I work remotely so only interactions I’ve had with these people are through teams. I’ve been there almost a year, so far I haven’t had any negative interactions with the people on my team. Today after we all met my boss sends me message separately wanting to speak. She started it with saying that she doesn’t want to read into my body language during the meeting too much but it looked like I rolled my eyes & she wanted to know there’s something I’d want to discuss with her. I told her no & had to ask if this was the first time I gave this impression. She said no it’s happened enough for her to want to bring it up today. I told her it’s been a few stressful weeks & it’s all fatigue, if I did it’s nothing against her. But if she’s been saying I’ve been doing this for a while then I have no excuse to back that up. I have two monitors, one on top of desk & other at eye level so I had to bring that up, she said she didn’t want to bring it up at our 1:1. I told her that I’m pretty responsive communication wise & didn’t think overall I came across that way, I said that to imply that I have no issue communicating with her. I’ve been pretty open with her, she said her bringing this up had nothing to do with my work ethic this is all regarding “attitude”. With all the communication we’ve had in the past, she’s said positive things for the most part & this is the first time I really felt tense talking to her. She honestly seemed kind of upset, tomorrow is our 1:1 for the month & I’m kinda nervous.
Is my boss nitpicking with confronting me about my facial expressions?
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Non verbal attributes are as if not more important than what you say. People's true feelings are often shown in their nonverbal behaviors.
Yes as its a part of your role in the team, if other people see that they will react and treat you differently or feel differently around you and not in a positive way. If you are WFH you do need to be conscious of what you are doing and whats around you like any meeting in the work place. If i need to say something under my breath i will glance to check the mic is muted.
I wouldn't worry too much about it, she's brought it up in a professional way, sometimes work places can be a pain and some managers can be complete dicks but you have to work with them and around them. I once got pulled up for always disagreeing with things said, so i then went around agreeing with everything and was pulled up for that as it seemed like i didn't care... since WFH i been pulled up for being negative in team conversations, so i made an effort to keep my self 100% professional and not display any emotions and be positive (and have to listen to everyone else being negative around me in team meetings!!) i then had to have a meeting as it seemed i was really unhappy and unresponsive and not like i used to be... so sometimes you can't win, but it pays the bills