Cowboy Who?

This post was written by Alison Green and published on 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.

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!

This post was written by Alison Green and published on 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.

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.

elizabethplaid:

blueandbluer:

kevinbparry:

Happy Holidays! Some new stop-motion work for the LEGO group - made with over 700 pictures :)

@legendofthehiddenbbc ! Has Mr. seen this yet?

The motions are so beautifully fluid. Kinda hard to wrap my head around it being Lego bits, because it’s so well-done. I especially love the extra movement of the hand gestures.

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The DistroWatch news feed is brought to you by TUXEDO COMPUTERS. postmarketOS is an Alpine-based Linux distribution for mobile devices. The project offers four user interfaces (GNOME, Plasma, Phosh, and Sxmo) across 45 supported devices. postmarketOS 23.12 introduces support for 14 new devices (up from 31 in the middle of 2023) and introduces a number of useful updates: "Unlocking....

This post was written by Alison Green and published on 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.

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

Remember the letter-writer whose boss said she doesn’t think mothers can fully commit to their jobs? Here’s the update.

I first ended up talking with my coworker who is a father to see if there was any difference between our experiences – I disguised it as me asking if he knew of any good childcare facilities. He said he didn’t have any recommendations as his wife is a stay at home mom – so his child being in the house with his wife is okay but my husband isn’t proper childcare? Now I was mad.

My manager and I had another 1:1 (our company requires these monthly). She asked me again about my childcare situation and I replied that I wasn’t comfortable sharing this with her. She said she wanted to remind me that it’s against company policy to have my child in the home if I’m working from home and I need to provide proof of childcare once we return to the office (this isn’t true and just an asinine lie to make up?). My response to this was she needed to give me this direction in an email – which of course she didn’t as she knew what she was saying was false.

Anyway, as you can imagine things were awkward and intense for a little bit. I ended up going to her director and explaining the situation and how I no longer felt comfortable under this manager. The director was horrified. Thankfully, I was moved to a new team. My old manager is still with the company, though I’ve heard some rumors of her making rude comments to one of her employees who has recently announced she’s pregnant so maybe that won’t be the case for long.

I’ve learned a lot throughout this experience that I’d like to share with any other working moms or future moms out there because I genuinely wish someone had told me these things before.

1. Other moms may not be understanding – I saw a lot of speculation in the comments about if my manager had children. She does have adult children and she was a single mom, which I believe is why I felt comfortable talking about my childcare with her. I figured she would have been understanding. I was wrong.

2. Ask around before agreeing to a transfer -this one seems obvious but I was naive and had never had an issue like this so I failed to do this. After speaking with former employees of this manager, she apparently has a reputation for not being very empathetic to mothers. Had I known this I wouldn’t have agreed to transfer.

3. The difference between how moms and dads are viewed in the workplace – I feel like this is a known fact but it’s hard to understand unless you experience it. My husband’s experience with his boss has been completely different. From now on I plan to keep the information I share about my child to an absolute minimum. Never again will I share my childcare situation with a coworker or boss because no matter what the answer is, people will make judgements. Again, this is just my experience but there is a lot of data out there about how moms and dads are viewed in the workplace if you are curious.

4. Get it in writing – I knew this before but this experience reinforced this. I’ll never have another 1:1 with a manager without sending a follow-up email summarizing what was said afterwards.

I apologize if these points seem obvious – looking back on the experience, I am kicking myself for not being more cautious about what I shared with my former manager.

And yes – I am looking for another job because this manager still being employed by the company has made me question everything. And to the comments advising that I should quit and stay home – this isn’t realistic in this economy, at least not where I live.

This post was written by Alison Green and published on 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.

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

Remember the letter-writer who was being required to participate in laser tag for team-building? Here’s the update.

Thank you for answering my letter about the laser tag.

I appreciated your comment about not enjoying movies with a lot of shooting; I have never enjoyed violence in my leisure activities and what with all the horrible things going on in the world right now (and, honestly, ever), I really couldn’t see myself partaking in laser tag. It was reassuring to know that I’m not the only one who feels this way about laser tag; it’s always comforting to have someone else agree with you.

