a team whose boss was AWOL for 2 years is angry and resentful now

by Alison Green on November 12, 2024

A reader writes:

My department had a manager, Beth, who spiraled into a drug addiction crisis post-Covid. The details of how that happened and how long it took to remove her from her position could make up several letters, but I will leave out those details as it’s not what I’m writing about now.

Beth’s team did their jobs (or did not do their jobs) while their boss was in the midst of this crisis for close to two years. Now Beth is gone and the team is in chaos. After she left, it became clear that over this period Beth was not checking that anyone was actually doing any work. She ignored almost all emails expressing concerns about her team. She also approved many hours of late night overtime, during which it is very unlikely any work was actually being done. Some new people joined the team during this time and got essentially no training, so have been just making it up as they go along, with no one checking in. Like I said, chaos.

Beth’s director, Janet, has decided that instead of going back two years and trying to pick apart this web of problems, most of which cannot be proven at this point, they are just going to start fresh. People are now held to working the right schedule, they’re no longer allowed to clock overtime without prior approval, and customers are getting served appropriately.

The problem is that there is a handful of employees who are VERY angry over this issue. These are employees that did everything “right” over the last two years and are very upset there are no consequences for those that didn’t. My impression is that these are great workers who got so fed up during this time that they can barely stand to be in the same room as the people who took advantage of their manager’s breakdown to not do their jobs. These “good” employees are so hostile that it’s a terrible work environment for everyone.

I feel bad because I know that under a different manager, this ball of hate would not have developed. These employees have been around for years and I know under their previous manager they flourished. I am not directly involved in this situation at all, but I am currently training Beth’s replacement and have shared the same details I‘ve shared here with you, and I’m not sure whether there are any further tips I could give them. Any advice would be much appreciated!

I mean, it is pretty unfair. It’s understandable that people are upset. Apparently they too could have kicked back for two years, not done any work, gotten paid for overtime they didn’t work, and in the end received no consequences for it. It makes sense that they’re irritated. I’d also bet that they ended up picking up the slack for their lazier coworkers during that time, and now they’re not being recognized for it.

I’m not saying Janet’s solution is the wrong one. Maybe there’s no practical way to sort through what happened, and maybe just moving forward is what truly makes the most sense for the business. But it’s unrealistic to expect people won’t have feelings about that.

I do wonder if there’s no way to reward the better employees now. If there’s any way to tell who kept the department afloat during that time or went above and beyond to cover for others, ideally they’d be recognized in some way — a bonus, better positioning for future promotions, whatever it is. Instead of looking at it as “give consequences for people who slacked off,” the right lens might be “reward those who didn’t.” But I also realize there might be no practical way to do that at this point — or no practical way to do it without missing some people, which would risk demoralizing them even further.

It’s going to be particularly tough for Beth’s replacement — who sounds like she’s coming in new to the situation — to sort through all that, even though she’s stuck dealing with the aftermath. In her shoes, I think I’d do a couple of things: First, talk one-on-one with each team member about their sense of how things are going and what the top priorities for stabilizing the department should be and, as part of those conversations, create room for them to air any grievances or frustrations. She should be open to hearing them out, while also being clear about what they can and can’t expect going forward. If it’s clear that someone was instrumental in keeping the department functioning during Beth’s chaotic reign, she should be openly appreciative of that and say that going forward she’ll be rewarding that kind of initiative/responsibility/effort (assuming that’s true, which it should be). She can’t go back and retroactively manage a situation she wasn’t there for, but she can assure them that the team will be managed effectively from this point on, which includes recognizing good work and addressing problems forthrightly.

That might not be enough for some people, but that’s the piece that’s within her control. And from there, it’s reasonable to hold everyone to a basic expectation that they will operate professionally. They’re allowed to feel demoralized or discouraged (what happened was demoralizing and discouraging), but they do need to work civilly with colleagues. If they don’t do that, she’ll need to have some hard conversations with people about the reality of the situation — yes, things were mishandled in the past … we don’t have a way to undo that now … we’ve got to move forward and that includes being civil and professional even to people you’re unhappy with … and we’re at the point where you’ve got to figure out whether you can do that or not because we are moving forward.

But it’s also very likely that as she gets to know the team better, she’ll get a good feel for who slacked off over the last two years and who didn’t. Chances are good that those same tendencies will show up in their work now, just perhaps in less dramatic ways, and she should watch for opportunities to reward the people who carried things.

All that said, unless you’re senior to Beth’s replacement, I don’t know if it’s your place to give this sort of advice to her. But this is what I’d tell her if I could.

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{ 194 comments }

{ 194 comments… read them below or add one }

  1. ACM*

    I feel like it should be known that the slackers will never be promoted because they showed themselves willing to abuse power/freedom.

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    1. ApollosTorso*

      I get what you’re saying about slackers missing out on promotions because they misuse their freedom. That makes me wonder if a full department restructure might help give everyone a fresh start.

      Maybe we could try breaking up this group and redistributing people across smaller teams with specific accountability roles.

      It could make it easier for everyone to step up and focus, especially if each team has clear goals and responsibilities. I know it’s not always practical, but it could help change the dynamic here.

      Maybe a new setup will make it clear who’s who, and over time, we’ll see who might be ready for promotion. Plus, it’ll help shift the overall vibe since people will feel like something was done to address these issues.

      My other question is, how did this happen? What was the boss’s boss hearing over those two years? Seems like the whole company needs to look at how they know things are happening. Managers need oversight. An absentee manager was the bane of my existence, and I’ve commiserated with so many people about that problem

      it. I have empathy for everyone involved, considering the situation. It’s also really demoralizing to have an absentee manager—I can even see some decent performers becoming slackers without the proper support. Some people really need that managing/coaching/accountability to be able to function and this environment was not that

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      1. Cinn*

        I think you’re onto something with a restructure. It reminds me of the Jane’s Desk letter where they actually had the most successful change by just relocating to a new office.

        A restructure could do a similar job here, though it might involve completely breaking up the team and forming a new one with different people and moving these guys to various different teams. But the buy in for that might be a bit tricky depending on the business and its setup/needs.

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      2. MigraineMonth*

        I think there is a bright line between the employees who requested and paid for overtime they didn’t need and the employees who just didn’t do as much work.

        Even aside from the new employees who were never trained (!), it’s pretty normal to be slower/less productive when when work isn’t getting assigned, there’s no management feedback, and you are never rewarded for doing a good job. I’d give them a chance under real management before writing off completely an employee who wasn’t very productive in such a challenging environment (though splitting up the department/bringing in new employees is a good idea if possible).

        I would go ahead and fire those who requested overtime they didn’t need, though. That’s crossing a line. (I don’t think it would be hard to differentiate those individuals from someone who may have requested overtime because they were single-handedly keeping the department afloat; if not, you have a very serious problem with how work is documented.)

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        1. Zelda*

          it’s pretty normal to be slower/less productive when when work isn’t getting assigned, there’s no management feedback, and you are never rewarded for doing a good job.

          Yep, this commentariat has generally been fairly sympathetic to “quiet quitting,” “you can’t care more than management does,” and generally not knocking yourself out for an employer who has no such loyalty to you. Those who *did* go above and beyond deserve some accolades, but those who coasted when coasting was all that was asked of them shouldn’t be demonized.

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        2. EchoGirl*

          This was my thought too — how do you differentiate between “unacceptable slacking” vs just not going above and beyond when that clearly wasn’t going to be rewarded anyway? On that I really don’t think you can take the word of the employees who did go above and beyond, because IME there’s a not-insignificant percentage of people like that who think everyone else should be working as hard as they are or they’re “slacking”.

          (This is separate from the “abuse of OT” issue, to be clear. I’m specifically talking about work output.)

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        3. Grumpy Elder Millennial*

          I hadn’t really considered this, but it’s a fair question. How many of the “slackers” did the bare minimum of their jobs and how many just sat there and did nothing even though they had assigned work? I assumed it was mostly / entirely the latter, but that’s an assumption.

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      3. Lydia*

        My other question is, how did this happen? What was the boss’s boss hearing over those two years? Seems like the whole company needs to look at how they know things are happening. Managers need oversight. An absentee manager was the bane of my existence, and I’ve commiserated with so many people about that problem.

        So much this. Beth’s manager isn’t innocent in this. It’s not like two years of people not producing anything wouldn’t have been noticeable on some level, even if you have other employees doing as much as they can to keep things on track.

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        1. Wilbur*

          100%, it’s hard to imagine that people were complaining and not escalating issues. Is the “let bygones be bygones” approach partly because Janet was also a bit on autopilot for those two years?

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        2. Grumpy Elder Millennial*

          Exactly this. The Beth situation is part of a bigger problem. Though it sounds like the LW knows this, as they say they could write multiple letters about the events of those 2 years.

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      4. The Questions Department*

        I never quite understand suggestions like this- doesn’t a department usually do one somewhat-related thing? How can you really “spread out” a team like that?

        Like, if I broke up my 10-person marketing department, I’m not going to be able to just reassign some of them to be accountants or logistics people. And they can’t just do marketing things for the head of Accounting.

        Or if you just introduce more hierarchy by hiring more Marketing Bosses, aren’t you going to exacerbate the bad feelings by rewarding outsiders and putting them in charge of the ones who did their job- or worse, potentially promoting the slackers, since it seems like part of the problem is not knowing who’s who?

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        1. Adam*

          It only works for bigger companies, it’s true. If instead of a 10-person marketing department, you had 10 10-person marketing teams each focused on different customer segments or geographies or whatever, then you could shuffle them all around pretty easily.

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        2. MigraineMonth*

          Depends how your company is structured. Some have similar roles across departments (e.g. a sales or admin team in every department) so employees can be moved.

