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 five updates from past letter-writers.

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

1. Company says they’ll fly me to another state if I need an abortion (#2 at the link)

We fought with Big Tech Company for as long as possible but yesterday was Partner’s last day at his job. It really sucks and while I’m incredibly proud of him for taking a stand, I hate seeing him give up something he worked so hard for. I really hope that our decision moved the needle in some small way and maybe the next person to put their foot down will have a different outcome. People shouldn’t have to decide between their rights/safety and their livelihood.

2. My older male colleague gives me condescending, unsolicited advice

I have been waiting to send you an update, hoping for a satisfying end to this story. Today I finally got one.

Bob and I were at an all-day meeting today and ended up sitting next to each other. I had never responded to his patronizing email and we’d continued to interact politely but sporadically throughout the year.

One of the presentations we heard today was about communication styles. The facilitator basically said, “if someone doesn’t answer your phone calls, maybe try emailing them. And if they don’t answer your emails, maybe they’d rather take a call.” Bob and I had a good laugh and then swapped pictures of our dogs.

Thanks for the advice, Alison. And to the commenters who said I sounded a bit ageist, I heard you and I’m working on it. I’ve definitely got a bit of “Okay, Boomer” in my blood and it’s not doing me any good.

3. I think our boss is lying about having a PhD

Just wanted to send an update on our incompetent boss.

We eventually sent in a complaint (jointly written by several people) detailing everything wrong with our terrible boss’s management, and why it was awful for business. They took her out of commission for a month, ostensibly to go through leadership training, then put her back in charge of us in July. When she came back, she seemed slightly chastened and less autocratic, but no more competent.

She clung on for another few months but was recently let go after her job title was merged with another. It’s not clear to me whether her incompetence was the cause, or whether they actually investigated a claim, by an outgoing employee, that she faked her credentials.

Either way, it wasn’t soon enough to completely prevent fallout (a number of employees quit), but we’re relieved to have her gone.

4. I resigned and my boss is pressuring me to stay longer (#4 at the link)

I stuck to the 2 weeks! I told them that staying any additional days only benefits them and not me and my resignation should not come as a surprise.

It was a brutal 2 weeks. They split up my work among 4 people. Every day for 2 weeks I was on 6-8 hours worth of Teams calls being recorded while I trained 4 people. This validated my decision to not stay longer and I was so glad that I didn’t.

I had a job offer within a week!

The advice that I got from you and from the commenters helped me so much and I can’t thank you enough.

5. Why is our CEO replying-all to BCC’s? (#2 at the link)

The good news is that Cecil eventually both a) cooled it with the BCC (or Bram stopped replying) and b) left for greener pastures. Too early to tell about his replacement but I’m cautiously optimistic (though still planning an exit strategy long term). Unfortunately I had a really hard year both at work and health-wise, so I haven’t had the energy to update my resume, and I wouldn’t have been in a good place to make the best impression at a new gig either. Things are calming down on both fronts now and I’m scheduling a proper block of leave to get my shit together in.

The commenters on the original post were curious about Cecil’s reply-all error that made the news. It took so much willpower not to post the link at the time, but the relevant news outlet seems to be kaput so I am willing to share now-less-Googleable details. In short, the error went as follows:

1. Cecil wrote an email to a colleague in which he joked about assassinating a small-time journalist who had been hassling them about alleged financial dodginess
2. Since Cecil was at that time working in Asia, the joke specifically involved an offer to hire a cheap local hitman who would probably come with a side of rice (I know. I KNOW)
3. The piece de resistance: Cecil proceeded to accidentally send this email DIRECTLY TO THE JOURNALIST IN QUESTION.

You can imagine the absolute chef’s kiss level of schadenfreude amongst my team when we discovered this history after dealing with him for a few months. Christ, what an asshole.

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 whole office works from home except for her — and she was getting stuck with everyone’s admin work? Here’s the update.

I quit.

Not dramatically, not rip-the-bandaid-off or anything. I tried to fix it. I realized from reading the comments that a lot of the problem was self-imposed– my desire to keep the machine running at all costs meant I took on more than my fair share, but I truly loved my bosses and my company and even (most of) my coworkers, and wanted us all to succeed. But this mess was broken for real, the comments made that very clear. It was pretty painful to realize, actually. But I knew something had to give.

Buckle in….

So first things first, I told myself to knock it off. I was taking on too many of the company’s problems and not forcing them to find their own solutions. I had to draw harder lines, and resolved to do so.

