Ask a Manager

It’s “where are you now?” month at Ask a Manager, and all December I’m running updates from people who had their letters here answered in the past. Here are three updates from past letter-writers.

1. Birthday celebrations are zooming out of control (#3 at the link)

The birthday celebrations continued for the next few birthdays after I wrote, but I gradually withdrew from them by saying I was too busy to do the prep work and/or doing a quick prep and then making up a conflict for the actual birthday presentation. Thankfully, this trend died out by the time my birthday rolled around, mostly because of multiple layoffs and resignations on the team, including the manager who was spearheading the whole thing. Afterwards, when we were back in the office more regularly, one of my coworkers confided in me how awful the presentations were and they were glad they stopped! We eventually went back to the usual email well wishes.

As a side note, I am no longer at that company, but looking back I see the whole incident as a symptom of the type of workplace we had, where small things often spiraled out of control due to a) the passivity of the overall team manager and the steamrolling nature of the other manager who led the charge and b) a culture in which nobody felt comfortable speaking up when they disagreed about how things were done. I now work on a team of three and our usual birthday celebrations consist of my boss taking all of us out to a nice lunch the next day we’re all in the office, which is great because I genuinely like my coworkers and we get to enjoy the fine dining in our town on the company dime.

Thanks again for your advice and the advice from the commenters!

2. Can I make my spouse wear noise-canceling headphones at home? (#3 at the link; first update here)

I wrote to you about a year ago because my spouse wouldn’t wear noise-canceling headphones or earbuds to work from home, but was constantly shushing me and the kids. My first update was that I realized we were all on edge because one of my kids was suffering from significant anxiety and disrupted sleep at home, and addressing that improved everything.

Well, my second update is that I have moved out and we are going through a divorce. Thank you to the commenters who identified that this demand was a red flag and indicative of some pretty unreasonable expectations about family life and what our obligations were to support his needs. It really wasn’t about this moment but a bigger-picture inability to engage with our family.

It’s really hard right now, and we are all pretty sad, but unfortunately I think this will ultimately be healthier for me and for the kids. I appreciate the AAM community.

3. My boss wants a timeline for me leaving and I haven’t even given notice

I wrote to you back in September 2016, and so much has changed since then. To sum it up: that job didn’t work out, and after being let go in February 2017, I focused on finishing my master’s before diving into the job search. I was determined not to settle for another bad fit, but with bills to pay, I worked temp jobs and did grocery delivery to fill the gap. Despite applying to hundreds of jobs, the rejections kept coming. By December 2018, I was in a very dark place. It had been over two years of searching with no results.

Then, I saw a job opening at a well-respected company in the community. I’d met the recruiter months before and reached out. He suggested a position I felt totally unqualified for, but he believed I had the soft skills they needed. Desperate, I agreed to an interview, and thanks to all the advice here from you and fellow readers, it ended up being the best one I’d ever had — and I got the job. The work was challenging, but my boss was amazing and helped me grow in ways I hadn’t imagined.

In mid-2021, our company was acquired, and by early 2022, my spouse’s health declined rapidly, making their ability to work uncertain. Once again, I was job hunting, but this time I had plenty of opportunities. I got an offer for a WFH job with unlimited PTO that doubled my salary. My old boss understood, having faced a similar situation herself when her husband became disabled 10 years earlier. I’ve been in this new role since summer 2022, and it’s been a great fit, and I have the flexibility to care for my spouse, who has a rare, but thankfully non-fatal neurological condition.

I’m writing to share two things: first, never underestimate your soft skills. If that recruiter hadn’t recognized mine, I wouldn’t have gotten that job. And second, I want to sincerely thank you. Ask a Manager changed my life. Thanks to it, I’m able to support my family on my salary and care for my spouse. I’m deeply grateful for you, and the advice and support of the AAM community.

It’s “where are you now?” month at Ask a Manager, and all December I’m running updates from people who had their letters here answered in the past. Here are four updates from past letter-writers.

