Ask a Manager

It’s a special “where are you now?” season at Ask a Manager and I’m running updates from people who had their letters here answered in the past. Here are four updates from past letter-writers.

1. I secretly moved people’s desks two inches over and they freaked out

Your feedback was very good to hear for my mental health, and to help me better recognize when I am given an unreasonable task.

I wrote originally that my team was pressuring me to sit with them but didn’t actually provide a desk on the floor, how all my attempts to solve the situation were shut down, and how everybody got very angry at me when I tried to move each desk a tiny amount to create some room.

They sort of did have a seat for me, but that seat was rather… illegal? Highly unreasonable? Horribly uncomfortable? I would have been in the hallway, everybody on the floor would have to squeeze by me to get to their seats (and everybody wanting to go to a conference room), everybody would see my screen all the time, and I am pretty sure it was blocking a fire exit. I didn’t agree to take that seat, especially with much more reasonable options a tiny bit further away.

This is also what I learned about the seating situation:-

– Nominally seats were assigned, but this was not enforced in the slightest.

– Any change in desk positioning or assignment had to go through office admin, sometimes office design (who were working with an architect and interior designer to keep a vision for the space and would protest people wanting to add shelves or cabinets), and IT (some seats were attached to immovable and inflexible cable outlets, and monitors were tightly assigned). Each of these had veto power and would have to be convinced separately.

– The people longest in the office have staked out their favorite spots (corners, windows) and were fiercely defending them. Apparently there have been some issues regarding desk spacing before.

– Newer people (like me) were constantly shuffled around to improve teams seating together, which was very difficult with half the company refusing to move desks.

– My team pretty much bamboozled their way onto the floor. Initially taking only a few seats, with permission, they then moved their other people in one by one and spread out from there, overfilled the place, and then wanted the people already sitting there to give up parts of their original desk space.

Nobody told me about any of this, and the people urging me to find a desk place were content letting me fruitlessly work towards that goal and take the accusations, and didn’t mention in the later fallout that they “encouraged” me to find solutions.

Finding/arranging a seat was totally not my job, and I shouldn’t have taken on that burden to begin with (thanks, Alison!).

I ultimately stayed on another floor (where there was room for like six more people directly next to me) and a month later Covid happened and the situation “resolved” itself anyway.

2. We need to tell our remote employees they can’t take care of young kids while they’re working

We learned that our HR department was working on an organization-wide policy, so we held off on one of our own. What they came up with was very vague and essentially just said that “dependent care should not interfere with performing work duties.” While this was initially a let-down, it’s actually worked out okay. We did some level-setting with existing staff and have made sure new staff understand that being able to have kids at home is not a perk of the job. In practice, unless we can hear kids in the background of calls or meetings or someone is excusing their underperformance with conflicting childcare duties, it’s a non-issue. At this point a seem to have a good understanding at all levels of staff that a school-age child popping into the background before you shoo them away is no big deal, but disappearing for long periods of time to wrangle a toddler or have them on your lap for an entire training is not okay. We also aren’t militant about it; we notice and address patterns instead of one-offs. This feels reasonable to me, and it seems to feel reasonable to the rest of the team too.

3. Coworker we don’t know keeps taking the snacks we bring in (#2 at the link)

I have an update on the coworker who kept stealing our morning tea.

Once people started returning to work post-Covid, our morning teas came back and unsurprisingly, so did the morning tea stealer! Like clockwork he would rock up for a morning tea that he was not invited to.

By that point it was basically a recurring joke in my area that everyone became a little obsessed with, and people would message our work chat, “I saw the food stealer around our kitchen!”

With that in mind, one of my coworkers ended up confronting him in probably not quite the method Alison envisaged. When he came looking for our food, my coworker said cheerfully, “This is our branch’s morning tea!”

And he replied, “lucky you” and walked away.

I’m not sure if it was the optimal way to handle it, but he hasn’t been seen around our food since.

4. My company wants to micromanage internal goodbye emails

I’m the person who wrote in asking about an office policy that departing employees’ farewell messages had to be approved by admin. It was part of a sudden culture shift at a small nonprofit that had been friendly and relaxed prior to new administration coming in.

