my mom answered my phone and yelled at my boss, staff grumbling about sales team’s “perks,” and more

by Alison Green on February 28, 2025

It’s four answers to four questions. Here we go…

1. My mom answered my phone and told off my boss

I was very sick with Covid and my mom had to come take care of me. She already knew issues that I’d been having with my boss; he’s a jerk. I learned later that he called to ask a question that he could have easily found the answer himself. My mother answered the phone and yelled at him because he does a lot of abusive things and keeps us working on days off, even vacation, not to mention when people are very sick. He is the type who can dish out the punishment or rude comments but cant handle it when you do it back even the slightest. Anyway, she told me what she had done.

Once I returned to work, I was written up and told my mother is not to answer my phone when anyone from the company calls because they chip in $50 a month for the phone. This is not their phone. Does this warrant a write-up? Do they have the right to say my mother cannot answer my phone?

No, this doesn’t warrant a write-up. If you call someone’s personal phone, you risk someone else answering it and conducting themselves differently than an employee would. But there’s no official arbiter of what you can and can’t be written up for; there’s only common sense, and your boss clearly doesn’t have it.

The question about whether they can say your mom can’t answer company calls on your phone when they pay part of the bill … eh, probably. If they consider that your work phone, then sure, they can say you’re the only one who can answer it (hell, in a lot of states they could say that without paying any of the bill). It’s a dumb response from them, though.

But also, your mom should stay out of your work life and not tell your boss off on your behalf! I get the impulse, but she doesn’t have the standing to do that and she ended up causing problems for you at work.

At the same time, though, I kind of love her for defending her sick kid. Is she up for telling off other people’s bosses too? She’d probably be in demand.

2. Staff is grumbling about sales team’s “perks”

I manage a team of salesmen who call on very large customers. Typically we are responsible for signing 5-10 contracts that generate a lot of meaningful revenue for the company. Because of the size of these contracts and the nature of our customers, we attend a lot of off-hours events to host our customers — things like dinners, concerts, and professional sporting events. As a manager, I try to be flexible with people’s schedules to accommodate all the hours they end up working outside of the normal 9-5. However, I’m running into problems with other departments complaining about my team’s availability or implying that we are more focused on partying than working. This typically happens when they want to connect with someone on my team but that person is using comp time; for example, they had a 7pm dinner the day before so I don’t have them come into work till 10 am but production wants to meet right at 9 am.

I understand why there might be a perception issue to say, “Oh, John is coming in late on Monday because he has to spend all Sunday at the suite of an NFL game,” but these events truly are a work day for us. Attending with a customer and trying to have a meaningful business conversation can be a pretty high pressure and stressful thing! We might have a beer at the game but it’s much more about making sure the customer has a great time then it is about actually enjoying the venue. Typically my team has to provide a recap of any conversations that they had and how contract negotiations are advancing. It’s also not fair to expect them to spend a weekend day or a weeknight working and then go back to a regular schedule.

My boss understands this but when I’ve tried explaining it to other departments (typically run by people at my level but without sales experience) I’ve had varying degrees of success. I’ve also set up a couple times a week like Monday afternoons, where I can guarantee that my whole team is working at the same time so these departments can schedule meetings. That has helped manage the scheduling issue that we are having, but it’s made the grumbling worse because they feel like we are being unreasonable. Is there a good way that I can explain to my peers outside of sales that we aren’t being divas, we just have a weird work schedule?

Can you stop describing the specifics of what they were doing when they were working off-hours and instead just say “he had to work all day Sunday” or “he worked until very late last night”? If you mention dinners and games, people are going to focus on that to the exclusion of the “work” part.

You might also try talking with the other managers one-on-one about the pattern and ask for their help in figuring out how to resolve it; sometimes when people are enlisted in solving a problem that they themselves are part of it, they start to get it more. And you could say, “While the events can seem like fun ones, that’s still time that my team has to be ‘on’; they can’t relax, they need to be focused on the client, and that’s time that they can’t be with their family or friends or handling household responsibilities. Since we can’t ask people to spend all their waking hours furthering the company’s business interests and they need to have time off as well, what would you suggest?”

But some of this is just a perpetual issue between sales and non-sales people, so your measure of success shouldn’t be “there is zero grumbling about this.”

3. Can I use Discord messages to confirm that my unreliable coworker told me she ignores my emails?

Right now, I am building an argument to my boss to change the workflow of a specific task to address a problem I have with a coworker (Clara). Clara’s supposed to be doing this task on my behalf. (For internal policy reasons, I’m not allowed to do it myself.) However, Clara is not reliable at doing this task. Over the years, I’ve made a thousand tiny adjustments to my work to make it as easy as possible for her, and she often still makes errors, which only affect me and are for some reason my sole responsibility to identify and (tell her to) fix. I’ve been stewing silently about this for years, because I thought I was just being a hater, frankly. But at my next review, I’m going to urge our boss to see if I can be given the authority to just handle this task myself.

Since all of the measures I take to help Clara and make up for her errors are individually very small, I’m compiling documentation to explain everything I’m doing and confirm that, collectively, they consume a lot of my time and energy — much more than just doing it myself. One item I wanted to include was an email from several months ago, where Clara asked me to indicate importance in the subject line of emails to her; I send out a lot of notices to the whole building, so she mostly just ignores messages from me and sometimes misses important ones. However, when I received this email, it made me so blindingly angry — considering everything else I’m already doing — that I trashed it immediately without responding. Now that I’ve decided to talk to our boss about it, it’s gone from the face of the earth.

But I have the annoyed Discord messages I sent to my partner the day-of that confirm that this email once existed. They don’t say anything spicy — essentially, “Clara just straight-up admitted to me that she doesn’t read my emails” with an air of frustration — and nothing rude, hostile, or profane. Do you think it would help or hurt my case to include these? If including them is a bad idea, do you have any alternate suggestions? Even if I had the original email, would it have been too petty to include, anyway? Clara’s otherwise very nice and definitely isn’t acting maliciously, so I still feel insane for actually complaining about this.

Don’t include the message you sent to your partner about it. It’ll come across as petty, and it puts the focus on your frustration more than on Clara’s behavior. It will also seem odd that you’re proactively trying to come up with outside “evidence” that the email existed, when no one has asked for any, and it risks putting a more adversarial lens on the whole thing.

In most reasonably healthy work environments, you could simply tell your manager what was said and assume that you’ll be believed. (If your word isn’t enough, there are bigger problems that would dwarf this anyway.)

4. Manager said we can’t talk to HR without telling him first

Is it legal/ethical for a supervisor to tell their team they cannot go to HR without telling him and letting him set the appointment with HR?

This comes after a coworker went to HR for two reasons (supervisor issues the entire team is having and a request to move departments). Today the team came in and was told that they cannot go to HR about anything without telling him first what it is about and then he will set an appointment with HR if he deems worthy/necessary.

I am thinking it is not illegal, but not exactly ethical and definitely not in the favor of the team as the supervisor will not set up appointments if he wants to hide things and there would retaliation.

While it’s not illegal on its face, it creates legal liability for your company. What if someone wants to report harassment or discrimination from your boss? They have to go through him first and he’ll decide if they get to talk to HR about it or not? What if he decides they can’t?

It’s very unlikely that HR would be okay with this rule if they knew about it (in part because companies need clear and accessible reporting procedures for harassment and discrimination to effectively defend themselves against lawsuits in those areas), so someone should break the rule to tell HR (and when doing that, should point out that they’re doing exactly what they were told they couldn’t and will need HR’s assistance in ensuring they’re not penalized for it).

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  1. Ask a Manager* Post author

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  2. RedinSC*

    I ran the fundraising part of a non profit. I’d often hear some of the same comments as LW2. “Oh, they’re the party people”

    Well, yes, we host events, go to events and work some days up to 14 hours to make sure we have all the money the organization needs in order to fulfill our mission.

    I don’t think this would work in a business operation, but we’d invite our colleagues to events, to help us set up, help us clean up, help us host people. Once folks got more an of idea of how much work went into these things, the comments settled down some.

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    1. JM60*

      As an introvert, “wining and dining” potential donors/investors/business partners sounds like work.

      In separate conversations, I’ve trumpeted the position that time spent at mandatory socializing needs to be treated as time worked. The fact that it might be fun is irrelevant. It’s time/effort spent on something that’s in the employer’s best interest (or that they believe is in the employer’s best interest).

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    3. bamcheeks*

      I was wondering about offering opportunities to people in other teams to attend sales events too. Not a lot, just one extra space every couple of weeks or so. I feel like you only have to do one or two “stay til eleven being cheerful, friendly and positive to clients” before you realise how knackering it is.

      And hey maybe you’ll accidentally find an engineer or a product designer who turns out to be *great* at sales too!

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      2. Cabbagepants*

        This is brilliant, and depending on the industry, occasionally having a rep from the non-sales side could really enhance your reputation and reinforce that the sales talk is backed by the people who will be fulfilling the sale.

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      3. Just a thought*

        I did this a couple of times. I brought account support people to an out of town 3 day conference were clients and prospective clients attended

        After 3 days of 8am breakfast with clients workshops client lunch and dinners, they realize it wasn’t a party having to be “on” that much time

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      4. By the sea*

        My brother was the engineer in this situation, attending a sports event in a suite at a venue that is almost always sold out. Years later, he still talks about how completely miserable it was for him. (Zero interest in sports, not a small-talker, doesn’t drink, very active and hates sitting still for long periods.) Probably not the right guy to invite.

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        2. KateM*

          If before this, he was grumbling all the time about salespersons having fun, then he was a very right guy to invite for at least that one time.

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        3. Dasein9 (he/him)*

          Yep. While we do all have a responsibility to be pleasant to work with, it’s unreasonable to drop someone into a situation where being outgoing is a major skill and they don’t have any other training or preparation for it. Clients will be able to tell the employee is unhappy and it won’t be the employee’s fault.

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      5. HonorBox*

        I can see the possible upside to this, especially if the engineer or designer can provide some detail to help a sale along. But I don’t love doing this just to prove a point. If you’re bringing someone to dinner or bringing them to a ballgame, there’s cost in that. If the person isn’t going to add anything to the conversation, it may look strange to the client to have an “extra” and if I were approving expenditures, I don’t think I’d look favorably on the added expense just for the opportunity to have the sales team prove a point.

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        1. Amy*

          Absolutely. With important sales, you need to be extremely strategic about who you bring.

          I will sometimes bring a product development person or data analytics person out to an event with customers, but it’s for the benefit of the sale, not the colleague.

