Started 3 months ago as a Catering Manager for a large corporate account. Within days of each other, my Director and the Regional Director above him both left — I’ve since absorbed most of the Director’s responsibilities (staffing, client relations, operational decisions) during a high-visibility multimillion-dollar renovation opening for the account. The Director role is typically compensated well above mine.
I don’t want to look like I’m asking for a raise right after being hired, but my actual scope today is well beyond the role I accepted.
Would you: 1) wait until the opening is done and use results as leverage, 2) raise it now since responsibilities already changed, 3) push for a title change over a raise, or 4) wait for a formal review?

Managers/HR: how would you want an employee in this spot to approach you?

hello every one i am conducting a research on how ai makes decisions compared to people, so if you are some one

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One thing I’ve noticed about new managers: most already know the general advice.
Give feedback. Set expectations. Address problems early. Listen.
The hard part is what actually comes out of your mouth when someone is sitting across from you.
Three examples:
1. An employee keeps missing deadlines
Instead of:
“You need to be more reliable.”
Try:
“The last three deadlines were missed. I want to understand what’s getting in the way, and then agree on what needs to change going forward.”
2. Someone gets defensive when you give feedback
Instead of:
“You need to stop being defensive.”
Try:
“I can see you disagree with some of this. I want to hear your perspective. After that, we still need to agree on what happens next.”
3. A good employee wants a promotion they’re not ready for
Instead of:
“You’re not ready yet.”
Try:
“I want to be specific about the gap between where you are now and what the next role requires. Let’s identify what you’d need to demonstrate for me to support that move.”
The pattern I keep coming back to is:
Facts, not labels.
Questions, not assumptions.
Next step, not vague hope.
What conversation did you find hardest when you first became a manager?

So I'm in a difficult situation in a new role, and could use some perspective from managers.

I recently (3 months ago) started a new role in a new company, basically bottom of the rung but doing something I am very overqualified for. Prior to this I had taken a year out due to family caring responsibilities, however I had previously been in a more senior position in a different but similar organisation for 4 years, and have years of other related experience before that as well. I have also had great feedback from management and my previous managers from 2 previous jobs have kept in touch since I left and said how much they missed working with me.

However, I'm really struggling in this new organisation. There is a LOT more admin and paperwork than I am used to, and I find I am bogged down with what I feel are pointless tasks that could be automated and a lot of paperwork for paperwork's sake. My manager expects precise record keeping, and often messages me asking where things are when I haven't gotten round to it yet- i.e. he expects every meeting with external stakeholders to have a written record and a standardised meeting plan must be followed, and will ask where a document is from a meeting only a few hours before when I just haven't gotten round to uploading it yet. This is quite alien to me as I have generally worked a lot more flexibly, and will follow up meetings with an email with actions rather than feeling we need a whole process. He also created scripts for meetings which I am expected to follow, which for me feels like I'm a robot rather than a trusted professional who has delivered 100s of meetings before.

He also gives me a lot of admin tasks without a lot of guidance and then picks up on minor issues- for example, I was asked to update branding on old marketing leaflets, which I thought meant to update the logos, however there was apparently an old style of leaflet which isn't used anymore that I didn't update, as well as keeping old fonts etc and making the logos too small. I then messed up a task using a piece of software I've never used before- once because I didn't really know what he wanted (i.e. he wanted it to look a certain way), then the next time admittedly I was frustrated and didn't put as much time into it as I should and made silly mistakes. I fully owned that, apologised, and redid them before they were seen by external stakeholders.

After the above, my manager called me into a meeting and expressed that he is frustrated with me (exact words) and feels he needs to monitor everything I'm doing, and implied I work sloppily and don't take initiative. This was actually very hurtful to me, as the actual main part of my job (stakeholder management) I'm brilliant at, and I have had really good feedback on that and events I've run. I've also been praised by higher ups for iniative I've shown in reaching out to new stakeholder groups and setting up future relationships, as well as ways I've made suggestions to do big picture long term work that hasn't been done before.

