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metafilter_feedaskamanager_feedA reader writes:
My reason for writing stems from a recent situation where I was meeting with my direct report, Lucas, to discuss an idea he came up with. It was a great idea, so I commended him for it and told my boss about it too to give Lucas more visibility across our department.
I did this because historically, Lucas has been difficult to manage because he is stubborn and argumentative. So I am hoping that with some positive feedback when it is due, and gentle coaching now and then, I can turn him around.
Anyway, when I brought his idea to my boss’ attention, my boss (Allen) directly reached out to him and decided to include him in a client call to allow Lucas to present the idea. I warned my boss not to do this given Lucas’s stubborn personality but Allen felt I was just being insecure and went ahead with it, with no internal meeting to align first and without any coaching of Lucas before the call.
The call went badly as the client wasn’t open to Lucas’s idea. But Lucas kept insisting on implementing his idea even though our client refused and said no several times. He even started lecturing the client on why certain things in their data package to us were wrong. At that point, I had to step in and ask him to leave it there.
I went to Allen after the meeting to complain about all this, and he said he would talk to Lucas about it since it was his idea to bring him into the call. I learned, however, that Allen had actually told Lucas that he did an excellent job on the call. But then Allen told me on the side that we will never bring Lucas on future client calls.
I felt this not right, as there should be transparency in our department, and without feedback Lucas will not understand what he did wrong and how to fix it. I think it’s not fair to exclude him from calls without telling him why, even though Lucas typically isn’t supposed to be part of client calls anyway.
So, I met with Lucas and told him if he wants to be on calls in future, he needs to listen to the client and not try to ram his own ideas through if the client is not receptive. He refused to listen to me as he said Allen gave him good feedback and so he didn’t understand why I had a problem. This is when I told him that due to his actions, he was actually being put off any future calls until we saw improvements and that this wouldn’t be happening if in fact his performance was good during the call.
When Allen found out I had told Lucas about him not being on client calls again, he was furious at me. He called me to his office and accused me of being a toxic manager and said he believes any problems I have had with Lucas in the past (I complained to my boss about Lucas causing issues in the past due to his argumentative nature) were due to me not being able to manage. He then went on to threaten to fire me and to never allow my team to expand since he feels I will not manage anyone well.
Am I in the wrong in all of this? Should I have done things differently and if so, how should I have managed this situation better? I have been thinking about this constantly and I really would like to not be fired.
So Allen was upset with Lucas’ behavior on the call to the point that he wants to ban him from future client calls — but for some reason he told Lucas that he did an excellent job with the client and got mad at you for saying the opposite? And you’re toxic and the source of all the problems with Lucas?
The problem here is Allen.
Or, at least, one of the problems here is Allen.
The other problem is likely that you’re not managing Lucas as assertively as you need to; positive feedback and “gentle coaching from time to time” aren’t nearly forthright enough for someone who’s as argumentative as you describe. But I can understand why you might be hesitant to take that on more directly when you have a manager like Allen above you — someone who clearly doesn’t have your back and threatens to fire you when you relay honest feedback to an employee.
If Allen were a reasonable person, the right next step would be to go back and talk about all this — to find out why he didn’t want Lucas to receive honest feedback about his behavior with the client, and also to dig into exactly what his concerns are about the way you’re managing your team. But based on your letter, it doesn’t sound like you have the kind of relationship with Allen — and Allen doesn’t have the self-awareness or receptiveness to viewpoints other than his own — that would allow that to happen in a constructive way.
Frustratingly, though, I don’t see how you can move forward without doing that, since he’s threatening to fire you and doesn’t seem to have much respect for you professionally. So I think you have to have some kind of conversation with him about what happened … but how candid and useful it can be will be determined by whether Allen ever has moments of rationality or whether he’s always as ridiculous as he seems to have been here.
In your shoes, I’d be taking a look at the job as a whole and whether it’s a good idea — or even possible — to work for Allen long-term. “You should leave” is easy to say … but unless this was wildly out of character for him, this is probably a situation where it’s better for you to work on leaving.
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metafilter_feedaskamanager_feedA reader writes:
Hopefully this is a non-issue very soon, but I was wondering what ideas you’ve encountered or heard of that might be helpful.
I am a manager of a small to medium-sized federal office. We are in furlough but required to work. While most of my employees are okay financially at the moment, we have three or four (and probably one or two who are private) who are being hit hard, and with SNAP benefits seemingly going away this is going to be a real issue for them and their families.