          And more often than not, we’re shaving people off the group, not adding to it. If you are meeting with 2-3 customers, it shouldn’t be more than 2- 4 of you. Significantly outnumbering the customer team is a usually bad look. So we often need to cut people who are deeply involved in the sale. I (nicely) cut my boss from a dinner last week because the table was going to be too lopsided between the sales team and customers.

          So sales always needs to be careful about adding extra people unless it’s a 100% a social event with no immediate business on the line.

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        2. Smithy*

          I’m in fundraising, and used to go to a lot of “fancy” parties and dinners for work. For the most part there wasn’t too much complaining, but every now and then someone would really push how much they also wanted to go.

          This job was outside the US, and huge part of why I was hired was due to being a native English speaker and while a number of people at my organization also spoke English, their comfort and fluency really varied. Anyone who really made a big deal about wanting to go, my boss said that as long as they joined me on two donor meetings in English where she was also there – then she would revisit the topic. For this case, it really stressed the “on” part of the task over the party/dinner part of the task.

          And all the staff who regularly HAD to join me for those meetings were never the people who wanted to join me at the parties.

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      6. Nonprofit Lifer*

        I don’t know. I’d worry that if the other staff are already coming in with an idea that ‘the sales team goes out and parties’ then they’d come into the event with an ‘I’m here to party’ attitude that could result in behavior which would embarrass or undercut the sales team.

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        1. Amy*

          Ive seen so many people crash and burn over 20 years at sales events with free alcohol.

          The secret to my success in sales has always been to remember I’m at work. Nurse that one drink for two hours, maybe a second one at 2 hours but no more than that.

          Make sure you accomplish your sales goals for the dinner (for example, find out the purchase timeline and who will be on the committee.) Make sure everyone is being taken care of – the vegetarians got the vegetarian dish, the person in the corner isn’t left out, that you ask the person who mentioned their spouse was having surgery about that. Ensure the clients feel like you are really listening (and do that by really listening.) Make sure all your clients get home safely, especially if they have been drinking a bit too much. That you write down anything important that evening. That you synthesize your notes the next day. Send email thank you notes etc.

          If it feels like a party, you may be doing it wrong.

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    4. Schnitzel*

      I also do fundraising and do a lot of events that sound like fun on the surface—fancy dinners, high end events, lunches, etc.

      Here’s what worked for me to help coworkers understand what it’s really like.

      Each appointment is like a job interview. I have to show up on time, be prepared, be on my best behavior, keep mental notes through it all, write it all up after, and then do the appropriate follow up. If I have eight appointments in a week, that’s eight job interviews.

      This way of describing it usually seems to help the light bulb turn on.

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    5. Sloanicota*

      As said in the response, this kind of thing is a longstanding issue between sales and office. I would wonder if OP could focus on some other common tension points to reduce the overall animosity: are sales people excused from a lot of the “paperwork” because they’re bringing in deals? That can be fine, but there needs to be a clear path for the people whose jobs are to get the paperwork right to get what they need. Maybe it truly has to be a meeting as soon as possible (probably not, although the paperwork people may think that’s a necessity) or could there be a point person assigned to get details via phone instead, to make sure it’s all clear and correct? Or whatever solutions might be, it might take some creative thinking.

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    6. NYWeasel*

      I’ve worked in sales, marketing and production at various companies and have a solid understanding of the skills salespeople need to have—I’d be terrible at that job!

      OP1 is specifically saying that the hosting events are what’s driving the jealousy, but in my experience it’s more nuanced than just that. Do the sales people get company cars to do their jobs which saves them having to ever pay for gas, insurance, etc? Do they get high commissions for bringing in revenue? If the company books a suite for an NBA game but the clients cancel, who gets to use the tickets? Do the salespeople get taken to offsite meetings in fun locations with cool “team building” events while the rest of the departments have to get sandwiches from Subway and maybe meet at the local Marriott? The perks I experienced during my time supporting a sales team were massively better than any I’ve had throughout the rest of my career, and no, I didn’t have to take client meetings or work events.

      At my current company, everyone gets bonuses for high sales, so we all feel like we’re working together. Additionally the sales team finds ways to kick some perks over to the rest of us, so we get to share some unexpected fun things once in awhile and we feel appreciated for the work we do to enable those high sales. I have no doubt that the grumbling OP is hearing is directly connected to the schedules around events, and yes, those are work, not fun. But it would be good to also look at the overall dynamics—are the other teams being asked to prepare rush materials and then the salespeople aren’t in to answer a question, for example—and see if there’s anything behind the jealousy that your team might be able to address proactively. Bonus structures etc might be out of your control, but even just occasionally throwing a “thank you lunch” might improve the dynamics.

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      1. Not That Kind of Doctor*

        Also making sure that non-sales people who end up working on those rush materials after hours b/c sales had comp time can get their own comp time for it.

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        1. linger*

          Also if sales are (seen as) over-promising and thus forcing others to work harder to deliver on those promises. The others need a clearer awareness of what’s involved in sales work; but that cuts both ways. The others also need to know sales appreciate their work too, which includes, at minimum, being available at reasonable hours for collaboration, but goes further.

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      2. Sloanicota*

        Yep. I was in my organization’s version of sales. You do get treated more like a rock star and even told you’re the one keeping the whole organization going. Companies need to figure out way to mitigate this so that you don’t get one department with a huge ego and/or 95% of the organization that’s resentful of one department. While still obviously incentivizing the sales team to keep pushing.

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    7. LaminarFlow*

      10000% agree! Many moons ago, I was a pharmaceutical rep, and we had giant budgets that we were required to spend on essentially wining & dining doctors so they would prescribe our medication, which made the pharm company more $. I bought a box at the Super Bowl a few times, many court side NBA/MLB tickets, Wimbledon seats, tickets to the Masters, you name it. I routinely took my clients to 5 star restaurants before these events. For a young & single person, it was pretty great, if handling the pressure of extracting a meaningful ROI from these events is easy for the rep.

      But, driving revenue with these methods meant that I was working a lot of VERY long days. The work/life balance sucked, and even if I was at the Super Bowl, I was working. Also, I was still required to be “on” at these events that could happen several times each week, regardless of if I was feeling social or not, and I still had to get all of my other work done.

      All of it wore me down, and I also started feeling icky about the whole thing, so I pivoted out of the industry. I believe the rules have changed since I left it 20 years ago, and reps are capped at what they can spend & do, which I think is a good thing.

      Anyway, the sales team in any company generates revenue, and while the events they plan or attend may not seem like work from an outsider’s perspective, they absolutely are. The revenue generated from these things is likely keeping folks at the company employed.

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      1. Sloanicota*

        I mean, your last sentence is the crux of it. Sales people are often told / it’s implied to everyone that they’re keeping the whole org afloat. But I mean, good engineering and good shipping of a good product, and good customer service, are all essential to success. You could say none of that matters without sales, but you can also say no salesperson would be successful for long if the product sucked.

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      2. lanfy*

        It’s when companies behave as though the sales people are the *only* people who generate revenue that resentment starts to foster.

        They’d be hard-put to generate revenue without the other teams providing something for them to sell.

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    8. Quinalla*

      Yes, I don’t do sales, but I did and still do work travel. The folks at my office that didn’t do work travel were always jealous that we got to go to cool places and eat food for free. Trying to explain to them the difference between a work trip and a vacation was maddening, they refused to understand that flying in, getting a rental car, driving directly to a jobsite, eating lunch with clients (so you are on), driving back and turning in the rental car, eating dinner at the airport and flying home wasn’t fun or a vacation :) I would occasionally have extra time because flights sucked and might go walk on a beach or see something interesting, but most of the time I saw the airport/drove/and the construction site. Unless you were somewhere like DC, you rarely drove by anything interesting.

      I very much understand that sales stuff is not the same as going to a game or dinner or whatever in your free time. I do it occasionally at work and there can be some fun, but it’s mostly work. And if you are exhausted from being on all day and have to go do this too, ugh. Kudos to the OP for giving comp time for these things, a lot of companies really don’t.

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    9. Jennifer Strange*

      Yup, fellow former fundraiser here. People think we’re just partying with donors, drink in hand. They’re not seeing us staying there until midnight to clean up trash left behind by guests (because that garbage can two feet away is much too far) or keeping a calm demeanor when a donor scolds us for not giving them their favorite seat at a sold-out opening night (when the playwright needed twenty seats just for their entourage). That’s not to say there weren’t perks, but, as with many jobs, they came with some unpleasant responsibilities as well.

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  3. Broken Nail*

    LW 3: You want to prove something you’re saying is true by… sharing a different time you said it. It just weakens the whole argument and makes you look out of touch with reality.

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    1. Knope Knope Knope*

      I feel like there’s more to this story. I wonder why OP isn’t allowed to handle the task themselves already? I have a senior staff member who insists on doing work I have reassigned to an intern. It’s a task that’s nice to have but it takes time and it’s not that important. I need my senior staffer focused on other things. They keep inserting themselves into the process to “fix” it. In reality, I don’t need it fixed. The “errors” are so minor and inconsequential they are taking every away from much more important work. I wonder if it’s a similar situation where OP is only going to showcase they are focused on the wrong thing.

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      1. Spencer Hastings*

        Segregation of duties is where my mind went — if certain tasks shouldn’t be done by the same person for internal control reasons, that could be a valid reason that LW can’t do the task herself and Clara’s inability to do it in a timely manner causes real problems for her.

        I also agree that there’s no point in sharing the Discord messages — if she tells the boss “Clara emailed me and said XYZ, but I seem to have deleted it” and the boss wants evidence, LW can probably go to IT and tell them the same thing.

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      2. Katie Impact*

        OP3 seems disproportionately angry about this whole situation, and self-aware about being disproportionately angry. If they’re actually catching heat for Clara’s errors, some frustration would be understandable, but passively stewing about it for years to the point of becoming “blindingly angry” over an email sure wasn’t a productive way to handle it.

        If the workflow does need to be improved, OP3 can talk to the boss about that and should already have plenty of other evidence of going back and forth with Clara to get her to fix things, which will hold more weight than this one deleted email anyway.

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      3. Part time lab tech*

        Could be a quality issue, such as quality control and manufacturing having different management and KPIs.

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      4. OP No. 3*

        This is a process I actually handle for everyone else in our subset of the organization. I’m just not allowed to handle my own documents (due to a conflict of interest policy that is unique to our particular subset), so mine are the ONLY ones Clara handles. I find it really frustrating that I’m the only person in our sub-group that has to work this hard to get their papers filed.

        The errors I’m talking about are things that have resulted in my corporate credit card going unpaid on multiple occasions, resulting in fees and cancelations that I had to pay out of pocket and sort out myself so that I could do routine parts of my job.