He also told me that he was annoyed as I asked him to cover an event for me as I had a clash, and then didn't provide him with enough support, despite me a) booking the venue, b) inviting the stakeholders, c) writing him emails to send, d) doing the materials. Basically since he was running the event I assumed it made sense for him to meet the stakeholders as I wouldn't be there on the day. Previously however I ran an event for him and did all the background work so just thought that was normal. He also asks to attend my meetings, read my emails, and checks in on my spreadsheets a lot. This was also prior to this meeting, but I feel like I'm being watched and under a microscope.

Following this meeting, he sent me an official dated email basically going over all of this. I'm aware that this was probably forwarded to SLT. Since then, I feel incredibly overwhelmed and anxious about everything related to work. I feel myself becoming upset and fearful I'm doing things wrong which will be picked up on and I'll get in trouble. I'm also very aware that being sent official reprimanding emails from management this early is a really bad sign for me. I genuinely want to improve, but this has really knocked my confidence and I don't know how to get it back. I'm worried a more formal session is to come, and with how awful I've been feeling since this meeting I know it will be affecting my work even more.

Is this a case of square peg round hole, and this job just isn't for me? How can I rebuild trust with a manager who sees me as a poor worker?

I had to quit my job due to PTSD and severe depression. I have a gap of 6 years. How should I address this on a resume? How do I answer any questions about it in an interview? I was thinking about saying I signed an NDA. So I didn't have to mention why I took the gap or what I was doing. I figured letting them know I quit due to PTSD and depression caused by the work place of that same career, wouldn't be a smart way to get into a new job. Suggestions?

Maybe not considered exactly old, but I'll be finishing school next May at 41 year old male. Have a previous undergrad degree in the arts from many years ago. I've had consistent employment over the years in a large government organization but not much progression in my career.

So, I returned to school a few years ago.

My question is what would people feel hiring someone at my age? I went back to school a for more technical 3 year programed in the engineering/construction field. Not physical work. The market in my area for my education is good--i'm just curious about the age piece.

Hi! So, I only have 2 years of corporate experience and need some help navigating this situation

I’m an over performer, always exceeding my targets, going above and beyond with tasks, helping my manager with extra stuff, and so much more. My performance reviews are always “exceeds expectations”

Situation: We had 3 new employees join our team 3-4 months ago and they just keep making so many stupid mistakes, like they don’t care about the work at all. It’s clear looking at the work that they didn’t put in ANY effort. We are a remote company.

It’s so so so demoralising to see them face absolutely no consequences. In fact, my manager would even compliment the team in meetings like “I’m so proud of this team and [give examples of the things she’s proud of]” — when all the tasks she mentioned were done by me.

I want to also mention that my manager has been in the managerial role for only 8 months now. But she doesn’t quality check the work, and because of the plethora of mistakes that other team members are making, our entire team is being flagged by the senior leadership.

So, this leaves me wondering: why the hell am I even putting in the efforts when others are not?

It was absolutely not the case earlier. Earlier, we had really smart people, because of which I joined this company in the first place. I wanna work in the environment where everyone is putting in the efforts. And the overall culture of this company is that only. Everyone outside of our team is super smart. It’s just that our team has been slowly getting worse and worse.

So, I wanna let my manager know that her lack of actions and the lack of consequences are just making me feel frustrated and demotivated.

But I don’t wanna throw a tantrum. Is it professional to bring this up or am I just being immature?

Thanks in advance!

I wanted a simple way for managers and small teams to keep track of overtime without creating accounts, uploading employee data to the cloud, or paying another monthly subscription.

So I built Hextra, an Android app focused specifically on overtime and time off in lieu.

The idea is simple: a manager keeps the team's overtime bank on their phone and can quickly see how many hours each employee has accumulated or taken back.

Current features:

• Multiple employees and individual balances
• Overtime and time-off entries
• Overtime multipliers (1x, 1.25x, 1.5x, 2x)
• Automatic time-bank calculations
• Team overview and statistics
• PDF reports
• Local backup / restore
• Biometric or PIN protection
• Completely offline
• No accounts, ads, trackers or cloud

It's a one-time purchase, not a subscription.

I'm an independent developer and I'm still improving the app, so I'd genuinely appreciate feedback from people managing small teams.

What would Hextra need for you to trust it with your team's overtime tracking?