The week that my answer was posted, I and five other staff were let go in a restructuring. Remaining staff tell me that the administration refused to disclose which positions were cut… in a staff of 40 people. It wasn’t hard for anyone to figure out.

I’m now at a higher-paying job in a different sector.

It’s a special “where are you now?” season at Ask a Manager and I’m running updates from people who had their letters here answered in the past. Here are four updates from past letter-writers.

There will be more posts than usual this week, so keep checking back– there’s more to come today!

1. My employee is obsessed with cleaning

Thank you for your advice last year, but I’m afraid my update is a downer!

After multiple staff quit and cited upper management’s constant absence and lack of accountability and needing more autonomy as reasons for leaving, I realized this was the real cause of my problem as well. Upper management is unwilling to provide support or be present in any way, but they also refuse to give up authority or let me enforce anything without asking for permission for every little thing. It’s no wonder I ran into a wall trying to fix the constant cleaning because I have to plead my case to get permission to do my basic job whenever there are issues. When I look back on previous management positions I’ve had, the constant cleaning never would’ve been an issue because I would have been able to address it promptly and with a standard system in place.

Your advice resonated with all the things I wanted to do but couldn’t, and it turns out my actual problem wasn’t the cleaning or not knowing how to deal with it–it was the fact that I couldn’t fix the situation because every normal solution had been shut off from me. I think I was hoping to get some sort of outside the box solution, but with hindsight I can see that if I was in a better work environment I wouldn’t need an outside the box solution in the first place. Other problems have popped up in the company since then, and each time it’s played out where nothing is dealt with in a good, timely manner because upper management has left everyone hanging and disappeared but refuses to allow anyone else to take control of a situation.

I wish I could say I quit and got an amazing new job like I see in many of your updates, but the reality is that this job pays way more than anything else I could hope to find with my skill set. I finally realized that the reason I’m paid so much is to put up with the bad environment and incompetent owners. I had to give up on hopes of being able to fix problems and just remind myself that I’d have to take a serious pay cut to work somewhere less dysfunctional.

And yes, the office is still spotless.

2. I slept through an entire day of work (first update; second update)

I wrote in 5 years ago (!????) and here’s how things went after that:

I stayed at that job for 5 years, or 4 from my last update. It was overall a great experience. I learned a ton and became close with my manager (professionally). I managed projects that seemed impossible at the time but grew professionally by leaps and bounds. Very recently my manager from that job gave me a glowing recommendation to take a HUGE jump forward in my career (that came with a 70% pay rise). I am now in a new, much more demanding position, as leadership in a new organization.

I am still chronically ill. This very moment I am experiencing a flare up but some commenters said the first 3 years of chronic illness are the worst and then you learn the rhythms, and that was spot on for me. I don’t feel the need to discuss my illness at work because I am able to manage it pretty well with our (company wide) flexible working arrangements.

I now lead a central department and was told just yesterday by a departing employee that working with me showed him “what good management can look like” – I was grinning ear to ear!

Still so much to learn but my own health/work journey has made me a very empathetic and flexible (and adaptable) leader. I led through a massive leadership crisis last year, and I think in large part I was able to do that by using my own prior experience from challenging times.

I read AAM most days on a break at some point and recommend it to other people. The dysfunctional stories in particular fill me with gratitude to be working in a place where people tell me, multiple times a day, how much they appreciate me. One of our core values is kindness. I just hope other readers know that: there are workplaces that will value you as an imperfect person and an imperfect employee. If you don’t already have it, demand better from your employers. I wish that everybody was as lucky as I am to have personal struggles and still be able to feel supported and successful at work.

P.S. I never finished my doctoral dissertation. That’s one of the things I had to cut, it just wasn’t in the cards. I don’t regret it, it hasn’t held me back, I still learned a ton. So no – I am not flawless or perfect and didn’t manage to make everything work out. But I am 100% comfortable with the sacrifices and tradeoffs and have no regrets.

3. I recommended a friend and it went terribly (#2 at the link)

At this point this friend had blocked me on everything so this is an update from my friends at the firm. My friend or should I say ‘ex-friend’ ended up retaining an employment attorney. It sounds like she was likely told she didn’t have a wrongful termination case so she instead asked for owed wages and for the company to sign off on credit working under a licensed professional in our field. In our field you must pass an exam and then work under a licensed professional for a number of years to become a professional yourself. When they sign this the person approving your time under them must vouch for your ability. You are able to write to what degree they succeeded but most people get signed off with high merit.