Second, I started rephrasing the conversations to make it clear that this was their responsibility. I peppered all of my interactions with lots of “your work” and “my help” and tried to avoid any type of “happy to help” type positivity (e.g. if a coworker sent a request for something, I’d respond along the lines of “sure, I can meet your client for you”). Subtle, I know, but I knew this was going to be a long battle so I was laying the groundwork. At this point I thought I’d still be there.

Next, I talked to my boss. I would have liked to do this sooner but she only came in occasionally and it felt like an in-person type of meeting. I told her I wasn’t happy with my current job, and exactly why, and used a lot of the verbiage from the posting (thank you!). I had been forwarding her the truly absurd requests and questions I had been getting for months so this wasn’t new info to her, but I know she was hoping I would never push back this hard. She offered me a new position (I think it was “Operations Manager” or something) to recognize my increased contributions. No mention of a raise. And while it was very nice I don’t LIKE that work, so making it official was the exact opposite of what I wanted. When I declined, she said they would start looking for an admin to “take over your duties.” I reminded her they weren’t “my” duties, and never were. She agreed and apologized, but I didn’t hold my breath. I think the hardest thing for me, and the thing that the posting and the comments really cemented, was realizing my boss agreed with me but wouldn’t do anything to fix it. I know she appreciated me and didn’t want to lose me, but at that point (and all the previous points) it felt very much like lip-service and not much else. Of all the many, many fires to put out, my fire was not a priority and never would be.

After a few weeks I told my boss, by chat, I was going to start working one day a week from home. She asked that I make sure everyone knew which day it would be, which I agreed to without thinking, because this just reinforced to everyone I was SUPPOSED to be in the office handling their shit even though I wasn’t. I also didn’t anticipate (and should have) that people would just wait to ask me to do things till I was in the office again, so this step didn’t work out the way I hoped it would have.

BUT. Something I didn’t anticipate brought it all to a head. Someone asked me to mail something for them on a day I was home. I told them I wouldn’t be able to help, and his response … he said the documents were urgent and needed to go out that day, so I would have to go to the office and take care of it. Yeah. He said *I* would have to go to the office to handle his shit for him. I responded with something like (1) boss is cc’d on this email, and (2) while I’ve been willing to help you with your documents in the past, I am not in the office today, so you will need to handle your documents yourself as I am unable to help you. He didn’t respond. My boss messaged me that she liked my email, and we had a good laugh about it. But then I asked her how the admin search was going even though I knew they never even posted anything about an admin position. She admitted it hadn’t happened yet because it wasn’t a priority (it never was) but promised she would handle it. I think this was when she realized I was serious.

At our next weekly Zoom meeting boss announced the admin position and asked everyone to tell their friends, outlined exactly what the position would entail. I thought she would have phrased it as “taking over OP’s work” since that would have been the easiest way to describe it, but instead she framed it as other people’s assistant (e.g. “this way you won’t have to drive into the office to mail your things anymore.”) I was … impressed. The implication that people had OF COURSE been handling their own shit themselves shut down any sort of protest. On one hand it was absurd because boss 100% knew no one was handling their own admin work, but on the other hand I didn’t care. She basically gas-lit the entire team, and it sorta worked. Fair dos.

The admin job was posted very quickly after that but, shockingly, part-time minimum-wage work with no benefits while all alone in a building handling everyone else’s crap isn’t a dream job. Who knew? The talent pool was … non-existent. I think we had 2 applicants in total, the first of which was hired immediately but didn’t show up for her second day, the second one didn’t show up for the interview. If there were more applicants, I wasn’t aware of them. Coworkers continued to send me their requests on the down-low (eyeroll), but I was too tired to protest so I just did them.

So I can’t say they didn’t try, though it was pretty late in the game and they didn’t really try all that hard. But they tried.

I started browsing job-postings. I’m not sure why I waited so long though loyalty probably had a lot to do with it. But one day I was bored and browsed and applied for a job. And another, and another. And every job I applied for got me an interview. Or at least a request for an interview since I ghosted so many of them. The thought of leaving my company and my job and my boss, all of which I loved, was a LOT. Like, a lot a lot. But one of them was a “can’t miss” opportunity — sort of the Moby Dick of my industry — and I took it. Increased pay, decreased responsibility. Putting in my notice was hard, REALLY hard, but I’ve never regretted it.