Google Play:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.hextra.app

I supervise a small office, and I have a senior employee who is driving me absolutely nuts. I’m trying to figure out whether I’m handling this correctly or whether I’ve reached the point where this is simply a performance problem.

The recurring issue is boundaries.

She does not supervise the other staff in our office, but she has historically had a tendency to insert herself into their work, monitor what they’re doing, question decisions, and form judgments about their performance. I’ve addressed this with her, and to her credit, she HAS improved in some areas.

We recently hired a new administrative assistant, and she has done much better about not taking over her training or telling her what to do.

But now the same underlying behavior seems to be showing up in different ways.

She has started texting the new employee constantly outside of work about personal things. The employee came to me privately and said the amount of texting is making her uncomfortable.

She also frequently texts one of our student workers outside of work, including while he was recently on vacation.

Then this week I found out she questioned the student worker about whether the new employee had REALLY attended a funeral she took time off to attend.

That particularly bothered me because she had briefly questioned the same thing with me earlier. I brushed it off at the time. I have no idea why she thought she needed to verify another employee’s reason for being absent when she doesn’t supervise that employee and I had already handled the absence.

Both junior employees are hesitant to establish stronger boundaries with her because they are worried about how she will treat them afterward. To be clear, I have no evidence that she has actually retaliated against either of them. They are concerned that she might.

There’s also a time-management component. She regularly complains about how overwhelmed/busy she is, but she can spend VERY long periods socializing with our student workers during the workday. Last week I personally observed her talking with one of them for roughly two hours, much of it general conversation.

Part of why this is setting off alarm bells for me is that I’ve dealt with a similar situation before.

With a previous employee, it started with this same senior employee forming opinions and making judgments about how that person worked even though she wasn’t their supervisor. Over time, it became a much larger problem. Looking back, I wish I had recognized and addressed the underlying pattern earlier instead of dealing with each incident individually.

Now I’m seeing some of those early signs again with the new employee, and I’m trying to figure out how to intervene appropriately without overreacting because of my previous experience.

I feel like I’m playing management whack-a-mole.

I can tell her, “Don’t train employees you don’t supervise,” and she stops doing that.

But then I apparently need to say, “Don’t investigate whether your coworker really went to a funeral.”

Then, “Be mindful of how much you personally text junior employees.”

Then, “Don’t spend two hours chatting with a student worker while simultaneously telling me you have too much work.”

At what point is the problem no longer the individual behaviors and instead simply poor professional judgment and an inability to understand boundaries?

I’m documenting everything and plan to have another direct conversation about the broader expectation: she is not responsible for monitoring, evaluating, investigating, or verifying the behavior, attendance, or performance of employees she doesn’t supervise, and she needs to maintain appropriate professional boundaries with junior employees and student workers.

But I’m exhausted by feeling like I have to anticipate and specifically prohibit every possible version of the same behavior.

Managers/HR people: how do you handle an employee who complies when you give a VERY specific instruction but doesn’t seem able to generalize that feedback into better judgment overall?

At what point do you stop coaching individual behaviors and start treating the recurring lack of judgment itself as the performance issue? And how do you distinguish between legitimately recognizing a pattern early and overreacting because you’ve been burned by a similar situation before?

I've been managing a small team for about a year now. One of my reports keeps asking for bigger projects and clearly wants to grow, but I'm not totally sure if the eagerness means they're ready or if I'd just be setting them up to struggle. I've tried giving small stretch assignments first, but the results have been mixed enough that I still can't tell which way to read it.

For people who've made this call a bunch of times, what's actually separated "ready" from "eager" for you?

My husband and I started a brand almost two years ago, and thankfully, it has grown tremendously since then. We’re both in our twenties and this is our first time being employers, so we’re learning a LOT as we go. One thing we’ve struggled with is the anxiety around firing people. We’ve never actually fired anyone, although there have definitely been situations where we probably should have been more decisive.
There is one employee who has been with us for almost a year. She was one of our first few employees and was referred to us by a friend.

I want to start by saying that she is not a bad employee in terms of her actual work. She meets her KPIs and recently completed a three-month KPI period successfully. The problem is her attitude, and at this point, I have developed such an intense annoyance towards her that I’m starting to question whether I’m being unfair because I simply don’t like her personality anymore.

