Performance Tracking and Feedback

It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go… 1. How to tell an employee to stop being bossy with coworkers I run a small, seasonal coffee shop with six employees. I generally have two to four return employees per season, which is a huge asset. An employee who has worked for me before has asked to come back, and while they are reliable, great with customers, and a very good barista, my other employees struggled with them being a bit overbearing and bossy, sometimes even giving incorrect feedback on procedures, and causing tension. They have a very bubbly and big personality and I don’t believe they realize how they come off. I plan to have a sit-down with them befor…

A reader writes: This is a completely low-stakes question, spurred on by the town Facebook group. Our province mandated that all job postings need to have a salary included. This is law. There have been two instances where two local restaurants have put out job postings without the salary. Someone pointed this out in the comments and it became a huge issue, where people fought back saying it was unreasonable for the owner who are small town business owners to know this (basic, now three-year-old law) bit. It eventually culminated in two different ways: a giant Reddit post where restaurant apologized and asked for resumes and still didn’t put in the salary in the post …

A reader writes: We recently hired a new employee, “Jane,” to replace someone who is away for a year. Two weeks after Jane started, she told us that she was pregnant and due about six months later. Our company owner, Ron, was very unhappy. He felt tricked, and annoyed that we then had to find a replacement for our replacement. For my part, it was a bit frustrating, but that’s life. I like her personally, and she’s a fast learner and a good employee. But ever since then, Ron has been very cold to Jane. He’s asked me to keep a record of every time she says she’s tired or takes time off for doctor appointments, and has asked me if she’s making up the hours. We had also tal…

A reader writes: I make a technically reasonable but low salary at my entry-level job, and while I’m not slacking, I’m also definitely not pushing as hard as I could. I do above my quota easily as it is, and I’m confident I could do more — even the work of two people — without overburdening myself. I like the work and I’m extremely good at it, but I’ve been feeling pressured to look for a new job because that salary just isn’t sustainable. Our team is short-staffed at the moment, like everyone else, and it takes some time for a new employee to get up to speed. If I could make, let’s say, half of another person’s salary on top of my current pay, I’d be making the amount …

It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go… 1. I was fired for charging customers’ cash purchases to my credit card Started my part-time summer job (I am retired) a few weeks ago, working at small convenience/snack/candy store near a local free tourist attraction that opened up for the season. Got fired yesterday. This year, the store went to a “no cash” payment system. Small sign on the door, another by the register. Problem is, not all people carry other forms of payment besides cash, mostly older folks, plus who wants to use their credit card for a 50 cent piece of candy? To help these customers out, especially ones who don’t have another form of payment availa…

A reader writes: I work for a large company and am my manager’s (“Sharon”) only direct report. Sharon is professional and high-performing the three days a week she is in the office. However, on her work-from-home days and even on her scheduled days off, her behavior becomes deceptive, erratic, and deeply disruptive. I choose to work in the office five days a week and arrive at 7 am — an hour before the rest of the team — which has made me the “face” of the team while Sharon has become a digital ghost. Some examples of her erratic behavior: • On a remote day, Sharon claimed she couldn’t work due to a failure in our software. Since our department manages that software, I…

A reader writes: I work in a healthcare-adjacent job with a pretty generous leave policy. When folks are going to take a sick day, it’s our practice to drop a note into Teams and say, “Not feeling well, taking a sick day, contact X about Y if it’s urgent, see you tomorrow I hope.” Sometimes folks will add a bit more info — saying they have a migraine or they caught the flu going around, etc. — but there’s nothing along the lines of needing to justify it to your manager or your team. If you’re sick, you’re sick and you take your leave. What I’m wondering about: quite often younger employees will specifically note that they are taking a mental health day when they call (o…

A reader writes: I just started working for an all-remote company who announced an in-person retreat not long after I was hired. (And after I specifically asked during the hiring process if any travel was required and was assured it was not, but anyway…) I am disabled (albeit not visibly), so travel is a struggle but usually doable, and the vibes I got from leadership were “you better have a really good reason for not attending.” I was still early in my probation period, wanted to make a good impression, so I sucked it up and agreed to attend. The retreat is coming up, and leadership has been infuriatingly coy about details, but the more they share, the more I realize t…

