hiring manager wants to fire my mentor and replace him with me

by Alison Green on February 13, 2025

A reader writes:

I’m in a quandary and really second-guessing a decision I made regarding an offer that was made to me a couple of weeks ago.

I work for a company that makes, let’s say, teapots. I recently found out that Cersei, the director of a different teapot-making company, wants to fire her entire design team and hire me to head a brand new one. I would not only be responsible for leading the new team, but for hiring everyone in it. The complication: the current head of the to-be-fired team is my mentor of 20 years, Jaime.

I found out about this when Cersei invited me to lunch and told me she would like to hire me. My initial response was that while I was flattered, I was worried about the turmoil it would create if I swooped in and took my mentor’s role without so much as a word to him. Cersei then told me that if it wasn’t me, it would be someone else, because she found Jaime difficult to work with and was just done. She also had problems with another person on his team, but liked a third. But she was prepared to clean house and start fresh with me.

A little helpful background: Jaime basically paved the way for my career, and I owe him a lot. However, I am not surprised that Cersei is frustrated. He (and his colleague) have a reputation of being difficult and even toxic. I have seen them blackball people for minor perceived slights, and it’s pretty awful. As a result I have significantly distanced myself from them. I retain a friendly, if surface-level, relationship with Jaime, but his colleague and I have had no contact for years.

Straightforward? Maybe, but Cersei also has a reputation — for exactly what she is trying to do right now. She is infamous for working with people and then dropping them without a word of notice, with new hires already in place. She even has a nickname in our industry: “Cersei Fires Everyone” or “CFE.” (It’s not really this, but if I told you the real one I’d out myself.)

After some seriously agonized thinking I turned the role down, though I didn’t tell Cersei why. I gave a sort of “sorry, I thought I could do this but it turns out it’s not the right time” half-truth, which maybe is a cowardly way out. The truth is there is too much potential drama for me to want to go near this situation with a 10-foot pole. I also don’t need the work. I’m happily employed, and I like my current company.

But now I’m second-guessing myself. Cersei is a Big Boss in my industry, and it would benefit my career to work for her. I’m also asking myself if she really is in the wrong. I mean, people are within their rights to fire employees who are difficult to work with. She will have to hire someone. Am I stupid for turning down a potentially huge career boost? Do I need a thicker skin? Though I am not close to Jaime anymore and will not make excuses for his toxic behavior, I do still feel like I owe him the respect of not taking his job out from under him. On the other hand, it’s almost certain he would not give me the same consideration. Am I overthinking all of this?

Finally, I feel really upset about the third colleague, who Cersei supposedly likes but is prepared to axe with the rest of the team. I know him personally and he is a wonderful, lovely human being. I have thought about coming to him with this information. In fact, it’s crossed my mind that it would be fair to let the entire team know what’s about to happen—but I keep stopping myself because I am worried I’ll just make things worse, and I frankly don’t trust my mentor or his colleague not to create a huge problem and/or take it out on me. I understand that it’s Cersei’s responsibility to warn them, not mine — but if she continues her usual M.O., she won’t. I feel terrible knowing about this and doing nothing.

What should I do?

Anyone who’s working for someone who has the industry nickname “Cersei Fires Everyone” already knows their job isn’t stable. So please relieve yourself of the pressure to somehow tell Jaime or his colleague that Cersei wants to fire their team. That would be true in any case, but it’s especially true when you don’t trust them not to take it out on you.

This isn’t yours to fix for them.

As for second-guessing whether you should have accepted Cersei’s offer … stop second-guessing! Maybe it would have benefited your career to have worked for her, but there are all sorts of things you can do to benefit your career that don’t come with a side order of “and you could lose your job without warning at any minute, and you won’t even get the courtesy of feedback so you can see it coming.”

Cersei doesn’t sound like someone you should want to work for.

Given all that, the question of whether it would be wrong to accept Jaime’s job after he’s fired is moot, since you made the right call regardless.

If this were a different set of facts where Cersei was a great boss and you weren’t sure if you should accept the job that a mentor of 20 years who paved the way for your career just got fired from … well, I’d be asking what you knew about Jaime and how he was likely to respond to that news. Some mentors would be absolutely fine with a mentee stepping in the job they were just fired from (especially if they were well aware of their boss’s habit of cycling through employees and figured their own time there was limited anyway) and would be horrified to be the reason you turned it down, and others would take it as a significant betrayal. So you’d need to know how Jaime was likely to see it. His reacting badly wouldn’t necessarily mean you shouldn’t take the job, but you’d want to be realistic about how it was likely to affect that relationship and factor it into your thinking.

