Posted by Ask a Manager

https://www.askamanager.org/2025/12/updates-my-boss-loves-being-told-shes-beautiful-and-more.html

https://www.askamanager.org/?p=34730

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 loves being told she’s beautiful

I’m afraid the ritual with the boss continues. I couldn’t find any way to say that the team might feel pressure to compliment her appearance without making it sound like I didn’t think she was good-looking.

So I just caved to the pressure and decided to start talking up her career and telling her she’d be great for more senior roles so it doesn’t seem like I’m the only one not complimenting her. And to make more of a point of complimenting other team members so it’s not just all the boss all the time.

2. My new manager is upset I didn’t tell her I was pregnant when I interviewed

I did end up having problems with “family friendly” culture at my hospital, although not in the way I was expecting. The frostiness from my manager subsided pretty quickly, partly because I stopped seeing her!

Immediately after my orientation ended, I started getting called off for literally 90% of my shifts due to low census (too few patients on the floor). Unbeknownst to me, they had majorly over hired on the floor I worked on, and as a PRN employee I’m not guaranteed any work. However, it’s common courtesy in my experience to not hire if you don’t actually need the help, and there were many phrases like “we can use all the help we can get” and “we are always busy/slammed” thrown around in my interview, which makes me feel that they were not hiring/negotiating in good faith. It did not occur to me to include “must allow employee to work and subsequently get paid” to my list of “family-friendly” requirements!

We are very fortunate that my income is not keeping our lights on or anything, but we have had to restructure the budget a little to accommodate me rarely working. The closest similar job is about an hour away, which is not workable with our family … so I’m kind of stuck. I’m hoping things will pick up in the winter, and I’m looking at cross-training to other departments to potentially be able to work more consistently.

Most importantly, I delivered a healthy little boy in September, and he is a joy. I am scheduled to work again starting in November, but I suspect I will get more time off with him than I initially expected!

If/when I have to take another position, I will certainly not be disclosing any medical info during my interview. Thanks for the advice and the solidarity of the commenters!

3. How can I help my dyslexic and ADHD employee write better? (#5 at the link)

My staff member is doing great. To recap a couple of responses I gave in the comments of the original post: I had a chat with her of the form “how can I support you?” She had been employing a few of her own tactics like changing text colors and circulating things with others before sending things to me. I made sure the managers of other staff were aware and on board with them providing help.

But I was happily proven wrong about our org’s appetite for AI, and we actually now have a limited set of tools approved. She (and others, including me!) are loving the help it provides.

Roses have thorns, however, so now I have a new challenge. Without going into detail, I’ve received AI-generated work (from several people) that’s just not on point. I’m sure I’m not alone here. I wonder what the future looks like, since the reason why I pick up on this is because I cut my teeth in the pre-AI dark ages. How do we teach critical thinking and analysis using AI without requiring work that will negate the productivity benefits it provides? I’m genuinely fascinated and excited to see how this will all play out, and keen to hear the stories and advice from your readers.

This particular staff member will be fine, though, because I have already seen that she has the skills required. I’m pretty sure she’s about to get promoted too :-)

4. We’re expected to provide treats for better-paid coworkers (#2 at the link)

On treat day, my nosy coworker said something like, “I’ll be setting up for the potluck in the staff room at 9, so feel free to bring your … whatever you brought … any time before then!” to which I nodded noncommittally. It didn’t come up again.

I’m relatively new at the job (last year was my first year), and while I haven’t experienced it myself, our principal has a reputation for taking criticism poorly and doubling down when she feels someone is challenging her authority/judgement. So I didn’t feel I had enough social capital to challenge the whole premise of “buy treats for your better-paid coworkers week.” But the good news is that my nosy coworker retired at the end of the school year, so I think going forward I should be able to get back to my plan of just quietly not signing up for anything.

It was very validating to hear folks in the comments confirming that the whole thing was completely unreasonable!

The post updates: my boss loves being told she’s beautiful, and more appeared first on Ask a Manager.

https://www.askamanager.org/2025/12/updates-my-boss-loves-being-told-shes-beautiful-and-more.html

https://www.askamanager.org/?p=34730

Posted by Ask a Manager

https://www.askamanager.org/2025/12/update-my-company-says-its-best-practice-to-do-layoffs-over-email-2.html

https://www.askamanager.org/?p=34675

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 company said it was “best practice” to do layoffs over email? The first update was here, and here’s the latest.

Two years later and I have a doozy of an update about this company.

So, after the last letter, I was working at a new company that happened to employ a lot of people who had left the Email Layoffers. We kept in touch with a lot of people at that company and it was pretty quiet for a year or so, though they kept eliminating positions and letting people go every few months. They did begin to do layoffs over Zoom meetings after my letter got published.