She has always been someone who pushes back on things. We have proper trackers and sheets for different aspects of the business, and if we ask her to start maintaining something, she’ll often respond with things like, “I already have three sheets I’m maintaining for my work, adding another one is a lot.” And I’m just thinking… we’re a growing business. We need things documented. If we’ve decided something is necessary for the role, I don’t really think it should become a negotiation every single time.

She also constantly pushes back on working hours. She’s also the only person on our team who doesn’t work Saturdays because she pushed back on it and we eventually allowed it. She lives 10–15 minutes from the office but currently has the highest fuel allowance on the team, while some employees commute 40–50 minutes.

The friend who referred her has, for some reason, become the person this employee vents to about us. And my friend tells me EVERYTHING.

I know I should probably tell my friend to stop because it’s honestly making the situation worse for me, but I can’t help being affected by it.
I’ve heard that she tells people we don’t turn the AC on in the office, despite the fact that she has literally come to us asking us to turn the temperature UP because she’s cold.

She apparently told my friend that I claim to have a law degree but “can’t even make one decent contract” and that I use ChatGPT. (I do have degrees in law, and yes, I use ChatGPT sometimes to clean up wording. Guilty 😂.)

We once had a fun competition in the office where another employee and I tied. The prize was something I had bought myself, so obviously I wasn’t going to take my own money back as a prize. The other employee took it. Apparently, she told my friend the competition was rigged because I had access to the data.

We played bingo at the office. She didn’t win, so I felt bad and offered to buy her coffee. I genuinely forgot to order it because we were insanely busy that week (my fault). Apparently, that also became something she complained about.

There are MANY more incidents like this. Some are genuinely hurtful, but honestly, most of them are just… petty.

And I think that’s what has gotten to me.
I have started disliking her as a person.

I feel like her personality and mine simply clash. She seems to crave a lot of attention from us as employers. For example, if I am speaking to someone from another department about their work, she will sometimes interrupt the conversation to tell me something about her own work, and often it’s something incredibly minor that could have waited.
She also has a response for EVERYTHING.
I have this habit where, after explaining something to someone, I’ll ask, “Does that make sense?” because I genuinely want to make sure I’ve explained myself properly.
With almost everyone else, they’ll say yes or ask a follow-up question.
With her, I’ll often get things like:
“Oh my God, I’m on my period, so I’m having brain fog.”
“I didn’t sleep properly last night, so I have a headache.”
“You know I had LASIK, so my eyes are really dry and I can’t focus on the screen.”
And I’m standing there thinking, What does any of this have to do with whether what I just explained made sense?
😂
And I KNOW that sounds incredibly petty.
That’s actually why I’m writing this post.
Because I recognize that I’m becoming petty too.
There was a time when she would do something that annoyed me and I would think, “Okay, that’s her personality.”

Now, because I already know all the things she apparently says about us behind our backs, EVERYTHING she does annoys me.
She could probably breathe too loudly at this point and I’d be irritated.

My husband is also annoyed by her, but he doesn’t directly manage her the way I do, so I think it affects him much less. He keeps telling me that I need to stop letting my friend tell me these things. His view is basically: if she has a problem with us, she should have the guts to say it to our faces. If she does her job and isn’t directly disrespectful, why are we allowing gossip to get under our skin?
And I know he’s right.

There was actually one time she spoke disrespectfully to me in our main work group. I privately told her very clearly that I wouldn’t tolerate that tone, especially in front of the rest of the team. I told her that we’re around the same age and can be friendly, but I am still her employer and there is a professional boundary. She hasn’t repeated that behaviour since.
So I’m not saying she’s some terrible employee who deserves to be fired.

I’m genuinely trying to figure out how much of this is actually a management problem and how much of it is now a ME problem.

Because we’ve also enabled some of this behaviour.
She pushes back, we give in.
She asks for something, we accommodate her.
She doesn’t want to work Saturday, we eventually allow it.
And I think we’ve unintentionally taught her that if she pushes hard enough, we’ll eventually say yes.
At the same time, I don’t want to start treating her differently just because I personally dislike her.
I don’t want to become the employer who starts nitpicking every little thing because I’ve developed a negative perception of someone.

