Ask a Manager

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

1. My employee’s clothes accentuate her chest — how do I talk to her about it?

Lot of people in the comments from the post correctly guessed that our clients were disabled and as such, we couldn’t really fire them or deny them services. Our nonprofit is often the last option for them, so we try not to do so unless they commit something truly egregious.

But honestly, it turned out the greatest reason for my struggle wasn’t really the dress code or the behaviour of my subordinate. It was mostly the fact I didn’t want to be a manager and I really didn’t fare well in the position. I grasped at straws like the chest thing to try to deal with the enormous pressure I felt.

In the end, I was forced to fire my subordinate by higher management — not for dress code stuff, but because she didnt do her assigned work. After that, I told them I refuse to do managerial work anymore and strongly considered quitting.

However, it turned out for the better. I was just “demoted” and a new, much more experienced manager was hired. Demotion might seem like bad news, but I am much happier back at my post working directly with clients and not doing management. My pay is lower but its worth it for my mental wellbeing.

As for my subordinate, she truly had the dress code badly calibrated – to share a occurence, she once wore a t-shirt printed with cute kitties and shorts to a meeting with state officials. Who then called me, because they didnt believe she was from our organization but just a random passerby who wandered in. (while our dress code was relaxed for work in the office, it was expected to dress formally for such meetings and she saw me dress as such when I did them) I tried to work with her, but it truly was not to be, both from her side and from mine.

2. I want to turn a professional contact into a friend

I can’t believe it’s been half a year since I wrote in! Shortly after I wrote the letter, I contacted Covid while traveling and was stuck across the country. Thankfully I recovered and made it home, and not too long afterwards I started a new job in a different industry that I’m enjoying a lot. I want to thank you for your excellent advice—while I didn’t end up taking it, I think you were absolutely right that when there’s a clear overture it’s okay to respond and see what happens! Your call for updates definitely made me pause and realize how hard it’s been for me to reach out to old friends or try to make new ones—I know I’m not alone in that, given the past few years, but it’s definitely something I want to work on as I settle into my new job. Thanks again, Alison!

3. Should I tell my boss I’m thinking of leaving? (#3 at the link)

When I reached out to you earlier this year, I was just “ghosted” by an employer after completing 3 rounds of interviews and having all my professional references checked by their HR person. I was pretty upset at that time. However, now that I had a chance to reflect on the things said by that hiring manager and her team, I’m convinced that they weren’t sure about the type of people they were looking for. I wish they would at least send me a short e-mail letting me know their decision. On the other hand, I had another hiring manager who personally called me and apologized that she decided to hire an internal candidate but thought that I gave a kickass interview. We need some universal standard rules of engagement in this hiring process!

Shortly before I sent you the email, I received a LinkedIn message about an opportunity with a medium-sized agency as a consultant. I had 3 rounds of interviews and met with the HR person, my future boss, my future boss’s boss, a VP with whom I would have a very close working relationship, and a member of the team I was going to join (I would never accept an offer again if I could only talk to the HR person and the hiring manager prior to the acceptance). I’m happy to report that I received an offer from the agency at a compensation level that I had never reached in my entire career before. Besides that the work is more interesting here (and absolutely no sales!), I have my 2-day weekend back.

I also wanted to reply to some of the comments left in the original post. Specifically, some of you said that they would never accept a sales job. During the last 8 or 9 months, I talked to a lot of people (recruiters, friends and former coworkers) to get a sense of what my next career move should be. My conclusion is that if you want a career in sales, it’s better that you could be your own boss (i.e., you own your practice/you could do your work your way). If you work for a big corporation like I did, you will eventually be caught up with corporate policies and procedures, and more importantly, office politics. Unfortunately, I worked with a group of people who cared more about their scorecards and sales numbers than our clients’ wishes and well-being. My old employer makes some of the best “teapots” in the business, which attracted me to this employer. However, how does that matter if the customer service level is not up to par, or I’m told to sell the “teapots” to those who couldn’t understand and/or shouldn’t have the products? I hope that my old co-workers’ attitudes don’t represent what my old employer is about at large and that the problem is confined to the territory where I was unfortunately placed.