          I worked at a software company where each department developed/supported a different program in the software suite, but every department needed software developers and QA testers. So when the company created a new program, ended an existing one, or had a failing team, you might get assigned to do your same role but in a different department. There were drawbacks (loss of institutional knowledge) and advantages (growth opportunities and cross-pollination) to moving from one department to another.

          Of course, the company only did this with departments that had interchangeable roles; HR, legal and culinary were safe from these shakeups (and we were all safer for it).

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        3. Wilbur*

          If it’s a 10 person supply chain team, you could move them to the purchasing team. If your company makes teapots, kettles, and mugs then you could split the team to those respective product teams. That might even be beneficial because the marketing/supply chain/purchasing/whatever people might benefit from working more closely with a specific product. If there’s an issue with those managers not knowing that level of expertise, then you can pick one of the top performers to be a SME that doesn’t manage people but provides feedback on their work. This could even be an advantage if you can figure out who the top performers were. Those workers could get bumped into a new role with a bit more pay and a bit more responsibilities.

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          1. The Questions Department*

            I guess it’s a matter of where you are. In my experience the Marketing people wouldn’t really have anything to do in a non-Marketing department, and the other departments would have no work for them and struggle to assess their performance on Marketing tasks, and splitting things up to make mini-companies would just make it much harder for all the other departments to do their work as they’d lose access to the rest of their teams’ resources.

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            1. ApollosTorso*

              That makes sense! I’m in Marketing too, and that’s how I was thinking about my comment. Our teams have been split up in so many ways over the years.

              Sometimes we’d have mixed teams, like a writer, designer, and project manager focused on one project, or other times it’d be all design or I’ve even seen all project management teams. For them, the project wasn’t “marketing”, it was more focused on deliverables or something. And then it was the creative’s team to advice.

              In practice, we’d still end up working closely with the same types of people, but it didn’t always match the reporting structure.

              So, for example, you might have a manager who handles accountability and general people management, but your actual work, whether it’s writing, design, or something else, gets reviewed by someone else with expertise. Even if they aren’t your people/timesheet manager.

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      5. Toots La'Rue*

        Yeah, my team just got free of an absentee manager and the vibe from upstairs / HR was yeah that that was a bad situation but what was there to do! Like… hold her accountable? Check in with us? Support us now that we’re trying to rebuild after the absentee manager drove most of the lower-level staff away? Stop acting like the staffing issues were the fault of the people who are left? Treat the nine months and counting of being understaffed like it’s not a backburner issue to be solved eventually?

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    2. MassMatt*

      But we don’t know that. Given the long history of dysfunction here it’s quite likely that the slackers, who got a free pass, can get promoted based on making nice with the new manager, while the actual people who did their work have that effort ignored and are punished for their anger and resentment.

      This is an awful situation, and it would take an extraordinary manager to turn around, even with upper management support, which is likely very much lacking here.

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    3. Lady Danbury*

      It sounds like things might have to been so chaotic that it’s difficult/impossible to completely figure out who all of the slackers were. For example, were the new people’s output subpar because they’re slackers or because they weren’t adequately trained and were figuring things out on their own? I think Alison’s advice is spot on, based on the challenges presented.

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      1. Person from the Resume*

        Who put for very likely unneeded OT? Talk to those people and figure out if they are liars or actually the hard workers keeping everything afloat.

        And then treat the new hired during the 2 years differently than anyone who was hired before the department quit producing.

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          1. Isben Takes Tea*

            Unless they were all members of a protected class, I’m not familiar with what law the suit would be based on, though.

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            1. Evan Þ*

              I agree. Not paying them would be asking for a lawsuit; paying them and then firing them is legal under at-will employment if nothing else.

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        2. Cracker Eater*

          Figuring out who worked unneeded OT vs. who worked needed OT covering slacking boss and coworkers is basically just the same problem in different words.

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        3. Reluctant Mezzo*

          Maybe the people who used the OT were the only ones keeping things together. In which case, they jolly well earned it.

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    4. Annony*

      The problem is definitively identifying the slackers. If you could then ideally you would replace them. They are starting fresh specifically because they can’t be certain who the slackers are. So making vague threats about the slackers never being promoted would probably make the situation worse.

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      1. Person from the Resume*

        I don’t really understand how identifying the slackers is the problem. I took the “we’re not firing people” to be that they don’t want to fire nearly the whole department and have to replace them. Presumably the “slackers” were at least minimally acceptable employees when they had a boss whole kept an eye on their output.

        The people who are VERY ANGRY about the lack of consequences are the the people who kept things afloat.

        The problem is that there is a handful of employees who are VERY angry over this issue. These are employees that did everything “right” over the last two years and are very upset there are no consequences for those that didn’t. My impression is that these are great workers who got so fed up during this time that they can barely stand to be in the same room as the people who took advantage of their manager’s breakdown to not do their jobs.

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        1. Richard Hershberger*

          This. Everyone in the team knows who is who. We are told that the visibly angry employees are long termers. Presumably they have a track record of credibility. So ask them. And while this may not serve as documentation for punishment, it should serve amply as documentation for rewards. If no one in management knows who is reliable and trustworthy, there are bigger problems afoot.

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        2. Zelda*

          Unless there is really thorough documentation about who did what, which would take ages to sift through, this is dependent on each employee’s perception of the workload, which may not be accurate, and their report of it now, which may not be honest. There have been times when my partner and I have been huffy with each other because each of us felt that “I do 80% of the housework around here!” When in reality, it’s probably pretty close to equal. And I can imagine the slackers putting on an act about how much they did and how totally essential they were, sheesh, can you believe those other guys!

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          1. Ally McBeal*

            It can be a good jumping-off point, though – if Good Worker Jane says Bob was a Bad Worker who filed OT but didn’t work, it should be relatively easy to identify the dates he filed OT and do some digging around in email or work files to see if any work was actually done on nights/weekends. We shouldn’t take the diligent employees’ word as absolute gospel truth, but it can at least cut down on any time spent investigating the slackers.

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          2. Annony*

            That’s what I was thinking. This does not sound like a competent workplace with good documentation or this situation wouldn’t have arisen in the first place. Relying on people’s perceptions and he said/she said about who was working legitimate overtime vs who was slacking and making bank is a disaster unless you have something to back up why you believe the people you do. I worked with someone briefly who literally came in less than 1/3 of the time she claimed. In order to fire her they needed affidavits from me and my coworkers of when we saw her there and security logs showing when she swiped into the building or accessed secure rooms. And this was catching her while it was actually happening, not trying to figure out what happened two years ago.

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        3. Alpacas Are Not Dairy Animals*

          People can believe they were the ones keeping things afloat and not actually be that. (Remember the LW who wouldn’t eat free pizza to set a good example? Or Guacamole Bob?)

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          1. JoJo*

            People also lie to get other people into trouble or cover up their own inadequacies or out of pure spite. I wouldn’t believe anything the complainers said unless they could back it up with documentation. I also wouldn’t care what someone did two years ago if they’re doing a decent job now.

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  2. Antilles*

    I’m giving some serious side-eye at director Janet here. How in the world do you go two years without realizing the department was this messed up? Internal check-ups, meetings with Beth, reviews of department financials, skip level meetings, performance reviews, exit interviews, or any of a dozen other things would likely have indicated that something was off if Janet bothered to do her job as director.
    And now just to throw up her hands and go well, we’re moving forward and not even going to attempt to figure out what happened. Like, maybe it doesn’t serve anybody to try to decipher who was responsible for a project being late back in June 2022, but surely you need to at least do a detailed “lessons learned” check on your internal protocols that let things go so far off the rails without management realizing it.

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    2. Caramel & Cheddar*

      Honestly, I think this mostly reveals how they don’t have a lot of the kinds of checks and balances in place that would have caught this earlier. I’ve worked places that don’t have skip level meetings, performance reviews or exit interviews, for example. The finances thing seems super odd, but if they people keeping the whole thing trucking along were involved with that, I can see how things might have looked okay on paper if your job didn’t normally need the finer details of what was going on.

      Not having a lot of the above is bad, obviously, I just mention it because I’ve worked places where I can see this kind of thing happening, unfortunately.

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      1. MaryWinchester1967*

        My experience with skip level meetings is that they aren’t worth the time. The director of my former team would have such meetings. The biggest problem was that no one who had worked with her before her promotion actually trusted her. There were valid reasons for that lack of trust. In order for skip level meetings to have any value, trust has to exist.

        At some point she must have swallowed a book of buzzwords and catch phrases. She’d say things like “you are heard” and “I promise you aren’t screaming into the void” or other such drivel. That was when the meeting was going well. It was still clear that she was not really listening and/or had no intention of doing anything.

        Other times she made it super clear she wasn’t giving her full attention to the meeting. She’s sometimes been outside, taking a walk during the call. Another time it was clear she was multi-tasking – I could hear her typing and she would simply say “uh huh” or other filler words that indicate “I’m not talking but I’m also not really listening to you”.

        All that said, it’s possible that multiple people might have been so fed up with the situation that they would have exploded all over whomever was conducting skip level meetings. I’ve noticed that people give negative feedback only when they are so frustrated or angry that they aren’t afraid of the consequences. Otherwise they are too nervous around upper management to be bluntly honest.

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        1. Cracker Eater*

          At my last skip level
          Me: “Things aren’t as bad as they were six months ago”
          Grandboss: “OK so things are a lot better then!”

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    3. Generic Name*

      For. Real. I left my last company partly due to a similar, albeit much more minor situation. A field technician was AWOL (no call, no show for 2 weeks +), and at one point I was asked to write a giant report that she had supposedly written. In reality, she just charged a bunch of time to the project, but there was no report. I jumped in and solved the issue, and all I got was a subdued “thx” type response. There were zero consequences for this individual. When something similar happened with a different coworker (blew 3 deadlines and I jumped in at the last second to fix), I started applying for other jobs and was gone in a few months. The people who saved the department are likely job hunting now. Don’t be surprised when your best people leave over this if management insists on the “clean slate” approach. Folks don’t need to be disciplined necessarily, but the folks who went above and beyond should be put in for promotions, raises, or at least bonuses, and the folks who slacked should be managed very closely and possibly demoted or even fired. I know that seems extreme, but does your company really want to keep employees who apparently only work and fill out correct time sheets if they know someone is looking over their shoulder and will be unethical when they think they can get away with it?

