my new employee feels excluded on a well-meaning but cliquey team

by Alison Green on February 19, 2025

A reader writes:

I am a manager on a team where there are two managers and five individual contributors: Buffy, Cordelia, Xander, Willow, and Anya. Buffy and Willow are very good friends. They joined the team at around the same time, about two years ago. Cordelia joined the team just under a year ago and quickly got adopted by Buffy and Willow as “one of the gang.” They have similar tastes and are always lending each other books, talking about shared interests, etc. Xander has been in and out of the team, but is well integrated socially with the others.

Anya joined the team straight out of college in September. She had been an intern here during college, but on a different team. She enjoyed it enough to want to come back when she was hired permanently after graduation. She said she was looking forward to joining our team because it skews young (Buffy, Cordelia, and Xander are all in their 20s and Willow is in her 40s but acts younger).

Before Anya joined, Buffy, Willow, and Cordelia were vociferous about how excited they were and how they wanted her to feel like a member of the team. Unfortunately, they have certain habits that exclude Anya (for example, they all go for coffee together but Anya only drinks tea). There was also an incident a couple of months ago where Anya was catching up with an old contact from her internship days, without knowing that this contact was Cordelia’s ex-boyfriend. There was nothing inappropriate about Anya and Cordelia’s ex having a catch-up meeting, and indeed I would have encouraged Anya if I knew, because it’s good for her to have a wide network. But apparently the others found out when they saw the meeting in Anya’s Outlook and gave her a bit of a hard time, possibly insinuating that she was trying to date the ex herself (which there is no evidence of). (I have only thirdhand information about this incident and only one side of the story.)

Anya has been very unhappy almost since she started, but hadn’t said anything to me or the other manager. She told someone from her previous team about it, and that person spoke to his manager, who spoke to the other manager in our team, so it’s now all come out. According to the manager in that team, Anya was very outgoing during her internship, but the other manager and I have found her reserved from day one on our team, which we just assumed was her personality. I think there may be some feedback loops going on where Anya is quiet and the others forget she’s there and don’t include her, which leads her to withdraw further.

I spoke to Anya today, and she is desperately unhappy and wants to move to a different team. The other manager and I think we can address it with Buffy, Willow, and Cordelia. We think that if they knew they were making Anya feel excluded, they would change their behavior. We wouldn’t make it a disciplinary issue or anything, but more ask what they can do to change the dynamic. (We’ve also agreed that if they’re told about the behavior and continue to make Anya feel excluded, that could become a disciplinary issue, but right now they seem to be completely unaware.)

The difficulty is that Anya doesn’t want us to talk to the team members because she thinks it will rebound on her. I have told her that unless I identify the problem/pattern with them and ask them for help in solving it, it’s not going to magically get any better. I have also pointed out that working in a medium-sized company, she could move now only to find that later she has to work with one of the others and that will be harder if things don’t get addressed now.

The other manager and I are also concerned that moving would reflect badly on Anya, particularly because new graduates in our company normally stay in their first role for two years.

Anya seems paranoid that the others are gossiping about her, but aside from the ex-boyfriend incident, I think they are probably being self-absorbed, not mean. Last week, we had a work social event and Anya left early without saying much. The next morning, Cordelia contacted me to find out if I knew why Anya had left early and if she was feeling okay. So I do have evidence that team members care about Anya and want her to feel included (even if their behavior isn’t making that happen).

Anya is clear that she doesn’t blame me or the other manager and acknowledges that she could have spoken to us directly and earlier. But she also wants to leave the team and get a fresh start. I have told her that even if she leaves, we probably need to address the situation with the other team members so no one is treated the way she has been treated in the future. She said she will go away and think about it, but if she doesn’t want us to speak to the other team members, can/should we do it anyway? Would it be better to let her have the fresh start (even if it looks bad to the team/other managers)? Can I help her be more resilient?

I hope you didn’t promise Anya that it’s her call whether you talk to the others about what’s happening, because as the team’s manager you need to be able to talk about team dynamics that concern you, even if Anya doesn’t want you to.

That said … I can’t really tell what’s going on! Are Buffy, Cordelia, Xander, and Willow being cliquish and exclusionary, or is Anya not meshing with the team for other reasons? Aside from the ex-boyfriend thing — which was really inappropriate, which I’ll say more about in a minute — it doesn’t sound like they’ve been actively exclusionary (it’s not like getting coffee together needs to exclude tea drinkers!). Maybe there’s more to it than what’s described in your letter, but based on what’s here it sounds like they’re just a pretty close group, and (a) that can be legitimately hard for a new person to break into, (b) especially if they’re not the sort who’s willing to actively jump in but rather waits to be invited, but (c) that doesn’t necessarily mean that the others did anything wrong. It might be a matter of them just needing to be more aware that because they’re so close, that’s a tough dynamic for a new person to come into, and so if they want future hires to feel welcome, they need to go out of their way to actively include them, more than they have been. And that’s a message that’s important for you to deliver, even if Anya doesn’t want you to — because it affects your team as a whole, not just her, and because it will affect other hires in the future.

However, if Anya doesn’t want you to raise it, you should be sensitive to that in the way you approach it. Stress that these are your observations, not something Anya asked you to address, and ask people to prioritize not making Anya feel awkward as things move forward.

(Also, you do need to address the ex-boyfriend thing if you haven’t already. There’s nothing inappropriate about Anya talking with someone from another team — and even if she started dating the ex, that’s something Cordelia and her coworkers would need to handle professionally. You need to call that out and ask them to remember that workplace rules are what apply when they’re at work, even if they might have different expectations of people in their personal lives.)

Back to Anya. If she wants to leave the team, you shouldn’t stand in the way of that. You can suggest she give it a little time before deciding, to see if things change now that you’re aware of the situation, but ultimately if she’s not happy, leaving might be the right choice for her — and that’s true even if we think she should give her current team more of a chance. If it’s really true that changing jobs before two years would reflect badly on her internally, you should explain how that’s normally perceived so she has all the information and can make the right decision for herself — but she does get to decide it herself, even if you think she’s making the wrong choice.

I do wonder if some of your concern is about feeling you will have failed if she leaves over this … and I do think there’s an important lesson here about paying more attention to team dynamics and how new hires are adjusting, and being more proactive about helping them become part of the team. For example, knowing that you have a close-knit team that might be hard for newcomers to break into, can you look for opportunities to connect  your next new hire with people individually? Even just “Willow, could you take Anya to coffee and tell her about your experience with X?” and similar suggestions can really change people’s experience in this regard.

But meanwhile, you can’t change what’s already happened and Anya gets to do what she decides is right for her.

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{ 378 comments }

{ 378 comments… read them below or add one }

  1. Binky*

    I am very confused. I don’t seen any exclusion happening at all. So is Anya being excluded? or is she just not meshing and instead of trying to build relationships herself she’s just avoiding everyone? This feels like an Anya issue, maybe an onboarding issue, but not a problem with the team.

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    1. A Book about Metals*

      Why do think it’s an Anya issue – from the letter the others are being obviously rude/mean, whatever to her. They don’t invite her to go to coffee with them and they give her a hard time over nothing. What did Anya do wrong?

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      1. Jennifer Strange*

        It doesn’t say any of that? It says they drink coffee, but Anya drinks tea, so my guess is they invite her and she declines because she doesn’t drink coffee. Aside from the ex-boyfriend thing – which the LW acknowledges is third-hand info, so it could have been something like a good-natured “Uh-oh, you and Cordelia are going to have to fight it out over Niles now!” that they didn’t realize wouldn’t land well – I’m not seeing anything about them being rude/mean to her. Quite the opposite, in fact.

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        1. Grumpy Elder Millennial*

          Whereas my guess is that they don’t invite her because they know she only drinks tea. Which is not, in and of itself, unreasonable.

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            1. Nola*

              When I was in my early 20s, just starting a job in the professional world, and a very literal minded person I absolutely turned down a couple of co-worker “Hey, wanna get a coffee?” invitations because I did not drink coffee (or tea!) and my brain did not get that I could have just walked along and chatted with them. I literally thought I had to get a coffee and since I didn’t drink coffee I thought I couldn’t actually come. Dumb? Yes, but it took me several years to figure it out.

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              1. Airy*

                That was true for me too, plus when you’re a non-coffee-drinker and there’s such a big work-coffee culture (and frankly some coffee people are a bit extra about it), it can feel like if the group goes “for coffee” and you have something different, you won’t be *part of* the group, just *with* the group. You won’t be taking the Sacred Coffee Communion – even if you’re drinking something else with caffeine in it.

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                1. Chirpy*

                  This. Some people are weird if you go along but don’t drink the same thing as everyone else (coffee and alcohol in particular, in my experience). But also, the team could be going to somewhere like Starbucks out of habit (which has terrible tea!) instead of somewhere with a better selection for everyone, or they might not be as explicit in making sure Anya knows she’s welcome to join.

                2. Jessen*

                  I was going to comment on the Starbucks thing Chirpy mentioned as well. It’s very very common in my experience that going out for coffee means you’re going to a place that has a wide variety of coffee drinks and then two or three varieties of the cheapest possible tea you can get. Usually Lipton, which is roughly equivalent to putting food dye in warm water in terms of taste.

                  You can still go, of course, but it’s not always an enjoyable experience and the non-coffee selection being rather perfunctory is not that unusual.

              2. Uh Oh HR*

                Oh man, I’m glad to hear someone else had this problem. For months, my manager would walk by my desk and cheerfully let me know that the team was going to grab coffee. I thought I was just being informed of their whereabouts!

                One day, she stopped, paused, and said, “hey, we’re going to get coffee,” and then carefully enunciated, “would you like to come?”

                And I did! But that sure was a datapoint.

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                1. Special K9*

                  That’s really kind that she was explicit.

                  Until I started to deal with autistic people, I didn’t realize how much is communicated by hints and body language… which are invisible to chunks of the population!

            2. toolegittoresign*

              I used to never drink coffee and I still used to “go out for coffee” with coworkers because it’s really just a quick walk to chat and get to know each other. I’d just get a juice or hot cocoa or just say “I could use a quick walk!” and get nothing.

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            3. Grumpy Elder Millennial*

              Yeah, if they’re inviting her. My main point is that they might not be inviting her, for whatever reason, regardless of whether the reason makes sense.

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              1. DireRaven*

                She may have had experience with “implicit invitations” for going for coffee or whatever in the past, and accepted the invite, only to be told “No, you aren’t actually invited. We’re just telling you so you know to cover the phones.” Or she goes because no one speaks up only to make things awkward.

                (Me that may or may not have been me at certain points – now I’m never sure if I’m really invited or wanted unless I am explicitly invited)

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            4. UKDancer*

              Yeah I don’t drink coffee in the afternoon but if someone invites me I go and get peppermint tea or hot chocolate or even a diet coke. Most cafes near my office have a range of drink offerings. I think there must be something more substantive than that affecting whether she feels able to join them?

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            5. Starbuck*

              Yeah I don’t understand this at all! I’ve never been to a coffee place that didn’t also have some non-coffee option, even the roadside drive by shacks. And the option is usually tea.

              So, is Anya opting out because it’s “coffee?” If so, that’s sad but that’s on her and totally fixable.
              Are the others not inviting her because they assume she wouldn’t want to go? That’s sadder and something that can also be fixed I think.

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              1. Cmdrshprd*

                “Are the others not inviting her because they assume she wouldn’t want to go? That’s sadder and something that can also be fixed I think.”

                Another possibility is that they did invite her initially the first idk 5/10 times and Anya turned them down every time, so they stopped inviting her, when Anya made it clear she was not interested. That might not have been the message Anya was trying to send, but that would have been the message she sent if Anya turned down repeated invites to grab coffee. It is not unreasonable for the team to stop inviting her.

                I think relationships (of all kinds) take work, I have done stuff that I was not particularly super into/interested because it had been a while since I had done something with a particular person/group and keeping up was important.

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                1. Mallory Janis Ian*

                  I had a workplace where one of the team said, “You never come when we go out to lunch”, and I didn’t recall ever having been invited. I think it was supposed to be understood that I was invited, but it wasn’t. So we had this thing where I wasn’t going because I wasn’t invited, and they thought I wasn’t coming because I didn’t want to. Then one evening after some drama with my boss (the wife part of a husband/wife boss team), I knew they were going out for drinks and I called one of them to ask them where they were — because I needed a coworker rant. I went there and that was where it all came out that they thought I never wanted to join them for anything.

              2. Crooked Bird*

                I actually wondered if the coffee vs. tea business was actually “coffee” vs “tea,” i.e. euphemisms like llama groomer and chocolate teapot. Like these groups have different hobbies but they’re a little too specific to put in the letter? Maybe. I don’t know.

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            7. Caller 2*

              I have to imagine it’s not actually coffee and tea that the LW is talking about, because otherwise someone not going for coffee with their team because they only drink tea is pretty ridiculous or there’s something else going on.

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            9. LaurCha*

              Exactly. You can get a tea at literally every coffee shop I’ve ever been to. If the reason for not inviting her is “she doesn’t drink coffee,” that’s really sus.

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            10. Jan*

              Exactly, that confused me too. Is that an American thing? Because in England where I live, all the coffee chains (and independent coffee shops!) sell tea.

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            11. Panhandlerann*

              Exactly. As a tea drinker, I have been invited for coffee a lot and always assume I don’t literally have to drink coffee in order to accept.

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          2. Pastor Petty Labelle*

            As a tea drinker, pretty darn every coffee shop has tea. If the team is so oblivious they haven’t noticed that, its on them.

            I doubt Anya is saying no to coffee because she drinks tea. She is aware that coffee shops serve tea. Its more likely she is being excluded.

            Coupled with the giving her a hard time about talking to one of their’s ex. Good grief. This is not junior high. People are allowed to talk to other people. No one can control that. Nor should they have ever given a hard time.

            OP the fact this is all going on and you didn’t realize it until it came about third hand is a bit concerning. You need to pay more attention to how cliquey your team has become. Because what else is being kept from you?

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            1. Grumpy Elder Millennial*

              Fellow tea-drinker here. Sometime the tea on offer kinda sucks, but there’s nearly always something. My suspicion is that they’re not inviting her, rather than Jennifer Strange’s suspicion that they’re inviting her and she’s saying no. Though we can’t know for sure.

              The teasing is, at best, ill-advised. I tease my friends in a good-natured way. I don’t do that with people I don’t know well / am not confident will be 100% sure that it’s well-intentioned and not passive aggressive. At worst, it’s bullying and an attempt to control Anya.

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              1. WellRed*

                As a coffee drinker, sometimes the coffee sucks as well ; ) I’ve gotten Diet Coke and it literally is not a problem for anyone.

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                1. Grumpy Elder Millennial*

                  And sometimes the benefit to working relationships is worth a few cups of sub-par beverage.

            2. OddPersonOut*

              Yep. It’s a very easy thing to have happen.

              Anecdote alert! At a former job, there was group that went downstairs to the coffee shop together every day. The group grew over time, new people were invited along, all very nice. And I was never once asked if I wanted to go. I was on the same job level as most of the group, I got along with everyone fine, no conflict or drama, but they just … never asked me. Once or twice I was downstairs and ran into them: “Hi! See you upstairs!” But I was never asked to join them.

              I doubt anybody else ever gave it a thought at all, but for me it casts a shadow over what was otherwise a job I really enjoyed. I’m with Anya. Whether intentional or just thoughtless, exclusion hurts.

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              1. Cmdrshprd*

                IMO you were partially if not equally at fault, based on your description it sounds like you could have gone with the group without an invite, just said “Coffee sounds good today I will join you” or just get up and go with them.

                It sounds like it was a nebulous group, no one person was in charge of inviting/excluding people so it can be easy for someone(s) to get overlooked. I get from your perspective how it can seem how can no one think about me, when they thought to invite others, but that I think is giving people more credit. People are self absorbed and usually not thinking about you/others, that it not necessarily wrong.

                Would it have been nice for someone to think to invite you yes, inviting new people makes a bit more sense because they are actively trying to be welcoming to the new person. For you they likely thought you were not interested because you never went, not knowing/realizing that no one ever invited you initially.

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                1. Lenora Rose*

                  I’ve also met groups who are, let’s say, very taken aback at someone inviting themselves along — even if the person would normally be someone who could be invited. While I’ve never seen anyone who would prickle at being asked a polite, “Hey, I’d like to join you all sometime, would that be okay?” about a future event, I’m also wary about blaming the person left out for other people leaving them out.

                2. MigraineMonth*

                  Especially with a large group that’s been going on for a while, there’s frequently the assumption that someone else must have asked and you declined, so they shouldn’t pressure you by asking again. Wouldn’t it have been irritating if a different person, or couple of people, from the group asked you every single time if you wanted to come along, even though you never did?

                  There’s a usually-unacknowledged mental load to arranging social things. You have to think of all the people who might want to come, you have to risk everyone saying “no”, you have to come up with a particular date and time, you have to come up with something to do. Sometimes you have to host/reserve for the event. Things–such as invitations–do fall through the cracks.

                3. OddPersonOut*

                  I’m sure I understood what was occurring correctly, given that it was happening to me. I don’t believe there was any conscious malice, I was just not “one of us” — for those purposes — and that never changed.

                  Lenora Rose below has it right; the situation/chemistry was such that it would have been all but impossible to invite myself along. I am not shy, but I’m not as thick-skinned as all that. It was just the way it worked out with that group of people, but it still makes me a little sad.

              2. MosbiusDesigns*

                I’ve been in offices that had groups of folks who were legitimately friends with each other, and went out for coffee /lunch together. Sounds great for the people in the group, and hard for the people outside the group.

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                1. Lydia*

                  It’s okay for people to be friends and go out to eat with each other for lunch and go with their friends only as long as they aren’t going out of their way to be jerks about it.

                2. allathian*

                  About 8 years ago I worked at my current job but the team has grown a lot and I’ve had four managers since then. We used to go for team lunches about once every two weeks, other than that people went to lunch with whoever. But my close coworker who generally skipped the team lunches because they were too early for his personal schedule sat on one aisle and the rest of the team sat on another, and one day when we weren’t due for a team lunch I happened to walk past that other office just as they were talking about going to lunch, so I asked if I could join them. One coworker said something like “you’re welcome to come to the team lunches but this time I’m going with my *actual friends*,” clearly meaning that I wasn’t one of them.

