It’s the last week of “where are you now?” time at Ask a Manager, where I run updates from people who had their letters here answered in the past. Here are five updates from past letter-writers.
1. How patient do I need to be with a coworker with mental health issues who lashes out at me?
Around when my letter was posted, I left Minerva’s assistant Ted a thank you post it for a task he helped me with. Minerva was furious. She said I had to check with her before communicating with Ted. This is not the first time she’s been territorial with “her” direct reports.
I confess I completely lost my shit at this point. Minerva seemed genuinely shocked by my reaction, particularly when I told her to stop being a bully (she said she never bullied anyone – lol).
Afterwards I went straight to my boss to hand in my resignation. I found myself sick with stress from constantly worrying if some small thing I did or said had offended Minerva. It didn’t help that my boss expected me to be careful to avoid conflicts; rather than simply telling Minerva to stop being a jerk.
My boss offered me paid sick leave to deal with all the accumulated work stress. After some therapy I realised I do want to stay in my job, but trying to work things out with Minerva was no longer an option. So as a condition of me staying in the company I no longer work with Minerva in any capacity. I have blocked Minerva’s number. So no more panicking when I see her name on my phone.
One of the reasons why I struggled to draw firm boundaries with Minerva was because – well, I have a young child with mental health episodes. I felt compassion for Minerva’s struggles with keeping emotions in check. But I also realise it’s wrong to excuse her behaviour for this reason. It was helpful to read comments from AAM community who had their own mental health battles; but clearly did not expect others to accept abusive behaviour. Thank you for posting my letter, and the input from commenters. My work life is so much easier now that I don’t have to tip toe to avoid Minerva’s outbursts.
2. How do I escape an exit interview with my terrible boss? (#2 at the link)
Your feedback and the readers’ feedback really helped me to better assess the situation and my options. As several commenters requested for this, here is the update.
Unfortunately, there is no happy end – well, except for the fact that I am finally starting the new job next week! Notice periods here are really long and the last three and a half months have been really difficult to get through sanely at work.
Good news first. The forced feedback meeting actually never took place – I guess, my boss came to some sense at least.
Bad news is that he not only ignored my feedback – he wrote me a really bad final internal evaluation and used every piece of feedback I gave to show me that I am so wrong and my whole approach to work and life and everything is bad. To give you an example of the ridiculousness of this: I do not take responsibility or make decisions since I always want to discuss with the relevant subject matter experts for any major new concept and not with him (who is new to this field and not interested in any details at all). I am not courageous to make mistakes since I complain about him letting inexperienced people completely mess up important projects for our customers (and also talk to other people and expect others to do the same for major decisions – such a strange approach in a strongly collaborative, highly complex environment apparently that this can be used against me twice). I suck at training people because I give them feedback when they are taking the wrong direction and do not just let them waste hundreds of hours billed to the customer to invent a square wheel.
I could go on and on – this is so ridiculous. I just hope that HR and any future boss will see through this as in some points he is contradicting his own past evaluation from 5 months ago and actually just promoted me right before I quit. Overall he is smart though – most of the ridiculousness was delivered verbally with the written evaluation only containing generic statements about my deficiencies. I am so happy that I only have to suffer in this toxic environment three more days. It has really screwed up my brain though in the ways you have already described in some previous posts – it will take me some time to not be on the watch the whole time and document every step of every important interaction.
3. My boss doesn’t seem to want my husband to visit me on a work trip
It’s been a bit over a year since I wrote in in a panic about a request I had made to meet my family dog along with my husband on a work trip, and I know everyone loves updates so I thought I’d write in.
Unfortunately, your reply was posted while I was on my work-trip, so I wasn’t able to implement your advice before the weekend of work. I definitely learned a lot from your advice, and the readers comments. Most importantly: it’s not standard procedure to have significant others with on a work-trip. I had thought from my previous employment (admittedly dysfunctional) that this was standard, not a special request or something above and beyond. I see now I was wrong-headed in my thinking, and will take this as a learning experience.
I was, thankfully, able to apologize profusely to my boss after returning back to the office, and, mostly, mitigate the damage I had done. My contract was extended twice, until funding was down to nothing, so I like to think I was doing something right.
I believe some, if not all, of my bad decision making in this case came from the fact that my marriage was unraveling, and I was desperately trying to pretend it wasn’t. I am now (quite happily) divorced and happier than I every have been, or every thought I could be. I now know to put more separation between work and personal life. Thank you again to you and your readers for all your help!
4. Low performers in my office are paraded around and forced to wear dunce caps
It’s been a while since my dunce cap days, but I thought the readers might appreciate an update. I was fired from the dunce cap tech company and taken a job at a nonprofit. My new job was a 10% pay cut (though with better benefits) and I was unsure of how it would work out because I’d never worked at a nonprofit before.
I’m happy to report that everything worked out better than expected. Not only was my new workplace normal and sane, but it ended up being a great environment for me and I found out that I really love working at a nonprofit. In my first year here I was able to expand the program I manage in a way that was beneficial for both the company and the community we serve and I ended up getting a 15% raise because of it.
Thanks to the really good medical benefits provided by this job, my husband and I were able to seriously consider starting a family and now our first child is due in the spring! We’ve decided to relocate closer to family and I will be leaving this job after the baby is born. My boss was disappointed when I told him but only had positive things to say about me and my work in his recommendations. Because of this, I already have a job lined up at nonprofit in our new city that I’ll start after maternity leave– and it’s a majority remote position with flexible hours.
Thanks Alison and commenters for being the voices of reason when I was trapped in the dunce cap hellscape and for your well wishes upon my escape. I’m chalking this whole experience up to “everything happens for a reason” and am looking forward to the professional and parenthood challenges that await me in my new city.
Update to the update:
Somehow my husband and I survived a cross-country move with a new baby! My maternity leave ended in September and I started at the new nonprofit that month. Onboarding during the end of the year has been a little chaotic but I feel like I’ve got my feet under me and am looking forward to leading a few new projects in 2020. My daughter is now 8 months old (how?!?) and, in my very biased opinion, is the sweetest baby ever. Life’s good!
updates: the coworker who lashes out, the dunce caps, and more was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.
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