Performance Tracking and Feedback

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go… 1. I want to quit my job and open a bookstore I work in tax accounting. Tax season just ended and the overtime nearly killed me. I love my job but I’m tired of it. I’m also in my mid twenties and more or less feel like I settled down too soon. I work at a small firm and the owners are the best bosses I’ve ever had. I really enjoy the people I work with and I enjoy what I do. I’m well paid and have good benefits including 100% employer paid health insurance. But I’m starting to get tired of it. Lately I’ve been fantasizing about opening a bookstore. I…

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. A reader writes: I recently interviewed for and accepted a job as a nurse at the very small hospital in my very small midwestern town. My lovely manager was very transparent about how they are big supporters of work-life balance, and gave tangible examples of how they support families, because they have “small town values.” She is clearly very proud of this fact and puts a lot of stock in being a “good” manager. I know some of the employees on that floor, and everything she says seems to be true and not just lip service. Well, I am pregnant (around 15-16 weeks when I interviewed) but, naturally, did …

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. A reader shares this story: I recently received what I believe to be a scam job offer. It seemed too good to be true, and I should have realized it was a scam, especially since I don’t remember applying for the position at the company that supposedly offered it to me. The most obvious red flag was that it seemed too good to be true, and the text in the email was clearly copied and pasted from a template. Still, in the excitement of the moment, I almost fell for it. Here’s how it went down: First email: A seemingly legitimate email from someone within the organization asked me to reply “yes” if I was…

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. A reader writes: The letter you posted from the volunteer who didn’t disclose something to a student’s teacher and parents reminded me about something that happened to me a while ago with an outside mentor for an after-school program, especially since I was a lot like Marvin in that letter (without the expensive romantic overtures). I was the only girl in a STEM club at my high school, and the mentor was, let’s say, a teapot designer who also trained teapot drivers. Bob wasn’t actually a teacher at my school. He was a volunteer who worked at a well-known organization that the club was associated with…

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go… 1. My boss says my salary research is wrong because our benefits are so great I recently received a promotion with a significant increase in job responsibilities and found myself negotiating salary for the first time in my career. My state requires salary ranges to be posted with job descriptions, so I have a good idea what other companies in our industry are offering for my role and my years of experience, and I asked for a similar amount, about 10% higher than what I was offered. My manager wanted to know how I came up with the new number, so I point…

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. A reader writes: Through a bit of misfortune, I had to fall back on working at the company my parents own, in order to pay my bills. It is a challenging job market, to say the least, so I am grateful that I have this safety net I can fall back on. However, it isn’t without its own league of challenges: my coworkers have taken to making complaints about me to my parents, who are the bosses, about issues that quite frankly seem petulant. In one case, one coworker was noting what times I was clocking in and made a complaint when I clocked in three hours earlier than everybody else to finish paperwork in…

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. A reader asks: My small business has had a recurring discussion regarding taking meetings with job seekers when we don’t have an open position. Someone will reach out, either by stopping by our office without an appointment or just sending an inquiry by email, and ask if they can meet with someone. In the past, we have taken these meetings as sort of informal interviews. From what I recall, we’ve never made a hire from these meetings when there’s no existing connection to our company or staff. Over the last few years, I’ve discouraged these meetings. They just take up time for our team when we don’t …

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. A reader writes: I took over as the director of my former team about a year ago. I inherited an ongoing HR issue between one of my direct reports (Tammy) and her direct report (Beth). Beth hates Tammy. Beth had applied for the promotion to Tammy’s position when it was last open but my predecessor hired Tammy from the outside, and Beth had strong feelings about being passed over. Tammy was not the best hire; she is not a strong manager. But we are a government agency, and while Tammy isn’t my best employee, she is not so bad that there would be any chance I could fire her. I have worked on coaching her…

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go… 1. My boss leads the worst staff meetings ever Every month my boss leads an all-staff meeting, and it is awful. Normally he is a pretty good boss, and I enjoy working with him. But this meeting is regularly 1.5-2 hours long and largely irrelevant to half the staff because it is mostly geared towards one team (out of 4). My boss also tries to make these meetings “fun” by asking people for personal pictures — at one meeting he showed pictures for 45 minutes before even getting to the business/informational part, during the height of our busy season. I ma…

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. A reader writes: I’m an admin in a small office, with a centrally located desk. One of my coworkers, Miranda, literally never stops talking. I counted for a while and she averages two major interruptions per hour, mostly extended monologues about personal minutiae, intimate relationship problems, or absolute and total nonsense. Basically, her entire internal monologue is externalized at all times. She announces everything she’s doing. She tells me long stories about how she managed things like “loaning her bike to someone” or “changing the exact location of her keys” that follow the entire storyline …

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. A reader writes: Is there a professionally acceptable way to push back when someone apologizes for causing problems at work? For example, this morning, my colleague slept through a meeting we had scheduled. Since I’m on the west coast (we’re a remote team), this meeting required me to wake up at 5 am. She messaged me two hours later saying, “Whoops, I totally spaced on this meeting. Sorry!” My normal response would be to say something like, “It’s okay! When can we reschedule?” But … it’s not okay! Not just because I woke up early, but because I was unprepared for my next meeting as a result. This ha…

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. A reader writes: I have a manager who you would deem unfixable, and I’m currently job hunting so I can put him behind me. In the meantime, I’d love your advice on how to handle this very emotionally draining situation. It has been two years of trying to fix him and I’ve exhausted every avenue, including seeking help from his manager. He’s not changing and I know that; he is very much out of his depth in the role, has poor professional instincts, and is emotionally juvenile. Last year, he blew up at me after I tried to reopen a conversation about my concerns regarding his shortcomings (obviously not …

