Remember the letter-writer whose boss was pressuring them to work more hours when they had just back from stress leave? Here’s the update.
Good news all around, thank you for the advice — I desperately needed to hear it.
It ended up working out — eventually. Brian’s outbursts, yelling, and general unreasonableness got worse after I wrote in, to the point where he would shout at me and everyone else in front of the team. I’m proud of keeping my cool in those moments, but I was in tears afterwards. It sucked. “Nobody is bigger than the project” became a sort of meme on our site, which was a funny upside. It seemed targeted against me, with him nitpicking my work and trying to embarrass me in front of the team to the point my client and subcontractors were asking why my project manager had it out for me. I also got close with our client, who loathes Brian, so that’s nice!
Because our project was so distressed, our ops manager, Luke, ended up taking more of an active role in managing the job, and thus Brian’s performance. He was onsite more, so I was able to skip Brian and talk to him about what was going on (because he had eyes, he had also seen what was happening). I also did end up going to HR, and they were great — they agreed that Brian was out of step with the org culture, and made sure that I had backing to set boundaries around my work. I also did have a discreet chat with my mentor and he flipped his lid at what was happening, so I think that’s one reason why Luke was looking at Brian’s performance.
I ended up electing for mediation so Brian and I could work out how we could work together (outcome: he would be less of an ass and I would proceed as usual). The damage was done and I was mega burnt out, so I agreed with my ops manager and Brian that once my work was handed over, I would go on long mental health leave from October 2024 to late January 2025, so that I could move back home from this regional hellhole. The leave was amazing, my husband got a job, and the break let me reassess what I actually wanted. Turns out, not my current high hours, high stress job. 38 hours a week sounds like paradise to me right now, and I don’t even have to take a big pay cut to work client side. Thanks to my close relationship with our client, they helped me find a new job. I’m starting there with three days WFH at the end of April with a great team, and I’m really excited!
My company was running out of work and major layoffs are on the cards, so as soon as I came back last week I had a redundancy meeting, I took the package — 12 weeks pay! I’m free! I couldn’t be happier with the outcome, and I’m so glad to see the back of this company without having to resign. As for Brian, the project has ended badly — the client hates us and half of our team, including Brian, is on a permanent internal blacklist for them, so if they’re ever on a project org chart, Questions Will Be Asked. Management has him pottering around the office doing not a lot until something comes up or he gets made redundant too, but his reputation is wrecked after our project.
Thanks again for your advice and the advice of your comment section. It really helped clarify what I needed to do and how much power I actually had in the situation!
Thanks for this update! Glad it worked out for you, and good luck at the new job!
I’m so glad this worker out for lw. My cousin took approved stress leave, his first day back he was told to pack his bags. Some companies pretend to be supportive and in the background they’re planning on his to term you.
Gross!
I’m so sorry it got worse before it got better, but when it did get better, it sounds like it got pretty great! And good that Brian has (sort of) gotten his comeuppance.
Just to clarify, you got a new job and *then* were made redundant at the old? If so, well played! I happened to overhear a new hire at work say that that happened to him, got hired at my employer, then got laid off at the old before he gave notice. He got a *huge* payout (something around $100K) and ended up starting with us the week after he left his old job.
Basically – I was late in interview stages with the job I’m starting at in April when they made me redundant. I got super super lucky. When Luke and HR had my redundancy meeting I told them that I’m glad they didn’t “offer” me another job in another state to avoid making me redundant. So they were overall really decent about it – I think they’ll have to make a LOT of redundancies in the next year, so I’m glad they’re handling it with a bit of decency.
Not to ignite the tiresome discussions about how everything in the US sucks, but … updates from other countries always sound like dispatches from the moon to me sometimes haha. A second paid mental health leave and a twelve week paid redundancy. There probably are sectors in the US where such things happen but let’s just say I’ve never been in one of them.
It does seem a bit like an alternate reality to some of us on very low rungs in corporate ladders…
No kidding. My group had a meeting with our boss today and my coworker said she’s feeling burned out and then said, “I just feel like nothing matters, you know?” and the response was basically everyone saying, “Yeah same” and then we just moved on. I would love to have a week of mental health leave, let alone multiple.
Ugh, me too.
Being unemployed like I was for so long (and then briefly again) is NOT THE SAME.
