boss runs hot and cold, collecting cash to give to staff, and more

by Alison Green on November 25, 2024

It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…

1. My boss runs hot and cold

I work in a mid-size non-profit as a fundraiser. I’ve been in this field for 20+ years and am used to the pressure that comes with this job. I joined this organization a year ago and have been successful. I’ve met my fundraising goals, implemented a few new projects, and built strong relationships with donors. That said, I’ve never been more stressed or anxious in a job and I don’t know if I can stay here.

My boss is combative and very hot and cold. One day she will yell at me, tell me that she “hates my work,” and tell me that I waste her time. Other days she will tell me that I am doing great and is very friendly. She has said things like, “I am combative because I care.” When I first started, she told me that her last team complained to HR about her, HR told her who said what, and everyone who spoke up is no longer working here. She implies that she fired them because of what they said. She also has told me that “they couldn’t hack it here.”

I attend a lot of events with donors as part of my job and when we were working on seating for a small dinner, she told me that I shouldn’t be seated next to a donor because “you aren’t fun.” She made this comment multiple times in front of a colleague. It was embarrassing. The purpose of the dinner was to cultivate and fundraise for the organization. I need to sit next to people to do my job.

Part of my job is to plan events to cultivate and steward new donors. I came up with a new type of event, got it approved by her, and invited people to attend. After the invitations went out, my boss told me the CEO “is very mad at you. You should have gotten this approved.” She had approved the event, and she got angry at me when I voiced my confusion. I don’t have meetings with the CEO and never get anything approved directly from him.

These are just a few examples from this month.

I feel like I am constantly failing even though I am meeting my goals. Am I being too sensitive? My spouse suggested that I talk to HR, but I worry that I will be fired because of what she has told me about the last team. Do you have any advice?

Find a new job and get out of there. Talking to HR about a bad manager is risky under the best of circumstances: at best, their power to do anything is often limited, and at worst, it can get back to your manager and cause tension in that relationship with. In this case, HR already has a track record of disclosing complaints to her and not preventing her from retaliating against the complainers. HR isn’t an option when you know that history.

Your boss is a jerk who is never going to support you, and as long as you stay in this job you’re going to feel stressed and insecure. The best thing you can do is to get out.

2. I’m not trying to blame anyone, I just want to fix mistakes

I’m having a strange recurring issue at work that I don’t know how to approach. Let’s say members on my team build teacups. The teacups have to be built to exact specifications or they don’t work right.

I am the subject matter expert on building teacups, but my boss assigns builds to people randomly. Some people make the same mistake on the builds over and over, which causes problems when customers try to use the teacups. I’m not tasked with reviewing builds, which in itself is a problem. I do try to catch problems if I can, but I don’t have the bandwidth to catch them all.

When a build is found to have a problem, my first question is, who built the teacup? If the same mistakes are being made repeatedly, I want to look at retraining or going over our guides to see if they need to be clarified.

My boss has started to get angry at me for asking who built the teacup. A serious problem with a teacup build came to light yesterday, and in response to my question of who built it, she snapped that it didn’t matter who built it.

I think it does matter, especially if the same person is making the same build mistakes, because I would like to retrain or go back through the steps with that person. Relying on me to find errors is not sustainable; I’m covering several jobs at the moment and everyone else on the team is new.

I’m not looking for someone to blame; I want to fix the process so we can cut down the error rate. I also don’t want to keep fixing the same mistakes over and over again, when the person doing the build should not be making the same mistake over and over again.

I don’t know how to approach this with my boss. I had the same problem at a previous job. I don’t know how to communicate that I’m not looking for someone to blame, I want to fix whatever in our process is leading to the same errors.

Have you said to your boss explicitly, “I’m not looking for anyone to blame or get in trouble. I’m asking so that I know if we need to retrain so we have fewer errors in the long run”? If not, say that.

