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.

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

1. My coworker is living in my boss’s house — and we all work there too

There’s at once not much and a lot to report!

I waited to say anything to Jane to gather a little bit more information—I decided to see if it was an emergency solution with a set end date, which it did turn out to be.

Fergus did not take that well, unfortunately. He spent a lot of time complaining to just about everyone but me about the situation, and did some major boundary crossing asking other employees for help and housing, which was kind of uncomfortable. I’m the only person he didn’t ask for help—maybe because he knew I’d say no?

He found another job about three months after I wrote to you. I wish him well, but his departure has made for a pretty positive culture shift, at least in our day to day.

I learned a lot about Jane through this situation—namely, that she is a wonderful person who cares deeply about her employees, and that she’s not comfortable with situations that require directness or confrontation. I’m grateful to have a boss who cares so much about us, but I also have run into a few other situations where I wished my boss was more of a “boss” and less my friend. I realized that I’m more comfortable in work situations in bigger organizations, with more firmly-set boundaries and procedures. I’m actively applying to other jobs now.

Weird situation, mixed outcome. I’m very grateful for your advice (and the commenters’!).

2. The new hires at work are driving me up a wall

I was the one who emailed in asking about the new hires to my company who didn’t really understand office norms. Thanks for answering my letter!! And thanks to the commenters for being (mostly) very nice and helpful (shoutout to the person on Twitter who called me a narc, though). I provided an update in the comments pretty much immediately after it was posted, but I’ll reiterate and add on to that.

What I failed to mention in my initial letter was that I seemed to have become the de facto “big sister” figure of the group, and as a real-life big sister I felt it was my responsibility to guide these new hires into the working world as the oldest and most experienced worker (I was the only one who had even held full-time jobs prior to this one). While this did mean answering loads and loads of redundant questions, it also meant I was getting annoyed when they didn’t act as professionally as I knew they should. This is something I’m working on with my therapist!! Some things just aren’t my business and shouldn’t bother me, but boy is it hard to let go of that instinct.

One thing I initially had a hard time putting my finger on was that there were several people there who severely misunderstood boundaries. One person went on their work laptop at 9pm to find my personal cell number and proceeded to text me several times a day about their personal life without me giving any indication this was something I was interested in. Another person with anxiety regularly cried in empty meeting rooms and would pull whoever was physically closest to them into the rooms to have a shoulder to cry on. One person, who I have heard has since been let go, got into a verbal fight with a manager when said manager let them know that their work wasn’t quite up to par and needed revisions. There were times it felt like I was back in high school.

But in bigger and better news, you might notice this has all been in the past tense, as I got a killer job offer about an hour before your letter posted for about $10k more and twice the vacation time! I left my old job in July and my new position is going well. The imposter syndrome has been something pretty serious to deal with, as this job brings with it a whole host of new challenges (and despite all the issues with my last job, I was good at it), but I’ve gotten through my probationary period with flying colors. And so far none of my new coworkers have texted me unprompted at 11 pm complaining about their love lives. Knock on wood.

3. My company may ruin my credit report (#3 at the link)

I informed my manager about the situation as you advised. She wasn’t much help. She didn’t intervene, but rather encouraged me to be assertive with the finance department about it. That wasn’t an issue for me because I was determined to solve this problem. After following up with them several times, they advised me to just pay the $1,500 bill myself to make sure my credit score remained intact. Then once they resolved the “payment issue” with the credit card company, I could be reimbursed.

I was perplexed. How is the issue that they’re having with the credit card company suddenly my responsibility to resolve? I prepared myself for the chance that I might have to pay it, knowing that I would avoid using the company credit card again (while also ruminating over what legal action I might have to take if they didn’t reimburse me. Can you blame me? They didn’t seem very reliable…)

Fortunately, they resolved the issue and paid the bill before it was reported as late to the credit bureau and before I had to fork out any cash. I was told that I needed to make sure to submit my expenses within 2 weeks so that they can make timely payments on the bill. I don’t believe that had anything to do with the payment issue considering I submitted the expenses within 16 or 17 days. After that, I was very cautious about using the credit card. Everything worked out with my mortgage, I moved into my house and I’m at a new company where I file expenses and I’m reimbursed in a timely matter. All is well! I’m so appreciative of your advice and the feedback from all your readers. Everyone, please make sure you understand what you’re agreeing to when you receive a company credit card. All companies are not the same.