First a small, petty update: I went to an industry conference over the summer. While talking to some colleagues from a leading organization in our field (one you would not want to burn bridges with) when I mentioned I used to work for the Email Layoffers. They told me that a year prior, their org signed with EL as a client, and this was such a big deal that the co-CEOs who stepped in to “save the company” decided to personally manage the project. After onboarding them and planning out the project, the co-CEOs ghosted. They missed meetings, dodged emails, and didn’t update the communication documents. Then, halfway through the project, the co-CEOs finally responded to an email … and informed my colleague that they were changing the contract to instead produce a much cheaper, lower-effort product that was completely at odds with the results the org actually wanted. Think: they ordered bespoke teapots, and they were told they’d be receiving dropshipped flasks instead. Apparently, even the dropshipped flasks had quality issues, and were delivered late. Unsurprisingly, they did not renew their contract.

Around this same time, the co-CEOs were asking the manager of one of the production teams to teach them how to use chatGPT. Normal enough, if a little late for our tech-adjacent industry. Except they wanted him to show them how to make chatGPT do his job. At one point, the CEO’s called this employee to one of their houses so he could talk them through a chatGPT process. They were being weirdly dodgy about why they wanted to learn chatGPT so suddenly.

Then, a few months later, our old coworkers told us The Big News.

The team responsible for the majority of the company’s output was concerned about the way our industry was changing in the face of AI. They were interested in taking on different work and had made a plan to upskill team members in a different, more AI-proof skillset, their managers supported it, and so they scheduled a time to meet with the CEOs and propose their plan. They also partnered with the manager who was teaching the CEOs how to use AI.

Alison, they laid off every single member of their production team and that team’s managers, and I am not exaggerating. In a zoom meeting where they were all planning to propose changes to the department. This included people who had worked for the company for 10-15 years, and people who were on or had just returned from maternity leave. The company right now is two CEOs, a single marketing person, an HR worker, sales, and project managers. They sold work they literally had nobody to complete. Then, over the next few weeks, they reached out to almost every single person they had laid off, asking if they could do some contract work so they could actually deliver the work they had sold. They misspelled people’s names in half of these emails. As far as I know, no one accepted the offer. Eventually they listed a few positions … for $10k-20k less than the old team was paid.

After that, of course, the Glassdoor reviews came in.

And the CEOs started responding to them.

One employee left a review, detailing that they had just fired half of their employees and planned to replace them with contractors and AI. The CEOs responded with a typo-laden multi-paragraph rebuttal that was weird and aggressive. It came off as very petty and uncomfortable. They also responded to a review that said “[CEOs] will lay you off right before Christmas without warning” saying, they “wish this employee had come to them with their concerns before leaving this review.” Um, how could they? You laid them off! They also called Glassdoor “a safe haven for slanderous claims and anonymous opinions,” which of course has become a meme among us ex-employees. Then a smattering of vague 5-star reviews came in, clearly from current employees told to help with the DIY damage control efforts. An industry publication wrote about the layoffs from the lens of companies going all-in on AI without thinking about the consequences, interviewing one of the people who were laid off. The surviving sales team posts on LinkedIn about hustle culture, with weird passive-aggressive tones about people who “can’t make it in the industry.” (We work in a pretty chill industry. You don’t have to hustle that hard).

Since then, the CEOs have been unusually quiet online. More 1-star reviews came in on Glassdoor and they stopped responding. They’ve trashed their reputation in our industry and we’re all wondering whether they’ll try to sell or just shut down. We will see!

The post update: my company says it’s “best practice” to do layoffs over email appeared first on Ask a Manager.

https://www.askamanager.org/2025/12/update-my-company-says-its-best-practice-to-do-layoffs-over-email-2.html

https://www.askamanager.org/?p=34675

Posted by Ask a Manager

https://www.askamanager.org/2025/12/how-can-i-get-my-employee-to-stop-condescending-to-me-2.html

https://www.askamanager.org/?p=34515

A reader writes:

I hired a promising junior employee who seemed polite and reasonable during his interview. However, now that he is my employee, he constantly condescends to me and says things that come across in a belittling way. Here are some examples:

Me: “Bob, I was going to train you on how to do X today.”
Bob, with a dismissive laugh: “Yeah, I was wondering when you were going to get to that.”

Me: “Bob, has anyone shown you how to do Y yet?”
Bob, with a dismissive laugh and a shrug: “How hard can it be?”

Me: “I just noticed an issue with the X documentation and wanted to make sure I corrected that so you have the right information.”
Bob, with a dismissive laugh: “Yeah, I was wondering what you meant by that.”

With everything he says, it feels like he’s trying to be smarter than me, or one step ahead of me. And he’ll always act like this stuff is easy and he’s the expert, but when he has to actually do it for the first time, he needs all the help he can get.

It has been all I can do to contain my irritation, and I have started to respond by becoming irritable, which I know is not excusable. Recently, he gave me the “I was wondering when you were going to get to that,” treatment, and I snapped back, “I can’t download my entire brain to you in one sitting!” He laughed, as though it was a big joke, but I felt terrible because I knew I had spoken in anger. I didn’t apologize, though.