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      1. MassMatt*

        Yes, the “reward” for competence is often being assigned more work. Bad employees seem to gravitate toward these poorly run organizations and good employees wind up leaving when they realize their good work will not go unpunished.

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      2. AcademiaNut*

        What the high performing employees are seeing:

        They had a manager go off the rails. They worked steadily, and worked extra hard to cover for people who were slacking or poorly trained and flailing. They watched coworkers pad their salaries with timecard fraud. Finally, after 2 years (!?) upper management notices, and their response is to go “eh, what can you do?” and get mad at the high performing employees for their attitudes.

        That will tell those high performing employees that it wasn’t just a rogue manager, the management structure in general is rotten.

        What happened in the side about how long it took to remove Beth is important as well. If the good employers were trying to raise the issue with higher level management or HR, and management knew things were bad but didn’t bother paying any attention to the people under Beth, or stepping in to provide support, they have extra reason for their anger.

        And I’d remove the quotations around “right”. These were the employees who were competent, hard working and honest when there was no oversight. They were doing things right, not “right”.

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    5. Lacey*

      That’s what I was thinking too. Sure. The old manager is to blame. But SO is Janet!

      Of COURSE they’re angry. I would be too! They went through all that and now it’s just like, “Ok guys, lets pretend nothing happened and we’re all new and everything is fine!”

      But it ISN’T. They’re burnt out and can’t trust that anything will be handled appropriately going forward either.

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      1. Jopestus*

        Dont worry. The good workers will leave in droves now and the company will have an easy time to figure out who the slackers were. They are left with them.

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    7. JFC*

      My situation is not as extreme, but my boss is a total Janet. Anytime I raise a concern with him, his response is to literally laugh. I’ve gotten so tired of it that I always tell him everything is fine, even if there are things I’d like his input on or help with. I know it’s not going to happen. I slipped a couple of weeks ago and brought up that a colleague is routinely missing standing meetings. His response? The typical “ha ha ha.” If the folks in this department who gave a shit were getting similar responses (or non-responses) from Janet, I can 1000% see how they would throw up their hands and not bother saying anything anymore.

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    8. Perihelion*

      “The details of how that happened and how long it took to remove her from her position could make up several letters, but I will leave out those details as it’s not what I’m writing about now.”

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    9. Letter Writer*

      LW here, definitely agreed that Janet has some blame here, but I think it’s more on the company as there are some extenuating circumstances. I’ll try to respond here to give all the “where was Janet?” askers some context.

      In short, Janet has had a perfect storm of crap to deal with. The department underwent a massive reorg at the beginning of Covid that left her with one fewer manager and no trainers, so she’s been having to rely on employees to train new hires, mostly virtually, which everybody hates doing. Our entire HR department was outsourced to an opposite time zone shortly after. At one point Janet had about 25 people directly reporting to her plus a few dotted line reports and she just had to prioritize, so she delegated a lot of stuff to the managers under her. In the last year she experienced two significant personal losses, and then we underwent another reorg earlier this year where we lost our VP, who was very well respected by the team, and this really upset a lot of people again. The situation with Beth was something that started slow so it wasn’t easy for her boss to notice, and also I think Janet was seeing a different side of Beth than her employees were seeing. When I’ve talked to people on Beth’s team I’ve only found three people who actually brought specific issues to Janet in the last 2 years, and with how busy she’s been I understand how those seemed like isolated issues and it slipped under the radar until Beth started acting so erratically that there was clearly something very wrong.

      Overall I think my company really needs some checks and balances, as another commenter said. It is mostly a great company to work for that does a lot of good things, they just really need to quit laying people off and outsourcing to the point that there aren’t enough people for the checks and balances systems that we should have in place.

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      1. ArtsNerd*

        Well this is at least a bit better than the scenario when my boss disappeared for 2 years. In mine, our department was a bit of an oddball within Janet’s portfolio, and she was a nightmare micromanager and fully abusive to her staff. We were explicitly warned against bringing our plight to her attention. Janet’s boss did not give two figs about Janet’s division and thoroughly ignored the flaming shitshow within.

        Two of us ended up carrying the department for those years. I ended up having a nervous breakdown and jumped ship for a new job that was only half as dysfunctional. The peer I worked most closely with during that time has received all of one lateral transfer (within the same division) and one promotion in the intervening decade, from what I can see in the directory. It took something like 7 years for Janet to get fired, despite her awfulness being well known across the entire sprawling organization.

        I came out of that with a stellar reputation and a good heaping of residual resentment. My peer stayed because the benefits were unparalleled; I left because I did not yet need them. Even if I did need them, I would not have stayed there for all the money in the world. Be ready to lose your best people. I hope your benefits are good.

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      2. Resentful Oreos*

        This is a very, very badly run company and those in charge should feel bad. Jeez. It sounds like a perfect storm of mismanagement and chaos.

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      3. Rory*

        I truly don’t understand how a company that operates like this could possibly be a good place to work? The constant layoffs alone would have me so on edge, and then outsourcing whole departments to a completely different country in an opposite time zone? What is actually good about it?

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        1. AD*

          Exactly what I was thinking. Maybe at one time this *was* a good company to work for, but from what OP is describing, the last 2-3 years have been a chaotic and miserable time that the company seems to have brought on itself. Surely the negatives outweigh the positives now.

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      4. joriley*

        It is mostly a great company to work for that does a lot of good things, they just really need to quit laying people off and outsourcing to the point that there aren’t enough people for the checks and balances systems that we should have in place.

        I hope I’m wrong, but I suspect this is a comment you’ll look back on from a new job down the road and go “wow, what was I thinking?” Your company does not seem to have treated anyone particularly well here, and I suspect it’s not the only dysfunctional situation here.

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        1. Antilles*

          I think you’re right, because even the quoted sentence itself feels contradictory: A great company to work for wouldn’t be constantly laying people off, nor would they be doing so much outsourcing that they can’t even successfully manage their own departments.

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      5. Rebecca*

        Respectfully, we all have our own shit.

        All of those people that kept the department functioning have personal issues too. Just because you don’t know about them because they’re professional enough not to use them as an excuse doesn’t mean that one wasn’t going through a messy divorce or another was struggling with a medical diagnosis or another’s beloved dog died or………

        Presumably, they had the same professional issues as Janet: that reorganizing and those layoffs affected them too.

        In short, you’re defending someone based on their personal circumstances. That’s not a good strategy, because we ALL have personal circumstances. You end up with half of people thinking “my mom died too and I got my work done that year” and the other half thinking “apparently my output is irrelevant for 2 years if my mom dies”. Bad, bad, bad.

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    10. Specks*

      This. It seems like we know at least one person who majorly screwed up and is now showing the same tendencies towards abdicating responsibility, and that’s Janet. How do you not notice your subordinate is abusing substances and is completely AWOL for 2 years?!

      Also, it sounds like there is at least some of a paper trail of complaints (“ignored all emails expressing concerns about her team”), and I imagine you can easily go back and see who actually submitted work product and who didn’t. But that requires work, leadership, and decision-making, so Janet is washing her hands of those possibilities. And maybe they would be so time-consuming that they don’t make sense… but the alternative is probably losing all your best people. Can you really not hire a consultant/auditor to sort through it all? It’s cheaper than training up a whole new department.

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    12. Resentful Oreos*

      Same here. This should have been handled long ago. How on earth was it allowed to spiral for two whole years? I can see giving Beth a chance, and helping her through her bad times, but where was the interim management? Did the upper management think the department was just a self-maintaining system like those little “desk top ecosystems” they used to sell in the oughts? (Which really were not. The fish always died.)

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    13. Fire Janet*

      Ignoring the team individuals, Janet should not have let this go on for two years. Janet is responsible for Beth’s performance as her direct manager and apparently Janet isn’t doing her job. I’d start by firing Janet.

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    14. Grumpy Elder Millennial*

      Another possibility is that she knew that everything was chaos and managed it poorly. Say if she was very sympathetic to Beth and gave her a bunch of chances to get it together. There may have also been constraints (real or imagined) because Beth was in a substance abuse crisis – a health condition.

      None of this changes your broader point, that Janet managed this poorly. It’s just a difference in the specifics of how she managed things poorly. In this case, Janet or someone she designates should have gotten much more involved in the day-to-day operation of Beth’s team.

      Reply ↓
  3. Ann O'Nemity*

    Where the hell was Janet while all this was going down? Blame lands squarely on the company here for letting all this happen. Good grief.

    With time, this will sort itself out. The best employees will leave for better opportunities at employers that actually reward hard work. The employees who never received training will get a fresh start and fair chance to be successful, and hopefully and unlearn any bad habits. The employees who slacked off and took advantage are going to fail, because I have not faith they can magically grow integrity.

    Best of luck to Beth’s replacement, who has a crap job ahead of them. I’d plan on having to replace 3/4 of this team in the next year.

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    1. MassMatt*

      “With time, this will sort itself out…. The employees who never received training will get a fresh start and fair chance to be successful, and hopefully and unlearn any bad habits. The employees who slacked off and took advantage are going to fail, because I have not faith they can magically grow integrity.”

      I am far more pessimistic. The upper management is the same. Are they going to magically grown competence and oversight or will they make surprised Pikachu faces when they realize things are a mess in a few more years?

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    3. Letter Writer*

      LW here, I replied to Antilles’ comment above with more details. Essentially Janet was put in a bad situation by the company and did her best.
      Your summary above is pretty accurate I think. I’ve tried to especially emphasize to the manager that none of the newer employees on the team have received good training and she might have to sort through who really doesn’t know things, and who knows the things and is just not doing them. Definitely an uphill battle!

