would probably be a bit different than it would be now in 2024, after a lot of return to office pushes…)

    3. ferrina*

      I would absolutely love an update from this LW. I came from a chaotic family, and I’m really hoping that LW was able to get to and stay in a better place and is doing well!!

      1. RC*

        Same… especially since if you do the timeline, they would have been starting a medical training program in spring 2020 :x I really hope things worked out well!

        1. A reader among many*

          Yes, that would have been a tough time to do it. Hopefully it went well and she’s somewhere stable now that the world of healthcare has calmed down!

  3. soontoberetired*

    I wonder if Jill’s been fired yet. What a problematic person and the LW paternal family is nuts. Would love to know if she did get to be a midwife.

    1. Hlao-roo*

      Would love to know if she did get to be a midwife.

      Yes, me too! The last update referenced “moving to a new city in the spring,” so I wonder how far those plans got delayed/derailed because of the pandemic. I hope she’s doing well now.

      1. Slow Gin Lizz*

        Same! I hope this LW is living her best life as a midwife, that the dad finally kicked Jill to the curb, and the org fired Jill. Even if it’s just the first one, that would be a big win. But it’s so sad that the dad doesn’t see what Jill really is. I’m still really proud of OP for having the guts to tell the rest of the org’s board what Jill was up to and having them listen to her and let her quit safely way (although side-eyeing them a bit for letting Jill stay on as the board chair).

    2. Miette*

      That’s the part that blows my mind every time I reread this one. This board is apparently completely okay with this kind of behavior, to the point that they have what seems to be an established process on how someone like the LW can get away. Bizarre. I hope Jill eventually got let go.

      1. Princess Sparklepony*

        But doesn’t seem to do her job, so I wonder what she does do. I think she has everyone else in the department doing her work. It sounds like the board is afraid to fire her.

  4. Our Business Is Rejoicing*

    Yes, if there’s any letter where I’d love an update, it’s that one. Really hope OP is doing well and that the karma monster came back to bite Jill hard.

  5. The Cosmic Avenger*

    I started reading this one and I immediately remembered there were updates! Can’t wait to get to those!

  7. Seashell*

    Jill sounds like a kook, but I wouldn’t think “You know as much as I do” is necessarily belittling. I would take that to mean neither of you have that much information on the topic.

    1. metadata minion*

      I think this one comes down to tone — said dismissively, it’s belittling. Said in a sort of cheerfully apologetic tone, preferably with additional context like “oh, you know as much as I do; just use your best judgement here!” or “you know as much as I do; I’m hoping to hear more by Wednesday” it’s a totally normal thing to say.

      1. Antilles*

        Also, the entire rest of the context in the letter about Jill. That sort of phrase can land MUCH differently from someone who is “rude and cruel to me in front of others”, claims others must have brain damage, and justifies it by claiming that’s just the way she manages.

        1. Sola Lingua Bona Lingua Mortua Est*

          The way Jill is described, “You know as much as me” comes across as “I can’t be bothered to flesh it out; I’m just assigning responsibility for its failure to you when the inevitable comes to pass.”

      2. Roberta*

        I think there is also a bit of “bitch eating crackers” here (for the uninitiated- BEC is when you have such disdain for someone even a neutral interaction takes on a negative light)
        OP had taken on so much emotional abuse that it was just one comment too many. for many other interactions it would be normal, but here Jill is just so bananapants and mean that it can’t be taken as neutral.

        1. Vio*

          Yeah, with somebody like Jill you can’t help but view everything they do with the utmost suspicion. Even if she gave a compliment, it would seem like an insult was hidden within it. When somebody manipulates you so often you just expect everything they say and do to be the same.

    2. Turquoisecow*

      It’s not really helpful coming from your boss, if they assign you something, you need more information, and they refuse to give it to you or claim they don’t have it, AND also don’t try to help you work around that.

      Boss: I need to you to do these TPS reports
      Employee: okay, but I don’t know the llama grooming totals, so I can’t fill out that part. Do you have those numbers?
      Boss: you know as much as I do.

      More helpful would be, “I don’t either, let me see if Bob in llamas has them,” or “we won’t get those numbers until Wednesday, just do the rest.” Otherwise the boss just throwing a task at you without the right tools and refusing to help the employee get those tools.