                  I got a bit upset at that, and as luck would have it, my manager saw me going to the bathroom with tears in my eyes and asked what was wrong. I told her, and she said as I expected that as lunch breaks were off the clock people were free to go to lunch with whoever they wanted. Granted, she then took me to lunch, but I felt really bad about it and it certainly soured my relationship with that coworker for a while.

                  A couple years later the same coworker was promoted to manage our team when the former manager quit management (she went to a sister organization for a while and returned to do one final project outside the team before she retired to avoid being managed by a former report), and to her credit I have to say that that former coworker was never anything but professional as a manager, although one of her friends switched teams and another got a job elsewhere, which was probably just as well.

                  I’m probably more sensitive to even a hint of exclusion than most because I was bullied by exclusion in junior high until I found my own crowd. But experiences like that tend to stay with you.

                3. amoeba*

                  Eh, that depends very much on the size of the groups in question, I’d say! Two people in a team of six? Fine. Five people in a team of ten? Probably also fine. Five people in a team of six? Very much not fine!

                  Basically, it’s OK to be more social with some people than others – but not if it’s the majority that’s social and a minority that’s left out.

                4. amoeba*

                  Also, @allathian wow, so sorry that happened to you! And honestly, I don’t agree with your boss at all, that was super unprofessional and just plain mean of your coworker. Granted, I also have a bit of a history of feeling excluded, but I’m pretty sure almost anybody would have been hurt by that!

                  I mean, it’s OK not to invite everybody every time you do something social at work, but turning somebody down like that? This isn’t junior high! We’re supposed to be professionals interacting in an adult manner – and I’m really, really hard pressed to come up with circumstances where I’d tell somebody they weren’t welcome to join for lunch. Like, even people I don’t like very much or have very little connection with, let alone my own team members (!)

          3. justTplease*

            Hard to tell about the boyfriend thing without more info, but it might have been meant as good-natured teasing. There are offices I’ve worked in where that kind of teasing would fly, and offices where it wouldn’t. Even if it was meant as teasing, I could see someone who doesn’t feel secure in the group feeling uncomfortable. I can’t think of many places that serve coffee that don’t serve tea as well. Or at least some other drink besides coffee. Are they not inviting her specifically or is she self-excluding because she’s overthinking the word “coffee?” I feel like, unless the comments about the boyfriend were serious and they are choosing coffee to deliberately exclude her, this might be more about her own insecurities. Yes, you want to be a welcoming and cordial team, and sure, put in a little extra effort to make a new person feel comfortable; but you also shouldn’t have an ongoing responsibility to accommodate a team member’s emotional baggage.

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          4. mandatory?*

            Another option is that going out for coffee is not really something anyone is “inviting” anyone else to. In all the offices I’ve worked in, a group of folks might go out for coffee and it’s implied that everyone is “invited” but it would take a new person saying, oh, I’d love to tag along too. But if the new person doesn’t know that – they could feel excluded! But the group could feel like – well, she’s never opted in, so maybe she’s not interested.

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            1. Roland*

              I would definitely hold that against the group tbh. When 4 out of 5 people are close and the last is a new grad, it really is on the rest of the team to go out of their way to help the new grad integrate.

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          1. Jennifer Strange*

            Yes, and yours was a very stormy interpretation of something the other group clearly feels differently about. I’m not saying Anya is 100% wrong, but we don’t have enough information to know if she’s 100% right. My guess is somewhere in-between.

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            1. A Book about Metals*

              Well I don’t think they would admit to excluding or not liking Anya. But either way I agree there’s alot of missing info here. LW needs to get more involved on what’s going on with the team!

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              1. Jennifer Strange*

                Sure, but Anya also wouldn’t admit to being the one rebuffing their attempts to be friendly if she’s trying to use this to get transferred (not saying that’s what’s happening, just offering a different perspective!)

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                1. A Book about Metals*

                  I just think that when there are four people who are described as “cliquey” and one other person, and that one person feels excluded and left out, usually the cliquey folks have something to do with it

                2. Jennifer Strange*

                  @Book about Metals Except no one has described them as cliquey (the LW certainly didn’t in their letter, and Alison usually creates the titles so I’m guessing that wasn’t them either).

                4. Cmdrshprd*

                  @A book about metals

                  “I just think that when there are four people who are described as “cliquey” and one other person and that one person feels excluded and left out”

                  Eh maybe but not necessarily, as others have said it is likely a mix of slight cliquey maybe inadvertent and maybe Anya not trying as hard to integrate or feeling like she needs a direct invite from them.

                  I joined a team of people that have worked together for 15 years, they hang out outside of work, they are all very nice and inclusive at work, but they spend time outside of work. Relationships take time and work on both sides, it would be unreasonable to expect to get invited to outside work outings right away, you can’t force things. Especially when people have established relationships.

            2. Hannah Lee*

              “… interpretation of something the other group clearly feels differently about”

              But do we even know what Buffy, Cordelia, Xander or Willow think about this? Not just “clearly” but at all?

              OP mentions what Anya thinks, and what a different group’s manager thinks … but it seems they haven’t spoken to the more senior team members about this at all yet.

              It sounds like something has gone on that led Anya to feel/think she’s not being accepted as one of the team … whether it’s just that she hasn’t meshed with them or they’ve been cliquey enough that it feels like active, purposeful exclusion we don’t know enough to say.

              But to me it seems like there’s some ‘failure to include’ going on, compounded by OP’s lack of involvement, awareness of the group dynamics during Anya’s on- boarding. Those 2 things together could lead a normally otherwise sociable co-worker to be unsure and hold back a bit, and feel like the group is just not a good fit for her.

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        3. Amy Purralta*

          All my workplaces I’ve never don’t get invited to coffee (I’m a Brit who doesn’t like tea or coffee) I still go and drink water. It feels like they don’t invite her knowing she doesn’t like coffee, even thought most coffee places serve other beverages also.

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          1. IrishMN*

            I do that too, but most places sell water for $2-3 a bottle and (in my experience) will point you to that if you ask for water. Could be that this fresh-out-of-college person may not have any dollars to spare and it subsisting mostly on ramen.

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            1. Great Frogs of Literature*

              There was a dynamic a bit like this at my first professional job — my boss and one of the senior guys would go get coffee every day, and while I was invited to join them, we had very good tea options in the office, and I would have been paying four or six dollars for someone else to make me basically what I could get in the office kitchen (possibly with less selection), and that was an extra hundred dollars a month that wasn’t in my budget for the first few years, and then later I was in the habit of not going (and still not inclined to spend that money).

              In fairness to them, a couple of times I did tag along because I wanted to get outside and stretch my legs, and they paid for my drink when they realized I wasn’t planning to buy anything, but I also wasn’t comfortable setting up a dynamic where senior people felt like they needed to pay for me all the time.

              I didn’t feel excluded by this, but in retrospect I’m suspicious that that manager on some level perceived me as “not really one of the guys” and that it would have been a very good career move for me to find a way to join them for a walk without buying anything, at least a few times a week. (I could perhaps have arranged to make my own tea in advance and bring it with, or just been cheerful about “No thanks, I’m just here for the walk!”) If I encountered a similar dynamic that’s probably what I’d do, along with occasionally buying myself a drink. But I was young, and didn’t have a lot of practice at finessing this sort of thing, and also inexperienced in the ways that people who are very nice to you can still make decisions that negatively impact your career growth.

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      2. K*

        Actually my coworkers at my old job used to go out for coffee and not invite me and when I finally mentioned it, they looked confused and said “but you drink tea.” Most coffee places serve tea too, and I also drink coffee anyway, but conceptually I was excluded from coffee runs. They included me on other things so I don’t think it was malicious, just thoughtless.

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    2. Lady Lessa*

      If Anya is like me, she probably tried at least once or twice, and just gave up. She might not even be doing it consciously, but unconsciously.

      I have deliberately made that decision several times lately, but it’s not at work, and I’m at the other extreme of work life.

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      1. mango chiffon*

        Yeah I have a hard time getting in with an established group of people and have given up myself. I am a introvert and find that sometimes it just takes so much more social energy to try and insert yourself in a group and it can be easier to just not. But it also does make me miserable, so I completely get where Anya may be coming from.

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        1. Grumpy Elder Millennial*

          Same. I’m also old enough that I don’t have a lot of interest in putting in the effort to force myself into social situations where I’m not actively wanted. I’m spending my social energy on people who are excited to spend time with me, and not so much on people who are neutral or tepid. I’m not going to be close with everyone and that’s fine. I would prefer at least a warm, professional relationship with my coworkers, though.

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          1. bye*

            Anya could still have a warm, professional relationship with her coworkers! It’s on her AND the group to do that, though. And as others have said, we don’t know the group’s POV on this. Maybe they’ve been trying to include her, but Anya rebuffs them. We just don’t know!

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      2. Iron Violet*

        Yes I will say, sometimes you go out with a group like that (e.g. if she did go with them to coffee) and it still feels exclusionary, because they kind of talk around the new person like they would if a newcomer wasn’t there, rather than talking about universal topics or actively including them in the conversation. Not saying that’s what happened, but it’s a dynamic that definitely can’t exist.

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        1. Chas*

          Yes, I was at a departmental pizza party a few months ago and ended up chatting with my coworker and some friends of hers from another group (she’d waved me over, otherwise I would have just grabbed pizza and left) until another friend of theirs turned up and started talking about a new pet while showing photos of said new pet to everyone in the group except me.

          I don’t think she was intentionally excluding me, since she wouldn’t really know who I am. But it did make it very clear I wasn’t going to enjoy the conversation if I stuck around, so I just made an excuse and said goodbye to my coworker, which I’m sure probably would look like I was rebuking them or being antisocial/standoffish, etc to an outside observer.

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    3. IrishMN*

      I disagree. I think the ex-BF thing was a big deal for Anya and she may have been mortified. She could now be wondering what will happen if she displeases them again. Sounds like they ganged up on her – and it doesn’t occur to them that this could make her feel excluded from their little group? They’re either being disingenuous or their sense of logical outcomes is questionable.

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      1. Annony*

        I agree. I think a lot of this stems from that incident. It sounds like the entire team other than Anya was extremely unprofessional. I would have a hard time trusting my coworkers if they all accused me of trying to date someone just because I was trying to network. The idea that a young woman can’t maintain a professional connection with a man is gross and they need to be told that they absolutely cannot behave that way and any repeat of cliquey bullying will result in disciplinary action.

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    4. Beth*

      Honestly, I think the root problem is that this team is functioning like a social group rather than a work team. Most work teams don’t click this intensely on a social level! Usually you’re polite to each other because it’s professional, cooperative because it makes work easier, and even nice and friendly with each other because you get along well enough and it makes life more pleasant…but if you leave a job, you’ll probably actually keep up with maybe one or two people, not the entire team. If this team were working on that level (which is the normal expected level for a team to bond on), Anya would probably be fitting in just fine, like she did on her internship team.

      But instead, you’ve got this incredibly close-knit group that shares hobbies and personalities and are friends outside of work. And then over here you’ve got Anya, who hasn’t clicked with the group on that level. Of course she feels left out!

      No matter what happens with Anya, this is going to keep being a problem for OP. You can’t realistically hire with the goal of finding someone who will become best friends with the whole team, so even if Anya transfers teams and OP hires someone else to replace her, they’re likely to end up with the same dynamic. I’m not sure what the solution is–they can’t tell their team to be less friendly with each other, and they probably can’t double their team size to make the friend-group influence less pervasive–but I don’t think this is an Anya issue.

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      1. MigraineMonth*

        I feel like the age range (all 20s except for someone who acts like their in their 20s) may be contributing. I cared deeply about my work friendships at my first job, but ever since then has been escalating levels of DGAF.

        One thing LW might consider is whether their hiring practices are resulting in a pretty homogenous group. I think you’re less likely to get this kind of cliquishness when you have team members at different life stages, from different backgrounds, etc.

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        1. OP*

          That’s a really interesting thing to think about. My employer’s model (which I have no control over) has been to hire new grads and experienced professionals in roughly equal numbers. Unusually, this team consists of four people hired as grads at different times over the last 6(?) years (Buffy, Xander, Cordelia and Anya) and only one who came as an experienced professional (Willow). In the new team I’ve moved to since this incident, we have a more typical mix of three experienced professionals and one grad. A rant for another day is that, even as a manager, I have extremely limited control over who gets hired into my team.

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          1. Ellis Bell*

            I think hiring diversely is the ideal, but even when you can’t, you can explicitly tell your team that the goal isn’t actually to be clone soulmate besties. Good social relationships at work involve surface level chit chat, and not constantly excluding one person. Anya needs to be reassured that she can join in activities even if they’re not thoughtfully designed for her as a tea lover, and that success looks like pleasant civility, not the lifelong friendships you see on every workplace based TV series. The others need to be told to cut it out with the boyfriend drama and to be inclusive if it turns out they’re not.

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      2. PurpleCattledog*

        My closest friends are from work – I see them all the time and spend more time with them than anyone else. I think this is pretty normal! It’s fine to not have a work social life – but it is odd in my experience to be surprised by them. Work usually is about more than just the income.

        It can be really hard to break into established friendship groups, and it can be really easy to hold yourself back from established groups.

        I joined a hobby when I last moved. I made the decision to decline getting involved in some aspects (it just didn’t suit me). The result is that while I have the core hobby I don’t really have the friendships from the group. They’re pretty cliquey people – and it is very obvious that I’m not one of them. I have two choices – accept that I’ll always be on the outer (not excluded, but not pulled in) or get more involved.

        I suspect this is where Anya is sitting. She doesn’t want to be part of the extra non-work things (going for coffees, staying for social events etc), she’s not really thought about in relation to those so nobody is trying to pull her in (which frankly is appropriate at work – they should respect her not wanting to engage), but she’s not enjoying being on the outer. Even when you choose to be somewhat isolated it can be really upsetting when it plays out where you’d like to be involved.

        I’m assuming that she’s invited and welcome at everything but is choosing not to go – rather than then shunning her because she ordered tea not coffee.

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        1. Ellis Bell*

          I don’t think this is the entire picture though; when Anya did decide to be social with someone, the whole team got all up in her business just because it’s Cordelia’s ex. I agree with you that close friendships at work are fine so long as they don’t interfere with the work. However the cliqueyness on display here is excluding someone OP wants to retain. That would be an issue even if it were passive exclusion (a cultural issue, not a disciplinary issue) but in this case OP is dealing with a full blown clique. They’re actively holding her to some pretty weird social expectations here.

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        2. Pescadero*

          “My closest friends are from work – I see them all the time and spend more time with them than anyone else. I think this is pretty normal”

          “Just 38% of Americans in February 2024 said they felt like someone at work cared about them, according to Gallup’s survey data.”

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        3. Beth*

          I’m not saying that having friends from work is unusual–just having an entire TEAM that are all very close friends with each other is unusual! I usually get along well with my teammates while we’re at work, and some become friends.

          But every team I’ve been on has included at least a few people who I didn’t share non-work interests with, were in a different stage of life that doesn’t allow us much outside-of-work overlap, or they already had full social lives and didn’t have the time/space for new friends. I think it’s rare to have an entire team that’s leaned-in to being a close-knit friend group.

          As long as there are a few people on the team who aren’t part of the clique, someone like Anya could come in and choose not to get involved and still feel like part of the broader team. But when the whole team is in the clique, an Anya really has to either opt in fully or deal with being the only one on the outside–and that’s rough for a work setting, where you’re not supposed to HAVE to be best friends with your entire team if you don’t want to.

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    5. Kt*

      I agree with this. And also…it’s fine to have friends at work. Like you are naturally going to be closer with some people than others and as long as your professional with everyone, no one should be trying to force friendships.

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      1. Roland*

        It’s fine to have friends but it’s really not fine for 4 out of 5 teammates to exclude the 5th based on existing friendship, if that’s happening.

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    6. JustCuz*

      So, we don’t know exactly what is going on here because OP hasn’t done the work yet to investigate it. What we do know is that Anya has worked well and had an upbeat team attitude on different team(s) within this organization over an extended period of time before joining her current team. I think that is more telling than anything else in the letter that something more nefarious is afoot here than what has been presented in this letter. I have a feeling this third-hand account OP has received about the boyfriend incident (the fact that this is third-hand is something in itself troubling) is just the frosty tip of the iceberg.

      That and that Anya felt absolutely zero comfort going to her managers about it + It going up the chain of command how unhappy Anya is + the way OP uses language that may be downplaying what she has noticed + having to hear really concerning behavior third-hand = a belief that something more nefarious is happening to Anya on this team.

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      1. K*

        Yeah, it really jumped out at me that there’s a lot of indirect communication happening here (manager hearing about the incident third hand, even Cordelia texting manager to ask if Anya was ok instead of, you know, contacting Anya directly). I think working towards opening direct lines of communication would help clear some of this up and also reduce the gossipy vibe.

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    7. Artemesia*

      I have rarely read anything so stupid as ‘they go out for coffee but Anya feels excluded because she is a tea drinker.’ Seriously? What coffee shop doesn’t have other alternatives including tea? This sounds like an Anya problem or just a ‘not meshing team’ problem.

      I’d let Anya transfer but if I were her new manager I’d be watching closely.

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    8. Esme*

      Seriously, is Anya 12 years old? She shouldn’t be looking to her job to provide her with a social circle, let alone squealing on her colleagues for not being friendly enough. I’d be mighty pissed if my manager insinuated I might be disciplined if I weren’t palling around sufficiently with a new coworker. Anya needs to grow up.

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  2. Liz the Snackbrarian*

    Insinuating that Anya wanted to date Cordelia’s ex because she went out for coffee (!!!) with him is reading as fairly bonkers to me.

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    1. Binky*

      The OPs knowledge is apparently third hand. No way of knowing if someone cracked a joke once, or if there was sustained harassment. But if it was the latter, I would assume that Anya would complain about bullying, not exclusion.

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      1. Tippy*

        Yeah I’ll be honest it sounds like there are a lot of missing pieces here the LW may either not know and/or filling in without actual knowledge.

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        1. Pastor Petty Labelle*

          Which I noted above is a concern. A lot seems to be happening on the team that OP is not aware of. Not just the Anya situation needs to be dug into.