I did forward your post to a few colleagues at my level and encouraged them to push back with their managers about how they also don’t want to play laser tag and several of them did. I didn’t end up having time to speak to my own manager about it again but I did decide that on the day of the event I would very firmly say that I felt uncomfortable participating and would wait in the adjacent arcade/snack bar area for everyone else to finish. (Although since arcades trigger my old video game addiction and the flashing lights give me headaches, this wasn’t ideal either.) By the time Laser Tag Day rolled around, I believe there were at least six people who said they couldn’t or wouldn’t participate.

Laser Tag Day was scheduled for the second afternoon of our three days of meetings. On the first day, we did an afternoon “team building exercise” at an arcade and everyone but one employee participated. Day two started out with a short all-staff meeting and then we broke into teams for the rest of the morning. Our team was discussing some really important subjects when another team asked the boss if instead of laser tag we could continue their team meeting and he asked our team if we wanted to do the same. Since many of us had already felt even before the meetings that we definitely could use more time discussing actual work instead of playing games, this ended up being ideal. Many of us are still confused as to why we needed two full afternoons of non-work when we see each other in person so infrequently anyway. Big Boss had said that no one pays attention in the afternoons at these staff meetings so he figured our time would be better used doing something fun. I’m not sure why he didn’t see this as a cue to revamp our all-staff meetings so that they are more relevant to everyone instead of having the same group discussion we have every time we get together, which is only eye-opening for the couple of new staff members we have each time and a big reason why no one pays attention anymore. It’s pretty frustrating that he decided to find a different way to waste our time instead of replacing the usual, work-related time waster with something that is actually productive.

Anyway, as you can see, laser tag was only the tip of the iceberg as to why many of us were frustrated at this chosen activity but the fact that it was laser tag specifically was especially frustrating to me as someone who does not want to participate in any kind of gun-related activity. Thanks again for your advice, I will definitely be more firm in my approach if this comes up again.

Welcome, come on in. Let me give you a tour of our new bathroom. We’ve painted the walls a beautiful sage green, installed a double sink vanity, and replaced our perfectly fine, functioning bathroom door with a sliding barn door. It’s exactly like a regular door, except it never closes.

That five-inch chasm between the door and the wall is not a design flaw. Our interior decorator has assured us it’s the next evolution in “open concept.” Now, nothing in this house happens behind closed doors, because we don’t have any. If you need to rip a cartoonish fart that sounds like a GarageBand sound effect, give us a heads-up, and we’ll make sure to turn all the music off and immediately stop talking.

Where are my manners? Can I get you anything to eat? I just made a batch of deviled eggs. Maybe some broccoli cheddar quiche?

We love our new sliding bathroom door because it’s a real conversation starter. And by that, we mean it facilitates a dialogue between the dinner party guests enjoying a home-cooked meal and the dinner party guest expelling that home-cooked meal from behind a glorified saloon door a few feet away. The spontaneity will literally keep you on the edge of your toilet seat.

Can I offer you a cup of coffee? Have as many as you like.

Don’t worry, it’s not like our toddler / the dog / the cat / a gust of wind is going to accidentally swing this bathroom door wide open while you’re in the middle of tweezing a whisker off your chin. There will be nothing accidental about it.

Of course, not being able to close isn’t the only notable feature of our sliding barn door; it’s also incredibly loud. We love hosting parties and watching our non-bathroom guests hear that barn door start rolling down its tracks. “Is that a train coming?” they ask. “No,” we laugh, “it’s just the sound of Dave discreetly trying to take a shit.” That’s the kind of radical transparency we strive for in this house.

Believe me, I know a sliding barn door takes a little getting used to. You’re not the first friend to ask, “Are you sure this isn’t broken?” “Is there another bathroom I can use?” and “Why would you ever make that much bean dip?”

But hear us out: Have you ever gone for a country drive, stopped at a farm to pick up some fresh eggs, and then wandered into the horse stables? You start petting the horse’s silky mane, feeding it handfuls of hay, and asking it how work is going. It’s not until later that you realize that the horse was pooping the entire time.