4. Can I bring my dog on a business trip?

I ended up boarding my dog because I realized there wasn’t really a safe place to walk him in the area where the hotel/office are located and my evenings started filling up closer to the week I was going to be there. Also, when I got into the hotel room, it was TINY and the chair was like a suede material that they never would have gotten Labrador fur off of in a million years. So leaving him at home worked out for the best. But I really disliked the hotel so if I ever go back I think I will ask for different accommodations and still try to bring him.

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.

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

Remember the letter-writer whose husband’s boss organized a poker game to determine end-of-year bonuses? Here’s the update.

This is an update to the Christmas bonuses determined by poker with a promised grand prize of a used Hummer. I wanted to know if it was legal, or if my husband had any recourse. The advice was helpful, though it was disappointing that we were quite limited in what we could do. Regardless, the story that shook down is moderately fun to tell. Spoiler: my husband quit.

I sent the email while my husband was hard at work gambling, so there wasn’t much we could do then. He came home with a $25 music gift card. The boss’s number two talked him out of buying the used Hummer. Everyone let out a sigh of relief, which resulted in the boss being prickly all evening about his employees not appreciating such a great opportunity that they missed out on. My husband saw that as the nail in the coffin of many other issues, like the poor compensation, and started to job search. We thought that was the end of the Christmas Bonus Sequel.

With a new sunrise brought a new great idea. The boss decided it was so much fun that they should do it again! In a month!

At that point we began studying the comments people left on the poker post. A few commenters suggested my husband begin using his work time to study poker. It was tempting, but my husband was responsible for upcoming deadlines and couldn’t swing it without leaving the company in the lurch. (And he still needed the job, at least for the time being.)

Another group of commenters mentioned looking at whether there was disparate impact among protected groups and whether or not there were accommodations for religious people, for example. Mormons doctrinally do not believe in gambling. We know because my husband and I were in the process of leaving the Mormon church.

We were tempted to play the religion card because the boss thought my spouse was still Mormon, but the boss actually had access to check and influence the worthiness status of my husband if anything seemed off because of his leadership position. The boss was quite disapproving of people leaving, and of course, much worse religious discrimination happens where we live in Utah all the time that goes unchecked. So we aborted the mission.

My husband decided the night of gambling part three he just wasn’t going. The boss was very upset, and tried to make my husband feel bad by sending videos of matchbox races for money. The regret we must have felt!

The cherry on top: my husband had started interviewing and accepted a new job before the third gambling night. The job didn’t start for another 10 months (big 4 accounting), and my husband appropriately waited until the final two weeks of work to give his boss notice.

It. Was. Glorious.

The boss freaked out. He sent via text “name your number and we’ll pay you whatever you want.” My husband politely declined. The boss then repeatedly called and asked him if he was a bad boss and said he just felt so insecure with my husband leaving. My husband had been working max 10 hours a week the past year to finish his work, left ample documentation, and still, his boss did not know how to hire someone to file this particular simple tax form. It was a moment of sweet comeuppance.

As a side note, I am also the wife in the playroom from the surveillance post in 2020. Readers may be happy to hear that I am only a year out from graduating with a 4.0 GPA and a degree in science communication and chemistry. After that, I will begin writing and illustrating science themed children’s books. I frequently read the comments on my first update post to remind myself that internet strangers liked my writing and motherhood doesn’t have to be my entire identity. It is a source of inspiration and motivation to me, so thank you for the virtual support, Alison and co.

Cheers from a person who now occasionally enjoys an alcoholic toast! May your year be merry and full of bourbon-fueled bonuses.

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.

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

Remember the letter-writer whose husband was her boss — and they were getting divorced? The first update was here, and here’s the latest.

I am the letter writen who wrote in in the middle of a divorce from my boss, who left me for a younger employee. Firstly, I want to thank both you and the readers for your compassion and kindness. Neither you nor the readers gloated or said I got what I deserved, and I am so grateful for that. Your compassion and kind advice showed me that I was reacting normally to an utter untenable situation: you restored my sence of normalcy and my confidence, and I am so grateful.

The one and a half years since my letter was printed has been eventful, to say the least. To start, I work at the same company in the same position. As I wrote in my original letter, I wanted to stay in the job because my young adult daughter was seriously ill and in psychiatric treatment, and needed the insurance for her treatment. Furthermore, I am a top specialist in a very narrow field with few job opportunities, so a change of job would mean moving to another part of the country and I could not bear to leave my daughter behind without the support of a parent, and my ex-husband is not what I call a parent.