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        2. linger*

          Yes, OP has only partial information, and addressing only one side.
          So OP does need to have some sort of conversation with the others.
          But that is going to be a really awkward conversation, and I don’t have many good ideas for scripts to open up the topic without potentially harming the dynamics further.
          “Any suggestions for how we can improve onboarding for / be more welcoming towards new hires in the future?” could be a useful question to ask (especially if Anya moves to a different team), but doesn’t necessarily address the specific problem at hand.
          I don’t want to add to the baseless speculation, but some of the issues to consider when addressing this might include:
          (a) Does this well-coordinated team want or need a new member for their workload as they perceive it? (If not, this problem may well repeat with a new hire.)
          (b) Does this team depend on the workplace for too much of their social interaction? (If Anya is more about leaving the job at work and seeking social life elsewhere, that is healthier in the long run, but is not going to mesh with a socially-oriented work team.)

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    3. Snarkus Aurelius*

      That’s straight up middle school nonsense. I wouldn’t want to be part of this group either, if that’s what happened.

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      1. Rex Libris*

        The whole thing read as so teenage drama to me that I’d be tempted just to tell all of them to grow up or everybody gets detention after school.

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      2. IrishMN*

        Agreed. And even if it was “just joking around” Anya may not have felt that way. It’s deeply weird and could have been mortifying for Anya.

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        1. Hannah Lee*

          Especially if Anya was already a bit of an outsider being new and not quite fully integrated into the team. IME sometimes groups that have worked together for a while and become close are unaware, or unconcerned with how they come across as a unified front and how that can read to other people.

          Having been on the receiving end of ‘teasing’ by a cliquey group I’d recently met, it can come across as more of a calling out, and sometimes there’s enough of an edge to it that makes it clear that you’re really not welcome and you’ll never be welcome, despite any smiles or small talk that may have been offered along the way. This may be the case here, or maybe Anya’s take on it was colored by the group’s prior failure to treat her as a fully peer, accidentally or on purpose.

          Younger me would try to find a way to fit in and be liked. More experienced me has realized that dynamic is absolutely a “them” issue, nothing to do with me really. Grown ups who cling to cliquishness or exclusion of others some combination of clueless, insecure, immature or value wielding social power for no good reason… and none of those are qualities that make me want to get to know them better or hang out. So I would do what Anya does, stick to my knitting and look for ways to be around them less.

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    4. H.Regalis*

      To me, it read like a joke or teasing: “Oooh, meeting with Cordelia’s ex-boyfriend Devon, woo woo! Jk” but it could have been “Stay away from my ex, bitch” or anything in between. LW didn’t actually witness any of this stuff, so we’re operating off of very limited information here.

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        1. JB (not in Houston)*

          Yeah, even if it was just a joke, I would not appreciate it. It’s unprofessional and demeaning. I would not appreciate even a joke about how my meeting with a coworker is actually an attempt at romance.

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    5. Beth*

      I feel like this is a red herring just because OP has so little info on it, and what info they do have is third-hand. Someone could have made a string of incredibly bonkers and invasive comments that were meant to attack Anya. Someone could have said something entirely reasonable and Anya blew it way out of proportion. Anya herself might have thought it wasn’t that big a deal but it got blown up through the game of telephone that brought it to OP.

      If OP wants to pursue it, they could start by asking both Anya and the team what happened in an attempt to clear the air. But what’s in the letter isn’t enough for us to really judge what happened or who (if anyone) was in the wrong.

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      1. AnonAnonSir!*

        “If OP wants to pursue it, they could start by asking both Anya and the team what happened in an attempt to clear the air. But what’s in the letter isn’t enough for us to really judge what happened or who (if anyone) was in the wrong.”

        I honestly think that’s the problem though. It’s a pertinent issue to be mentioned in the letter, but apparently OP doesn’t think it worth finding out what actually happened. Why haven’t they tried harder to find that out?

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        1. Lab Rat*

          Because Anya asked them not to! I think this letter was meant to be a gut check – “Should I do as she asks even though things are obviously not working right now and I don’t have enough information or should I talk to the team anyway and come what may?”

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          1. OP*

            Exactly this. At the time I wrote the letter, I was really struggling with respecting Anya’s preferences vs how I thought would be an effective way to handle the situation,

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    6. librarian*

      I seriously wonder if that’s what actually happened, or if this is classic workplace gossip getting around. Like, perhaps, one of them said to the other in passing “Did you see she went out with your ex, haha kinda weird” which someone else overheard and passed on to someone else, etc.

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  3. Shrimp Emplaced*

    Yeah, I’m really curious as to whether the clique said “You drink tea, so you can’t join us” for their coffee runs, or if Anya just self-opted out. That might change things, in that they’re not intentionally excluding her.

    But the exboif thing does really sound Mean Girls-esque.

    Even if OP did promise Anya not to do anything without her say so, OP could walk it back by saying, “I’ve been mulling over how to handle this in a way that’s best for our team, and realized I need to addres this with them anyway. I’ll talk to them based on my own observations, though, so you don’t have to worry about blowback.”

    As to how to address the clique on the exbf situation, why do I feel like the language needs to sterner than what AAM suggested?

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    1. vscolorado*

      Beverages – Coffee was a hypothetical example and I’m wondering if this feels different if the beverage in question is alcohol rather than caffeine? I can think of many situations in which someone who doesn’t drink alcohol would feel uncomfortable hanging out with a close group that does …

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      1. Tio*

        Possibly, but alcohol affects you a lot differently than most other types of beverages.

        I have been in situations like this, where my bosses were coffee addicts and I don’t drink coffee at all. They would do afternoon starbucks runs just down the street. I came along, and would either order a hot chocolate or quite frankly nothing and go just to stretch my legs. They knew this and were perfectly fine with it. So Anya could consider just going with them to build a bond, but I think at this point, Anya is over it and it may not be salvageable.

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        1. Caller 2*

          I initially thought it had to be hypothetical too, because not going for coffee with a group because you drink tea is such an incredibly odd excuse – almost anywhere that does coffee will also do tea or other options. If it isn’t a hypothetical, there’s something else going on there, and it could be the group or it could be Anya.

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      3. Pastor Petty Labelle*

        coffee is probably exactly it. Which is pretty much short hand for let’s go out for a break. Coffee is not just coffee but any hot beverage.

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      4. Smithy*

        Another aspect about this can often be cost. If someone isn’t joining a team for coffee runs because of cost, changing it to frozen yogurt or any other kind of snack doesn’t impact the cost factor. Inevitably Anya is more junior and likely making less – but people at all salary ranges will often opt out on those work place food/drink runs as a way of cutting back on spending.

        So, this isn’t so much about these type of food runs as problematic, but asking more senior members of the team to think about how to make offers more inclusionary generically. Things like making it explicit that it’s ok to join just for the walk, or offering to bring the coffee back to the office/break room and someone can join them there.

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        1. IrishMN*

          I agree! Even a bottle of water at a coffee shop can be $2-3, which a person just out of college may not be able to afford if they’re living on ramen. (And in my experience if you ask for a cup of water, more often than not they will say “oh we have bottles of water in the cooler over there.” Plus is can be embarrassing to basically admit you can’t afford to spend a few bucks.)

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          1. Smithy*

            I used to have a colleague who’d buy breakfast often – and for all sorts of reasons, I was never going to do that. But she always made it very clear that she was inviting me to join her for the walk, and at first would often frame it as a chance to catch up on “something specific”. She’d get the food, and then just take it back to her desk, so it wasn’t a case where I was watching her eat and overall felt very collegial.

            Inevitably, some people are better at this and some people need more coaching. But for these avenues for teams to connect, the quest to always find something that works the same for everyone is a losing battle.

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            1. Laura1*

              Yeah, for any time of beverage or food run where you’re just picking up something to bring back to the office, it’s super easy to just go with whoever invited you to socialize and just not buy anything. I don’t drink coffee after noon, but I had a work friend who did and sometimes she’d invite me to walk with her to get it. I never bought anything and nobody cared because everyone just ordered at a counter and took their coffee (or tea or whatever) somewhere else.

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        2. Daisy-dog*

          Yep, I self-opted out a lot at one of my first jobs because they went out to eat at every shift. I couldn’t afford that and just brought my lunch every day. It definitely impacted my relationships there. Sometimes they’d do a coffee run to McDonald’s (because it was in our same shopping center) and I certainly could have gotten a soda or cookie or something, but it just wasn’t what I wanted to do. (Plus, someone had to stay in the store, so I quickly became de facto MOD for team bonding times.)

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      5. Myrin*

        I think it was about literal coffee, not a metaphor or stand-in. OP says “for example” because, well, it was one example for what’s happening, not because it was a similar-but-different situation.

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    2. Not on board*

      The whole lot of them seem very immature here, and a little bit unprofessional. You can absolutely be friends with your colleagues but it’s not a requirement. You just have to be friendly and professional. Giving Anya a hard time for talking to your ex-boyfriend is high school stuff and extremely unprofessional. Even if she was dating him, this is a workplace, not a social group.

      The manager needs to sit down and talk about professional norms and making sure that everyone is included and treated fairly.

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      1. bye*

        One joke over seeing the ex-boyfriend is not giving Anya a hard time. OP needs to sit down and actually figure out what happened, instead of relying on the hearsay written in the letter. It is bizarre that commenters are taking this one situation and assuming these people are all unprofessional? LW doesn’t mention any other issues with their work.

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      2. Laura1*

        yeah, even if it was meant as a joke, I’d be put off by it if I were in Anya’s situation. Honestly, if someone made that joke to me now that I’m older I’d still be put off by it, because it’s weird to do that to a new colleague, but I’d also just shrug and be like “weird thing to say.”

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    3. OP*

      This is one of those issues that was hard to suss out. Others in the team had said to me that they invite Anya to go with them for coffee but Anya told me that they don’t invite her. Without sitting everyone down, it was very hard to get to the bottom of the situation.

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      1. T.N.H*

        Did you figure it out? Same with the ex thing, was it inappropriate comments to Anya or just a throw away taken out of context?

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      2. Essay*

        I wonder if that’s happening here is something like they say “we’re all going for coffee at 3!” which to them reads as an invitation (why would we tell you if we didn’t want you to come) and to Anya as exclusion (they drew attention to the fact that they’re doing an activity without me). At least one part of the disconnect could be ask culture vs guess culture.

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        2. boof*

          From the info so far I strongly suspect this is the case – my vibe on the info so far is it doesn’t sound like the main group is doing anything wrong (except maybe the boyfriend thing which we have pretty minimal details about) but Anya is not feeling the vibe but also is the one withdrawing whenever the manager is directly observing the interactions

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        3. Consonance*

          Or, alternatively, she was initially invited but said “No, I don’t drink coffee,” and so they didn’t invite her to coffee again, which she now views as being excluded.

          My hot take on this is that Anya is young and inexperienced, and is reading way more into this than she needs to. If I feel a little excluded from a work clique, it might sting a little bit, but I can also recognize that it’s not mean-spirited and it’s work, not friendship. I can wish I were closer with the group, but also find plenty of peace and contentment without that change. The fact that she explicitly wanted to join the team because they’re young makes me think that she was expecting work to give her a friend group. Then, since the rest of the office seems to treat work as a friend group, this will confirm her feelings that this *should* be friendship and that *not* finding friendship means she is being socially excluded.

          With some more time and experience, Anya will likely figure out for herself how to build friendships both at work and outside of work in a way that will insulate her more from her current knee-jerk reactions and strong feelings. OP can likely help point out *some* of this and also try to influence the coworkers so they’ll be a bit more intentional about this being *work* relationships. But they can’t make people interrelate perfectly, nor can they make Anya mature faster.

          And all that to say, the rest of the group *should* be less oblivious to the way their actions are affecting her. They’re being a bit obtuse/thoughtless.

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        4. sb51*

          Yeah, I would look into this as well — I grew up somewhere where that is NOT an invitation, it’s a deliberate snub. The invitation has to be explicit to be an invitation. While I know it’s not meant that way everywhere, I still wouldn’t be able to summon the nerve to ask if I could come along if someone said something like that.

          (I also didn’t take the original to be saying that they “go out to a coffee shop”, I took it as “walk over to the work kitchen where there’s a coffee pot and stand around chatting”, which can be a different dynamic to try to work your way into.)

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        5. londonedit*

          Yeah, I can see it being a ‘we’re going to get a coffee’ situation, and Anya either doesn’t realise they’re inviting her by saying that, or she thinks oh, right, they’re all going to get a coffee and I don’t drink coffee so they probably don’t want me to come, or whatever. Or maybe Anya declined the first couple of times they asked, so now they just don’t ask anymore. It sounds like there’s a disconnect somewhere, anyway – the group thinks they’ve invited Anya, maybe they think it’s a sort of standing ‘hey, we always go and get a coffee at 11am on a Thursday, come along if you like’ thing, and Anya somehow isn’t seeing it as an invitation, or she’s somehow feeling that she isn’t included.

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      3. Funko Pops Day*

        This actually makes me think of a scene in the Imitation Game where Alan Turing is too literal to recognize that “hey Alan, we’re going to lunch” was meant to be an invitation. I wonder if there’s anything like that happening here– they are saying “we’re going to run out for a coffee” or even “want a coffee?” instead of “Hey Anya, would you like to join us on a coffee run”, so they think they’re inviting her and she thinks they’re telling her they are stepping out (in the way that “I’m going to feed the meter” or “I’m heading to an offsite meeting” aren’t invitations)/ asking if she wants something they know she doesn’t drink?

        I will say that this feels like something that would not be an issue if the team was otherwise healthy, so I don’t think this is the thing to focus on fixing, even though it feels the easiest to speculate on as a commenter…

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      4. Smithy*

        I do think one way to approach this is make this less of a group issue and break down what it means for professional growth for individuals – particularly the most senior members of the team. Essentially being inclusive and cultivating that kind of team environment is part of overall professional growth – even with people where those social connections don’t form as naturally. With the coffee invite – things like asking Anya if there’s a place she enjoys they could try (that would likely have tea and coffee?) – or if she just wants to accompany them without getting anything. But also just to think more broadly about tools and approaches to be inclusive with Anya or any other new colleagues going forward.

        Because while the issue may genuinely have some cliquey aspects or dynamics that can improve- it’s also really possible that Anya was hoping to be on a team where she’d make friends. Then when she realized this wasn’t the kind of team where that would happen (for potentially unproblematic issues), the overall dynamic because less and less appealing for her.

        I think it’s very likely the issues are somewhere in the middle. The existing team can find a way to be more inclusionary and have it called out why the exboyfriend jokes risk being exclusionary/problematic. But Anya may also just be a more extroverted person who was looking for a job where she’d have more personal connections and isn’t enjoying being on a team where that’s not happening.

        Reply ↓
      5. Rebecca*

        You say “without sitting everyone down”, and that’s the problem. You can’t manage people based on gossip. Right now, you’re managing people based on what they’re saying about each other, and not on what they’re telling you directly. Ask them directly.

        Put yourself in Anya’s shoes here. How would you feel if someone was trying to solve a problem without talking to you directly? And instead was trying to solve a problem by asking (what appear to be) unreliable narrators telling second and third hand stories? You’d assume the boss is a gossip, just like your coworkers.

        Reply ↓
      7. Not Tom, Just Petty*

        One thing that struck me. The person who noticed Anya left early and wondered if she was OK asked you about it and not Anya. It’s normal thing to as a coworker over asking her manager. It made it seem like she wasn’t comfortable asking a “hey, are you ok” question TO Anya. Yes, she likes her as a coworker, but also feels uncomfortable around her. Can you follow up with that employee and see why she didn’t wait and ask Anya?

        Reply ↓
      8. Daisy-dog*

        Situation at a prior role: I shared with my co-workers that I can be sensitive to caffeine and didn’t drink coffee other than a small cup in the morning. Co-workers heard that and stored that knowledge away. Later on, co-workers started bringing in Starbucks and decidedly did not include me because *they knew I didn’t want coffee*, but not really thinking about how many other things are sold at Starbucks. Theoretically, a kind gesture to remember this tidbit about me and take care to not involve me in something that I don’t like, but not really thought-out in actuality.

        (Also, I was deep in job-search mode because this was actually a weird place, so I never asked them to bring me tea or hot chocolate.)

        Reply ↓
      9. AnotherOne*

        Is it possibly something where they are like “everyone, coffee at 11am?” so in their heads, they’re inviting the whole group but Anya feels like- because she hasn’t been explicitly called out- she’s not included.

        Or if they’ve done stuff- unintentionally, of course- like left her behind because she had to pop to another area to talk to someone and when she came back it was 11:05am and they’d left.

        Reply ↓
      10. daffodil*

        Humans are so frustrating sometimes. How can everyone be in the same conversation and come out with opposite answers to the seemingly factual question of “was Anya invited?”

        Reply ↓
  4. T minus 2*

    IF it wasn’t for the ex-boyfriend incident, I would have said Anya seems to be self selecting not being in the group. But that incident is hugely unprofessional so it wouldn’t surprise me if there’s a lot going on that isn’t out in the open re Anya fitting in.

    Reply ↓
    1. Fluffy Fish*

      That’s is an orange flag for sure.

      OP seems to be approaching this as the exclusion is innocent. And it might be.

      But I think OP will be better served by approaching the situation as she doesnt know if it’s innocent or not.

      Reply ↓
    2. Paint N Drip*

      Agree it makes me wonder how else that vibe leaks out within the team that doesn’t make it to management’s knowledge; that incident made me wonder if maybe Anya saw the group in a different light, and doesn’t WANT to fit in. Like if I was on the fringes of a work social group, then I heard them being Mean Girls or reminiscing/joking about something I find abhorrent, I would gladly step back – to an observant manager it might seem that all of a sudden I was no longer interested in socializing with the team (if this was the case I’d assume Anya would have disclosed her perspective to the OP, but who knows)

      Reply ↓
      1. IrishMN*

        Yes. Even if they were “just joking around” about the ex-BF thing, it could have been very embarrassing for Anya – or at the very least, immature and off-putting.

        Reply ↓
  5. Lacey*

    I feel like we need more info on this.

    For example, I’ve never been to a coffee shop that doesn’t also have tea.
    So, did Anya decide she was being excluded because they called it a coffee run – or did they not invite her because she only likes tea?

    The absurd hassling her about meeting up with a contact Cordelia used to date makes me feel like there’s probably other stuff going on that makes Anya uncomfortable.

