Ask a Manager

It’s “where are you now?” month at Ask a Manager, and for the rest of the year I’ll be 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 whose boss was obsessed with her and wanted her to be his emotional support? The first update was here, and here’s the latest.

Your readers may remember me as the executive assistant who wanted advice about the increasingly obsessive behavior of their CEO. Shortly after reading your response, I began job hunting in the public sector. I was disillusioned by my recent experiences and the thought of landing a position that was even remotely similar made my skin crawl. Fortunately, I was able to land a position in my local government after a relatively brief search. I’ve been in this new position for a few months and it’s been the single most humbling experience of my life: the caliber of people that I work for and with is astonishing; I’ve never been part of a team that operates this way and it’s incredibly gratifying. However, I’ve been struggling to find my footing and rather than hit the ground running, I took two steps and face planted. I feel like I’ve gone from playing with Lego Duplo to Lego Creator Expert sets overnight — one of the many astute comments left by your readers suggested that my old job was doing nothing for my skill building and they couldn’t have been more right! However, I’m happy to say my new boss has been incredible at every turn: they understand it’s been a rough transition and they are willing to see me through. I’m learning and growing in fantastic and challenging ways for the first time in my adult career. It’s been really hard, but the kind of hard that makes a person better for having experienced it.

As you can expect, it’s been a really bitter pill to swallow, now that I have first hand knowledge of what an appropriate EA/executive relationship should look like. In an effort to insure that my ex-boss is no longer able to leverage his title and position to manipulate or out-right force women into these relationships with him, I’ve retained an attorney and am currently working through the list of options available to hold him and the organization accountable.

And I’m still married, happily for the most part (ha!)

I remain forever grateful that you responded – you and your readers showed me everything I was missing when I was too close to see.

It’s “where are you now?” month at Ask a Manager, and for the rest of the year I’ll be running updates from people who had their letters here answered in the past. Here are four updates from past letter-writers.

1. My younger employee doesn’t know professional norms

Thank you to Alison for your advice and to the commenters as well. I wasn’t able to be in the comments in real time, but appreciated the feedback (and drubbing haha). I’m happy to report that my employee continues to thrive in his role and that we sorted out the issues in the letter. The most important thing to address was being on time to our check ins, which I brought up and we haven’t had an issue since. I mostly decided to let the “boss” thing go, although I did let him know that it should stay in internal communications. Finally, I learned from my employee (and from my brother and in the comments) that there are actually a few different interpretations of the 😤 emoji! He intended it to communicate “Yes, I’m hard at work!”. Like, you are grunting from the exertion of doing your task. I let him know that since there’s a few different interpretations of its meaning, that we should probably keep it out of social posts. (We had a separate funny conversation about how millennials use 😂 but Gen Z prefers 🤣. Still learning a lot about which emojis are in these days!)

Overall, I’m very happy with my hire for this role. In addition to the coaching I provide him as his manager, we also secured funding to hire an outside consultant who has been helping him shape his work plan, which I think has been invaluable professional development for him. His role is one that we haven’t had a dedicated staff person for in years, so it’s a huge boost to our organization’s impact to have him there. Excited to see how he continues to grow into the role!

2. I’m taking six months off to hike — should I tell people what I’m doing? (#2 at the link)

I did end up telling folks why I was taking off for 6 months and it was pretty much a non-issue. People were generally excited for me, supportive and curious. I recently got back after completing the trail, and have gotten absolutely no negative feedback, even though I ended up extending the trip by two weeks. My one remaining team member had a fairly miserable May/June but she is more frustrated with my boss than me, b/c he also took off for more than a month in her busiest season. I also ended up getting the promotion I had anticipated (while I was on leave already, gotta love those sloooow government processes) and have had overwhelmingly positive responses to that – my team member/new direct report has been particularly effusive as have all our internal partners.

3. My boss sent me a message urging me to follow Jesus

Unfortunately I never texted back or reported but as the job was a a grocery store I still shop at I have run in to her. When it happens we both have acted like it didn’t happen. I don’t really want to risk her being fired as she retires this year. But I did tell a lot of the coworkers there about it.