The company disputed her owed wages but offered to pay her the amount she asked for with a condition of no liability. (I have no clue how much money this was). Regarding the professional vouching process her supervisor refused to do it but the owner of the company said they would under the condition that they be allowed to say that it was completed at the bare minimum standard. My former friend is fighting this and last I heard they were moving ahead with taking it to court.

Our field is relatively small in our neck of the woods and there’s a lot of gossip about this but as guessed my name has stayed out of it. It sounds like former friend likely will have a hard time finding a new position in this field after everything that’s happened. As for me, I’m going to limit recommending people for jobs unless I’ve worked with them directly. It’s definitely a lessons learned all around. Thanks for the help!

4. How can I make myself look less qualified? (#2 at the link; first update here)

I have an update to a letter you answered for me years ago. I was looking for a part-time admin type job and was wondering if I should leave my master’s degree and big-city experience off my resume, so I wouldn’t appear over-educated for the type of position I was looking for. I laid off the job search for a while after that due to some family-care needs that came up. Last year, I started casually looking again and happened to spot an article in our county paper about my town approving a new part-time position in the town park office—admin, secretary, office manager, receptionist, holder-down-of-the-fort while the rest of the park workers were actually out in the park. I fired off an application before the job posting was even listed, and I got the job! It’s perfect. Low-stress, quiet, just enough human interaction to keep me sane, and I’ve gotten to use my editing and project management skills as we work to get an online facility reservation system up and running. I still have time for my freelance editing, and the addition of a regular (if not large) paycheck has greatly eased our financial situation.

And I do think I wrote a good cover letter. It also helped that my boss’s wife also does freelance editing work, so he knew the types of skills I’d bring to the job.

It’s a special “where are you now?” season at Ask a Manager and I’m running updates from people who had their letters here answered in the past.

There will be more posts than usual this week, so keep checking back throughout the day.

Remember the letter-writer who was about to inherit a bad employee (Dwight) who was a jerk to their good employee (Lucy)? Here’s the update.

I wanted to thank everyone for the advice and comments. My letter was actually posted while I was taking a vacation just before moving on to the store manager job. I hate that I couldn’t reply to more comments but I had only my phone and was on a train at the time! But I absolutely read every single comment and took so much of the advice to heart.

My old manager wound up retiring a little earlier than she planned, in part due to changes made in my company surrounding our labor budget. In short, corporate made us cut hours for everyone across the board and we lost a lot of good people who needed to move on to jobs that could give them more hours. This left my old store manager needing to be more hands on in the store’s day to day, which she was not interested in doing.

So I came into this job in October and since then, it’s been myself and Lucy for the most part. I could go on and on and on about the entire payroll budget situation but that isn’t the focus of your site, I know! Dwight is one of my employees who moved on but I have a few parting tales:

1) Dwight did apply for the assistant manager position and I interviewed him. I feel that I gave him a fair shot but at the end of the day, Lucy was always going to be the better choice both on paper and in what I’ve observed of her at work.

2) After I informed Dwight of this, probably a month later he sent an email asking HR and my Regional Manager whether a decision had been made. Not only does our application system automatically notify applicants when another applicant has been given the job, but I spoke with him when I made my decision and he’d had weeks of observing Lucy having the job! I was perplexed and slightly embarrassed that my RM and HR departments both got that email.

I did want to add that I have not been posting any schedules publicly; they’re available online and I can send or print a screenshot of that, with an employee’s schedule and no one else’s hours, if they request it.

I spoke with Lucy when I got back about Dwight to see if she felt uncomfortable or unsafe and unfortunately she did. She told me a few other stories about Dwight that I hadn’t heard about but my old manager had been told about – that he’d throw merchandise around and do things aggressively when Lucy was the only one in the room with him (like throw products past her onto counters or slam doors). She also told me about a time that he was grabbing a merchandise cart aggressively after a conversation with her and wound up wrenching another employee’s arm. I was very upset when I heard that my old store manager did nothing about this at all. I hadn’t realized that it was bordering on actual physical aggression.