    3. Observer*

      Come on. Context *matters*. I think it’s pretty obvious that she’s not acknowledging the limitations of her knowledge as much finding another way to say “How stupid can you be? You should know about this!”

    4. Princess Sparklepony*

      The comment was made in reference to the question: Which email are you referring to? When Jill had sent her about 5 emails that morning and asked OP if she had received Jill’s email.

      You really think that means that Jill doesn’t have enough information?

  9. RabbitRabbit*

    That last update – going into a new healthcare program in Spring 2020… yikes. I hope LW is doing well.

  10. River Song*

    I remember when this was originally posted- Jill is one of my mental benchmarks on the extreme end of narcissistic manager behavior. Here is hoping to someday get the update that the OP is delivering babies and her dad dumped Jill!

  11. Crystal Claire*

    Oof. This one. I think we need another update from this OP; hopefully it’s one where her Dad comes to his senses and breaks up with Jill. Wishful thinking, I know. But I want to know how OP is doing now.

    1. ampersand*

      I hope he’s come to his senses and they’re no longer together, but if I were LW I’d still have a hard time reestablishing a relationship with my parent who had so little regard for my well being.

  12. Delta Delta*

    I think about this letter sometimes. It’s just so bonkers that I sort of can’t believe it but then I remember that people can be very weird sometimes.

    I’d love to know an update – if LW was able to become a midwife and how that’s going. It seemed like an exciting transition.

  13. Tom R*

    So my Narcissism detector went through the roof reading this letter, holy cow that’s bad (and I have dealt with some pretty narcissistic people in my time). LW needs to quit and get away from this job as soon as possible. If it becomes a massive deal and her father and Jill become nasty over it she may even need to go no-contact with them for a bit. Her mental and physical health is already taking a beating and it’s only going to get better.

    1. Dawn*

      LW did quit and get away from this job, before this was even published, and she and her father subsequently didn’t speak for a long time. There’s updates at the bottom of the letter!

  14. pally*

    This is wilder than any amusement park ride!

    Yeah, I’d love to see a more recent update. I want karma to bite Dad and Jill. Hard.

  15. Juicebox Hero*

    Oh, lord, this letter is what brought me to this site in the first place (someone sent me a link). What an epic clusterfork.

  16. LCH*

    i still have questions about that therapist. i think OP never actually met them, but if they were willing to participate in this nonsense, they couldn’t have been very good at their job or really certified or whatever. maybe they were actually a life coach.

    1. Hlao-roo*

      I think you missed the crucial part of the first update, where “Jill tried to tell me her therapist was the most ethical therapist.” (/joking)

      In seriousness, I also have a lot of questions about Jill’s “most ethical therapist.”

      1. Excel Gardener*

        I used to be in a long-term relationship with a woman who had a narcissistic mother. A lot of awful things happened to my ex and her sister when they were teenagers, largely due to their mother’s narcissism. In response, the mother would send the daughters to individual therapy and even did family therapy with them at points, which on the surface seems good. But of course, being a narcissist, she would only select therapists she had vetted and met with herself first, who were completely bought into her perspective over her kids’ perspectives. So of course she picked therapists who weren’t the best or most professional.

        1. anon for this*

          Yes, narcissists fire therapists who say anything they disagree with. My narcissistic ex once fired a therapist for asking a clarifying question she decided she didn’t like.

          Never go to therapy with a narcissist. It’ll only result in more gaslighting.

        2. Princess Sparklepony*

          My ex-in laws went to a therapist and they loved her. I was hearing about the therapy and it turns out the therapist agreed with them that everything they were doing was perfect and it was the kids/in-law kids that were all wrong….

          I had a little giggle.

  17. CityMouse*

    I’m glad LW got out of that workplace but it’s sad about basically losing her relationship with her Dad. I really dislike people who let their new partners destroy their relationship with their kids. I’m a parent and it’s just unthinkable to me.

  18. Sean*

    An all-time classic. When this gets reposted it’s like catching a really good movie on late-night TV: sure, I can stream it, but seeing it unexpectedly is a gem.

  19. Liz the Snackbrarian*

    I hope LW is doing well and that her dad broke up with Jill. It’s truly a wretched situation and none of what happened is LW’s fault, and it sounds like Jill happened to find someone who was easy to manipulate in LW’s father.