4. My coworker/friend keeps coming to work drunk

Unfortunately, my story did not have a happy ending. Despite my and my coworkers’/supervisor’s best efforts, my friend ended up being caught drunk on the job a second time and was terminated back in the spring. She has recently started to look for work again but did no additional substance abuse counseling and I’m positive she’s still drinking. It’s really very sad.

It’s “where are you now?” month at Ask a Manager, and for the rest of the year I’ll be running updates from people who had their letters here answered in the past.

Remember the letter-writer whose boss wouldn’t stop texting her while she was in a hospital bed? Here’s the update.

First, I want to thank the commentariat for all the well wishes for my recovery and for those who shared their own stories of cancer/major illness. Reading your supportive comments got me through a difficult month. I’m six months out from surgery and just had a good scan and follow-up appointments. I’m seeing a therapist who specializes in patients who have/had cancer and have my first visit with the exercise oncology group next week. Things are looking good.

Before I get to the update itself, I also need to thank Alison who, on the day of and after my letter was posted, kindly and quickly dealt with my mental fog and opioid-induced paranoia. At my request, she made several edits to the piece (e.g. removing the word-for-word text messages I originally included) and removed my comments, which is why the comment section seems confusing. There were LOADS of identifying details in the post and in my comments, so I freaked out a little. She was great and reassured me as well as made every change I asked for.

Now, on to my update and to answer a few questions that commenters had. The flowers were purchased via a PO sent to an admin — not personally paid for by my team. More than a few descriptions of my boss were spot on: wants to be acknowledged for “kindness,” extrovert who is projecting her needs onto others, narcissist, has boundary issues, believes she is empathetic but shows it all wrong, and performative just to name a few. Several readers caught that I said these were just the texts my boss initiated, speculating that I’d been encouraging the communication. While, yes, I’d replied to her texts, I wasn’t the one to start any of the conversations. Grumpy Elder Millennial’s comment summarizes why I responded to them: “I’m guessing that OP is concerned about the interpersonal and career consequences of [ignoring them].” I also didn’t want my boss to have the phone numbers of any friends/family members (I’ll probably do this with a Google number next time), which is why she only had my number.

Now for what I did. I used Alison’s advice and some of the suggestions made in the comments to craft a reply that said I (1) was settling back in at home (I’m out of the hospital), (2)  was wiped out and focused on rest/recovery (I’m exhausted and healing), and (3) would get back in touch closer to my return date when I was feeling more up to it (I’m not at work so leave me alone). I also thanked the team again for the flowers and conveyed my appreciation for their concern. My coworker (we are a team of 3) reacted with a simple heart within minutes. Boss never reacted at all — no email, no text, no call, zero reaction. I hear nothing from her until I emailed several weeks later letting her know I would be able to come back half days a week before my return date, so all the advice worked. The relationship between the two of us is fine now. She’s back to her oversharing self but not hounding me like she was when I was on leave, which I can deal with now that 90% of my energy isn’t spent healing my body from a 10+ hour surgery with a surprise organ removal.

An unrelated, final thought for the readers who didn’t understand the difference between “Did they get all the cancer?” and “How did everything go?” Although people and cancers are all different, you should really never say that. Even if the surgeon or oncologist thinks they got it all, you really have no idea until you hit a 5-year (or more) mark — or when it comes back. There is literally no way to know if they “got it all” until years later. different pseudonym’s comment sums it up nicely: “There is a difference between cancer and ‘not feeling well,’ and when you speak as though they are the same you are being cruel.”

Thank you to everyone who engaged in the comments. I can’t tell you how much I appreciated it!

It’s “where are you now?” month at Ask a Manager, and for the rest of the year I’ll be 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 FASCINATING letter from the person whose new hire kept kneeling in front of him? Here’s the update.

A while back I wrote about a new hire that had a strange habit of kneeling in my office. First of all: the comments are always so unexpected. Commenters were convinced it was cultural, or that Sam was deaf or blind and needed to be inches from me to communicate, or that he was super tall or super short, or that he had some chronic wasting disease that made sitting in an office chair impossible and painful, or that my cubicle size/layout made the extra chair impractical. It really was just as simple as I suggested: a new employee just didn’t really get it.