Things have been smooth with Lucy. Dwight moved on about a month after I became the store manager and to be honest, I was very relieved to see him go.

It’s a special “where are you now?” season at Ask a Manager and I’m running updates from people who had their letters here answered in the past. Here are four updates from past letter-writers.

1. Offensiveness in the fantasy football league

I wish I had a better update for you. I’m pretty low in the HR hierarchy with my company, so all I could really do is tell my boss that we need to keep an eye on this manager because his response was incredibly concerning. This concern was well placed as someone else reported him to HR shortly after I wrote you for his public conversations on LinkedIn- more abrasive and politically controversial stuff the company does not want to be associated with. My boss had to speak with him again, and this time he sent her a wild 2 page diatribe on feeling persecuted at work. I wish I could send it to you because I’ve never read anything like it before, especially in a professional context. My boss, again, simply took note and moved on. She has since retired and her replacement thankfully takes these things way more seriously than she did. We now, months later, have someone transferring out of this manager’s department solely because of personality conflicts due to the manager’s abrasive demeanor.

The manager is excellent at a very difficult job and his boss loves him, but in my opinion he should not be managing people at all. He has since completely cleaned out his LinkedIn profile. He seems to have finally decided to keep his beliefs to himself, and my new boss is keeping a close eye on him to ensure he stays in line. I think that the changeover in HR was more necessary than anyone realized, as my former boss was more willing to accept some of these behaviors than my current one. People are more engaged in the culture and we’ve had more referrals than ever before. I wrote to you because I was questioning my reaction in comparison to my former boss, and you gave me the reality check that I wasn’t overreacting but rather she was underreacting. I am much more confident in my position now and know that if something like this happens again I won’t let it get pushed under the rug.

2. My boss says I’m not ready for a promotion, but is giving me work above my pay grade

In my original letter, I wrote about how my boss has been giving me work above my pay grade but said I was not ready to get promoted. I am happy to report that I started a new job shortly before the letter was published, which came with a 25% salary increase and a more flexible work-life balance! I had the best interviews of my career.

There are some things I wanted to touch on in my original letter. A key element that I did not include in my original letter is that my boss said that our department would be hiring for a newly created position, a Senior Z, which would have required several more years of experience and I knew I wasn’t qualified for it.

In addition to “not being ready,” my boss said that creating this new position would not leave enough room in the budget to promote me. I did not include this information because I thought it would out me if my boss reads AAM. It is possible a lower budget was a legitimate reason for being able to promote me, but there was never any conversation about other jobs that would fit me at our university. (“We can’t promote you to Senior X in our department, but this other department is hiring for a Senior Y which has a very similar role”).

I work in higher education, and I was surprised to see that so many of the commenters went through similar experiences. Contrary to what some commenters guessed, I do not work in Res Life or in any student-facing role. I do not envy anyone in those positions – y’all are seriously doing the Lord’s work!

I honestly did not want to leave the university or the people I worked for. I tried very hard to stay within the company – I applied to 5 different jobs in my field and while I came close a few times to a job offer, nothing really stuck. But at the end of the day, you have to look out for yourself and that’s what I did. I chose my career – and more importantly, me – over my employer, and I don’t regret it one bit. I like my new job, but I will keep the same mindset.

Thanks again to all of the commenters and of course to Alison for giving me helpful advice that I’ll take with me throughout my career!

3. My boss interrupts me while I’m presenting (#2 at the link)

My 20-minute presentation was sandwiched between two other 20-minute presentations that hour, so nobody had extra time. The boss didn’t have time for comments or impulsive encouragement to add to my talk, but I did write down some of those phrases to remember, because that’s really what I needed; a polite and pointed way to remind her to let me give my talk in the order of my slides. And trust that I know more about the topic than she does (which I do).

My talk went well enough that I have been asked to do a more in-depth training for the leadership in our company on the topic. This might be where those interruptions happen, but now I will be prepared.

Thank you and your readers for the advice!

4. Can I contact a CEO who offered me a job previously to ask about job openings now? (#4 at the link)

tl;dr: I didn’t reach out to the CEO but I did get a new job!

