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. Telling an interviewer that the job expectations aren’t realistic (#2 at the link)

I’m the one who asked about telling an interviewer that their job description expectations aren’t realistic if I received an offer for the position. As it happens, I did not receive an offer! I was informed I was their second choice. Disappointing at the time, but perhaps I dodged the bullet.

To provide a little more context: I’m an acupuncturist in private practice. I saw that a large healthcare franchise was looking for an acupuncturist to work in a clinic they had set up to transition people with chronic conditions off of narcotic pain relievers, given what was being learned about opioid dependence. Pain management is one of my specialties, which is very rewarding, but it’s stressful to be a small business owner at the best of times. I was looking at alternatives that might provide a steadier income and benefits for myself, where I could also focus entirely on helping people and less on all of the marketing and insurance billing that occupies much of my current time.

During the hiring process, once I learned who the hiring manager was, I looked up their clinic online and found a review page that gave them less than one star out of five. Review after review from disgruntled patients criticized the clinic for taking them off of the narcotics they’d come to rely on over the long term, apparently without providing anything useful for the chronic pain. I didn’t really see this as much of a red flag in working with this clinic, as it’s bound to be a difficult transition. I commended them for thinking to provide acupuncture, which can help both in cases of pain and substance dependence.

The real red flag was during the interview when I was told that the plan was to give the acupuncturist one small treatment room to see three patients per hour. Typically, acupuncture appointments last one hour per patient, and they were offering me 20 minutes, minus the necessary time for refreshing the room, checking in with the patient about how they had been doing, disrobing when necessary, getting positioned on the table, etc.

I can see more than one patient per hour, even one every 20 minutes, but it usually has to be in separate rooms. For example, someone comes in at 1 pm, I check in with them and start the treatment, then leave the room at 1:20 and let them rest quietly for the rest of the time, then start the next person at 1:20, etc., with rolling arrivals and departures. Or it’s possible to do full treatments in an open-space “community” setting, with a number of people in recliners getting treatments as they arrive and resting for the rest of the time with the needles in. Either of these approaches can be very effective. This clinic’s proposed structure of three patients per hour, one at a time, would simply never have worked the way they wanted it to. I believe it was trying to put a little bandage on the huge amount of dissatisfaction experienced by their patients, but it would have just ended up being another layer of frustration.

So I stayed in private practice for the next several years, considering one or two other jobs that I became aware of, but never applying to any. I honestly love the people I see and help in my own clinic. My success rate is quite high, I just get burned out on the all of the admin involved in keeping an insurance-based business running despite very low insurance reimbursement rates. Recently, I’ve decided to change my business model to add additional services, and this process has fired up my enthusiasm for entrepreneurship again.

Thank you again for your response to my letter. I’ve been self-employed since the twentieth century and had no idea how to navigate the world of job interviews. Now I am about to conduct some hiring for my expanding clinic, and thanks to the regular wisdom in your column, I know what it takes to be a good interviewer and boss.

2. Should I tell a community partner’s boss that he was unprofessional? (#2 at the link)

I ended up contacting the presenter’s supervisor and she looped in her boss. They were both very concerned about what had happened and asked for more detail. I sent them all the information I had from the teacher. They told me that they were going to stop school presentations and re-tool the whole program for the fall, as well as pull John from that program. I don’t know if anything more is being done with him, but I feel confident that I did the right thing. Thanks for reassuring me it was the right choice!

3. How to tell clients I’m shutting down my business (#4 at the link)

I did manage to separate from the clients, with mostly no issues. One client refused to pay me the remaining balance owed, and still hasn’t, but I wrote it off at this point. (A friend of mine who in the same field also canceled their work, so that helped take the sting away.) I remain working with one client, but they are not an issue at all and it’s not the same services as the others.

Since then, I’ve also been diagnosed with both autism and ADHD, which, while not a reason, helps shed a little bit of light on my rigidity and over-thinking.

4. Should I trade free time for more money? (#3 at the link)

Turns out there was a lot behind the scenes going on that I was not privy to — in short order we had two senior (one C-level employee, one SVP) retire and the CEO took it as an opportunity to restructure the company. My direct manager was promoted into a CPO position and took me with him — promoting me and giving me several products to run (including building one from the ground up). I am excited to say that it is a big jump up in responsibility (and pay was raised in accordance with the new role) and my job is now much more rewarding and I find my days more full with rewarding work. It’s only been a few months, but the company has already seen increased revenue, and I have already seen professional growth.