And Alison’s advice not to let my old boss know was spot on! My old boss was pushing me into getting her the sales number right to the end of my tenure to a point of suggesting I should do something that, in my opinion, was borderline unethical. When I told her about my resignation, I felt that she wanted us to end that conversation as soon as possible. In the past when I left my previous employers, I always could reach out to my old bosses for HR-related issues. This particular old boss gave me a 1-800 number to call and would not offer her support for anything else. I felt that I was basically dropped dead in the face of her earth. If I had told her earlier my wish to leave, I probably would be pushed out before I was ready.

My old boss would be the first person I met throughout my career that I wish I won’t have to cross paths with in the future.

4. Declining to travel for a work event that feels unsafe (#4 at the link)

I did take your advice and was open and honest with my manager about being reluctant to attend the in-person meet-up and why. He was very understanding and said it wouldn’t be an issue. There wasn’t really a way to participate remotely, though, so I ended up just being the only one “in office” and being the contact person for the rest of the company for any issues that came up.

My immediate impression was that it was fine that I stayed home; however, shortly after everyone got back, my manager’s attitude towards me started to shift. Before the meet-up, he’d had nothing but positive feedback for me. After the meet-up, though, the feedback became much more negative. He started questioning my competence and whether I was a “team player.” I was ultimately fired in July, with one of the primary reasons given being my unwillingness to communicate and be a team player. The whole experience left a really sour taste in my mouth, and left me thinking that, even though this was a remote role, the expectation of meeting in-person wasn’t as optional as I would have liked it to be. That said, I’m not sad to not have the job anymore. Any remote role that would require in-person meet-ups like that isn’t really for me anyway, and my family member’s safety is definitely worth more to me than that job.

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

1. Making a remote employee pay for their own travel to visit the office

Plot twist — I quit! The boss was making noise about wanting everyone (except the one pre-pandemic remote worker) back in the office, and when asked why, she let us know that she liked seeing us face to face. When pressed, there wasn’t any other reason than vague things like, “It’s better to be in-person.” I liked not commuting for two hours a day, so I bailed, and I’m much happier now (for a lot of reasons).

Regarding the out of state employee, however, the update is that there’s no update. Everything remains the same: the out of state employee remains mildly annoyed, but unwilling to rock the boat and risk the arrangement, so she dutifully continues to pay for her own flights, transport, meals, and hotel 4x/year, so the boss can have the pleasure of having her do the same job, just in person for the week (minus the lost productivity of Monday mornings and Friday afternoons when she flies in and out). Indeed, two more employees negotiated remote work agreements with the boss, with the same terms: let me work remotely, and I agree to show up in-person, on my own dime, four times/year. For this reason, and many more, I am glad to be gone, and I wish them all the best! It just wasn’t a cultural fit for me, and I’m in a better place now. I do appreciate your advice, and all the constructive advice in the comments section — all good food for thought!

2. My boss asks for my input, won’t take it, and then turns out to be wrong (first update here)

I wrote to you in the Beforetimes about how my boss would ask me for recommendations on how to do a thing (the specific example I used was printing advanced reviewer copies of a book he wanted to publish) and then wouldn’t listen to my recommendation (which was STRONGLY that he avoid using the cheapest version because the website was a dumpster fire), and then things went wrong (because, again, dumpster fire).

I am happy to report that I am still on very good terms with said boss — he’s become a friend of the family after my mother also worked for him, and we meet him and his wife once a year for dinner at a local restaurant. He’s also provided me with excellent references for the job I got fairly soon after I wrote the letter (he was retiring and happy to give a reference for said job search) and the one I’m in now, which is the best job I’ve ever had (though I don’t tell him that, of course, but I do tell him I love the job). Both of my bosses at the last and this job said multiple times that his strong reference really stood out for me as a candidate.

As for my current job, the best I’ve ever had: I work at a nonprofit that is a truly wonderful group of people and I love what I do now, which is focused on our contacts database and processing donations and all the fun stuff that comes with being in charge of a database (really, I love it!). I am also awaiting placement of an adopted child in my home, something which could happen in the next couple of months or could take years, and I am very happy to be working for an organization that really does care about life/work balance and doesn’t just say that family comes first but actively supports their employees in this respect. For all the naysayers who believe that nonprofits are terrible places to work, I’ve been at two since the job I wrote in about and I love that the focus for both of them has been on human beings and not on profits, and in my experience are far more willing to spend money where it’s needed in order to facilitate getting the work done the right way. The for-profits who only care about the bottom line are the places I’ve worked where we had cheap computers, ugly offices, and not very good vacation time.