I work in tech, and obviously there have been lots of layoffs and hiring freezes lately. Shortly after I wrote in, the CEO’s startup took all their job postings down, so I figured it wasn’t a good time to reach out. I also hadn’t heard back from any of the companies I had been applying to, so I was feeling discouraged.

But! It was a blessing in disguise! I spent some time getting extremely clear on what I want in my work life: what I liked about my job, what adjustments I would have to make to find it tolerable, what an ideal job somewhere else would look like. When I eventually did start getting interviews, that clarity became super helpful! I was able to pretty quickly rule out roles that would not have been better than the job I was in and to find a few that were all green flags. I started at my new job a few weeks ago and so far, it is wonderful.

It’s a special “where are you now?” season at Ask a Manager and I’m running updates from people who had their letters here answered in the past. Here are four updates from past letter-writers.

There will be more posts than usual this week, so keep checking back throughout the day.

1. My coworkers’ plants have infested the office with gnats (#3 at the link)

I have kind of a bizarre update? So, I finally banded my coworkers together to help pin down which plant (or plants) were causing the issue. Good news: it was only 1 that had the problem. Bad news: it was belonged coworker who has been absent for personal reasons.

One of the more plant savvy people offered to take the plant and try to remedy the situation and asked our manager to notify the coworker so they weren’t blindsided by its disappearance. Which, my manager did.

My manager and I are fairly close and she shared (possibly shouldn’t have, I’m not sure, it’s too weird of a situation) that the coworker admitted to knowing it was infested and didn’t want it in their home while they were on leave so they brought it in to the office.

There is already some weird tension in the office with this coworker and things are weirder now. Not sure how it will play out upon their return.

2. My coworker sends an all-staff email any time someone makes a mistake (#3 at the link)

I think Jane was just really unhappy! She was certainly underpaid and underappreciated by the higher-ups, and though we got along outside of our occasional brushes against each other regarding purchases, I understand now that she was just all-around frustrated. She wound up finding a remote position, and in our brief communications since she left, she seems much more engaged and excited about her new job.

The big update is that after I wrote to you and while working at home during the first year and a half of the pandemic, I began taking courses to allow me to switch careers. My boss was supportive, and though I am still in the midst of my degree, when Jane left, I put my name forward to fill her position. So now I do Jane’s job! I know even more intimately now the ins and outs of how difficult our purchasing can be, and I’m still learning every day. I’m much happier doing this work than my previous role, I’ve implemented new systems, and I’ve received feedback that my coworkers appreciate my approach as well. After serving in an interim position for six months, I was just hired permanently and given a promotion.

Thanks for answering my initial question. I think about it often when I come up against a problem, and I use my past frustration to guide the way I treat others.

3. Can I negotiate more time before I start my new job so I can help my old job replace me? (#3 at the link)

I only worked the two week notice period, and it was an absolute misery. For two straight weeks, I was browbeaten for leaving, told I would get fired at New Job, told how I would fail – they even offered to let me stay for exactly zero dollars in an increase in salary. The abuse was ridiculous, and I’m convinced I have PTSD from it since it was everyone there browbeating me to stay.

I’m glad to say that I’ve been at my new job four months, and I’m enjoying it. It’s so different from where I was that it’s like night and day. It’s nice to not be the “it” person for every little thing that comes along. My boss is kind and hasn’t given me any indication that he’s not like that all the time. Everyone else in the office gets along, and it’s just very refreshing from where I left.

Thank you for your advice! I’ll always remember it in the future!

4. Am I the only one excited to return to the office?

About two years ago, I wrote you asking if I was the only one excited to go back to the office. I saw the call for updates on your page and while I didn’t submit a terribly interesting question, I thought I’d give you one. Going back to the office remained more or less optional, and while I tried to go pretty regularly, I was definitely an outlier among my colleagues. I ended up getting laid off from that job this past fall, and found a new one that’s 100% remote for non-COVID reasons. I like my new job much better, it’s the same kind of work but in a different industry. Sometimes I still feel nostalgic passing by a suburban office building. Maybe someday I’ll find my way back to one.

Also, as a side note, this blog was quite helpful when I was job hunting at the end of last year after being laid off. Thank you!