However, you have serious ethical issues with how Jaime operates and you’ve distanced yourself from him, which changes  the calculus of how accepting the job might impact your relationship.

But again, that’s a different set of facts. In the actual set of facts, none of this matters because you shouldn’t work for Cersei anyway.

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{ 57 comments }

{ 57 comments… read them below or add one }

  1. Arrietty*

    The Jaime aspect is a red herring – this job offer is a poisoned chalice and you were right to turn it down. I suspect it would have been an easier decision, in some ways, without the mentor element distracting you from the real issue.

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    1. Not Tom, Just Petty*

      If you didn’t know the people involved and Cersei Fires Everyone invited you to lunch to gleefully (vs with regret that the group has gone so far off the rails, nope, it’s personal) tell you that she is cleaning house and wants to see if you were interested in taking over as she fires everyone with the promise that you can hire and manage a new team, how long would you seriously think “This is the jump for me?” before looking down and seeing a pool of bees.

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      1. Elbe*

        Exactly this. Anyone who happily tells you that she’s willing to fire a good employee that she likes simply because she wants to “clean house” is not someone you can trust at all. That is not how a decent manager (or a decent human being) would behave. She clearly has no respect for the fact that she controls this group of people’s livelihoods.

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        1. Kevin Sours*

          I’m honestly not sure how to read that. Given Cersei’s reputation that’s probably the right take. But if a manager with a sane reputation said “I like Joe but I’m prepared to clean house” in the context of a team that needed a reset and new leadership I would take more as an assurance that the prospective new leader would have a free hand than any nefarious intent. “I want you to fix a broken team but you have to keep all of the employees except for these two” isn’t an attractive pitch to a potential hire.

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          1. Antilles*

            I could see it, though if you’re coming in and saying that the likely solution is to completely clean house, I’d have to ask a LOT of questions about the situation, how it got so bad, and what allowed it to (apparently) go unnoticed.
            Basically checking to see if the problem is really the last manager and his leadership or if there’s also some factors higher on the food chain that I will also run into.

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            1. Kevin Sours*

              That’s a lot of why “you will have the authority to do things the way you want” is such an important assurance in this sort of situation.

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      2. Antilles*

        Seriously. The mere fact that she’s firing the entire design team under her and replacing everyone in one fell swoop is an enormous red flag right there, even if you stop reading the letter in the second paragraph.
        She’s the one in charge of this mess! She hired these people and kept them on. She’s the one who’s supposed to be controlling things and running them. She’s in charge of designing strategy, setting goals, and monitoring progress towards them. What does it say about her management acumen that her department apparently got so bad that she’s choosing to completely bulldoze the entire thing to ground zero?

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    2. MigraineMonth*

      Yup. There are SO many things going on here (mentors, toxic behavior, other people caught in the crossfire, blackballing, firing entire teams, etc., etc), it’s an entire school of red herrings in sequined outfits.

      In the end, though, I think this is the most important part: “I… don’t need the work. I’m happily employed, and I like my current company.”

      You got a chance to jump into a morass of drama, back-stabbing, blackballing and other sordid behavior for a job that might have been good for your career but also might have been jerked out from under you at any moment with zero notice because your new boss prefers to suprise!fire people rather than manage them.

      You VERY WISELY went with your gut and said “Oh hell no!” to all that in favor of reasonableness, stability and a job you like. Trust your instincts!

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    5. JustCuz*

      I would like to know where the “Working for Cersei Fires Everyone” and “benefit my career to work for her” overlap on the Ven Diagram of Objectively Good Career Choices. I mean she is a big boss, but is there any actual evidence that anyone fires from there have come out the other side better for it? Is Cersei just living the “too big to fail” life right now, where the reality is that the company functions DESPITE of her? That these positions are just the buffers between her and the people in the positions who actually do the successful work? Sort of like working for Elon Musk?

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    6. Momma Bear*

      I agree. Whatever she will do to her current team she will do to you. I think LW was right to turn this down, especially since she was willing to sacrifice someone she otherwise had no problem with. I used to work under a Director known for having a “finger of death”. Probably no surprise that the Director blew through employees and contractors alike and the whole office was very unstable. Some firings were warranted and some were not. It kept everyone on edge. I suspect Cersei is like that and enjoys the control and drama. I hope LW finds a better career move. These people are a whole beehive.