Thanks again for your excellent advice, then, now and always. I believe I have matured so much just because of you and all the terrific commenters on AAM.

3. How do we write an improvement plan for a pastor?

Your advice helped so much! And that of the commenters. I rolled off the committee but they did move forward with the 360 review process led by someone with actual experience doing that type of activity. Often churches don’t take that route.

It has taken a year but the person was officially out on a PIP. Because I was a part of the committee at that time I was able to see it. It well written. Clear expectation delineated in both behavioral things and task related things. A timeline with regular review of improvements and specific consequences if not achieved. He did take it well when presented with it. Some of that conversation included that past leadership had failed him by not being specific in how he was failing. In this case, leadership being the senior pastor not the personnel committee. They wanted it be clear that none of this should be a surprise but it likely was because of how senior pastors had delay with him in the past.

4. Can I ethically hire when the company is a mess?

I’ll say up front I didn’t take your advice exactly, but your advice turned out to be spot-on, of course! Hiring is such a desperate and desolate exercise these days and I needed this job filled, so I did go ahead and hire this person; I tried hard not to actively mislead them – if anything, I chose to be a bit silent on certain topics and focus more on the philosophy I try to bring to the table in daily work as a manager. I flagged that we were having a leadership change and were experiencing a lot of sudden transition, and tried to do it in a professional way. I still struggled a bit with it – but ultimately the part of your advice about how a lot of people don’t care about some of the cultural stuff was right-on. Now that they’re in, many of the warts are visible and they are rather unphased. I wish I had a better update for you – but basically, I hired them anyway and it seems to have mostly worked out. I just completed their probationary review the other day and they are doing great. I hope they will be happy here for years to come, even after I depart.

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

1. How to tell an employee he needs to figure some things out himself

I have a quick, albeit possibly underwhelming, update to this. Carl’s questions continued, but I was much better equipped to handle them :) and then a whole lot of other things happened. Shortly after this, Carl was offered a plum international trip to New York (to address one of my substantive policy areas). I reacted … not well to this. I wrote about it in a Friday open thread, and some commenters replied that I seemed to be a bit burned out. They were very correct!

I spoke to my manager, who was really apologetic about the whole situation. It turned out that she was slightly zoned out because she had just accepted a position in another organisation. When she left, I was given many of her programmatic responsibilities for a three-month acting-up period, with budget responsibilities taken up by her manager (based in another part of the world, and overloaded with a million other things). And… chaos ensued.We were heading into a spectacularly busy period program-wise, and taking on managerial and operational responsibilities on top of this (and not being able to control our budget) was not easy, and I did not excel by any stretch of the imagination.

I applied for another job at a much bigger, more prestigious organisation, working in a team with people whom I already worked with as external partners – and was offered it almost immediately after interview! I’ve been in that role now for a month and half, and I really like it. It doesn’t have managerial responsibility, which I was not ready for or good at – in fact, the role in the team is comparatively more junior than I was before – but it has deeper substantive work and better pay. I spent a few weeks in the new job still feeling burned out by the former, but it has been a relatively quiet time of year for our industry, so I’ve spent the time planning, and getting to know my new substantive areas and colleagues, and now I am just about at the point of very much looking forward to next year. So win-win. Apart from Carl, who is feeling isolated and abandoned by the wider organisation since my manager and I left (which is true – the organisation decided to not hire for my manager’s job, and have not yet recruited for my former role). I take him out for lunch now and again and am gently encouraging him to look elsewhere at places with more structure which could be a better fit.

Thank you so much for your advice (and all that you do!!), and commenters for their take!

2. How can I fix my company’s dysfunctional culture? (#2 at the link)

Thanks so much for publishing my letter, and all the sage advice you dispense!

I did end up leaving that job and am much happier for it. Entirely coincidentally, I gave my notice on the same day as multiple other coworkers. All of us were women, with similar levels of experience, and the only people capable of doing an important set of tasks. Our manager, when asked by another colleague, said he “didn’t see a pattern” in our departures. Right.

