Performance Tracking and Feedback

Welcome to “where are you now?” season at Ask a Manager! Between now and the end of the year, I’ll be running updates from people who had their letters here answered in the past. A heads-up about update season: for the next few weeks I’ll be posting at midnight, 11 am, 12:30 pm, 2 pm, 3:30 pm, and 5 pm (all times are Eastern)* … at a minimum. There will sometimes be additional posts at random times throughout the afternoon as well! Also, if you’ve had your letter answered here in the past and would like to send in an update, there’s still time to include it so go ahead and email it to me! * That’s Monday through Thursday. Friday will be unpredictable. The post the sch…

Earlier this month, we talked about corporate gifts that went terribly wrong. You shared so many outrageous stories that I had to split my favorites into two parts. Part one was here, and here’s part two. 1. The fire hazard After college I spent some time temping for a cargo airline. When someone had been with the company for five years, they were given a little glass globe paperweight. Part of my job was sending them out – a lot of the company’s employees were pilots and flight crew, so they didn’t come in to an office, and we mailed the gifts to their homes. After a while we got an email from one of the pilots. He had placed his globe on his desk by the window and wa…

Last month we talked about “other duties as assigned” — things you’ve been asked to do at work that were wildly outside of your job description. Here are 15 of my favorite stories that you shared. 1. The handmade crafts I had a manager whose in-laws held a handmade-only Christmas exchange every year. They were all crafty and she was decidedly not, and they made some intimidatingly great things — the one memorable example she cited was that someone hand-carved a chess set for the exchange. She made us figure out her craft and do her craft for her a team event every year. The one year I participated, we made a decent felt-flower wreath for her mother in law. It was fun, …

Last month we talked about signs of financial trouble you’ve seen at work — the early signs that foretold something worse was to come — and here are 12 interesting stories you shared. 1. The shrimp harbinger One place I worked at had a holiday party, and long-timers clocked that the size of the shrimp cocktail tower was an indication of the financial health of the company. Some years it was a four-tier ice sculpture piled with giant shrimp, some years it was a single platter of average shrimp. It became known as the “big shrimp party.” One year … no shrimp at all, and rumors started flying. A few months later there were layoffs. 2. The rug repo You know those rugs you…

All this week to get us in the holiday spirit, I’m going to be featuring holiday work stories readers have shared here in the past … and then updates season will start next week! To kick us off, here are 12 of my favorite stories you shared about potlucks and other food gatherings at work earlier this month. 1. The mince pies During a Christmas potluck, our CEO made a surprise appearance at our small branch to chat, exchange wishes, and so on. While everyone moved to the main floor for some games and quizzes, I had to go back to the canteen to retrieve my forgotten jacket. I caught the CEO stuffing the pockets of his very expensive, very Armani suit with our mince pies…

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. Last week we talked about things that you thought were normal early in your career … but later learned were actually just weird things your old workplace did and which were not typical at all. Here are 15 of my favorite stories you shared. 1. The packed hotel rooms My very first internship was the most bizarre work experience I’ve ever had, but I didn’t know it then. My boss was personally wealthy, as in 1% wealthy. But she was super cheap at work. When we organized the nonprofit’s annual conference, we got X many rooms free for staff for however many attendees booked rooms. My boss told us that we …

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. Last week we talked about shared space / hot-desking horror stories and here are 10 of my favorites that you shared. 1. The torn-down sign We have a bank of shared desks which aren’t actually general-use hot desks, but hot desks specific to our team. However, as we’re often out and about supporting other colleagues or delivering training out in the field, we’re usually only in one day a week. People realized this and started using our desks as hot desks, and all our equipment gradually failed/vanished, and when we DID come in, there wouldn’t be any desks available. So we put up signs. One of the oth…

Here are 15 of my favorite stories you shared about holidays at work over the past month. 1. The succulent For several years I managed a team who were all at individual satellite offices. During my site visits over the holidays, I gave them all little gift baskets which included a small, fake succulent (most of the offices didn’t have windows). On a subsequent visit about six months later, I found out that one employee had been watering hers every day, and was proud to show me how healthy it still looked. Fortunately, she thought it was hilarious when she found out it was artificial, and it brought the whole team a lot of joy. 2. The panda onesie Our new vice preside…

