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.
Remember the letter-writer who made an anonymous complaint about a coworker’s racist comment and the coworker blamed someone else for it? (#2 at the link) Here’s the update.
I wrote to you in September looking for some advice regarding a racist coworker I had anonymously complained about.
Thank you to you and your readers for your advice; I did end up calling the whistleblower line again. They promised me that they would take the issue seriously and follow up with the manager of the department instead of my individual manager.
Almost immediately, Jane quietened down. However, about a week later, our entire team was pulled into a meeting and my manager angrily told us that someone had been ‘stubbornly’ making ‘aggressive’ anonymous complaints about our team and that he couldn’t address individual issues unless we came to him personally.
At the start of November, I noticed that I could no longer see Jane’s comments in our team’s shift discussions on social media. She had blocked me along with about two thirds of the team, and word got back to us from other teams that she was publicly posting inflammatory comments about the blocked team members now that we couldn’t see them. Around the same time, our manager went on sick leave and nobody was put in place to cover him; the lack of any visible management seemed to make Jane bolder and she began openly making racist comments and pointed comments towards Sarah again.
In December, both Sarah and one of Jane’s friends, Anne, applied for a promotion to a management role. Sarah got it but had to work out a month’s notice period in our team until they replaced her. Jane and friends made a big show of ‘freezing’ Sarah out, and when she wasn’t around telling everyone that she had ‘stolen’ Anne’s job. This went on for a week or so while we tried to arrange our formal Christmas night out. When discussing the menu, Jane lamented that there was no chicken and someone pointed out that chicken was available on the halal section of the menu. Jane loudly proclaimed that she wasn’t going to eat ‘Muslim food’ and overhearing this, Sarah said “Wow. You know you sound really racist when you say stuff like that, right?”
Jane went crazy. She started screaming in Sarah’s face that she better stop calling her a racist, called her a b*tch, and threw a notebook across the room, while Sarah stood her ground and stayed perfectly calm. It was mayhem. After a few minutes, it calmed down and management from other teams started taking people into rooms individually to find out what had just happened. When I was called in, I mentioned the way Jane and her friends had been reacting to Sarah’s promotion.
Jane was told to go home for the day and in the end, she never came back. A few days later it was announced that she had handed in her notice effective immediately (I assume to prevent getting fired). I think her friends must have received stern warnings because their behaviour towards Sarah stopped immediately. Another management position came up and Anne put herself forward again; when she didn’t get that one either, she quit. I think she realised she’s burned her bridges here.
When my manager returned from sick leave in January, he told us he had secured a position elsewhere in the company and would be leaving at the start of February. It’s early days, but his replacement seems wonderful so far; she’s very supportive and the atmosphere in our team has already improved. However, my time in the team has left a sour taste in my mouth and as things become more professional I can see that I’ve let my anxiety and the toxic atmosphere make me a less than ideal employee (sometimes becoming tearful, making some mistakes in my work, and taking more sick leave than is ideal). I feel like the best thing all round is a fresh start elsewhere, so I’m still job hunting.
update: my coworker is blaming someone else for an anonymous complaint I made was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.
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