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        1. Cohort1*

          A simpler version of your situation: when my sister was 18, many years ago, she was employed at Disneyland as a hot dog vendor. She passed out the hot dogs and put the money in the till. One day she decided to have a hot dog for lunch. She put her money in the till and ate her hot dog. She was fired. You can’t sell yourself the product that you sell to everyone else at the park, someone else needs to sell you that hot dog and they put the money in the till. It sounds like you are in what is a similar situation, just a way more elevated operation than a hot dog stand.

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          1. LifebeforeCorona*

            That’s common in many places where the worker handles money and/or food. We could buy food but we had to be on our break and someone else prepared the food. It was the same process with the cashiers, they could not ring in their own purchases. Of course it didn’t stop workers from giving their friends extra fries or a double burger but the intent was there.

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            1. Sola Lingua Bona Lingua Mortua Est*

              Yea, the only part of that story that surprises me, having been both a cashier a few times, is that the first occurrence resulted in immediate termination instead of a write-up, warning, or other progressive discipline.

              And we played fast-and-loose with the food side of it. You could totally make yourself a mini chicken-parmesan sub as a custom order, punch out for break, then buy it from your peer and eat it all in the course of 5 minutes. I think Management didn’t care because the most obvious outcome would be a customer noticing, thinking that looks tasty, and ordering one of their own.

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              1. Chirpy*

                It really depends on the place. I worked at a sandwich shop that allowed that, and a burger chain that absolutely would not let you make your own food. But even there, I assume you’d get a write up first.

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          2. Also-ADHD*

            She was FIRED on the first time? I hope they really outline not to to that in onboarding. It seems a fairly easy mistake to make unless they do. I get Disney wouldn’t let you do that, but I’ve definitely worked places (back when I was in high school and college, so maybe it’s a time period thing too and retail/food service has changed) — even corporate places — where I could sell myself stuff, as long as my till was “right” at the end.

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        2. Friends of English Magic*

          For #1, I think my opinion of the sick OP’s mother would depend on how badly she “told off” the boss and about what. If it was limited to the situation at hand (ie, “She’s sick, you need to leave her alone”) that would be pretty understandable, but if it started to get into all the other ways Boss is a jerk (based off things OP had vented about in the past) then that would be crossing a big line.

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        3. JediJoe*

          Have you gone to IT to see if they can recover the deleted email? If they can do that then you have the evidence you need

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        4. blueberry*

          Wait, what? Your corporate credit card got cancelled and you paid out of pocket? Why? That’s the work issue you should have talked to your boss about. “Clara failed to pay my corporate credit card, and now I can’t buy widgets. How would you like me to buy widgets?” Clara’s mistake not allowing you to do your job is the major issue.

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        5. Sloanicota*

          Been there. But unfortunately I think you’d have more luck campaigning for someone *else* to take on the task, versus being able to approve your own expense accounts? There’s a reason for rules like this, and “Clara sucks” doesn’t negate that. (If the reason is fear of embezzlement, it’s actually going to look a bit suspicious if you make this your hill to die on).

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        6. Alicent*

          This reminds me a lot of my last job. We had to handle sensitive laboratory samples and I had an assistant who screwed them up regularly. We handled these EVERY WEEK, but she couldn’t remember to spin them down, draw them off and freeze them. Three steps. I even made a chart and my boss ripped it down saying it “looked bad to clients and you should just remind her every time.” Clients couldn’t go in the lab and I was often doing other work so I couldn’t babysit my assistant. After two incidents of having to redraw samples and angering clients because I had to lie about why (it was an involved test to complete) I I finally started doing them all myself.
          Unfortunately this was a trend where the staff would do something lazy or careless and I would get yelled at by the client and/or boss about communication or that I needed to double check all their work like they weren’t grown adults doing fairly simple tasks. Nothing ever changed and I quit which was such a weight off my shoulders.

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        7. Guacamole Bob*

          OP No. 3, if Clara does this work as a separation of duties matter, and it’s resulted in real work problems like the ones you mention with your credit card, I would approach it differently.

          Instead, I’d go to your manager and say “the way this task is being handled isn’t working well, leaving me with out-of-pocket expenses and making me spend significant time unraveling problems. I understand that for financial controls reasons I can’t approve my own reports. What are some alternatives? Is there someone else who could take this on instead of Clara, or could you supervise her more closely on this task to make sure it is completed in a timely manner?”

          And instead of emailing Clara repeatedly, contact your manager if she doesn’t get it done on time.

          It sounds from your letter like you’re just seething, gathering all this documentation without taking the more typical approach of regular conversations with your manager about the work impact of this issue. If the first time an employee raised an issue with me in a serious manner they came with a folder of email printouts or a spreadsheet of occurrences over months rather than just having the conversation, I would seriously question their judgment, along with what about my management style made them think that was how to solve problems.

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          1. Falling Diphthong*

            This is a much better approach.

            “X isn’t happening, which derails and complicates my work, and the interruption is then passed on to the business. We need a different way to make sure X happens.” With no supporting texts to your spouse about how annoyed you are about work things.

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          2. Pastor Petty Labelle*

            I like the contact your manager part. Make it is his problem. If OP cannot handle the task for conflict reasons, then its not her problem to solve. It is manager’s. Right now manager is not handling it because OP is.

            Also OP, this is not a court of law. You don’t need proof beyond a reasonable doubt with a whole stack of evidence showing the pattern. Literally, you can deal with each instance in the moment. Dear boss, Clara has yet to approve my reports for this week, how should this be handled? Repeat as necessary.

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        8. AlsoADHD*

          If it’s a conflict of interest policy, I don’t think you can change to doing it yourself. Can you ask for Clara to have more oversight and document by CCing others and also make it clear you won’t pay any more fees etc. That’s the paper trail you probably need. If you establish a clear escalation policy, that might free brain space and push the pain up to management.

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          1. linger*

            Yep, if this is a financial control thing then OP cannot be seen as attempting any kind of end-run around the policy.
            But also, technically, under this policy, Clara would need oversight from, and to be held responsible by, someone other than OP when performing this task. THIS is what OP’s manager needs to make happen.
            The only time OP should ever have been directly involved is in training Clara in how to perform the task.
            Note also, this task is otherwise not part of Clara’s role, and she does not perform it for anyone else, so does not get much chance to improve or get faster with practice. She can’t be as invested in it as OP is; for her, it’s an odd additional task with less priority than her regular job. Maybe (paradoxically) this means Clara needs to take on more of this processing, which on the one hand may mean any issues become more visible to others, but on the other hand allows opportunities for training or improvement, and would emphasise that it really is part of her duties.
            Also, while OP probably doesn’t care either way at this stage, it makes a difference in terms of managing Clara whether the problem is just in the performance of OP’s task, or whether there is a more general pattern of Clara neglecting tasks.

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        9. Grumpy Elder Millennial*

          I don’t know if you’re going to get much traction if you’re suggesting to your boss that you ignore a conflict of interest policy. If I was your boss, I would question your judgment and integrity if you tried this. Instead, present your (entirely legitimate!) complaints and push the boss to resolve it somehow. I commented below that I’d start looping in the boss any time there are issues around this, in real time. With this additional context, I’d recommend it even more strongly. When you get something back with errors, reply to Clara and CC the boss, every time.

          Also, it’s BS that you paid for her mistakes with your own money. If this is an expectation your boss has, you have bigger problems than a careless coworker.

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      5. M*

        From OP3’s replies in the comments, don’t think that’s the case. That said: while Clara sounds like she’s being fairly sloppy in handling this task:

        a) it sounds like it’s a one-off task for her that she’s doing for conflict-of-interest reasons and isn’t really her wheelhouse, so it’s not unreasonable to expect that she’ll need instructions, and more importantly,

        b) I’m absolutely with her on the email thing. If I get a bunch of building-wide emails from my colleague that need to be sent but largely don’t affect me, but also, every now and then, an email that’s specific to my work and sent just to me, I… think it’s pretty reasonable to ask OP to put subject lines on the latter that make it clear that I need to treat them as urgent.

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        1. Falling Diphthong*

          Part (b) here. When most of the emails you send someone are “So for everyone in the building, here’s some info” and then every once in a while one is “Hey Falling, Can you find a llama by Tuesday please,” then it makes sense to find some way to distinguish that.

          Re: Building Maintenance
          Re: Chloe’s Retirement
          Re: A Training Video
          Re: TUESDAY Llama for Demo
          Re: More Building Maintenance

          Nonprofits have to deal with this when emailing people who might utilize their programs in some way–if I get 10 chatty emails a week from the art center trying to make me feel engaged with them, I’m likely to miss the one that wasn’t generic-to-all and conveyed information I care about, like that a class was canceled. So the arts center dials down the emailing to a frequency where people won’t ignore all communication from them. OP can’t dial down the frequency of the all building announcements, so there needs to be another way to make the “actually this is only to one person, and involves a deadline” email stand out.

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        2. Spencer Hastings*

          If that’s Clara’s problem, she can solve it herself to some extent, depending on the email program they’re using. I have an Outlook rule that turns the subject and sender a different color if an email is sent only to me, for instance. If the mass emails are sent to particular mailing lists, she might be able to direct emails addressed to those lists into dedicated folders instead of her main inbox. Or something like that.

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          1. Ginger Baker*

            ^Useful for anyone who has a similar situation. I use both the conditional formatting and rules to filter to folders for this exact “how to distinguish sent to just me vs mass emails” and it is super helpful.

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          2. Also-ADHD*

            I think asking for a set subject line isn’t a problem. I would frame it differently than “I usually don’t read your emails” but more “I don’t do this task for anyone else, so having X as a set subject line will help me do it in a timely manner” — but then if OP does the subject line, Clara needs to do the task in a timely manner. Copy/pasting the same subject line even, or forwarding within a chain, could help both Clara AND OP perhaps and systemize the task. BUT Clara has to actually be reliable for that to work, and it sounds like she is not and also no one else has any oversight on this, to the point where OP paid CC charges for company stuff HERSELF!

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        3. Pastor Petty Labelle*

          While I noted above that OP needs to loop in her manager, subject headings is the easiest thing in the world to do. It takes little extra time and makes finding that email you need so much easier.

          I do it for all my work emails, whether to client or opposing counsel. For clients I just leave off the case name — because they kindna know it already. For opposing counsel its always Doe v. Smith – topic. That way I can go back and check – when did I send that whatever?

          OP you should be using subject lines on the building wide emails too. That way people can find it if they need to go back and check. For Clara it would be obvious too — her emails would have – Weekly Report or Credit Card or whatever needs to be address on them.