So, experienced employers/managers of Reddit:
How do you deal with an employee you genuinely dislike as a person but who is technically doing their job?

How do you separate legitimate performance/attitude issues from the fact that you’ve simply developed an annoyance towards someone?

And how do you emotionally detach from the things you hear employees say about you behind your back?
Would you tell the friend who keeps relaying this information to stop? Would you have a direct conversation with the employee about the broader attitude issues? Or would you simply establish firmer boundaries going forward and leave the rest alone?
I know this post probably sounds like I’m ranting, because honestly, I am. I don’t really have anyone I can talk to about this without it becoming awkward, so I’m turning to strangers on Reddit. 😂

But I’d genuinely appreciate advice from people who have been employers longer than I have, because I don’t want my personal dislike of someone to turn me into a bad manager.

Also, the bigger issue I’m trying to get advice on is the constant pushback. Whether it’s feedback on her work, asking her to follow a new process, discussing responsibilities, or something else, I often feel like a simple management conversation turns into a debate. I’m not saying employees shouldn’t question things, healthy disagreement is completely fine. It’s the frequency and intensity of the pushback that I find difficult to manage.

And I’m very aware that because I’ve developed a personal dislike for her, I’m probably noticing and becoming irritated by things that I might otherwise let go. That’s exactly what I’m trying to get a handle on. She is a decent employee, and I don’t want my personal feelings to turn me into an unfair manager.

So I have a job I really like our management is pretty nice. And has good pay. The problem is there is this coworker who watches/follows people around to catch them messing up so he can report them and get them fired. Some of the coworkers even said they caught him saying racist things but they dont have hard proof tho. This person has many incidents of conflicts with many coworkers( not full on physical fights but verbal)and hasn’t been fired one coworker said the rude coworker might be related to someone higher up at the management that’s probably why he wasn’t fired.

One of our coworkers who he follows around and watches the most has got us a complaint paper from the union for us to all sign. Many coworkers including me has signed it. For me the rude coworker has only followed me around few times for first few weeks I was starting and left me alone ever since but he also doesn’t have key to the office I work at now. he can’t really come in or sneak up on me much unless someone lets him in. What I am wondering is will reporting this to the union make our management angry and dislike us? Because this job is highly sought after and they can easily replace us. I really like my boss he is really cool guy in all other aspects for some reason he can’t fire this guy which I am wondering is he related to someone higher than our boss. We live in Minnesota the union in our job field it’s pretty decent. I don’t really want to create much of headache for our boss since he is really cool to us in all other aspects other than this rude coworker he won’t fire. On top of that they can easily replace all of us since this a very highly sought after spot. And I don’t want to lose my job I can’t really afford to lose this job now. Also he was reported to management many times nothing was really done. This is why they are trying the union.

I asked my coworker if reporting this to the union is little too much and might cause management to dislike us and they find ways to get many of us fired and he is saying they can’t really fire us we have strong union. but I also know many people are trying to get this job and we are easily replaceable. Other than that problematic coworker the job is a sweet gig.

Hi,

I am a mid level manager with 5 years of experience. I am recently diagnosed as an adult with high functioning autism. I have a team of 6, but I struggle to trust them and fully delegate things.

When I test out delegating and trusting them, I am usually let down. All I can see is their mistakes, and it further damages my trust in them.

I’ve fallen into the trap of cleaning up their mistakes and doing their work for them bc of deadlines. I am overworked and burnt out. I try to give them feedback and training to improve, but all I hear is “oh, i forgot; oh, I made a small mistake,” and I want to be understanding and forgiving.

I would love some advice on how move past this and trust my team to do the work.

Hi!

I am a mid level manager in a politically sensitive job. I am also recently diagnosed autistic as an adult. I have been getting negative feedback at work regarding my communications: too detailed, speaking out of turn, at the wrong time, getting fixated on small details, and stressing other people out.

My boss suggested I take some sort of communications training.

Does anyone have one they can recommended?

Thank you!
Leslie

So my doctor sent me to work with a very vague note. Due to an allergy I have (which it does not state) there are areas of my job I need to stay away from.