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  2. Goldenrod*

    I agree with Alison – I think you should stop second guessing yourself!

    Cersei sounds horrible. Even if she seems to like you *now*, it’s really only a matter of time with people who are that toxic. You might very well end up in a horrific situation with all of her malice directed right at you.

    Even if that didn’t happen (which I personally think it would, eventually), you don’t want to be in an environment like this. Alison is right – there are other ways to succeed. This way is NOT worth it.

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    1. Landry*

      +1000. It’s like cheaters — if they do it with you, they’ll eventually do it to you. How long will it be before Cersei finds fault with LW and decides she’ll be next on the chopping block, especially considering her industry reputation? Stay far away from this one. If you’re happy in your current role and company but also have an eye toward advancement, look at ways you can do that (professional development, taking on bigger projects, doing work that gets you more industry visibility) without getting mired into Cersei’s toxic cesspool.

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  3. HonorBox*

    Completely agree. This isn’t a question of whether you should take a mentor’s job. This is a question of whether you should choose to work for someone when working for them might put you in a position similar to Jamie’s at some point in the future. Sure you could benefit and raise your profile and make yourself more marketable to someone in the future. But you could also find yourself in an awful situation and not able to make the move you want to make on your own terms.

    Also, just a note about Jamie. He’s no longer your mentor. You’ve recognized that he’s more of an example. An example of things you don’t want to do in your career.

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  4. Alton Brown's Evil Twin*

    You know what strikes me about this letter? There’s basically nothing in it except interpersonal stuff. Is Jaime productive and his team profitable? What is the inevitable friction and disruption of a clean sweep going to do to the rest of the organization? How much extra work is OP going to have to personally take on while standing up a new team?

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    1. HonorBox*

      All great questions. Also, is Cersei going to be level-headed enough to appreciate the impact of having one person running a three person department while simultaneously hiring and training the other two people?

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    2. Varthema*

      It really reminds me of a plotline straight out of “Flack,” that series with Anna Paquin about a highly dysfunctional (but effective) PR firm.

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    3. MigraineMonth*

      I’m not sure those are the questions that really matter in this case.

      Whether former mentor Jaime is super productive doesn’t change the fact that he is toxic interpersonally and tries to blackball coworkers. Cersei sounds like she’s an industry bigshot who probably has great organizational skills and a track record of successful projects, which doesn’t matter nearly as much to her reports as the fact that she has a nasty habit of secretly hiring new people to replace them instead of giving actionable feedback.

      Whether OP would have to move mountains to stand up a new team or Cersei had it all set up and it would be a breeze, OP’s job would still be at Cersei’s whim and disappear without warning.

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      2. Observer*

        Exactly. It’s a major mistake to the dismiss “interpersonal” stuff. For one thing, that stuff actually matters to people. For another that stuff *really* matters to long term effectiveness.

        Whether it’s because people don’t do good work, get sabotaged, create other havoc, or just steal from their employer, these things really do matter.

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  5. Elbe*

    The LW made the right call. Not only is it not good for the LW to work for Cersei, but the LW also probably doesn’t want to work for a company that hires/retains so many “toxic” managers.

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  6. I'm great at doing stuff*

    I think you can move on in your career with both Cersei and Jamie in the rear window. You can make connections and cultivate relationships with people that have far less drama and rancor going on.

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  7. Anita Brake*

    As I was reading the letter, I thought “Oh yay! They turned down the offer! You made the right choice, OP. That’s a lot of drama to take on when you’re already happy with where you’re working.

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    2. MigraineMonth*

      It’s that moment in a horror film where you’re yelling at the screen, “No! Don’t go down into the murder basement!” and then the heroine… decides not to.

      The least dramatic choice is so often the best one.

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  8. Caramel & Cheddar*

    Everything else aside, I think it’s probably also rethinking whether or not Jamie actually is a) still your mentor, and b) someone you want to be your mentor.

    You say he’s paved the way for you, but you only maintain a surface-level relationship with him at this point. Is he actually still mentoring you? Do you want to continue being mentored by someone you describe as “difficult and even toxic”? Is it helpful to your career at this stage for people to know you were mentored by someone they have difficulty working with, and does that reflect well on you?

