updates: boss gave me hush money, don’t want to participate in my office’s steps challenge, and more

by Alison Green on December 9, 2024

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 five updates from past letter-writers.

1. My boss gave me thank-you money in secret, but it feels like hush money (#3 at the link)

I thought both pieces of advice were solid options and landed between the two. I spent considerable amount of time asking myself if I keeping the money would prevent me from functioning authentically in the future should I have issues. I decided it would not.

I chose to assign good intentions since I had no tangible reason not to although my “spidey senses” were still tingling. Not taking the money seemed it may create bigger issues. Things seemed fine, and he seemed very pleased I accepted it.

Fast forward six months to yesterday. Someone on the leadership team reached out to provide notification of their role change in the company, and provide a personal word of warning to watch my back with the seasonal employees. Additionally information provided me with the backdrop for why I was given such a large amount of secret thank you money.

Apparently one of the seasonal employees was jealous of me and operating behind the scenes to sabotage me and my role. Leadership became aware of this toxic situation and talked about it among themselves. However the key authority personnel (the Money Giver) willingly chose to not address it because it didn’t personally affect him. Arguments among leadership ensued, pressure was applied to support me in my leadership role with said staff and Money Giver turned a blind eye.

So- all the spidey-tingles I experienced that something was amiss behind the scene were correct. The first commenter to my post was also correct. The money wasn’t hush money. It was “I f’ed up money.” He gave it to me to make himself feel better. But that’s okay. I bought brakes for my car, I now know my discernment was sharp, that leadership here is a mess and same seasonal employees are coming back. Leadership displayed their values – which do not align with mine. I am now job searching to find a place that more closely aligns with my values. It’s still a win for me!

Thanks for the advice!

2. My boss told me to meet weekly with my coworker … but my coworker won’t do it

I took your advice and emailed Jim and pushed for in-person meetings, especially since our boss asked me to establish regular face-to-face time. Unfortunately, he didn’t respond. My attempts to catch him in person about this did not work out.

I went back to my boss one last time. She explained that while she can mandate meetings with Jim, she believes it would be punitive for her to require meetings between the two of us, and feels it would be better for Jim and me to resolve this together without her intervening. My boss also clarified that Jim’s preference for email isn’t personal but part of his standard approach. He likes to process conversations and reflect before responding. Side note: Earlier this year, Jim told our boss that he didn’t see the value in regular 1:1 meetings. Boss had to put in a lot of work to get him to agree to meet regularly with her!

Over the past couple of weeks, we’ve had two communication issues where Jim expressed concerns through email, IM, or via my direct report instead of speaking to me directly. This has led to confusion and required me to initiate in-person conversations to clarify and resolve the issues. The second instance was particularly problematic, as he discussed his concerns with four other people during a meeting I wasn’t part of, including my direct report. He then messaged both my boss and me simultaneously about the issue without first talking to me. Both times this happened, I was completely surprised by his concerns and caught off-guard. This has been very frustrating.

I’m disappointed that my boss won’t require Jim to meet with me and that Jim hasn’t made communication easier. I still don’t understand why this has turned into such a “thing,” or why I am the one who is solely responsible for trying to better communicate with Jim. I hate to say it, but I am a youngish woman and he is an older man — I sincerely hope that our demographics have nothing to do with this, but who knows? Regardless, I sent him a final, direct request to meet bi-weekly, given the recent issues. I’m waiting for his response.

To address your question on verbosity: ironically, Jim is known for storytelling and lengthy explanations during meetings, so that label might suit him more than me — though I could be biased!

3. I don’t want to participate in my office’s steps challenge

I wrote in about how to manage a steps challenge at work when I was concerned about being pressured to participate. Your advice was spot on in helping to give me a breezy way to respond when two people did push me about signing up.

As is often the case for many who reach out for advice, I realized this one thing was a symptom of a larger culture issue. When I sat back to think about it, I realized I didn’t feel like I fit in with the office culture and didn’t like my work enough to keep trying to fit in. I decided to start job hunting and asked an old boss for help. He put me in touch with a friend of his who connected me with a company that did similar work but was a much better culture fit. Especially in this market, I was glad it was easy for me to quickly find another job that made me much happier.

4. Is it appropriate to want to be told when my manager won’t be in the office?

In the 10 years since this letter, my attitude toward my work and I think in general, Americans’ attitudes towards work and work location have really shifted. Speaking generally, I care less about where people are than if they do good work in a timely manner, and communicate appropriately.