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go… 1. My promotion was canceled because of budget … but I’m still doing the work I’m an employee at a university paid through federal funding. Last month, my manager submitted a promotion for me. After some back and forth, it was approved all the way up and down the chain by everyone and just waiting for the last signature to be finalized. At the last second, two days before the deadline, upper management said that due to funding uncertainty the promotion was cancelled. Unfortunately, I don’t expect this uncertainty to resolve any time soon, so who knows …

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. 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: Greta & Valdin, by Rebecca K. Reilly. Greta and Valdin are siblings and roommates, one dealing with his break-up with a much older man, and one trying to figure out love and her career. It’s also about their large Maori-Russian-Catalonian family, and about struggling to find your way, and it’s funny. (Amazon, Bookshop) * I earn a commission if you use those links. View the full article

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. 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. View the full article

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. It’s four answers to four questions. Here we go… 1. Excusing myself from a fancy work lunch due to allergies I have severe food allergies to multiple common food items. They are complex (substitutes for one food often contain another, some allergies are tied to flavoring or preservative agents not immediately obvious, etc.), often challenging, truly allergic (not an intolerance), and fairly new (adult onset a few years ago). For that reason, I very rarely eat out. My food intake is consistent and incredibly limited. I had to work with a dietician for several months to figure out how to even get enou…

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. A reader writes: I am the director of a small, public-facing unit. We have a full-time staff of 10 and several part-time workers. I am struggling with our leave system and how to make it as equitable as possible. Current policy (that I inherited) is that employees can put in all leave for the following year beginning in November of the previous year, and first-come first-serve wins. We have some employees who quickly take a lot of the prime spots, particularly around spring break and holidays. Not everyone can plan ahead like this, however, and so some of our people then get little to no time around …

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. A salary negotiation success story from a reader: Due to a lack of backfills, I’ve absorbed the work of some attritions over the last couple of years and have been operating for some time as three raccoons in a trench coat. I’ve far exceeded expectations and have been recognized in performance reviews (although not raises — my company has been well below cost of living for some time, with my department averaging around 2% annually since 2020). Now the very rare event for my company has happened where they’ve decided to permanently promote the job level of my existing role — to take what I’ve made it i…

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. It’s the Thursday “ask the readers” question. Today we have two letters, one question. The first: I’m a fed in a (relatively) safe job in a (relatively) safe agency, and while I’m hoping to stay, I am keeping an eye out for other opportunities. But as someone who went straight from academia to the federal government, I realized I don’t know where to look beyond places like LinkedIn or Indeed. I’m sure many job categories have their own niche places to look for job announcements, but how do you find out about them? Maybe people who are looking could say their desired job category in the comments and ot…

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go… 1. If I opt out of team-building activities, I still have to work on those days I work for a small nonprofit with about 25 employees. Recently, we have begun “employee engagement” activities, like visiting local attractions. These activities take place during work hours. We are not forced to participate, but if we choose not to, then we are expected to work while those who do want to participate are basically paid to hang out at a local attraction, restaurant, etc. I don’t enjoy these kinds of group activities, but I’m not trying to keep anyone from g…

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. Remember the letter-writer who manages a terrible slob and asked how to convince her upset coworker that it’s being handled? Here’s the update. I actually have an update to this situation right now! I appreciated so much of the advice in the comments, as well as yours. I didn’t get much into everything I had done with Sally since my question was really about Susie, but it really did sound like I was blowing off Susie without that additional context! Susie and Sally have separate offices with doors on a large campus. Most of Susie’s work happens on her computer, except for an occasional client meeting…

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. A reader writes: I am one of the lucky few who have not been greatly affected by layoffs in my region. While I am working from home, I am still working. I work in an industry that is fairly well insulated, considering the circumstances. I have a friend who has been laid off from their job in a very different field. This friend emailed me the other day asking me if I had any leads on jobs that they could apply to. The only person I know in a field anywhere close to theirs is in the same position, laying off workers. I have no idea what to say to this person in response. Can you help? I answer this qu…

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. A reader writes: As a millennial (I’m 40) who spent years being mocked and maligned for enjoying avocado toast, I’m averse to generational generalizations. That said, I’m a manager in a large finance company struggling with how to motivate and manage our youngest employees. Our company is typical for finance; buttoned up, long-ish hours, high expectations. We have thousands of employees who range in age from early 20s to 70s. The early career employees we’ve hired since the pandemic are … different. Our company was quick to recognize that, because these employees started their careers when everything…

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go… 1. My boss is my boyfriend and won’t give me a day off The owner of the restaurant where I work is my boyfriend and the general manager. I asked for a day off a month ahead of when I needed it off. It’s on Mother’s Day and, yes, it is one of the busiest days of the year. But I have worked there for three years and never took a day off, unless he wanted us to go on a vacation. He recently hired someone two weeks ago and promised her Mother’s Day off because it’s her birthday. I have missed out on so so many things in the past three years because he need…

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. A reader writes: I work in a department of nine people. We all get along well, but I’m struggling with how to handle my frustrations with my colleague, Marrgo. Margo is possibly the most well-intentioned person I’ve ever met, but she has the infuriating habit of bringing every conversation back to herself to explain how she understands or has been through the same thing. This week, the transmission in my car died. When I was lamenting to the group that I was now facing the financial hardship of either repairing it or buying a new car, Margo told me, “I get it. I just had to buy brand new tires for my…