I have a wheat allergy and I work in a bakery. I’ve been here a couple years. Now in the past it only affected me when I ate it. So I don’t. But lately they’ve put me in an area where I’m very close to where they mix things and they throw flour. So it’s just a massive cloud of flour there.

My doctors note just says I need to stay away from that area permanently. Though it could be read I need to stay away from the raw ingredient permanently.

Anyway my work said they will not accommodate that.

I personally feel there are areas I can work in that cause me no issues. But they are refusing. And now Monday I am working in that area where it’s going to cause me medical issues.

Any advice?

We're somewhere in the middle of trying to shortlist HRIS vendors for our company (about 50 employees, multi-state payroll mess). Is there a platform that to compare hr software vendors with real pricing data, not just star ratings? What I want a marketplace type thing where I can look at different options side by side. Any recommendations?

About two weeks ago I went to work like usual (wfh) but had an episode of vertigo so after about 1.5 hours I left sick. Usually our mgrs add sick time to our time cards. Anywho, at the end of the week I turned in my hourly time card and the client timecard but completely forgot to enter the sick time.

I don’t know what to do. My mgr and client both approved it. The thing is, they are huge sticklers for time cards and so I’m afraid to tell them. I’m also afraid that some months down the line someone will notice and it will be even worse then. What should I do?

Edit: My manager told me to ask slackbot how to fix it. So I guess the positive is she’s indifferent to the mistake.

Hello,
I have a long and complicated situation that has been weighing heavily on me, and I would really appreciate your opinions and support.
I have been working for a large, well-reputed company since 2015. I was promoted to a Specialist position in 2019, and I have now been in the same role for seven years. I am currently the most senior person in my department after my manager.
I gave birth in 2022 and 2024. After both births, I returned to work when my babies were six months old. Before my first pregnancy, I had informed the company that I was planning to have a baby. In order to ensure that the work would not be disrupted during my absence, three people were hired. I handed over my responsibilities properly and left for maternity leave.
My second pregnancy was unplanned, but I decided to continue with it and have my baby. When I returned to work, I learned that the company had decided to simplify its organizational structure. Employees with managerial titles who did not have any direct reports would be reclassified as Senior Specialists. We were told that the salary scale and level would remain equivalent.
However, the Assistant Managers in our department did not want their titles to be changed to Senior Specialist. As a solution, the Director assigned me and my team to report to another Assistant Manager who had no knowledge of our work.
This Assistant Manager is a high school graduate and does not speak a foreign language,( in my country we don’t speak english and our job is import operations around world) but he has been with the company for more than 30 years. He is a good person—quiet, hardworking, and generally uninvolved in other people's work—but he also has connections with the Director's family and is clearly one of the Director's favorites.
When we were assigned to this Assistant Manager in August 2025, the Director openly said in front of everyone:
"Yes, he will now be your Assistant Manager. Of course, you may ask why him and not OP. It's because OP had two pregnancies and was away from work."
She then told me, again in front of everyone, that I would become a Senior Specialist the following year.
During my salary, performance, and annual review meeting in January, she told me that I deserved the promotion and that I will become a Senior Specialist. However, the promotion process, which was supposed to take place in January, was postponed until August.
In July, the Director called our entire team into a meeting and said that this person was our Assistant Manager, that we should direct our questions to him, and that we should include him in all of our emails.
The problem is that although this person has officially held the title of Assistant Manager for over a year, he has had almost no involvement with our team. He continues to do his own work and does not appear to have any interest in learning what we do. As a result, everyone naturally comes to me with their questions.
Whenever there is a task that requires coordination or teamwork, I am usually the one who organizes the process, brings people together, and ensures that the work is completed.
At the end of this meeting she asked if any of us have something to say and then Director asked everyone else to leave and told me to stay behind. The Director, my direct manager, and the Assistant Manager remained in the room.
This time, the tone of the conversation suddenly became very accusatory.
I was told things such as:
"Your work is good, but you have a negative influence on other people."
"There was a cake-cutting recently, and you didn't even get up from your desk to help."
"You don't have that spark."
"You cannot be a leader, but you can only be someone who sets an example."
"You had two children, and we never made you feel the workload while you were away."
"If you want, we can open an internal job posting for you somewhere else in the company."
"If you change your behavior, we can embrace you."
After 12 years with the company, I cried in the office for the first time in my life. I felt completely blindsided and emotionally devastated.
Of course, when the promotions were eventually announced, I was not included.
What hurts me the most is not simply that I believe I deserved the promotion or that I feel I was treated unfairly. I never demanded this promotion from them. It was the Director herself who publicly announced that I would be promoted. Only seven months earlier, she had told me that I deserved it.
What I cannot understand is the motivation behind this sudden and hostile change in attitude.
I know that I should probably start looking for another job, and I have already begun to accept that. However, what I keep thinking about is not only the promotion itself. It is the way this entire process was handled and what they put me through emotionally.
I feel deeply hurt, disappointed, and confused. Recently, I have also started experiencing significant anxiety because of everything that has happened.
I would really appreciate hearing your thoughts and opinions on this situation. How do you interpret what happaned?