    I’ve been on teams where people were overly involved (or trying to be overly involved) in each other’s personal lives and that was never the only issue.

    Reply ↓
    2. Snarkus Aurelius*

      I’m not a coffee or tea drinker, and I’ve never been excluded from Starbucks runs. I wonder if the last sentence is accurate because I’ve worked on teams like that, and I was miserable. I felt punished for not acting like we’re all on The Office or something. I keep my private life very private for a reason.

      Reply ↓
    3. Colette*

      Or did she decide not to go because she isn’t interested, and then misses out on the discussion/bonding because she’s not there?

      Reply ↓
    4. bamcheeks*

      I would guess it’s something more like the other four are going out for drinks after work, but Anya doesn’t drink.

      What actually makes a bigger difference for me is whether this is stuff that’s happening in work (eg. it really is coffee, and there’s an eleven o’clock coffee-run that Anya feels excluded from) or outside work (80% of the team is going out of drinks after work, one person doesn’t drink.) If it’s the former and it’s happening on work time, LW can quite legitimately manage that: either by asking that the coffee runs are a bit lower profile, that they make more of an effort to make sure non-coffee-drinkers are included or ensuring there are other team bonding activities. If it’s outside work, and it is actual socialising around an activity that Anya doesn’t or can’t do, LW can still ask that the chat and social bonding about it is a bit lower profile.

      THAT SAID, goodness, this sounds exhausting, and my instinct is that a manager shouldn’t be doing this much managing of their reports’ collegial relationships unless something is very wrong. I think LW needs to take a very big step back and ask a few serious questions:

      1) Is there actual bullying going on here? Are you sure? Cos the “Cordelia’s boyfriend” thing sounds kinda nasty.
      2) If you’re totally completely sure, are Anya’s expectations of socialising with her colleagues a bit unrealistic? Did she think she was actually joining the Scooby gang Season 2-4, and was totally excited about it, and hasn’t really adjusted to the fact that this is Season 6 and post-college life just isn’t as socially intense as Seasons 2-4?
      3) Are the friendships between Cordelia, Buffy, Willow and Xander maybe a little too high-profile and cliquey for an office setting? Would anyone who came into that fifth role find it difficult to fit in? If so, it’s OK to ask them all to dial it down a bit. Nobody’s saying you can’t be friends, but equally, work time shouldn’t be an endless parade of in-jokes and “hey remember that time you had to kill your mom’s robot boyfriend lol good timez”.

      Reply ↓
      1. OP*

        No, it was legitimately coffee at about 11am. We have a coffee bar in the building, but the coffee is apparently bad (I’m not a coffee drinker) so Willow instigated going to a coffee place that’s a 10 minute walk away (having tried and rejected the numerous coffee places that are closer to hand). So there is a lot of time for talking/bonding on the coffee runs.

        This is a team that doesn’t tend to do much after work together — Willow, Xander, Cordelia and Buffy all have active social lives and social circles that don’t intersect. It is the case that Anya doesn’t drink, but when we have had social events that involve pubs (twice since she started), I have checked before, during and after that she was okay with the venue and what went on. (Apparently she was not wholly truthful with me when I checked in with her, and that was part of the problem I had with knowing there was a problem in the first place.)

        Reply ↓
        1. Silver Robin*

          Yeah, that gets tricky if you try to check in and she does not say anything about it. But it can also feel difficult to tell the well established team (and the manager!) that “hey, I actually would prefer we do not go to the pub like you usually do”. Maybe try rotating out different venues so it just becomes normal

          Reply ↓
        2. Jennifer Strange*

          (Apparently she was not wholly truthful with me when I checked in with her, and that was part of the problem I had with knowing there was a problem in the first place.)

          It sounds like Anya doesn’t speak up about things that bother her, but then gets upset when people don’t recognize she’s upset. To be clear, there could be very valid reasons she doesn’t speak up (not even anything to do with you or your team, but because she was shunned previously for speaking up) but in the long run I hope she’ll feel able to let folks know when she feels upset or uncomfortable about something.

          Reply ↓
        3. HB*

          To me this is starting to sound like Anya expected to immediately click with everyone based on their age, and now everything has taken on a sour taste which is making the problem worse.

          Reply ↓
    5. Timothy (TRiG)*

      I’ve been to coffee shops where I wouldn’t want to drink the tea, though. (Also, I don’t know why, but I’m perfectly happy to drink coffee from a paper cup, but not tea. Tea from a paper cut tastes wrong. And I know I’m not alone in that. So if it’s take-away coffee, that might be part of the issue.)

      Reply ↓
      1. Ann O'Nemity*

        Yeah, that’s fair. I’ve always seen tea offered at coffee shops, but it sometimes feels like an afterthought. Oh, you don’t want coffee? Here’s a cup of hot water and a basket of dusty tea bags—now all vaguely mint-scented because the herbal ones were mixed in.

        Reply ↓
      2. Hastily Blessed Fritos*

        I mean, I’ve been to plenty of coffee shops where I don’t want to drink the coffee! (Starbucks being the major offender – I like to actually taste the coffee, and theirs is all brewed to taste good in a sweet flavored creamy drink of some kind, so the beans are burned). I’ll go along anyway, and just deal with it.

        Reply ↓
        1. Ally McBeal*

          Starbucks’s burned-beans flavor is not covered by the sugar and cream, in my opinion. Even the sweetest raspberry white chocolate mocha is hopelessly bitter. They do have a great selection of other drinks though.

          Reply ↓
        2. Antilles*

          I’ll go along anyway, and just deal with it.
          Indeed. If you’re trying to make new friends or break into an already-established group, you often will need to go somewhere just for the company, even if it’s a place that you would never in a million years have picked yourself.

          Reply ↓
          1. Cmdrshprd*

            I think even with established friends/ social groups, sometimes you do things go to events not because you love it 100% or even 1% but you do it for the social interactions.

            Reply ↓
      3. L.H. Puttgrass*

        Yeah; I’m a Tea Snob who can tell the difference between good tea and “tea dust.” Many (most?) coffee shops have the latter. Far too few (none of them major chains) have quality loose-leaf tea that’s brewed at the proper temperature. Even worse, some coffee shops can’t stop the taste of coffee from getting into their tea; I don’t know if it’s common sourcing from water, or coffee getting into everything, or what.

        I realize this works to my social detriment, so I’ve also learned that it’s okay sometimes to just get a bagged tea and deal with it. (Then I make some good tea of my own later.) I’ve also learned to interpret “Let’s get coffee!” as “Let’s get daytime appropriate non-alchoholic social beverages!” so that I don’t have to get into the whole “I don’t drink coffee, I take tea, my dear” thing.

        Reply ↓
      4. Caller 2*

        Yeah, totally agree with you on tea in a paper cup! Why is that? But if it is the case that Anya doesn’t want to go because she doesn’t like the tea at the place, it’s not really that Anya’s being excluded. She could still go with them for the walk, for example. Sometimes when you join a new group you have to be a little flexible in order to gel on a personal level with your new teammates, and I think it’s possible that Anya’s being a little precious.

        Reply ↓
  6. mango chiffon*

    Liking coffee shouldn’t automatically mean a tea drinker can’t join. Most coffee shops also have tea. But the situation with the ex (with the caveat that it’s third hand), is really not good. People are allowed to interact with colleagues whether or not they dated someone else. Unless the ex was like extremely abusive (and even then, how would Anya know!) I don’t see why you would be rude about someone having a work related catch-up.

    Reply ↓
  7. A Book about Metals*

    Does it matter if they’re specifically excluding her rather than just being generally mean? Either way it sounds like that’s what’s going on. Sounds like the whole group is immature – let Anya transfer back to her old team where everyone knows she was thriving and happy

    Reply ↓
    1. Alan*

      Yeah, the OP seems oddly fixated on preserving her reputation by keeping her in place. She had a great rep in her previous position! There’s no reason for her to stay and be miserable (which will also affect how people perceive her). Let her go already!

      Reply ↓
      1. Paint N Drip*

        I feel weird about holding Anya so tightly to this one position (and feel like it might be related to OP’s feelings about their success as a manager) ESPECIALLY since it is her first work experience after graduating! I actually feel proud of Anya for advocating for herself a bit when she likely has really limited working experience plus a manager who seems keen to keep her in this painful position

        Reply ↓
  8. Jim A.*

    It also doesn’t help that Anya shared feelings to an old peer who immediately reported it up the chain to the point that it got back to her own manager. I get why she doesn’t want to feel blamed for any further discipline her current team might face if they think she’s asking for the intervention. The culture here kinda sucks.

    Reply ↓
    1. Pizza Rat*

      It’s pretty worrisome that whatever she shared was egregious enough that her former peer felt the need to go to their manager.

      Reply ↓
      1. RIP Pillowfort*

        Yeah that’s kind of what is giving me red flags. Nowhere I’ve worked, even in places with serious culture problems did someone ever escalate something like a cliquey team for only that reason. There would have have to be some level of actual, actionable harassment for most peers to feel like they needed to escalate the concern to management, rather than being a supportive peer.

        Did they make a bunch of mean girl comments or were they actively harassing about meeting with the ex-bf?

        Reply ↓
      2. bamcheeks*

        Either that or it’s Band Candy and everyone at this workplace, including managers like Joyce and Giles, are just a little too up in everyone else’s gossip.

        Reply ↓
      3. Rebecca*

        The other possibility is that the company culture is acting like they’re in middle school. That’s what I got out of the letter. It sounds like a bunch of adults acting like they’re in middle school. Running to tell your boss a second hand complaint about another team is middle school behavior.

        Reply ↓
  9. Anon21*

    The amount of back-channeling and gossip that’s going on here is a bit head-spinning. You heard about the dustup about Cordelia’s ex-boyfriend thirdhand (which presumably means Anya did not bring it up and/or confirm it when you met with her?)? The news of Anya’s overall unhappiness took four steps to make its way to you? Why does no one on your team talk to each other directly?

    Reply ↓
      1. Paint N Drip*

        Personally it seems like OP is really steeped in the culture too, and may not be the one to untangle this mess (or, not alone)
        This strikes me the ‘canon event’ employment for Anya learning skewed workplace norms

        Reply ↓
    2. HannahS*

      Yeah, this. I hear “she’s worried that people are gossiping about her” and…well, yeah. Because they are.

      1. Someone peeped her calendar, gave her a hard time about meeting someone else’s ex-boyfriend for lunch and you heard about it from someone else.

      2. She told one person that she was feeling unhappy and three separate people felt the need to pass that along to someone else.

      3. She left an event early and a coworker contacted HER BOSS to ask if everything was ok.

      This is really, really weird. If someone told me they were unhappy with their job, I would talk to THEM about it, not pass it along to anyone else. If a colleague was acting oddly and I was worried, I’d either ask them directly if they were ok, or discreetly ask one of their close work friends (like, if I was worried that I’d missed the news that their parent had died or something.)

      I can’t say what I think the OP should do with Anya, but I do think they need to think a bit about how the social dynamics are playing out in this organization as a whole.

      Reply ↓
        1. Rebecca*

          My number one rule at work is “don’t gossip”. I’m also a huge extrovert and never shut up. I just don’t gossip, my mother raised me right.

          I worked on a team like this once. My husband came to meet me for lunch, and my (awful, gossipy) boss asked him how he lived with someone that was so quiet. I am genuinely the opposite of quiet; I’m the kind of person that is on a first name basis with employees at the stores I frequent and struggles to be self aware enough to know when to shut up sometimes.

          My family still makes fun of me about being called quiet, 15 years later. That place was toxic.

          Reply ↓
      2. Aggretsuko*

        I get why Anya’s not feeling comfortable with the Scooby Gang after all this rumor-milling. She probably just wants to quietly get out and leave without stirring up more drama, which frankly might happen if she gives more out for the rumor mill by speaking up.

        I’d let Anya move away from the gang, personally.

        Reply ↓
    3. Sparkles McFadden*

      It sounds as of everyone talks about and around everyone else, and not directly to each other. There’s also no mention of how the work is going. Do they work collaboratively? Do they all have separate assignments so they don’t have to interact? I get that the LW is just stating what is seen to be the problem, but if there’s this much gossip and indirect conversation, I can’t imagine it doesn’t spill over into actual work issues.

      Reply ↓
      1. OP*

        This is a great question and probably why I didn’t spot things earlier. The quality of Anya’s work is great. I have had spontaneous positive feedback from both Buffy and Cordelia on pieces of work Anya did for/with them. None of the upset seemed to be related to being excluded from work, it was all the ridiculous social stuff like the coffees.

        Reply ↓
        1. HalesBopp*

          The fact that you are referring to this as “ridiculous social stuff” feels like you really need to help Anya move to another team. Even if your current team is not actively bullying Anya, she has been explicit with you that she is not connecting with the rest of your team. She’s allowed to place high value on being able to connect socially with her teammates, something that Anya is not getting from your team.

          The fact that you didn’t realize there was a problem until it was brought to you thirdhand should be an indicator that you may not be fully aware of your team’s dynamics and just how cliquey it is coming across.

          Reply ↓
          1. Cmdrshprd*

            “She’s allowed to place high value on being able to connect socially with her teammates, something that Anya is not getting from your team.”

            She is to a certain extent, I think moving from this team is reasonable, but I think just once, if she moves to another team and encounters similarish issues and wants to move again I don’t know if that would be reasonable. Asking/needing to move a second time would make it seem like Anya is the common denominator/problem. So even if Anya placed a very high value on connecting with her team OP/company can only try to accommodate so much. Trying 3/4/5 teams to find the right social fit would not be okay.

            Reply ↓
        2. Pastor Petty Labelle*

          the ridiculous social stuff that is so bad Anya wants to change teams.

          We aren’t robots. How we are treated by our colleagues has an effect on how we view our work and our work life.

          You need to focus on the interpersonal a little more.

          Reply ↓
    4. Laura1*

      Yes, thank you. I’m surprised that everyone in this story isn’t in their early 20s because that’s what this behavior sounds like.

      Reply ↓
  10. mango chiffon*

    Also, LW please update us about this story. I feel like there is something more going on with this situation if Anya was outgoing before as an intern.

    Reply ↓
  11. MsM*

    “The next morning, Cordelia contacted me to find out if I knew why Anya had left early and if she was feeling okay. So I do have evidence that team members care about Anya and want her to feel included (even if their behavior isn’t making that happen).”

    I don’t know, I think it’s weird Cordelia would ask you instead of just talking to Anya directly. Can you use that as an opening to probe whether there’s been some kind of breakdown in communication without exposing that you’ve already talked to Anya?

    Reply ↓
    1. Seashell*

      Yeah, I wouldn’t take that to mean that Cordelia cares about her. Judging by the other information in the letter, she may be looking for something to gossip about.

      Reply ↓
    2. Heidi*

      I’m not convinced that Cordelia’s question is “evidence that team members care about Anya.” It could just mean that Cordelia is nosy.

      Reply ↓
      1. Tio*

        That’s a really good point! And noticing someone left is also a pretty low bar for caring, people who don’t care about you will still notice that anyway half the time

        Reply ↓
      2. Yvette*

        Or maybe she left early because of something the rest of the team did and Cordelia wants to make sure that there’s no blow back on the rest of them.

        Reply ↓
    5. Snarkus Aurelius*

      Or Cordelia is covering her butt after the ex boyfriend nonsense, assuming that’s what really happened.

      I don’t know why she wouldn’t ask Anya herself!

      Reply ↓
    6. Rex Libris*

      It makes total sense if Cordelia did something to upset her, and was trying to find out if Anya tattled. It would absolutely fit with the rest of the immature juvenile behavior.

      Reply ↓
    7. tiddlywink*

      This. It makes me think that Cordelia was more checking to see what OP was aware of (had Anya said anything about their behavior toward her) than that she was concerned about Anya herself. I think this only because I have seen it done so many times, by people who Know they crossed a line, and then wonder if they need to do damage control.

      Reply ↓
    8. Not on board*

      Yeah, or Cordelia knows they’re not treating Anya well and is asking in case Anya has outed them to their manager about their behaviour.

      Reply ↓
    9. Head Sheep Counter*

      Struck me as an odd call out to think this was positive as well. I feel nearly certain that this was a mean girl “tattling” vs a real concern

      Reply ↓
    10. Sparkles McFadden*

      Yeah, so, if you genuinely want to know if someone is OK, you contact that person and say “Are you OK?” If what you want to do is call your boss’ attention to the fact that someone left a work event early in the hopes that might color the boss’ impression of your coworker, then you do what Cordelia did. You might also do that if you just want to get dirt to gossip about your coworker.

      Reply ↓
    11. OP*

      First, I got my pseudonyms confused and it was Willow (the slightly older member of the team) who asked me about Anya, not Cordelia. (Not sure if that makes a difference, but…)

      Second, the context was that I was having my regular weekly 1:1 with Willow, which happened to be the morning after the team event. We were both working from home that day (because it was a Friday, when no one tends to go into the office), so Willow hadn’t seen or had any interaction with Anya that day. The tone of voice and context were definitely concern, not gossip.

      Reply ↓
      1. Jennifer Strange*

        Thanks for chiming in here. I think some folks are jumping to extremes based on their own experiences rather than the actual facts we’ve been given.

        Reply ↓
        1. Resentful Oreos*

          I don’t find it an extreme leap considering the boyfriend middle school bs. The fact that info is traveling through multiple managers indicates to me that these people have very roundabout communication. All of which is a natural progression to these folks cover their ass for whatever nonsense reason at every step.

          Reply ↓
          1. Jennifer Strange*

            But we (including the LW) don’t know what was said/happened with the ex-boyfriend. It could have been someone just saying, “FYI, Niles is Cordelia’s ex” and Anya taking it as them insinuating she was trying to date him.

            Reply ↓
      2. MsM*

        Yeah, I don’t think the member of the group really changes anything, but it does make a difference if you could actually hear Willow’s tone. I still think it’s telling that Willow didn’t go out of her way to find an opportunity to interact with Anya if she really was concerned, though.

        Reply ↓
        1. Lab Rat*

          I don’t know, I do this all the time with my colleagues that I like and have a good relationship with. If one of them hasn’t been to work in a few days, I might pop my head in their supervisor’s office and ask if they’re okay, because I don’t want to bother them if they’re not feeling well or dealing with an emergency.