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      1. Rebecca*

        “Essentially Janet was put in a bad situation by the company and did her best.”

        If that’s true, that still means that management is awful. Where is Janet’s manager? Where is upper management? They’re worse than Janet, apparently. Because that’s what you’re actually saying without realizing it.

        Your company is rotten from the top down, based on your comments here. I get it, you (mostly) like your work. But you’re conflating empathy for Janet, who may very well deserve empathy, with defending the company itself. The company is rotten, even if Janet isn’t part of the problem.

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  4. fhqwhgads*

    I sort of think if it were easily possible to know who was doing real work and who wasn’t, they wouldn’t have chosen the approach they did. If it’s readily apparent, then there’s no reason not to have had consequences for the people who didn’t do their work, and Janet’s completely dropped the ball here. However, if it is too difficult to unravel as Janet indicated, well, then they’d have to do just as much digging to be sure about who did well as they would to figure out who did poorly. And the company has already indicated an unwillingness to do that digging…soo….they’re stuck.
    It also doesn’t say good things about the management above Beth that it took a full two years for anyone higher up to know what was going on?

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    1. Goldfeesh*

      “It also doesn’t say good things about the management above Beth that it took a full two years for anyone higher up to know what was going on?”

      and that’s the answer to why they are starting fresh. Go about your business. Move along.

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    2. Tio*

      I think this has to be a big part of it – setting measurements and expectations that are solid and reliable and easy to understand on who is and isn’t doing their work. KPIs and clear goals and assignments. This is to show people can easily be recognized for both good work and bad and avoid situations like this. This can lend a kind of stability.

      The slackers are going to whine and push against it but it’s seriously necessary here.

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      1. Beth*

        This is definitely how the new manager establishes trust with the diligent workers. No reasonable person will hold Beth’s replacement responsible for knowing who did or didn’t contribute over the last few years; as long as she establishes a reputation for fairness and transparency and attentive management going forward, I think she’ll do fine.

        But I don’t think this will necessarily satisfy disgruntled employees who feel like the company let them down. It’s hard to see your teammate do way less than you, for years, and come out with the same salary and same advancement (or lack thereof) as you did. Assuming higher management sticks to the blank slate plan, some people aren’t going to be able to get past that feeling. For some of those people, this team won’t be recoverable–they’ll need to move on to a new team at a new company before they can feel trust in their colleagues and their employer again.

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      2. Hot Flash Gordon*

        Yeah, I sympathize with the folks who were steady and kept the ship moving, but with new metrics and expectations, hard core slackers will eventually feel the pressure and either leave or get let go. Those who “slacked” because of improper training now have the opportunity to improve and be assets to the team. It sucks that people were allowed to abuse the system and if they end up leaving because of that, that’s OK. I don’t think it’s good to stay at a company where you no longer trust management and you don’t have to remain loyal if you can’t move past it.

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    3. Beth*

      In a company with good management, I’d agree with you – the only reason to take Janet’s approach of a hard reset would be if that genuinely is too difficult to unravel who was and wasn’t doing their work.

      In a company where no one higher up noticed for TWO YEARS that an entire team was nonfunctional? That there was no training for new hires, that emails expressing concern about the team were going unanswered, that overtime was being approved with no work done during that time, etc? If I was one of the workers who kept pushing through, only to hear that my team members who did no work for that period get a blank slate and I get no recognition, I’m not sure that I’d trust a higher up telling me that it’s too difficult to detangle. The entire situation speaks to higher management not being very invested in the department. In that context, a blank slate feels like management ducking out on investing time or energy into the department yet again.

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      1. Generic Name*

        I agree. I wonder, quite frankly, if upper management’s “can’t untangle” is actually “don’t want to bother”.

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        1. MigraineMonth*

          Yeah, I’m betting if you set the IT department the task, they could figure out who was actually doing work during the last two years. Who was responding to customer requests? Who was updating the files? Who was accessing the work queues?

          Talk to those people, and I’m sure they’ll tell you if there’s someone you missed (“Oh, actually, Sue was always volunteering to take over my customer calls when I needed to troubleshoot something. She’s the reason I was able to clear as many tickets as I did.”).

          Deciding to start everyone over with a clean slate is just a continued failure of management.

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          1. Shirley You're Joking*

            Billing for fake overtime is time card fraud. I think it would be worth putting in the resources (IT investigation) to identify and fire the people in the department who essentially committed theft.

            Or, easier, management would just need to state that they will be launching an investigation and then offer nice, quiet exits to those people who would like to resign before the investigation gets underway.

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            2. Reluctant Mezzo*

              What about the good people who really did work all that overtime and deserved to be paid for it?

              Oh, wait, they’ll be punished too.

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    4. Myrin*

      “If it’s readily apparent, then there’s no reason not to have had consequences for the people who didn’t do their work”
      Of course there is, and it’s a reason I keep encountering more and more the older I get and which seems to be rampant in bosses everywhere: Janet is conflict-avoidant and doesn’t want to impose consequences on the slackers.

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    5. Letter Writer*

      LW here, I do see a lot of people in the comments saying that it should be fairly easy to figure out where people were lying about OT. It’s a little more complicated than that. We don’t only do things in our department that are easy to track, like printing invoices or generating documents that can be time stamped. Doing work in one of a million shared Excel files would be considered a valid reason for OT in some circumstances and would be virtually impossible to track. If I asked anyone on the team what they were doing at 8 PM on June 27th when they logged OT, they could give a list of 30 tasks they might have been doing, only half of which are really traceable. Which is the reason that we have the policy that OT on time cards is only allowed with prior approval from manager/in emergency situations.

      Since the manager mostly stopped responding to emails, Janet feels she can’t really criticize the people who stopped sending the emails and just did the OT without asking. The suspicion of “unnecessary” OT comes from knowing what these employees’ workloads are like (light), but it’s only a suspicion when there wasn’t appropriate oversight by the boss at the time.

      Reply ↓
  5. Caramel & Cheddar*

    “That might not be enough for some people, but that’s the piece that’s within her control. ”

    I think that’s the most important part here. There’s only a small part of this that is actually within her control. People are going to (quite justifiably) feel how they feel and she can’t change that. Some of these folks may never get over it. But she can’t retroactively manage conditions that existed before her time, and it would be unreasonable to expect her to do so.

    I do think, more broadly, this is a good example of keeping an eye on who is always stepping up and who isn’t. The kind of people who keep the lights on during a crisis where the manager was MIA for two years aren’t the kinds of people who would slack off even when faced with no consequences (as evidenced by the fact that there were no consequences during this period and they just kept on working). It’s really hard to be that person in a workplace, and the resentment can start building before you even notice.

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    1. Delta Delta*

      Exactly this. The people on the team who kept the business limping along are getting lumped in with those who didn’t. while it makes some sense for the company to say they can’t reconstruct 2 years ago, what they’re likely to have is a mass exodus of good employees who feel pretty stung by the situation. It seems like Janet would be wise to talk to the people on the team and find out what their contributions were, and see what she can do to right the situation.

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  6. Resident Catholicville, U.S.A.*

    “Chances are good that those same tendencies will show up in their work now, just perhaps in less dramatic ways…”

    This was going to be my point- in my opinion, the people who slacked off will find ways to keep slacking off going forward or will get fed up with being held to acceptable standards and quit. But either way, they’ll weed themselves out, albeit over time. (And if they improve, then good for them! I can see why their coworkers would be upset, but if someone improves their work and attitude, that should count for something.)

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    2. Sola Lingua Bona Lingua Mortua Est*

      My experience is that the former slackers will probably find and attempt to execute the new minimum effort to get by.

      Reply ↓
      1. Not Tom, Just Petty*

        I imagine a lot of blustering about how:
        – they “had to cut corners” to get things done without Beth.
        – entire projects or tasks were shelved because only Beth could approve all the stages/resources/time.
        – I was never told to do that because Beth didn’t tell me
        – Beth never trained me, (me who preceded Beth in the department).

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    3. Sheworkshardforthemoney*

      During the pandemic I was able to observe a similar situation on a smaller scale. I was deemed essential and couldn’t work from home. Within a few months it was obvious who was actually WFH and who used the time as a paid holiday because of the lack of clear oversight and the chaos of trying to work in a new way without a foreseable end in sight. Eventually things slowly returned to normal but the worker bees knew who pulled their weight and who didn’t. Several key players were encouraged to retire or left for other pastures.

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    4. Cat Lady in the Mountains*

      yeah, and in addition to rewarding the folks who stepped up, assertively managing people who don’t meet the now-clear expectations is going to be crucial for the new manager to build trust. Some folks may never get past the uneven performance standards of the past, but some of that may also be rebuilt under a “no tolerance for that behavior to continue now” policy.

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    5. TwoPiMann*

      Some will continue to slack. But some will thrive under a boss who actually holds them to standards. Sometimes people just need structure and clear expectations.

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  7. MountainGirl19*

    Similar situation although not nearly as dramatic but we had a director of IT who did nothing, ignored everything, and allowed many employees to get away with similar behavior. New CIO let him go as he saw what was happening within the first couple months in his new position and interviewed all team members privately and in small group teams (it was actually very helpful and we finally felt heard). It was the same as far as a “fresh start” and it did work itself out. Once every team member was being held truly accountable (not being watched or micromanaged, but definitely being tracked as far as production/outcome goes), those who slacked off quit eventually since they could no longer enjoy the perks of a slacker boss :). Ended up for the best and was left working with the most amazing team!