  20. Foreign Octopus*

    This was a wild one from beginning to end. Just absolute banana crackers. So many people doing so many things wrong. I know there’s an update and I hope that OP is thriving now.

  22. Someone*

    Disgusted in general, but:
    “When I ask clarifying questions, she belittles me (“That’s common sense” or “You know as much as I do”).”

    I ask any questions that I believe are appropriate. In a work environment there is no such thing as a stupid question about your job (but don’t push your luck).
    Please, if you need help, ask. If someone asks you for help, do your best to assist!

    Also:
    “She is always coming up with elaborate rumors about our out-of-state staff. She often says that her former assistant had brain damage; her reasoning was that she was born premature and therefore must have brain damage and be “mentally handicapped.” So-and-so is obese because her kid died and now she’s too emotionally unstable to work. So-and-so must be crazy because he chose to serve on a submarine while in the Navy.”

    Was Jill trying to get herself sued for libel/slander?

    One more:
    “She doesn’t do anything herself because she doesn’t know how to use Word. She makes me come to her house to print things because she doesn’t want to open them on her computer. I write columns under her name, and then we go through upwards of six drafts as she makes minuscule tweaks, forgets she made those tweaks, and changes them back to the original, all while criticizing me for not making any sense.”

    I have never once been to a manager’s house. I don’t even know where any of my managers live! Granted, several senior board members of my employer know where I live, but that’s because I have a strange family rather than for work reasons.
    Also, was the problem that Jill couldn’t use Word or, as I suspect, wouldn’t bother to learn? I suspect that she decided to do the things the letter writer describes just to have an excuse to criticise the letter writer, not because she needed the letter writer’s help.

    I’m just glad that the letter writer was doing well at the time of the last update. Letter writer, if you’re still around, I wish you and your father the best.

    1. JustaTech*

      I know where a few of my bosses live/lived, but not for work reasons. I’ve had bosses invite the whole team or department over to their house for a party. I know the general area where most of my bosses live, in that it comes up in conversation about gardens and commutes and stuff.

      And during early COVID I saw inside a lot of my coworker’s homes.

      But going to the bosses house to do work stuff? Nope!

  23. WheresMyPen*

    Blimey, that was a letter and a half! Sorry you had to go through that horrible situation OP, and I really hope the move to a new city and your training to be a midwife went well. Would love an update if you’re still around!

    1. 3-Foot Tall Inflatable Rainbow Unicorn*

      There is another technical writer I bump into now and then who refuses to learn ANY word processing software except for one very specific and very obscure program. I’m always stunned when our paths cross and I discover that he has talked yet another company into buying his preferred software and allowing him to work in it and export to Word.

      1. Dawn*

        Which is extraordinary because right now I’m trying really hard to reduce my reliance on major corporations and use some of the other word processing software out there instead, and, um…. for once it’s easy to see why Microsoft dominates the market. I’m struggling so hard with it and that’s not like me (heck, I grew up learning WordPerfect for Windows 3.1!)

        1. Observer*

          Try Libre Office. It’s surprisingly good.

          And it’s surprisingly good at interoperability with Word.

          1. Dawn*

            I’m using LibreOffice right now and it’s a pain in the butt.

            I constantly have to restore my text spacing for academic documents. Images at best don’t paste in well, and if I try to move them, can completely screw the document up; I have to back up my work before inserting an image.

            I could go on. It’s… a moderately capable word processor, yes, but it has nothing on the ease of use of Word.

            1. Subtle Tuba*

              It may also be partly what one is used to. I’ve been using OpenOffice/LibreOffice for academic documents since 2006, and haven’t run across the kinds of problems you describe — but trying to use MS Word makes me want to scream and throw things because I can never figure out how to make it do what I want.

              (Re: images in LibreOffice, I usually select “treat image as character” and I find that this makes the images very easy to move, position, resize, etc.)

              1. Dawn*

                Thank you, I’ll try that, if I can figure out where that one is; a lot of my frustrations are just with how obtuse finding things often is. Not that I love Microsoft’s embrace of minimalist design philosophy but for most documents, it’s either already set to the obvious thing out of the box or it’s set-it-and-forget it.