Honestly, this was a watershed moment for us. To know we were no longer beholden to the constraints of “just talking” or “just pooping.” With a sliding barn door, we could do both at the same time.

This rotting hunk of warped wood we haphazardly hung on the wall? It’s from that same farm. And guess what? When the man who owned the farm heard we were going to use it for our bathroom door, he charged us only two hundred dollars. He said he had more where that came from and we should tell all our friends.

Sorry, did you say something, or was that a primordial squelch that escaped from the bowels of your inflamed bowel? Should I stop saying “bowel”? Just let me know when you want this bathroom semi–to yourself.

Speaking of bowels, we stayed at a hotel in the Bowery last month and were thrilled to see the bathroom in the room had a sliding barn door. We’ve been married for fifteen years; there are few things left for us to experience together. But spending a weekend in a confined space where the bathroom door can’t mute the sounds of your spouse’s explosive response to an undiagnosed lactose allergy? That’s a new core memory I’ll treasure forever.

What’s that? You desperately need to use the bathroom now? Why didn’t you say something? I’ll get out of your way. You know how to use a bidet, right?

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LOS ANGELES—In a groundbreaking series that includes shocking close-ups of the 28-year-old subject eating a bowl of Froot Loops on the couch, the TLC television network premiered a new show this week that stars Benjamin Neufeld, a man who is 5 pounds overweight. “Some people may say we’re exploiting his condition, but…

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OMAHA, NE—After driving from agency to agency all over town to find the perfect ward of the state, local man Pete Byrd placed a big red bow on top of a brand-new foster child, sources reported Tuesday. “Janice is going to be so excited when she looks under the tree and sees the orphaned boy I got her,” Byrd said as he…

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Situated in the futuristic Newfoundland Standard Time Zone in St. John’s, Canada, this state-of-the-art home will allow you to experience life 1.5 hours ahead of everyone in New York, Philadelphia, and Miami! If interested, remember to call us between 7:30 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. EST, because we live in THE FUTURE!

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The libs have ruined everything from beer to sex, and they are determined to ruin Christmas too. The following are woke gifts you should never buy for your patriotic relatives.

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CLEVELAND—Explaining that he had no way of transporting it to the drop-off location even if he wanted to, local man Jason Gardner told reporters he spent Tuesday calling around looking for a donation center that would come and pick up bulkier sperm. “The truth is, I’ve got some perfectly good spermatozoa, but I can…

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POUGHKEEPSIE, NY—Going about his daily life completely oblivious to his exceptional gift, area man Daniel Clark remains tragically unaware that he possesses one of the top five most beautiful assholes in America, sources confirmed Thursday. “Every single day this man wakes up, goes to work, and comes home without the…

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This post was written by Alison Green and published on 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.

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

Remember the letter-writer who worked in an office where a lunchtime “thought experiment” had caused a cold war (first update here)? Here’s the update.

I saw it’s update season, so I thought I’d do so one more time. Things have gotten a lot better since that original update I sent in. The major ringleader of the “Carrie is weird/robotic” discourse was let go in September. I didn’t know why at first, but Steve confided in me that he mentioned to one of our bosses in a private chat that that person really had a toxic effect on the workplace (in addition to just not being great at her job). I imagine it was a combination of those things that led to the termination. Her closest friends became much quieter generally almost immediately, perhaps hoping to avoid being perceived the same way. For all I know, our bosses reprimanded them. I do want to say I believe the “robot” nickname started because that little group felt her answer to the Shakespeare question was cold/inhumane. It wasn’t anything to do with her affect. Not that that makes it better, but I saw some commenters feeling worried about their own manner of speaking/interacting with people and how that could target them for that kind of name calling (and those who had actually been targeted). I just wanted to clarify, and say be yourself even if you feel like you sound less than enthused/gregarious at work if it’s safe/otherwise professional for you to do so. Horrible people will be horrible regardless, so there’s no reason to police yourself that way.