But if you’ve said that and it hasn’t changed anything, then combined with the fact that you got this same feedback at a previous job, I suspect there’s something about the way you’re communicating that is coming across as blamey, even though you don’t intend it to. For what it’s worth, “who built this?” both is a reasonable question to ask and can easily sound like, “I’m asking because they need to know this is unacceptable.” So you might try softening your wording — for example, “I’d like to give whoever built this some tips on how to avoid it — do we know who I should talk to?” That’s less efficient to say, but it’ll probably land differently.

3. Collecting cash to give to staff

I work as a staff member in an academic department at a large state university. We have 10 staff members, including fiscal specialists, advisors, communications specialists, etc. We eliminated receptionists, secretaries, and other more traditional positions years ago. But, dating back to when we had a department secretary and office assistant, there is a tradition of the faculty passing the hat to collect money to give in cash as a Christmas present to us staff (and the sum can be fairly significant, especially because two of us have always opted out, which means more money goes to the others). Of the staff, four of the us have PhDs; a couple make more money than the lowest-paid faculty members who are chipping in for these gifts.

I’m always fighting to have staff seen as equals with faculty. I find this variation on tipping to be demeaning, and I’m frustrated that it continues (because some of the staff just want the money). Am I being oversensitive?

I don’t think you’re being oversensitive, but I also think you’re probably fighting a losing battle as long as the other staff members want to continue the tradition.

4. Recruiter said candidates lie about needing visa sponsorship

I am hiring for a new member of my team working within a small department in a very large university. I’ve done hiring in this role before and this is my first time using our university’s recruiters to help lighten my workload in the process.

We receive a lot of applications from people who are students in a masters program at our school, who have only worked outside of the U.S. in the past. This is very common for this role as it is classified as a STEM role by the government (it’s not) which means it does technically qualify for an O-1 visa. However, we do not sponsor visas within our department.

We have questions in our application system that ask if an applicant will need sponsorship now or in the future. As long as they answer no, I accept them as a viable candidate and I’ve never thought twice about it. When I was speaking with a recruiter about our role, he remarked that we had many international candidates. When I brushed that off because I don’t really care, he reiterated that “we do not sponsor” and then followed up with “people lie on those questions all the time.” That part made me uncomfortable. I was in a meeting with my boss and a more senior recruiter and no one else reacted.

I made a joke about how candidates could technically lie about anything, but I’m still thinking about his comment and if I should have said something then or should say something now. For what it’s worth, I’ve ignored his advice completely and am interviewing some great candidates.

People lie on all sorts of questions, which is why you verify the things that matter. As it happens, this one is easily solvable because employers are required by law to verify new hires’ ability to work legally in the U.S. before they start work, so if someone is lying about not needing a sponsor, you’ll find that out pretty quickly.

In your shoes, I’d sure as hell be wondering if that recruiter is rejecting all international applicants on the grounds that they might need sponsorship even if they don’t — and if that’s the case, he’s violating federal law, which prohibits discriminating based on national origin. It might be interesting to ask him — or his boss — if he is in fact doing that.

5. I think our doctor’s note policy is illegal

My company is mostly remote, but has recently begun a policy where employees in cities with enough employee density come into a coworking space once a month. I have no problem with the policy — it’s great to see people, while still working mostly remotely! However, our HR team, in an attempt to stamp out any possible edge cases where an employee might not be able to come in for coworking on this day, has implemented a bunch of rules that are annoying in some cases (for example, if your childcare falls through and you need to stay home, you must use one of your PTO days, even if you can work with your kids around), and possibly not legal in the one I’m writing about.

Specifically, if you’re sick and need to stay home on the coworking day, you’re required to send a doctor’s note to HR. In my city and the city where the company is headquartered (San Francisco and New York City), there are laws stating you can’t require a doctor’s note unless an employee is out sick for more than three days. These laws are pretty easy to find with a simple Google search. Our regular sick time policy in fact states that a doctor’s note is only required if you’re out more than three days, but the policy for the coworking days states that if you’re out just that day you must provide a note. I’ve heard of at least one employee who needed to stay home sick on a coworking day, and was pinged by multiple people in HR (including the head of HR) saying they must submit a doctor’s note, and generally giving them a hard time about needing to stay home.