There will be more posts than usual this week, so keep checking back throughout the day.

1. Work doesn’t interest me anymore

I had progressed to the end stage of that job interview process I wrote in about. But what started as feelings of non-excitement turned into the strong epiphany that this ultimately wasn’t the right job for me, so I decided to remove my candidacy from the pool. From what I gather from those on the inside, it sounded like the position would’ve gone to me, but I felt no regret whatsoever to step back. I knew I made the right decision.

About a month or so later, I applied for another position I felt glimmers of excitement for. I heard great things about the team, the culture there, I knew their work well, and the position would allow me to go from managing a small team to an individual contributor role (without taking a pay cut), which was a major bonus for me. After interviewing, I was offered the position, and it’s been pretty great ever since.

And while I enjoy my work now and collaborating with other colleagues, it’s the work-life balance and flexibility my team lead offers that makes me feel closer to the feelings of excitement that I was starting to miss. They are infinitely generous with their time and energy, and they look out for their team members in ways big and small, protecting our wellbeing and always centering our needs before anything else. They also make it a point to carve out new opportunities for all of us, looking out for our career growth and development along the way. If I could give this person a medal, I would.

Although I don’t know that I’ll ever again have the level of excitement and ambition I felt early on in my career, I’m OK with that now because I’m in a place where I can do good work and be part of a team that demonstrably implements flexibility and empathy, respecting the fact that the working world has changed, that workers and their needs have changed, and that work needn’t be someone’s full and sole identity anymore. And now that I’ve been on the team for long enough to get a better sense of the pace and rhythm, I’m looking for volunteer opportunities outside of work that more closely align with my interests so that I can continue decoupling what I do for a living from who I am as a person in the world.

I feel lucky to say that it’s been a really positive experience for me so far. I also want to note how grateful I am to you and your readers for sharing their experiences in the comments section, too—they made (and still make) me feel so much less alone or weird or deficient for feeling this way about work.

2. Assigning tasks to an assistant (#2 at the link)

Firstly, my assistant’s work load was not beyond what he could get done. In fact, he’s allowed to bill up to 25 hours and he was averaging about 15 hours a week. So that was not the reason for the constant boundary setting.

The stress caused by my assistant’s “not right now but I can do it tomorrow at 10am” or “I am doing something else right now, and I can’t get to this until Friday” or “I can’t do this right now” — boundary setting responses with every single assigned task got to me in a way that I had to finally ask him to respond specifically like this: “I’ll add it to my list.”

I made it clear several times that when I assign a task, I’m not asking that it be done at the time I’m assigning it. I just need to assign and move on, knowing it’ll be done when he can get to it.

Eventually, after having to reassert many times that “I added it to the list!” is all we need to hear, that is how he responds and all is well. If there’s something super urgent, we talk about his workload to see if we can rearrange priorities, but usually he gets everything done pretty quickly so really, the timing boundaries were never really needed and did nothing but stress me out, and make me feel overly managed by my employee.

I’ve seen tiktoks and things on social media, telling employees to force their bosses into excessive prioritization of their schedule and I think it’s just brutal on the employer. We are too busy to micromanage your schedule. And if you make a mistake or need to re-prioritize, it’s not a reflection on your work, you’re not in trouble and you don’t need to be defensive. It’s part of working with others. Don’t put all of that on your boss if you’re not being pushed or over-scheduled. It’s not helpful and can turn your boss against you.

For us, it worked out though — and the vibe at work is much more productive, and calm for both of us.

3. Is it weird to bring my toddler’s sippy cup to work with me?

I wrote in a few months ago about bringing my toddler’s sippy cup into the office to rinse it out in the sink. Was I overthinking it? 100%. But I very much appreciated the nuanced response to my question! I found myself feeling weird walking down the hall holding the cup; and the feeling was reinforced by my confused coworkers occasionally calling me out on it. But to clarify, no one was ever rude about it or reacted poorly. My coworkers are all great – I think they were just caught off-guard by seeing the unexpected item and questioned it before they even realized the logical explanation of why I was holding it. And once I explained it, it was entirely a non-issue.

