employee never paid me for baby clothes but now wants a reference, quarterly performance reviews, and more

It’s four answers to four questions. Here we go…

1. Employee never paid me for baby clothes but now wants a reference

I left a job about 2.5 years ago on good terms. One of the people who worked for me (who was a great employee) reached out when I left and asked if I’d be hiring soon, which I wasn’t. I wanted to help her, and I did find a different job opening at another company and sent it to her. She applied and ultimately got the job.

Shortly after, she asked about baby items I was getting rid of. She asked if she could buy them from me (I had already given away a fair amount of maternity clothes and baby things for free) and I said I had several massive bins of clothes/shoes and that she could pick up the lot of clothing, pay me $1 per item, and return the bins and unwanted items. She picked them up and I never heard from her again. She never paid for anything, and I never received leftover clothing or my bins back. I realize the opportunity to ask was way back then, but truthfully I felt too petty to ask for an unknown amount of money or the storage bins (which I had to replace) but she also did not remotely hold up her end of the arrangement.

This week she contacted me asking if I’d be a reference. I said yes, then received a text from a third party with a link to a questionnaire. The instructions said this will take 30-40 mins to complete. Less than 24 hours later, she was reaching out asking when I’d have time to fill this out.

I am going to make good on my word and complete the questionnaire. This situation just rubs me the wrong way all around because it feels very one-sided. Would you say anything about this? Or is this just the risk you run when you try to do something nice within a workplace relationship?

There’s a pretty good chance that her absconding with your baby clothes and bins was just baby brain and she didn’t even realize she did it … but you are allowed to feel peeved by it!

That said, yeah, ideally you would have addressed it at the time by texting her when you hadn’t heard back within a couple of weeks to say, “Hey, just checking in — did you decide what you wanted and when is a good time to return the bins and anything you’re not taking?” I get why you didn’t, but if you’re going to be annoyed it’s nearly always better to just reach out and check.

I do think you’re right to complete the questionnaire because you said you would — and to continue being a reference for her if she was a great employee when you managed her. And because so much time has passed, I don’t think there’s a lot of point in raising the baby clothes now. If you have otherwise known her to be a responsible, conscientious person aside from this, you’re better off figuring that it slipped her mind at the time and she would have made it right if you’d contacted her. (And really, that is the grace we’d all want in her shoes if it was a genuine oversight.)

2. Should we be doing quarterly performance reviews?

My company recently moved from semi-annual to quarterly performance reviews, and I’m trying to figure out if my feelings about them are well-calibrated.

For context, I’ve spent most of my career at small companies without formal review processes. My current larger company is good at giving feedback so there’s nothing surprising in a review, and we have weekly 1:1s with managers to discuss goals and adjustments.

Many of my coworkers find self-reviews and peer feedback stressful enough that we have multiple long-running Slack channels dedicated to discussing them. I’m less stressed about the reviews themselves and more bothered that the whole process feels like a time sink box-checking exercise.

Our system has three ratings that essentially amount to: improvement needed by next quarter, doing fine, and doing excellent. I’m one of roughly 80–90% of the company who will land in the middle category. If someone needs to improve, they already know before the review. If someone is working toward a promotion, they have a general sense of what’s expected and can actually achieve one with a “doing fine” rating. The top rating is uncommon and not structurally achievable by everyone each quarter. Ratings do affect raises, so there’s real motivation behind them.

Given all that, is there a version of quarterly reviews that serves a genuine purpose? Or is what I’m describing closer to what you’d call work theater, a performance of performance management not the same outcome? And do you have general thoughts on what separates a well-designed review process from a performative one?

No, quarterly reviews in most cases are way too often! First, doing formal reviews well takes an enormous amount of time and energy (and if you’re not doing them well, there’s really no point to doing them that often). Second, that frequency just isn’t necessary if your managers are managing effectively; they should already be having ongoing conversations with people about how they’re doing, what’s going well, and anything that needs to change. If they’re not doing that, the solution is to better train those managers, not to implement quarterly bureaucratic time sucks.

I could see if it’s literally just a quick check-in with one of those three ratings and any accompanying discussion that needs to happen for a “needs” improvement” — that could be a way to ensure managers are staying on top of communicating about issues. But if it’s accompanied by the more detailed narrative that evaluations usually include, it’s just too much.