Yeah, my manager would look at me like I’d just sprouted three heads if I asked for stress leave. And then probably laugh. And maybe tell me I could take unpaid leave (it’s retail, so I absolutely can’t afford that.) When I ask for more help with overloaded tasks, he just shrugs and says there’s nothing he can do, and just “get done what you can”.
It was absolutely like watching a tv show where all the rules seem weird and off and you realize the main character is in a coma dream. I kept going ‘wait, how is this… why are they??? I don’t understand!!’.
Wait, is there something in either letter that says OP is somewhere other than the US? I know that that’s a unicorn situation here in the US but not totally unheard of. And my apologies if it is obvious that OP isn’t in the US, I just don’t see anything that says that.
Not in the original letter, but in the comments on the original the OP mentioned:
Cup Weekend refers to the Melbourne Cup (I’m guessing based off a quick google) which lines up with the OP being in Australia.
Ah, thanks, Hlao-roo, you always come through for me!
Correct, I’m in Aus and it was Melbourne Cup (not Bendigo Cup lol)! The mental health leave was, technically, sick leave (I had medical certs for everything), but it was mostly unpaid. They didn’t have to give it to me for sure, but I think Luke wanted to keep me, and probably keep me from causing some legal trouble or something.
I am not sure how unicorny this situation even is? They gave her a second leave because her boss was a POS and the company knew they were in the wrong.
But she did use the term redundancy which isn’t a US term.
Yes it is
Thanks for this. While it’s not used that frequently, I’ve certainly heard people here use it. Maybe it’s more common in UK (or Australia, as it seems OP is from), but not unheard of here.
I think the most *common* time it’s used is when layoffs are the result of a merger, but it pops up in all kinds of RIF contexts.
“Made redundant” is a British euphemism for being laid off. I generally like British euphemisms, but find that one quite brutal.
Thought same. It seems very cruel to say it THAT way.
I think part of that maybe comes from the fact that in the UK the job role is the bit that’s made redundant not the person. I think there’s restrictions on how soon you can hire for a position again after you’ve made it redundant as well.
Yes, and for a certain period you have to offer the job back to the original employee before posting the same job, so it’s not a way to get rid of a troublesome employee. At least that’s the way it works in Finland.
The more I hear about Finland, the more I wonder if they need someone to groom reindeer. #ivolunteerastribute
Nah, the only time it’s offensive is when the role ISN’T made redundant and they illegally hire someone else.
It’s not a euphemism, it’s a legal term and there is a whole legal framework for how redundancies are meant to take place (people do use the term when it’s not strictly correct though). I line manage people on short term contracts sometimes and have to have a redundancy meeting three months before the contract ends (which is sometimes almost as soon as they start) where I support them about the end of the role and make sure they are aware of any redeployment options.
The Australian dream is this: save up your long service leave. Take the last 6-9 months off before you plan to retire. Get made redundant and a nice payout. Retire. I’ve got friends in the public service planning/hoping for this!
Really? As a British person it doesn’t sound brutal at all to my ears – just factual (also wouldn’t describe it as a euphemism, it’s just the name for the process).
There’s no shame or stigma whatsoever to being made redundant, it’s just one of those things that could happen to anyone. Being sacked, on the other hand, has huge stigma (because it is really hard to sack people, they are usually just “encouraged to resign” – you only get outright sacked if you’ve done something really egregious).
To me being “laid off” sounds harsher – like to me being “made redundant” is a euphemism for being “laid off/fired”… but in my redundancy meeting Luke had a company script he had to follow about making the position redundant, not the person.
As Sashaa says, it’s not a euphemism, nor is it particularly brutal. I was made redundant from a previous job that was going through a major restructure where the role I had would no longer exist and I would have had to apply for a similar (but not the same) job, with far fewer protections (it was a local tourist attraction that had been taken over by someone used to running a tourist attraction in London who had no clue that he wasn’t going to get the footfall in my town that he had in London, especially as we were right by an outlet shopping centre and not far from a major historic site). I bowed out and took the redundancy payment, as did my colleagues.
And it was maybe a year after that that we heard everyone who was working there was fired via Facebook – the place closed literally overnight, so they didn’t even get the basic courtesy of an exit interview and didn’t qualify for redundancy.
I don’t remember anything about the location being mentioned in either letter. The mention of being “made redundant” is the only thing that made wonder abiut it, because that language is never (at least not as far as I know) used in the USA.
I’m so confused why people think this it’s very common in the US
To be fair, sitting here in the EU and hearing how “no one is REALLY being really productive the full 40 hours” or “reading Ask a Manager while at work” from US office workers while busting my *** around 55 hours a week and taking work home feels weird as well.