For the specifics of the original question, I did take Alison’s advice that as long as things were getting done, then it had nothing to do with me. I remained in the role for several years, and looking back, I admire my manager for living her own life and also being a supportive boss, who has since been a reference several times.

Due to the nature of the field I’m in now, I’m likely to work for small (tiny) organizations in the future, though they won’t be family businesses. I think more years in the working world have helped me realize what is and what isn’t mine to care about.

5. Managers don’t know we can all read their private Slack channel

I wound up telling them that the Slack channel was open. I decided that they really needed to know. I told my acting manager who was one of the three in the channel. He started to cry. I received an apology from the chief of staff and the CEO thanked me for acting like a “grown-up.” My new manager didn’t understand my role and the leadership team continued to be toxic. I wound up playing my own personal game of survivor as everyone in my department started to leave one by one. It came down to me and one other woman. I left about a week before she did! I am now in a new position with a wonderful new boss. I appreciate everyone’s advice and continue to follow everyone’s stories on AAM!

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{ 69 comments }

{ 69 comments… read them below }

  1. Martin Blackwood*

    I dont know OP2’s boss, but i really dont get the difference between “mandating” meetings and “requiring” them. Mandatory comes from the word mandate, does it not? Am I missing nuiance or is this a OP2’s Boss Exclusive Usage? Anyways, this would drive me up the wall.

    1. Frank Doyle*

      Maybe the boss means that she can require Jim to meet with her (his boss), but not with the OP (his peer).

    2. Sarah*

      I’d be angry with the boss for putting me in such a futile position and causing such an adversarial relationship with Jim.

      I’d probably flat out say, if it isn’t important enough for you to require Jim to be there I am NOT going to push for it anymore.

      1. goddessoftransitory*

        I agree. Either Jim is subject to the same management as the LW or he isn’t, but if not she shouldn’t have to make corralling/translating his crap her second job.

        Hooray for him wanting to “process” through writing emails, but it clearly isn’t making things clearer or easier for anyone but Jim.

        1. Venus*

          I think email could still work for Jim if he sent emails to LW before telling everyone else. I still think he should occasionally meet with LW but there is another option that is better than the current state.

      2. Your Former Password Resetter*

        Definitely a responsibility without authority situation.

        OP’s boss needs to resolve this in some way:
        – Just order Jim to have these 15 minute meetings so OP can do their job.
        – Explain how exactly she expects OP to “resolve this together” with Jim when Jim is not cooperate. Though I’ll bet she doesn’t have a real idea either and is just making it OP’s problem.
        – Deal with the communication problems in some other way, and not making it OP’s problem anymore. How will she ensure that problems get raised and solved in time, or that there aren’t any miscommunications? Because the current system isn’t working well enough, so it needs to be fixed one way or another.

        1. StarTrek Nutcase*

          Definitely Jim stinks, but the manager is next level crappy. Another example of the kind of manager people quit over. I get being a manager can suck especially with regards personnel conflicts, but FFS that is exactly the manager’s job.

          1. Artemesia*

            The OP needs to be job searching; this management sucks and won’t get better. She doesn’t need to rush and can wait till something good comes along. Older man won’t agree that younger woman has any authority in the work place sounds like a form of sexual harassment. There is no point in staying in a place where it is impossible to get your job done and your manager doesn’t have your back. Jim is the classic missing stair.

            1. MigraineMonth*

              I think you mean sex discrimination. I agree, and the manager is definitely part of the problem. Giving your female reports the task of managing your male reports’ feelings is not acceptable.

          2. MigraineMonth*

            I said on the original that Jim didn’t sound like a missing stair, but it certainly seemed like their manager had decided “It’s easier to apply extra pressure to [reasonable person] to accommodate [unreasonable person] than it would be to hold [unreasonable person] to a normal standard.”

            Someone replied it was fanfic to say that the manager was putting pressure on the LW or trying to make her responsible for something she didn’t have authority to do.

      3. MCMonkeybean*

        Yeah, without any context I’d agree with the boss that arranging these kinds of meetings should usually be between the employees. But if the boss “had to put in a lot of work” to get Jim to agree to meet regularly with *her,* it’s certainly not reasonable to expect OP would be able to get him to agree to anything similar when she doesn’t have any authority over him.

    3. Jenesis*

      “She explained that while she can mandate meetings with Jim, she believes it would be punitive for her to require meetings between the two of us, and feels it would be better for Jim and me to resolve this together without her intervening.”