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          1. M*

            Yup. I get that OP is finding Clara frustrating, but I would not be *surprised* to discover that OP’s sense of what Clara should reasonably need from her to do a task that is otherwise unusual for Clara isn’t entirely reasonably calibrated. Or not! But being that resistant to sticking “Monthly Expenses Report February” or whatever in the subject line rose an eyebrow for me.

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          2. Grumpy Elder Millennial*

            When I was a project manager, I did something similar. Anything going out for approvals had a subject line that started with FOR APPROVAL. Or if I needed them to respond to something, especially if it was urgent, RESPONSE REQUESTED. These people get a billion e-mails and I didn’t want these to get lost in the pile.

            Yes, it would be great if Clara was more diligent about this and it sounds like she expressed herself poorly. But this is also a simple request that doesn’t take the LW any real time and might help. The LW is justifiably angry with Clara. But the request is reasonable and might help.

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      6. DC Cliche*

        “internal policy” makes me think either they’re not senior enough (like, only a manager can perform the task and OP is an analyst) or there’s a check-and-balance because it involves money or data. If those are the cases, I’m not sure why advocating to the manager to do the entire task is the right move.

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        1. DC Cliche*

          wait, just saw OP’s comment. If it’s a corporate card, it being cancelled as a result of Clara’s incompetence it is their issue, not yours, to solve! Saying “I can’t order this because my card was cancelled” will get the situation resolved in a hurry.

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      7. Delta Delta*

        Could be a licensing or credentialing issue. Example: I’m a lawyer. I could ask a paralegal to draft a pleading for me, but they couldn’t sign and file it with the court because they lack the licensure to do that.

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  4. MSD*

    I’ve found that people who don’t travel for work usually think that it’s a lot of fun for those who do. Although it sometimes is, for the most part it’s not.

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    1. MK*

      Or worse, when they only have to do it occasionally. One work trip a year and social work events every three months could be fun. Monthly work trips and events every week aren’t.

      Reply ↓
      1. Wanderlust*

        Completely disagreed. I have taken jobs because of the opportunity for travel, and not too long ago I left a job because promised international travel opportunities never materialized (and they had me working from home!).

        I have probably visited over 30 countries that I would not have had the opportunity to visit but for work projects. There’s two countries whose border I have crossed probably over 100 times; I’ve lost count. To be sure, little of this is “vacation” per se, but (1) I love seeing how different cultures negotiate, (2) I love getting out of the office routine, and (3) usually the employer is fine if you stay the weekend, which gives you a chance to see a little bit of the city you’re in.

        I fully appreciate that this may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but equally, please don’t proclaim that it’s no one’s.

        Reply ↓
        1. Nodramalama*

          I think you’re pretty uncommon. When people speak in generalities they don’t mean, every single person in the world thinks this way.

          Reply ↓
        2. Ellis Bell*

          I can definitely see a job holding a special allure because you get to ‘travel’ amongst different cultures, but usually, ‘travel’ in a work context is used without reference to cultures. I don’t know many people whose dream it is to spend every weekend in a Holiday Inn in culturally identical towns – or revisiting the same place over and over.

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        3. JustCuz*

          Its like long haul truck driving. Its great for very few. Most people value being with loved ones more and stability of life than being gone and in different places all of the time.

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      2. LifebeforeCorona*

        We have a popular yearly community event that requires planning 3 months at least before hand to make sure that it goes off smoothly because there are lots of working parts involved. One of the most popular draws is the local handmade ice cream. “You guys get to eat ice cream all day!” No, the last time I managed to get an ice cream at the very last minute and had to freeze it, I remembered it a month later.

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    2. Not Tom, Just Petty*

      This reminds me of a reality check I had one time. I was talking about tour dates of my favorite artist with a friend. The tour was hitting four or five cities in my state over one week. The cities are half a day driving apart and the shows were 1-2 days apart. Oh, the crew will have time to see the city and go to X and Y destinations.”
      My friend: “the crew will have time to do laundry, pay bills, not drive and do work for a day.”
      Oh yeah! This isn’t aroad trip vacation!!!

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    3. lanfy*

      I’ve travelled for work a whole two times; once to the Mediterranean coast, and once to San Francisco.

      Did I see the sights? Did I hang out on the beaches? I did not. At my exotic holiday destinations, I got to see the inside of a lot of air conditioned rooms, feel like carp from the travel and the jet lag, and I couldn’t even get a decent cup of tea. It was very frustrating.

      As an introverted homebody, I just feel pity for people whose work requires them to travel and go to events.

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    4. Tiny Clay Insects*

      This whole conversation is so validating. My husband and I have a small business running small-group tours in Europe, and running those tours, while extremely cool to get to do, is EXHAUSTING. I’ll be gone from home for up to 2 months (doing multiple tours and research for other tours), and I feel like a lot of people I talk to about it seem to think it is a 2-month vacation. I then feel bad for talking to anyone in my life expect my husband anout how incredibly tired I am, how I miss friends and family, etc, because other people seem to act like I’m essentially complaining about vacationing.

      It’s wonderful to have a business we built overselves taking off, and it’s really a cool business, but I am ON as soon as I step out of the hotel room door and start seeing the guests, even informally at breakfast or whatever. So I 1000% understand why the sales team is tired, needs adequate breaks, etc., and I’m glad their manager is protecting them. At least in my case, it’s MY company, so working incredibly hard and getting exhausted is still a choice I’m making voluntarily, to benefit my own company. (So maybe I shouldn’t expect to complain, when I think of it like that…)

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    5. Also-ADHD*

      I travel for work occasionally, and I find it both fun and exhausting. But I definitely take comp time if I’ve traveled over a weekend or Friday evening etc. I think the issue with sales might be — as someone upthread says — they’re often treated like the “royalty” of the company in other ways. LW is right on this, but should definitely check on company culture a bit (especially with the old-timey comment on “salesmen”).

      Like that person, I work in a function that can be within different parts of the business, and when I’ve been in Sales Enablement, you DO feel the difference. I actually prefer being in HR or Ops because of the kind of work I’ve moved up to do in my function, but I was never treated so well in terms of perks and comp-for-level* as when I designed external onboarding for a Sales team.

      *I actually have higher comp now, but at a much more senior level (Director+). I was a mid-tier IC making fairly similar amounts when I was in the Sales side, and that’s common in my function. Easy work (not sales, what I do is easier on the sales side) for higher pay and less chance of layoffs since you’re in a revenue generating part of the business.

      Reply ↓
  5. Abogado Avocado*

    LW#4, I’m a lawyer and, regrettably, it’s idiots like your boss who keep us in business. If I worked for your employer, I would be advising your boss that he absolutely cannot insert himself in any employee’s effort to contact HR due to the great likelihood that his gate-keeping would result in the company failing to meet legal requirements, such as providing ADA accommodations, and FMLA leave, among other duties. I’d also advise him that if he continued to insist on this path, he’d be looking at many hours in remedial management training with an emphasis on reducing the company’s legal liability.

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    2. Zelda*

      A boss forbidding subordinates to speak to HR without boss’s permission is the work equivalent of an outside adult trying to forbid a small child from telling their parents about interactions with the other adult– it’s a flag that you need to go to HR/tell parents right away. Someone who wants to keep those kinds of secrets is up to no good.

      Reply ↓
      1. My Boss is Dumber than Yours*

        Bingo. I do not get along with one of my brothers-in-law, but have been mostly just ambivalent about interacting with him for the past few years. But then he told my wife he wants to see our daughter more to have a better relationship with his niece, but only in contexts that I’m not around. Like, dude, you’d have a far better chance of seeing her without me if you didn’t open your dumb mouth. Now, I really don’t trust you around my kid…

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    3. Bilateralrope*

      Why do you threaten retraining ?

      At this point, all we are sure about is that he’s interfering with people talking to HR. That’s not a retraining issue. That’s a “this must not happen again” issue. The kind of thing that should be another step towards firing the supervisor every time it happens. I wouldn’t give him anything more than the minimum number of warnings that the law/company policies allows.

      Maybe a few company wide emails informing everyone that anyone trying to gate-keep like this is going against company policy and HR wants to know about it.

      Reply ↓
      1. misspiggy*

        I’m guessing the idea is that if you threaten managers with tasks they’ll hate but can’t justifiably escape, they’ll change behaviour faster than formal measures would effect.

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      2. Abogado Avocado*

        Bilateralrope, another lawyer may well see this differently. I agree this is a scenario where I would say, as a lawyer, “This must not happen again” and I’d certainly suggest a wider review of his management practices. However, I would not propose putting him on a termination path without more information.

        For-profit businesses tend to balance events like these (which is not discrimination, it’s not sexual assault, it’s not stealing, it’s stupidity) against everything else the manager brings to the table. If he’s managing a profitable unit and hasn’t otherwise exposed the company to liability, his bosses are unlikely to direct him towards the exit or even put him on a path there. Hence, more management training is a way to split the difference. And, it’s another note in the file for the next time this idiot does something idiotic but not explicitly illegal.

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    4. Falling Diphthong*

      There’s a saying about HR being there to protect the company, which: Yes, to prevent people doing things that leave the company open to large pay outs when sued, like forbidding anyone to go to HR.

      Reply ↓
    5. Parrhesia25*

      I’ve experienced mandates like this where it was less that the supervisor wanted to insert themselves in ADA, FMLA or other clearly HR issues and more that someone went to HR about an issue they were having with the supervisor and the supervisor was salty about it. Sometimes it was an issue that the employee had attempted work out with the supervisor with no resolution but sometimes the employee really should have reached out to the supervisor first. In the second case it is more a case of poor supervisory skill or not thinking through the implications of their instructions than actual shenanigans.

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  6. Bilateralrope*

    #4: It’s very telling that your supervisor didn’t mention this rule until after someone had gone to HR with complaints about him.

    If your HR is competent, they will not be happy when they learn about this. It’s the kind of thing that should make them realize that they need to protect the company from this supervisor.

    Reply ↓
    1. Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells*

      I agree. It sounds like this supervisor would double down on any decisions made or refuse to accept responsibility for a mistake. Just like many of the worst bosses on this site.

      Reply ↓
    2. Hush42*

      I am sitting here imagining the reaction our HR department would have if they found out one of our managers had said that. It would be immediately extremely negative. I am not entirely convinced that they would allow that manager to keep their job. This is such a huge violation of how HR is supposed to work.

