How to get work-life balance in a work-life balance company

JudgeRudy:

I wanted to get work-life balance so I left a high-pay job and went to a lower-pay one. My whole company seems to have work-life balance. My boss supports me to have work-life balance. My job doesn't require long hours. But the person who is my direct supervisor on most of my projects is refusing to give me this balance. What do I do and where do I go now?

You deal with it, protest, or quit. Those are your options.

What's the contract say?

My direct supervisor just keeps dumping work on me. If I ever say I have too much - even when I provide a list of what else I'm working on - this supervisor minimizes all the other work and claims that I am too slow (I'm not by the way).

When the supervisor loses the workload argument, this supervisor then passively aggressively tries to find something else that is wrong with me - like too little networking (which luckily I did in slow periods, Supervisor just wasn't aware of it) - and makes a huge issue out of it.

I feel like I'm fighting a war every day - and directing time and emotional energy to a war - with someone who claims to be a "team player" and "mentor."

I know why this is happening - company is having lay offs and supervisor is paid many multiples of my salary so is very vulnerable. I just don't know what I have to do with it or how to deal with this insecurity on a daily basis. I have even tried speaking well of the supervisor's positive traits - like expertise - in front of the supervisor and others but nothing seems to work.

Can you elaborate a bit more? What work-life balance are you looking for or do you expect? You mention the hours are not long. Are you expecting work-life balance while your at work working?

During work time getting work dumped on you isn't a work-life balance issue unless it is creating longer hours.

Everyone else in my team works 10-5:30. My supervisor pushes me to work 9-7 on an easy day, 9-12 on difficult days. Before I frequently worked till midnight but didn't finish my assignment so no one knew that I worked till midnight (I sent the finished assignment next day). Recently I have gotten faster and send finished assignments by midnight. This is upsetting my supervisor even more because my hours are now getting documented.

I think our team's workload is more than peer teams' for sure.

I think supervisor knows that our team has a lot of work and pushes more of it down to me and keeps himself/herself available for "supervision and training".

Supervisor wants me to cut corners in getting work done so that supervisor can point to mistakes in my work. Supervisor has even told me that he/she can review for mistakes and to not worry about that. But I think it's a trap. I only send completely finished work. When people other than the supervisor review my work (happens 40% of the time), they have almost no comments. My supervisor sometimes provides no comments and other times invents mistakes (which I frequently clarify) or gives guidance that conflicts previously provided guidance, etc.

I spoke to some of my friends and almost everyone has been with a passive-aggressive supervisor like this at some point. Their advice is always to plan an exit. Are there ways to fight too?