This is not a post to rail against female bosses in the workplace but I simply want to talk about my experiences with two female bosses I’ve had that were particularly negative. I don’t want to generalize and have had good and bad male/female bosses in the past.

I’m simply asking for advice on how to deal with female bosses as a man.

First negative experience I’ll describe quickly as possible. I was with a company for 5 years. Got a new female boss, basically didn’t know what she was doing, rode me hard to do not only my work but her work. Our team decided to complain to HR about her. Some months later all of a sudden I get three warnings within 7 months and I’m fired. Turns out, she made an accusation against me - said I slammed papers on her desk, said disparaging things to other females, said my work was subpar etc. I could disprove the work accusations but HR took her side. Anyway, I was fired after over 5 years at this company. I find out later that my boss was let go. This happened about 5 years ago.

Second negative experience - new job this year. Struggled in the first month and then worked my ass off and after that was much better. My boss was only supervising me for the first 6 weeks so only saw the first month or so. She was supposed to consult with with the acting bosses for the remaining 6 weeks when reviewing my performance but never did, despite saying she did and she lied to her boss about doing it. Parts of her review were factually inaccurate about work I did, did not write one positive thing. She also asked me in an email to do something, so I do it but then afterwards asks me why I did it. I explain it’s because you told me, and then she said I should have used professional judgement. Anyway, I worked my ass off and passed review, I showed colleagues these examples and they couldn’t believe it.

Anyone have advise on how to deal with someone like this, or have had similar experiences? I write this because as a man confronting a female could be tricky.

I also saw her and another woman discussing a book about feminist leaders in the office or something like that.