We have certain ethical boundaries we can’t cross, and I don’t want to single any one out. But I can’t let my employees go hungry. Have you heard of any creative ideas that I might be able to try? We’ve already compiled a list of outside resources, but this doesn’t seem enough.
If you were a private employer, you’d have a lot more options for how you could help, from offering temporary food subsidies to bringing in lunch more often to adding (or increasing the stock of) things like oatmeal and other basics in the office kitchen.
But you work for the federal government, which means you don’t have the budget authority for those things, so you have to get more creative. Compiling resources is good (and if you’re in the D.C. area like many federal employees, this article has links to a range of local help). Could you also partner with local organizations that will offer coupons for free or heavily subsidized food?
You could also do a very low-pressure office food drive — like setting up a bin for canned goods in an inconspicuous area with a sign on it to donate if you want and to take what you need, and then letting people know it’s there.
But man, none of this comes close to filling the gap.
Readers, other ideas? (Keep in mind that this letter-writer has pretty rigid financial restrictions on what they can do because they work for the government.)
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askamanager_feedA reader writes:
I started at my company about five years ago after being laid off from my previous company due to Covid. Once I started here, I was shocked to discover that one of my old friends (Susan) who I was very close to in college (which I had graduated from 10 years prior) worked at the same company in a different building on the company’s campus.
I reached out to her briefly on Teams just to say, “Oh wow, I had no idea you worked here. If you’re ever near my building, pop by and say hey and maybe we could grab a coffee.” She responded warmly and we had one brief conversation in my office, and that was the last time I saw her for months. We were in different departments with very little crossover, so we never had reason to interact in a work setting and we weren’t the kind of friends who were in constant communication so I didn’t think much of it.
Cut to a while later — maybe six months to a year — and I met up with the friendship group that had survived from our college years. Susan was invited but unable to attend, and during this gathering our mutual friend Carla said that Susan had decided she no longer wanted to be friends with the rest of us, only wanted to keep her friendship with Carla, and our over-a-decade-long friendship was essentially over. It wasn’t only me who got cut off by Susan, but I must admit that I took it quite personally, given that we worked at the same place. I wondered if the formal break-up through our mutual friend wasn’t specifically aimed at me because none of the rest of our friends would have had reason to run into her, given that we were all very spread out geographically. I also felt like because the news was delivered via a mutual friend, I never got the chance to get closure or understanding of why the friendship ended.
For the past four years, this has been mostly a non-issue since we only run into each other maybe twice a year at work and none of our work crosses over. But recently a department that I work incredibly closely with was hiring. I was talking to my friend in that department and she told me that they had had an exciting internal applicant, and lo and behold it was Susan. I’m 100% sure that Susan will get this job; she is intelligent and hard-working, and I know they had been struggling with finding external candidates to fill this role.
I’m feeling anxious at the prospect of working closely with her. There was a time when we were really close friends and basically living in each other’s pockets. She was the first and only person at college who I told when my mother died and she helped me share that information with our other friends. Then we weren’t and I never got the chance to understand why. I just have no clue how to gauge my behaviour. Did we stop being friends because the friendship just fizzled over time? Did I do something to annoy her? Was the trigger me showing up at her place of work unexpectedly? Did she feel like I followed her there or was pressuring the relationship? I am autistic and social stuff can be very tough for me to navigate even at the best of times but this feels like a whole minefield. I am also having a lot of anxiety that if the friendship ended because she didn’t like me specifically or I unknowingly did something that upset her, that may still be true and may affect my working relationship with the people I am friends with in that department.
I know the first port of call is to behave professionally towards Susan and treat her like any other colleague, but should I be doing anything else proactively? It’s been a few years since the news that we were no longer friends was delivered, so bringing it up would be weird, I think. I did not say anything to my friend in the other department when she suggested that Susan might be getting the job, other than endorsing her candidacy because I truly feel like she would be a good fit for this role, and despite the awkward way our friendship ended I hold no ill will against her. We’re both still friends with Carla so I was considering reaching out to her to see if she had any sense of how Susan felt about me, but then indirect communication through Carla is also what spawned a lot of this anxiety in the first place.
Pay attention to that last sentence because I actually think Carla stirred up a lot of drama where there didn’t need to be any.