Anyway, after I read through the response and the comments I decided I would ask him explicitly to sit in the chair. He came into my cube, and I said something like “hey dude, I don’t mean to make a big deal about this, but I’m gonna need you to sit in the chair. It’s just a little weird, especially when [president of company] walks by, you know?” He said OK (albeit somewhat confused), and sat in the chair. I had a hunch he may just be sick of sitting, so I said “you know [our company] has a bunch of extra sit-stand desks, right? You can ask for one.”

So, the next day Sam had a sit-stand desk. And then a few months later I moved cities to be closer to family. No telling if he’s gone back to his subservient ways or not.

It’s “where are you now?” month at Ask a Manager, and for the rest of the year I’ll be  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 whose boss was demanding a gift with an accounting of names and how much each person contributed? Here’s the update.

Here’s what happened. Feeling more brave after reading your and readers’ responses, first I tried a lowkey version of asking for help from HR. When I asked them about the grievance process in general (I did not provide any specifics) , they said the first step in the official company process is to talk directly with the person to try to resolve the issue one to one. They said this was true whether it was a peer or a supervisor — even though I hadn’t asked that question. Which reinforced my belief that HR protects the company, not any of the human beings in their employ. This was an effective dead end because I neither wanted to share more details with HR, nor confront the boss about the whole messed up pay-for-performance-review system.

Then I asked around to get an idea of what other employees were planning to do. A few had already made substantial “contributions” but many hadn’t done anything yet because they were feeling stuck too. I suggested those of us remaining contribute to a gift made “in honor of the Boss’s leaving the company for XYZ Corp” to a local organization that focuses on people facing food insecurity. I liked the suggested idea of making a donation to a cause Boss would find odious. But we all agreed that doing something that would ameliorate suffering in our community would be more impactful. It would be something good to come of the bad situation we found ourselves. So that’s what we did. And then we waited.

The deadline for performance reviews came and went. Cartoon Villain Boss left town for the new gig. I assumed she passed her review of me to the new boss, so she would have the satisfaction of cutting me down and forcing another person to deliver the bad news, and also poisoning the new boss about my work as an added parting-gift evil bonus.

In my first meeting with New Boss I mentioned, Lt. Columbo style, “I noticed it didn’t seem as if Former Boss uploaded my performance evaluation before she left. Wasn’t sure if you might have it?” New Boss responds “It turns out Former Boss didn’t do performance reviews for ANY of her employees!”

I was relieved, perplexed, and annoyed, all in equal measure. Reviews are tied to our annual raises, tied to advancing in the company, etc. Turns out there was an upside and a downside. New Boss made sure supervisees got the base raise, thereby immediately gaining our good will. But she told us we won’t have a performance review for another year because New Boss hasn’t supervised us until now. For some that had outstanding years, this was not great because it kind of makes it as if that outstanding work never happened.

Your advice and that of readers was of great value in terms of possible routes of action I could take, as well as providing general affirmation that the situation I found myself in was not cool.

With appreciation,
Loyal Reader, Who Now Has A New Boss Who Is Not A Cartoon Villain

It’s “where are you now?” month at Ask a Manager, and for the rest of the year I’ll be 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 whose office was in chaos after the governor yanked telework for state employees? Here’s the update.

Soon after my letter posted and there was related press coverage, two things happened. The first was that Governor Youngkin’s administration backed way, way off the enforcement of the new telework policy with only my agency. We heard through official channels, but nothing in email, that all employees and supervisors were to “use their best judgment” when July 5 rolled around and to “be flexible and use common sense.” So if an employee struggled to abide by the new telework agreement, that was okay. My friends in multiple other agencies said this was NOT the case in their offices. The second thing is that the Governor’s staff were cracking down on leaks, specifically this one. It’s no a secret that Youngkin decided to run for president soon after he became Governor, and he has been laying the foundation for that since he took office. Leaks are considered a fireable offense so while the Youngkin staff were nice in meetings, they were privately trying to find out who contacted you and other media outlets. They chatted with multiple friends of mine across different agencies, asking specific questions and names of potential leakers.