I don’t think I can fire him over such a small thing, and I’m not sure it’s fair to nitpick someone’s personality just because it’s not compatible with mine. It’s not really a performance issue, because for the most part, he’s doing fine.

It’s possible he’s feeling insecure, but the way he’s expressing it is just not okay to me. Do you have any advice for this kind of conflict?

I answer this question  over at Inc. today, where I’m revisiting letters that have been buried in the archives here from years ago (and sometimes updating/expanding my answers to them). You can read it here.

The post how can I get my employee to stop condescending to me? appeared first on Ask a Manager.

https://www.askamanager.org/2025/12/how-can-i-get-my-employee-to-stop-condescending-to-me-2.html

https://www.askamanager.org/?p=34515

Posted by Ask a Manager

https://www.askamanager.org/2025/12/update-my-coworker-is-making-our-friend-break-up-really-weird.html

https://www.askamanager.org/?p=34711

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 was making their friend break-up really weird? Here’s the update.

I have a major update to my previous letter. Last week, this coworker (Mr. Collins) got fired. He had another extremely similar falling-out with another female coworker (let’s call her Jane) in June, and even more women started comparing notes. Jane started working with us around the time that Mr. Collins and I fell out and they struck up a friendship, so she and I had been avoiding each other because of Mr. Collins until we were at a social event with Kitty and Elizabeth (other coworkers I’m friends with who work in Jane’s department). It came up that Kitty, Elizabeth, and I had all had problems with Mr. Collins. Jane shared that she’d just ended her friendship with him, in almost the same way that I did and for almost the same reasons. Elizabeth left shortly afterwards for unrelated reasons, but spoke with her supervisor before she left about Mr. Collins, naming me and Kitty as also having issues and expressing concern about his pattern of behavior.

Once Jane and I talked about our experiences with Mr. Collins, we started talking to each other at work, which Mr. Collins took as a betrayal. He approached Jane a few weeks ago saying he felt hurt that she started talking to me but also asked her if there was any way they could be friends again. She told him no.

Two days later, he approached me and said he’d been afraid of me for a year because he thought I was trying to get him fired, but realized we’re professionals and wanted to know how we could move past this. I told him I wasn’t trying to get him fired, and I was trying my best to be professional but keeping my distance because of the flinching. He asked how I wanted him to interact with me, and I said, “Like a coworker.” It was like a switch flipped. He went from flinching when I walked past to sending me articles, trying to chit-chat over Teams, and using the phrase “awesome sauce” three times in one day.

Meanwhile, he starts flinching when Jane walks past, greeting other coworkers by name while blatantly ignoring her, and asking me to take over tasks that would lead to him crossing paths with her. He’d also started asking me if it was okay to ask me things (usually things it was my job to help with), if he could ask me a question related to education he was doing for our field (I told him I’d rather keep things strictly work-related), and if it was okay to make jokes. This was the exact kind of thing that was frustrating and annoying to me a year ago that led to me ending the friendship.

I updated my supervisor and department head about the change in his behavior towards me, but increasingly realized that they would need to know the extent of the behavior. The weekend before last, Elizabeth texted me, Kitty, and a couple other coworkers we had a group chat with that she’d asked Mr. Collins to stop texting her and not to ask us about her either. Another coworker in that group chat said she was going to tell her supervisor that Mr. Collins had made her uncomfortable. Between all these people, plus a couple more I was aware of, we were at a total of seven women who he’d made uncomfortable or had overwhelmed, to one degree or another.

On Tuesday, I emailed my supervisor and department head letting them know that another coworker (Jane) had been through almost the same exact thing I had, while leaving out her name and the exact details, and also letting them know that several other people had dealt with his overwhelming and exhausting behavior. I said I was concerned that he might fixate on someone else, that some of our young part-time employees would have to deal with him and not say anything, and that his behavior was inhibiting having a safe and comfortable work environment.

My supervisor and department head had already looped in the head of the organization before I sent the email and passed the email on as well, and they let him go the next day. Our org head told me that in 30 years he’d never seen an employee correction situation quite like this, where the behavior is obnoxious, overwhelming, annoying, and affecting so many people, but technically the individual actions themselves are not inappropriate.

Initially I felt a little bit guilty for “getting him fired” when I had told him that I wasn’t doing that, but he really just had to face the consequences of his own actions. Mostly, it’s been a relief and I’m no longer dreading coming to work worrying about how I’m supposed to deal with him, and I’m really glad I can finally start putting this nonsense behind me.

The post update: my coworker is making our friend break-up really weird appeared first on Ask a Manager.

https://www.askamanager.org/2025/12/update-my-coworker-is-making-our-friend-break-up-really-weird.html

https://www.askamanager.org/?p=34711