Half of my original problem is solved, as my ex-husband resigned as head of department a few months ago, to my immense relief. However, the time after my original letter and until his resignation was bonkers. As expected, my ex-husband/boss started belittling me and questioning my qualifications in meetings with me and my collegues, he started withdrawing my funding, and he started placing very important project meetings on the exact days and times he had sent me on jobs outside the institution. I believe his plan was either to force me to resign, or to make sure I had so many stress-related sick days, that the institution could fire me.

In the same period, two collegues, both excellent specialists, resigned (and resignations are very rare here), in protest of my ex-husband/boss’s ´treatment of them. Both of them had meetings with the director, where they documented the ways in which my ex-husband/boss was a terrible manager and explained that they left because of him. The director did absolutely nothing with that information. One commenter remarked that “a fish rots from the head” and that is certainly the case here: In our only meeting, the director stated that the indepencence and autonomy of the head of department (my ex-husband) was his first priority, so he would not put a stop to what he called the “alleged mistreatment” and that his second was to make sure that I conducted myself professionally towards my ex-husband/boss. He said that my objections to being managed by my ex-husband during a divorce process showed that I was overly emotional, because he had complete trust in my ex’s abilities as a manager. In my country (not the States), employers have a legal obligation to create a safe work environment, so he was breaking the law as well as being a jerk. I had to call in sick after that meeting.

The end came when my boss/ex-husband and the director in secret fostered a plan to get rid of me and another colleague. My ex/boss stated that I and the colleague, our most excellent senior specialist, were getting too old and needed to be replaced in a short number of years (we are 15 and 17 years away from the official retirement age). The solution should be to hire completely inexperienced recent graduates, order me and my colleague to train them to our specialist level, and then have them replace us while we would be fired because of “budget cuts.” To make matters worse, all senior specialists receive no funding from the department budget, but have to apply for our funding ourselves from external sources. This has been a long-time point of contention. My ex-husband/boss had for years stated that the institution was much too poor to fund even the slightest bit of the senior staff (and especially me). Now we learned that these new employees woud be fully funded by the institution. My boss/ex and the director fostered this plan and kept it secret in order to have it sustained by the board, but we got wind of it. The secrecy and the plan did not go down well with either us nor the other senior specialists, who would of course be the next ones to be deemed too old and fired on the flimsiest of pretenses after having trained their successors.

I asked for a meeting with my boss/ex in order to discuss the plan and if possible avoid a big blowout at the next department meeting. That meeting went badly: my boss/ex said I was being paranoid as usual. (The “as usual” refers to an incident that took place in private a year earlier; I then confronted him having learned from a colleague that he was having a long-time affair with another of his employees. That affair apparently started while my mother was in hospice care 5 years ago.) Asked about the issues with funding, he stated that “of course the senior staff would receive some compensation for the time we used on training our (fully funded) replacements.” I still don’t know how I managed to refrain from tellling him exactly what he could do to himself.

The next department meeting was dramatic, to say the least. All senior specialists opposed the plan, the funding, and opposed the way my ex-husband/boss had handled the process, and the mistrust towards him was palpable.

My ex/boss resigned from his position as head of department and took a demotion a week after the meeting: apparently he and the director realized that the only other choice was to fire 10 renowned specialists, which would lead to very bad publicity.

However, not all is well: Upper management still suck and is not going to change. the director has hired a person with absolutely no prior management experience to fill the now vacant position as head of department. And of course, the “generational transfer” is going to come back. Management is even talking about “re-integrating the ex-boss into the department again ” — good luck with that. Morale in the department is at an all-time low, and upper management is working overtime to free themselves for responsibility for the dumpster fire they have ignited.

The good part is that my daughter is doing much better. In six months, perhaps a year, she will no longer need the level of support she does now and then my institution will see my dust.

I realize that this update is tragicomic and the whole process seems grotesque. However, being in the middle of it felt like a nightmare, as I fought my way through an acrimonious divorce from an emotionally and financially abusive husband/boss while my work life was under attack from said husband/boss, who was given free range by a director telling me I was “overly emotional” for even suggesting that I did not trust said abusive boss/ex-husband’s ability to manage me while divorcing me. At that point I seriously questioned my sanity. Thank you for coming to my rescue.

As Alison has pointed out, toxic environments can twist your sense of normalcy, and I am so grateful to Alison and the wonderful readers for giving sound and sane advise, kindness and compassion, that restored my sense of normalcy and my confidence and put me in a place where I am finally ready to move on.