It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go… 1. Do we need a dress code because one employee’s skirts are too short? I work in a small marketing office and am part of the leadership team. It shouldn’t matter for this, but I am a woman. We have no written dress code and it is pretty casual. To give you an idea, leggings and tracksuit bottoms are not that uncommon, nor are hoodies and shorts. But I’m not sure that means we have actually no rules. At the extreme end, swimwear and booty shorts would not be okay, nor would a t-shirt with swear words on it. One staff member, Barbara, stands out a bit in how she dresses — think very short dresses (with tights underneath) …

A reader writes: I supervise a team that provides internal services to other employees, some of whom are demanding customers but are on the whole polite and professional. I have one team member, Jamie, who is convinced that the majority of her interactions with our customers are deliberate attempts to demean her or are outright rude or demanding. I have expressed surprise about this on a number of occasions, as with the majority I’ve never encountered an issue with their behavior. Jamie counters that this is because I have a higher status in the organization. I want to allow for the possibility that this might be true, but I’m still struggling to see any evidence of it,…

This comment section is open for any non-work-related discussion you’d like to have with other readers, by popular demand. Here are the rules for the weekend posts. Book recommendation of the week: Leonard and Hungry Paul, by Ronan Hession. Two men living with their parents meander through their lives being kind, fundamentally decent people. Not a lot happens! But it is very quiet and charming. (Amazon, Bookshop) * I earn a commission if you use those links. The post weekend open thread – May 16-17, 2026 appeared first on Ask a Manager. View the full article

A reader writes: I have one of those intensely low-stakes questions that I would love to get your and the commentariat’s opinion on. I like using paper planners. I like decorating them. I recently started a new job. My question is twofold: 1. How much can I decorate my planner without people starting to look at me as an overgrown eight-year-old? 2. How much decorating can I do while physically at work? Some planning on paper feels fine to do while in the office but fiddling with stickers and different colored pens, maybe not? Where does one draw the line, so to speak? I’ve attached two different types of planner spreads (they are not confidential and most likely not…

A reader writes: I manage a fully remote team. It can be difficult to draw a line between work and life when you work from home, so I try to emphasize the importance of work-life balance within my group. I don’t send emails outside of traditional work hours, I’m flexible about appointments, and I encourage my team to use all their vacation time before year-end. I have a new employee, Jolene. Day 3 of her first week, Jolene said she would work on something “later tonight, after dinner.” I reminded her then that I don’t expect her to work on this project at night – if she ever needs more time on something, she can let me know. Today is the start of her second week, and s…

A reader writes: I’ve been working at this smallish company for five and a half years now. I started as the office manager when we were nine people and now we’re approaching 50. I am a friendly person and have great relationships with many of my coworkers. We’re a friendly group, but strangely with my manager, I genuinely feel total invisible to him. In my many years of working, this is a weird experience for me. I’ve always had very good relationships with my managers. A few examples of what I mean: This morning I walked into the office and he’s standing talking to my coworker (he’s also her manager) and he’s looking right at me as I walk by and I look at him and say,…

It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go… 1. Interview questions meant to identify covert North Korean workers As you may already know, with the rise of remote work, some sectors in the U.S. have had an issue with North Korean workers applying for work while pretending to be a U.S. citizen, with an American liaison hosting their work laptop in the U.S. and providing aid with documents and such. Since this has been discovered, some interviewers have of course tried to find ways to weed out these fraudulent applicants, and I was wondering what you think of the matter. I heard today of an interviewer who would ask candidates to repeat a phrase like “Kim Jong Un is …

A reader writes: I work for a large nonprofit organization; I started here a few months ago. I am a mid-career professional, and in general, I feel like I usually have pretty good instincts for how to handle interpersonal conflict at work. But I feel stumped by this one. In a recent call (on Zoom/video) with approximately 10 staff members, we were discussing a stressful work project where a lot of things are going wrong. One of the senior leaders on my team said (I am paraphrasing), “If XYZ happens, I will kill someone.” They did not name a specific person; they seemed to be expressing their extreme frustration at how the project was going. I tried to intervene with e…

