Performance Tracking and Feedback

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. Here are four updates from past letter-writers. 1. My job wants me to hit up everyone I know for money and other help So it’s been a bit of a twisty path since I wrote in. I’ll start by thanking Alison and the commentariat for really helpful advice. The small group meetings with the explicit purpose of sharing our personal contacts and their locations kept being postponed. Casual discussions about the principles of the project continued during other meetings, and I began to lay the groundwork suggested in the advice and dis…

Remember the letter-writer whose breastfeeding coworker wouldn’t stop talking about her boobs? Here’s the update. It has been about a year since I wrote in. While the talk about breastfeeding specifically decreased about eight months in, my coworker’s seemingly endless need for attention and validation was unceasing. It got to the point where only about three people in the office were engaging with her at all unless they absolutely had to. She then shifted tactics, approaching people with questions that were superficially work related, then immediately re-centering the conversation to either boast about her chosen path to martyrdom, garner excessive praise for her child’…

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 company said it was “best practice” to do layoffs over email? The first update was here, and here’s the latest. Two years later and I have a doozy of an update about this company. So, after the last letter, I was working at a new company that happened to employ a lot of people who had left the Email Layoffers. We kept in touch with a lot of people at that company and it was pretty quiet for a year or so…

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 coworker was making their friend break-up really weird? Here’s the update. I have a major update to my previous letter. Last week, this coworker (Mr. Collins) got fired. He had another extremely similar falling-out with another female coworker (let’s call her Jane) in June, and even more women started comparing notes. Jane started working with us around the time that Mr. Collins and I fell out and they s…

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. Remember the letter-writer whose coworker screamed at them and HR hadn’t done anything? Here’s the update. I wrote to you back in 2020 about an incident from 2019 where a coworker had a screaming tantrum. I very much appreciated your input, and that of your commentariat. Nothing much happened regarding HR and my yelling coworker, Dolores. I’ve taken your advice to heart, that almost all workplace issues are caused by bad management. This was seemingly a situation with a bad coworker, but the problem was exacerbated by the deep incompetence of my boss, Cornelius. He had no idea how to shut Dolores dow…

It’s a special “where are you now?” season at Ask a Manager and I’m running updates from people who had their letters here answered in the past. Remember the letter-writer whose coworkers were joking that she was pregnant when she wasn’t — including having a local radio host congratulate her on her “pregnancy”? Here’s the update. I was reading AAM as I do every afternoon when one of the recommended posts catapulted me back into my past. I’m the reader who wrote to you about six years ago about my co-workers who wrote into a local radio station to pretending I was pregnant as a “prank.” I’ve been meaning to share an update for a while now, and this felt like a sign In th…

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. Remember the letter-writer whose coworkers had way more money than her but constantly expected her to shell out cash for meals and gifts? Here’s the update. Thanks for posting my letter and for your advice a while back. I have a somewhat unsatisfying update. The gift-giving has slowed down considerably, presumably because the federal workplace isn’t exactly festive at the moment. However, the original issue recently showed up in a different form. Our office admin offered to put together (what I understood to be) a no-host happy hour as a send-off event for a colleague who recently got DOGE’d. (Note: …

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. Remember the letter-writer whose doctor’s office constantly left them on hold while they needed to be working? Here’s the update. I wrote in a few months ago about struggling to schedule doctor’s appointments when I worked at a busy reception desk. Thanks very much to both you and the kind commenters who offered sympathy and suggestions. It was nice to receive confirmation that there wasn’t some easy solution I was missing, and I appreciated the suggestions to use an earpiece from other people who’d done front desk work. I also saw a few suggestions that my question wasn’t really a work question, whi…

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 employee was demoralized after a promotion was dangled in front her and then yanked away (#3 at the link)? Here’s the update. I met with Maple, the head of our office, and was able to uncover the truth about why they decided not to promote Joy (though it took some deeper questioning to get to it). It was your third possibility: Maple had concerns with Joy during the decision-making process. Maple felt th…

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. Remember the letter-writer whose employee said they needed to give her longer breaks because she’s a smoker? Here’s the update. Update on my employee who is a smoker and requested extra break time due to her disability. First, wrong terminology on my part was used when I wrote in. The campus is non-tobacco use, not just non-smoking. Second, Deleana is an excellent worker other than her tardiness in coming back from breaks. I did ask my other employees if they would prefer one long 30-minute break or two shorter 15-minute breaks. 100% of the other employees (I didn’t ask Deleana) prefer having two 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. There will be more posts than usual this week, so keep checking back throughout the day. Remember the letter-writer whose friend hired them but wasn’t paying what they had agreed on? Here’s the update. I’m happy to say that the outcome of the conversation with my now former boss was positive and I didn’t expect it to end as well as it did. Thank you, Alison, and everyone who provided helpful feedback. I respectfully brought up with my friend what she was thinking to do in terms of the summer when the days were longer and I…