If Susan wanted to end her friendship with your friend group, she could have just … done that. Carla didn’t need to make a formal announcement. Susan could have talked to people herself or just done the natural fade/falling out of touch that happens frequently post-college. I’m side-eyeing Carla a bit for thinking it was her place to announce this to the rest of you (and I can’t tell if Susan asked her to, or if she took it upon herself — it sounds like maybe the latter). “She doesn’t want to be friends with any of you, only me” also makes me wonder if her announcement was self-serving in some way. Regardless, if Carla hadn’t said anything that day, you wouldn’t be feeling any of this anxiety now — so it’s worth noting that your fears right now are coming from Carla’s actions, not Susan’s.
As for what happened, I’d bet money that it’s not about anything you did at all, because she cut off your entire friend group. It’s far more likely that it’s something like feeling very different from her college self now, or even having bad memories of that time and avoiding people associated with it, or going through something now and not having the energy to keep up with older, more distant friendships, or … well, all sorts of other things that you wouldn’t know from the outside. I don’t think you need to wrack your brain trying to figure out if you caused this. (It’s also very unlikely that Susan felt like you deliberately followed her to her company. It’s a large company, people one knows might pop up, and it sounds like your approach to her was extremely normal and low-key.)
Your instincts to just treat Susan like any other colleague are absolutely right. You don’t need to do anything else proactively (like reaching out to her ahead of time), and actually I strongly think you shouldn’t. Just be low-key about the whole thing, which has the advantage of demonstrating for her that a low-key approach is perfectly workable and no one needs to feel tense or weird about the situation. Treat her the way you would someone else you didn’t have a history with — meaning pleasantly and with good will and with no real expectations beyond working together productively — and just assume that you and Susan will build a new relationship as colleagues that will be its own thing, rather than an extension of the old friendship.
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metafilter_feedmetafilter_feedmetafilter_feedmetafilter_feedmetafilter_feedmetafilter_feedaskamanager_feedIt’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…
1. Should you put fan fiction on your resume?
I saw someone online saying that they write fan fiction at Ao3 and so on their resume they put “independent fiction writer” or “independent online publishing project” without explaining what they write or that it’s at Ao3. They say that if you’re asked about it in an interview, you can answer with, “I prefer to keep my personal creative work separate from my professional identity, but I’ve used it as a way to improve my writing, editing, and consistency over time.” This seems like a really bad idea to me, but is it?
Yes, it’s a bad idea. If you prefer to keep your personal creative work separate from your professional identity, then you shouldn’t put it on your resume! Anything on your resume is assumed to be fair game for interviewers to ask about, since by definition you’re offering it up as evidence of your qualifications — so if you then refuse to discuss it, it’s going to come across really badly.
Moreover, the fact that you’ve written things isn’t in itself a qualification; they need to see that it’s good writing, by seeing samples of it or at least by seeing that it was vetted and published by someone qualified to judge it.
So at an absolute minimum it won’t help you at all — because for all they know the writing doesn’t really exist, since you’re not willing to talk about it (thereby negating the point of including it in the first place) — but beyond that it likely to actively count against you by making you look shady or just … off.
2. My boss told me what I did was “unacceptable”
I work as a middle manager in a large corporation. A few weeks ago, I received a notification that an intern we were expecting wouldn’t be available for a few more weeks. I flagged it for my manager, received his approval, and approved as well. My manager is now on leave until the end of the year, and his manager has been the new go-to. During my weekly update, I included this request/approval, and it was not received well.
My grandboss told me it was unacceptable that I had not included details about this intern’s delay sooner. He asked to see the request itself and where my boss had provided approval. I sent those over right away and realized that when I sent the notice to my boss, I had sent the entire request but hadn’t been super clear about how long the delay would be. I said this to my grandboss and apologized.
I admit that I shut down after hearing him call my mistake unacceptable. Every explanation I had just seemed like an excuse, so I gave short answers. He insinuated that I had not read the email in full, because how else would I think this wasn’t a huge deal, and commented on how this proves what he’s been saying and that I needed leadership training. (This was news to me.)
I have no problem owning a mistake, and I understand that I am ultimately the one at fault. But I am at a loss on how I could have responded in this situation that would allow me to stand up for myself while also accepting the mistake. It seems as though he just wanted me to grovel. My boss had not flagged any performance issues with me, but I’m concerned this indicates that my work is seen as poor.
This is not the first time I have worked directly with my grandboss. Before this, I would have said we had a good working relationship. Any tips on how I could have handled this better? Do I approach him again? Do I bring this up when my manager returns?