Some context that I had left out of the first letter was that I am a woman of color, and our management is all white male. Definitely some of the morale issues stemmed from ingrained biases, and attempts to address DEI topics were often met with the “I don’t know, what would you do” response, which is pretty classic I’ve now realized. Not only do women and people of color bear the brunt of these issues, we’re also made to feel responsible for fixing them, even and junior staff. And still somehow do our day job as well. So glad I’m no longer around those kinds of attitudes.

Since I left, I started therapy and eventually realized a great deal of my burnout came from the fact that my manager had been gaslighting and emotionally abusing me for years. In the meantime at the old company, there continues to be wave after wave of departures and at this point, there is hardly anyone I used to work with still there, with the exception of management. From what I’ve heard there has been no effort to change any part of the culture, so I expect more staff turnover will happen.

My new job is wonderful- supportive colleagues, interesting work, and a very collaborative culture. It’s not without its stresses but it is a world of difference from the truly toxic environment of the old job. I am now building in social equity as part of my research and fully supported by my organization in doing so. Thanks to all the commenters for sharing their experiences trying to change cultures, it definitely helped me focus my energy on job searching to end up where I am now.

3. Should I tell my boss my coworker is working a second job?

I never ended up turned Bella in. Maybe I should have but I just didn’t know if she needed the money, and I didn’t want to be a cause of her job loss if it came to that.

Alice got promoted and no longer manages Bella and myself. Bella and I actually bonded a good amount and we had figured out how to work together really well. She did come clean about the second job but they decided it wasn’t a big deal since they weren’t related.

The culture has had a drastic change since Alice’s promotion. Our new manager, Jasper, leaves a bit to be desired. He can come off as condescending and has very old school ideas on how we should do our work. We’ve added more people to our team but no one on the team seems happy anymore.

Crazy update is that Bella was let go last week. My guess was more of a personality conflict than anything as he seemed extra hard on her. I am also looking to leave due to Jasper’s poor leadership and not feeling like I want to be a part of this new culture. I won’t call it toxic, but the joy I had about my job is dwindling. I just heard from a company I interviewed with that they are working on an offer for me and I should have one by tomorrow!

4. My coworker says our company is toxic — but is she the problem?

Jane quit after I’d been there less than a year, shortly after she was promoted. She was one of five people (out of 11) who quit that year. In this time, I’d worked mostly alone on my shift. I worked through some of the hardest times our agency had ever seen (including the pandemic). But all I got from my managers was non-constructive criticism. They’d only praise me was when they wanted me to cover an undesirable shift. They ignored my emails asking for help and told me I rely on my supervisors too much. They wrote us up for minor, reversible mistakes, and seem to come down harder on people who question them (including myself). Once I was written up after coming to them to ask for help on a mistake I’d made – while I was overwhelmed and working alone.

Finally, my managers uncovered a misguided decision I’d made in good faith a year prior; I hadn’t attempted to hide it, but given how ignored I felt I didn’t think anyone would care. I was accused of going beyond my expertise (though I’ve been peripherally trained in the subject matter … and they have zero expertise in the subject matter at all). They also cited “20 incidents of inappropriate behavior” (?!) that they had never addressed to me before. (Beyond seeing me crying at work due to stress and a big breakup, only to tell me “you can’t have a bad day in this job”….a very emotionally challenging job in emergency services.) I explained myself, accepted responsibility, and pointed out other gaps in the project that others had left that should be addressed with equal scrutiny. I cared about what happened and wanted to make sure the process as a whole could be improved. I even had a union rep advocating for me. None of that mattered, and they recommended termination, “allowing” me to resign. The coworkers I was closest to were shocked and appalled and rallied around me. A month after I left, one of the managers took my work friend into his office and told her not to be friends with me because I’m too negative.

It’s been six months since I left, and I still feel humiliated and heartbroken. I was able to get another job right away through a close connection who had also worked there and knew the terrible dynamics, but I’m panicking over how to address this in future applications. So many ask if you’ve ever been asked to resign. I have no confidence in my abilities. I’m still beyond devastated and extremely depressed, and I can see myself having regular panic attacks at a new job, because what could I get fired for next time?