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      1. StarTrek Nutcase*

        I think the consequence would be greatly impacted by the overall value of that manager. I worked at a major research university and one professor was a known problem (ignore policies, fostered hostile work environment, hired/fired discriminately, etc). HR did nothing and even the College Dean was unable to exert control. Why? Because this AH brought huge research dollars as an internationally known expert. Other professors refused to collaborate, graduate students made deals to switch from his supervision rather than pursue legal avenues (failure to deal would have crippled their futures), and staff quickly transferred or quit (and again struck deals). This was before social media, witnesses & physical proof were problematic, and retribution from the professor & the university was not unknown.

        I lost my rose-colored glasses in that job – $$$ before morals. I (dept. office mgr.) chose to quit but was stopped only through my dept. chair using a lot of his political clout to push for AH to essentially become a one-man dept. (aka fiefdom) which meant dept. professors & staff could consider him invisible. His staff, grad. students and lab techs were left in hell.

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    3. el l*

      Yeah, I can understand a reasonable supervisor hearing about either issue and going, “Couldn’t you have talked to me first?”

      But this response is so wildly out of line that I think it shines a harsh light on who they are. That’s not how this works…at all.

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    4. Also-ADHD*

      I agree with Alison that someone should go to HR, but if anyone is brave enough and in a position to do so (i.e. has enough clout/power within the org), they should actually not even bypass the rule but just tell manager, “Hey, I’d like to talk to HR about this policy. Let’s set up a meeting.” I’ve been in situations like this and called a bluff, but I know some of that is a privilege thing.

      Reply ↓
  7. PanDaMonium*

    3: Don’t “stew silently for years”. If you have a half-decent boss just tell them when you’re having an issue with a coworker affecting your work. If you don’t then that’s your real problem, not Clara.

    Reply ↓
    1. Ellis Bell*

      This is why I think Clara is the red herring; the real cause of OP’s frustration is being made to feel they need proof before being listened to. I read this as OP has been communicating with their boss throughout, but has been instructed to just identify issues and tackle them with Clara even though OP has no authority over her. It sounds like Clara’s performance is being managed with the same lack of urgency being shown when OP says they need to be listened to and supported. This is what happens when managers put their feet up and instruct the little people to sort it out amongst themselves.

      Reply ↓
    2. bel*

      Yes. Been there, done that. Try having a very frank conversation with your boss. If your boss ignores you or doesn’t support you, that’s the real problem.

      PS: Fingers crossed, Clara wins the lottery and quits and you don’t see her again.

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    3. OP No. 3*

      I’ve only recently come to the conclusion that any of this was an actual problem worth discussing, versus me just being petty about small annoyances. The last time I brought up Clara letting me down like this, our boss’s answer was to tell us both to be more attentive. In context, I thought that was fair, but (based on my experiences since then) I think I took it to heart way more than Clara did. But I haven’t brought it up since, because my thought was that I would probably get a similar answer while also coming across as whining about a perfectly reasonable directive. Only recently have I come to the realization that it was reasonable for me to be frustrated with Clara at all–which you’re right, IS a me problem, lol.

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      1. Snow Globe*

        Unless your annual review is very soon, I’d suggest going to your boss about this before the review. There is no need to wait on something that is causing you so much frustration, and if there is any chance that your boss will hold you responsible for things not getting done, you want to get ahead of that before he writes it into the review.

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        1. Grumpy Elder Millennial*

          Agreed. Your annual review is meant to be discussing your performance and opportunities for growth. The issue with Clara will probably come up, but it’d be a bit weird to spend a lot of time during your review talking about someone else.

          Go back to your boss and say that the intervention didn’t solve the problem. Ask for your boss’ help in resolving it – this approach makes it seem less like you’re attacking Clara. How does the boss want you to respond when X happens? What should you do with Y situation?

          Consider also looping in your boss whenever Clara causes issues. This will give the boss insight into what’s going on. Reading your letter, I was a bit concerned that you might be going overboard with the evidence and that it would hurt your chances of getting the resolution you need. Instead, maybe present the most recent few issues that came up and say that this is characteristic of the types of problems you’ve been continuing to have.

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  8. Perks*

    I honestly thought the complaint was going to be my sales folks get to go to ballgames, nice restaurants, etc on the company dime and others complain because they don’t. That’s the form of this I’ve encountered before, one that some of my companies have addressed by having periodic company wide outings at a sporting event or recreational venue and by sharing out extra free tickets left by vendors so a wider swath of employees get to participate. The difference is these events are seen as perks even if expected as part of the job; while some flexibility in other hours is generally given, it doesn’t go beyond the flexibility other employees would get in terms of being able to start their workday at whatever time makes sense for them. If there isn’t a scheduled meeting on their calendar at 9am they shouldn’t be dinged for not being available at 9am.

    Reply ↓
    1. Not That Kind of Doctor*

      My thought was also along the lines of, “When was the last time anyone outside of sales got a break in routine?”

      Granted my situation is not typical, but my employer didn’t just not return to office, we don’t really have an office anymore. Travel for most of us is on the order of once every other year or so if you’re lucky. Otherwise it’s typing, video calls, and leftovers for lunch. I’m actually pretty introverted, but it takes a toll.

      All of which to say I too would be annoyed if my monotonous daily grind were made more tedious because someone else was getting paid to leave the house and see other humans in person.

      Reply ↓
      1. I guess my entire company was the real work wife the whole time.*

        That seems weird to treat working events as perks.

        People get a break from the routine by taking PTO. Exactly how the sales people have to take PTO to get a break from their routine of exhausting, overstimulating events.

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      2. AMH*

        “All of which to say I too would be annoyed if my monotonous daily grind were made more tedious because someone else was getting paid to leave the house and see other humans in person.”

        I’m not sure I’m understanding you here, but if you are referring to salespeople: leaving the house and seeing other humans is their job, which is why they get paid for it, and they generally work quite hard! Their jobs aren’t perks, they are jobs, and they probably feel like a draining daily grind as well.

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      3. Fingus*

        that’s an odd take. they just…. have a different job than you do. that, yes, they obviously get paid to do. maybe your irritation at the tedium of your job is a sign that it’s not totally what you’re looking for in a work environment– but it’s odd to put the annoyance on coworkers who have different schedules/tasks/expectations than you do. (imagine how weird their annoyance would be at you getting paid to sit at home and have the same schedule every day.)

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    2. MsM*

      Yeah, but it sounds to me like nobody else is getting the flexibility they need in their schedules because everything has to be planned around sales’ availability. In which case, it might be politic to suck it up occasionally, designate someone to make the 9 am meeting, and let them make it up at some other point while someone else covers the next all-hands conversation.

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    3. el l*

      I think the key word here is “availability.”

      If salespeople are persistently difficult to get time with for normal updates, that’s a problem. They should also use calendar do others can plan ahead to talk.

      That said, If other departments expect “of course you’re available!” at 9 when they had to work late, that’s not a reasonable work/life expectation on sales. If you need to talk to busy people, plan ahead or risk disappointment.

      Reply ↓
  9. Jasmine Clark*

    LW1, it would be great if you could come back in the future and update us! Your mom should not have done what she did, but to be fair, your boss totally deserved it and I’m sure his feelings were very hurt, lol. I hope you can soon find a better job with a kindhearted boss!

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  10. Martin Blackwood*

    #2 – Yeah be less specific. But at the same time, pay attention to the reasons people need to book time with your sales reps. I’m in production, though theres a coordinator layer between me and sales. It’s possible that, while maaaybe their question could wait for monday afternoon, then that eats up buffer time in case some machine goes down, someone gets food poisoning, etc. Depending on what production’s doing, sourcing materials, scheduling machine time, etc as soon as possible makes their lives way less hectic. So if you could sit in on some of those meetings, talk to the people who need to meet with the sales reps the most, and try and find some patterns.

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    1. Disappointed With the Staff*

      IME companies where sales *isn’t* connected with production have many other problems. But connecting production to the sales side is also useful, if somewhat more difficult.

      Threatening engineers with having to do sales is often effective. “oh yes we’d love to have you on the booth at the conference in {popular holiday destination}. You’ll do three 14 hour days mostly talking to people then fly home”. I found booth work for a one day conference to be ample. Or just get the factory staff out helping set up for a trade show, that’ll learn ’em.

      Reply ↓
      1. andy*

        I dunno, as an engineer these are not threat and you just goof off most of the time in the trade show. They are long day, but an engineer on it is neither under pressure nor under stress. You are away from the family and your engineering duties wait for you, so then you are can get really overworked while sales people pressure you to be fast.

        But, the trade show itself is not exactly punishment and is more of sought for fun change of pace.

        Maybe if you stopped thinking about engineers in pure stereotypes and started to listen to concerns they have when they ask for meetings and answers, the relationships in company would be better. They are not asking for meetings because they would enjoy those meetings that much, they need something they are not getting.

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        1. Texan in exile on her phone*

          I have never gotten to work a trade show where I did nothing but goof off. I was on my feet all day answering questions and being nice and then I had to go out to dinner with customers after. It was exhausting and I hated it. Oh – and our shows were on the weekend and I got neither OT nor comp time.

          Reply ↓
        2. Disappointed With the Staff*

          I’m speaking as an engineer, albeit a pretty stereotypical one. But then I’m also speaking as someone who took “represent the company at a trade show booth” seriously and did it to the best of my ability. Which was hard work. But as you say, if you goof off any job is easy, you just have to hope that that’s acceptable to your employer.

          Reply ↓
          1. Polaris*

            It is…definitely a LONG day. Not quite a trade show, but when you have to be the face and voice of your employer at an all day thing, then maaaaaybe get an hour to shower/freshen up and then go wine and dine or otherwise do more things til midnight, wash rinse repeat for three days? Yikes. Just yikes.

            Reply ↓
          2. Also-ADHD*

            A more extroverted engineer type (my husband is this) would genuinely enjoy and find it to be “goofing off” for a day even while taking it seriously. Because it’s FUN for a day or two, and he doesn’t get to do that kind of socializing that much as an engineer. Of course… my engineering husband became a client trainer of sorts because he was feeling isolated as an engineer. (Still works remote, and he loves that, but he wants to talk to people even though he likes engineering.)

            I think all socializing might feel like “goofing off” to people in some jobs, because it’s a break from the routine. With the sales staff, it IS the routine. And, of course, if someone would prefer to go into sales, they can usually find an opportunity to do so! Sales is a high churn field, and while good jobs can be harder to get, you can usually find a sales job if you want one badly enough.

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        3. A. Lab Rabbit*

          If I sent you to do a trade show so that you could learn how much work they are (and they are a LOT of work) and found out you were just goofing off the entire time and did for a “fun change of pace” rather than to promote our company, I doubt very much you would have a job much longer.

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    2. L-squared*

      That’s great and all. But if someone is out late on a Sunday working, they should be able to take their comp time Monday morning if that is convenient for them.