So. Lessons learned. To managers: PLEASE pay attention to the division of responsibilities. To employees: (1) Do NOT make other people’s problems your problems. Learn how and when and where to draw the boundaries. And (2) sometimes the situation really is too far gone and the only way to fix it is with a hard re-set. Recognizing and accepting it is the hard part. As Kenny Rogers once said, “You got to know when to walk away, and know when to run.”

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 coworker keeps asking what my clothes cost in front of other colleagues

Update on my colleague “Ava” who asked awkward questions about my clothing costs. Shortly after I wrote in I had a chance to become the manager of Ava and a few other direct reports, which is a really great thing for me! I’ve been more easily able to coach Ava and give her the professionalism feedback I think she needs because of this role change, and I have been getting great feedback on being a great manager for the past 6 ish months. I really wanted this change to management and am very happy.

Unfortunately, since becoming Ava’s manager I have realized that she lacks professionalism and office etiquette in a more significant way than just the comments about how much my clothes cost (which have stopped) and I am not sure how this job is going to work out for her. She becomes defensive with feedback and has blown up on the team over minor miscommunication, and her behavior continues to be awkward and off putting in the same way the clothing cost comments were to others on the team and they really dislike her because of it. I was pretty removed from the rest of the team previously due to different responsibilities and was in the dark about just how bad it is with her, but I’ll continue to work with her on things and hope for the best! I really want her to succeed and be a great fit to the team.

2. My boss falls asleep in meetings (#2 at the link)

Well, an update – he fell asleep again. Just after lunch. Unfortunately, I didn’t have control over the meeting agenda, so I couldn’t make the after lunch portion more engaging. There were about 15 people attending (all seated around a conference table), and for the most part of the day the meeting was just presentations – there was a fair amount of “interruptions” to the presentations, where attendees would ask the presenter questions, but there wasn’t really any good way for me to try to engage boss during those times – it would have felt out of place for ‘Suzie’ to be presenting, but for me to say “hey, boss, what do you think about what Suzie is saying?”

It could be a medical thing? I have no idea. In response to other commenters – we are a small staff (less than 10) and there is no one else closer in reporting to him than I am – if anyone were to say something to him, it would be me. On the good side, we really don’t have that many in-person meetings, much less all-day ones that I should have to deal with that often in the future. I do think, however, that if we have another (at least, another small one like this, where his behavior is noticeable) that I should say something in advance…

3. Should I let job candidates know I’m going to be leaving soon after they start? (#5 at the link)

I went forward with posting the job and reviewing resumes; I talked to several great candidates and there was a clear frontrunner in my mind. After the phone screen, I invited them to come in for an interview and also shared that I would be moving, but we have a great transition plan in place, and the rest of the team is stable. They ultimately decided that they did not want to pursue the opportunity further knowing that there would be a new manager in place; they’d been in this position before and did not have a good experience, which I respect. Not only do you run the risk of not liking the new manager, but you then also have to deal with a big transition early on.

It did throw off our hiring schedule though, and by that point it did not make sense for me to continue trying to hire & train someone prior to leaving because there just weren’t enough calendar days left. My replacement joined, I had a three-week transition with them, and they hired someone right as I was leaving. It was for a slightly different, less specialized role than I envisioned but I’m still in touch with the team and it sounds like things are going well!

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 manager attends a notoriously bigoted university (#2 at the link)

I feel okay with writing in with an update now, along with further details, because this supervisor has resigned from my firm.

The people who guessed Liberty University were correct. Unfortunately the advice given wasn’t actionable, because the entity paying for the degree was the U.S. military (my former supervisor is a veteran). Readers, if it angers you that your tax dollars get funneled to places like Liberty via the GI Bill, contact your Senator, I guess?

I am polyamorous. This is a big part of my life that also affects my work life — e.g. when my non-marital partner got Covid, I was his sole source for Paxlovid and emergency supplies, and I had to take off work to tend to those issues. Whether or not poly is considered queer/queer-adjacent, poly people are subject to a lot of discrimination that is perfectly legal. Coming out is extremely fraught.

In my year of working for her, I never got a sense from my former supervisor about her personal views on the people Liberty hates. Regardless, I’ve stayed wholly closeted at work. Call me a coward; you’re not wrong. America hasn’t reached a place where I can expect any reaction other than revulsion, and it scares me to death. Much love to everyone who has the courage to live in their full authenticity, and happy holidays to all.