    I agree with the first comment that says the Jamie stuff is a red herring to the issue of the job offer, but I think the Jamie stuff is still something you need to figure out. If your industry is small enough that there’s an industry-wide nickname for someone who is famous for firing everyone, then it’s small enough that you’ll probably keep encountering Jamie in a professional context going forward. This may not be the last time you could be in line to take his job, or even in line to work with/for him again, and you need to figure out what your relationship is to him before that situation comes up again.

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  9. Red5*

    OP, I think you made the right choice. Several years ago, I made the choice to work for my industry’s equivalent of “Cersei Fires Everyone.” I needed to fill in some gaps in my resume and this job was the perfect one to do it. It was great, until it wasn’t. It turns out, my “Cersei Fires Everyone” was the short version of their nickname, which was “Cersei Fires Everyone AND Badmouths Employees to Anyone Who Wants to Hire Them.” They tried to block a promotion for me by giving me a bad reference. And they’ve done this kind of thing to many others who have worked for them. Luckily, I had other references the hiring manager trusted more and I was able to get out from CFE with my reputation in tact. Eventually, CFE would have turned on you. and who knows how bad the outcome would’ve been.

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  10. MAW*

    I would also say that taking a job with “Cersei Fires Everyone” means that sooner or later, would mean that sooner or later, Cersei would fire *you*.

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    2. Kevin Sours*

      The only reason to take this job is if you thought you could put up with the circus long enough to trampoline into a new position. It’s a job that comes with an expiration date and you don’t actually know what that is. It doesn’t sound like the “it would benefit my career to work for her” is sufficiently specific to be worth dealing with this particular troupe of monkeys.

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      1. HonorBox*

        Yep. That trampoline into the new position is one that Cersei will have made little cuts into every night, and one day the bounce ain’t going to be there.

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    3. Slow Gin Lizz*

      “First Cersei came for Jaime and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t Jaime….” To paraphrase a well-known poem. Obviously this situation isn’t quite as dire as social injustice, etc., but it’s true that if you work with someone who targets people and you’re not currently one of their targets, just wait a bit and you soon will be.

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  11. MsM*

    OP, if you are in a position to forward the colleague who doesn’t deserve any of this drama one or two “hey, saw/heard about this and thought of you” job opportunities without implying there’s any particular reason he might want to take a look at them, that might be a nice gesture.

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  12. Eduardo Ramirez*

    I would strongly suggest (re)watching The Devil Wears Prada and asking yourself which character in that film you would like to be, since that sounds like the situation you’d be wading into (although as an experienced industry professional, I guess you’d be Mentalist guy or something, not Anne Hathaway.)

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    1. boof*

      I enjoyed that movie but I really hope most people don’t take away from it “yes! utterly destroy yourself so you too can get brief approval from someone nigh impossible to please!”

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      1. Liz the Snackbrarian*

        I don’t think people get that from the movie! I think the moral is “Quit when you start to emulate those who are quick to throw others under the bus.”

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  13. Jaunty Banana Hat I*

    LW made the right call to not take the job. And actually, knowing how Jaime is, part of me wonders if Cersei picked you because of your history with Jaime, in the hopes that you’d be the focus of his ire instead of her.

    Like, Cersei clearly doesn’t care that much about the drama she causes, but people like that are also always happy to throw someone else under the bus to get what they want with less hassle to themselves.

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    2. The Unspeakable Queen Lisa*

      Ooh, perceptive. Cersei does sound manipulative and toxic. And totally irresponsible. “Jaime is terrible, I can’t tolerate him” – uh, you’re his boss. Why haven’t you done anything about this?

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    3. Smithy*

      While there certainly may be motives like that – what I think happens far more often with managers like this is cronyism. And it can certainly feature things like managing folks emotions, but even without it is its own barrel of issues.

      The way Cersei is operating – she’s not doing an open job posting. She’s not looking at candidates she doesn’t know (or aren’t referred to her from her current network). She’s not allowing for the interview process to happen. She’s selecting through folks already in her orbit. And while there are always small industries where people know lots of the same people – that kind of thinking alone just sets a really problematic standard for how she manages.

      Whether this is how she believes she can trust or vet people, or it’s because of emotional fall out, or whatever – it’s just a very narrow way to hire and evaluate talent. All to say, that practice alone would make me concerned regardless of her motives.

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  14. Alex*

    You don’t want this to be your circus. People like Cersei know that they have influence and believe that they can behave poorly because people will think they have to deal with it to “get ahead.”

