bullying coworkers wouldn’t let me speak at a meeting, I heard something alarming about a coworker, and more

It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…

1. My bullying coworkers wouldn’t let me speak at a meeting

This happened many years ago, but I keep replaying it in my head and wondering what I should have done.

At that time, I was working in a very small department in a small nonprofit. There were four of us in the department, three faculty (me, Marc, and Terry) and a director, Linda. We were having our weekly meeting (overkill, in my opinion) with some reps from other departments, and a couple grad students. Maybe eight people total.

Linda despised me and made no bones about it, and the overall situation was extremely toxic. I’d been tolerating Linda’s abuse for about four years at that point and was very miserable and looking to escape. She delighted in making me look bad in front of everyone possible, including students.

At this particular meeting, towards the end, there was something I wanted to comment on. I forget the topic, but it wasn’t a huge deal. For the next 5-10 minutes, every time I opened my mouth, Terry would interrupt with a comment. The first couple of times, okay, coincidence. And then it became extremely obvious that Terry was deliberately interrupting to prevent me from speaking. I looked up and Linda was openly giggling at Terry’s antics. This went on for quite a while, with Terry saying increasingly inane things every time I opened my mouth and the rest of the group giggling. At one point, I yelled, “Does anyone want to hear what I have to say?!” and Linda responded, while laughing, “We don’t know, we haven’t heard it yet.”

In my fantasies, this is where I storm out and slam the door, saying something like, “When you want my input, let me know and I’ll start attending these meeting again. Otherwise, I don’t see any point in being here.” Needless to say, that’s not what I actually did. In real life, I gritted my teeth, waited until Terry was bored being the funny guy, and interpolated my comment, which was an almost completely irrelevant after that much time wasted by Terry being a jerk.

I got laid off from that job about three months later and found a new one six months after that. It took about a year at my new, non-dysfunctional workplace before I was comfortable speaking in meetings. I have no contact with any of those jerks anymore, but this situation pops up in my head from time to time, wishing I had pushed back or done more to stand up for myself. Realistically, that wouldn’t have helped my situation at all but might have made me feel better.

What would have been the best response at the time?

First and foremost, there was no “good” response in this situation because there was no winning.

The way you handled it was reasonable. It also would have been reasonable to just give up on speaking at that particular moment, since they were being such pains in the ass. Either was reasonable.

What wasn’t reasonable was them and there’s no magical response that forces unreasonable people to become reasonable.

What you were dealing with there sounds much, much bigger than what happened at this one meeting. I suspect you’re focusing on the meeting — even now, years later — because it encapsulated their disrespect and rudeness, and there’s something about that particular instance that you feel like you should have handled better.

But they were just jerks. They were jerks before this meeting, I assume they were jerks after this meeting, and there was nothing you could do that would have changed that.

2. Should I tell my boss something alarming I heard about a coworker?

I work as an instructor for a niche sport, which can be dangerous if people aren’t following safety rules. We mostly work with school groups, so the majority of our students have little to no experience with our sport, making safety even more important.

Today we had a large school group with a language barrier, so things were kinda chaotic, and we had an unusually large number of kids being wildly unsafe, and it’s a miracle we got through the day without any serious injuries. A lot of this was kids who were done with their lessons and immediately attempted to do things that were wildly above their skill level … but there was a few incidents of instructors having their classes try things they weren’t at all ready for.

Afterwards, a few of us were discussing the whole mess in the break room, and some support staff raised concerns about one instructor in particular, who is apparently a repeat offender with this sort of thing. They said John typically gives his classes very little instruction, takes them to do more challenging things, and then gets angry with the kids for not knowing what they’re doing. John’s attitude with the kids is bad enough that the support staff raised concerns about it counting as emotional abuse, not to mention that his lack of instruction and poor judgement is endangering the kids.

This is obviously very alarming. Only problem is, my only source is that small handful of support workers I talked with today. This is John’s first year with us and we’re still early in the season, so he hasn’t been teaching with us for very long, although he’s not new to the industry. None of the instructors have personally witnessed any bad behavior from John, but we’re usually focused on our own classes; the support team are in a much better position to spot alarming patterns, but they’re a different department and they don’t feel they can raise any official concerns.

Should I alert my boss to the situation? I’m on the fence, because it’s just unsubstantiated gossip that might not be accurate (the support staff weren’t even sure who the offender even was; they just kept giving details until we narrowed it down to John), and I don’t like the idea of sharing harmful rumors, especially since I’m only on my second year here. But if the complaints are accurate, then the situation needs to be handled immediately, because John’s conduct is endangering his students (and making them miserable). Help?