          Reply ↓
        2. Jennifer Strange*

          We don’t know if she didn’t also find an opportunity to interact with Anya also, just that LW was the first one she was able to speak with.

          Reply ↓
      3. Observer*

        The person asking is not the issue.

        And it’s still extremely odd that she asked you rather than Anya. Even assuming that she was actually concerned about Anya.

        Reply ↓
    12. Myrin*

      I honestly don’t find that weird at all. In fact, I encounter that kind of thing pretty regularly – although not with any bosses involved, but I can imagine a manger-report situation where it would feel more natural – and it’s generally because if there really was something that had upset the other person to the point they felt like they had to leave, the asker wouldn’t want to upset them even further in case they don’t want to talk about it.

      Reply ↓
    14. Jellyfish Catcher*

      I see that as Cordelia “acting” concerned, to get info that is none of her business. It’s the same passive game as when she told a higher person that Anya left a meeting early.
      It’s creepy and it’s gossipy and it’s possibly damaging.

      Reply ↓
  12. Blarg*

    I know we all read these with our own experiences in mind, so, you know, acknowledged.

    But I read this and just see glaring red flags of bullying. Anya has changed her personality, from outgoing to reserved. She is scared of retaliation from the clique if she says anything. The group is monitoring her calendar to invent missteps and confirming her outsider-ness.

    You can KNOW when you aren’t welcome. When something about you is just unacceptable to the in group. It is subtle and insidious and sets you up for failure, because they are looking to ensure you do. You go to work with a pit in your stomach everyday, scared to rock the boat but wanting desperately to scream.

    I hope I am wrong and reading too much into it. But if I am not, I hope OP helps Anya get into a better role at this org or another one, and takes steps to handle the insular clique they supervise.

    Reply ↓
    1. A Book about Metals*

      I agree with you… Not sure why AAM is both sidesing this one – it seems very obvious to me that the rest of the team are treating Anya poorly

      Reply ↓
      2. Rex Libris*

        It read to me as everyone being so immature and overly dramatic that I couldn’t really tell who was being overly dramatic about what, so I can see there being room for doubt in either direction.

        Reply ↓
    2. MsM*

      To be fair, I could also see a scenario where Anya’s been a victim of bullying before and is particularly sensitive to things others might genuinely intend as light teasing or needs much more explicit affirmation that people are happy to have her around for her to believe it even a little. (Don’t ask how I know.) But even if that’s the case, the group does need a general reminder that they can’t just assume newbies will know the unspoken “rules” and tease back or tag along without an invite. And that starting rumors about office relationships isn’t cool even if it isn’t intended seriously.

      Reply ↓
      1. Slow Gin Lizz*

        Yeah, Anya’s behavior reminds me a bit of myself as a young graduate, because I was raised in an environment where you don’t make waves, you just play the cards you’re dealt. Consequently, I didn’t learn how to stick up for myself very well and also developed a lot of passive aggressive skills. Not saying that’s what’s happening here, but I can easily see Anya maybe having been in situations in school where she didn’t fit in with a group and just changed classrooms or something like that, not realizing that you can’t just do that at your workplace because you really do need to learn how to behave professionally with your coworkers, and where your coworkers are not kids who can face punishments for misbehavior. And it sounds like most of the rest of the team also need to learn how to behave as professionals and not schoolkids. I’m not sure what kinds of training one needs to give to employees for them to learn these things, because I think the very best way to learn them is to read AAM. Maybe just assign them a few old AAM columns to read? ;-)

        Reply ↓
    3. Aggretsuko*

      I second Blarg here. It’s got passive aggressive vibe going on all over here and even if it’s not overt bullying, it’s enough to make Anya feel the need to hide away.

      Assuming Anya gets the hell out of this group, I’m not sure what I’d advise OP to do about these people though. After I got the boot from the group that hated me, as far as I know they were all happy campers without me to kick around any more, and they didn’t have to welcome anyone else into the group so that wasn’t an issue. But you cannot make people like each other or treat each other well if they don’t wanna, either.

      Reply ↓
    4. Mark This Confidential And Leave It Laying Around*

      I think you nailed it. Read Cordelia’s calling the boss to ask if everything is all right with Anya and it doesn’t sound caring anymore. It sounds like a subtle way to Other the person who left early, or imply there’s an issue. Maybe it’s the choice of code names but it really feels like high school stealth bullying.

      Reply ↓
      1. Cece*

        OP has replied elsewhere that the coworker who asked after Anya did so during a regular catch up. It wasn’t a special call just to ask after her.

        Reply ↓
  13. Snarkus Aurelius*

    The whole dynamic reminds me of the last neighborhood we lived in. There was this tight, impenetrable clique. They did everything together outside the regular neighborhood events, including camping and vacationing abroad. I was working in my backyard once, and my next door neighbor hosted a lunch for all the women in the neighborhood but me. They waved at me, and I felt like such a loser.

    The worst part (and I wonder if this happened to Anya) is these people would openly talk about parties and dinners I wasn’t invited to in front of me along with inside jokes and You Had To Be There stories. I just stood there like an idiot. At some events, no one talked to me despite my best efforts. It was one word answers and then back to whatever the clique was talking about.

    No one did anything intentional to exclude new faces, but there wasn’t an intentional effort to welcome anyone they didn’t know.

    You don’t need Anya’s permission to address your own observations. No one here sounds particularly welcoming. More like cordial but distant. I’d want to leave too.

    Reply ↓
    1. Alan*

      My girlfriend and I went through this with a group of friends from church who we would frequently host for dinner. It was a pretty casual thing but we’d been good friends with some of them for years. Somehow the rest of the group planned a trip that my wife and I weren’t invited to, at our home! It seemed to be the only thing anyone could talk about! It made me reevaluate some of these friendships. The irony is that when my girlfriend and I got married we didn’t invite some of these people to the wedding, not as payback — we weren’t that petty — but simply because we only had the resources to invite the people we felt closest to. One of the people later confronted me saying that we had hurt them deeply by not inviting them. I just let it go. We weren’t trying to hurt them but why would we invite people who thought so little of us?

      Reply ↓
    2. Sparkles McFadden*

      I had this neighborhood experience as well, though at least half of the reason was me self-selecting out. The weirdest thing was some of them were upset that *I wasn’t* upset that they were excluding me. They’d come by while I was mowing the lawn to explain why I hadn’t been invited to something I would never have known about, saying “I know you’re probably upset but we just didn’t have room for you.” I never would have chosen to go regardless, but I have to admit that I was so relieved when I moved to a place with normal neighbors who would just wave hello while walking the their dog.

      I didn’t know it all annoyed me until I didn’t have to deal with the petty nonsense anymore. So, I say let Anya switch teams and then take a good long look at the team dynamics.

      Reply ↓
      2. London Cat Lady*

        Oh God, are you me?! I just had this with two of my housemates (one I used to get on with, and a new guy who recently moved in and felt the need to lie about me to get my former friend onside). They arranged a chess game night in the lounge that I wasn’t aware of, and being a Saturday I already had plans. When I got back from my night out, they asked me where I’d been and had the cheek to act annoyed that I’d been out with my own friends instead of crying alone in my room. It’s pathetic. And yes, I’m making plans to move out.

        Reply ↓
    3. Poppy*

      That was me at my long-ago second job. Senior assistant, manager and grand-manager would have dinners together and bring in photos of their happy evenings together to show off round the workplace. I was the new person in that department, left holding the fort on my own while they all went to lunch together. I still remember the sting, decades later. But jobs were as scarce then as now.

      Reply ↓
    4. Shutterdoula*

      Been there, too. Sometimes they’d even ask me if I could watch their kids for them while they went to the “neighborhood stay at home moms lunch” that I, also a SAHM in the neighborhood at the time, was not invited to.
      The audacity!

      Reply ↓
  14. Observer*

    I don’t think that Anya is being “paranoid”. She has good reason to believe that the gossip is happening. I mean they looked at her calendar, decided that she was going on a date, and then gave her a hard time about it. What is that if not gossip? Even if she did decide to date the guy, the whole situation would be waaay out of line, as Alison notes. Given that it was simply a lunch catch up, just bonkers, as someone else noted.

    And while it’s possible that Cordelia’s question was really motivated by concern for Anya’s welfare and she did not discuss it with the others, you don’t have to be paranoid to wonder why she reached out to the supervisor.

    So I’m not going to jump to “they are a bunch of mean girls who are into giving the new girl a hard time.” But I’m also going to say that you should not dismiss Anya so easily. And you have a problem with the team dynamics that you need to address regardless of what happens with Anya. In other words, you don’t want to talk about “you were mean to Anya”, but “Discussing people’s out of office plans with others is not appropriate. Giving people a hard time about who they socialize personally and professionally outside of the office is out of line. In general, please be mindful of activities planned at work that consistently exclude one person. You get to be friends with whomever you want to, of course. But things like regularly leaving together for lunch to a place where only one person can’t go creates an exclusionary atmosphere with is not good.”

    Obviously not these exact words. But the point here is not Anya per se, but a behavior pattern that seems rather troubling.

    Reply ↓
    1. mreasy*

      Looking at someone else’s calendar and commenting on the activity feels pretty beyond the pale to me! Like, I guess you could have been looking in order to try to schedule something with them, but scrutinizing the individual events rather than just eyeballing for availability is really intrusive.

      Reply ↓
  15. AnonInCanada*

    There’s got to be more to the story than this, and OP doesn’t have enough details. Is Anya not meshing with the rest of the team because of the incident with her her old friend/Cordelia’s ex-boyfriend? Is there something about the coffee shop they go to? I’ve never been to a coffee shop that doesn’t also serve tea, so I’m flabbergasted. Maybe the rest of the group thinks they’re including Anya, but Anya doesn’t feel this way?

    As an old Bowling for Soup song uttered: High school never ends.

    updateme! Please!?

    Reply ↓
    1. el l*

      Yeah, I see the conversations above about bullying etc, and I’m skeptical that we’re seeing the full picture.

      If somebody says they’re “desperately unhappy,” there’s got to be a reason that they can name, even if it takes some thought. “Not going to coffee” just doesn’t ring true for that.

      Other possibilities to start:
      Anya just preferred the other team’s work and was better at it.
      Personal/medical issues outside our ability to view.

      Reply ↓
      1. bamcheeks*

        Hmm, I think it is possible to be “desperately unhappy” in your first job out of university for reasons that are not necessarily other people’s fault. If a lot of her college social group has moved on or away, and she was expecting the Scooby Gang to provide the same level of social interaction and support that she had at university but they are instead just a normal workplace that gets on reasonably well, that’s more a problem of mis-matched expectations than it necessarily is someone who is being bullied. It’s pretty common to experience your first one or two years out of uni as a bit alienating and lonely if it’s the first time you’ve had neither your family nor all the coordinated socialising of university around you.

        But gosh, this is an AWFUL lot of social management for a manager to do. It shouldn’t really be necessary!

        Reply ↓
        1. Not your typical admin*

          This! College is such a social time! You’re around lots of people in your same age bracket, and same stage of life. There’s clubs and groups for just about any interest. When you switch to the working world it’s much harder. Now a lot of people you spend most of your day with can be very different. You have multiple generations, and people in a lot of different life stages with different responsibilities. It can be much harder to find close friends, or even a group to hang out with.

          Reply ↓
        2. mandatory?*

          Yeah I overall see 2 possibilities:
          1. There’s A LOT more going on here underneath the surface that is more like bullying. (The facts on the surface don’t really add up, but there could be a lot that OP is not seeing).
          2. Anya has mis-calibrated social expectations for work.
          Or maybe a bit of both!

          Sidenote – the fact that she won’t go for coffee because she only drinks tea is a strange detail because she DID go for coffee with the old colleague! So +1 to there’s something else going on.

          Reply ↓
          1. Pescadero*

            As someone who interned somewhere – then took a full time job there on graduation… even the exact same job, in the exact same place is totally different as a real full-time employee instead of an intern.

            Reply ↓
  16. Decima Dewey*

    OP: “We think that if they knew they were making Anya feel excluded, they would change their behavior.”

    I’m skeptical about that. The group may not feel that they are excluding Anya and would see no reason to change their behavior. Or, Anya may be right that they are deliberately excluding her, in ways that fly under the radar: “Oh, we didn’t *not* ask Anya on the coffee run because she drinks tea–she’d be miserable if she were with us with just a tea bag and hot water and we were all having lattes or capuccinos.”

    Reply ↓
    1. Anonymous Demi ISFJ*

      Which would be ridiculous in any case – I’m the lone tea drinker on a coffee-obsessed team and just order a tea latte or steamer whenever there’s a coffee run!

      Reply ↓
    2. Statler von Waldorf*

      Skeptical doesn’t even come close to my feelings on that sentence. My eyes almost rolled right out of my head.

      I don’t believe for a single second that they don’t know.

      Reply ↓
    3. HalesBopp*

      I do wonder if part of what the team has done is a “quiet freeze out.” I don’t think this is always malicious, but it does show an overall lack of social awareness. For example, this may be that the team invited Anya for coffee once, she declined, and so the invitation was never extended again. The team thinks, “Oh, she doesn’t want to do this, so we won’t continue to invite her,” and there’s basically no additional effort to pull this person in.

      In a more welcoming team, effort would be made to find an alternative, “Oh, you don’t drink coffee? Is there another beverage you prefer? Let me link you their website so you can check out their non-coffee drinks.” Or, maybe after she had declined once, “Hey Anya, we are going to go to the coffee place again. Are you sure you don’t want to come along? We’d love to have your company, even if you’re not grabbing a drink!” Or, “Hey – I know you’re not into coffee, so we wondering if you’d want to grab lunch with us instead.”

      The team doesn’t have to keep inviting Anya to things if she has repeatedly declined, but showing even a modicum of willingness to accommodate someone new often goes a long way.

      Reply ↓
      1. Ace in the Hole*

        Perhaps this is a cultural difference, but all your examples of a welcoming team feel really over-the-top to me!

        I agree with you that it would be unwelcoming to completely withdraw just because the new person turned down a single invitation one time. But I don’t think the existing team should be expected to jump through hoops like checking the menu for her, suggesting alternate (and significantly more costly/inconvenient!) activities, etc. Particularly since some people will use excuses to soften a “no.” Offering an invitation more than once is great, but trying to circumvent the reason someone gives for declining can be a problem in its own right.

        Reply ↓
  17. AnnsBanans*

    I really feel for Anya – my anxiety often makes it really difficult to figure out where I fit in an established social circle. If I came into a work situation where it was clear all the members of my team were a tight-knit group with their own hangout habits, I wouldn’t assume that I was welcome to join into that without an explicit invitation. I do agree with Alison’s point, OP, that it might help with future new hires if you help to initiate some rapport building interactions with members of your established team without it being the full group (all the time). Even the kindest groups of people don’t often think about how their interactions as a unit can exclude the newest members, who don’t know the inside jokes and stories, or how easy it is to fall into those habits without noticing that it excludes the new person from being able to join in and build their own relationships. Thank you for caring about doing right by your team :)

    Reply ↓
    1. Snarkus Aurelius*

      There’s a great Tweet that says something like…

      Being the new person at the office is like joining a hit television show in the middle of season five.

      I so feel that!

      Reply ↓
      2. Ensign Ro Laren*

        Being the new person at the office is like joining a hit television show in the middle of season five.

        Which is not an impossible thing.

        Reply ↓
    2. SimonTheGreyWarden*

      This. I’m 3 years into my “new” job (after 12 years at the last one) and while everyone has been nice to me since day 1, I’m only now at the point where I’m comfortable joking around with people due to my anxiety, and I personally would never hear “Hey, we’re going for coffee!” as “Hey, do you want to walk with us to Starbucks?”

      Reply ↓
      1. Jellyfish Catcher*

        Yes, but did one of them get majorly upset and include others as well – because they found out that one of their ex’s was also your friend?

        Reply ↓
  18. Sometimes maybe*

    I am a little curious what exactly the conversation with the team would be. Are they not including her on work projects or leaving Anya out of the loop on work related communications? Or is Ayna just expecting to be included in personal conversations. As a manager do you say…hey team make sure you are sharing your books with Ayna too, make sure everyone has equal time to discuss their weekend plans, and don’t go to lunch together unless Ayna is invited too. Since this is Ayna’s first job out of college, it might also be prudent to explain work friendship vs personal friendships; not that she is oversensitive, but reframing her expectations might also help her feel better about her place on the team. (The caveat to all this being the reaction to the Ex boyfriend)

    Reply ↓
    1. Sometimes maybe*

      There is also this point the OP is observing “I think there may be some feedback loops going on where Anya is quiet and the others forget she’s there and don’t include her, which leads her to withdraw further.”
      I think commentors here are so quick to jump bullying, when it also seems Ayna is not herself making much of an effort. It is possible the “gang” might simply be responding to Ayna’s social cues. I am not blaming Ayna for her situation, but I do not think purposeful exclusion and bullying are necessarily what is happening here without a lot more information.

      Reply ↓
      1. Jennifer Strange*

        I agree with you. I’m not saying it can’t possibly be bullying, but right now all we have is that they drink coffee and Anya drinks tea (with no implication that the other group is, therefore, not inviting her to coffee) and a fourth-hand account of them giving Anya a hard time about speaking with someone’s ex (which could have been an actual hard time or what they thought was playful banter with a work friend).

        Reply ↓
      2. Pizza Rat*

        I think if Anya’s personality is showing as the opposite of what it was on the other team that she’s more likely responding the clique’s social cues.

        Reply ↓
    2. Analyst*

      This. Work can’t mandate you hang out with anyone off hours. And this may include the coffee breaks. Now, they can’t be jerks about it and the boyfriend thing was beyond gross but….

      Reply ↓
  19. MSD*

    This just seems odd. The OP says that Anya has been reserved since day 1. So before there was even any interaction with the team. Smells a bit like Anya wasn’t happy about being on a different team and is doing an end run to get back on her original team.

    Reply ↓
    1. Silver Robin*

      I caught that too; if the personality shift happened immediately, that feels odd. Is this a feedback loop of suddenly being shy on an unfamiliar team and then the tightly knit part means makes things harder to feel like she is making headway, which goes back to feeling awkward? Is it entirely unrelated to work and the weirdness of being the new kid on a tight team is exacerbating stuff from outside of work? Did something happen on day 1 that turned her off the team immediately and now all the smaller things are ratcheting up the anxiety?