Tucked at the bottom of countless job descriptions is a line so familiar it may barely register: “other duties as assigned.” That language generally feels like a formality—an obvious catch-all to cover the reality that job descriptions can’t list every small thing a job might task you with. In practice, though, that line can end up doing a lot of work in ways new hires never anticipated. At Slate today, I wrote about some of the weirdest ways “other duties as assigned” has been used — and what you can do if you’re being assigned work wildly outside of your job description. You can read it here. The post “other duties as assigned” – the 4 words that can make your job any…

A reader writes: I have a tough situation. Our new business manager of one year for an office that requires in-office management (due to daily printing requirements) has come to higher management to state their childcare is no longer available. And due to childcare being so expensive, this manager has requested to work fully remote until their young child is at least three years old, which will be in 2028. Their direct manager offered the solution of working remotely a few days a week and asked if their partner could help on the other days, but that isn’t an option. We also offered another big office rent-free for the manager to hire a certified babysitter, but that was…

It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go… 1. Coworker is poisoning a new hire with his bad attitude A guy who works in our IT department, Steve, is just genuinely a negative human being, and pretty overt about it. He complains constantly about anything and everything, and really appears to hate his job despite remaining at the company for over 20 years. All managers are stupid, all decisions about his job/responsibility area are bad … you get the idea. Examples: * Telling a visibly pregnant coworker that he “didn’t think bringing a child in the world right now was a great idea considering the state of things.” * Wearing a truly enormous sombrero after complaini…

It’s hard to think of another time in modern history where workplace trends have changed as quickly and as dramatically as they have in the last five years. From the enormous increase in remote work, to employees grappling with careers that look quite different than what they might have been told to expect, to rapidly growing discontent with income inequality and stagnant wages and disillusioned employees reassessing their trust in their employers, to young workers launching pandemic-era careers without the same set of work and academic experiences that previous generations benefitted from, work is just a very different place than it used to be. I wrote a short piece for…

Last month we talked about what dysfunctional behavior you’ve been driven to after a toxic office warped your norms, and here are 15 of the best stories you shared. 1. The printer destruction At a past job, management was extraordinarly cheap. My printer was over a decade old and was slowly dying. Normally this wouldn’t be a big deal but it was my job to print payroll and A/P checks and every few checks would jam. It would take me hours to complete this task that should have only taken a few minutes. Multiple times I requested a new printer or a repair but was told it “wasn’t in the budget” and they could only make an exception if it was completely dead and unable to pr…

It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go… 1. My interviewer didn’t ask me any questions I just had my second ever job interview (I’m a college student applying to a student job on an editorial team at a big media company). I feel pretty good about it. The atmosphere was nice and relaxed, they seemed enthusiastic about me and my experience, there were no major blunders. However, what really surprised me was the lack of questions on their part. Most of the interview time was spent on them telling me about their processes and the duties I would have on the job. I was asked one (!) question by one of the interviewers and it was a very general one. He asked me to tel…

Let’s discuss small things that almost took down an entire team or company. To kick us off, here’s a story that was shared here recently: About 10 years ago, I was at a job where a huge drama erupted over email signatures that ultimately resulted in a lawsuit. One day the subcontractor we all worked for sent an email that we had to standardize our email signatures because some people were having too much fun with them and using non-standard colors and fonts. Okay, fine, we thought, we guess we took it too far. The job was very very tedious and messing around with signature blocks (strictly in emails to each other) was one of our few outlets and expressions of individual…

It’s four answers to four questions. Here we go… 1. Should I say something about our intern’s bright blue pimple patch? We have a paid intern on a four-month term with government. He has some social anxiety things and general workplace norms we have been working with him on. Last week, he showed up at a virtual internal team meeting with a blue star sticker on his forehead. It took a while to figure out it was a pimple patch. Do we say something? I know there is a move among young people to wear bright and patterned pimple patches in public, but at work I expect them to be hidden. Pimple patches at work are increasingly getting normalized and seen as no different tha…

It’s the Friday open thread! The comment section on this post is open for discussion with other readers on any work-related questions that you want to talk about (that includes school). If you want an answer from me, emailing me is still your best bet*, but this is a chance to take your questions to other readers. * If you submitted a question to me recently, please do not repost it here, as it may be in my queue to answer. The post open thread – May 15, 2026 appeared first on Ask a Manager. View the full article