Last week we talked about times people “misused” their power for good. Here are 12 of my favorite stories you shared. 1. The payout I had a colleague, “Carol,” who decided to retire, and went in to tell our site HR person this and get the pension paperwork started. The HR person, “Grace,” was apparently unhelpful and said that she couldn’t do anything until the following week, and Carol should come back and remind her on Monday. Two days later, Grace called Carol and the rest of her team into a meeting to inform them that their entire department was being outsourced, and they were being laid off. This is the UK; there’s legislation around minimum payments in this situa…

Last week we talked about memorable impressions made by new hires. Here are 20 of my favorite stories you shared. 1. The celebration At my husband’s old company, a new hire took a three-hour lunch on his first day. When a coworker asked where he’d been, new hire said he’d been at the strip club with his friends celebrating his new job. He reasoned that this was fine because “it’s just syllabus week right now.” He did not last long. 2. The carving Years ago we held an orientation for some new hires in the boardroom and one of them chose to carve his name into the table-top. It was his first and last day. 3. The Keurig annexation On a new guy’s first day, he took the…

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. Last week we discussed final F-you’s to jobs or bosses you hated, and here are 18 of the best stories you shared. (Caveat: appearing on this list is not an endorsement of said behavior in every case! Stories are shared primarily for entertainment value.) 1. The revenge A legal secretary at the Big Law firm I worked at knew she was going to be fired, so the day before she went into a bunch of partners emails and sent their wives evidence of infidelity, printed out confidential employee evaluations/communications about bonuses/pay and left them in everyone’s desk, and then cleaned out the swag closet (…

The final votes are in, and the CEO keeps asking young male employees to try her breast milk won the Worst Boss of 2025 Award, with 57% of the vote in the final match-up. Coming in second, the company that made summer interns wear bikinis captured 43% of the vote. The runners-up, who all managed to be pretty terrible themselves: my boss told me to stop having sex with my boyfriend or quit my job boss says it’s unacceptable not to meet all deadlines, no matter how unreasonable my boss made me verify that I’m really exercising I was written up for having a visible thong outside of work can I ask my boss not to scream at me with her door open? my boss said I’m threat…

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. One of the oddest things about interviewing people for jobs has always been how frequently candidates say they don’t have any questions when I ask what I can answer for them. This is a job they’re considering spending a large chunk of their waking hours at for the next however many years, and it’s likely to have a significant impact on their day-to-day quality of life and progression in their career. Surely there’s something they’d like to know about. At New York Magazine today, I talk about why people don’t ask questions in interviews, why that makes a bad impression, and 10 especially strong questio…

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. Especially early in your carer, it’s common to think that they way your workplace does things is normal — and then you move somewhere near and discover that having a goat shrine isn’t normal at all. This can also happen if you stay at one job for a long time, or if you move to a new field. We don’t always know that what we’re surrounded by isn’t normal — until something makes us realize that it’s not. Today’s “ask the readers” is a suggestion from a reader, who requests stories of “expressions, traditions, methods that you thought were universal but which you learned were actually just a weird thing y…

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go… 1. Am I being a grouch about this touchy-feely group activity? I work at a school. As the closing activity for today’s professional development session, Fergus (an administrator) split us into three groups, then asked two-thirds of us to stay seated with our eyes closed while the other third stood and moved around the room. Fergus read a series of prompts and invited those who were standing to “connect with” (that is, tap or pat on the shoulder) someone the prompt applied to (“connect with someone you admire,” “connect with someone whose work you’d lik…

A reader writes: I’m managing a department of eight people and two of them won’t speak to each other. I’m new to my position and it took me a couple of months to figure out that they weren’t talking. They literally won’t speak to each other. If we have a meeting, they won’t participate if the other person is in the room, unless I address a question directly to one of them. I’ve been managing them for three months, but from what I can gather it’s been like this for at least two years. There seem to be a couple of other people in the department who are on one person’s side or the other, and it is affecting the department’s work. Everyone who has been with the company fo…

It’s “where are you now?” month at Ask a Manager, and all December I’m running updates from people who had their letters here answered in the past. There will be more posts than usual this week, so keep checking back throughout the day. Remember the letter-writer whose office had been sent someone who couldn’t do the work by a job placement firm that said they’d lose their funding if the letter-writer’s office didn’t keep her? The hire, Carol, not only couldn’t do the work, but was disruptive — and her wealthy parents were being disruptive too. Here’s the update. I found some menial tasks from the lists given and put Carol on them. She really liked making paper chains…