I was unable to respond to the comments, but I read through all of them. I appreciated the suggestions and alternative options. And I especially appreciated the commenters who “defended” not changing up my morning routine, because yes, the struggle is real in the mornings and I refuse to negotiate with my (now) 3-year-old before I’ve had my coffee! It’s not an option to rinse the cup outside or at daycare, so at the end of the day, I took Alison’s advice and changed nothing. Not only do I have some seniority in my position at the office, but I’m also the oldest in a recent influx of pregnancies and new babies among my coworkers – so I will continue to carry the cup with pride, secure in my conviction that I’m doing a social good and hopefully helping the other moms on my team (if only a little bit)!

4. I’m missing out on work conversations because I don’t smoke (#3 at the link)

I had forgotten about the Friends episode some commenters mentioned and I am an avid watcher of the program.

John was very good at his job prior to being promoted. What I meant by being “promoted out of his competency” (a term I was introduced to on AAM) was that it is difficult for him to change his mindset and have to manage his friends, interact with those who are not his “friends,” discipline staff, and be aware of how the whole department functions rather than getting input from a select few .

The smoke breaks are social, he is not going out there to hold “a meeting” and make others uncomfortable. He is a nice guy and they like spending time with him so he would be missed if he stopped going. The breaks lead to work conversations and chit chat, particularly when he and Jane walk to and from the break. My health issues are not severe enough to warrant ADA involvement.

I did not speak to John specifically about this issue and I also realized after reading the comments that for those not in his friend group his demeanor can come across as animosity, or at least indifference, which I do not believe is intentional. I did end up speaking to him about an incident where he did not communicate specific information related to my job duty but did to others who had no involvement, and he seemed to be somewhat taken aback so I don’t think he would have been receptive to having a discussion about his smoke breaks. I do plan to speak to another director, who is also above him, about my concerns. They will be dividing up the director duties at John’s level so this is a good time to have that conversation.

It’s “where are you now?” month at Ask a Manager, and all December I’m running updates from people who had their letters here answered in the past.

There will be more posts than usual this week, so keep checking back throughout the day.

Remember the letter-writer who was stably employed but internally screaming (#2 at the link)? Here’s the update.

Your advice and the responses to my initial letter were very insightful and validating, and it did help me accept the fact that I just don’t like this job very much. I have less than a year until my retirement account is vested so I’m not planning on leaving before then (unless I come across a really amazing opportunity) but working towards a mental expiration date is helpful.

At the same time, the spiraling I mentioned in my initial letter has, if anything, intensified. Whenever I make even minor mistakes, like submitting an expense sheet with math errors or populating the wrong column in a spreadsheet – annoying but not emergencies – I can’t help dwelling on it and feeling really stupid for a while. As minor as they are, they add up and I don’t want to be the person who submits unreliable work – even when I *think* I’m checking myself, somehow things still slip by that are glaringly obvious in retrospect (the recent letter about double-checking work also applies to me). And often when I ask clarifying or follow-up questions, I feel like I should somehow already know the answer – even when the answer is something I hadn’t even considered, which then makes me feel dumb for not thinking of it. It’s almost like the longer I work there, instead of feeling more secure in my expertise, I feel like more of a failure when I get something wrong (or just need information that, realistically, I have no way of knowing prior to asking). I’m creating a handbook for my position with step-by-step instructions for my recurring projects and my initial pitfalls so I know to avoid them in the future, and having it all written out is calming. But it doesn’t necessarily help with avoiding mistakes in the first place, or for moments where I need to exercise judgment.