      If the issue is the salesperson is taking this time at the last minute and their calendar isn’t up to date, that is a fair gripe. If their issue is their comp time isn’t “convenient” for the other department, its not

      Reply ↓
    3. Caramel & Cheddar*

      Yeah, I thought the letter subject kinda misrepresented what was going on here underneath it all — people sound mostly mad that they can’t reach the sales team / can’t get info from them in a timely manner. The bit about the perception being that they’re more focused on partying than working strikes me not as jealous or sour grapes but misplaced lashing out? While I’m sure it wouldn’t solve 100% of the problem, I’m betting that the staff back at the office who need info from the sales folks would make far fewer of these comments if they were actually getting what they need.

      Reply ↓
  12. Saturday*

    For #3, “I send out a lot of notices to the whole building, so she mostly just ignores messages from me and sometimes misses important ones” – are the notices things that you need to tell everyone about but that are only relevant to some people some of the time? I ask because I get a lot of FYI messages from certain emails, and I do often skip over them because most of the time they don’t pertain to me. I can kind of see why she might want your other emails to be marked important. But the bottom line is… it sounds like it would be more efficient and better all around if you could just do this task yourself, so maybe you can just focus on that in your message to your boss.

    Reply ↓
    1. OP No. 3*

      You’re right that a lot of my messages don’t have anything to do with her; but I also receive similarly broad messages from her and our other direct coworkers that I still quickly open, just to make sure. Again, it’s a really petty thing on its own (and a request I wouldn’t even mind that much usually) that really bothers me in the broader context of things I already have to do to make sure she does this particular task.

      My concern is that I’ve asked once or twice before to take this on (without mentioning any of my greivances with Clara), with no luck. It’s possible that my grandboss just won’t budge on it, but I want to make a strong case for why it’s causing difficulties for me to NOT be authorized to handle this task myself. But you’re right, that my personal offense at this email subject line request is probably not as relevant as it feels in my heart lol.

      Reply ↓
      1. Morning Reader*

        OP1: I hear you on your frustration but the simplest thing to do might be to do as coworker suggested and use a strong subject line (or different colors, or flashing lights, if you have email settings for that) when you send her something that is a priority for your task. With the deadline right in the subject. “OP’s required paperwork: deadline March 3. Priority 1”
        Other suggestions:
        A) ask boss to assign task to another, more reliable coworker,
        B) Track coworker’s process on the task the same way you do for others’ paperwork that you process and followup with coworker in other ways besides email to prompt her (e.g. walk over to her desk, call her, message her, maybe even use the group text? Like “hey all, I finished submitting everyone’s thingamagig for this year. Coworker, how’s mine coming along?”)
        C) print out the email and leave it on her chair,
        D) use Pavlovian training techniques to reinforce whenever she does do the task correctly or promptly. I recommend a small chocolate.
        E) if she falls behind and there are extra costs like late fees, submit them for reimbursement also; document these and other costs and use that documentation when you request (A) with your boss

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        1. Hlao-roo*

          I was also thinking along the same lines as (A). Maybe Clara isn’t the only/best option to take care of OP3’s paperwork. Also, another suggestion for the list:

          F) Split the process more evenly between OP3 and Clara/someone else. Right now, OP3 handle’s everyone else’s paperwork and Clara just handles OP3’s paperwork. I can see that leading to a situation where OP3 has a good system for processing this paperwork because they do it routinely, and Clara does not have a good system because she does it infrequently. If OP3 handled about half of this process and Clara (or someone more reliable per option A) handled the other half, both people would do this process with roughly the same frequency and could use the same system for this process.

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        2. Claire*

          I agree; it sounds like Clara already suggested the simplest and easiest solution to this problem. It takes a split second to click the “high importance” button when sending an email. OP, it sounds like you are taking it personally that she doesn’t always read your mass emails, and so you immediately rejected her suggestion for how to quickly solve your problem.

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      2. hbc*

        It sounds like the reason for the separation of duties is pretty solid, and there’s no way they’re going to be all “Oh, we didn’t realize how difficult Clara made things, so we’ll just go ahead and ignore this conflict of interest. Please don’t abuse it!”

        Honestly, in your manager’s position, I’d be so annoyed that you were failing to take my “no” for an answer that I’d have a hard time registering any of Clara’s failings. I would rethink the purpose of the meeting–you can show how much of a problem the current set up is and then try to come up with some solutions that *respect the reason you can’t do it all.* Get IT to set Clara up with an auto-filter sending mass notifications to a folder? You do the Clara step for a colleague while they take over the Clara work for you? Because the solution you’re proposing is a non-starter.

        Reply ↓
        1. Reba*

          Agree, the task going to OP will not (and should not) happen. You want to talk to your manager about solving the Clara problem or moving it to someone else…not breaking the company’s very standard ethics rules which could get a whole lot of you in trouble! Your boss can’t agree to that.

          But stress the credit card problems, paying out of pocket being unacceptable, and how much time it takes away from your other work to have to mop this stuff up.

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      3. Ginger Baker*

        Ohhhh. On the problem-solving front…why not take this as the perfect moment for that otherwise ridiculous situation: the immediate phone call. Send email, dial phone “Hi Clara I just sent you the latest report. Can you please take a look now? I need this submitted by Friday. Do you see the email…? Ok great”. Followed by a phone call Thursday “checking to make sure this will be done by Friday!” And then another call(s) Friday. Is it annoying and tedious? Yes. But if it becomes more annoying to deal with your constant phone calls versus just doing the task right away: that’s your win right there.

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  13. andy*

    Do the other teams get answers and support they need? In companies I worked for, sales were selling stuff we did not made yet. When there were not sufficiently available to tell us what it is exactly they promised, massive issues happened few months down the line. Mostly caused by customer not getting what was promised.

    You focus on availability afternoon Monday, bit maybe there is reason other teams complain. Or ineffectivies caused by these delays. No one schedules meetings with sales for fun. It is not exactly pleasant or seeked situation. Mostly because they tend not to care about other teams. They want more contact with you, because company needs to function.

    Solution can be more written info. More proactive communication. Maybe even more time overall dedicated to giving other teams what they need.

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    1. Cinn*

      I was going to comment something similar about what the interactions between the sales team & other departments are like apart from the grumbling about hours. In my experience the sales people who promise the world and then expect the lab to deliver it without getting their input or the ones who say they need the data by Friday because of an important customer meeting (and you & boss triple check its crucial that it’s definitely the next Friday) causing you to work extra hours that week to get it all done and after, when you ask how the customer meeting went, they admit that actually it wasn’t for another few weeks… They’re the ones who other departments quickly lose patience with. The sales people who actually show respect to the other departments tend to get the respect back.

      I’m not saying that’s definitely happening here, and maybe it is just frustration from teams who can’t flex their hours when they need to stay late one day to come in late the next morning. So I agree with Alison to stop naming the events and just say they’re using time in lieu because of work commitments. But maybe think about other potential causes of friction too..?

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    2. Cinn*

      I was going to comment something similar about what the interactions between the sales team & other departments are like apart from the grumbling about hours. In my experience the sales people who promise the world and then expect the lab to deliver it without getting their input or the ones who say they need the data by Friday because of an important customer meeting (and you & boss triple check its crucial that it’s definitely the next Friday) causing you to work extra hours that week to get it all done and after, when you ask how the customer meeting went, they admit that actually it wasn’t for another few weeks… They’re the ones who other departments quickly lose patience with. The sales people who actually show respect to the other departments tend to get the respect back.

      I’m not saying that’s definitely happening here, and maybe it is just frustration from teams who can’t flex their hours when they need to stay late one day to come in late the next morning. So I agree with Alison to stop naming the events and just say they’re using time in lieu because of work commitments. But maybe think about other potential causes of friction too..?

      Reply ↓
  14. Stepurhan*

    LW3. You may have deleted the email, but if it was sent through a corporate system, it is almost certainly accessible by HR/senior management on the company servers. So, if you really need to prove that email existed, then it can be proved without you bringing an external message into it.

    Is there a way of distinguishing the emails that you need Clara to respond to from the general building emails? Could you include something at the start of the subject to make them easier to spot? Clara, knowing she expects to receive important emails from you, should be checking. Making it easier to spot those important emails removes her excuse that she misses them among the other emails you send.

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  15. Cordelia*

    LW3, I’ve got to be honest – I often skim or ignore emails that are sent from a particular dept where I work, because they are to the equivalent of “the whole building” and are rarely relevant to me. If there is something that this team specifically require from me, they do indicate that in the subject line – I assume they know that these all-office emails are often not read. I don’t think it’s unreasonable for Clara to ask you to indicate priority level in her emails to you. Being “blindingly angry” about this is an overreaction.
    Definitely don’t include a Discord message to your partner as “evidence”, that would be very odd and unprofessional, and make it more likely that your bosses dismiss your concerns as a personality clash, or a “you” problem.

    Reply ↓
    1. OP No. 3*

      In our office–where multiple of my direct coworkers (including Clara)–send out these kind of general building-wide emails, no one indicates importance in the subject line for the specific ones. Personally, I open all of the emails I get from my direct coworkers, even if the subject line is obviously not for me, just to be sure; in an email-heavy job, I figure that’s just part of it. It’s a petty thing on its own, but in the broader context of things I have to do to make sure she does her job, it felt disrespectful that it was being asked of me specifically. Like I have to do all this extra random stuff to make sure you do this task at all, but I can’t even rely on you to look at my emails? I know nothing was meant by it; but straws, camels.

      But you’re correct. Ultimately my fear is that this whole thing will come across like a personal problem anyway, which is why I’m so anxious about compiling evidence to prove that I’m frustrated about something real. But the email thing is probably not useful to that end lol.

      Reply ↓
      2. Ellis Bell*

        Is this a job role thing? It doesn’t sound like this is her usual job so the chances of it falling off her to do list are high, but she’s trying to find ways of keeping in mind that it’s high priority for you. Rather than sending her emails, or in addition to, could you put deadlines etc in her calendar in the same way as you would a meeting? The title of the meetings could be “two weeks to paperwork deadline” and “Please email confirmation of completed paperwork to OP3”. Set them to repeat and then you’re done! Sure, she could do this herself, but I would just put them in there anyway and see if it makes a difference. I would say: “Hey, I know my emails get lost, so I have put some reminders in both our calendars as well.” It’s another thing to show your boss, that you have done everything possible.

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      3. ecnaseener*

        Yeah, the email thing is not going to be useful. Even if you had the original email, it would mainly just demonstrate that Clara was making a good-faith effort to improve the system you have with a very reasonable, two-second solution.