      Reply ↓
    2. OP*

      According to the person who Anya confided in, she started to feel out of place the first day she met the team (after over a week of induction with the other recent grads). I had arranged for the team to all have lunch together in the staff cafeteria. We all sat at a round table together and I remember a lot of discussion of Taylor Swift. I didn’t notice anything particular in the conversation or interactions but apparently that was when Anya started feeling excluded.

      Reply ↓
      1. mango chiffon*

        How much was Anya participating during this conversation? Was she contributing? Were other team members dominating the conversation? To be honest, the way you’re describing things makes it feel like you’re pretty removed from the team. I know a manager has to be somewhat removed in terms of personal friendships, but it genuinely feels like you don’t know what’s going on with the team dynamics.

        Reply ↓
        1. Saturday*

          I’m not sure what else she was supposed to be monitoring. These are all adults. A lot of new people hang back a little bit when they don’t know people well, and that wouldn’t seem odd (if in fact that’s what happened – I don’t know).

          Reply ↓
      2. Allonge*

        OK, so… the first ever time someone meets a closeknit team IS going to feel like they are not part of it. There is not a lot to be done about this; it’s more or less by definition how it will feel.

        OP, look – not saying you should not pay attention here but if someone is desperately unhappy and wants to go and has a place to go to, let them leave. Some of what you are describing is best addressed in therapy, not by a manager. You will not be able to convince Anya she is not unhappy. Let her go, learn your lesssons for the next person.

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        1. MSD*

          What lesson is the OP supposed to learn for the next person? The OP is their manager not the playground monitor. It really doesn’t seem like the team did anything wrong if Anya felt uncomfortable after one group discussion. I do feel bad for Anya but it seems like she didn’t try very hard to mesh with the group.

          Reply ↓
      3. Isben Takes Tea*

        From your added comments, this is sounding more and more like a young person without a lot of life experience who equates “I’m not on the same wavelength with this social group (and nobody else has noticed)” as “this group is actively excluding me,” with the resulting natural defensiveness and magnification of interpreted slights.

        Which isn’t to say something more couldn’t be going on and that it’s not worth investigating (the comments about the amount of second-, third-, and fourth-hand reports going on here are valid), but it also sounds like Anya has Made A Decision about the group and isn’t interested in trying to make it work anymore.

        I’d take it as a sign to try and be more actively aware of group dynamics and more intentional about inclusion moving forward, but to not try to force something that isn’t going to come naturally at this point. If Anya wants to leave because she’s “desperately unhappy,” let her leave.

        Reply ↓
        1. AD*

          I think this is spot on. Having managed a recent grad new to the workforce not too long ago, the lack of maturity in certain areas definitely comes through sometimes in interpersonal stuff like what’s in this letter. Very hard to tell from the details here whether there’s real exclusion going on, or if this is a young new hire who’s being a bit precocious and perhaps oversensitive. Maybe it’s a little of both — if so, maybe it’s for the best for everybody if Anya moves on.

          Reply ↓
      4. Kay*

        Question – did the conversation make an effort to include Anya?

        I’m not saying it was right or wrong of Anya to feel excluded without more information, but if this was framed as a “getting to know your new colleague” lunch to Anya but the rest of your team focused all on their own conversation I can see how that could have soured the tone. I would hope there was an effort by the entire team to make her feel welcome, if that wasn’t happening that you would have worked to redirect the narrative and there would have been no excluding anyone, intentionally or inadvertently. Without knowing more it is hard to say if this is a group that does exclusion well or if Anya is overly sensitive to this kind of treatment. Either way I would reflect to see how you could improve things to be more welcoming for whoever comes next.

        Reply ↓
  20. Thin Mints didn't make me thin*

    I think all of these people don’t have enough to do. Give Anya and one of the Scoobies a project to do together, something important and visible. Then when it’s done, assign the next project to Anya and another one. Then the third one. By the time she’s had to work intensely with each person, the vibe should have changed.

    Reply ↓
    3. linger*

      The odd thing is, OP has already commented that Anya’s work product is good, and she’s being praised to OP by the others for her assistance with their tasks. So whatever the ((differences in) perception of) social interactions within this team, they apparently are capable of interacting successfully around work tasks.

      Reply ↓
  21. Amber Rose*

    “According to the manager in that team, Anya was very outgoing during her internship, but the other manager and I have found her reserved from day one on our team, which we just assumed was her personality. I think there may be some feedback loops going on where Anya is quiet and the others forget she’s there and don’t include her, which leads her to withdraw further.”

    Wait, what? So you were told that in other settings Anya is outgoing, but your experience with her from day one is that she’s withdrawn, and you assume that her struggles are because she’s just quiet? You should be asking, why is an outgoing person withdrawing from day one? Whatever is happening here has been happening since literally the beginning and your continued lack of knowledge and weird assumptions about it are honestly not good enough.

    You need to properly investigate this, which means getting actual information, not third-hand info that you don’t follow up on.

    Reply ↓
    1. Snarkus Aurelius*

      Also, if others forget she’s there, the manager needs to address that dynamic, not leave it to Anya to fix. She clearly doesn’t feel empowered.

      Reply ↓
      1. Guacamole Bob*

        Maybe? We’ve had plenty of letters and comments here from people who want to be the less social one in their office and the advice is to let them be, more or less, as long as things are going well work-wise and the person isn’t unhappy. Managers don’t need to make sure that everyone on the team is the same level of friends.

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    2. Sometimes maybe*

      Also people are allowed to have quiet personalities or be dealing with personal matters that effect their moods. How well did they really know Ayna just from a college internship. How much is the OP putting her own personality expectations on Ayna. We used to have an employee who just wanted to read her book on her lunch time, and I kept having to remind my other staff, that her not going to lunch with the team did not mean she thought she too good for them.

      Reply ↓
  22. Pam Schrute-Beesley*

    I once had an employee file a grievance because the rest of the team went to lunch without him and he felt excluded. I told him I understood why that might feel exclusionary, but I can’t order people in their unpaid time to eat with him.

    I didn’t tell him that it’s probably because they don’t like him. I didn’t like him either. Sorry, I guess the office just sucks in many ways.

    Reply ↓
  23. NerdyLibraryClerk*

    According to the manager in that team, Anya was very outgoing during her internship, but the other manager and I have found her reserved from day one on our team, which we just assumed was her personality.

    This stood out to me. If she’d become more reserved, I’d say it was probably the team being an issue, but she arrived reserved. Did something happen in the rest of her life that threw off her introduction to the team, so that the team thinks she doesn’t want to be included and are freezing her out without realizing that’s what they’re doing? Is there something about the team that she found off-putting from the start? Is she someone who needs to be explicitly invited to things, and her previous team included someone who explicitly invited everyone, but this team doesn’t?

    This could be a case of people behaving badly or just a pile up of unfortunate misunderstandings. Everything is so second and third hand, it’s really hard to tell.

    Though that might be part of the problem. Maybe the manager needs to directly observe the team a bit more. Are they freezing Anya out? Is Anya selecting herself out? What, exactly, is going on here?

    Reply ↓
    1. Sometimes maybe*

      Also it is possible the internship Ayna, was doing different work she enjoyed more, or had a close friend on the previous team, or a very engaging manager, or the internship was only a couple days a week for a semester so any real since of her personality was obfuscated. It is also possible this is her first fulltime professional job and she is trying to be professional.

      Reply ↓
  24. Wellie*

    Just let Anya move. You are rigidly invested in adhering to the convention of new hires staying in their position for a year or two, but I promise, it’s fine to let Anya move sooner. Her success in her previous role shows that she has the ability to integrate and flourish. Instead of forcing her to continue where she is not flourishing, help her find a better fit. Let *Anya* manage her future interactions with her current group members. Right now, you are catastrophizing on her behalf about how these encounters *might* go. Stop. Your only role in those hypothetical encounters is to manage your own people. Concentrate on that.

    Reply ↓
    1. Anonymous attorney*

      Just let Anya move. You are rigidly invested in adhering to the convention of new hires staying in their position for a year or two, but I promise, it’s fine to let Anya move sooner.

      This is the crux of it.

      In my second year of law school, I interviewed with multiple BIGLAW firms for summer associate positions in MegaCity A, which, for professional reasons, was the only locale I was *really* interested in. I accepted a summer offer from a top firm and was really excited about working there. I had a very successful summer in MegaCity A and the firm offered me a permanent associate position, based in MegaCity A, at the end of it.

      Towards the end of 3L year, the firm told me that it “wouldn’t be possible” to be based in MegaCity A, but that I could pick between MegaCity B and MegaCity C (where the firm had recently opened a new office) instead.

      The law school dean offered to intercede with the firm on this bait-and-switch, and in retrospect, I probably should have taken up the dean’s offer. But I declined to do so, because the firm in question was very prestigious, and I didn’t want to risk the firm pulling the offer outright. (The bait-and-switch also came late in the year, well after on-campus BIGLAW recruiting was over.)

      Still, the bottom line is that I was extremely deflated and, having joined the office in MegaCity C, immediately began plotting ways to lateral to another firm as quickly as possible in the locale in which I wanted to build my career. I admit that I was a bit more reserved about networking within the firm after the bait-and-switch — I just didn’t see much point in investing the time when I wanted to be somewhere else.

      I indeed lateralled to a peer firm in MegaCity A after two years at the original firm, and I enjoyed it a lot more. Even though I gained good deal experience at the first firm, I still feel like I wasted two years of my life.

      The point of this story: I suspect that Anya had her heart set on working on the team where she had interned. That may not have been possible due to the company’s business needs — and in fairness, unlike my first law firm, it sounds like OP’s company was upfront with Anya about it, rather than pulling a bait-and-switch. Nonetheless, it may be that Anya has a close second-choice team that would be more aligned with her career goals than where she ended up.

      I suspect that this is less about coffee (seriously, what Starbucks doesn’t offer tea?) and more about Anya being worried about her career trajectory. There’s no reason to force her to stick out two years if everyone is miserable.

      Reply ↓
  25. UKAAM*

    Honestly the thing that jumps out at me here is that OP, as a manager, doesn’t have more information on this. You weren’t checking a new hire was integrating well? Were there regular check-ins with Anya? Did she have a designated buddy? Does your team have any group activities organised (even just a weekly “everyone pick their mood from this funny mood scale chart and we chit chat about weekends”)? I think you and your fellow manager need to think about how you manage and structure the team!

    Reply ↓
    1. Silver Robin*

      yeah this sounds like an in-person office (coffee runs etc) so these dynamics should be a lot more visible. The lack of direct observation/communication with the manager is weird.

      Reply ↓
    2. OP*

      I had weekly check-ins with Anya, at which she was always quiet and reserved. It took weeks for her to even ask me the normal work questions that other new grads I’ve managed have asked. She had a formal buddy in the team she worked with before (who sat about 10 yards away) and Buffy was supposed to be her informal buddy on our team. I arranged the seating so that she would sit next to me so that I could provide her support.

      I regularly asked her how she was doing and she repeatedly told me that everything was fine. It was only when I got the roundabout feedback and told her that I had gotten it that she opened up and told me she was unhappy.

      Team meetings are chaired on a rotating basis by all members of the team and everyone normally adds “fun activity” as the last item on the agenda. This can be things like a quiz, sharing travel photos, or discussion of a holiday in the chair’s culture (it’s a multicultural team with 5 countries and 4 religions represented).

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      1. Silver Robin*

        Honestly, based on your additional clarification, it sounds like you did a lot of the normal expected stuff to help get Anya settled in. If the social stuff is not working (because sometime people just do not click) and that is making Anya miserable, then let her go somewhere else. There are only so many factors you can control and only so many opportunities to give a person to voice discomfort/build a relationship.

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      2. Delta Delta*

        10 yards is 30 feet. That’s not close. That’s about the distance from bumper to bumper on a semi-truck. Do you work in an airplane hangar? Point being, that doesn’t sound like it was set up for success.

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        1. Insert Clever Name Here*

          That was the previous team, when Anya was an intern and described as outgoing, so I don’t think we can blame the internship seating arrangement for what’s happening now (or what was happening last fall, based on OP’s further comments below).

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    1. OP*

      TBH, I was trying to remember the character names from Mean Girls but decided to stay on more familiar territory. Cordelia is the least like her pseudonym, but I couldn’t think of anyone else to use…

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  28. DogFace Boy*

    We definitely do not have enough here to understand the dynamics. One possibility I would mention- if the team is in fact excluding/bullying Anya, then it could be that Cordelia “expressing concern” over Anya leaving the event early was really to rat her out to her boss that she left an event early.

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      1. DogFace Boy*

        Absolutely. I gave a possibility IF Anna is in fact being excluded/bullied. I don’t think we have enough information to assess if that’s the case.

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    2. Starbuck*

      Hmm, interesting example. I actually think taking something that seems relatively minor/innocuous and assuming the worst of the other person is a large part of what’s driving the conflict happening here!

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  29. ZSD*

    This whole situation sounds exhausting. Tell me your colleagues are in their twenties without telling me your colleagues are in their twenties. (Well, actually, you did tell me, but I could probably have figured it out without being told.)

    I think one problem that should be addressed is the talking behind the back that seems to be going on at the whole workplace. Like, why didn’t Anya tell you directly that she was unhappy? But on the other hand, when she *did* confide in a different co-worker, that information shouldn’t have made its way to that co-worker’s manager and then to the LW. And as someone pointed out above, why did Cordy ask the LW if Anya was okay, rather than asking her directly? I feel like there’s a culture of a passive-aggressive whisper network at play, and I wish that could be addressed.

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  30. Insert Pun Here*

    I used to work in what I not-so-affectionately refer to now as a “high-drama workplace.” There were always dozens of small interpersonal dramas going on (and sometimes big ones) and also everyone knew everyone else’s business. This…. feels a lot like that. Everyone needs to take a big step back.

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  31. Galvanic*

    The coffee/tea thing is weird. Coffee shops almost universally have tea available as well, so why is that an exclusionary difference?

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  32. Grumpy Elder Millennial*

    I have experience on both sides of this issue. I was an Anya at one job. It was a pretty small, long-standing team where a couple of the people had been friends for years before joining. Nobody did anything wrong, but I consistently felt on the outside looking in. Like, they would go for lunch together and not invite me, even though my office-mate was included. Like in the letter, I think it was from just not thinking to invite me. Now, I acknowledge that I could have done more to reach out to them to try to build solid work relationships, but I think I was afraid of the potential for being rejected if I tried. I ended up being offered another job in the organization that was a promotion, which I took.

    I’ve also been part of the clique, in a social dance community, as a member of the performance team. A newbie pointed out to the people running the dance that having the performance team and the other more experienced dancers congregating on one spot was very unwelcoming. It makes sense that it would happen; we want to hang out with our friends. But that wasn’t the vibe we were going for and, as informal leaders in the community, we had a responsibility to create the vibe we wanted. So it became understood that we were expected to limit our time in that part of the space and to be more deliberate about talking to newbies and asking them to dance. We were very intentional about creating an environment where new people would feel welcome. I’ve taken this lesson with me in the intervening years.

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  33. H.Regalis*

    I gotta say, to me this all sounds like teasing and maybe the main group being a bit thoughtless. I am not getting any vibes of bullying/drama/toxic narcissism/bullying/passive aggression/whatever that a lot of other commentors are seeing. We have very little information, the LW straight-up says that they’re hearing all of this thirdhand, and it seems really uncharitable and quite frankly a bit ridiculous to immediately jump to Willow, Cordelia, Buffy, and Xander being the worst people ever.

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    1. Jennifer Strange*

      Thank you. And for the record, when I saw the title for this I was very much ready to be on Anya’s side, but without more information my guess is they are trying to include Anya in a way she doesn’t realize (someone else mentioned they might be saying “Hey, we’re going for coffee!” which to them is an invitation, but Anya is taking as just a statement) and that they’re engaging in what they think is friendly teasing that isn’t landing well. This doesn’t mean Anya is a sensitive snowflake or anything, but I don’t think they’re monsters here (barring more info). The fact that (by the LW’s own words) Anya arrived to this position reserved rather than starting outgoing then becoming reserved indicates that the team isn’t bullying her into introversion or anything.

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      1. Sometimes maybe*

        This misinterpretation used to happen to me all the time. I remember one time sitting at a table that was drafty someone announced another table was available and that they were moving. I got it in my head she was telling me that she and her friend were moving away from me and instead of just joining them (like a normal person) I believed they had announced to me they were going to sit somewhere specifically without me. I was hurt for like a week until my husband explained to me that i terribly misread the situation and I had no reason to believe everyone hated me.

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    2. Tea Monk*

      I don’t think they’re bad people, but I think a lot of people here need to have direct conversations with each other.

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  34. Once Upon an Anya*

    To be frank, OP, I don’t think you have enough info to make any kind of assessment about the situation. We the readers have even less context. However, a couple things did stand out to me:

    – Anya’s old manager reports that she was very lighthearted and happy during her internship, but you and your co-manager report she’s been reserved since Day 1. Is it possible the pressure of having a “real” job is impacting her confidence? Is it possible she was hoping to be kept on her original team? You mention that your team was excited to welcome her; was she excited to join them?

    – The ex-boyfriend thing. You got this info 3rd hand, so not from Anya, Cordelia, or the X, and not someone who spoke to those three directly. You heard from Tara that Harmony said that Cordelia said something to Anya. Realistically, it could have been Anya mentioning lunch with X, asking if anyone was familiar with him, and a very bland “he’s my ex,” from Cordelia. I think it’s worth looking into, but you don’t have enough to go on to do anything.

    – The coffee / tea thing. If it’s really coffee, it sounds like Anya is self-selecting out. I, too, am not a coffee drinker. Most coffee places have tea, lemonades, flavored ice teas, etc.

    – Historically, how has this team handled newcomers? You mention Cordelia, who seemed to mesh right in. You mention Xander, who comes and goes but everyone is friendly and welcoming. Is Anya the only person that’s been “shut out”?

    I say all this as someone who has been Anya. It’s tough breaking into an established group, and my introversion makes it extra difficult. I left a job because I was certain no one liked me. Retrospectively? I was young and saw most things that weren’t emphatic invitations as slights and exclusions. Again, we don’t have enough info to fully assess. But I don’t feel like this is as simple as Anya being bullied.