In the end, it looks like Jane was right about a lot of it. I had thought my work ethic and skillset would protect me from all that. They didn’t. I take some solace knowing that these managers don’t have the greatest reputation among others in our field, but I am so new that I worry what this will do to *my* reputation. All I can hope is that I can maybe better recognize red flags in the future.

Anyway, thank you so much for providing me with an outlet for this. It’s been a tumultuous few years for me, professionally and personally, even aside from the pandemic. I’ve revisited the original letter a few times since you posted it. Your and others’ responses have helped take some of the sting off this situation since it was somewhat predictable.

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

Remember the letter-writer whose office wasn’t acknowledging her adopted baby? Here’s the update.

I didn’t mention this in my original letter, but my wife and I (yes, folks correctly guessed that I am a woman married to another woman) had staggered our parental leave. We took the first two months together, and then she finished out her remaining several months of fully-paid leave (so nice!) while I went back to work, then we switched back. The goal was to extend the leave time period as long as possible since the little one had some potential developmental concerns we wanted to be fully on watch for.

Luckily (and perhaps expectedly) while I was out for those initial two months, the texts and emails from work became much less frequent. A lot of commenters—as well as you, Alison—were rightfully much more incensed by the lack of respect for my leave than the interpersonal stuff, which in retrospect was a sign that some of my norms were a bit warped.

I initiated a call a couple days before my return to check in about transitioning back in and was gently and professionally informed that a lot had been going poorly in my absence. The person who took over most of my duties was a peer whose specialty is a lot different from mine, even though we worked closely together—the best analogy I’ve come up with is an anesthesiologist taking over for the surgeon they usually work with; theoretically similar training, to a point, but WILDLY different day-to-day duties—and the “patients” were unhappy to the point of being downright rude. Everyone was extremely happy to see me when I came back for that reason.

I also heard through the grapevine that someone else (who had stepped in to help with the transition and was a half-step above me on the organizational ladder) had been badmouthing me in an all-staff meeting, saying things along the lines of, “I don’t even know what Lucinda has been DOING these last months” (I’d celebrated my five-year anniversary just before leaving with no serious concerns raised about my work since year one). I almost immediately confronted her about it politely, using AAM-inspired language: “I heard you may have expressed some concerns and I was surprised because our previous conversations had indicated everything was going well! Is there anything I should be aware of?” She denied having any concerns and basically said she would have just been venting due to the stress of being down a staff member. But since I didn’t say where I’d heard it from, she let slip that she thought that I would have heard from clients that she was badmouthing me! I was floored.

Anyway, I felt like I was in putting-out-fires mode from my first day back. Communication continued to be a huge issue and I felt consistently unsupported in doing my job, sometimes even significantly undermined. My mental health took a giant nosedive after having been as happy as I’ve ever been while on leave. I think the reality of why I wrote my letter was that I had been dissatisfied for a while with the feeling that I was giving so much for a job that, despite the warm and fuzzy exterior, made me feel like a cog in a machine. My wife and I talked about it extensively and I decided to leave my job with the intention of my spending 1-2 years at home with my son and working on some personal projects.

So, a couple of weeks before the second part of my leave was supposed to begin, I put in my notice that I wouldn’t be returning from leave the second time around. I don’t know if this would have happened had I not been leaving, but the whole-staff meeting on my last week was converted into a combination baby shower/goodbye party for me. A few people brought gifts—interestingly, all of those people were my peers or below me in the hierarchy, although I had already gotten a small gift each from my boss and grand-boss on my return to work.

I also had two people on my team reach out specifically to apologize for interrupting my leave, but never got any sort of acknowledgement of that from those above me on the hierarchy.

Since then, I’ve reached out to a company where I’d had a previous “side hustle” to see about a part-time remote position. The answer was an enthusiastic yes without so much as a phone screen! It’s been a nice reminder of what it feels like to have my work appreciated.

Tl;dr, a lot of the specific stuff that I was complaining about in my original letter was resolved, but those things were symptoms of bigger issues, so … I got out!

Finally, some commenters, especially those with connections to adoption, expressed some very kind wishes and hopes about how things would go at home. I hope you’ll all be glad to hear that baby boy, birth mom, and both adoptive moms all seem happy with how things have turned out so far. Adoption is complicated and messy but we are putting in our best effort to show up for our son and his birth mom and I’m so grateful to be able to do it. Being his mama is the best thing I’ve ever done.