July 5 came and went with no fuss. You couldn’t tell the difference between the previous week and start of Youngkin’s new telework agreement.

Regarding the ADA accommodations, there was a lot of intense press scrutiny so the Youngkin administration backed off that matter too. One minute our ADA agreements were being scrutinized, and the next we weren’t required to show or do anything beyond what we had already done. I haven’t heard anything about the ADA since I wrote you.

Regarding the office space challenges, I did what you said. I drafted an email that outlined all the resources my staff required to return to the office. I never heard back, and my agency head hasn’t brought up the subject since the negative press coverage. I consider that a closed matter.

The most concerning detail is that we learned all the telework agreements were going to be printed and signed by hand by the Governor’s Chief of Staff. We asked multiple times about who was going to print them, where this information was going to be stored, and how long the Youngkin administration had to retain this information per FOIA. To this day, none of us got any sort of response. I’m still very concerned that all of my personal health information, which I gave under duress, is sitting in a random office or unlocked storage room somewhere where anyone can read it, copy it, etc. Quite frankly, I’m afraid to ask.

Given the hoopla around requiring a signed telework agreement on July 5, multiple agency employees and a few of my direct reports never got theirs back. Technically, those people are supposed to be working Monday-Friday, full-time in the office, but I decided to honor my direct reports’ telework agreements as if they’d been signed by the Governor’s office. I didn’t want the people on my staff who didn’t have signed agreements being resentful of the others who did. I assumed my decision would fall under the “use your best judgment” directive the Youngkin administration gave us.

While this update may seem like return-to-office screeched to a halt, things are ramping up again. After seeing several empty cubes and offices in our space, high-level managers above me are now insisting that people are not adhering to their telework agreements so anyone who is out of compliance will face official disciplinary action.

Finally, a number of high-level, long-time people quit for a variety of reasons, including the new telework policy rollout and the Governor’s use of state agencies for his presidential ambitions. (We don’t do politics at my agency. One of my coworker’s official government email address is now on multiple GOP campaign mailing lists, and they are furious because they only signed up for official press releases.) I love what I do, and I wanted to retire here, but I’m nearing my breaking point. If I’m forced to participate in ratting out my direct reports over their telework agreements, I don’t know what I’ll do.

I wish I had a better update. Your advice and reader comments were awesome though!

It’s “where are you now?” month at Ask a Manager, and for the rest of the year I’ll be running updates from people who had their letters here answered in the past. Here are four updates from past letter-writers.

1. Can I recover from two angry explosions at work?

I went through the EAP and was eventually connected with a therapist, whom I’ve been seeing this year. We worked on some anger management techniques that have been helpful, and the sessions have broadened into general talk therapy now, which has been good to have again.

When my letter posted, one of the commenters noted that it sounded like I was very burned out, and boy howdy was that person correct. This year has still been a challenging one, both in terms of the work and in my relationship with my boss, but I’ve also come to realize that a lot of my frustration stemmed from issues with management that were really out of my control. Realizing and dealing with that has helped me and my mindset tremendously. The underlying issues are still there, but I’ve been able to get some mental distance from them. I also plan to start looking for a new job in the new year, and I did some back-of-the-envelope math and know I have enough savings to leave and be OK financially for a good chunk of time. All that combined to say that I’m in a much better mental space as the year ends than I was when it began, but I am also very, very eager to look 2022 in the rearview mirror.