It’s “where are you now?” month at Ask a Manager, and all December I’m running updates from people who had their letters here answered in the past. There will be more posts than usual this week, so keep checking back throughout the day. Remember the letter-writer whose boss was pushing them to fundraise from their family and friends and tap their personal network for prizes for raffles? Here’s the update. In the months during which my boss was pressuring me to solicit gifts, I managed to procure exactly one in-kind gift from a local business I frequent, and I was so awkward doing it. There’s a local yarn shop that I frequent, so I intended to ask the owner for a donati…

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. Remember the letter-writer whose anti-vax employee was pressuring a coworker not to vaccinate her baby? Here’s the update. I really appreciated your advice and several of the thoughts from the commenters as well. I have weekly one-on-ones with each member of my team, so after reading your response, I used that next meeting with Cordelia as an opportunity to step in, after taking care of our usual business. I used the framing about how if the roles were reversed, if Dawn didn’t want to vaccinate and someone was pressuring her to, I would need to shut that conversation down, because Dawn deserves to b…

It’s “where are you now?” month at Ask a Manager, and all December I’m running updates from people who had their letters here answered in the past. Remember the letter-writer wondering if they were missing red flags at their new job since their coworkers kept expecting them to be miserable? Here’s the update. I’m still in the job! My boss is still a stickler, that hasn’t changed, but I’ve adjusted to him, and things have stayed pretty stable overall. I’ve now been here about nine months, and I’m hearing a lot less about the dog (thankfully) and a lot less doom-and-gloom about how the job will “turn nightmarish any day now.” It hasn’t. My team lead and colleagues are go…

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. Remember the letter-writer wondering at what point they could report their inappropriate and inflammatory coworker? Here’s the update. I finally quit so now I can update. One of the details I was obfuscating before was that we’re both student workers in our 20s at a post-secondary institution. Unfortunately, I couldn’t apply too much of your advice because things got CRAZY basically immediately after, but I still greatly appreciated the advice and the sanity check from you and everyone who commented. My question got posted the week before U.S. election day. The first words Kevina said when she walked…

It’s “where are you now?” month at Ask a Manager, and all December I’m running updates from people who had their letters here answered in the past. There will be more posts than usual this week, so keep checking back throughout the day. Remember the letter-writer wondering if they could ask their coworkers to tell them to shut up when they were talking too much? Here’s the update. I was the person who wrote in a moment of desperation trying to figure out how to stop myself from endlessly talking with/at coworkers and posed the idea of having a button made to tell people to tell me to hush (you know it was bad times when that sounded like a good idea). Warning for cont…

It’s “where are you now?” month at Ask a Manager, and all December I’m running updates from people who had their letters here answered in the past. Remember the letter-writer wondering whether to suggest that their employee rethink her career path? (They were having to outsource a large report she should have been responsible for because of the quality of her work.) Here’s the update. Mindy is still with our organization, but possibly not for much longer. We ended up not outsourcing the report, but I had several conversations with her over the course of this year about her growth with the organization, as she’d requested a promotion to a senior manager role — a position…

It’s “where are you now?” month at Ask a Manager, and all December I’m running updates from people who had their letters here answered in the past. There will be more posts than usual this week, so keep checking back throughout the day. Remember the letter-writer asking whether she had to share her story on a “women in industry” panel? Here’s the update. So … I ended up doing the panel. I talked to multiple trusted women at work and outside of work, who almost always encouraged me to do it, even if just for the experience and to showcase myself. For what it’s worth (now that the panel is over), I work in the construction industry as a superintendent. My job is to organ…

It’s “where are you now?” month at Ask a Manager, and all December I’m running updates from people who had their letters here answered in the past. Remember the letter-writer whose employees were being cruel to a gross coworker? Here’s the update. I fear this won’t be a very satisfying update. As I sat at my desk and read your email asking about an update, I took a few moments to look up from my screen and across the office to watch Meredith. Within those few seconds, I saw her pick a scab off her face and eat it. So yeah. I had my first conversation with Meredith months ago. Our job is one that exposes us to food, biological material, and chemicals, so at the sugges…