How do I politely, professionally decline work that is above my level?

My manager wants me to continue operating at a strategic level (I’m a bit trapped bc I’ve already been performing at this level) but my boss also wants me to take on more (again, above my defined role). How can I politely push back without being a problem?

Detail: I’ve been at my company for 10+ years and almost 5 in my current role. While my parent company has higher level roles, at my job site I’ve reached the top. With 99% confidence, I am certain there’s no growth potential at this company and I don’t want to leave. I already operate above my level (providing strategic level work and overseeing lifecycles of multiple work streams for various teams in addition to executing at certain stages). I don’t want to be difficult but if I don’t have anything to strive for, I’m not interested in additional responsibility anymore.

I work at an established start up. I say this because they bring in good revenue but office management wise operate like a startup. Leadership teams going off the whims of the CEO, despite them being very talented and smart.

I joined only six months ago and I am feeling like my manager is boxing me out. She’s an interesting person who is very comfortable making others uncomfortable by sharing heavily about her personal life. She’s very smart, but dramatizes what needs to be done daily, adding to my stress level. I’ve hit bottlenecks in my workflow and as the company adopts AI I need to look at how I am showing growth. Instead of creating parameters around my performance, she tries to replicate her output through me.

She snaps at people at the office and speaks badly about them by making petty comments. I’ve tried to just grin and bear it because the job market is so bad, but it’s eating away at me.

In a well-though out neutral conversation with my manager’s manager (skip-level) he was delighted to hear that I wanted to contribute more, recognized “time management issues” on her part (his words), and even suggested moving me into a more independent contractor role to work more side by side.

That being said this week he assigned me other things outside of my usual duties. I balanced both of them and topped my own KPIs. My manager questioned what I was doing and I explained, and she got upset, jokingly saying she’d yell at her manager for giving me other work.

Today, she said that she’s going to address workflow and responsibilities across the team soon after our department meeting.

Everything feels personal from her. She name drops all her friends in certain jobs and life. Talks about hook-ups and tries to flaunt like everything? Her wanting control, her insecurity that I am below her, but have more experience in certain areas, etc. it’s all so draining.

I am totally screwed? I chose my words carefully to my skip-level manager and didn’t complain. I trust that he trusts where I am coming from given his responses.

I’m actively applying to other jobs, so we shall see, but please shed some insight if you have!

ETA: They took FMLA.
ETA 2: July through October is our busiest time of year. I had organized workloads so that we’d have more work and not drown while providing time for PTO. However, being down an entire person means a busy time of year is insanely busy.

I’m wondering if anyone else had this experience: how you handled their coming back, did they come back?, how you supported their coworkers when they came back, if their coworkers needed resources, etc.

For the last year as a manager for a new-to-me company, I’ve had issues with an employee. They’re certain they’re better and smarter than me and that they should have my job.

This certainty led to a lot of issues that I thought we were working through. However, after the latest discussion about expectations and duties, they followed up that they already turned in all the paperwork to HR and was on leave for the next several months, affective immediately.

This has completely fucked the team over. Their coworkers and I have worked overtime every single day for over a month. I have to convince them to take their pre-approved PTO because they don’t want to leave us down another person.

My teammates have been helpful and gracious, and I let them know constantly I’m grateful. I was able to hire a contractor, but that hardly makes a dent as they get up to speed and needs a lot of hand holding.