I appreciate all the comments. Turns out I wasn’t being phased out, there was just C level restructuring that had to take place.

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 coworker had a crush on their boss and was mad that she asked her to stop talking about him? Here’s the update.

Things seemed seemed to calm down till the end of the summer. After my first letter, I started documenting conversations to prepare for a confrontation with Keith. Jan then started dating someone! yay for an appropriate distraction! The passive aggressive comments stopped about 99%. I thought we were in the clear.

Unfortunately it didn’t last. They split up after a few months. To put it simply because Jan’s deadbeat adult son drove her new beau away. Jan’s insecurities and inappropriate boundaries returned quickly. Only this time she stated being more “public” with her flirting and obnoxious comments.

I was recently promoted and started receiving more “attention” from Keith since I work with him more on projects now. During a group lunch I had my phone on the table. Jan saw a message alert and immediately demanded to know why Keith was contacting me and not her and that I didn’t need to bother him while he was on vacation. Another coworker stepped in and asked why it mattered? Jan loudly snapped back that she is the office manager and “the only one that takes care of Keith.” She left the restaurant embarrassed and my puzzled coworkers asked what all that was about. I filled them in on the other inappropriate comments. Our other coworkers at the table thought she was joking with the flirting, but clearly wasn’t now. My coworker Stacy, that I have since befriended, volunteered to talk to Jan to tell her to knock it off or she would tell Keith personally. Whatever she told her seemed to work because she essentially ignored us for a few weeks. Probably because she was afraid we would gang up on her.

I wish I could say that was the end but her behavior escalated again at Keith’s daughters engagement party last month. Jan introduced herself several times as “Aunt Jan” to the point where Keith’s wife Amy told her to stop. Then after a few too many drinks she “jokingly” tried to insert herself in a family picture and cut into dances with Keith’s wife. I could tell from across the room that Amy told Keith to make her leave. He actually asked Stacy and I to take her home. We all came separately. I firmly told him no that we were enjoying ourselves. We weren’t responsible for her and he needed to be the one to deal with her. Stacy went as far as to say that “she pulls this crap at work too and you know it.” He eventually called her an Uber. I think it finally took her making an idiot of herself in front of his family for him to realize how obnoxious her behavior had become for everyone. Keith said he would call her over the weekend to have a “long talk.”

I don’t know what the details of the conversation were, but she didn’t come to work that Monday and put in her notice not too long ago. She said she needed a fresh start and decided to move closer to other family. I think once she finally figured out that she wasn’t going to get what she wanted out of Keith that giving herself a fresh start would be wise. I do wish her well. I did learn through Stacy that her marriage wasn’t a happy one and combined with the deadbeat son, her possessive, people-pleasing with Keith made a lot more sense. I’m hoping this move will give her a new sense of purpose.

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. Can I make my spouse wear noise-canceling headphones at home? (#3 at the link)

We do have a resolution, and it has absolutely nothing to do with headphones.

I didn’t put all the pieces together, but at the time I sent the letter, my youngest child was struggling and we were all pretty sleep-deprived and stressed. Not long after I wrote to you we saw the pediatrician and started some medical and therapeutic interventions that have been an absolute game changer for our family. My kid is so much happier and as a result, we are too.

My husband… still does not wear headphones. He doesn’t like the way they make him look so it isn’t really an issue of how effective they are. And at this point, we’ve all accepted that if he won’t wear them, he’s going to have to deal with standard family noise. Now that our kid is doing better he is much more flexible and tolerant about it.

Looking back this was clearly more about what was going on with our family and our own well-being, and I really appreciated the commentators that pointed in that direction! (And there was some great advice about headphones, so I might pick up a pair for myself.)

2. Diplomatically criticizing AI in an interview (#3 at the link)

Thank you so much for your advice with my question!

My writing sample got me the next interview. At that stage my interviewer hardly talked about my writing at all—other than to say it was great!—and didn’t ask about my experience with the AI. Based on your suggestions, I asked about their experiences so far with AI as a writing tool. I learned they were still in the very early stages of exploring how AI could support the team and that the person they would hire for the role would get to take the lead on that exploration.