            2. Media Monkey*

              i mean that’s Word too right? inserting images in Word is its own circle of hell (and i often think needlessly terrible to make people need Powerpoint)

        2. JustaTech*

          I’ve used a bunch of free Word clones over the years (OpenOffice, etc) and my husband has tried several times to convince me that I want to use LaTeX (la-tech, oh tech naming before the internet), but at the end of the day I just like Word best for work.
          Part of it is familiarity and part of it is that things like Sheets or Pages just don’t do the formatting I need.
          I personally never used WordPerfect or LotusNotes or whichever one required a little plastic overlay over the function key (my mom used that one).

          (This is not to say I’m a Word fan – I’ve spent entirely too much time trying to figure out some bizarre thing that Word has done, like eat every 100th space, or randomly eliminate formatting levels if you paste.)

          1. penny dreadful analyzer*

            I do a lot of highly specific formatting stuff in Word and I am definitely of the opinion that it is absolutely the worst word processing program, except for all of the other ones.

    2. Bookworm*

      Agreed. Almost reminds me of stories I heard in the 90s and early 2000s of executive types who lost their secretaries, but refused to use a computer themselves.

      1. Antilles*

        That was my thought too, but at least in those cases, you could arguably give some grace that they just never had to learn. An exec in 1995 probably started his career in the 1960s, then by the time they’re absolutely everywhere in the 90s, he was senior enough to have a secretary. And at that point, he’s spent nearly his entire career doing things the pen-and-paper way and just doesn’t feel any need to change when he’s counting down the months until retirement.
        But this letter was published in 2018. At that point, computers had been default office equipment for ~30 years. So even if we say she’s 70, she’d have spent half her working career with a computer at her desk, it’s strange to not bother to learn the basics. Especially since she apparently also uses text messages and emails, so it’s clearly not some generalized aversion to learning about new tech, just specifically that she doesn’t want to learn Word.

        1. Dawn*

          Not that she particularly deserves defending, but in her defense, some of that might have to do with her minority status.

          In Canada where I live, for example, you can either get a US English keyboard, or you can get a Canadian French/English keyboard; both are fundamentally laid out as QWERTY.

          When I was learning French, I actually spent some time studying Parisian French, and in France all of the keyboards are AZERTY.

          And believe me, if you’ve spent your whole life learning one keyboard layout and then try to switch to another one, it’s like someone rewired your brain. I eventually managed to wrap my head around it, but I can definitely imagine that if someone learned to type on a keyboard that, say, doesn’t use the Latin alphabet at all, and wants to write their memoirs in English, it would be functionally equivalent to not knowing how to use a word processor.

  25. Bookworm*

    This is one of the most bananapants things I’ve ever read here. I’ve had pretty toxic bosses in the past, but this really takes the cake.

    1. Dawn*

      I actually think that the boss who peed in coffee cups and dumped them in the office sink takes the cake, but this one is up there.

  26. Chewy*

    What sort of “kills” me about this letter is that the final update was from mid-December 2019 (eek) and the letter writer had just been accepted into a midwife/doula program (double eek?) and was also planning to do some international traveling (triple eek) with her spouse.

    So like, I hope she got to do all those things but one of my morbid “interests” (for lack of a better word) is reading stuff from right before COVID happened and being like, “oh boy, we were really were [REDACTED] clueless about what was to come.”

    And the only reason I’m saying “double eek” about being accepted into the midwife program is because like, anyone starting any kind of healthcare degree program in say, winter 2020 was going to be in for quite the unexpected ride :-O

    1. The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon*

      Right?? That’s part of the reason I would love another update on this letter. I super hope LW is happily midwifing and that she and her husband made it to Egypt, but gosh the timing!

    3. londonedit*

      Absolutely. It really is a sobering moment when you see letters and updates from late 2019 where people are going ‘Thanks so much for the advice! Bring on 2020!’

      Er…no.

  27. Friday Hopeful*

    Dad is being emotionally abused just as much as OP was. That’s why he is on Jill’s side. He is also a victim, sounds like he is scared of her. Hopefully someday he will realize and get out himself. I can’t even imagine giving up you KID for a relationship with such an a$$_ole

    1. Observer*

      No, he is not as much a victim as the LW. I’m not saying he is not a victim at all, but he actually has a lot more agency and power in the relationship than the LW did.

