Performance Tracking and Feedback

It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go… 1. I didn’t expect my employee to take off so much time after a family death My only direct report, Jessy, recently had an unexpected death in her spouse’s family. This has taken a huge toll on both of them, especially due to its sudden nature. Jessy let me know a couple of days after the passing. I checked her PTO balances (which are generous in our company), let her know how much time she could take, and encouraged her to take the time she needed. I expected this would be two or three days at the most. Instead, Jessy was off three days last week and three and a half this week. This has really put me in a bind and left…

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: Sisters of Fortune, by Esther Chehebar, who’s been called “a Jewish Jane Austen.” Three sisters in the insular Syrian Jewish community in Brooklyn try to figure out their relationships to men and to each other, as one begins to question her engagement. (Amazon, Bookshop) * I earn a commission if you use those links. The post weekend open thread – September 13-14, 2025 appeared first on Ask a Manager. View the full article

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 – September 12, 2025 appeared first on Ask a Manager. View the full article

It’s four answers to four questions. Here we go… 1. My client “befriended” me and now isn’t paying for my work I am a self-employed home manager. I gained a new client via referral a few months ago. She is very nice and friendly, and I am a friendly “relationship building” type of professional. This has served me well in getting and keeping clients and in sales previously. I admit, I do struggle with crossing the line — oversharing too much personal info, experiences, etc. — and with this particular client, it has backfired. After working with her for a few weeks, I offered to help with one task at no charge to help her out during a very difficult time in her personal …

A reader writes: I’m in the middle of a pretty bleak job search, involving lots of form rejection emails. The first few times I got one, I wrote back a succinct note to the effect of “thank you for letting me know” before realizing how depressing this would be for all of the rejections that would soon start rolling in. I figure most places don’t care, so I’ve stopped responding to those rejections, but I’m wondering: is it worth ever sending something polite but more personal, hoping that maybe they’d change their mind, or am I living in the job-search equivalent of a 90’s rom-com? “Gosh, we usually get crazy people who yell at us, but this person is so nice and that go…

A reader writes: I interviewed a student today who is interested in doing an internship at my organization. I love working with interns so I was happy to meet with him (virtually), but I am wondering if my expectations are off in terms of how a student interviews. He was late, his wifi was bad, the background was messy (dorm room with flags hung on the wall), he was wearing a hoodie and ear buds, and he didn’t have any questions for me. He seems smart and he has some interesting and relevant experience, but I know that’s not how I would have shown up to an interview, even at his age. Are my expectations too high? Is it unreasonable to expect that programs that require …

In response to the letter earlier this week about a company that announced it would no longer clean out office fridges, we talked about how cuts that save only minor amounts of money can be a harbinger of more significant problems to come. Today, let’s talk about what other signs of financial trouble you’ve seen at work — the early signs that foretold something worse. Some examples shared in the comments: “This was back in the financial crisis of 2008. One morning we get a company wide email with the subject line ‘Milk.’ Went on to say that we since we had been spending so much money on it, the company would no longer provide milk for coffee/cereal (they kept the non-da…

It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go… 1. No one in my company will give direct feedback I joined my current firm almost two years ago. It was an industry switch post-masters degree. The firm is well-regarded, albeit fast-paced and challenging. After joining, I learned that they have a truly bizarre approach to feedback: you don’t give feedback to people directly, you tell their manager. About six months in, someone went to my manager to say they felt I was not as communicative about a deliverable as they wanted. She never said anything to me when I was working on the deliverable, just took the deliverable when I handed it off (on time), said it looked good, …

A reader writes: I recently made a hire for a mid-level job in my organization, and hired someone I was extremely excited about. We clicked in his interview and I had some warm personal recommendations. His experience in our field was light, and there were a few red flags in the application process, but I felt that he was teachable and worth taking a chance on. Four months later, I can conclude I was disastrously wrong. He has struggled to grasp the material of the job, to arrive at work on time (with a few near no-shows thrown in for good measure), to demonstrate professional courtesy to colleagues, and to pick up on company culture. We are nearing the point of termina…