That person is now me! So far, we haven’t had a lot of success in getting the AI machine to learn our style and tone, and it has a tendency to make stuff up that’s not necessarily obvious at a quick glance (deceptive word salad). For now, writing from scratch is still the fastest and most accurate way to get the job done.

We’ll keep experimenting with the writing, but for now I’ve been using AI in other ways. It’s been a great help in brainstorming solutions to data challenges the team faces. After I learned how to formulate questions in a way the machine understands, it’s written Excel formulas that speed up my workflows. I’ve even had it write Excel scripts, and teach me how to use them, since that’s something I’ve never done before.

I’m cautiously optimistic about the potential uses for AI in the future in this role. I’ll be sure to keep you posted.

3. My coworker jokes about suicide (#3 at the link)

First off, I’d like to thank you for posting my question. You and the readers have been really kind, and it helped a lot to know that it bothers other people too and it’s a legitimate thing to be bothered by.

I tried your advice and said, “Please, don’t joke about suicide” or “That’s not funny,” but he would just respond that it’s just a joke and keep on doing it.

I decided to follow the readers’ advice, thinking that maybe the jokes were a cry for help (and I feel bad for not thinking of that earlier; I really wanted the jokes to seem like they never occurred to me to think about why they were happening). Unfortunately, I’m not in a good enough place to have a face-to-face conversation about this, so I grabbed a suicide prevention flyer and left it on his desk.

I saw when he read the flyer, and I don’t know if he needed help or realized it could be taken seriously. But it’s been a week, and he hasn’t made any kind of joke. So, I consider it a win.

4. I’m sharing a hotel room with a coworker but I snore

I took your advice and said I’d just head home in the evenings to take care of family responsibilities … and then we got hit with a massive ice storm during the conference. We ended up stuck at the hotel for five days! I did have to share a room with a colleague, but there was enough other stuff going on that I decided to just roll with the punches, and it was fine.

My husband and I moved about five hours away from our old city this year. The 2024 annual conference is in our new city, just about 10 minutes from our house. I made sure everyone knows well in advance that I’m going to spend the nights at home.

And yes, my snoring is much better!

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 employee tore down other people’s work to make themselves look better? Here’s the update.

You had excellent points about pay parity, which I agree with and brought up with leadership and got positive feedback! You asked about my employee being defensive in other areas — hoo boy, most definitely. Defensive became downright hostile. What started as comparisons of their work to a peer escalated to attacking my work, as well as the work of other managers in other departments. They took their complaints and demand for a raise to our executive director after I told them outright to stop criticizing other people’s work. It came to light that the specific work they were taking credit for and citing as reason to get a raise was unsanctioned — not in their job description and work that I had specifically told them not to do. After being informed that the unsanctioned work was out of line, they expressed anger along the lines of “you can’t unring that bell though” and submitted their four-week notice, which is where things get weird and have much less to do with the employee and more to do with organizational culture and the bummer that is middle-management.

You might be thinking “four weeks is a strangely long amount of time to give notice, especially for an entry-level position.” You’d be right! My boss told me there was nothing we could do about it as long as they were not actively harming our work (note: we’re an at-will employer so that’s definitely not true, but I suspect leadership wanted to avoid unemployment “stuff”?). The month that followed was full of chaos. The employee spent loads of time actively ignoring me and their job duties, making work noticeably more difficult for everyone with whom they interacted. I would catch them lingering in my office and staring over my shoulder, trying to see what I was doing on my computer and sometimes even asking point-blank “what it is I do all day.” I repeatedly asked my boss if we could let them go before their notice period was up, as the employee was now actively harming my work, and was told to be patient. I was given space to vent, but no tools or ability to affect the situation. The organizational culture here is very conflict-avoidant, so much so that I received emails from our executive director commending me for my “strength and patience” as a coded reference. Essentially, everyone was watching this happen, acknowledging it was bad, but wouldn’t put a stop to it.

It was only after the employee left that multiple staff members and volunteers confided in me that in addition to the poor performance and hostile behavior I was noticing, the employee had also been actively spreading rumors and airing all their dirty laundry and opinions about me, my supervision, and how I am unfit to lead. The one that stung the worst was them telling multiple people they were tired of me being “sick so often, as it is impacting their performance when they do show up at work.” I have a documented chronic health condition. Yikes.