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  35. Josh Lyman*

    Oh my god I could have written this EXACT letter about 7 years – down to the number of employees and having a co-manager. The only difference? The clique on my team we roommates too!

    I think a lot of times with more sensitive people who are right out of school, it can be a very tough adjustment to go from spending much of their time with close friends most of the time to being in a workplace where they need to spend 40h per week with the people on their team, regardless of how they get along. So you have a team member who comes in expecting to have an immediate work social circle, and any unintentional exclusion feels magnified. Based on Anya’s comment about being excited to be on a young team, and the fact that she was reserved from day one, I suspect that’s happening here. You’re spot-on that it’s a feedback loop at this point.

    I do think you should let Anya move to a new team if that’s what she wants. At this point, the dynamics are going to be TOUGH to correct with the existing team.

    Before your backfill starts, make sure you coach the team on being inclusive. You can even have them brainstorm ideas for how to welcome new hires. For example, assign buddies, build in a social break during their first day; decorate the new hire’s desk…these actions go a long way to counteract any unintentional exclusion.

    Ultimately in our situation, the person who felt excluded left and…we didn’t have more problems with inclusion. Her sensitivity + the team’s lack of awareness was just a bad combo.

    One other thing – you may want to look into whether the clique has a group chat they haven’t invited Anya to. That can be an under-the-radar cause of that left-out feeling. You can’t and shouldn’t police group chats. However, if the rest of the group is spending all day sharing hilarious gifs or mentioning things from the chat, it’s going to feel extremely cliquey. You can ask the participants to follow party invite rules – don’t talk about it in front of people who weren’t part of it. Work-related conversations need to be happening in full-team channels.

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    1. Tio*

      I think this is a great comment. I think at this point, the dynamic may be so off-balance -regardless of who is or isn’t at fault – that healing the wounds between these specific people is going to be tough. The Girls are likely going to feel like they didn’t do anything wrong and Anya is overreacting; Anya is always going to feel like they’ve been forced to hang with her and don’t genuinely care, even if they change their behavior. Let Anya move on, set up a better welcome plan with the team for the new person, and discuss it as a retrospect and future solutions rather than keep Anya there.

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  36. Lab Rat*

    It feels like everyone is jumping to conclusions about what’s going on, rather than answering the question the LW actually asked: Should she go over Anya’s head and talk to the team about what’s happening?

    I feel like the answer is obviously and unequivocally yes! There is something going on here, it might be bullying (which MUST be addressed) or it might just be that Anya really doesn’t like this team and doesn’t want to stay on it for her own reasons (so let her move), but either way, a conversation MUST happen between the LW and the team to sort everything out. (At minimum the ex-bf thing needs to be addressed. That is beyond the pale.)

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    1. Amber Rose*

      100% yes. As a manager, LW has a duty to investigate and address workplace issues. It really bothers me both how little information she has, and how little effort she’s made to get more.

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    2. AnonAnonSir!*

      Yeah, to me it’s the fact that OP has been dallying so much about finding out *just what is going on* that concerns me. It feels like there’s more concern over preserving the good look of the team than actually making sure everything’s functioning as it should.

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  37. spcepickle*

    Another side to look at – Most young people starting out in their first office job do not fully understand workplace norms. Teaching Ayna (and building a workplace culture) where people understand and respect work and life boundaries can be really helpful. It is great when your work place is friendly and you enjoy being there – but work is a place where you trade your time and skills for money. It is not a social club. So setting her up with interesting projects, making sure she is getting good training, helping her figure out where she wants to be in 5 years and setting up a plan to get there are all great manager things. Making her get tea with her co-worker is just stirring drama.

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    1. Once Upon an Anya*

      Yes, and this was me 10ish years ago when I started at OldJob. I’d come from (toxic) retail, had just graduated college, and my expectations were skewed. OP said Anya is doing good work, and that the Scooby Gang have active social circles outside of work that don’t overlap… so they sound like friendly coworkers who go and get coffee together, and I just don’t think we have enough info to determine where the problem actually lies.

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  38. ILoveBlueberryPopTarts*

    What’s the reputation of the Scooby Gang outside your department? Perhaps Anya being quiet from day 1 was because she was warned that the Scoobys don’t welcome outsiders.

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    1. Jennifer Strange*

      Which would be weird because the “Scooby Gang” immediately welcomed Cordelia and Xander (even though the latter is only part time) and “were vociferous about how excited they were and how they wanted her to feel like a member of the team.”

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  39. IrishMN*

    The LW says that she doesn’t think that the clique realizes Anya is feeling left out, but I don’t know. The ex-boyfriend thing is kind of a big deal. This is Anya’s first job and she might have found that mortifying. She could now be wondering what will happen if she displeases them again. I’d be really curious to learn more about how they “gave her a hard time.” Sounds like they ganged up on her and made her feel like crap, and they don’t think that would upset her and make her feel excluded from the group?!

    Also, regarding coffee…even if she was invited, maybe she can’t afford it. Sounds like Anya is just out of college and may be in a situation where she’s eating ramen for most meals and every penny counts. I don’t drink coffee so I might get water, but even a bottle of water at coffee shops can be like $2-3.

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      1. Happy Temp*

        In another comment, OP, you state that the team insists they invite her on these coffee runs and Anya insists they have never invited her. That seems like a situation you should actually explore and I’m a little confused why it’s just left to just sit there without finding out more. It could speak to a lot of other yellow flags (the team says one thing and Anya says the opposite is happening).

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      2. Hey there*

        I mean beyond that, I’ve gone to placed a number of times with ppl in and out of work and not ordered anything! Like sure you’re walking I could stretch my legs! Then again I am a NYer, so maybe that skews it since we love to walk…

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        1. IrishMN*

          It may be kind of cultural. Where I live and work, you have no choice most of the time but to take a car to get coffee or lunch. I don’t know, I just remember when I was younger I think I would have felt awkward not getting at least something to drink if they’re staying there for a little while. And having someone offer to pay for me would have been embarrassing. I am older now and my GAF is much lower but at my first job I was nervous and socially awkward,

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      3. IrishMN*

        You never know about another person’s circumstances. Unless you see her getting take out for lunch and whatnot, I wouldn’t assume anything.

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  40. ER*

    I kept waiting for the answer to ask, “But how is this affecting their WORK?” A team member being “desperately unhappy” is obviously a concern for a manager, but there isn’t anything in here about how they WORK together, just about social or social-adjacent issues. Based on the social stuff, I would guess it is affecting their/her work, and I would want my manager addressing those things. Based on this info, it feels very “manager meddling in social dyamics” rather than “manager addressing how social dynamics are affecting the work.”

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  41. AnonAnonSir!*

    For me it’s the snooping into someone’s calendar and then apparently ‘giving her a hard time’ about who she was going to see which is waving stonking great red flags about the *entire* team at me. That’s incredibly inappropriate for your team to do – and although you say you only heard about this third-hand and so it might not be as bad as it sounds, why on earth haven’t you taken the initiative to find out what actually happened to sort any issues out straight away?

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  43. Not A Manager*

    I’m usually VERY sympathetic to claims of exclusion and bullying, but from the information OP has provided in the comments, I’m wondering whether Anya is being a bit… precious? here. What we’re hearing is that she felt excluded from the first group lunch (which looked normal to OP), and immediately became withdrawn and reserved. (Instead of withholding judgment, trying again, putting on a good face, etc.) The group reports that they invite her to coffee, but she says they don’t. (They could all be lying, but that really would make them pretty pathological.) OP asked Anya whether she was comfortable with the pub outings, and she said she was, but she wasn’t really. (It’s hard to express discomfort to a new supervisor, granted, but then I think you need to accept that people are going to take you at your word. Complaining to other people isn’t really the best solution.) Speaking of complaining, I have to wonder how emphatic her complaints were to her old friend if they were urgently escalated to a manager and then kicked around the chain of command. Maybe this organization doesn’t know how to communicate effectively, or maybe Anya’s situation sounded extremely alarming.

    The information that we have about the group, by contrast, seems to be that other people have integrated into it pretty well; the group reports that they attempt to include Anya; they speak well of her work and appear to like working with her; and the inquiry made by the co-worker was raised in an appropriate venue and appeared to be genuine concern. It might be that the group *is* picking up on Anya’s discomfort and they are trying to figure it out/address it.

    The issue with the ex boyfriend is weird, but it’s also completely hearsay. Without a more reliable source, I wouldn’t conclude that this story is at all accurate.

    My guess from all of this would be that Anya got off on the wrong foot for some reason, got up in her own head, and couldn’t get out of it. A far, far second guess would be that this group is extremely toxic, manipulative, and purposefully deceptive. I think it’s right to let Anya transfer if she wants to, and to make some subtle structural changes going forward to be sure that new people feel welcomed. But I wouldn’t conclude that this is a big emergency.

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    1. Sometimes maybe*

      I agree with most of what you saying, and I wanted to add that the last two people to join the team also quickly fell in as a group so I don’t know if welcoming new members is much of an issue. Not saying Ayna is completely wrong in her feeling, but I not sure her situation is symptom of an endemic issue.

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  44. AnotherSarah*

    This all sounds exhausting! To me it seems most likely that:
    1) Anya is having a tough time transitioning to the job from the internship. This makes sense! Internships are more fun in many ways, or they can be, and the cohort experience is really important. Moving to a team that knew each other previously and are close is hard. Can the old intern group have monthly lunches to talk about their new roles? Anya might come to realize that her situation is normal (or if it’s truly abnormal, she’ll have more evidence of that, too).
    2) The new team is (aside from the ex thing, which rises to a different level) a bit oblivious to the dynamic. They can be coached to be more inclusive without it seeming like the OP is intervening in a “now you have to play nice with everyone” kind of way.
    3) There are people whose go-to is to feel excluded, for various reasons. This may be Anya’s MO around everything. In that case, invoking reason/logic is not necessarily going to be so helpful, but it might be worthwhile to say what you see: a tight-knit team that really appreciates Anya and her work, and does show concern for her. Anya may or may not take a reframe if this is her MO, but it’s worth a shot.

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  45. Grizzled*

    “Willow is in her 40s but acts younger” I feel like this is written by someone in their 20s. I wonder what they mean by a 40 year old acting younger. What are they supposed to act like? LOL

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    1. OP*

      I am 2 years older than Willow but I often forget this because I feel like she is much better at understanding Gen Zs than I am. She listens to the same music as them, is much more up on pop culture references and social media than I am. So yes, I may be projecting, but she is more youth-orientated than I am or my other friends her/our age.

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    2. Myrin*

      I mean, I would definitely notice if my best friend at work – who is 36 – suddenly started acting and, even moreso, talking like our trainees, who are 17 to 19. It’s not one specific thing and I definitely wouldn’t say any of our trainees are immature, but you can still definitely tell that there’s an age gap of almost 20 years there.

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      1. Grizzled*

        I see your point! I guess I’m projecting, since I’m 40 and hang out with people around age 30, but not because I act particularly young. This happens because I don’t have kids, and my schedule matches better with other childfree people who mostly happen to be way younger than me. Most people my age have young kids and can’t get together on evenings and weekends. Thanks for clarifying :)

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        1. Myrin*

          No problem, and I totally see what you mean, being almost 34 and childfree myself.

          I’d also say there are often “thresholds” we cross regarding behaviour/attitude/demeanour as we grow older, and these are fluid and not the same for everyone.

          I said I’d notice if my friend suddenly behaved more like the trainees but there’s a third person in our “group” at work who’s 27 and I see no fundamental difference between him and my other friend even though that’s a difference of almost 10 years, too. He sometimes doesn’t catch references me and our other friend share simply because he doesn’t remember them but he still doesn’t have that “teenager” feel that the trainees do (which makes sense, since they are teenagers!).

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        2. OP*

          I’m actually in a similar boat to you, @Myrin. I’m in my 40s and married but don’t have (and don’t expect to every have) children. A lot of my work and non-work friends are younger or older than I am. I have people I would consider good friends in every decade from their 20s to 80s. But even my friends in their 20s and 30s are less into the youth zeitgeist than Willow. She is never married, has no children, talks about her love life in rom-com-ish ways and, as I already mentioned, is much more on trend with things that are stereotypically Gen Z than I am.

          Within the team, Cordelia, who is Gen Z and almost 20 years younger, actually has more millennial tastes in some ways than Willow.

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        3. Ineffable Bastard*

          I’m 43 and I discovered that I get along well with gen Zs (despite not behaving like them) thanks to a prolific and continuous meme exchange with my teenage child, that helps me to keep up with a lot of conversation topics my younger peers like to talk about — some of them met my kids and get along well with them, too. Perks of having almost adult children :)

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  46. CatDude*

    Whether there’s a fundamental issue with the teams dynamic or not, Anya is clearly unhappy and wants to leave; I think you should empower her to do so. She shouldn’t have to be the guinea pig for you to try to root out the team’s issues and address them.

    Does your organization’s culture really look down on new employees changing teams? If so, that’s a bigger problem, although one that is difficult for you to change on your own. But I’d suggest at least trying to change that perception in your own team, and encourage people to move teams if they would be a better fit. Cultural change has to start somewhere.

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    1. CatDude*

      Just read that you said the issue with moving teams was more about budget than culture. That makes more sense and is hard to navigate around; glad it all ended up working out.

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  47. OP*

    Sorry for the drip feed but I did want to get through the comments before giving an update. So here it is.

    This all happened last November. Since then:
    Buffy has been promoted and moved to a new team in a different department.
    My main piece of work also moved to a new team within the same department and I moved with it. I tried to take Willow (who was the main person working on that piece) with me, but she decided she wanted to stay where she was.

    In the interim, the other manager and I spoke with the graduate team in HR. They reiterated that it would not be normal for a grad to move to a new team in their first two years. The way our budgets work, it would be hard to find another team willing to take her. The team she really wanted to go to was in our same department (and the work is pretty much identical to ours — if we are llama groomers, they are grooming a different group of llamas) and our Head of Department did not want to move Anya to that team because he felt it would be better for her resilience to stay put.

    The other manager and I decided to tell a white lie that a central directive had come from the graduate team to remind teams with graduates to be more inclusive of their graduates because there had been some problems. We spoke with each team member casually in regular 1:1s and they generally reacted positively. Buffy was the most clueless (“well I’m sure that’s not a problem in our team.”) but Xander (who reports to the other manager) said he’d noticed some of the exclusion. Out of respect for Anya’s wishes (both the other manager and I had asked her multiple times if she’d be comfortable with us sharing her concerns with the team), we did not let them know Anya had specifically been concerned. This meant we couldn’t address the specific allegations (which genuinely were around them not inviting her for coffee and the ex-bf thing — which turned to to be one conversation with Buffy, not any direct contact from Cordelia).

    At the same time, Anya volunteered to work on a project in her old team, which was fine. This gave her an excuse to sit with them for a week while things blew over. When she came back, I changed the seating arrangements so she was sitting between Buffy and Cordelia rather than at the end of a row next to me. I started hearing a lot of giggling (including Anya) from that bit of the office, so that seems to have been a successful change.

    In December, I organised some optional team lunches and Anya came along enthusiastically with the rest of the team. For the first one, we picked a sandwich shop that people had noticed her going to previously so we knew she would find something she liked. For the second, it was some Insta-famous place Willow had discovered and Anya seemed happy to come along too. Everyone seemed to interact with each other well on both outings, one of which involved standing in a very long line so plenty of time to talk.

    When I moved teams, the remaining manager decided to have Anya report to Xander, who she had gotten on better with than the others and that seems to be going well. That team is meant to be getting a new internal transfer to replace Buffy, but because of the work that transferred out of the team with me, it looks like that person is more likely now to go to a different team. I have checked in with Anya a couple of times since I moved and she tells me things are better, but I’m not sure she would tell me if they weren’t

    One of the things that was confusing to me as a manager about all this was that it did seem to be genuinely purely social, which was what made it harder to know whether/how to intervene. The quality of Anya’s work was good. She interacted well with the other team members in meetings. The people she did pieces of work for (mainly Buffy and Cordelia) gave me positive, unsolicited written feedback about it.

    So I think it’s basically an “all’s well that ends well” situation. Buffy moving on was probably the best thing that could have happened (and happened only because of an HR screw up — she was meant to stay in the same department with the promotion, but when the screw up happened, the other manager and I saw our chance and made it happen permanently).

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    2. Hlao-roo*

      Thanks for this update (and for interacting in the comments section earlier)! It sounds like you and the other manager handled this pretty well. It sounds to me like the changes you made had a positive effect on the social integration of Anya into the team.

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    3. Silver Robin*

      Glad to see it all ended well; the change of seating was clever. People do not always realize how space affects conversation dynamics; it is why I personally avoid sitting at the end of a table when I want to be more social because it means I am less likely to end up on the outside of a conversation by accident.

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    4. Paint N Drip*

      thank you for jumping in with answers in the comments and this big update already! High-quality OP action, I appreciate it :)

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    5. mango chiffon*

      Interesting that Xander, who joined the next most recently and isn’t as buddy-buddy as the others, noticed some exclusion. And Anya felt the most comfortable with him as well.

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    6. Delta Delta*

      It jumps out to me that things within OP’s team started to work out better with a change in the seating arrangement. When Anya was no longer next to OP and was between team members, she was more animated. Maybe she needed not to be right next to the manager so she could feel like she could integrate a little more. Sounds like it all worked out, though, and that’s good.

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    7. Insulindian Phasmid*

      ” our Head of Department did not want to move Anya to that team because he felt it would be better for her resilience to stay put.”

      This isn’t your fault but this gave me such a visceral gross reaction. It is NOT his place to decide that for Anya!

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      1. Leenie*

        I don’t know. I kind of had the same initial reaction. But on reflection, after reading the updates it actually doesn’t sound like the team was seriously dysfunctional, especially after one person left and the seating was rearranged. So maybe he figured Anya would get the same results from the other team, if she went in with the same expectations. So she needed to discern her way through with this team instead of bringing her disappointment to another team. I do agree that the language was a bit condescending. But I don’t necessarily think it was the wrong call. Sounds like it turned out well anyway.

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    8. Ellis Bell*

      This was a really masterful way of using timing, spacial arrangements and planning occasions to affect mood and culture. Well done OP. Also extraordinary use of subtlety to avoid drama.