Last year, the federal government was poised to ban non-compete agreements for most U.S. workers, saying they stifle wages. However, right before that change in the law was supposed to take effect in September 2023, a judge in Texas blocked the rule, saying the agency lacked the authority to issue it, and it’s been in limbo ever since. Last Friday, the FTC announced it will end its appeals of the case, which ends all the remaining litigation over the rule … and means the proposed noncompete rule is null and void. Non-competes still remain banned in California, North Dakota, and Oklahoma, and 11 more states and Washington, D.C. prohibit them for hourly wage workers or wo…

A reader writes: My boss is INCREDIBLY verbose, a disorganized speaker, and consequently pretty terrible at running meetings. If we’re doing five-minute check-ins, his will take 20. If he’s presenting on a topic, his presentation will take most or all of the meeting and will be crammed with irrelevant details and tangents, to the point where it’s genuinely difficult to pull the relevant details out (He never has slides. He might have a giant spreadsheet.) If he’s running a meeting, which he does for our weekly team meetings, he’ll spend about 75% of that meeting monologuing. He clearly loves to talk; he is palpably joyful when chatting. I also think he uses our meetings…

It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go… 1. Can I tell a coworker I dislike him? Is it ever safe to tell a coworker you dislike them on a personal level? There’s a colleague I find very annoying. He hasn’t done anything wrong, but his personality is extremely different from mine. He’s far more optimistic and cheerful than I am. The disparity in our attitudes comes partly from me hating my job. Even though there are all sorts of ways in which it could backfire, I think I would very much enjoy telling this person I don’t like him, even if only via email. If not while we’re in the same workplace, maybe on the day one of us moves elsewhere (I’m applying for other …

A reader writes: My fiancé and I just broke up after 6.5 years together. The underlying factors contributing to the split had been percolating for a long time, but the actual break-up happened very suddenly and unexpectedly, and I’m in a lot of pain right now. I was wondering if you had any scripts for how to broach this subject at work. I’ve talked about my partner, his career, our upcoming wedding, etc. a lot to my coworkers, and many of them have met him. I don’t know how to now announce that we broke up without trauma-dumping, but obviously I can’t just pretend that we’re still together. I’m sorry! You don’t need to make a big announcement at all. You can simply s…

Most office routines aren’t exactly thrilling: you answer emails, survive meetings that could have been a Slack message, and silently curse your coworker for not saving the spreadsheet you need on the shared drive. But some offices have embraced the weird and wonderful, establishing traditions that range from hilarious to outright bizarre. At Slate today, I shared 15 of the greatest work traditions I’ve heard about from readers. (And it’s probably significant that all of these traditions appear to have developed organically! None of these stem from organized team-building or “mandatory fun.”) You can read it here. The post the 15 greatest office traditions you’ve never…

A reader recently sent me a cover letter that I want to share as a great example of explaining a maybe surprising job history: she had started in one field, then left it, then was trying to come back to it. First, though, the caveats I’ve learned to give when sharing these: The writer has allowed me to share this as a favor to me and to readers. Please remember she’s a real person when you’re commenting. This writer’s voice is her voice. It will not be your voice, and that’s part of the point. There is no single cover letter in the world that all hiring managers will love or that would be the right fit for every employer and every industry. But I receive letters all th…

A reader writes: I’m a manager in an office environment. I’m not involved in hiring or firing. I only make recommendations, and someone else makes the decision and implements it. My instructions are not to talk to the person about it and refer any of their questions to HR. I’ve heard from former employees that when the company lets someone go, they don’t tell them anything about why, just that today is their last day. In some cases the person getting fired expects it somewhat based on past conversations, but some people are completely blindsided and never know what made them lose their job. Is this normal? I answer this question — and two others — over at Inc. today, wh…

A reader writes: I’m absolutely prepared for you to tell me there is nothing I can do about this at all besides ignore it, but I REALLY need to change my thinking around my boss’s parenting choices, which I find bizarre and am frankly tired of hearing about. My boss’s adult daughter and 13-year-old grandchild live with her. The daughter doesn’t work but often needs my boss to babysit. Fine, this is her business. But when she leaves work to do it, she gives us a convoluted and overly detailed explanation of why, every time. This has the effect of making it seem much more annoying than it would be otherwise, especially if we’re in the middle of a deliverable or project. …