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      2. MountainGirl19*

        I think the fact he listened and I started to see little changes, positive changes right away. Simple things like ensuring I got the equipment I needed to do my job within a day versus weeks. He didn’t come in all chaotic like beginning to change big things immediately. He was watchful, quiet, would always ask questions, and seemed to really listen to everyone and actually follow through. He made it clear he would hold everyone to higher standards (well, honestly, regular standards lol) but gave them all a chance to correct, but they knew they were on notice informally, so it wasn’t like he let it go as a ‘fresh start’ completely. A few ‘slackers’ did auto-correct and stepped it up and became great to work with! But most left, which was a good thing for the rest of us.

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    2. Letter Writer*

      LW here, we are thankfully already seeing some of that. People threatening to quit over being held to what should have been the expectation the whole time…the response is basically “please do”.

      Reply ↓
        1. Samwise*

          It’s not always easy to just pick up and leave. Are there jobs to go to? Do you have to move to get a new job? what’s your family situation? are the benefits good where you are, and are they as good where you are going? (and yes, stellar health insurance can make a person stay in a poor work situation, don’t judge)

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          1. SimonTheGreyWarden*

            My husband hasn’t worked for two years; my job is OK though not in the area I wish I was in, but I’d stay through a much worse experience to have the insurance I do.

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    2. Scarlet ribbons in her hair*

      I agree with you, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Beth’s replacement doesn’t stick around for very long.

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    3. Letter Writer*

      LW here, you are not wrong. I volunteered to be a reference for one of them, as I agree that they were really screwed over and think they just need a fresh start. No matter how good their new manager is, the resentment is going to be really hard to overcome.

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      1. MigraineMonth*

        It is really heartening to hear that you understand that some employees were screwed over by the company and will be better off starting fresh elsewhere, and more importantly that you’re taking concrete steps to help them such as being a reference. If everyone in your leadership has this kind of clarity about the company’s responsibilities to its employees, I think there is a good chance this situation can be salvaged.

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  9. Chairman of the Bored*

    The organization couldn’t/didn’t resolve this problem for nearly *two years*.

    For these two years it sounds like people were working with no effective management, oversight, training, or direction.

    Under those circumstances it’s not unreasonable for people to go a bit feral and ultimately take the approach of “if Beth’s bosses don’t care then why should I”. I wouldn’t be inclined to try to retroactively punish them for a circumstance that the organization ultimately was responsible for.

    Just set reasonable expectations, see how people do with them, and then reward/correct as needed.

    It’s unfortunate that a few people decided to keep doing their homework after the teacher stopped grading it, but their beef should be with Beth, Janet, and the larger organization rather than their worker bee colleagues who were just riding out a period of uncertainty and poor management.

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    1. cindylouwho*

      This! I too would be mad if my company ignored my group/let someone who was going through some real crisis (not) manage me for two years, then all of a sudden came in and treated me like I had slacked.

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      1. Don Quixote, man of Tuchanka*

        That’d be my worry too. While some people will have been slacking off on purpose and abusing overtime, others would have been sitting around doing nothing because they haven’t been assigned any work, haven’t received any training, and don’t know what they’re supposed to be doing despite repeatedly asking for direction. At this point I wouldn’t trust the company to know the difference.

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        1. zuzu*

          I’m going to guess the workers will know the difference.

          Those who were trying and pulling their weight will understand that those who were in over their heads, didn’t have anything to do, couldn’t find Beth, couldn’t get answers, couldn’t get training, but were trying their best anyhow weren’t milking things like the ones who were causing the problems.

          First stop is probably talking to the angry workers and seeing who they think pulled their weight and why, and who they think were at least trying but didn’t have any guidance. People who are angry about injustice are usually angry when others are treated unfairly as well.

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          1. Zelda*

            You’re giving people a lot of credit for both perceptiveness and good faith. If you’re right, then Beth’s replacement is very, very lucky.

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          2. Joron Twiner*

            Those who slacked off are going to have many excuses that will be hard to detangle. Worker A complains that Worker B was always slacking, and when you ask Worker B, they say they were in over their heads, couldn’t find Beth, couldn’t get answers. Worker C says the same thing. How do you know whether Worker B or C were genuinely stuck or just slacking? Can you conclude that based on hire date alone? How do you defend your decision if they claim it’s a personal attack from Worker A?

            Even if Worker A is completely correct, you need some kind of data to sort it out, and OP says they just don’t have that.

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    2. ReallyBadPerson*

      Why is it unfortunate that some workers had integrity and did the right thing even when no one was looking?

      Reply ↓
      1. Caramel & Cheddar*

        Yeah, I’m confused by the idea that going through a period of uncertainty and poor management means you just start slacking off and that the people who did keep working were the ones who erred in judgement.

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      2. Beth*

        Some of the difference between those who contributed a lot during the last couple years and those who did less is probably not due to taking advantage of the lack of oversight. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure some people did take advantage! The overtie where no work happened situation is particularly egregious.

        But some low contributors were also probably new hires who never really got trained and therefore never ramped up fully, people who do great with direction but struggled with ambiguity, people whose original projects ended or tapered off and didn’t get anything else assigned their way to replace them, etc. I can see why Janet thinks it’ll be hard to punish people for low performance in that environment.

        I don’t see why it would be hard to reward the reliable performers, though. People who rose to the challenge and kept the department going through a long period of absent management are clearly high performers with a lot of initiative, and it shouldn’t be hard to tell whose name/login info is all over the work that has been done during this time.

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        1. Dancing Otter*

          “ it shouldn’t be hard to tell whose name/login info is all over the work that has been done during this time.”

          This! I don’t know what department this is (clearly not accounting, or someone would definitely have noticed missing payments and financial reports), but surely there’s some sort of work product that can be traced to the person who created it.

          Once you know who did most of the work, you know whom to reward and on whom you can rely. And then there’s everyone else, who either didn’t know what to do or chose not to do it. Okay, maybe it’s too hard to sort out the latter, and they should get the benefit of the doubt, The first group, though, you CAN identify and SHOULD reward.

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      3. bamcheeks*

        I don’t know, I think we’ve all worked in teams where the people who are convinced they are th e ones who work the hardest aren’t necessarily right. Sometimes they are the ones who prioritise their own workflows at the expense of other people’s. Sometimes they are the people with the fewest dependencies who are able to keep doing their work and don’t really believe it when their colleagues say they can’t move forward until the other team gives them the information they need. Sometimes they are the people who don’t need the motivation or support of a manager, and that’s great for them but it doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with people who do need that motivation and support. I mean, if it was perfectly possible for everyone to just keep doing their jobs independently without a Beth, the company wouldn’t have been paying Beth in the first place and wouldn’t be paying her replacement.

        My team lost three and a half managers in the months between February 2019 and November 2019, and nobody had been appointed by March 2020, so we all had to navigate most of winter 2019 and then all of the first few months of covid by consensus. Fortunately we were all very collegiate and kind to each other, but it really wouldn’t have been hard for anyone who was looking in from the outside to decide that Zaphod was clearly working hardest because he was the most visible, or that Trillian was slacking off because her work underpinned a lot of other stuff and wasn’t as obviously impactful as Ford’s, or that Arthur was underperforming because he had a couple of big projects fall through through no fault of his own. It also wouldn’t have been hard for those kind of things to turn into frictions and resentments WITHIN the team and for people to decide that other people were slacking off if we hadn’t all been so damn careful and respectful of each other, but that wouldn’t have made it true.

        I’m not clear on how close LW is to this team, but for me, part of coaching NewBeth would be letting her know to keep an open mind and listen carefully to the resentments and anger but kot necessarily assume that it’s the whole story.

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      4. Sarah With an H*

        I can absolutely see where if someone is in a chaotic situation where the manager doesn’t care about the work, their boss apparently doesn’t care about the work or the dysfunctional situation or it wouldn’t have gone on so long, and there’s no compensation for stepping up or caring about something the actual people in charge don’t care about, that would be really demoralizing. At that point, what IS the point of taking on more work to make sure things don’t fall apart?
        I’d be less sympathetic if they work in a hospital or school, some place where not doing work would lead to other people suffering. If its just a standard business whose bottom line is profit, though, I don’t think this is about innate slackers or having/not having integrity as much as with the importance of paying attention and respecting your workforce.

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      5. Alpacas Are Not Dairy Animals*

        Because it rewards bad management behavior and ultimately, makes a profit for people who put them in this situation to begin with.

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    3. Junior Assistant Peon*

      I was hired into a situation like this – the company was private-equity owned and for sale, and my boss wasn’t interested in what any of us were doing for a span of over 2 years. I grew increasingly frustrated with my boss ignoring my emails and questions, and ended up as one of the slackers the OP describes. I ended up being laid off when the company was sold, but I would have resented being retroactively punished by the acquiring company – I tried pretty damn hard to do a good job before I got frustrated enough to stop caring.

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      1. Junior Assistant Peon*

        Beth’s comment came up while I was typing mine – that was 100% my situation, a new hire who was never properly onboarded and was always wondering when I was going to start getting assigned work.

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      2. Blue Horizon*

        Yeah, it actually sucks for the slackers as well even if it’s not as obvious to people (or to the slackers themselves).

        I have seen this kind of thing before, although not to the same extent described here. Being a motivated self-starter for months or years on end even when it’s clear management won’t recognize or care about your contribution is really hard. Kudos to the people that managed it, for sure, and they deserve recognition, but plenty of others who go off the rails in that situation still have the potential to be motivated and productive in the right setting. It’s particularly tough on new grads if they enter an environment like this, as they develop a lot of dysfunctional behaviors that they will then need to unlearn.

        In general, these people are probably not any happier than the hard workers, even if it may be less apparent. Yes, they get to slack off and get paid, but they’re missing a lot of what they would normally get from a job, including proper experience, accomplishments and career development. (How do you write a good resume when your most recent achievement was ‘goofed off for two years’?) They probably want to do better, but they haven’t been able to bootstrap themselves, and the manager they would normally rely on for assistance is AWOL.