I mean, there are always people who have it different than us, is all.
That is… not a country specific difference. There is massive variability in the US on how busy various roles are because we are a massive country, but we have many companies/roles/teams/jobs where people are overworked and take work home with them. It’s kind of a defining caricature of the US that we prioritize work over everything else.
In the US, it’s often a function of where you work. I work much harder at my retail job than I did at the office, because there’s absolutely this idea that retail and fast food workers are slacker loosers who don’t deserve to sit down or get paid enough to live on, so management/corporate have long checklists of stuff to do so there’s never “down time”. At the office, nobody cared if I occasionally surfed the internet, as long as the work got done on time, and we regularly had long paid lunches at restaurants (technically meetings, I guess, but we didn’t really do much business there, more like a “how are things going” kind of thing. The work was not super stressful.)
I think it’s also about the focus required for the tasks. I’ve worked as a server, at a pizza place and in retail, and I was able to work the entire length of the shift with only standard breaks. Don’t get me wrong, I was exhausted afterwards, but I wasn’t on my phone or browsing the internet.
In contrast, I hit a pretty hard max of 30 hrs/week of focused computer programming. I can’t do it for my entire shift multiple days in a row. I’ve tried all sorts of productivity hacks like the pomodoro method, but if I work the whole 8 hours on Monday then I zone out half of Tuesday. If I work overtime, I forget details and make dumb-ass mistakes that take forever to find and fix.
It’s not about which is harder or easier (being a server was really hard for me!), it’s just the baseline amount of focus required to do the task.
I think it’s the difference between long term projects and short term ones. My office work was a lot of longer projects and event planning, with research that I was largely left alone to do. It switched between public events and focused work, with typically known timing.
My retail job involves a lot more short-term projects, but also a huge amount of working memory (where literally everything is in the store, what are we out of, product knowledge to help customers, etc) and is way more chaotic as to when I will have to stop what I’m doing to help a customer, meaning deep concentration is sometimes not possible. But also, sometimes absolute tedium and repetitive tasks.
And that is a lot harder for me to focus on than my office work.
Yeah in the US it’d be like ‘You can have a 12 minute mental health break, and when you get back we will lay you off with no benefits so the share price can go up a thousandth of a percentage point’
Yeah I’ve never heard of paid “stress leave” which doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist here. We have FMLA but it basically just says you can’t be fired – it’s unpaid. Companies can choose to pay it if they want to, but none I’ve ever worked at do. If you demonstrated stress, you would be asked to permanently leave, that’s the paradigm I’m more familiar with.
A second paid mental health leave and a twelve week paid redundancy
That’s the good part. The bad part is that Brain can’t be kicked to the curb. In most functional companies in the US, Brian would have been gone by now. Even places don’t care about managers being jerks care about people who antagonize clients to this extent, who open them to law suits, and who mess up projects this badly – especially when it comes out that he’s been fudging numbers to hide stuff from upper management.
I don’t think that there is any country where all aspects of employment law are what they really should be.
Er – in most functional companies in Australia, Brian would have been gone by now. I’m not sure why you think this is a function of the country in this case; you’re just wrong.
Yeah, I think most HR is really hesitant to fire people. Our industry is notorious for saying “well, if you don’t LIKE night shift on a project 3 hours from your house you can always leave” instead of firing people.
12 weeks severance in the US isn’t uncommon depending on your job tenure and seniority.
Yeah, my severance was based on years of service, so it was pretty good, along with my notice period payout.
It’s unfortunately far too uncommon but I got lucky in the US. I had 3 months fully paid mental health leave from my company and would have been welcomed back — I am positive they would not have retaliated — but instead I quit and took state disability at half pay for a year. I was really surprised at the generosity of my state benefits (California), including the ability to earn on top of that up to my original salary. This wasn’t about my sector but an unusually generous state as well as employer, though I found it an extremely difficult place to work in other ways.
Right? My first thought was my god I cannot image a workplace in the dystopian hellhole that is the U.S. that would allow you to take a 30 minute mental health leave let alone a months-long mental health leave.