How big a deal is it actually that an intern is starting a few weeks later than planned? Interns aren’t usually crucial to business operations, and a few weeks delay in anyone’s start date isn’t normally a disaster unless they need to immediately take on essential, time-sensitive work (which isn’t typically the case for interns). So first, do you even agree with your grandboss that this is a big deal? Would your boss agree, if he knew about it?
Does your boss’s boss have a history of overreacting to things? Or of being super controlling (and so his ire here might be more about not being kept in the loop on something relatively minor, rather than about the delay itself)? Because this sounds fundamentally like a weird reaction.
Separate from that, though, I’m not sure exactly what you shutting down and giving short answers looked like, but it’s possible that it came across differently than you’d want — such as uninvested, unconcerned, or even rude. Ideally you’d have said, “I didn’t think pushing out the start date by a few weeks would interfere with any projects, and since I thought Rowan was looped in, I didn’t realize it was something I should flag for you earlier. I’ll handle anything like that differently going forward.” You could still say that now, but more important is probably talking with your boss when he returns, explaining what happened, and asking for his help in understanding where his boss was coming from, what that leadership training comment was about, and whether there are issues with how your grandboss sees your work more broadly (because his comments implied that, and that’s something you’ve got to dig into now).
3. My former boss is telling people I was fired for working 2 jobs — I wasn’t
I was heavily recruited to join a company earlier this year. Shortly after I started, I knew it was a mistake. My training was passed off to other (overworked) members of my team who had no time, the manager of my team was always unavailable for questions, and the whole environment was toxic and unstable. My one-on-one meetings with my boss were either canceled or only a few minutes long, with a “you’re doing fine!” I poured a ton of time and effort in to get up to speed quickly but, after only a few months, had an abrupt meeting put on my calendar with the manager and HR to let me know I wasn’t a good fit. Although unexpected, I was definitely not heartbroken to leave the chaos behind.
My issue is that I have remained friends with several of my colleagues who still work there, and one let me know that today in an all-hands meeting, that manager said I was let go because I was working two jobs at once, which absolutely was not true. That job took up so much time, there was no way I could have juggled two jobs even if I had wanted to. I’m puzzled as to why she would make up this lie, and why she would bring it up now to the entire team after I’ve been gone for six months. It’s really bothering me, but I’m thinking it’s not worth addressing with her. Thoughts?
It’s worth addressing; she’s spreading false information about you! It’s possible that it’s intentional, or maybe things are so chaotic there that she’s confusing you with someone else, or maybe she really thought that for some reason — who knows. But it’s reasonable to email her, cc’ing HR, and saying something like, “I’ve been alerted that you’re telling employees that I was fired for working two jobs at once, which is unequivocally not the case. I did my best while I was there and was disappointed when it didn’t work out, and I am requesting confirmation from the company that you are not misrepresenting the circumstances of my departure.” Alternately, skip the manager and just send it straight to HR.
You could also have a lawyer handle this for you, pointing out that lying about the facts of your firing is defamation, but I don’t know that it’s worth paying a lawyer to deal with it unless you also plan on using this company as a reference, which I’m guessing you don’t.
4. I don’t know if my office has anywhere private for me to pump
I work in a very small department of a large organization, and I’ll be going on maternity leave in January. I know that when I return, legally my job has to provide me with a space to pump that is available when I need it, private/not accessible to the public or coworkers, and not the bathroom. The big issue I’m seeing: there’s really no space that meets those requirements in our small, quirky, historical building. While some people have offices with doors that shut, those coworkers all work busy and unpredictable schedules with lots of virtual meetings, and I don’t think that booting a coworker out of their office would work other than in a pinch very occasionally. Our conference rooms all have glass doors, and we don’t even have a supply closet or break room I could use. I know that there is a chance my plans for pumping/breastfeeding don’t work out, but I am wondering if this is an issue I should raise now, or wait until the beginning of the year (but at least six weeks before my return date) when I have a better idea if this is an accommodation I’ll actually need?
I generally like to try and problem solve before bringing something to my boss, but right now my only options are to request that some not insignificant work be done in our building to create a space for me (very unlikely to happen due to budget constraints), request that they provide a room for me elsewhere on campus (okay but not appealing because I’d have to walk 5-10 minutes to another building each time I needed to pump), or request a work-from-home accommodation/hybrid schedule due to pumping (which I’d love and I’ll have childcare so that wouldn’t be a conflict, but I doubt would be granted even though my work could be done remotely and I’d be willing to come in a few hours a day). For what it’s worth, I do think our HR department is very reasonable on most things, but this is not an issue where I can think up a simple solution that will make everyone happy.