You should talk to your boss. You’re not going to be spreading unsubstantiated gossip; you’re going to be alerting the appropriate person to a potentially serious safety issue. You’re not going to claim that you know all of this firsthand; you can say, “I can’t attest to this myself because I haven’t seen it, but I want to pass on to you what I heard since it’s potentially so serious.” Your manager can sort it out from there.

3. Can I ethically encourage succession planning in the current state of things?

I still have a few years to go, but I’m starting to consider retirement. I have a millennial staff member who would be a logical choice to move up to my role when the time comes. Our employer is great about supporting continuing education and certification within our field.

My delimma is that my field, like many others, is taking a beating by the current administration. I’m honestly unsure of what it will look like by the time this is over and somewhat doubtful it will fully recover. Much of our field is being courted overseas where the environment is still welcoming and the regulations are very different. While we have to do our jobs to the best of our ability in the interim, I question whether it’s a sustainable career trajectory for a young person who will be in the workforce for another 30 years.

This leaves me uncertain about how much to push my young staff. They can do their current jobs well enough, but there’s a lot of extra work to move up to my level. That said, it’s a niche field and people tend to stay once they land here. I would need to be pushing them starting soon so they had the right experience, but there might not be much of a role when the time comes.

I would appreciate your thoughts on the best way to move forward.

Honesty! Tell them exactly what you said here — you think they’d be a great choice to succeed you, which would entail them needing to do XYZ over the next couple of years, and you question whether it it’s still a sustainable long-term career trajectory, and explain why you think that. Lay it all out and let them decide if it’s something they want to pursue; don’t make that choice for them.

4. I’m about to be assigned an old-school manager who I don’t want to work for

My organization restructured, and my reporting line is changing. We work primarily on a project basis, so there are two people I work with very regularly who I could theoretically report to, but one is the most frequent. My concern is that this person is very old-school in their attitude about PTO and promotions. For example, they complain when people take a lot of PTO in December (so they don’t lose it). They believe that an employee shouldn’t be promoted to the senior manager level and stay at that level for several years — they should only be promoted to that level when it’s clear they’re poised to be ready to go up for partner within 2-3 years. They also frequently work on vacation and holidays; they don’t ask others to do so, but they often comment that that’s part of the job at that level.

The pressures that this person is responding to are real. However, this person’s peers do not all say the same things or behave this way. I see examples of other people who have different boundaries and priorities, while also appropriately meeting client needs.

I’m about to be asked to report to this person. Folks in the organization are acting like they’re running it by me, but I don’t feel like it’s something I actually have any say in. I really like my job and working with this person, but I’m super worried that reporting to them will change how I feel about my job. I know who I’d prefer to report to, but I’m not sure they have capacity to take on a new person. Is there anything I can do or say in this initial meeting where HR asks me / tells me this is the plan? I really love working with them, but I’m so terrified that reporting to them will change things.

Talk to HR now, before the conversation where they’re telling you about an already-finalized plan! Frame it this way: “I enjoy working with Jane, but would it be possible for me to report to Cressida, who I also work closely with? Cressida has a work style that matches my own very well and I think we would have a strong reporting relationship.”

You might also talk with Cressida now and ask if she can help you make that happen.

5. Should my husband keep applying at my workplace?

This one is on behalf of my husband. We’re both working in an industry that is going through a lot of instability right now. My job is at a company that is one of the best and most prestigious globally, and I’m pretty secure in my position. His workplace is much more shaky; he already survived multiple rounds of layoffs, but who knows when his luck will run out.

In the past few months, my company has posted a few roles that I believe he would do well in. However, all positions here are highly competitive; the recruiters get hundreds of applications. He applied for two positions and was rejected at the screening stage. There is now a job number three. He thinks applying again would be seen as desperate and the recruiter won’t take him seriously, and that he should at least wait a year before another application. I kind of see his point, but I also know that he very much lacks confidence in himself and he finds the whole looking for a job process very stressful. So what do you think? Does it look bad to apply again, or should he go for it and see what happens?

As long as it’s a reasonably large company, he should keep applying. This is normal at large companies with highly competitive roles; it won’t reflect badly on him unless he’s submitting an identical application and not changing anything about it. The first two didn’t get him an interview, so he should look at ways to strengthen any future ones (whether that’s a more targeted cover letter or a resume that better plays up his accomplishments).

One caution: having both spouses working for the same company can be risky, especially in an unstable industry; if they make cuts, you risk both of you losing your jobs at the same time. But I assume you’ve factored that in!

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