        Often the best solution is for them to find a new job with a proper set of workplace norms, and use it as a chance to reinvent themselves and do a mental reset. That’s not an option for everyone, though. Aside from setting expectations and holding them accountable, I’d consider clearing out any lingering habits or team rituals and establishing new ones to give as much of a ‘reset’ feel as possible.

        There will probably be a few that have constructed a mental fantasy world in which they’re responsible employees and not to blame for any of this, and will resist any efforts to change them. Handle these as normal cases of underperformance if they arise, but don’t preemptively lump all the slackers into this category.

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    4. Great Frogs of Literature*

      I’m fascinated by how many people in the comments are mad at the slacker coworkers/think they should be punished. (To be clear, I’d be one of the people who kept working, and quite possibly annoyed that that work was just forgotten, and I think it’s very reasonable for the coworkers to be annoyed, though not necessarily to go so far as making the environment “hostile.”)

      But we talk a lot on this site about “you can’t care more about your job than you job does.” And the way I see it, it probably became clear within a matter of months that there was not going to be any effective management, and no reward for going above and beyond. Under those circumstances, I can see deciding that if no one else at the company cares if you do your job, why should you keep fighting a dysfunctional system in order to do it? That honestly feels in some ways like a more rational action that continuing to give 110% to hold everything together.

      That said, putting in for unnecessary overtime feels like a step beyond that.

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      1. Elbe*

        The LW stated that the perception seems to be that these employees took advantage of their manager’s personal problems, rather than adjusted their effort to fall in line with the company’s attitudes.

        The unnecessary overtime seems to support that. This wasn’t just people scaling back a little – it really does seem like at least some of them treated it like an opportunity. If they work in an industry where dropping balls comes with high consequences for the company and for others, it wouldn’t surprise me that the decent employees felt like they were being coerced into stepping up.

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      2. bamcheeks*

        I’ve been in a similar position (not the addiction part, but 10+ months with no manager, much of which was during covid), and frankly I kept working on the stuff I cared about and which I thought was important, and I did not do the stuff that I did not think was important, like updating spreadsheets that nobody was tracking. I completely possible that somebody else would have made different decisions about what constituted important work that had to be kept on top of and assumed I was slacking. I also took over a team that had been left without a manager for a few months, and one of the people who definitely saw themself as someone who “kept things going” was doing things like responding individually to 200 emails saying, “I put my password in but it isn’t working?” and claiming overtime for it, instead of sending one email to everyone saying, “we’re aware, IT is trying to fix it, sorry!” They were a great employee in many other ways, but some of the things they prioritised were wild to me.

        I just think it is really unlikely you can divide people neatly into hard workers and slackers! I have worked way too many people who identify as hard workers but who actually work very inefficiently or who are just best at looking busy or who jump on tasks more urgently than they need doing and then get annoyed that everyone else isn’t prioritising them the same way, and I’m just kind of sceptical that these people who are making the environment “hostile” are really so great. If it was that easy for a team to function without a manager, we wouldn’t have them in the first place.

        Reply ↓
        1. Joron Twiner*

          Great points here and above. What looks like “slacking” could be genuine floundering without direction, what looks like “hard work” could be inefficient and unnecessary. Without some kind of data you can’t determine this based on people’s feelings of injustice.

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  10. Roscoe da Cat*

    I think this manager is also going to have to be prepared for a wave of the best people leaving. I mean, if you were being productive in this kind of atmosphere and then was told you are on the same level as the people who coasted, wouldn’t you leave?

    Actually, I would be amazed if any really good people are still there.

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  11. Somehow I Manage*

    While I can see how a “clean slate” approach can make sense, I can also see how some resentment would build up if everyone gets a start fresh, even if they were slacking off and taking advantage of Beth’s absence. While leaves us with the situation you’re in OP.

    Beth needs to have a frank conversation with Janet. Janet needs to OK something for those who were doing good work and following rules. Money, faster track for promotions, etc.

    Beth’s replacement needs 1:1 with everyone. And in those, they need to be very clear that (almost) anything can be shared without fear of consequence. Give the good apples the news that just because the slate was wiped clean, previous good works were not just gone.

    And then I’d advise replacement Beth to keep a really close eye on anyone who was brought up as not pulling their fair share, milking the clock, etc. While the fire may be out, there are probably still embers smoking, and as the new boss, they need to have a pretty short leash with those who were misbehaving previously. While it may not reach the scale of previous bad acts, I wouldn’t let anything fester. It will be far easier to replace those who aren’t as strong and not as ethical than it will be to replace those who are doing solid work.

    Reply ↓
  12. Another Academic Librarian too*

    I walked into this EXACT situation ten years ago.
    There was no way to untangle the previous two years of chaos.
    I went into damage control immediately.
    My first 3 months was holding people to hours, to job descriptions, to deliverables with deadlines.
    Anyone who wouldn’t/couldn’t meet those expectations was placed on a step schedule of discipline.
    I was firm but fair and worked closely with HR revising job descriptions.
    I found promotional positions and more money for the the ones who had measurable success within my first 6 months.
    That left me with the non-performers who actually were resentful of my “micro-managing” and reasonable expectations.
    After a year and a few months I had an almost completely new staff (retained two with successful retraining) and yes had to let go of the worst offenders. Even with 18 month PIPs were SHOCKED that they were being asked to leave.
    It was horrible and stressful and yes I did have to avail myself of employee assistance for my mental health.
    Ten years later- the “new” hires are still around and everyone is productive and likes working here.

    Reply ↓
    1. MassMatt*

      Congratulations on successfully tackling the most difficult and thankless job of having to turn around an underperforming team. I fortunately have only had to deal with a small number of problem employees on an otherwise functioning team and it was stressful and time consuming. The toughest part for me was not letting all your time and energy go to the squeaky wheels and giving time to developing the better performers too.

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    2. Letter Writer*

      LW here. This is amazing. If this new manager doesn’t work out, I have a job for you!

      Seriously though…my company supports its employees and makes sure that if you are fired with cause then you really really deserve it. Unfortunately this means that if a person’s boss is too busy (or lazy, or nonconfrontational) to deal with all the demands of a PIP then they end up sticking around until they get a boss that will do it.

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      1. Another academic librarian*

        Yes, the PIPs were a part time job. And I had to be willing to let go of the good performers to reward them. My supervisor did a great thing for me. She allowed me to make a new hire with a job description that reflected the needs of my department who was completely separate from the bad performers. That person is still with me.

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  13. Person from the Resume*

    If you don’t fire the slackers and those who lied about OT they never worked at the very least reward the ones who kept the department afloat while everyone else slacked off.

    New hires are a slightly different story. Without training, they were not really in a position to keep things afloat; although, did they join in the “wage theft” by claiming to work OT that they didn’t?

    I can’t imagine Janet has no idea who was great and who was terrible. I can understand not firing anyone, but holding everyone accountable to expected standards. But you absolutely must reward those who contributed quite possibly more than their fair share for two years when others slacked. off around them with no consequence. Bonuses, promotions, pay raises.

    And any slackers and people who lied about OT should never be promoted within the company. There should be no recovering from that. They get to keep their jobs as long as they adhere to expected standards, but they should never be trusted with more responsibility and even without a good bit of oversight. They’re untrustworthy.

    Reply ↓
    1. bamcheeks*

      Where are you getting that people lied about doing OT? My assumption was that people were being told or required to stay late even if there wasn’t enough work to justify it. Reading it, I think it could go either way — it could have been making their own decision to stay late or being told to— but if people were actually staying late, even if it wasn’t technically necessary, that surely counts as overtime which needs to be paid.

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      1. Elbe*

        She also approved many hours of late night overtime, during which it is very unlikely any work was actually being done… [now] they’re no longer allowed to clock overtime without prior approval

        It sounds like the request for overtime was coming from the employees, not from management. Beth was just approving it because she didn’t have a good idea of their workload.

        Reply ↓
        1. bamcheeks*

          Yeah, although it doesn’t necessarily follow that they were lying. It’s completely possible that the circumstances when you can or should claim overtime were unclear, amd people genuinely thought these were situations where they ought to stay late but they were wrong.

          Reply ↓
        2. Joron Twiner*

          I also think it would be a bad look to permanently punish people for working overtime that was approved by their manager. What message does that send to other workers? How much documentation will workers now need to provide to work OT if manager approval isn’t enough?

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          1. yvve*

            it also might be difficult to identify the difference between “worked overtime but very little was done” and “slacked off all day then worked overtime” and “very inefficient worker doing three hours of work in 12 hours” and other variations. Unless you can literally say *nothing* was done (like you can prove they went home), then its very possible this is not really somethng that can be fully sorted out two years on

            Reply ↓
            1. bamcheeks*

              One of the things I had to unpick in a similar situation was “client asked if they could call at 7pm and I thought that was valid reason to stay late and claim overtime”.

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  14. EA*

    Wow, I’m not jealous of Beth’s replacement! I think this situation is particularly egregious because not only did the slackers do less work, they also got more overtime pay! (If I’m reading that correctly)

    The OP should fill Beth’s replacement in on EVERYTHING with total honesty and encourage the replacement to have one on one meetings with each staff member. Feeling like someone is listening to them and on their side is so important. Opportunities for bonuses would also be great, too.

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  15. Yes And*

    “But it’s also very likely that as she gets to know the team better, she’ll get a good feel for who slacked off over the last two years and who didn’t. Chances are good that those same tendencies will show up in their work now, just perhaps in less dramatic ways, and she should watch for opportunities to reward the people who carried things.”

    I would double down on this paragraph. For the kind of mice who will play the second the cat’s away, buckling back down to work is going to be really hard. I would bet dollars to donuts that the past offenders will have re-offended and (if Beth’s replacement is an effective manager) gotten themselves fired within a year. I only hope the good employees stick around until then.

    Reply ↓
    1. S*

      For the hard workers who have worked very independently with minimum oversight for the past several years, it’s also going to be hard to adjust to a cat in the room.