2. What do I do once I retire?

I wrote in asking about what to do in retirement. The most useful comment was from someone who said, basically, think about what you most value at work. I realized that being a professor was a part of my identity I didn’t want to lose. I didn’t want to work (not the research and teaching – I was ready to stop), but being a professor was still part of me. At a party I heard someone refer to themselves as a retired librarian. And I thought, I can do that! I can be a *retired* professor. Other comments were less helpful (the number of people who suggested quilting, or the people who suggested ways I could keep teaching and research after retirement, well if I wanted to do that I would just keep working).

So I retired last summer. And in a pretty satisfying way. I and another professor took a small group of students to Germany for ten days at the end of the term. Then I and my family (kids, husband) met in Finland (where my daughter is getting an MA) for a vacation. That was great! But life happens. Amidst all this my husband was diagnosed with two serious illnesses, one progressive, incurable, and ultimately terminal. So, the silver lining is I am here to go to hospitals and doctors’ appointments with him. He is stable, for now. And I am doing different things: another trip back to Europe last summer, auditing a class, exercising more, going out more with people (while trying not to catch anything). So, my advice would be to give some thought to retirement before you jump in, be aware that any plan can be derailed, and if partnered learn to do everything your partner does because divisions of labor emerge subtly over the years and one day one of you will have to do it all.

3. I’m managing the mom of the ex-friend who catfished me

I would have certainly taken your advice, and I appreciated your words of support.

The day after I wrote in, “Michelle” told me she remembered who I was. I told her I had remembered too, it just took me a second. We expressed how great it was to see each other again after all these years. She’d show me pics of her grandchildren and talk about her kids like any other proud Mom/Grandmother would show their coworkers. There was never any weirdness.

Michelle recently retired and sadly, she suddenly and unexpectedly passed away. I went to her funeral services and obviously saw her daughter (my former friend). We hugged and I told her how sorry I was and how nice it had been to see her Mom again. She said she appreciated that I came to the service. Some of her extended family members remembered me and it was nice to see them, too (although not under happy circumstances).

Someone on my team who was close to Michelle said that she did tell her that I “basically lived at her house,” but she didn’t say that Michelle had said anything about why I had stopped going over. Like many of the comments said, she probably didn’t even know. I think my team member was trying to get some dirt out of me and asked if something had happened to make us stop being friends, and I just said no and kind of blew it off.

Certainly a sad ending to this story, but I did get some closure to an old wound.

4. My friend says we’re not supportive enough of their business idea

My friend and I who are on the same page resolved to take your advice and that from readers of being supportive but not initiating anything. However, I forgot the next time our friend spoke about opening a B&B and asked if they thought about all the things involved that would have to be done and so wasn’t as noncommittal as I should have been. In any case, our friend hasn’t made any further movements in making it a reality, so maybe there’ll be no need for concern going forward.

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 boss wants me to be positive and upbeat all the time … we work in disaster relief

I really appreciated your response and those of the site readers, and especially those who have also worked in emergency response and mental health fields and understood what I was going through.

After I wrote in, Sam backed off asking about my mental health. It appears that the conversation he had with Gillian had the desired effect, so I didn’t need to address it with him further. For those readers who thought it might be related to me being female, it appears that wasn’t the case. Sam did make one more comment about mental health in a team conference call just after I wrote in, but this time about a male colleague. After the usual round of greetings, Sam said something like “And Jim sounds particularly down today,” to which Jim replied, “I’ve got Covid!” Since then there have been no more mentions of mental health.

With regard to my own health, I continued to struggle with fatigue for several weeks and then sought medical advice. It turns out that I had a couple of physical health issues that were contributing to my feelings of exhaustion and my shorter fuse. Those have been taken care of now and I’m feeling much better, but I think it is a good further illustration of why managers shouldn’t diagnose their employees as having mental health issues, as they aren’t qualified and don’t know what else may be going on in peoples’ lives.

An additional possible contributor to my feeling burnt out was that in spite of being seconded to emergency response, I still handled three times the number of files last year as my nearest colleagues (who were not working on emergency response). Sam is aware of this as he is the one who ran the stats. Several weeks ago, he and Gillian asked me to take the lead on an interesting side project. I agreed, but asked that they assist with shifting some of my regular workload so that I could have time to focus on it. They promised that they would do this, but so far it hasn’t happened. Although I’ve enjoyed my job to date, the regular workload and expectations around emergency response have become untenable for me. I’ve been looking for another position, and just this week I interviewed for a job with another organization. I have a former colleague who left to join this organization who told me that it is a good place to work with really good managers, and I’m hopeful that I’ll receive a job offer in the next couple of weeks.