Maybe I just haven’t been there long enough yet (the person before me was there for decades, so I feel like my ineptitude is even more glaring). Or maybe this is run-of-the-mill imposter syndrome, and I’m not used to it because I felt useful and needed at my last job, and had been there long enough that I didn’t spend so much time and energy second-guessing myself. Either way, it’s all further evidence that this isn’t the job for me. It also makes me think I should talk to a therapist and figure out the root causes of these feelings. No one has told me my employment is in jeopardy, and there are elements of my job that I enjoy and know I’m good at. But they tend to be one-time outliers, like thinking through how to improve a system, and not the rote tasks that make up the bulk of my day.

I wish I had a more upbeat response, but right now I’m kind of in a holding pattern and focused on keeping my head up at work and having an enriching life outside the office. If anyone has advice about how to stop spiraling, I’d appreciate it.

It’s “where are you now?” month at Ask a Manager, and all December I’m running updates from people who had their letters here answered in the past. Here are four updates from past letter-writers.

1. My boss keeps bringing her sick child to work

I tried to talk to my boss about her bringing her sick child to work with her. I tried to start with a lighthearted “they should be home watching the Price is Right,” but she shut down the conversation with a tirade about how hard it is to run a business and have kids, so I dropped the issue. Since then, I could tell that she’s had a shorter and shorter fuse, so I avoided bringing it up. I think her child must have had a good stretch of not being sick, because I didn’t see them for a while.

Unfortunately, she then scheduled to have her business renovated. The working conditions were by no means safe, but she refused to close. I brought up the safety issues multiple times, trying to frame it as “how can we figure this out together,” but she would throw up her hands and say that people would just have to deal with it. Another downside of the renovations is that she’s been so stressed about it that she turned me into her “emotional release valve.” She would lecture me for not doing things I was never told about, immediately blamed for things other people did, and whenever I fixed something she would refuse to acknowledge that I had fixed it and instead just find something else to complain about.

Long story short, I quit and cited unsafe working conditions. I also filed a health and safety complaint with the labor board.

Thank you for the advice (and all of the suggestions and support from other readers). Hopefully my next job will be better.

2. My employee wants to be promoted into a job that doesn’t exist here (and probably shouldn’t) (#2 at the link)

I followed your advice exactly. I told the employee that it would be very hard for us to make a case for the role, and if we were successful, the role would probably be moved to a different department. I was also honest about his current qualifications and how he’d need to close a gap between his current qualification and what’s needed in the role he wanted. I indicated that if he still wanted to pursue this, the first step would be to draft a document that actually makes his case. I also said that the easiest way for him to get this job, if he really wants a job like the one he’s creating, would like be to find it somewhere else where it currently exists (or exists as closely as possible to his ideal job).

I left all this in his court. I’ve heard nothing on this. However, this conversation ended up redirecting the employee. Rather than pursuing this job he’d imagined for himself, he has a renewed interest in his current job, even with regards to parts of his job that he didn’t previously have interest in. He seems to be happy for the moment.

Thank you very much for replying to my letter and your excellent advice!

3. My company has no reporting structure and no training

I’m happy to report that I took your (and your readers’) advice and walked away. I thought that was probably what I needed to do, but it was so nice to hear it from someone else when I felt like maybe I was giving up too soon.

When I gave notice at my old job, Malcolm’s reaction was shock. “But I didn’t think you were that unhappy!” was what he said. As if I hadn’t, more than once, told him “I cannot do my job like this and we have to change things.” He tried to counteroffer and promised to give the changes a try, but I knew he’d never follow through and politely declined.

I handed off my projects, checked in with those people periodically to see if they were doing ok or needed help, and otherwise took my hands off the wheel. I didn’t earn much those two weeks (we got paid based on chargeable hours), but it was worth it for the break.

I did a pretty honest exit interview and gave Malcolm some feedback for what would have kept me from leaving. I hope it helps my replacement, who was one of the team leads, is great at her job, and could really improve things if given the chance.

I’m now working for a private company in a role that is more suited to my professional skillset. Compensation is similar, I’m on salary (no overtime!), and I don’t have to manage people. I’m very happy!