      I don’t think the boss means two different things. I think this means the reason she’s not giving Jim a direct instruction to meet with OP2 is because she believes Jim will see it as a “punitive” disciplinary action (when he is, in fact, doing his job poorly by making it hard for OP2 to communicate with him on overlapping work). Boss, for whatever reason, is upset by the thought that Jim will take offense to that, and she wants OP2 to make Jim comply but convey it in a way that it doesn’t hurt his feelings.

      It’s crappy management for sure, for all the reasons that have been previously listed.

    4. Myrin*

      The part you’re referring to doesn’t have anything to do with different meanings of the two words, it’s about the boss being able to require Jim to meet with her, since she’s the boss, but not with OP (who is not Jim’s boss but, I think more importantly in boss’s mind, is a third party regarding boss and Jim; boss seems to think she can only order things which directly pertain to her).
      I assume OP simply used two different words to not have the same word twice in quick succession.

  2. Frank Doyle*

    Sorry if this is being nitpicky, but with regard to OP1, the first person who called it “I F’ed up money” wasn’t a commenter, it was Alison herself, in her response.

    1. Jellyfish Catcher*

      The OP’s boss was the one who “F’ed up in not squashing the original sabotage. He tried to make up for that, in an gesture.
      Alison laid out the pros and cons of accepting the money. The OP was in a no win position either way, but felt at that time, that it was a genuine “thank you.”

      Maybe it was… or it wasn’t a thank you, or maybe everyone is just uncomfortable with the whole incident.
      Alison advised, BASED ON the situation and op’s sense of the situation.
      Nobody can do better than that.

    2. Jellyfish Catcher*

      The boss of the OP is the first person who originally “F’ed up”. They didn’t deal with the sabotage, then placed the OP in a no win situation, with the “secret bonus.” or possibly
      The OP stated that she felt that it was sincerely offered.
      Alison said yes based on the OP’s information. I would lean toward not accepting it. Alison, like all of us, is a human being.

      One of her “rules” is not to trash any posters; I assume that includes her.
      A more appropriate, mature reply would say that you disagree and why, etc.

      1. nnn*

        I think you are misreading. The commenter you are applying to is pointing out that Alison is the one who correctly called the situation originally.

      2. Myrin*

        What?
        Frank is reacting to this part in the update: “The first commenter to my post was also correct. The money wasn’t hush money. It was “I f’ed up money.””, saying that it wasn’t actually the first commenter on that letter who correctly called it that but actually Alison herself.

  3. Sara without an H*

    I’m disappointed that my boss won’t require Jim to meet with me and that Jim hasn’t made communication easier. I still don’t understand why this has turned into such a “thing,” or why I am the one who is solely responsible for trying to better communicate with Jim.

    OP#2 — If I were in your position, I think I’d start job hunting. You’re manager is making you take responsibility here without any authority. This does not bode well for your future. I’m not saying that you have to run like the wind, but I’d recommend that you update your resume and start looking discreetly at what else is out there.

    1. Peanut Hamper*

      Very much this. The manager is not managing as they should. I cannot help but feel that this is not the only problem LW will run into.

    2. goddessoftransitory*

      Agreed. Your manager seems to be making you a buffer between her and Jim–you are basically being asked to do her job without her authority or commiserate compensation.

      1. Bird names*

        Yup, all the headache, none of the compensation.
        And funny how Jim apparently can’t even use his email preference to raise issues with LW in a timely manner, before both *talking* and writing to other people about it first.

        1. Mockingjay*

          Funny how Jim has no problem talking to other people…

          Most of us have dealt with a “Jim” before. It’s not his age (I’m probably older than he is), it’s the fear/reluctance to work with competent people. Jim schleps along and produces reasonable quality work (assuming here), but relies on his seniority to avoid scrutiny, because “he’ll get it done” (eventually). Projects these days, however, are very collaborative and have a lot of just-in-time scheduling that requires a lot of people skills, teamwork, and accountability. Not Jim’s strong suit.

          Advice: OP2, Jim is only the symptom. The real issue is your boss. It’s time to start looking.

      2. EngineerRN*

        “…without her authority or *commiserate* compensation.”

        I think you meant “commensurate”, but thank you for the laugh at “commiserate compensation” to describe the pay of being a manager to a difficult person!