Since then, we have hired a new HR director who sat in on a debriefing with leadership and spoke up for me and confirmed what I thought — as an at-will employer, “there’s nothing we could have done” was a poor excuse for how this went down. I received an apology and assurance that future situations will be handled differently, there will be more clarity around hiring and firing decisions, and there is upcoming management training on how to handle employee performance issues. Unfortunately, I’ve not seen any of those improvements made yet and my mental health at work hasn’t recovered, nor has it been checked in on since that debrief. I guess the bright side is that I’ve been able to get more work done in the past three months than I have all year, as I now have a new assistant who doesn’t need constant coaching on how to behave kindly towards other people and professionally in an office.

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 who worked at Twitter while it was imploding? The first update was here, and here’s the latest.

I’m very happy to report that I got a new job! After months of applying and not really getting anywhere, I reached out to a career development coach who used to work at Twitter with me and who specializes in folks in my industry. She really helped me with how to prepare for interviews, how to put my best foot forward, and how to not be discouraged/take it personally when I received a rejection. I hadn’t been in the job market for almost 10 years so I was pretty rusty, and working with someone who knew how to highlight my skill set was so helpful.

In July, I got a job offer at a company I fell in love with during the interview process, and I started in August! I now work at a smallish startup (not so small that I feel like we’ll go out of business any day, not so giant that I feel like I have no ability to have an impact) and I’m really loving it so far. The role is a great match for my skills, but also lets me learn about a whole new field. I have a great manager who trusts my judgement and gives me really interesting projects to work on, and a team full of the nicest group of smart and funny nerds – a team dynamic I love.

One of the best parts is that since joining I’ve been able to successfully refer two members of my former team, and it feels really great to be helping my former colleagues move on from Twitter.

I still miss my old team and the Old Twitter — it’s been really hard to see news story after news story reporting on some new and sad development at the company, but as I’m getting more distance from my time there, it does sting a little less (when Twitter was renamed ‘X’ that did provide a good amount of closure for me since it truly felt at that point like Twitter was gone and the new company had nothing to do with it anymore).

I want to thank you for your reply to my initial letter and the kind responses from your readers — I have such a clear memory of writing that with this pit of dread in my stomach because I felt so hopelessly stuck, and it’s quite nice to look back on that and realize how differently I feel now. I’m so appreciative!

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.

Warning: This is a tough update to read.

Remember the letter-writer who managed a gay employee at a homophobic company? Here’s the update.

It’s been a few months of ups and downs. I wanted to reply both to thank you and the commentariat for the excellent advice and insight and to thank everyone for being far more forgiving and sympathetic than was deserved.

I think I need to go into more detail about where I work to add context but also don’t want to reveal too much for the sake of anonymity. We serve a client base that is extremely vulnerable and volatile and we are really the only option in our city. A certain level of bad behavior is expected, and banning them is unthinkable to us. It is overwhelming and often awful and we do have a huge burnout rate – but it’s also hugely necessary, literally life saving, and a lot of us are putting up with a lot because what we do is needed.

Readers reasonably asked if we’re bad with other minorities and I’d say (as a Brown woman) we’re generally good. Our senior leadership team is diverse, our staff are diverse, we have more women than men at all levels, we have generous sick/disability policies, and we make truly excellent accommodations for disability. The hole is that our clients can pretty much get away with anything – but even then if a client racially abuses someone (as has happened very recently) they are warned and we severely limit what activities they can be part of and length of time in the building. It’s not great but we do something.

Unfortunately with a lot of our staff and partner agencies, homophobia crosses with religion – which we are extremely accommodating towards. And while in terms of race, gender, and disability we have a diverse team and leadership, the same is not true for LGBTQ people.

So, Darren is still with us. Part of me is overjoyed because he is such an asset and a great guy, but I’m also somewhat saddened because everyone was right, this isn’t a healthy place for him. I feel Darren has absorbed the idea that a certain level of homophobia is just something you have to live with; I know he has had some bad experiences and I feel he is not good at advocating for himself.

Things are somewhat better here, albeit not necessarily for the right reasons: senior management were reminded of their legal liability, the fact Darren has a law degree, and the potential bad PR. Even with the current government’s considerable anti-LGBTQ hostility, the central office is always rather reactive to anything sniffing of scandal, and “allows years of unrelenting, unchecked homophobia” is not a selling point.