    There are lots of ways to get ahead without having to put yourself through this kind of crap knowingly. And the risk of backfire is just too much. Especially since you are happily employed where you are, you made the right call.

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  15. Thin Mints didn't make me thin*

    Also, consider why there are so many toxic people in this field and whether you might want to pivot your career in a direction that connects you with a better class of human.

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    1. Slow Gin Lizz*

      Eh, I think that’s a bit harsh. Any field can have plenty of toxic people, and telling the OP to completely change to a different career based on one story of a couple of toxic people is not very helpful advice.

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      1. Sashaa*

        There’s a middle ground – my husband explicitly avoids jobs in ad agencies because there’s a larger proportion of dysfunctional people/toxic environments. Exact same job in eg a digital agency has a far kinder work culture, at least in our city.

        In my sector, healthcare, some hospitals have a reputation for being full of difficult people, and some don’t. You can choose to avoid departments known for being difficult, or you can choose to join them and be difficult along with them. There are definitely people who thrive on being one difficult person in a sea of likeminded difficult people.

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  16. Machine*

    Cersei, as you say, is a big boss in your industry, but she is a terrible person who will hire you in a day with the replacement already hired. I’m assuming she hasn’t already told Jaime, ad his team members are getting fired. A person with a Cersei role in an organization would be great to work for, but only if you’re not going to get fired from the organization at the boss’s whim. I would not touch this organization anywhere Cersei can touch with a 10-foot pole. The risk is much too great, and you like your company and your current job unless there is no reason to risk leaving for a role that could very well turn out to be much worse. I also wonder if you’ve ever worked with Cersei personally because sometimes people can have very different public personas than private personas, even with what she has already shown you. She is a very risky person to work for.

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  18. Bird Law*

    I did not even make it to Alison’s advice before I recoiled and said, out loud in my office “Oh no, that was exactly the right thing to do.”

    OP if you’re reading this, just adding another voice to the chorus that you nailed this, and wishing you the best. It sounds like your field will really benefit from a prudent leader like you.

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  19. Kindred Spirit*

    I think OP’s instincts about this one are spot on. It’s almost certain this will blow up on whoever the replacement hire is. It’s fraught with interpersonal drama, and if I were reporting to someone with a reputation for firing everyone, I would be second guessing my decisions and waiting for the moment that I, too, get stabbed in the back. No thank you.

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  20. EngineeringFun*

    Replacing your mentor: my friend is a dev ops guy for startups. He likes to come in C round funding and not before. He has replaced a guy three times becuse that guy likes to come in at B round funding. So replacing your mentor isn’t a bad thing when it’s their choice.

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  21. Cookie Monster*

    OP, you might have been tempted because of the career-boosting aspect of the new role. But it feels that way because we can’t see what other opportunities are coming our way in the future, be it 1 month from now or 1 year. If you’re good enough at your job that Cersei wants to hire you without any interviewing process, trust that others will want to offer you great opportunities too.

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  22. Festively Dressed Earl*

    I’m wondering how King’s Landing Teapot Co. is still in business. There’s another bullet OP might have dodged: surviving Cersei’s tantrums only to lose their job when the business goes under.

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  23. Sparkles McFadden*

    It’s fairly common belief that everyone should take any offer of advancement no matter what. Nope. Life is too short to work for a crazy person who creates unstable work environments.

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  24. learnedthehardway*

    There can be times when it is absolutely the right call for a manager to replace an employee, and if it was only that situation, it would be one thing. In that case, you might seriously consider the role, and decide that burning a bridge with Jaime was worth it – seeing as he has a reputation for being difficult and is not really much of a mentor anymore, or really even someone you want to be associated with.

    However, since Cercei has her own serious reputational issues, I think you were wise to turn down the offer. Not only that, but her rather gleeful approach to decimating the prior team is just off-putting and doesn’t bode well for how she will treat the next person in that position.

    Sometimes, the only way to win is to refuse to play.

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  25. Workerbee*

    All these horrible things and yet you still second-guess yourself, OP.

    I’m not blaming you – we’re raised to “turn the other cheek” and “give second chances” and “don’t sink to their level!!” – all of which is soooo coincidentally beneficial to the willful asshat types. Such a mystery how that works out, yes, yes.

    So instead, OP, CONGRATULATE yourself. Seriously. Any one of the bullets you dodged there would have laid you out but good.

    Reply ↓

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