As for what makes a review process well-designed, I have some thoughts here:

how to make performance evaluations useful to your team
conducting strong performance evaluations
how managers mess up performance evaluations

4. Was I wrong to give input to my manager about our frustrating temp?

I am an individual contributor in a creative role at a small company. I’ve been there for about a year. I have many years of experience in this area and really enjoy this new company. The work is challenging, but fulfilling.

About three months ago, our team experienced an unexpected setback and we needed temporary support. They brought on the runner-up candidate for my role as a temp. This has been challenging. On a practical level, the temp doesn’t seem to thrive in the type of work our team does. Their experience comes mainly from freelance work and their skills don’t translate as well here; as a result, other team members often have to step in to fill gaps or rework deliverables. We are under a deadline and it doesn’t seem like I have a choice but to try to make this work, but it has added strain to an already high-pressure environment.

There are also interpersonal challenges. Their overall tone can come across as negative or tense, which affects team dynamics. I feel like there is friction between us because I “won” the full-time position. I find myself feeling judged on my work by this person. In meetings, they sometimes talk over me and can become visibly frazzled under stress. They seem to think that managers provide me with more support and training than them, but in reality, I’ve just been doing this for a decade and can work independently.

The complicating factor is that we do, in fact, need to hire another full-time person. The temp has expressed strong interest in staying on permanently. From a distance, this might seem like an easy solution: they already know the company, and hiring them would be efficient. However, I have serious reservations about whether they are the right long-term fit for this specific team. My concern is not that they lack talent — they clearly have strengths — but that their strengths don’t align with the demands of this role, and that the interpersonal friction may continue over time.

I recently shared this feedback with my manager and skip-level manager. I tried to focus on the work itself and the team’s needs, but I worry that my personal frustrations may be influencing my perspective more than I realize. Was it appropriate for me to voice concerns about hiring this person full-time? Did I just come across as not a team player to management? Am I overstepping by weighing in so strongly on what could be seen as a management decision? More broadly, how do I distinguish between legitimate concerns about team fit and performance versus personal irritation with a someone?

Yes, when your team is considering hiring a temp full-time and you’ve been working closely with that temp and have input that could be relevant, you absolutely should offer it. Your input presumably wasn’t “I don’t like Jane”; it was about real work issues, like the skills gap that causes other coworkers to have to step in to redo her work. In your manager’s shoes, I’d want to hear about the interpersonal issues too (I want a team that works well together and where people are collegial; someone who regularly talks over others, gets visibly frazzled under stress, or is inappropriately competitive with a peer can be coached, but I’d want to be aware that those are issues as I’m making a hiring decision and not find out about them later if someone could have filled me in earlier.)

To your question about how to distinguish between legitimate concerns and personal irritation, think of it terms of work impact. Skills or lack thereof: highly relevant. Work habits or approaches that make more work for others: highly relevant. Interpersonal habits that are generally recognized as rude (not listening when someone is talking, interrupting, letting stress affect the environment for everyone else): also relevant. Personal habits that are more like pet peeves (gum chewing, uptalk, taking about their social life an annoying amount): usually not relevant (although even there, sometimes it could be relevant — for example, someone who talks non-stop to the point that it’s disruptive to other people’s ability to focus).

4. Changing my name in my email after I get married

I’m probably overthinking this. I recently got married and I’m changing my last name. My company is going to assign me a new email address, and I’ll only have access to the old one for two weeks (too short, in my opinion, but I don’t make the rules). Would it be weird for me to put my maiden name in parentheses in the signature block of my new email for a while, like this:

Miranda (Stewpot) Warbleworth

We deal a lot with people who only know us through the computer, and I think it would be nice for them to see that it’s the same person. If this is okay, how long should I do it for?

Note, I’m positive my company will have no opinion on this. I just want to make sure I’m not overthinking or being too emotional. It never occurred to me that I’d be a little sad to change my name, but it’s bittersweet.

Yes, you should absolutely do that, and it’s very normal when you change your name. Not weird at all! (What is weird is that your company won’t set the old email to forward to your new one, but so be it.)

As for how long … I’d say at least six months. The exception to that would be if you’re generally only emailed by people on a short-term basis and then you’re never in contact again (for example, if you sell a product but then pass the client on to your tech support team for everything after that). If that’s the case, you could keep it there for whatever the typical lifecycle of the relationship is plus a couple of months.

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