Posted by Ask a Manager
https://www.askamanager.org/2026/05/my-boss-treats-me-like-im-invisible.html
https://www.askamanager.org/?p=38138
A reader writes:
I’ve been working at this smallish company for five and a half years now. I started as the office manager when we were nine people and now we’re approaching 50. I am a friendly person and have great relationships with many of my coworkers. We’re a friendly group, but strangely with my manager, I genuinely feel total invisible to him. In my many years of working, this is a weird experience for me. I’ve always had very good relationships with my managers.
A few examples of what I mean:
This morning I walked into the office and he’s standing talking to my coworker (he’s also her manager) and he’s looking right at me as I walk by and I look at him and say, “Good morning.” He looks down, doesn’t reply, and my other coworker says, “Good morning.” This has happened many times, where I may have walked by him in the kitchen first thing and say good morning and he just walks by. I have sometimes thought that maybe he didn’t hear me. This morning he 100% heard me.
I sit in a pod of desks, and he often comes by to speak to one of the other two people I sit with. One time he came by, and only the person who sits across from me was sitting here and I was here — and he came over and said, “You know I’m coming to talk to you because no one else is here” and that coworker says, “But MyName is here” and I pipe up with, “I’m here! I”m here!” He says nothing and doesn’t acknowledge the banter.
So all this makes me feel absolutely invisible.
It’s so weird, because if I message him with an issue, he will reply. If I go to his office to talk to him about something, he obviously will talk to me.
Am I being overly sensitive? I appreciate not being micromanaged and nitpicked and the work gets done — I don’t need oversight. He does come to me when he needs me to do something for him, although it doesn’t happen often.
Does he not like me? Does it matter? He chit chats with other coworkers and he shares personal stuff with them. I’m not looking to be BFFs, but a “good morning” would be nice.
Part of me thinks I shouldn’t care, but I was raised to be polite. You greet people when you come in and you say goodbye when you leave. How do I not let this make me feel like less? I don’t think bringing it up to him would be helpful; I think he would just end being way more awkward.
No, you’re not being overly sensitive! It’s weird for anyone in your office, let alone your boss, to act like you’re invisible and ignore you when you greet them.
It would be different if your boss were like this with everyone. Then you could write it off it as shyness or social awkwardness.
But when he’s only doing it you and you see him chatting perfectly comfortably with others, it feels personal.
Plus I’m wondering about his comment to your coworker when he didn’t realize you were there — “You know I’m coming to talk to you because no one else is here.” That makes it sound like the coworker knows your boss prefers not to come talk when you’re around. Or maybe it was a reference to the coworker knowing your boss is generally socially uncomfortable and prefers talking one-on-one … but given that it only seems to be you he avoids, you’ve got to wonder. (Also, did he just … not see you? Are you literally invisible and just don’t realize it? If you look in a mirror, are you visible?)
As for what’s going on, I can think of a bunch of possible explanations:
* He has a crush on you.
* Your resemblance to someone else makes him uncomfortable (a hated cousin, the bully who tormented him in school, a dead loved one).
* You offended him in some profound way at some point (presumably this wouldn’t be something small like accidentally cutting him off in the hallway, but rather more like you said something implying he or his loved ones don’t deserve rights, or something indicating you’re part of a group that he doesn’t think deserve rights).
* You’re different from him in a way he’s uncomfortable with (including things like race, politics, sexual orientation, even age).
Was he like this from the very start or did it change to this at some point? If he was like this from the very beginning, that points to different possibilities than if he was normal with you at first and then changed.
If you were still a very small office, I’d consider other possibilities, too: like that you were the only woman there, or the only woman in a certain age group, or that he actually is very socially awkward in general but that other people there have figured out how to bond with him. But in an office of nearly 50 people, those seem much less likely.
As for what to do about it, personally I wouldn’t be able to resist asking and would want to say to him, “Have I done something to offend you? You’re always available when I need you for work questions, but I can’t help but notice you don’t acknowledge me outside of that, even when I greet you or we’re in conversation with others.”
I know you don’t want to do that because you think it’ll make things more awkward … but how much more awkward can they realistically get? I suppose he could also start being weird with you during work-related interactions, but I think the potential benefits from just asking about it outweigh the risks.
Still, though, if you don’t want to, then all you can really do is to (a) look at whether this might stem from something on your end (like did you insult his partner or his child and then blithely continue on?) and (b) assuming that you reflect on that and are confident that you didn’t, assume that whatever’s going on is entirely about him, and try to see the entertainment value in having a boss who’s this obliviously rude.
That said, you do need to look at whether his weirdness is affecting you professionally. I’ve got to think having a boss who avoids you affects the type of feedback and professional development opportunities you receive, and at some point there’s just a quality of life tax to working for someone who won’t acknowledge you except when forced to. After five and a half years there, when you imagine moving on and working instead with people who don’t ignore you, do you feel relief? If so, that’s something to consider too.
(Also, you may find this letter on a similar topic from 2021 interesting! I was pleased to see that I came up with the same bulleted list of possibilities then.)
The post my boss treats me like I’m invisible appeared first on Ask a Manager.
https://www.askamanager.org/2026/05/my-boss-treats-me-like-im-invisible.html
https://www.askamanager.org/?p=38138
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