Is there a (tactful) way to bring up that we may be running afoul of local employment laws with this policy? Am I missing something?

I’d say it this way: “I’m concerned that requiring a doctor’s note if someone is sick on a coworking day violates the law in San Francisco and New York City, both of which prohibit requiring doctor’s notes unless the person is out three days or more.” You could add, “I don’t want us to run afoul of the law, and I think we likely need to change that to comply.”

This is the same matter-of-fact “whoops, we might be getting this wrong” framing that you’d use for a concern that felt less fraught (like if you needed to point out that you were using the wrong deadline for a city tax filing or something else similarly boring).

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{ 29 comments }

{ 29 comments… read them below or add one }

  1. Daphne*

    LW2-
    Are you doing root cause analysis on all build problems and identifying trends? Bc if you jump right to retraining individuals without confirming that a training problem is the issue, then you won’t be fixing the problem. You should have a root cause analysis process that includes collecting the operator, but also collecting other information.

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    1. Bambue*

      Is this also something where you have flagged the larger goal to your manager and ask for assistance in creating a strategy? Laying out the problem of inconsistent quality and it’s impacts and ask what their thoughts on solutions might be. It might reveal differences in priorities, or a different approach to training that doesn’t feel as blame-y to people.

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      1. Ellie*

        Yes, the way you take the blame away is by lifting the data up a level so that no names are involved. OP, you have a couple of options, but I’d start by cataloguing what errors were made and when across a decent length of time, to see if quality really is a problem or not (it might not be – some processes run faster when not every problem is caught and that’s not a bad thing). Then I’d develop a training plan to address the main failings that you’re seeing. Since your manager won’t identify people, you’ll have to train them all. Or, could come to your manager with suggestions such as you reviewing all the complicated teacup designs, or similar.

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    2. AcademiaNut*

      It also makes a big difference whether this process is part of your job, and if your colleagues know that it’s a part of your job.

      If you are tasked with analyzing failures and retraining you people don’t directly manage, they should be told that this is part of your task, and that it’s diagnostic rather than accusatory. Then, within that system, you can work with your boss on the best way to approach it, both practically and in a soft skill way that doesn’t upset people unnecessarily.

      On the other hand, it sounds like this might not actually be part of your job, and you’re taking it on yourself to investigate and act. Does your boss want you tracking down individual teapot makers and retraining them and going through the errors with them, or does he simply want you to give him the information, for him to decide how to handle it? If you don’t have your boss’s backing for this, then it might be something that is useful, but not your job, and in that case your coworkers and your boss are likely to respond badly.

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      1. Kella*

        Yes, I was very confused by this part of OP’s letter: “I’m not tasked with reviewing builds, which in itself is a problem. I do try to catch problems if I can, but I don’t have the bandwidth to catch them all.”

        This seems to say OP has decided independently that catching these problems and trying to find the source of them is something they should do, but it is not actually part of their job to do that. It’s possible the manager’s frustration stems from OP taking on managerial tasks when they don’t have the authority to do that.

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  2. Caramel & Cheddar*

    2) I definitely could have written this letter. I generally don’t care if people make a mistake in and of itself, but I do care that they fix it and that they learn from the mistake so they don’t repeat it. If it’s happening over and over, I do the same as you and double check whether our documentation is clear, they need additional training, or if there’s something else going on that I’m unaware of. I’m also really clear when training what the common mistakes are eith certain tasks so people can be on the lookout. Lastly I point out the mistakes I make myself because nobody’s perfect and I’ve found people feel a bit reassured that the SME isn’t perfect either.