4. My boss keeps asking for rides home

Funny enough, there is no update. Since writing that, he has not asked for a ride. He ended up getting a new vehicle and has not had any issues with it, knock on wood. He’s still a quirky and awkward man, but I haven’t had to give him rides anywhere. There have been a couple instances where we go off site somewhere and he has asked if we want to ride together, and I just always say no I’m taking my own car, and that’s that.

It’s “where are you now?” month at Ask a Manager, and all December I’m running updates from people who had their letters here answered in the past.

There will be more posts than usual this week, so keep checking back throughout the day.

Remember the letter-writer whose coworker was working alone overnight despite explicit instructions not to? Here’s the update.

Your advice was really helpful, as were some of the comments (though many assumed that my colleague was making drugs after hours? Which is a wild thing to jump to, in my opinion!).

So a couple of quick notes:

A few commenters guessed correctly that safety isn’t actually my job, just something that was assigned to me because someone needed to do it. When I wrote in, all of my knowledge was based on personal research and reading guidance materials. I was in a position to make recommendations but I didn’t have any authority. I scheduled a meeting with my boss to talk about what that meant for me, legally, and his stance was that at the end of the day, I’m not on the hook for us being out of compliance. Making the company aware of safety issues was, at the end of the day, just a nice thing for me to do to help protect my colleagues. It’s the responsibility of the company to hire a trained safety specialist to manage compliance, and once we have the capital to make that happen, he will. In the meantime, he just wanted me to make sure that no one was storing open bottles of ethanol next to a soldering iron or wearing open-toed high heels while making 12M hydrochloric acid solution.

ALSO: THAT THING ABOUT OSHA NOT KICKING IN UNTIL YOU HAVE 11 EMPLOYEES IS A MYTH! OSHA guidance becomes mandatory as soon as you have TWO employees. The 11-employee thing is about reporting and posting injuries with the 300, 300A, and 301 logs.

Some people insisted that staying at the lab late was a definite, sure sign that my colleague was up to something nefarious, and he couldn’t possibly be a “good” coworker if he was having emotional outbursts or breaking rules. This is a thing I’ve noticed a lot while reading AAM comments: people tend to jump to the worst conclusions about what’s happening in the background, and have a really hard time believing that people can be complicated. My colleague has saved my butt more times than I can count, he is a team player to a fault, extremely detail oriented, and great to work with. Behaving badly in one area, or for a specific, limited time frame, does not erase that. (Note from Alison: Thank you pointing this out.)

The actual update:

I did end up mentioning it to my boss. My thought at the time was that, even if I wasn’t legally on the hook for anything, if he did get hurt or sick from working alone, I would never be able to forgive myself. I focused on the legal aspect when I wrote in originally because I felt like I didn’t have standing to say anything on any other basis, in part because he had insisted so vehemently that it was none of my business. Reading the responses helped me realize that actually, yeah, it was my business, for a whole slew of reasons.

It didn’t get fixed immediately, but I think coming forward helped flag the larger issue for my boss and his supervisor, who were able to communicate to him how big of an issue his general behavior had been over the previous few months. I don’t want to share too much of his business, but he was dealing with some really severe personal things and basically wasn’t able to sleep at all. Once he realized that we weren’t going to let it go, he made an effort to address the personal stuff, and over the next few months things got measurably better.

I want to be really clear about this: he wasn’t just being a jerk for fun or because he doesn’t care about people. He was dealing with things that no one should ever have to deal with, some of which were systemic and outside of his control, and it took tremendous effort for him to address those things (Extremely redacted version: a medical professional almost killed him through pure ineptitude and ego. Anyone here with a chronic, invisible illness is probably familiar with how hard it is to get doctors to admit that they made a mistake, or to listen to you about your symptoms.)

Things are much better now! I got some additional, real training on lab safety, I have a better understanding of the expectations for my role, and my colleague is back to working normal hours and being a pleasure to be around.