        Compile the examples of her actually not handling your requests in time. Leave out the evidence of Clara admitting that she sometimes misses your requests, it won’t strengthen your argument and might just dilute it. (Also, this compiled evidence is to have available if your boss wants to see specifics. Don’t lead with “please look at this big dossier I put together,” just give the bottom line, X out of Y requests to Clara in the last year have been missed.)

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        1. Guacamole Bob*

          Yeah, I was surprised that Alison didn’t address your last point in her response – big dossiers are usually not a good approach in a case like this. They’re for legal matters like patterns of harassment, and for managers to use in documenting PIPs and such. If someone came to me with a dossier on this kind of issue, my first questions would be a) why didn’t you come to me with this business problem sooner and in a more normal way, and b) have you had a conversation with Clara about the big-picture problem and strategized with her about the best format for reminders and such?

          Reply ↓
    2. Beany*

      Yeah, the Discord exchange is evidence of nothing, except LW3’s frustration at Clara at the time. Crucially, it doesn’t prove Clara did or said anything at all.

      (I do wonder whether the original mail from Clara is really lost forever, though. Depending on the size of the company and how the IT admins run things, there may be a long-term backup of mails that have been scrubbed from individual users’ mail clients.)

      Reply ↓
      1. Calamitous ORTBO*

        I don’t think it will help to have the email. So Clara admitted she doesn’t read every single email she gets? That’s unlikely to be a firing offense. Clara requested a clear, specific action to make sure she doesn’t miss these emails. Did LW do it? Has it helped? Those would be my first two questions as a manager upon seeing that email exchange. If the answer to the first question is no, I’d tell the LW to try doing it and see. I think getting permission to approve their own expenses is a total non-starter and LW should stop approaching it from that angle.

        Reply ↓
  16. Amy*

    I’m a sales person with a pretty heavy travel and weekend / after-hours entertainment schedule.

    While it’s important to not burn out your sales team, I’ve never worked at a company where the focus was on making up personal time on exactly the next day. For example, if we entertained on Sunday and there was an important 9am meeting on Monday, we’d almost certainly attend the 9am meeting. But then maybe take a half day Tuesday or Friday. Or have taken it the Friday beforehand.

    Maybe people are out drinking until 2am and it’s too difficult. But otherwise, I’d look holistically at the week and plan around both important meetings, travel and my own wants. The flexibility doesn’t need to be within 24 hours and anyone who can handle complex sales negotiations can usually figure it out themselves as long as their company’s internal meeting schedule isn’t unreasonable.

    Reply ↓
    2. hbc*

      Yeah, I was thinking the OP’s described setup is very unusual. Most salespeople will flex it with the knowledge that getting the 9:00 meeting with production means their customers will actually get their product on time, so they’ll come in early and then maybe leave early to go home and nap. Sales is usually the best compensated department at the company, and part of that is due to the requirement to be where you need to be regardless of exactly how many hours you worked yesterday.

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    3. L-squared*

      I’m in sales too. And while I agree, I will also say there may be a disconnect on how important people see certain meetings. The meeting product sees as important may not seem important to sales.

      If I’m working on a Sunday, I’m 90% of the time going to make up that time on a monday if possible (unless I have something else going on).

      There are standing meetings on my calendar that, frankly, I don’t see as very important, and I’d have no problem skipping.

      There has to be some give and take though. If Monday mornings are a common time for people to take comp time, but you know people are more likely to be in there monday afternoons, then just reschedule it.

      Reply ↓
      1. Flex time management is hard*

        Yes – the comp time does not make sense to me either. Salespeople generally have very flexible schedules. They may work late on a Thursday night, wake up for meetings with operations / sales support Friday morning, and then leave work mid-afternoon because customers generally avoid sales calls at 4pm on Fridays.

        Have you considered that the grumbling isn’t about Salesperson PTO or flexibility, but about the lack of salesperson availability during normal business hours impacting the non-salespersons ability to do their job?

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    5. Also-ADHD*

      I am not in Sales, but I have to shift time a lot because of several kinds of the work I do (including travel/events) and I just pick my comp time around my meetings. If someone comes looking for me and gets fussed when my calendar says I’m OoO on comp time, that’s their problem, but I agree it doesn’t need to be right after in many cases. When I travel for weekend events a few times a year, I’ll usually work the day I get back to do clean up but have the end of that week booked for an extra long weekend for recovery.

      Reply ↓
  17. Disappointed With the Staff*

    Do companies not have announcement email addresses? I work in STEM so it’s possibly more obvious to us that you can (and should) have “everyone@company” as well as engineering@, production@ type “from” addresses that can be used by anyone vaguely familiar with using outlook to manage multiple accounts (our admin staff have this down to a fine art)

    That avoids the whole “I ignore emails from you because they’re rarely relevant” problem in two different ways. And if someone ignores “from: location@company. WARNING: building on fire” that’s a different issue :)

    Reply ↓
  18. Friends of English Magic*

    For #1, I think my opinion of the sick OP’s mother would depend on how badly she “told off” the boss and about what. If it was limited to the situation at hand (ie, “She’s sick, you need to leave her alone”) that would be pretty understandable, but if it started to get into all the other ways Boss is a jerk (based off things OP had vented about in the past) then that would be crossing a big line.

    Reply ↓
    1. KateM*

      Yea, if what Mom said made it clear that OP has been telling her a lot of workplace secrets (so to say), that could be taken as a pretty bad unprofessionalism on OP’s part.

      Reply ↓
    2. Despachito*

      Yes, this is what I am thinking as well.

      Telling off for calling her when sick = OK, telling off for some workplace issues = not OK.

      Reply ↓
    3. RagingADHD*

      Yes, even a boss who wouldn’t write LW up for what Mom said, could reasonably conclude that LW was unhappy / not invested and looking to leave. And of course, that kind of thing tends to have repercussions on the way you’re treated at work, what kind of projects / responsibilities you’re given, etc.

      Reply ↓
  19. Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells*

    For LW4, some military organisations used to have that policy but have now set up independent reporting channels. Saying that a private must complain to their non-commissioned officers about bullying usually works if the bully is another private (or someone in another unit), but is absurd when it’s their own NCOs that are the bullies.
    Even when that policy was in place, there were several approachable NCOs (perhaps even some commissioned officers), not just one ‘supervisor’ gatekeeping complaints.
    If the military knows that your supervisor’s policy is counterproductive, I’m sure that your company will as well.

    One other thing. Is there any precedent within your company or in a similar business that a supervisor can declare that you “cannot go to HR about anything without telling him first what it is about and then he will set an appointment with HR if he deems worthy/necessary”?
    If there is, I’m worried.
    If there isn’t, I can imagine HR and maybe upper management piling on to this supervisor.

    Personally, I think that a manager saying that you are not allowed to contact HR is grounds for you to complain to HR, as advised here.

    Reply ↓
  20. Turingtested*

    I support a sales team in various ways but do not sell myself. Those comments get to me and depending on the person I have a few responses. “Hey, X is actually closing Project Acme we’ve been quoting on for a few months. He just texted asking for some details.”

    “Ooof 6 straight hours of butt kissing does not sound like my idea of a good time! How do they do it?!?”

    “Personally I’d rather be here in peace with my spreadsheets and prints. Dealing with all the different personalities and being charming is not my thing.”

    Basically I remind people that the sales team is working and doing things we’d rather not.

    Reply ↓
    1. Not The Earliest Bird*

      I like to remind people that different jobs have different requirements. I wouldn’t want to be in a job that requires entertaining people on a regular basis, so I leave that to the sales people, while I take care of the numbers that get them paid.

      Reply ↓
  21. 2cents*

    As someone who doesn’t live or work in the US, this part of Alison’s advice for LW1 was a little baffling: “If they consider that your work phone, then sure, they can say you’re the only one who can answer it (hell, in a lot of states they could say that without paying any of the bill).”

    Can anyone enlighten me – what does this mean exactly? Can a company tell you you’re the only one who can answer your **personal** phone if anyone from the company calls? How would you even know that that’s the case – unless you have the entire company directory in your contacts? Or am I just being dense and missing the point completely (entirely possible, it’s been a WEEK)?

    Reply ↓
  22. Despachito*

    LW1 – I assume the mom took the phone because LW was too sick to do that.

    Of course it was a bit problematic to tell off the boss (especially if mom used some insider information from the OP) but the boss seems insane to write OP up for someone else picking up her phone.

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  23. Pocket Mouse*

    #2: To be honest, the thing that caught my eye as potentially a problem is that you describe your team as salesMEN. The moment I read that word, the rest of the question was colored by questions about the culture in your company or team such that it seems only men have been/are expected to be hired into the sales role. In that context, the activities you describe start to feel like a good ole boys club. I hope you take a hard look at that angle in addition to the other advice suggested.

    Reply ↓
  24. Judas Priest*

    LW#4: I’ve also had a boss who told our team stuff like “don’t ever go to HR, just come straight to me and I’ll fix everything.” These types are the worst to work for..
    they’re usually terrible at managing and even worse, they’re so slick. I wouldn’t be surprised if he had HR bribed on the side anyway. I could totally see him slipping a few hundred dollar bills to our HR director in secret and bribing them on the side if any complaint against him came up.

    Reply ↓
    1. DramaQ*

      We have a higher up person like this. I was sitting there thinking if I’m ready to go nuclear and head straight to HR I either already tried with you and you ignored me or the issue involves you and you don’t want HR knowing.

      It was a giant waving red flag.

      I do not trust that guy as far as I can spit. He is the LAST person I’ll go to.

      Reply ↓
  25. Alicent*

    #5: I had a manager try to tell me I had to report things to her before HR. The reason I had to go over her head was because she was ignoring sexual harassment happening DURING MEETINGS that she was hosting! A male coworker literally commented on the size of a female employee’s breasts during uniform discussions and she sat there silently. We were having other problems with SH on the team and ended up reporting everything. HR told us we should have a “diversity potluck” to work through our issues because it was a multinational crew, but apparently they also chewed out my boss and told the offenders who reported them. We agreed in the meeting to run things by her to smooth it out, but we definitely weren’t going to do that.
    I ended up getting transferred to a new team and location (I was being retaliated against and didn’t feel safe reporting it, but the transfer wasn’t my idea). Funny enough every problem I was being punished for supposedly causing at the original location disappeared like magic.

    Reply ↓
  26. My Boss is Dumber than Yours*

    Removed because the resulting discussion was off-topic but please email me a screenshot if you see the ad again so I can get it removed. (I can’t do anything with just a description, unfortunately.) – Alison

    Reply ↓
  27. Anon for This*

    LW1 – I would ask for a company-provided phone, tell them you need to keep your personal one separate. You were sick and your mother answered your calls for you – how is she to know whether the caller is from work, your doctor’s office, etc.? If they want to tell you who can answer your, they need to provide it.