Thank you for your response. It was very helpful and a big relief to have the validation that what I was experiencing from my manager was not right.

2. My remote boss wants to know every time I go to the bathroom

I ended up just kind of forming my own boundaries without a conversation. I think my foot was halfway out the door anyways. It seemed that my boss wanted the utmost communication from me without having to reciprocate that in the slightest. It felt so uneven, especially given his bathroom comments!

I am also dealing with a dying family member. Not having the trust and flexibility in my job was brutal. I sought out new positions and turned some down based on how similar they sounded to what I was doing. I finally found one that a) pays double b) offers flexibility whenever I need it and c) I don’t need to tell anyone when I’m peeing.

I know my previous boss was probably just freaked out about control and stuff. But being on the receiving end was demeaning. Don’t treat your employees like they’re criminals!

3. Should I tell my coworker she’ll never get the promotion she deserves?

I told her. I sent her a message on Facebook so it wasn’t on any work related accounts or devices. It actually worked out well as she kind of already knew and was already looking for something else. She not only landed a better position with better pay, but her leaving actually forced a somewhat painful restructuring that pushed a few under performers out the door. Including the one that was promoted over her. I don’t mind the restructuring and I found it ultimately improved everything once the first few months were completed.

4. Manager came to work with Covid and infected high-risk people

I don’t have a fantastic update, unfortunately. Partner was resistant to bringing up any issues with HR because they’d recently been bought over by new management and he didn’t want to rock the boat, so no real consequences. The good news is that there were fake consequences! The manager who exposed everyone without disclosing did get fired not long after, just for completely different reasons. No structural changes, so while employees are required to report covid exposure it’s possible the same issue could happen again without consequences. So far her replacement hasn’t done anything as blatant as knowingly exposing high risk employees to covid or failing to disclose exposing employees to Covid so I’m taking the win.

Bonus update in case anyone was concerned about health consequences for the at-risk people who got exposed: coworker and partner are both okay, I have some mild consequences but luckily immediate danger is all ruled out.

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 new coworker kept staring at her breasts? Here’s the update.

Thank you again for publishing my letter and for your advice. It was especially great to see just how exhausted you and the commentariat were with having to even consider any of that crap, again, for the thousandth time. Feeling that collective exasperated sigh behind my back made it much easier to act.

I did at first try to ask the staring coworker rather pointedly, was there something wrong with my badge? He gave me a surprised, uncomprehending look in response and said no, no, nothing was wrong. That encounter seemed to help briefly, but in a couple of days the effect disappeared.

I next tried pointedly crossing arms across my chest and, separately, asking what it was he kept looking at. Both attempts elicited the same exact reaction as the badge try.

A day or two after my last attempt to save him the face, I finally had enough. I said, “Name, you can’t keep staring at me like this. This area (and I showed the area with my hands) is completely off limits when you talk to women.” I was tired and not feeling well that day, so it came out in a pretty harsh tone. The guy was very taken aback, he just sat there staring at me (at my face this time hah), frozen and speechless. After a minute or so of him not saying anything at all, I left the room.

He approached me later that day, in a couple hours after my outburst, very cautiously. He said he hoped I understood he never meant to stare “like that,” that it was just how his eyes were, whether he looked at men or women. He said it was considered impolite in his country of origin to look people in the eyes for long stretches, which is why he made it a habit to rest his eyes elsewhere.

Now some of that I felt was true, as I said in my original post, I had a feeling all the way through that he didn’t REALLY mean to stare at the chest. However, the part about looking at men the same way was not true at all, with them he would look at their ears, the wall behind them, that sort of things, instead of their chests (yes I had studied this aspect carefully before acting, sigh). Still, I told him that I believed him and even soothed his ego a bit by saying how much I valued his contribution to the lab. But stressed that he still had to change his eye habits, however innocently meant, around women.

The guy was very, very careful where he looked the rest of the time I worked with him, which was about 3-4 more months, so the lesson did stick. Unfortunately our relationship never recovered – he started avoiding talking with me in general, and when he did have to talk to me, his attitude reminded me of a snake charmer approaching a particularly dangerous reptile. If I stayed at that lab, this would be a very difficult thing to work through. Fortunately, for reasons completely unrelated to the staring guy, I am now happily at a great new job across the globe.

Thank you again Alison, and thank you all who commented, it is so great to have this amazing place to talk through even the hairiest of issues.