Carrie is actually on her honeymoon leave right now. We gave her a work shower right before her wedding, as we would for anyone else here for a wedding or baby (not a big production, just a sheet cake and group gift from her registry). I was a bit nervous about it, to be honest, because I wanted it to be nice for her but I knew that a few people in attendance would be the ones who’d talked about her behind her back earlier in the year and I just thought the hypocrisy would be awkward. It wasn’t, though, really — those folks had already been acting chastised after the other coworker’s termination, so they were once again quiet and mild. Our bosses attended Carrie’s wedding and they said it was lovely.

I will say that in my view there was a LOT of projection in the comments based on identifying with Carrie. I’m not trying to diminish anyone’s personal experiences with feeling ostracized at work or in other social settings for any reason, but respectfully, none of the commenters really know anything about her or any of the rest of us. She is a nice, serious, quiet person and no one ever deserves to be talked about like that behind their back for just being a bit outside office culture (or for any reason I can think of barring actual criminal behavior!). But the idea that some commenters were fantasizing about Carrie being promoted to manager and then immediately firing the rest of us was so bizarre to me as the person who knows her and our workplace. However, I accept that I could not possibly include every piece of context that seemed relevant to me to head off that type of comment, and even if I sent in an entire novel (instead of a novella, haha) and you were willing to publish it, some people would read into it what they wanted to and there’s nothing I can do about that. I lost control of the narrative when I wrote in, which I felt I was prepared for, but maybe not as much as I thought.

Thank you again for your original response. I am still grateful you urged me to consider this wasn’t really about the thought experiment at all. I couldn’t see beyond that one event because it loomed so large in my mind at the time. And truly, thank you to those commenters who engaged with my situation the same way and shared their stories of feeling alienated for any reason, especially if they’re neurodivergent. I didn’t think it was healthy for me to try to respond in real time but I read them all.

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According to a study published in Nature, the nausea and vomiting in the first trimester of pregnancy experienced by more than two-thirds of women are caused by one hormone called GDF15, with the amount of that hormone correlating directly with the severity of symptoms. What do you think?

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VATICAN CITY—Once more advancing his vision of a more inclusive church, Pope Francis reportedly broke with longstanding Roman Catholic doctrine Monday when he pressed his face against a steamy glass door in fervent approval of same-sex showers. “After careful consideration of what dirty, dirty boys they are, I see no…

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Click here to go see the bonus panel!

Hovertext:
Normal people: You economists keep assuming humans have perfect pricing information! Microeconomists: we need ever more complex auction mechanisms to suss out the true preferences humans are constantly hiding!

Today's News:

pierppasolini:

The Golden Girls - 2.11 - ‘Twas the Nightmare Before Christmas

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.

The final votes are in, and the CEO who tried to fire an employee after a DNA test revealed they were half-brothers won the Worst Boss of 2023 Award, with 60% of the vote in the final match-up.

Coming in second, the company that wouldn’t do anything about an employee who was angry about an employee’s weight loss, captured 40% of the vote.

The runners-up, who all managed to be pretty terrible themselves:

• • my company is cutting my overworked team’s pay as punishment for mistakes
  • our boss tells lies to make us feel bad for taking time off
  • I’m a public employee and the governor pushes religion at work
  • my boss is abusive and blames it on PMDD
  • my boss says she has the right to come by my house unannounced
  • after I resigned, my employer accessed my personal email to find out details about my new job
  • my boss made us all attend a session with his therapist
  • my boyfriend’s manager told me I could date someone better
  • my company says it’s “best practice” to do layoffs over email
  • my boss collected money for flowers for me … and then kept it for herself

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FOXBOROUGH, MA—Noting that whatever was happening to the injured New England Patriots player could not be good, several witnesses at Gillette Stadium reported Sunday that they saw the silhouette of a chainsaw and a blowtorch through the NFL injury tent. “I’m not exactly sure what’s going on in there, but every so…

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Take this test to see if you possess the arrogance, stubbornness, and shortsightedness to be a baby boomer capable of screwing over future generations.

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