It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go… 1. Coaching a female employee to apologize less, as a man I’ve been thinking about your response to “my employee apologizes all the time,” specifically: “I think from the name on your email that you’re a woman, so one way to address it is to point out that women in particular tend to overapologize and that it can make them seem less confident and less authoritative than men” I’m a male manager in a field that’s pretty welcoming to women, thankfully, so throughout my career, my teams have always had significantly more women than men. I’ve wrestled with how to address the above (which I’ve seen firsthand), and also the oth…

A reader writes: I’m not quite a year out from graduating college. I left my first “professional” job after only eight months (due to a workload that required us working seven days a week, a manager who texted our personal cellphones at all hours and days demanding answers about work tasks, etc.) and just started my second job in a much lower-paying field about two months ago. At my first job, my manager wanted to be cc’d on everything … and I mean everything. He’d complain if he was not cc’d on the most mundane of emails, and even requested that our broader 12-person team would be included as well. This was even for things that were extremely specific to me, such as re…

Here’s some coverage of Ask a Manager in the media recently: I talked to Slate about the death of the work happy hour. I talked to CNBC about how people are feeling about work right now. I talked to CNBC about how people returning to their offices are encountering very messy coworkers. I talked to CNBC about why generational stereotypes are often BS. I talked to CNBC about some TikTok career advice I support. The post Ask a Manager in the media appeared first on Ask a Manager. View the full article

A reader writes: My generally good manager recently gave me a dressing-down over a statement I made in a meeting. During the ensuing discussion, it came out that she relies on body language and facial expressions to figure out what people are “really thinking.” I knew that she does something like that, because every time she assigns me a task, she will keep explaining why it’s necessary well after I’ve agreed, so now I fake enthusiasm. Similarly, I proactively explain even the tiniest twinge of hesitation I think might have made its way to my facial expression, because she’s going to ask me about it anyway and then refuse to take “no concerns” for an answer. However, de…

It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go… 1. How to ask HR for additional support without undermining my boss Recently, I raised a concern with my skip-level manager, Crowley, about a colleague (Alastair) making inappropriate comments about my appearance. Crowley immediately flagged the comments as inappropriate, told me I shouldn’t have to deal with remarks about my age or appearance at work, and said he’d speak to Alastair’s manager — which he did the same day and confirmed when it was done. He also told me to come to him again if anything similar happens. Now, Alastair has emailed me to apologize and ask what, specifically, he said that made me feel disrespec…

Last week we talked about ridiculous examples of micromanagement, and here are 16 of my favorite stories you shared. 1. The insufficiently festive cookies My boss decided we all should make cookies and do a cookie swap for Christmas. The cookies needed to be sufficiently festive and colorful, however. She brought in a cookbook with pictures of cookies on the front to show types would pass muster. She specifically pointed out some powdered sugar covered chocolate cookies as being not colorful, but they would be allowed because a beloved relative of hers used to make them during the holidays. I happened to like those cookies and they were easy to make, so I brought them.…

A reader writes: I recently hired a new administrative employee. His job is to answer phones, greet guests, and complete various tasks I assign to him. His customer service skills are strong, but his attention to detail is very weak. I have given a lot of feedback and training, but he continues to make basic mistakes and misses almost every deadline I give him. But he is constantly telling me how great of a job he’s doing. He routinely tells me things like, “You are going to be so happy when I show you what I’ve done for you!” or “You are going to love me, I am making your life so much easier!” and then hands me a report that I have to spend a half hour correcting. Yest…

It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go… 1. My office is infested with mice, and no one will do anything There is an active mouse issue at my work, and I am having trouble finding a way to tell my boss how done I am with this situation. About eight months ago, our building was taken over by new management. My work space is located in the basement and, with seasons changing, mice have moved in. This was not an issue with the previous bulding management company. They have installed traps, but the problem has gotten worse, not better. At this point there have been mice running across my desk while I am working, right next to my feet, and in sight of clients. I ha…