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 manager posted a “wall of shame” of people who didn’t volunteer to work more? Here’s the update. I wrote in a few years ago about a new supervisor and her approach to mandated “voluntary” overtime as a registered nurse in a hospital. Since then, that supervisor has stepped back into a staff nursing role and she’s happier for it. We’re still friends so I’m also happy about that! She’s a great nurse who tried a new role that wasn’t right for her. A new supervisor was hired from outside. She was…

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 new boss told them not to take all their PTO each year? Here’s the update. I appreciated your advice, as well as the commentary from the reader community. Your reply was spot on to how I felt as well — vacation time was part of my compensation package, and them backtracking verbally after agreeing to it in an official offer that I signed felt very, very wrong. I had also declined another offer to take this one, so I felt betrayed in a sense with a bait and switch. I was so incredibly thankfu…

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 new employee felt excluded on a well-meaning but cliquey team? Here’s the update. I had actually done some of the things you suggested when Anya joined (e.g., organizing a Teams call before she started so she could ask me questions and briefly meet the rest of the team before she started, having a team lunch in the staff cafeteria on her first day with us in the office, setting up coffee meetings with each member of the team in her first couple of weeks, designating an official buddy in anoth…

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 partner was angry about how she handled harassment at work? Here’s the update. Addressing the domestic violence situation: following my post, we took more than a month away from each other. I stayed in our flat, he stayed with a friend and we had zero contact during this time. About 40 days in, my partner came home (as agreed), but he works away a lot so he booked jobs to be away Mon-Fri for four weeks a…

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 who was the chair of a board and had one board volunteer making everyone’s jobs harder because of his struggles with technology? Here’s the update. I found your advice and the advice in the comments very helpful. To start, I wanted to clear up something that that came up in the comments: this is not a 501(c) organization, though we do volunteer work for them. I fudged some of the details to make my story less recognizable, but this is actually an employer-sponsored affinity group. So no, there is …

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 CEO was demanding everyone return to the office but people didn’t want to — and they were a manager stuck in the middle? Here’s the update. Just a few months after my letter was published … my team imploded. My boss decided after 10 years of service to leave the company to focus on his family, and due to the terrible state my industry is in right now, my team of 12 is now just three, including me. Losing…

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 whether to write a list of rules so a colleague, Paul, would treat them decently? Here’s the update. I’ve recently taken a step that commenters had advised — leaving the group. Getting Paul to leave (your excellent advice) wasn’t an option, though perhaps me leaving will push things in that direction. I alerted five people to why I was leaving, and a number of them seem to be realizing that the grou…

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 CEO who kept asking young male employees to try her breast milk (!!)? Here’s the update. I recently wrote in about my CEO offering her breast milk to staff. The staff member most impacted elected to write a letter to the board. About 95% of union members decided to sign on to the letter, with many of them writing their own letters describing favoritism and lack of accountability on the part of the CEO. The whole board rece…

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 federal employee wondering whether to stick it out or leave (#3 at the link)? Here’s the update. Here’s a bit of an update from one of the federal employees who wrote in back in January. Not much has changed on my end, although it’s been a long year. I’ve gotten a resume completed, which at least is a step closer than I’ve been in over a decade to looking for another job, and have looked around, but haven’t found anything that would work for my situation. Right now is a lousy time to be looking for work; everyth…

Remember the letter-writer whose building was being plagued by human waste outside it? Here’s the update. The pooping has stopped! It was actually just a small group of six people who were causing the biggest problems. There were mental health issues at play as well. Our boss had several conversations with the police and created a plan that involved him monitoring the security cameras at night and calling the police non-emergency number any nights that group was sleeping under our awning. The police would send the homeless outreach team to give resources and ask the individuals to move on. If they didn’t move on, they were given no trespassing orders. There is a publi…

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 asked whether they’d been wrong not to interview a problematic volunteer for a paid job? Here’s the update. You and the commenters were extremely helpful. I was reassured that the decision itself was not inappropriate, but better communication would have helped a lot along the way (isn’t that always the case?). One of the first things I did was go back and re-read the personalized rejection I had sent Stephan…

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. Here’s an update from a letter-writer way back in 2009 whose coworker was a not-very-well-behaved ex (first update here). I left the country and HR a few years later, moved to a different country in a different department, and was introduced to a colleague by another colleague. Got married to the colleague, continued working there, had a family (human and cats). We both got burned out and decided to semi FIRE, moved to a third country, and are now staying in a small, progressive town with loads of greenery. We joke that we m…

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. Here are four updates from past letter-writers. 1. How do I manage petty behavior between two employees who dislike each other? For context, I am not the manager of either of these employees, just an innocent bystander trying to help the manager figure this out. The feedback that was given to both of these employees was relatively similar to what you suggested. Basically, the manager focused not on the specific incidents, but instead on telling these employees that the expectation is that they treat all coworkers with profe…

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. Here are four updates from past letter-writers. There will be more posts than usual this week, so keep checking back throughout the day. 1. I think my disastrous ex-employee is co-opting queer identity Where do I begin. I followed the advice and said nothing, generally kept my distance. Pam sowed chaos “leading” the LBGTQ+ group. She created what an ex-member described as a sexualized atmosphere, including a pinup photo of her in an event announcement. A lot of members left. A young employee, Mary, very publicly accused P…