updates: disastrous ex-employee is co-opting queer identity, and more

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 Pam of blowing up her life. Pam promised to leave her husband and move in with Mary, but turned on Mary once Mary had done all Pam asked, including taking on debt to rent a home for them. Mary lost her job for this because Pam complained about being outed. Pam seemed to enjoy the painful drama. (And yes, people at the company helped Mary. But there was a lot of damage.)

What else.

Pam is on a PIP now and practices malicious compliance when she is at work. That doesn’t happen much because she is often just AWOL. Junie (unlucky new manager) has visibly aged. We had drinks and she asked, “Did Pam do X and Y when you were managing her” and it’s the same batshit things, including the spooky rage. Our labor laws and risk-averse HR mean it will be a year or more until Pam can be fired.

Also, Pam decided she wasn’t queer after the head office pulled support from DEI programs, following the The President executive orders. She has turned on the ERG members. She doesn’t seem to care when people are angry at her. It’s unsettling. She just smiles and looks kind of happy whether she’s getting cheers or curses (not literally).

I don’t know what we’ve learned from this. How do you not hire a sociopath?

2. My boss wants my employee to report to him (#2 at the link)

My post was about how my supervisor wanted to file himself as supervisor of record for my long-time supervisee, while I continued to handle the “day to day” of supervising her. I reacted to this proposal out of anger because this sounded like I would be covering for him, and, as a woman in this organization, I have previously had to cover work for a male supervisor, with no credit given.

After reading the comments, it occurred to me that if we could mitigate any functional issues with this change (such as confusion or crossed wires), it could be a net neutral for me and a net positive for Sarah. Over the years, Sarah has had many growth opportunities through new projects and responsibilities, but we’re a small and immobile organization (eight employees), and it’s hard as a supervisor to provide a continual cadence of growth. And so I had the realization that it made no sense that I stand in the way of this change for Sara. To mitigate potential problems, I asked my supervisor to meet to chart out Sarah’s reporting line for each of her projects. I also asked him to identify at least one or two projects to work on with her, so that he had some substantive role as a supervisor.

It’s been about two months since the change. It has really been nominal. Sarah reports to me on all of her projects but one. We connect for 3+ hours a week, and my supervisor has met with her once so far. But we haven’t had any communication problems, or confusion about my role. I think the big positive is that the change has elevated Sarah’s sense of her own importance in the organization — which is great, because she is important. Even if it was not the reason my supervisor proposed it, this boost has been a big positive.

On my end, I am looking for a new job, not due to this situation but due to the general lack of accountability of management in this organization. Altogether, going forward with this change with negotiated conditions was by far the most frictionless solution, and I am happy we could make this a win for Sarah. Thank you to the commenters for helping me to see the opportunity for Sarah.

3. What’s up with unannounced video calls?

I wrote way back in 2022, what feels like a lifetime ago, about joining a new team in my same company with a culture of unannounced, unexpected video calls. We were all remote at the time and video calls weren’t a part of the routine with my old team (and it was a very small company) so the hard shift was jarring. It was, as some folks might have picked up on, an extremely stressful time (lots of extraneous context involved that made the move itself unannounced, unexpected, and involuntary) and the perceived rudeness of the passively demanding video calls were just the crap cherry atop the stress sundae. And yes, they were always video calls with an expectation for video-on.

I can only chart correlation, not causation, but the worst offenders were also the leaders with the most boundary issues — they had the hierarchical power and authority and they used it to demand their direct reports be “besties” with them (actual quote) even after being rebuffed (!!), use their employees for emotional support and venting, caring more about being liked than being a leader, and a whole host of other issues. I didn’t end up addressing the video calls thing because there were much bigger fish to fry — including a neurodivergence diagnosis that helped explain why being wrenched from my task to answer an unannounced call made me feel bitey!

I do not miss that job.

4. My coworker got angry that I gave her time-sensitive info at the start of her shift (#3 at the link)

Management moved my coworker away from that position where she was having issues, and at the end of the day I think she had some things going on in her personal life that caused some challenges at work.

A few months later, she was fired because she got caught clocking into work and then going home for hours at a time.

If any lesson is to be learned, I imagine seeing small conflicts like what occurred in the past is a good sign a manager/supervisor should be checking in to support someone as things aren’t likely going so well! I’ve also been moved into other positions with more responsibility away from the role where I would attempt to help that previous coworker.

Now when I present “too much” information, my peers are very grateful and I’ve helped catch a lot of mistakes and helped solve some problems before they even occur! (Heard about this in my most recent performance review.)

I’m happy I didn’t take it to heart and I kept being who I was and just communicated that my previous angry coworker was having personal issues.

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