    The only thing I’d add to the suggestions here is that sometimes it’s genuinely a performance issue and you need to be able to share that with the boss since it doesn’t sound like you have supervisory powers. Maybe your boss doesn’t ultimately care about the errors because that staff person has some other responsibility that trumps the teapot stuff, and that’s definitely their call, but it’s a call they should make with all the information at hand. Getting managers to actually keep their staff accountable for their work quality is really difficult IME but all you can do is share feedback and hope for the best.

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    1. Captain dddd-cccc-ddWdd*

      I wondered if the boss already knows who’s making all the mistakes, and is protecting them from a performance process for some reason – so then boss gets oddly defensive on behalf of the underperforming person when OP keeps asking “which teapot builder did this mistake”.

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  3. Artemesia*

    A good fundraiser is gold; they are hard to find and you will be able to find a job somewhere that isn’t crazy. You are better off looking before she fires you or badmouths you or makes you life anymore miserable. This woman is nuts and thrives on hurting people. Take your amazing skills somewhere else.

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    1. MsM*

      Honestly, LW, you’ve probably got enough experience to be an executive director somewhere yourself if you want. You don’t need to put up with someone who wants you constantly off-balance and questioning yourself because you’re better than her and she knows it.

      (Once you are safely out of there, though, consider sending a letter directly to the CEO and/or the board explaining why you left. HR might not be on the side of the people she pushed out, but they might be interested to know why they’re having retention problems.)

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  5. Daria grace*

    #1 this place is so full of bees you could run a whole honey factory off it. There’s multiple layers of problems here. It’s not just that your boss is a jerk which is more than enough reason to get out of there. There’s also that she’s unable to assess what good work looks like- she keeps changing her mind and fun is not the primary thing you’re looking for in a senior fundraiser for example. Your HR that allows people to be fired in reprisal is also a huge problem. Even if your bad boss were to win the lottery and disappear tomorrow, a spineless, underskilled HR is likely to continue to contribute to problems with their replacement and other staff. It will also likely become increasingly hard for you to bring passion to fundraising for an org where horrible things are happening.

    Experienced fundraising professionals are usually in demand and you likely have skills you could transfer to adjacent roles like sales. There’s very unlikely to be a way to fix the situation you’re in, move onto better things.

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  6. Eryn*

    For #1: Do they KNOW the people who complained got fired? Because if that info is just coming from the boss, it would be good to verify if she’s putting a chilling effect on going to HR to protect her own butt.

    But either way, I’d definitely be looking to be elsewhere & then decide if I wanted to ask for an exit interview.

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    1. Roland*

      I has the same thought. Don’t believe what she says justj like that, she has no credibility. May be worth asking tenured coworkers what happened to previous reports of this boss.

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    2. WS*

      Yeah, they may have moved on so as not to have to deal with this boss and she’s trying to intimidate you (and shore up her ego) by saying she fired them.

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  7. IrishMN*

    About the last letter: in these types of situations I am always curious – assuming LW doesn’t work in HR and sends this email to the general HR mailbox, what would you do if they simply don’t respond or email back to say something to the effect, “You don’t work in HR, you don’t need to worry about it.”?

    Is this something that could be anonymously reported (although if you were the only person asking they would probably know you reported it)?

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    1. Bilateralrope*

      If that’s the response HR gives, then the only option left is to have a lawyer bring it up after the LW is personally impacted by this illegal policy.

      Reply ↓
  8. Bilateralrope*

    For LW1, I’d be tempted to complain to HR between getting a new job and giving notice. Just to see if I can get a nice settlement over the predicted retaliation.

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  9. Lemonwhirl*

    LW 1 – Please run. Your manager is way out of line and you do not deserve to be treated this way. I hope you are able to get out soon and in the meantime to keep the negativity and toxicity out of your head.

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  10. TheBunny*

    LW#1

    I totally relate. I have a boss who runs hot and cold too (although not as bad as yours) and it’s impossible to ever feel on an even keel with them.

    One day my boss is fine, the next she’s acting like my existence annoys her…and she’s telling me I’m too friendly to the team…which was odd feedback, I’m never the too friendly one. :)

    I don’t have anything super helpful to add on how to deal with this…I just wanted to let you know that even when it’s not yelling, a boss like this makes it impossible to ever feel like you are doing a good job.