    3. Learn ALL the things*

      I agree. If OP is willing to make one last ditch effort, she could skip a level and go to her manager’s manager and say “Jim is refusing to meet with me, relaying messages through other people, and complaining about me in meeting’s I’m not in. Our manager is aware of the situation and not doing anything to help me resolve the issue. I don’t know what to do to make this situation better so that Jim and I can successfully collaborate on the company’s work, can you help me?” I don’t have high hopes that it would help and I’d be job searching either way, but it’s really the last thing left to try.

    4. Your Former Password Resetter*

      I don’t think this would rise to the level of job-hunting for me, but it’s definitely frustrating and a very bad look for the manager.

      1. Caution*

        It’s more than a bad look. Boss won’t manage Jim and is placing responsibility on OP. OP needs to understand that she cannot trust or rely on her boss. That is important information and, depending on her tasks, may have more influence on her daily work life than you’d expect.

      2. Nah*

        It is directly negatively impacting OP though, not just in that they can’t get answers to things that need to be shown in person, but that he is now seemingly actively hiding from them AND airing his grievances and issues to apparently everyone else on the team before bringing it up with OP themselves, to the point they were only added to a complaint being made directly to the manager! Imagine how that must look from an outside perspective, not knowing that he’s never brought up this issue before then and “blindsided” OP, but looks to anyone else that OP had such big issues that they weren’t addressing that they only bothered to look into fixing when he roped in their direct manager!

    5. Artemesia*

      The behavior is gendered and comes close to constituting a hostile workplace in the technical sense of the word. This missing stair isn’t going to change, so time to find a better job.

    6. Sparkles McFadden*

      Yes to all of this.

      Your boss is pretty much saying “I had to push to get Jim to respond to me, and now that he’s doing that, I don’t want to do something that might make my life harder. Therefore, I am making it your responsibility to force Jim to talk to you so I can classify it as your problem.” Since you have no authority to address the situation, it will always be like this. You just have to decide if you can continue to work there under such conditions.

  4. Wilbur*

    “The second instance was particularly problematic, as he discussed his concerns with four other people during a meeting I wasn’t part of, including my direct report. He then messaged both my boss and me simultaneously about the issue without first talking to me.”

    Jim doesn’t seem to have an issue having meetings with other people. OP needs to tell Jim he needs to discuss concerns with her before escalating. It’s a bad look for both of them.

    1. Zona the Great*

      Yes, I’d be telling my direct reports they may not meet with Jim without me there or my approval.

      1. Your Former Password Resetter*

        I don’t think the reports meeting with Jim is a problem.
        The problem is that he’s refusing to meet with OP, and not telling her the information she needs to do her job.

        1. Zona the Great*

          He’s circumventing the OP completely and having the conversations he needs to have with her with the DRs instead. It is very lacking in common professional courtesy.

          1. Artemesia*

            And it is sexist and intentional. If the manager isn’t going to deal with this, she needs to escalate above her manager around issues of hostile workplace and sexual discrimination AND needs to be looking for. a job.

    2. Carmina*

      Yeah, it’s one thing if he doesn’t like regular face-to-face meetings (not too fond of those myself TBH, they have a way of taking over the whole calendar, and I’m someone who thinks better in writing), but that doesn’t prevent one from raising issues immediately and directly with the interested party! Via IM or email or whatever! It is actually possible to email people and not copy their managers, believe it or not!

      So I think it’d make sense to drop the meeting angle but keep on insisting on what matters most: that concerns must be raised with the OP directly. And if he is known to be long-winded, and honestly kind of a jerk it sounds like, it might be a blessing in disguise to do it all in writing?

      Also, for the record, I would bet money that the demographics absolutely do have to do with this.

  5. Observer*

    #2 – Meeting issues

    You have two problems. One is Jim. And I would be willing to bet almost anything that the demographics have a LOT to do with the issue.

    But you have an even bigger problem, and that is your boss. At best she’s incompetent. Unless you have someone above her you can talk to and expect reasonable results, I’d start looking elsewhere.

    1. bleh*

      Ding ding ding. We have a winner. Jim is not meeting with you but with your reports? That means he has a problem with women managers (ask me how I know). Also, your manager is asking YOU to manage Jim, because they cannot or will not manage him themselves. You are not paid to manage Jim, and you do not have organization power to do so. I’d nope right out of there.

        1. Bird names*

          Sure, but that doesn’t absolve Jim and still means LW’s manager needs to manage or loop in somebody above her.

    2. Inkognyto*

      Jim seems to want to control the narrative.