      Reply ↓
  16. Lamont and Rollo*

    Beth’s replacement is coming into a tough situation – because of the team dynamics but also because of Janet. How could the director have been there for two years and not known any of this was going on? Nobody ever questioned anything?

    Beth might be gone but the disfunction may not be

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  17. borealopelta*

    I feel like it will be pretty easy to tell who the good workers were versus who the slackers were- completely aside from the good workers all being (rightfully) upset/angry.

    If they have a 1 on 1 conversation with each team member and really get into the nitty-gritty of things, it will be apparent who actually knows what they’re talking about and who is making things up in the moment. Asking things like how did Beth’s disappearance affect your work, personally? What projects have you been working on in the meantime? What measures did you have to take to complete them without Beth’s approval or oversight? How did this affect relations with other teams in the company? Were you working on any projects jointly with other team members, and if so, do you feel the work was equal/ shared evenly/ up to company standards/ etc? In what kind of cases have you worked overtime in this period? Is there anything you think management should know about the team/ team members going forward?

    Let people know that these meetings will be entirely confidential, and that management realizes that they’ve dropped the ball on this team big-time but are now trying to rectify what they can going forward. The good performers should be rewarded (bonus, raise, retroactive raise, etc) and the bad performers should be headed down the PIP path unless they magically turn around with new management. People’s assessments of themselves and their coworkers should show who was actually working and keeping the team going, and who was riding their coattails.

    Reply ↓
    1. Beth*

      It’s not accurate to assume, in a years-long situation like this, that all low performers are slackers who should be on PIPs. OP told us there are new hires in the department who never really got trained. Plenty of people are great workers when given even a little direction, but don’t have either the initiative or the strategic understanding to pick up useful projects without any direction from a manager. Even generally hard workers with a lot of initiative and ability to work independently will get discouraged and taper off when, over the course of years, their hard work doesn’t get any recognition or reward.

      People who clearly were doing useful work entirely independently over the last 2 years should be rewarded. This is where I think there actually is room to prove it–emails, edit data on documents, etc probably do show who was doing a lot of work to keep the department running. (It shouldn’t be based just on talking to people about what they’ve been doing. Who among us hasn’t had a coworker who claims they’re essential and working incredibly hard, but in practice they’re either focusing on non-essential projects or just talking a big game?) But it probably is genuinely hard to trace back who ‘deserves’ to be punished in a situation like this. It makes more sense to establish performance expectations going forward and talk PIPs in 3-6 months for anyone who you can *currently* document as not meeting minimum standards.

      Reply ↓
  18. Katie Porter's Whiteboard*

    I’m so angry on behalf of the “good” employees because I know what it’s like to struggle to maintain standards when a manager is absent or counter-productive. I think OP is going to see an exodus both high- and low-performers if this isn’t adequately addressed.

    Reply ↓
    1. Retired Vulcan Raises 1 Grey Eyebrow*

      They need to receive bonuses, raises and if possible, promotions.
      Hardworking employees should be able to quantify their deliverables – tell them it’s for rewards! – maybe with backup from IT and internal customers.

      It’s worth making the effort to find who to reward, even if Jane decides she doesn’t want to penalise past slacking and overtime fraud.

      Reply ↓
  19. Pay no attention...*

    I think unless jobs are hard to find in this industry or location, the whole department is going to rebuild itself under a new manager and that might be the best scenario. The new boss should start prepping for high turnover — maybe moving quickly to make it happen with the worst attitude/complaints in either camp. That sucks for the long-time employees who persevered but I’m not sure they will ever NOT be angry if they stay; I’m slightly more confident that the slackers could get their act together with a better manager — unless Beth specifically hired people who share her addiction issues.

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  20. Still*

    It’s understandable that a lot of people are resentful but they should really be placing the blame on the management who have massively dropped the ball.

    I go above and beyond for my company that supports and appreciates me, but if I were getting no guidance and no support for two years, I don’t know how long I would keep making an effort.

    I do think it says a lot about people how they react when things are going poorly… but in your average job, working in a crisis mode for two years should not be a job requirement. Those workers should be evaluated based on how well they do their jobs under normal circumstances. Not on how much energy they put into scooping water from a sinking ship.

    Now, if there is a way to recognise and reward the people who really carried the team during this time, great! If there is a way to figure out who was getting paid for overtime they didn’t work, fantastic. But I don’t think people should be punished for slacking under the circumstances, when upper management couldn’t be bothered to notice that something was wrong or help them for TWO YEARS.

    Reply ↓
    1. Rory*

      These are my feelings exactly. I feel everyone is being pretty harsh on the “slackers” – why should they have cared more about the job than the management who clearly didn’t give a f***? The company doesn’t reward people for going above and beyond (or seem to even notice that they are doing so?) so personally I wouldn’t have seen any reason to do anything more than the absolute bare minimum for as long as possible.

      Reply ↓
  21. Shirley You're Joking*

    For two years, the people who were working hard were stewing about their team being in chaos with no management and coworkers who did nothing. Why did none of these conscientious people inform someone in management or in HR?

    I kinda feel like maybe they wanted to be martyrs and they kept waiting for the slackers to get what they deserved. And now, seeing that there will be no justice, they are angry.

    Reply ↓
    1. Retired Vulcan Raises 1 Grey Eyebrow*

      Yes, The OP said Jane only received 2-3 reports of problems from the entire team in 2 years. They should have been EMing her every time and gone to her as a group.
      Part of being a good employee is pressing the alarm button when the team can no longer function or work to an acceptable standard.

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      1. Resentful Oreos*

        I do wonder what was going on here! Only 2 or 3 reports from the entire team in two years? Either those two reports were made, ignored by upper management, and the team decided reporting was futile, or, the team shrugged and said “whatever. In either case, the hot steaming mess is all the way up and down the ladder.

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    2. RVA Cat*

      I’m wondering about this, too. Sounds like they couldn’t let go of the sunk cost of their effort so they stayed with the resentment building, meanwhile they were getting the work done so the slackers weren’t causing problems that would make management pay attention.

      Reply ↓
  22. Elbe*

    My impression is that these are great workers who got so fed up during this time that they can barely stand to be in the same room as the people who took advantage of their manager’s breakdown to not do their jobs.

    Yeah, this is pretty huge. I’m willing to bet that these employees didn’t just decline to slack off; I think they were probably picking up the work of those who did slack off. That’s a lot to be mad about. Humans have a strong sense of justice and it’s incredibly difficult for people to just let stuff like this go when it dragged on for years. It likely cost them stress and effort and time with their families/friends/pets/hobbies that they can’t get back.

    The person who has to make an effort to make this right is actually Janet. As others have noted, it is incredibly poor management for a situation this bad to have continued for this long. Even just acknowledging the situation would be helpful. During the next team meeting, it wouldn’t be out of bounds for Janet to say something to the effect of, “I know that the last two years have been chaotic and that some team members have stepped up more than others. Beth’s replacement will focus on improving the team and rewarding the our highest performers going forward.”

    Even if the company doesn’t understand the situation well enough to promote or discipline based on previous behavior, they can still acknowledge that they know the effort has been lopsided. The good team members will feel validated hearing that and the slackers will maybe sweat a little bit.

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  23. Stanley steamers*

    I know “find a new job” is way easier said than done but maaaaaybe the resentful care should…look for new jobs? Seriously, why would they want to stay at a place that let such dysfunction flourish for so long? Were the money and benefits really that good?? Were there really no other jobs around???

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  24. Head Sheep Counter*

    I mean the company clearly values bad managers over good employees. I’d take that at face value. If we’ve learned anything over time… when someone or some organization shows you who they are/who they value… believe them. In this case they did nothing and left a whole department to go feral. That means doing nothing was more valuable than dealing with the issues. I suspect the “bad” employees are actually a good reflection of company values.

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  25. Retired Vulcan Raises 1 Grey Eyebrow*

    Unless all this was remote work and maybe also cameras off, I’m astonished that Jane didn’t notice Beth’s absences and disfunction. Even a grandboss would normally walk through the offices sometimes, bump into Beth and Beth’s employees in the lift or getting coffee, have skip meetings.

    Jane failed massively and is probably only keeping her job because the organisation decided it would prolong the chaos. I wonder if Jane thinks she has no longterm future there and is also job-hunting.

    It may also be why they don’t want to hunt out and fire the slackers – because Jane either feels guilty or feels vulnerable

    Reply ↓
    1. Retired Vulcan Raises 1 Grey Eyebrow*

      Even if all work was remote from Jane, she should have noticed this entire group was not meeting / reporting its expected deliverables

      Reply ↓
  26. Heffalump*

    Giving the good employees better positioning for future promotions is fine as far as it goes, but presumably there’s only a finite number of promotion opportunities. And maybe some people like their current jobs and aren’t interested in being promoted.

    If I were one of the good employees, it would take a generous bonus to make me happy. Don’t be sorry, do something about it.

    Reply ↓
    1. Rory*

      A part of me is also kind of questioning how “good” the judgement of even the best of these employees are if they never thought to raise the alarm about this over the course of two whole years?

      Reply ↓
      1. bamcheeks*

        This is where I land too. I think this probably really comes down to whether you identify as a Hard Worker or not, but personally, I do not! I am not a Hard Worker. I am a Good Worker, which for me means that I get things done the most efficient way possible, and I am very happy to leave things undone to make a management or systemic problem visible and urgent. I have worked with a lot of Hard Workers who Keeps Things Going At All Costs, many of whom were lovely people who I am happy to have as friends, but I don’t actually think they are the same thing as high-performers. Sometimes they are the people who are enabling dysfunction, taking too much on, resenting others for not doing the same and frankly causing massive stress to people around them– they can be far more disruptive and difficult to manage than the people who do the job with minimal fuss and don’t go above and beyond.