So we’ve had a mandatory refresher of our diversity training and senior management have passed strong guidance to team leaders that this has to stop and they do have to intervene. It has made a difference (though the general overwhelmedness of everyone means we don’t intervene enough) – just that clear message from the seniors that this is not OK encourages on-the-ground team leads to do something (and that it’s ok to speak up even if someone is invoking religion as an excuse) and a clear message that the senior leadership is paying attention (well … for a given value of attention anyway). There is a culture shift. But it’s confined to our staff – not our partner agencies or clients.

But I must mention our receptionist, Rita – the main driver of change: she’s an older, very self-confident, very respected, fierce lady who handles everything our front desk throws at her (which is a lot). Once this train wreck hit her radar, she decided she is Not Having It. She has chewed out clients, partner agency representatives, staff, managers, visiting regional directors – she is taking no prisoners. And I think this is a vital lesson because we may not all be as scary as Rita (who is very scary) but there’s real power in all of us, at every level, being willing to say, “Stop. This isn’t OK.” It’s hard to dismiss your peers and colleagues saying no (and no one dismisses Rita). The commenters really covered this before – and it was my silence that was such a problem here – but there’s a real power here to just everyone saying “this is not OK.”

I’ve rambled a lot and we’re not in a great place for many reasons (the core of which is always under-resourcing) but maybe, potentially, we’re doing something to tackle this. It’s early days but I’m hopeful (which isn’t something I say often at work).

Update to the update:

Unfortunately I have to add an update to the update, because it’s always 2 steps forwards, 11 steps back.

Since last month, we’ve had an urgent major inter-services project going on and Darren has been doing the lion’s share of the work. It’s not entirely his role, but he has excellent knowledge and experience and he’s an excellent problem solver. With so many things, there’s the choice of “spend 2 hours trying to find this out” or “spend 10 minutes asking Darren.” With this being on such a time crunch, a lot fell on him.

And we did an awesome job; I’m really proud of what we achieved. Our work is being used as an exemplar by our head office for other services around the country. Darren should receive a great deal of credit for this … and didn’t. One of the biggest charities we’re working with is headed up by a couple of dedicated, passionate, and highly religious women who have been a not small part of the inter-agency homophobia problem. Our senior team have responded by keeping Darren at arm’s length. He does the work, then I or someone else takes it to the meeting. We talk about what we did, we say “Sarah did this and Anita did that, and we did this…” and that “we” is Darren. We went into big meetings and Darren provides “remote support” on teams feeding us information and hiding he’s involved. As we brought everything together, it became more apparent just how much Darren was erased from this. In a dozen ways Darren was, to be brutally honest about it, closeted.

This did remove all the conflict and any potential of homophobic abuse, but instead we completely sidelined him and denied him the recognition he deserved. This isn’t an ego thing — we’re not in a field that encourages ego after all — but a real career consequence. Of course Darren is no fool and is painfully aware of what happened (the “closet” line up there is a direct quote).

Sadly it’s pretty typical. It was the easiest way to avoid a conflict, or delay it at least, and we’ll always take an easy short-term “solution” rather than a more difficult but actually effective path.

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 who had to train an aggressive man when she had a trauma history? Here’s the update.

I booked a meeting with my manager to go through the training plan and as part of this discussion I brought up the mouse-throwing incident so we could make a plan to manage similar behavior if it came up in training. I basically said if anyone (not just Derek) acts with hostility or aggression in training, I would ask them to leave and if they wouldn’t, then I would. I wanted assurance from my manager I would have his full support if this happened, which he gave me. Thankfully I didn’t end up asking anyone to leave but it gave me confidence knowing I could take action if I need to.

If this isn’t too long, here are some other things I did to manage the situation:
– I wrote out what I would say if asking someone to leave and practiced saying it.
– I asked my manager (a department director) to ask the other directors to remind their team they need to engage in training and any hostility would not be tolerated. This instruction had more impact coming from their chain of command rather than our team.
– At the beginning of each training session, as part of housekeeping, I reminded everyone that we would be respectful towards each other in training. This was helpful as it called out possible bad behavior without singling anyone out.

Training was offsite and over multiple days with different teams. Generally my manager wouldn’t be at the offsite location all day but I did end up asking him to work from the training location on the day Derek was there. I really struggled with this, I didn’t want to undermine myself or make my manager feel I couldn’t handle the training but ultimately I think it was the right decision. My manager didn’t actively participate in training but worked quietly in the background with the rest of the project team. Derek is exclusively hostile to women or those below him in the hierarchy, so I do think having my manager visibly there made him rein in his behavior.