      It’s far easier to control that when it’s a 1 sided viewpoint.

      Thus ’email’ where things can be modified and trimmed and worked on.

      Face to face means Jim needs to deal with it.

      I’d just make sure my boss was cc’d on every email that went to Jim.

    2. Lana Kane*

      Yeah I had to read a couple of times before it sunk in that crying boss was also shit talking boss. What a piece of work.

      1. OP #5*

        The best part is that boss has left and is now a leadership coach. Corporate America is a funny funny world.

        1. boof*

          Wow, haha, well hopefully not many people are hiring/listening to them. I don’t think “those who can’t do, teach” is any kind of universal maxim but it does appear to apply to a frustrating few!

          2. MigraineMonth*

            I think the actual lessons from this is “Anyone can call themselves a Leadership Coach or Life Coach, even if they’re truly terrible at it or have no experience” and “When you start near the top, you tend to fail even further up.”

    3. Wolf*

      Ikr? That’s a person who doesn’t feel bad about what he did, he only feels bad about experiencing consequences of his own actions.

  7. Cloud Wrangler*

    It boggles my mind when employees refuse to meet with their managers and managers that refuse to stop this behavior. I would never think I could just say no to a meeting with my boss.

    A member of my division formally complained because our boss didn’t just randomly come by for meetings. Uh, boss is busy, busy, busy. Also, boss has said repeatedly that if we are doing our job correctly we’re not going to be hearing much. But her door has always been open if we need her. Boss also maxes out any possible bonuses she is allowed to give.

    1. KB*

      100% this. Failing to meet when asked is failing to complete a very basic, easily-achieved goal. It’s one of the most non-subjective, documentable failures you can get. Unless “Jim” is extraordinarily valuable, I don’t understand why this simple task and follow-up wasn’t managed better.

    2. MigraineMonth*

      I had a manager who complained about the fact that I requested one-on-one meetings. (I’d suggested half an hour every other week.) He said it would be unfair to all his other reports because he was far too busy to meet with all of us, but it would be okay for a couple of months since I was a new employee.

      This was the same manager who loved to ramble, gossip and joke around so much that every one of his meetings ran at least half an hour over. No amount of agendas, announcing that I had a hard-stop or reminders we only had a few minutes left helped. After a few months I took to just announcing that I had to go and disconnecting from the Zoom call!

      So my boss was busy busy busy, but I think we all could figure out why. (He’d also made himself indispensable by insisting almost all interdepartmental communication go through him, and I cannot emphasize how insane that is for a department that’s only job is to *support other departments*.)

  8. e271828*

    LW #2, you have a boss problem even bigger than your Jim problem. Your boss is setting you up to fail by undermining your management of Jim, and Jim is working hard to undermine you by meeting with you direct reports without telling you while refusing to meet with you.

    If you think your grandboss would be useful here, that might be a path for escalation. But Jim sucks and your boss sucks and neither of them in going to change. Do email them constantly documenting everything Jim is refusing to do, and call it “refusing.” Keep copies of your emails somewhere not on the company’s servers in a place/account you alone control.

    And also, just get out of there. There are jobs that do not have Jim and your boss doing this weird dance around you. I don’t know what their deal is, but they’ve put you in the middle of a crappy dynamic and they’re making you pretzel yourself and you are certainly fully qualified for jobs that are not about catering to people like them.

    1. This*

      “they’ve put you in the middle of a crappy dynamic and they’re making you pretzel yourself ”
      And this is only working because OP IS actually pretzeling herself.

  9. Mik*

    OP4:

    “In the 10 years since this letter, my attitude toward my work and I think in general, Americans’ attitudes towards work and work location have really shifted.”

    Unfortunately not enough, not yet. The hypocrisy of someone higher in the hierarchy being able to spend most of the “work” day doing non-work activities while being strict with the work expectations of those lower in the hierarchy is still excused a lot, just like ten years ago. However, there is some pushback, mostly by the younger generations, rightfully expecting the same “focus on whether a reasonable amount of work is getting done rather than focusing on forcing butts ins eats or continuing to add more work for the sake of indirectly forcing butts to remain in seats” that your former manager enjoyed.

    Hopefully, Americans’ attitudes towards work can continue to shift away from hypocrisy and towards reasonable working conditions for all, without too much bumpiness or backwards turns in that road.

  10. Possum's mom*

    Seems like Jim has assumed leadership and your manager doesn’t care to correct his assumption. Get out .