    Reply ↓
    1. ecnaseener*

      Not sure the “how is she to know” thing would go anywhere, unless LW’s phone is a landline without caller ID.

      LW can easily label all work contacts with “Work” or the company name if they haven’t already, so it’s definitely within their power to make it clear to mom which people are from work.

      Reply ↓
    2. FINALLY FRIDAY*

      I understand this. When my doctor’s office calls it often doesn’t show who the caller is. The only number that does up as theirs is the main line. Ditto with some offices. So it why writer doesn’t have everyone’s direct line/cell in their phone it might not show up. If it were my mom, LoL, she would barely know how to answer my cell at all!

      Reply ↓
  28. Glengarry Glenn Close*

    There’s something a little off about #2 – this is so common for salespeople (at least those who work on large deals), that it’s very surprising other department leaders aren’t aware of this.

    I’ve been in sales/sales leadership for 20+ years and often other folks besides sales will attend these things too – basically anyone who touches the account is often included.

    I wonder if there’s a serious silo culture at LW’s office

    Reply ↓
    1. learnedthehardway*

      Indeed. I would be tempted (if I were a sales person at that company) to point out to anyone who commented that the VERY LAST THING I want to be doing on my personal time is attending a football or other sports game, TYVM. It’s work, full stop.

      Reply ↓
  29. Omskivar*

    Honestly, I know Mom needs to stay out of LW1’s business, as much as she wants to defend her child, but I’m on Team Mom here. But that might be because I had a similar situation about 10-ish years back when I was working as a home health aide.

    It was two days before Christmas, I had already called in two days before because I had to go to the ER with a sudden allergic reaction to ???*, and now I had to go to the ER because my face was swelling so much I couldn’t fully open my eyes AND my throat was starting to swell closed. When I called in I got read the riot act by the holiday/after hours phone operator, who told me that if I’d wanted time off for Christmas I should have put in PTO like everyone else. I repeated that I was having an allergic reaction and had to go to the ER, and she huffily told me, “I’ll call you back.”

    She called back while I was at the ER, where the nurse was getting rather concerned watching the hives actively spread across my back, and my husband answered. I don’t remember what he said to her, just that he was coldly polite and factual, but suddenly she believed that I was actually unwell! And she was able to talk to my clients and cancel all but two of the appointments I had that weekend, and called back later to make sure I was doing okay and able to make it to those appointments. (The uncharitable side of me notes that *of course* a man had to confirm that I was actually sick and not just malingering.)

    So, yeah, Mom was out of line, but she gets all my respect.

    * We figured out later it was my dust mite and mold allergies cranked up to 11 because we were moving and kicking up a bunch of dust that I was constantly breathing in. Fun!

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    2. Great Frogs of Literature*

      I also think it’s really shitty for OP to get a write-up for something their mom did *while they were sick.* OP said they were very sick, and certainly if MY mother was coming to my house to take care of me, it would be a sign that I was in a bad way.

      What is this write-up for? OP was presumably in bed, and the phone was in their own home, which is typically the standard for taking care of work-related electronics, unless you’re subject to very intense security restrictions. “OP failed to leap out of their sickbed to stop their mother from answering the phone”? “OP did not proactively tell their mother to not answer any calls from work”? “OP neglected to turn the phone off or lock it somewhere their mother could not access while collapsing into bed with a fever”?

      I’m not surprised that the boss was pissed, and sure, it’s not illegal to issue such a write-up, but to my mind it’s utterly ridiculous.

      Reply ↓
      1. Great Frogs of Literature*

        Well, in their own home or left at work, but for a personal phone subsidized by work, that’s not reasonable.

        Reply ↓
    3. NotRealAnonForThis*

      Similar situation, except it was my Mom. And I was irked because it was just a third party who had to confirm.

      (They’re freaking lucky they didn’t get my Dad. Because if they questioned him, it was obviously because “they didn’t believe me because I’m just a girl” and that would have sent him straight nuclear because we’re in the same industry and he cant’ believe I’m still fighting all the sexism, regardless of whether that was the intent of the phone call or not.)

      Reply ↓
  30. post script*

    Can we get a bunch of Moms like LW1’s together to train an AI like Daisy? But instead of wasting phone scammer’s time, it would tell off toxic bosses?

    Reply ↓
  31. Former Lab Rat*

    LW#1 – are you paid hourly or on a salary? If you are an hourly employee your boss is violating all kinds of laws making you work off the clock. If you’re salaried he’s a jerk that expects way too much. I suggest two things: (1) for a month keep track of all that extra work time. It will be proof of how hard you work when you ask for a raise/promotion. (2) look for another job with a better work life balance.

    And update us!

    Reply ↓
    1. A. Lab Rabbit*

      LW replied to Jasmine Clark above as “Cody Edwards”. It was…interesting. I honestly can’t believe they stayed at that job for so long.

      Reply ↓
  32. Left Turn at Albuquerque*

    “Is she up for telling off other people’s bosses too? She’d probably be in demand.”

    *clears throat* Asking for a nation.

    Reply ↓
  33. anonymous state employee*

    I feel #2’s pain. I work in tourism promotion for a state agency whose primary focus is infrastructure, so we spend a lot of time documenting economic impact and otherwise trying to justify our “fun” existence (and it really IS a fun job).

    Sometimes our job duties require us to attend gala events where our agency’s ethics policy does not allow us to eat or drink (can’t accept gifts, including food & beverage, from anyone who does business with us) and it’s awkward. And there’s lots of resentment and misunderstanding from workers whose duties are more visibly in line with the agency’s core mission.

    Reply ↓
    1. HonorBox*

      Yikes. No food or drink? I get that you can’t accept a gift card, or a gigantic flower arrangement, or some other actual gift from a client, but expecting that you attend but not actually eat is a bridge too far.

      Reply ↓
      1. Lady Lessa*

        Preach it. As far as I am concerned, not allowing your employees to eat and drink (moderately) at a gala, would have me rethink my relationship with you.

        Reply ↓
        1. anonymous state employee*

          Well, most of the entities we work with are either other state agencies (which tend to be a little more flexible because they are primarily focused on tourism to begin with), city government or city-government-adjacent, or attractions who work with various government orgs. So they do understand that sometimes regulations can be constricting in awkward ways, and we can all laugh about it together. (Also, if the agency paid a registration/admission fee for us to attend, we can eat; just no alcohol.)

          The tourism department is just a bit of a red-headed stepchild in our rather stodgy agency, and the perception that all we do is have fun is really the hardest thing we have to navigate.

          Reply ↓
        2. Claire*

          Ethics laws for state employees are pretty strict, at least in my state. It’s not something an individual manager can choose to ignore, it’s state law.

          Reply ↓
  34. HonorBox*

    For LW2 – I think it would be worthwhile to not only not highlight the specific things the sales team are doing, but also highlight the hours they’re putting in outside of 9-5. Let’s say Jonas is taking a client to an NFL game on Sunday. Rather than saying that Jonas went to an NFL game, you can say instead that Jonas had meetings with client(s) on Sunday from 11-5 and will be in a bit later on Monday. Rather than Janine going to the new five-star restaurant, mention that Janice was working from 6-11 last night. There will be less FOMO to be sure.

    These outside events might seem fun and exciting, but they’re work. They’re difficult. They’re exhausting. I’ve done some similar-ish things and I’d suggest that having to be “on” for 4 hours in a situation like this is as mentally draining as working at your desk for 12 hours. It is compounded greatly.

    Reply ↓
  35. learnedthehardway*

    OP#4 – someone should go straight to HR and inform them of your manager’s new requirement to be consulted before anyone goes to HR.

    My guess is that HR will be VERY interested to hear that he made this demand, and they’ll handle telling him that NO, he doesn’t get to do that, and that this is NOT the way things work.

    Reply ↓
  36. SunnyShine*

    LW4: Tell HR. Last manager we had that did that got away with so much stuff. I covered for him as he was out on medical leave. I found so many issues that HR kicked me out of the investigation process. He was fired. I went back to the group and told them that they are free to go to anyone they feel comfortable with.

    Reply ↓
  37. FishyInDenmark*

    For the sales manager (#2) – I think, at some level, you’re going to just have to deal with this, and be something of a lightning rod.

    Your reports are working while they’re doing it, but they’re still going to a ballgame/fancy dinner/etc. It is certainly work time, but when other people’s work time never includes to possibility of a beer and a hot dog while the local team is in action, or a nice scotch paid for by the company, it is reasonable that they feel excluded and grumpy.

    So, a “hey, we’ll have everyone here Mondays and Tuesdays, 10-3, no comp time then” is probably about the best you can do, but you won’t get rid of the grumbling.

    Reply ↓
  38. Chirpy*

    #4 is effectively how my company works. There’s an anonymous phone tip line, but regular stuff has to go through a manager because floor staff do not have email access and cannot contact anyone from corporate via personal email. We use a “social media like” program to communicate with other associates, but HR is not on it (nor are most of corporate). So if the manager forgets to send the message/doesn’t think it’s a big deal, you’re just screwed even if you do feel comfortable telling him.

    it absolutely sucks, and I feel for you.

    Reply ↓
  39. Lacey*

    LW2 – Do you… make a big deal about they’re pulling in those big contracts and not at all a big deal about how the reason they’re able to is that there are teams of non-sales people turning out a great product/service and making the customer experience as smooth as possible?

    I’ve worked with a ton of sales teams and that’s… a really common element.

    I could not less about the events. They sound like my personal version of hell.
    I respect the skill it takes to sell things. I wouldn’t be able to do it.

    But, when Megan from accounting gripes about Maggie not being in yet because she was out “partying” with clients last night… Do I say, “Well, to be fair that’s part of her job.” ?

    I don’t.

    I say, “Poor Maggie, it must be so hard to eat hors d’oeuvres and pull in a huge commission”

    Because I worked hard on Maggie’s last project even though Maggie was hard to get a hold of and short on information and Maggie got an award and bonus for it and now I have to hear every day about how important Maggie is to the company because she sold such a succesful project. She didn’t make it successful. But the teams that did never get recognized.

    So. Maybe this isn’t you. But. When I have worked with sales teams that respect and recognize my work… I’ve never complained about them going to parties that they can’t enjoy because actually they have to work while they’re there.

    Reply ↓
  40. RagingADHD*

    Now I want to see LW4’s boss’ face if the whole team told him they want an appointment with HR to talk about this new rule.

    Reply ↓

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