    If my boss also belittled and yelled…I’d leave the job, 100%. Best of luck!

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  11. Combien*

    Anyone who’s in the situation of contributing money to staff holiday funds–particularly if you’re in academia–how much do you contribute? Our department has four staff members and around three dozen faculty. I’m an assistant professor and feel awkward asking colleagues. I have no idea whether $40 or $100 is more appropriate. TIA.

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    1. Jessica in higher ed*

      When my academic department at a public university did this, our then-chair laid out some suggested amounts by rank (while also emphasizing that the whole thing was optional and secret), and it was $50 for assistant professors.

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    2. KeinName*

      I find this highly problematic! Check out Utrecht university’s implementation of the Dutch Recognition and Rewards programme – they eliminated distinction between academic and non-academic staff, because research is a team effort. I‘m support staff with a PhD and would find it really condescending. Our researchers, even young ones, earn a good living, as do I. But those on temporary contracts should not be made to pay money to those in permanent employment, nor do I want handouts. I’m fine with being paid for me work by my employer (granted I’m in Europe, in a great welfare system).
      You’ll never get the respect of academics if they tip you.
      You could send out the link to the Utrecht system, and the colleagues who still want the tips could be given an official bonus by the department head.

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  12. Jinni*

    LW #4 – yes people do lie about sponsorship. I’ve had friends that do this on the theory that they are such great candidates that the employer will change their mind. It sometimes works (in private employment).

    THAT SAID, I also know a lot of people who were born here and their parents promptly went home/somewhere else abroad. So they have foreign work/undergrad credentials AND are eligible to work in the US.

    His thinking is problematic. You’re overriding him, but I’d worry others aren’t.

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  13. John*

    LW2 – is it maybe a matter of when you’re asking the question? Based on “A serious problem with a teacup build came to light yesterday, and in response to my question of who built it, she snapped that it didn’t matter who built it” it sounds like that’s your first question when the issue came up. This depends on field/job of course but I would assume the first priority is fixing the issue, and then later you can figure out how to train people to prevent it. So if you’re asking about who caused the issue when your boss is trying to fix the issue, that could be the source of your boss’s irritation.

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  15. J*

    LW #2, teacups:

    You could consider a more strictly depersonalised quality control or post-mortem process. If you can’t do formal reviews before shipping your teacup, maybe you need a regular meeting where everyone presents the teacups they’re working on. Even better if you can do a quarterly review of all teacups that shipped, say, in the last three months. Then you’re not asking to review only the lousy cup-builders; its much less accusatory and still likely to surface recurring problems.

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  16. Name's Seuss*

    That’s very harsh, and doesn’t give people space to grow from eg learning how to communicate in an emotionally abusive household.

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  17. Get out*

    #1: Not only has HR proven to be useless (giving names, not solving the situation, not protecting employees from retaliation), but your boss is actively trying to break your confidence.
    Also, she prounds herself that she got rid of people speaking up. There are people who really think that is a sign of power and strength, so please do not fall into the trap of thinking she possibly couldn’t have meant it “like that”.
    Take all those things at face value. Get out.

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  18. KillDoctorNotes*

    Ugh, why are there still companies that require sick notes for anything less than an extended absence? Do they not understand how difficult they are to get? Or how many times a relatively minor but contagious or unpleasant illness doesn’t need or benefit from a doctor’s visit, especially if it’s something the employee has already been told how to treat? Especially these days when most doctor offices won’t give notes for anything without an appointment because they don’t get paid without an appointment.

    Even with longer absences, it can be difficult unless provided retroactively. Having a planned surgery with a two week recovery time? Require a note if you want, although if you can’t trust your employee perhaps that’s the sign of a bigger issue. But a two week absence from an emergency hospitalization? That note’s likely not happening until after you’re back.

    Reply ↓

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