  11. VP of Monitoring Employees' LinkedIn Profiles*

    OP2…

    I’m disappointed that my boss won’t require Jim to meet with me and that Jim hasn’t made communication easier. I still don’t understand why this has turned into such a “thing,” or why I am the one who is solely responsible for trying to better communicate with Jim.

    It makes no sense that the meeting “requirement” is one-sided (OP is required to meet with Jim, yet Jim is not required to meet with OP). How does Department Head expect the meetings to actually happen?

    1. Artemesia*

      Well if she were good at her job she’d be able to handle this. THAT nonsense is something I have seen several times in situations like this. A person is tasked with something and not given the authority to make it happen then, penalized for their lack of leadership.

      1. MigraineMonth*

        Funny how “catering to older men’s emotional needs” seems to be an unwritten job requirement for so many women. I’d say it’s practically systemic.

    2. Naomi*

      I think Captain Awkward has described this dynamic before: when one person is being reasonable (OP) and one is being unreasonable (Jim), the reasonable person gets pressured to fix things–because even though they’re not the one causing the problem, they’re the one who is more likely to be persuaded to change.

      In a social context, all you can really do is set boundaries with the unreasonable person. But this is a work context! The manager gets to tell Jim what to do! She’s just shirking her job by making OP do it instead.

  12. boof*

    LW2 “[my boss] feels it would be better for Jim and me to resolve this together without her intervening” – uuuuhg, this smells so much like “hey it’s easier for me if you do my job for me so just keep trying m’kay” – like the first iteration of attempting to work it out between you should have been it, its boss time. Boss should fire / manage out Jim if Jim consistently refuses to abide by standard professional communications.

    Also be sorely tempted to reply all to jim trash talking you without you around “Hello Jim; X is the reason Y. Please discuss questions about our work with me rather than people who are not directly involved, thank you!” Repeat ad nauseum “Jim, once again it is confusing when you do not talk to me about questions involving me, please do not do this”. Grey rock + cc manager + everyone else Jim pulls into these shenannigans.
    (I can’t help but think Jim might eventually be shamed into knocking this off even if you can’t force him not to)

  13. all the leaves are on the trees*

    LW2: My sympathies. I’ve got a coworker like this on a team we work with, and she is absolutely awful to deal with. She won’t read her emails — she tells you this upfront — she doesn’t really read her IMs, and getting her on a call means she berates you constantly. But we have to meet with her and discuss things, and she doesn’t really document. It’s a nightmare. We would be better off if she did just leave the contract like she’s been saying she should for months. We’d lose a subject matter expert, but the amount of time we spend dealing with her could be time we spend fixing her stuff and documenting it!

  14. Expectations*

    I just had a long post about how OP1 reads to someone who medically can’t drive eaten by the site. I don’t have the energy to recreate it. Suffice it to say she comes across as bananapants to me, and that’s coming from someone who lives in a place where traffic escalates quickly and who genuinely appreciates rides when available. People do not function with to the minute precision and an extra 10-15 minutes isn’t even going to register with someone who has likely missed buses that run once every 90 minutes because they had to use the bathroom or who missed the last bus of the day because the boss unexpectedly stopped by at just the wrong moment. Especially when they’re paying you for the ride (not objecting to that, but in my experience most people turn down gas money when offered and I’d feel that this is more of a business relationship than a favor which gives me more agency in the process). I had a lot more context and nuance in the original post, but these are the key points in a somewhat blunter tone.

  15. bertha*

    I am over here thinking I work too much, because I never thought you could say no to your boss over something as innocuous as asking you to meet one on one with a coworker. We now have the boss and employee coddling Jim and what he wants. Where do I sign up to be coddled?

  16. umami*

    I fin d#4 interesting, because after a recent promotion, I am just now getting used to the idea that my boss literally does not care where I am during the day as long as my work is getting done and my division is functioning well. He told me this when I asked him what protocols to follow for an upcoming day I had requested off from my previous supervisor, and before I could even explain, he stopped me. Specifically for absences, he explained that his expectation (and I quote because he followed up via email) is that ‘no one here must ask for my permission to take an afternoon off (or day off) or give me the reason … just let (redacted) know who is in command in your absence (or if you are still in command, you don’t have to tell us at all).’ He added that if he sends a communication while you are off, to feel free to tell him you are off, and he would respect that. Now that’s the kind of leadership I appreciate! I have shared the same with my direct reports because what is good for me is good for them, too.

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