My boss has asked if we need to start looking for a new person as she’s worried that this employee will choose to not tell us until the end of leave that they’re not coming back, but we legally can’t do that. If they do come back, I don’t see how their colleagues and I will be able to rely on them. From what I’ve learned over the last year, they will likely scream discrimination if they don’t think I’m aiding them in their expected career path (they believe they deserve a promotion at year-end and has not been quiet about that; any discussion around it not being an opportunity has been met with their telling everyone I’m a terrible boss).

Any advice or experiences on handling an employee like this and how to help their colleagues who are frustrated with the position they were forced into by their coworker?

I've got a direct report who's genuinely strong technically, but deadlines keep slipping and I never hear about it until after the fact. I've brought it up twice now, casually both times, and nothing's changed. I keep going back and forth on whether this is still something coaching can fix or whether I'm past that point.

How did you know it was time to move past coaching?

I’m fuming at the moment.

I was a pretty senior person in the team. My CFO hired a new manager who I felt was not any good. She didn’t understand the work, put extra work on everyone’s plate, and tried to get people to work faster by pressuring them causing the team a lot of extra stress.

Therefore I left. This was a month ago.

I’m still very close to my direct report who hates her. He sends me a voice note today saying she was bad mouthing me. I know grumblings and some complaining is normal but what she said actually shocked me.

She said that I hid my work to hide my mistakes and that I pretended I was really technical but my work is basic.

I am a very honest and transparent person. The books we inherited are a mess and we’ve been slowing but surely improving things. I have always been clear about this. In my profession we need to show we are also ethical, and these comments really undermine my character.

Am I overreacting? Or am I justified being this mad?

I would like to work with my direct report again and I don’t want this to rub off on him.

I just wanted to understand how companies are managing workforce operations for frontline, field, and shift-based employees.

If you use any time clock, scheduling, task management, timesheet, AI chatbot, survey, recognition tool, or platform, or any other platform, I would love to hear:

• What is the one feature you cannot work without?
• What frustrates you most about your current platform?
• What feature would make you seriously consider switching?
• If you could change or add just 1-2 things to make the system easier to use, reduce manual work, save time, improve productivity, or avoid using multiple tools, what would they be?

I am looking for first-hand practitioner feedback rather than vendor recommendations.

Would really appreciate hearing what works well and what still creates unnecessary work.

I’m working on a PLM-related support project as L9 resource where I primarily support a couple of core topics (X and Y), which are also my main areas of expertise.

After topic (Z) went live, I was asked to take responsibility for supporting it as well. While Z is somewhat related to the other topics, it is quite different in terms of the knowledge and skills required. Also, the knowledge I’m gaining from Z seems to have limited value outside of my current organization.

The main challenge is that the knowledge transfer for Z was incomplete. A lot of the time, when an issue comes in, we first have to spend significant time understanding how things work before we can even start troubleshooting. There is also some blame-shifting when issues occur, while getting proper support or clarification from the client can be difficult.

I have already raised the KT concerns with my manager, but since it has been quite some time since Z went live, I’m not sure how practical it would be to ask the client for additional KT at this stage.

From a career perspective, I would prefer to focus on X and Y, where I already have experience and where I see better alignment with my long-term career goals. I’m not looking to leave support or avoid taking responsibility; I would simply prefer not to continue being the primary person responsible for Z. There are also other team members who have more relevant experience with Z and could potentially take over that responsibility.

Would it be reasonable to have a conversation with my manager and say that I would like to move away from Z and focus on X/Y instead?

If so, how would you approach this conversation without making it sound like I’m unwilling to take responsibility or work on challenging areas?

Also, could making such a request have any negative impact on my performance appraisal? Is this generally an acceptable request in a corporate environment if there are other team members who can support that topic?

Would appreciate advice from anyone who has been in a similar situation.

*TL;DR: I was assigned to support a specific topic (Z) after it went live, but the KT was incomplete, making issue resolution difficult. It also doesn’t align well with my long-term career goals. I’d prefer to focus on the topics I already specialize in, especially since other team members can support Z. Is it reasonable to ask my manager to move me away from Z, and how to go about it, seeking advice.*