The simplest solution would be to make one of the conference rooms private by covering the glass in the door. It’s not on you to solve — it’s up to them to figure out how to meet their legal obligations — but it does make sense to ask about it now so they have time to come up with solutions. When you do, you can say, “I’m not sure what’s available as a private space, but one idea I had was to cover the glass on one of the conference rooms for privacy and use that.” (Also, if that is what they settle on, make sure there’s a system for ensuring it remains available to you; a covered glass window won’t matter if the room is in use when you need it.)
5. Can I avoid my boss at the company party?
Is it really necessary to spend time with your manager at a company’s casual party? The management has been horrible with me by giving me two people’s worth of work and then deducting my bonus because I couldn’t action it all on time.
I only want to say “hi, how are you?” and that’s it. But last year when I did that, he said people noticed and a big drama could be caused. Could there be any problems or HR-related issues for me if I avoid him? I cannot leave the job for at the moment.
Normally it would be absolutely fine and unremarkable to just pleasantly greet your manager at a party but not hang out talking to him, unless you’re doing something that makes it very obvious that you’re going out of your way to avoid him like ignoring him in a three-person conversation or otherwise pointedly snubbing him. If nothing like that happened, it’s extremely odd that he even noticed it, let alone that it caused drama!
That said, if he complained about it last year, then your life will probably be easier if you spend five minutes talking with him this year before excusing yourself to get a drink and then just happening to find yourself in conversation with people who are not him for the rest of the party. His behavior is weird, but there’s no gain in standing on principle if a five-minute conversation will satisfy him.
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metafilter_feedmetafilter_feedmetafilter_feedmetafilter_feedmaru_feedmetafilter_feedmetafilter_feedmetafilter_feedmetafilter_feedaskamanager_feedA reader writes:
Our local business group/Chamber of Commerce had a luncheon today to hand out awards to the business community. My business was nominated and picked for an award.
As I only have four employees, I closed the business for the afternoon and had them join me for the lunch and award ceremony. As the luncheon was finishing up, I left the room to go get my picture taken with the other award winners and then left. I had let my employees know they could leave at anytime and would see them tomorrow.
Shortly after I got back to my office, I received a text from a fellow friend/business owner, saying I had better check out the Chamber’s Facebook page. When I looked, to my horror there were multiple comments and pictures about a lady who had almost physically cornered our mayor and a state representative and was getting very vocal in her questions and her opinions to them about some political hot topics. It was “Teena,” who works for me!
I am beyond embarrassed. Luckily, she wasn’t wearing one of our company’s logo shirts, so just looking at the pictures you may not know who she works for, but I am sure word got around to who her employer is and I am worried her actions will hurt my business’ reputation in the community. I am not so naïve that I don’t realize some political talk goes on at this event (I myself had talked to others about an unpopular decision the city council had made about closing a parking lot for redevelopment and how that would affect business owners near the lot), but I didn’t get into a loud argument with anybody.
Is there anything I can or should do about this situation with her? Her actions were outside the office but were at a company event that she was getting paid to attend. Any suggestions for “damage control” if I get questioned about my employee’s actions or I lose an account(s) over what she did?
I’m all for people asking questions of their elected representatives, and there are certainly things happening that warrant being impassioned about those topics — but the time to get into it with legislators is not when you are being paid to attend an event on behalf of your employer. I suspect that distinction was completely lost on Teena, and it’s reasonable to have a conversation with her to explain it.
Sample wording: “You’re of course welcome to advocate for your political views and to lobby our legislators on any issues you’re concerned with, but when you are attending an event as part of your job, you are there as a representative of our business, and your actions reflect on us. You can bow out of attending those events in the future if you don’t want to be constrained in that way, but you cannot accost legislators at events you’re attending for work or in situations where you will be perceived as representing the company.”
As for damage control if it comes up with others, it depends on exactly what she was saying and how poorly it reflects on your company. If it was something wildly offensive to your average person, you have a different problem than if it was more mundane. For the latter you could simply say, “She misunderstood that she was attending as an employee, not a private citizen, and it won’t happen again.”
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timeasmymeasure