        When you combine that with making the environment hostile for the rest of the team– it is not at all clear to me that these actually are good workers who need to be rewarded. I personally would find it much easier to manage with a team of former slackers who need structure and motivation than people but are easy-going than people who self-identify as The Good People and spend their time being mad at the Bad People.

        Reply ↓
      2. Pointy's in the North Tower*

        When my department had an AWOL boss for four years, it was raised to the boss’s boss. Boss’s boss didn’t care and didn’t want to deal with it. AWOL boss was also protected by someone higher in the organizational chart than AWOL boss’s boss.

        We stopped saying anything because we knew upper management wasn’t going to do anything about it.

        One of us took a different job. The other stayed on for a few years but left on extremely acrimonious terms with management.

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  27. Insert Pun Here*

    OP doesn’t say if Beth was generally well liked before this crisis. But if she was, it could also be the case that the group of responsible workers is ticked off at the other folks for not “helping” Beth (by covering for her/making her dysfunction less apparent.) Though it’s not rational, that could be a factor worth considering — because if that’s how those folks feel, a sincere “thank you” and a bonus probably isn’t going to solve the problem. (Though I agree that a sincere “thank you” and a bonus is where this company should start.)

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  28. Raida*

    Instead of focussing on punishing the people who took advantage – as it’s so hard to prove anything now – their new manager should focus on rewarding outstanding work.

    And if *any* of the staff that took advantage don’t get up to the required level of competency and professionalism, start cleaning house. That level should be set by the high performers.

    Should be able to cycle out bad staff, reward good staff, get new staff trained in the new environment.

    Thing is, I don’t know what their new manager can reward them with. Does she have budget for pay rises or bonuses? Or high quality training? Attendance at conventions or seminars? Promotions to team leads? Access to executive level perks? Discussing with the great staff what they think about processes and policies to improve how things are done – and giving them the credit? Opportunities to work on interesting or high profile projects?

    If I were their new manager, I’d figure out how many hours of ‘overtime’ were claimed by staff claiming it, calculate the dollar value, and present it as a suggestion for a bonus for the staff that didn’t take advantage. My argument would be “They know it was free money the business handed out. They are unhappy. This is to pay them the same as the staff that took advantage so they aren’t paid *less* than those staff, and to thank them, and to draw a line under all of this. And to retain them. They are the staff I need to keep. This is worth it.

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  29. Tenebrae*

    Yup! Worst boss I ever had constantly loudly talked about how busy and stressed she was, explicitly thought she was the only competent person in the department and accomplished nothing.
    Meanwhile, high performers in difficult circumstances were convinced that things would be better if they could just manage to do more.

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  30. restingbutchface*

    I’d be angry too. Not so much at my coworkers but at the company that allowed this dysfunction to continue for *two years*. I hope someone has been honest about the situation to Beth’s replacement.

    Has anyone senior apologised to the team and acknowledged their role in the chaos? I agree that everyone needs to held accountable for a minimum level of professionalism, and that includes Janet et al. So maybe Janet commits to joining a team meeting once or a month or whatever. This can’t be a Beth Was Bad, New Beth is Going To Take Back Control.

    Also, even if half the team were slacking off… the business kept going. I’d be thanking everyone for keeping the business alive – and yes, that includes the person who did less than everyone else. They’ve been running the show, ask them how they did it and take it onboard. OP’s letter is a clear example of how committed people have become. Use it.

    Finally, if the company doesn’t have an EAP or policy about supporting employees with substance abuse issues, this is the time to create one.

    This is one letter I’d love an update on OP. Best of luck to everyone,

    Reply ↓
  31. A Poster Has No Name*

    Sounds like Janet didn’t want to do the job of managing Beth and her team before and doesn’t want to do so now, either. Washing her hands of the whole thing and declaring a fresh start is a continuation of her choice not to manage the situation appropriately. I would encourage Beth’s replacement to push back on this, or she’ll end up with a team of all slackers after the good people leave. Finding out who took advantage of overtime and/or didn’t turn in work shouldn’t really be that hard and Beth’s replacement would do well to spend some time on that and, yes, per Alison’s advice, finding ways to reward those who helped keep things afloat.

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  32. CommanderBanana*

    I mean, what did you expect? Why is it that employees are supposed to be these never-ending reservoirs of understanding and grace for higher-ups?

    Reply ↓
  33. bamcheeks*

    I kind of feel like all the responses that think it should be “obvious” who the slackers were and who the hard workers were in a chaotic situation that went on for two years are pretty much missing the point of the role of manager! I took over a team which had been under-managed due to long-term sickness and chaos during covid. I had a highly anxious person struggling with their workload because they couldn’t say no, and half the team was pitching in to help out on the stuff they’d said yes to but couldn’t actually do themself. I had another person working ridiculously long hours because they were committed but incredibly inefficient. I had someone off in their own world doing a great job that they’d designed themselves which was loved by customers but had nothing to do with the department strategy. I had someone filling in twice as much information as was actually needed in the database. I had someone who barely met their own targets because they were spending most of their time — just about! — keeping the other six sane and more-or-less on track. I had someone who was struggling with an illness and a difficult home situation and needed flexibility and reasonable adjustments but couldn’t find anyone to ask. Which of them were slackers who were taking advantage and which of them were hard workers? IMO, they were all good people trying to make things work — and they’d all been in the role for a couple of years before the chaos— but they hadn’t have a manager and they couldn’t do their jobs properly without one, because a manager has an actual function and isn’t just decorative!

    Reply ↓
    1. Strive to Excel*

      I’m currently helping untangle our financials at work since we’ve finally actually started using a digital hours tracking system and let me tell you it is a *mess*.

      We’ve got data transfer errors. We’ve got errors coming from “no one was entering enough data”. We’ve got a whole department that picks up the slack of another department resulting in a mess of misallocated costs. We’ve got process changes. No one’s been keeping any kind of inventory. Our estimates are ??? years out of date.

      So similarly, our management is doing its absolute best to cut its prior year losses and start fresh, because the amount of sheer tedious manual work it would require to go back and recover those KPIs (even if it *were* possible) would be prohibitively expensive. Would the floor managers be able to tell us who the “challenging people” are? Maybe, but to bamcheek’s point you might have someone who’s struggling to keep their own stuff on track because behind-the-scenes they’re supporting 6 other people, and if they’re not telling their manager that it might not be clear.

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  34. Luna*

    Best to just let it go instead of simmering resentment. It’s such a mess it cannot be sorted. The so-called slackers may have done more or tried harder than people think. Where was upper management during this entire thing? That’s where the fault lies.

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  35. Picky*

    I think anybody who took advantage of the situation to get paid for not working will probably find actually working too hard, and the situation will resolve itself when they take themselves off to an easier job OR get fired for falsifying timesheets. If I were managing I would probably hint at that to the high-producers. Assuming I as manager were actually allowed to fire people who falsify timesheets, which should be a no-brainer but apparently isn’t.

    Reply ↓
    1. Heffalump*

      I’m not sure if you mean getting fired after the fact for falsifying timesheets under Beth, or getting fired for falsifying timesheets going forward under the new regime. If they do the latter, they’re pretty damn stupid.

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  36. Resentful Oreos*

    I’m wondering about the health of this company *in general* after reading some points other commenters have brought up. Nobody in the group raised concerns over what was going on to Janet or other higher ups? Or did they complain, get no answer, and decide it was futile to even mention anything?

    I know there was chaos in the company as the LW replied, but so much slipped beneath the radar that I don’t think management was ever very effective in the first place.

    This workplace sounds like a hot, steaming mess of dysfunction. I hope LW and others can find better jobs soon.

    Reply ↓
  37. TheBunny*

    Reading this, I’m guessing were it easily possible to know who was doing good work and who wasn’t, it would have bubbled up by now.

    Right or wrong, I’ve been in countless situations where someone leaves the company (sometimes of their own volition sometimes not) and only then do you discover they never filed investigation notes, or were letting someone else slack off, or were doing work for another.

    I suspect this, along with the added turmoil of Beth, might be where OP’s company is. No it doesn’t sound like Janet was all that helpful…but it’s hard to know what she was being told from her managers (or who knows maybe she’s awful) but I tend to agree that unpacking all of this is potentially impossible.

    And I’m not sure you want to…I’ve never seen a fishing expedition like this would become not turn up some surprising fish, especially after 2 years. Had it been a couple of months I would feel differently…but after this long, there’s no way it goes well no matter what choice is made.

    Some may leave and that’s unfortunate, but I don’t think anything other than a full reset is reasonable.

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  38. Luna*

    The entire fiasco is the fault of management. How can they be asleep at the wheel for so long? Easy to blame the employees but it’s the higher ups who let it fester.

    Reply ↓
    1. Rory*

      Yeah exactly, I’d be pretty hesitant to come down hard on “slackers” when so many people in the management chain were clearly not doing their job at all.

      Reply ↓
    2. TheBunny*

      Yes there is. COVID is here to stay but how employers and the world are dealing with has definitely changed from what was going on in 2020.

      Reply ↓
        1. Zelda*

          I’ve been going with “post-lockdown.” “Post-emergency-phase” would be most precise, but doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue. “Post-covid” is just wrong.

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  40. Kron*

    Do you ever pass by one of those restaurants displaying a GIANT under new management sign and wonder what happened?

    This. This is what happened.

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  41. Nicole Maria*

    I had the opposite reaction initially, hopefully people who are doing the right thing are doing it because they want to live their values, not because they want a certain type of recognition for it. I would still want to do my best at my job even if no one else did and the outcome was the same for everyone.

    Also personally, I love seeing slacker co-workers not getting fired, because it means that if something were to go wrong with me where I couldn’t do my job well for a while, I would probably remain employed

    Reply ↓
  42. Statler von Waldorf*

    My advice to Beth’s replacement is to get out now, because the management in this business is terrible. My gut tells me she is about to get scapegoated for the inevitable good employee exodus caused by Janet’s failure to manage.

    Reply ↓

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