I work in the US, in software development, and me and my teammates have taken mental health days before. In fact, our bosses have sometimes encouraged us to.
never heard of stress leave..not sure we have that in the US, unless it’s an actual breakdown mentally
Yeah, when it’s so bad that a client actually speaks up about a manager’s behavior, it’s beyond time to gtfo. I’m a bit surprised Bryan still hasn’t been let go, given he’s now blacklisted from what sounds like a major client after already getting taken to task about his earlier behavior, but OP’s out and that’s what matters more.
I too am surprised that it wasn’t Brian who got the ax instead of OP. That seems like a really bizarre way to do layoffs…”yes, let’s lay off the person who did all that work for this project rather than the terrible project manager who is so problematic that our top client refuses to work with him anymore.” Sure, that makes SO much sense. #sarcasm
OTOH, sounds like this company is closing soon anyway so maybe they wanted to be decent and let OP move on sooner than everyone else since it sounds like they actually like OP. Who knows.
The squeaky wheel/complainer is always the one who gets canned, never the one causing the problem.
A redundancy meeting isn’t usually a lay off – it’s a meeting to discuss the likelihood of a layoff, offer a severance package, or explore other options if the employee isn’t comfortable with the offering and thinks they could work out another arrangement/negotiate terms. My guess is enough people took the package that they didn’t *have* to lay Brian off, and Brian didn’t want to leave, so they kept him and gave him nonsense to do.
That sounds about right to me.
It’s not clear to me that the layoffs have occurred yet. I wonder if the OP left in time to get the package and if the company is just waiting for the layoffs to let Brian go.
Yeah, I’m guessing they don’t want to deal with the tantrum he’ll probably throw over being let go until they have to, so they’re waiting until a quieter moment and hoping he takes the hint to leave of his own volition in the meantime.
Yeah, that was my experience. I didn’t want the job as it would become, certainly didn’t want to apply for the job as it would become, and took the redundancy. The last interviewing me – the company hired an outside agency to handle this HR stuff for this – did try to put a good spin on it, but could tell I wasn’t convinced that the route the new company director was planning on taking would work.
I was proved right within two years; I know my local area and it was so clearly obvious that the new director didn’t have a clue.
It sounded like voluntary redundancy to me.
Yep, to clarify they let me move on before most of the redundancies – but we all know they’re coming once projects start ending, even if they win more work. I told Luke I wasn’t interested in Brian’s type of role in the office – I can’t do 70 hour weeks, weekends, etc with a tender, so we all kind of agreed a redundancy was best. I think they handled it really fairly because I’ve been a good performer for a long time.
If the client actually called out Brian’s behavior that’s pretty bad. Reminded me of the “I’m jealous of my attractive colleague” letter who had the same thing – a client noticing how badly they treated their report.
Sounds like getting out of there was the right move!
I love it when an update is this satisfying. If Brian gets canned, that’ll be the cherry on top.
I’m so glad everything worked out so well for you OP!!
Thanks for the update, OP! So happy for you!!
And thanks to Alison for publishing this today. Needed a pick me up after *waves hands at everything*
i think sometimes we all are rooting for an update that is “my company stopped doing the bad thing and now all is copacetic”.
but i also love updates like this. where the LW realizes that they don’t want to be there to begin with, and comeuppance for the issues may be coming, but they get to not worry about adjudicating it because they’re free from those worries. the sheer joyous relief is overflowing from this letter, and i couldn’t be happier to see it!
hell yeah, LW! go frolic! …ok, look up pollen counts before you frolic. but definitely frolic
Yeah – I’ve barely been in contact with anyone from work since Feb and it’s great. I’ll check in with people once I’m back in a job, but it’s so good being free from the stupid corporate drama.
A great update!
Yes! I was waiting for this update. Like everyone else, I’m disappointed that Brian didn’t get canned, but what matters is that OP landed in a good place. It’s kind of a shame that the business is going under because Luke and OP’s immediate boss seemed like good people, and they did try to do right by OP. I wonder if wrapping Brian in duct tape and propping him in a corner sooner might have kept the business afloat?
It might have saved the client on that project, but that project was the smallest of the half a dozen we had going a the time… and also losing the smallest amount of money… my section of the business was totally f****. In my region at least.
The stinger was that after years of Brian ranting about how much money the project was losing, being so tight he wouldn’t put the company card on the tab on the rare Friday drinks occasions, the project actually made more than the target profit! Super insulting.
My headcanon is now that the project turned a profit because of you and your work/life boundaries. I will not be taking further questions.
Well that was certainly a lot of skirting around the issue, which was Brian. Instead of addressing it. Glad it worked out but not surprised the company is doing poorly.