In training, Derek was clearly frustrated but he didn’t do anything inappropriate. He did ask a lot of sly, challenging, critical questions trying to pick holes in the system but that was easy for me to manage since I know the system inside and out and always had a good answer. After training, someone in the office heard him talk about how he tried to give me a hard time. Which is gross but also made me laugh since nothing he said was actually hard for me to answer!

Since we launched, he semi-frequently sends emails just toeing the line of unprofessionalism, complaining about the system, usually cc’ing in as many managers as possible. Unfortunately for him, his issues are either user error or a deliberate choice made by higher-ups that he doesn’t understand or agree with so he mostly ends up looking stupid when I (very professionally with a minimal amount of glee) explain that his problem is not actually a problem. He also didn’t log into the system until three weeks after we launched which is wild because the only way he can do his job is by using the system so I have no idea what he was doing in that time.

He is currently very polite to me in person but continues to be awful to others in the office. Most recently he had a go at a younger woman in an admin role, and another staff member had to step in and tell him to back off. I didn’t see this happen and I find it very frustrating when those who see it don’t escalate it or formally report it to HR. Everything I’ve witnessed was pre-training so I feel like it’s too old or not bad enough on its own for me to report. I’m keeping an eye out now and will report it if anything comes up.

As an aside, after training I received many glowing emails about how informative and well run it was. I’ve also been complimented several times on how I can answer any questions thrown at me! I’m so proud of the system I helped build and the work I’ve done to launch and embed it. I really do love my job.

I didn’t end up talking about my history because you were right when you said this behavior wasn’t okay regardless of that. After my email to you and my initial panic wore off, I was really pleased to find that once I’d calmed down I was able to handle it very well. I put together a plan and acted assertively to make sure it was followed. And I was fine!

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 coworkers wanted them to turn down their raise? Here’s the update.

Thanks so much for your advice and the help from the commenters. I wouldn’t have previously considered my workplace toxic but it was helpful to learn that many people saw it differently. Honestly, Mo is great at the job we do, she’s highly regarded in our field, and she was a wonderful mentor to me when I started, but she just isn’t a good manager (in a flustered, reactive way, not an evil genius as some suggested!). And my coworkers were great too, really supportive and kind and we’ve shared tears and laughter over many years. I used to love my job and would never have thought about leaving! It was hard for me to accept how drastic and widespread the changes to our culture had been, especially as it had really only been about 60 working days for me between the departure of the last manager and the letter I received.

A few people queried how the salaries of the four senior people who left were the same as a 50% raise for a part time employee. The managers who left took a lot of the clients with them, so the business did have a decline in revenue. If I left, it would have been even worse for the business as I was bringing in about twice what I cost. We also tried several times to hire people to do the management tasks that needed to be reallocated, but most people quit within a few weeks of being hired (and everyone but Mo could see why).

I swallowed my resentment, took your advice, and reached out to my coworkers. The letter was ridiculous but I can understand why they were angry and that I was an easy target for that anger. I let them know that I still wanted to support them and that I’d join them if they wanted to take a stand (against Mo). I explained how I had secured the raise from Mo, gave them the contact details of the lawyer who helped me with my new contract, and I suggested that the other people who had been given access to the payroll and accounting info do the maths themselves. The hostility towards me seemed to fade to indifference. Or so I thought.

Before all this mess, our annual company picnic had been organised for a few weeks after I received the letter. This had usually been a fun day of relaxed team bonding and I was hoping it would be a time to connect and move past the awkwardness. My family and I turned up at the park and…no one else did. Yep, 29 adults decided to ghost me and have their picnic elsewhere. I went home, cried, and ate the pan of brownies I had made to share.

Once I stopped feeling sick from brownie overdose, I realised that my colleagues had done me a favor. I was no longer torn by ideas of loyalty, fairness and doing the right thing. So I stayed at the job while I got my freelance business started and I kept things as civil and professional as I could muster.

After a month I resigned, calmly and without the “screw you all!!” I wanted to say. My own business has been going well so far and I’m earning close to what I was earning before the management change. I wish I could say that I’m glad I took the high road and things are working out for me and I’m happy, but I miss the company that I loved for many years and I’m still grieving.