2. We’re doing a physically demanding “team-building” exercise

Thank you to Alison and everyone who was so kind and helpful in the comments! I have a mixed bag update. I spoke to my manager (let’s call him Mike) and he indicated he was already concerned that a team builder at an obstacle course escape room might not be inclusive and he was totally on board to switching. Mike spoke to the organizers and we switched to the place with the 2nd most votes: a golf driving range bar. Luckily, this worked for everyone on my team. The person who had suggested the obstacle course escape room (Angela) seemed to suspect I was the reason we changed and was a bit cold to me for a couple of days. This resolved itself and while I don’t think Angela and I will ever be friends, we are cordial. Which is unfortunate as Angela and I are the only 2 women on our team and she’s part of a clique that includes the majority of our team (they get lunch together during work, walk out at the end of the day together, and are friends outside of work/talk about what they do together on the weekends). They’ve known each other for years, I’ve been on the team less than 2 years, and the 2 others not in the clique joined the team less than 6 months ago, so I doubt it is personal. I’m neurodiverse (and used to it), so not terribly bothered. Plus, being on the board for our disability employee resource group is quite fulfilling (I’m even leading a diversity initiative on campus that is receiving recognition!).

But all of this might be moot as my company (one of the largest tech companies in the world), is struggling and a leak to the press forced them to announce a huge company wide lay-off but they have been very vague regarding the parameters, we won’t know for another few weeks who is likely to be affected. I’m slated for a promotion in Q1 and they announced raises will be affected next year. And they wonder why they receive such poor marks for transparency and trust on employee satisfaction surveys.

3. I can’t afford to keep paying for work I’m not receiving from our nanny

So, it’s a mixed ending. We do still have our nanny and have fought hard to keep her. We have had to engage a lot of backup childcare from family, looked at day-only options where we can pay per day, and get creative with our hours while she is out for vacation so we can save our own PTO for illnesses only. Sometimes we split working on weekends while one parent parents the children. It’s been stressful and we don’t often do anything recreational because we devote all our time off and many weekends to covering childcare, but I just didn’t feel like I could take her vacation and sick time away from her and so we kept everything in the same quantities.

Some changes: because my daughter is now (finally) vaccinated and I was able to receive a bivalent booster in my third trimester with my son, and we have all had COVID (my son in utero), we have come to a different understanding about exposures. There have been so many on both ends (hers and ours) that we couldn’t reasonably continue paid leaves for her exposures and, if we as a family have an exposure and everyone is testing negative and not symptomatic, she needs to either take her own PTO or unpaid time if she doesn’t feel comfortable coming to work. She was in agreement with the change, as she dines indoors now, goes shopping, socializes in large groups, etc. – and so we both have similar overall risk levels. We still disclose all known exposures and test the adults on day 3, but we only quarantine or test the children if someone shows any symptoms. My daughter will soon be old enough to use rapids, and so we will test her as well going forward.

If we are ill at all, we give her paid time that doesn’t count against her total and test everyone before she returns. If we are COVID negative, the paid time ends when we are symptom-free. If we were to test positive, we would pay a full quarantine. If she is ill, she can use her sick time if she would like to or take it unpaid. We ask her to take a COVID test before returning (at our expense) and if she ever were positive we would pay her to quarantine for the CDC recommended period.

This is still a lot of leave, but thankfully a mixture of vaccines, COVID infection, luck, and risk management with NPI’s has meant we have all been COVID-free and not continuously reinfected even as it rips through my office what feels like every other week.

4. My team is having a weekend sleepover at a coworker’s house

When I wrote in asking for advice about how to ask for details about a work retreat where my team would be sleeping over at a vacation house together, both you and many commentators basically said “just ask about the details!” I realized I was being overly anxious that even asking would make it obvious that I felt very reluctant to go.

I did ask, and learned that we would be sharing bedrooms, yikes, but it ended up being moot because yet another wave of covid swept through our area right before the scheduled weekend and multiple team members ended up in quarantine due to family members or themselves testing positive.

That said, now that I’ve been at the job longer, I am starting to appreciate the way everyone on the team is so close, and if we did another retreat in the future I would be more enthusiastic about it. I think part of my hesitation was that at my last job, a lot of colleagues were nice to each other’s face and complaining behind their backs, and I couldn’t conceive of a team that was actually this nice, but they are! I’m much happier now.

Thanks for your advice! Sometimes it’s best to just assume the best and act reasonably and assume people will act reasonably in return (even if they haven’t always in the past!)