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  48. Sometimes maybe*

    Another thing at play might just be maturity. For many 22/23 year olds fresh out of college, they still don’t really see themselves as equal adults yet. There is a huge jump for most of us around 24 or 25. She may be mentally still operating under “I am the student/not real adult” dynamic. I remember the first time I had to work with “real grownups” as a social equal, when no one was censoring/explaining anything to me anymore, it took a little while to adjust.

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  49. Pinche Coca*

    I’ve been the Anya in a similar situation (minus the ex boyfriend madness!) and left my job because of it. I don’t think my colleagues were bad people, or that their intentions were mean, but the outcome of their close social bond (and me always being outside of it) permeated all parts of my experience in that job. I tried to make my way into the group, and did go along to some things with them here and there, but it was always in a tokenistic way, sort of how like your Mom would make you invite that one kid to your birthday party who wasn’t really your friend and you didn’t really want there. I wouldn’t get the in-jokes or references they made to things because I wasn’t part of earlier conversations, and I’d miss out on key things they’d go on to talk about so even when I was with them I kept having to ask ‘oh when did that happen’ or ‘oh wow how exciting, I didn’t realise you were going there/doing that’ etc. I tied myself up in knots trying to be part of the ‘gang’ but never made it, and when it got to the point where it felt a little like a mean girls situation I was out of there.

    I don’t think there was anything that could have been done about it, or that some kind of disciplinary was needed, but I do think a lot of times people are unaware of just how exclusionary their close bonds can be in a work setting. It was a little like being the unpopular kid in high school every day, something which is harder to rationalise as an adult when you’re surrounded with grown ups. It didn’t ruin my life by any means to keep it in perspective, but it was quite unpleasant at the time and made me not want to go to work. For Anya’s sake I hope she finds a new role or team where there’s a more open and welcoming team.

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    1. CatDude*

      “I do think a lot of times people are unaware of just how exclusionary their close bonds can be in a work setting”

      For sure. There are certainly cliques who intentionally exclude others, but just as often, I think people in them are largely unaware of how they’re being exclusionary. Of course, lack of intent to exclude doesn’t stop the exclusionary behavoir from being harmful, so it certainly does not excuse it. Often people who hurt others aren’t intending to do so, but it hurts just the same.

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  50. Mid*

    So, not work related, but I think still relevant. My partner has a VERY close knit, loud, outgoing friend group. They’ve all been friends since college, the “newest” member of the group joined a decade ago. I get introduced to the group, and it’s intimidating, and I’m not someone who is socially intimidated easily. Years of in-jokes and memories, and I’m here 2 months (at the time) into seeing this person. We had barely made any in-jokes with each other. This group is a sitcom-esque large family, with lots of friendly yelling and chaos and talking over each other. It was overwhelming to walk into that room the first time.

    The group and I have a ton of shared hobbies and a lot of them regularly did those hobbies together. I felt a little left out and excluded at first, until I realized they weren’t talking about plans in front of me to exclude me, that was their way of including/inviting me. They had just been so comfortable with each other for so long, they had gotten out of the habit of intentional invitations, and instead assumed I’d be on the same page as them. It felt super weird to me at first, but I talked to one of the people I felt closest to and checked that I was understanding the social dynamics, and now, two years later, I’m integrated into the friend group to the point where I get invites to things that my partner doesn’t (for activities that he doesn’t like, for no-boys trips, etc.)

    One of the partners of someone else in the group, Jane, who has been around for longer than me told me she hates the group and feels super excluded. She doesn’t share any of their hobbies, and she’s also way more reserved in group settings and is someone who needs explicit invitations to feel included, rather than being willing to just jump in to the conversation. And because Jane has felt excluded for so long, her resentment is clear, so she puts off this unwelcoming vibe, and then they don’t include her, so the cycle continues, for years now. If someone had taken the time to interrupt this dynamic years ago, it could have gone differently, but now everyone is set in their dislike of each other and everyone seems unwilling to change.

    From the facts of the letter, it sounds like Arya is somewhat like Jane. It sounds like this team might have been unintentionally excluding her, or assuming that she would jump in if she wanted to participate, that talking about plans in front of her was an invitation, etc. It’s hard to tell, and the ex issue is a very large yellow flag at minimum that indicates there might be some maturity issues at play. Maybe they should have been more actively and explicitly inclusive, and maybe Arya needed to be more assertive. I think that LW should read the letters from the manager who wrote in about their team being “too exclusive” to see if they’re noticing similar patterns of behavior in their own team, and should probably pay attention to how this team interacts with other teams in the company, but it also seems like this might just be a personality mis-match, and transferring sounds like a great solution for everyone.

    It also might be worth considering if the team needs to be broken up a bit. Not fully dissolved, but are there cross-departmental projects one or two of the members could be put on, to help de-clique them a bit? Close knit is one thing, but it can also get very toxic, very easily. It can have negative business impacts, because the in-group wants to protect itself from outsiders, new ideas can be rejected more easily, they forget how to work with others that aren’t in the group, and they can lose sight of the fact that they’re there to work, not be besties.

    So, Arya should be allowed to transfer and not be punished in any way for it, and this group might need some closer monitoring to make sure they haven’t gotten too cliquey and are verging into toxic. They might be fine! But the should be watched to make sure this isn’t a pattern.

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  51. Thursday Next*

    I find myself wondering if Anya’s expectations are reasonable. It’s hard to tell whether the rest of the group is being exclusionary (and if they’re being deliberately harsh to Anya, that’s obviously a problem to fix), but since Anya is right out of college, I wonder if she just has wonky expectations of how workplace relationships are supposed to look. It sounds like this group is closer than coworkers tend to be, but that’s not usual or expected. If Anya is looking for her coworkers to fulfill her social needs, then she needs to be told that the most you can reasonably expect at work is warm politeness. (If more happens, great, but managers should not be trying to create friendships among the staff – as has come up here before). She might be seeing “exclusion” where other coworkers just see “fellow workplace associate.”

    Reply ↓
    1. Meep*

      +1 My more senior coworkers and I are unusually close, but that is because we are all (unfortunately) trauma bonded due to a bad boss and all relatively close in age (26-32). Not to mention, my industry is TINY! Everyone knows everyone.

      As the company grows and we get newer (and younger) employees (without that baggage), we definitely have some coworkers who get along better than others and do outside activities together, but it isn’t the norm as we work on establishing workplace professionalism and boundaries that Bad Boss broke down.

      Be friendly and cordial, but you do not need to be best friends with your coworkers. In fact, it is often better not to be for the sake of being able to get things done.

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  52. Happy Temp*

    The fact that Anya hasn’t been “honest” with OP about her experience until OP went to Anya about what OP had heard from others AND that Anya was strongly resistant to OP “talking with the others” about her experience suggests to me that Anya doesn’t trust the OP to take the situation seriously and/or prevent any blowback from the team. In other words, if it appears someone is hesitant to be honest to you/begs you not to interfere, you should also ask yourself why.

    My read is that OP is awfully passive about everything. OP keeps saying “someone else told me that…” and that makes me feel like there isn’t a realistic sense of what is going on/what the day-to-day dynamics are.

    Finally, Willow/Cordelia (it doesn’t matter who) telling OP they were “concerned” about OP leaving a work event the previous night early seems odd to me. I agree with others that it sounds like faux-concern used to either plant seeds for OP that “Anya isn’t a team player!” and/or a fishing expedition seeing if OP noticed or has concerns.

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  53. Anonforthis*

    The ex boyfriend thing is really pinging my radar. It’s exceptionally juvenile.

    Also as an FYI, Cordelia asking after Anya isn’t evidence that she cares. It’s evidence that she knows how to *look* like she cares.

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  55. Jellyfish Catcher*

    My take is due to Cordelia’s clear behavior: “mentioning” to an upper person that Anya left a meeting early, asking within hearing distance of others if she is not feeling well.
    But the proof of harassment is the reaction to Anya calling her male friend, causing Cordelia to attacking Anya, AND whipping up the other 3 to harass her.
    It’s Mean Girls for sure; your job to deal with it.

    Anya is not responsible for this; she did well as an intern. Even if she was an experienced new team member, harassment- especially not called out by management – would cause anyone to end up quiet, unhappy and ready to transfer.

    Anya should be transferred with documentation that the move was not due to any deficient work abilities. You, as her manager, need to advocate for her.

    You need to manage this group very closely, especially if you get a new team member.
    I thought about a transfer for Cordelia, to break up the group, as well. But first, manage her.
    Don’t feel bad – this is how we grow to deal with new challenges.

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    1. Dinwar*

      You forgot to add the snooping. I get that there’s no expectation of privacy in an office, but there certainly are norms. If someone went through my calendar, I’d be furious. Everyone I know has personal information on their calendars. You have to–things like doctor’s appointments, personal obligations, and the like impact work schedules and vice versa, so you need to track them. Further, it’s a huge invasion of privacy. I get that legally my manager can demand I hand in my work notebook, but it’s expected that it will take a LOT to reach that point. And to harass someone about what you found in it (even if it doesn’t fit the legal definition, morally it’s harassment when combined with the rest) just shows that this person had ill intent when snooping.

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      1. Insert Clever Name Here*

        I scheduled 8 meetings with various groups of people today, and our calendar settings allow me to see the subject of the meetings. It wasn’t snooping for me to know that on March 3rd 1 of those people is on vacation (“Vacation”), 2 of them have a meeting with a supplier (“Lunch w/Supplier”), 1 is apparently between offices that day (“Travel to HQ”), and another is conducting interviews (“Interviews”) — it was just information that I saw before realizing March 3rd isn’t a good day for that particular meeting.

        It’s also why anything that is truly personal — like my child’s IEP meetings, or my annual at the OBGYN — get the title of “Appointment” in my work calendar.

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        1. UKDancer*

          Yes, we all have our calendars open so everyone can see who is where. It’s been the norm in all the companies I’ve worked in. So anyone can look at my Outlook calendar and see where I am and I can do the same to everyone else in the company. If something’s private I mark it as private with the padlock symbol and then they can’t see what it is about. So I use that for things like medical appointments or things I want to keep private.

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      2. Whale I Never*

        That is really, really workplace-specific. I check my coworkers’ calendars all the time—to see if they’re working from home before I schlep all the way to their office, to see if they’re free for a meeting at a specific time, to check their exact vacation dates—and I presume they do the same to me. If people have personal stuff on their calendars they don’t want coworkers to see, then they title the events vaguely or lock them to “user only.” Being furious over a coworker simply checking a work calendar seems like an exaggerated reaction to me.

        (Granted, this is without taking into account the comment about the ex—but given that OP acknowledges it was just one conversation and all parties involved get along well now, I still think this is a long way from even the colloquial definition of harassment.)

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    2. Insert Clever Name Here*

      I’m not sure. First of all, Anya was quiet before the ex-boyfriend thing, from her first day with the team. And then there’s what OP tells us about the ex-boyfriend thing:

      But apparently the others found out when they saw the meeting in Anya’s Outlook and gave her a bit of a hard time, possibly insinuating that she was trying to date the ex herself (which there is no evidence of). (I have only thirdhand information about this incident and only one side of the story.)

      It’s a pretty big jump from that to Cordelia attackingAnya, especially when the information is only 3rd hand (and now 4th hand for us)!

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  56. Box of Rain*

    It’s lovely that the LW thinks this is a sign of caring. It shows that they were never the target of middle school bullying.

    Cordelia contacted me to find out if I knew why Anya had left early and if she was feeling okay. So I do have evidence that team members care about Anya and want her to feel included

    I pride myself in remembering there are many reasons for a behavior, but my gut reaction when I read this was Cordelia was being underhanded in trying to get information to gossip about with the others. Otherwise, why not ask Anya herself?

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  57. Box of Rain*

    Has anyone explained to Anya that the workplace is not like school? It’s super difficult to “make friends” at work, ESPECIALLY with a tight knit group. I was in my previous role almost a year before anyone even started including me in non-office things. It wasn’t because I’m unliked, given the frequency now, but that they just… didn’t think of me because they had enough friends at work.

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  58. home with strep*

    Anya seems paranoid that the others are gossiping about her, but aside from the ex-boyfriend incident, I think they are probably being self-absorbed, not mean.

    But there is gossip, you’ve mentioned the gossip chain that is giving you info, too. There’s a bunch of gossip going on.

    Let Anya move to a different team.

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  59. Troubadour*

    Oh wow that situation of someone being deeply unhappy but not wanting to tell their manager or talk to the person/people directly because they don’t want to make things worse… which itself ends up making everything way more dramatic than it ever needed to be… certainly sounds *very* familiar.

    Similarly, your instincts as a manager to protect Anya’s confidentiality can also make things worse. You probably shouldn’t go to people and say “Anya said…” but you can go to people and say “I know you were keen to welcome Anya in the team. How do you feel she’s settling in?” Then dig deep into their answers and prompt them to think about ways to check in with her and _explicitly_ include her. You can also talk about anything you’ve personally observed and/or say that it’s important to you as a manager that everyone feels included – ask what you can do to support that too.

    Similarly when you talk to Anya you can dig a bit deeper into some of the things she’s saying. If she says she hasn’t been invited to coffee, maybe ask her what people say when they’re going to coffee and that will give you a clue if there’s a mismatch in implicit/explicit invitation-making. Maybe prompt her to think about things she could be proactive about including herself. I’d also say to her that you know she doesn’t want to make trouble by complaining, but as a manager you need to know what’s happening so you can help the team run as smoothly as possible; it’s not about getting people in trouble, it’s about solving a problem which is making her deeply unhappy.

    If she ends up after all this still wanting to go, then so be it – but use this to prompt you to be a bit more attentive/inquisitive/involved when you hire any replacement.

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  60. Hydrates all the flasks*

    Maybe it’s because of the pseudonyms but the whole time I was reading this, I kept thinking, “oh my god, this is just sooooo high school!! Just get a limo and ask Willow to the prom already, my God!” It doesn’t help that the team is described as “in their 20s” but one person is “in their 40s but acts really young” too or whatever.

    I agree with others that it’s not super clear if Anya is maybe self-excluding from the coffee runs because of social awkwardness (or who knows why), or the others aren’t thinking to include her, or whatever the heck. And the info about Cordelia’s ex-BF was obtained third-hand so it’s hard to judge what’s going on there–was it a one time, ha ha type of joke? Or an ongoing smear campaign???

    Sheesh, could the LW try initiating some coffee/tea runs or lunches out with the whole team? One, it would give the LW more opportunities to see for themselves what the heck is going on. Two, it’s a chance for interpersonal team bonding that isn’t subject to this “they said they’re going out for coffee but I don’t drink coffee so I guess I shouldn’t go” or “Anya only drinks tea and never seems to want to join us anyway” mix ups that may be going on when it’s just the other 2-3 team members initiating stuff. Because right now, there’s just too much “he said, she said, someone’s cousin’s roommate’s tiktok said” hearsay going on to even know for sure if there’s actually a real problem.

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  61. Odd One Out*

    What about a cliquey team where the manager is part of the clique and you are the excluded one? Who do you go to?

    Reply ↓
    1. Dek*

      Been in that situation myself. If it starts to get bad (like, manager clearly treating you differently, holding you to different standards, etc), you *can* go to HR or a grand-boss about it, but I’ve learned from experience that you had better be able to point out very concrete ways that it affects your work, or you’re likely to get a “we can’t make everyone be friends” AND you’ll be even more persona non grata.

      It’s a really crummy thing, and managers should NOT do it, so it’s frustrating when it happens because it just feels like…wait, no, this isn’t how this is supposed to work.

      But basically. Decide if you still like everything else about the job. Decide if it’s going to be a significant hindrance in your work going forward. Buckle down and focus on doing good work and trying to ignore that social aspect (seek friendships with folks in other departments if you want to, but DO NOT GOSSIP about your own). If there are significant instances of you being treated differently than your coworkers (being reprimanded for talking with other coworkers at your desk or other small things that the clique is allowed to do, having your errors made into a big deal while theirs aren’t, having your leave requests denied without cause, being spoken to disrespectfully), make a note if you want to, in case you ever do need to go to HR with concrete examples, but make sure to keep it to specific harmful things so it doesn’t look like an Airing of the Grievances.

      Also, maybe see a therapist or counselor for a bit. It can really mess with you to be on the outside of a clique that the rest of your department is in, so it’s good to have a neutral person who you can vent to who can also help you walk through solutions for your specific situation.

      Good luck!

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  62. Raida*

    I’d be having a quiet 1:1 with Cordelia:

    I have gotten info third and seventh-hand.
    I loathe gossip, so I’m talking directly to you to understand:
    You are Cordelia, yeah?
    You used to date a guy, Bob, yeah?
    This I do know – Anya and Bob worked together when she/they were intern(s).
    This I do know – Anya and Bob caught up.
    I didn’t know that was happening when they planned to catch up, if I had I would have encouraged the networking, that I do know.

    So, this is what I have been told:
    Yourself, Buffy, Xander and Willow had issue with her and Bob catching up… possibly insinuating that she was trying to date Bob.
    How true is that?

    then, I’d simply give her a blunt lesson:
    Your behaviour was immature and unprofessional.
    I understand you weren’t taught this little lesson in high school or college, so I’m teaching you now:
    You. Have nothing to do with who Bob does or does not date (excluding very close relatives, feel free to have an opinion on that). Your coworkers *completely* have nothing to do with who their coworker’s ex may or may not be dating.
    He is your ex.
    You. Now stop thinking of him as anything other than a person you *do not have any claim over or any opinion on*.
    That. Is being mature.
    That’s the lesson – break up, move on, learn to let go, realise you aren’t the main character – you’re going to have sixty years of him being your ex, unless the plan is to stalk him you shouldn’t have any opinion on him dating hmm!

    This is not a high school “I called dibs OMG” or a college “sisters first!” thing. This is an adult behaving like an adult. And especially behaving like an adult who is employed and wishes to not have their professional conduct or decision making capabilities or emotional attachments questioned from not acting maturely and not calling out coworkers and friends who are making them look bad by association.
    If I were you I would be horrifically embarrassed by my behaviour and that of my coworkers/friends. But I’d learn from it. And I expect you to do so.
    I do not want my team associated professionally with cliquey, immature behaviour. And I certainly do not want my team associated professionally with a woman who’s clingy towards her ex and I never spoke up.

    Reply ↓

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