  28. CET*

    There’s a lot of OMG moments in this letter, but I’m stunned that Jill still has a job. The update says the OP spoke with a VP when resigning and they were “yep I know all about Jill and her narcissistic, abusive behaviour. Here’s a plan for your resignation”. Not yeah I’m going to fire Jill’s ass.

      1. JustaTech*

        Best guess? Jill has *all* the connections that this non-profit needs (not just money but people), and extricating themselves from her is likely a slow and clandestine project.

      2. CET*

        I reread the original letter and Jill is the Chair of the foundation and the OP spoke to the Vice Chair. So Jill’s in charge, but the board still suck for keeping her around.

        It really chaffs me that in order to keep what ever benefits Jill brings the board would be willing to hand someone over to be abused by her. To have their mental and physical health ruined in pursuit of the foundation’s aims.

  29. Observer*

    In thinking about this, it seems to me that the simple fact that Jill and the LW’s father were still with the therapist is proof that therapist was either incompetent or unethical. Because, even assuming that Jill didn’t tell the therapist why she *really* wanted to bring the LW into session, I would have expected a decent therapist to recognize what she’s dealing with here. And that all the family therapy in the world is not going to make it a healthy relationship.

    SO. What’s going on there? It doesn’t sound like ethical and appropriate therapy, that’s for sure.

    1. Ama*

      It’s possible the therapist didn’t know anything about this and Jill was just assuming that she’d go along because Jill is pretty used to browbeating people until she gets what she wants.

      But we’ve also seen a number of instances here at AaM where therapists don’t really understand workplace issues — so if the therapist is looking at the situation through a “family therapy” lens it’s entirely possible the extra layer of “Jill is OP’s boss” and what that means from an ethical perspective is completely lost on the therapist.

      1. Observer*

        Yeah. But that’s my point. The thing that’s a red flag for me here is the relationship between Jill and Dad is one that is not really amenable to improvement via family / couples therapy. So why has the therapist not dismissed them as clients?

      2. Kello*

        Narcissists often get their “narcissistic supply” by duping therapists about being persecuted and victimized by everyone around them.
        I imagine one reason Jill wanted to drag OP into family therapy with dad was so that the therapist could give Jill’s gaslighting an air of credibility and normalize her manipulations.

  30. Jiminy Cricket*

    In the update, when the vice chair of the foundation’s board just throws up their hands and says, “Yes, we know Jill sucks, let me help you get out of here!”

    The CEO of a nonprofit works for the board. The board hires her and can fire her. They suck as much as she does if they didn’t fire her after this.

    1. i am a human*

      Yeah, I get that OP was feeling powerless in the situation and appreciated the commiseration in that moment, but the board sucks.

  31. Blarg*

    This is clearly not the most important part of the story, and I certainly don’t want OP to dredge up old trauma.

    But … did the book ever publish?? I was shocked that the letter mentioned an actual publisher as opposed to someone planning to self-publish.

    1. Daria grace*

      There’s a bunch of businesses who publicly present like they are serious, rigorous publishers but in reality are essentially self publishing places with good PR and okay book cover designers. I suspect Jill is dealing with one of those.

  32. Stipes*

    Reading this and its updates and the updates to the referenced other insane bosses was quite a rabbit hole. I’m glad this writer got away from Jill, and I hope her career pivot navigated the pandemic alright.

    I really need an update to the Chemo Boss story. Jesus.

  33. Vipsania Agrippina*

    Isn’t dumping a baby on someone unconsenting abandonment? It sounds like something that should be illegal.

    1. Dawn*

      I think that probably has a bit of a higher legal bar than temporarily leaving your child with someone, even someone who would really rather you not.

  34. Never Knew I was a Dancer*

    OP, if you see this, I hope things are going okay for you, and that your dad has been able to finally free himself of Jill. I can’t even begin to imagine the feeling of having your own parent choose an abusive asshole narcissist over you, but it is so messed up and you don’t deserve that.

  35. Figaro*

    If there’s ever an ultimate top trumps of the worst bosses, like worst of the decade or anything, surely Jill will win it. We’ve had some horrifying letters but I really think this might be the most distressing and abusive I can recall.

    But I’m so happy the LW is mostly doing so well now – although the family part of the update letter is heartbreaking.

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