doitninetimes

Posted by Ask a Manager

https://www.askamanager.org/2025/06/my-boss-takes-on-too-much-impossibly-slow-coworker-and-more.html

https://www.askamanager.org/?p=31690

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

1. Should I tell my boss he’s taking on too much?

My boss is overworking himself. He is the executive director of our small team (only three of us, including him, but we serve a pretty large school district) and has been in the position for three years. He is constantly complaining that he is behind on work, has too many emails, has too much to do, etc. Understandable, EDs have a lot of responsibilities. He often works late and on weekends.

However, he keeps signing up for more and more professional organizations and events outside of what is required for our work. Earlier this week he had to MC an online event, not for our school district but for one of his professional organizations — taking time away from his work day. He chose to sign up for evening classes about AI use, which takes up even more time in his day.

Not to mention, he has a very high-maintenance dog and a high-maintenance house and he’s single, so he doesn’t get very much help with that.

I am concerned because it’s impacting both his health and his work. He has had several sick days in the past few weeks with symptoms that (to me, at least) are pretty obviously stress-related. From a distance, what I see is that he’s overcommitting himself to the point where he’s making himself sick. On the work side, emails are going unanswered for weeks because he doesn’t have time to get through them all.

I think the worst part is: he thinks this level of work is normal. He’s worked this hard all his life and has been exploited by previous employers. (He did not realize that until I explained that withholding wages for being late is illegal. He thought it was normal.)

Should I bring this up to him? Should I bring it up with HR? Should I bring it up at all? I’m getting kind of sick of hearing “I’m too busy” when he’s doing it to himself.

No — he’s a grown man in a position of responsibility, and if he can’t figure out on his own that an obvious solution to being really busy is to take on fewer optional things, you’re not likely to get through to him. And since he’s your boss, you don’t have the standing to sit down with him and say, “You need to stop this.” The power dynamics run in the opposite direction.

However, you can raise any pieces that affect you, like if you’re not getting responses from him in time or if work is getting bottlenecked with him. Just address it rom the perspective of “this is preventing me from being able to do my job,” not “you are overworking yourself and making yourself sick.”

Some advice on addressing the pieces that do affect you:

my boss is so busy that I can’t get any time with him
my boss is impossible to reach when I need responses
my boss is unavailable and it’s driving us all mad

2. Should I mention my concerns about an impossibly slow coworker?

I have a colleague who was hired about 18 months ago in the same role as me, and I’ve now had many opportunities to work with them. They’re a very friendly and easygoing person and a joy to spend time with socially speaking, but performance-wise, I have serious concerns. They are exceedingly slow while completing even the most basic of tasks (it’s like watching a movie on 0.5x, it’s bizarre to observe), have next to zero problem-solving skills, and seem to just be … well … mentally “out of it,” for lack of a better term. For example, if they needed to tie a rope to a tree, they’d take at least 5-10 minutes to do so with much of that time consisting of blank stares. The final result might be a mess of rope wrapped around itself but nothing actually resembling a knot that will hold. One can patiently provide explicit instructions or suggestions over and over and over again, only to met with a blank expression followed by doing something completely different and insufficient instead. It’s as if the lights are on, but nobody’s home. I feel terrible saying so, but it’s an apt description.

We work in a technical scientific role, in often very remote locations and in potentially dangerous situations where one needs to be able to think and take action quickly. Failing to do so could lead to a dire outcome for either member of the two-person crew. I’m highly doubtful this coworker would be able to even recognize such a situation early enough to take action, let alone be able to decide what to do and act on it in a timely manner. I’m becoming increasingly worried for their safety and the safety of those assigned to work with them, especially as they will be sent on increasingly more challenging assignments in the future. I’ve also found myself (normally a very patient person) beginning to lose my temper out of sheer frustration because they’re so wildly inept, not to mention the stress of a far bigger workload and much longer shifts that results from working with them. Something just isn’t right. I’m not sure if it’s drugs, a serious learning disability, or a health issue, and it’s not my place to speculate but I’m not the only person on the team who has noticed the concerning behavior. After a situation yesterday where they put me in a physically dangerous situation by carrying out a task entirely differently than we’d (extensively!) discussed and agreed on beforehand, I feel I need to say something. What should I do?

You should speak up! You have serious safety concerns about this person’s work, so you have an obligation to talk to your manager and share your concerns.

Even without the safety concerns, I’d suggest talking to your manager to explain that your coworker is struggling significantly with the job and needs more training or supervision. But with safety in the mix, it’s not even a question. Talk to your manager today and explain what you’ve seen.

3. How can I get management experience when my job doesn’t include any managing?

I’m an individual contributor in a team of two (just me and my boss) in a niche department at a nonprofit. I love my job, but I don’t see myself working here forever. The issue – and I realize how privileged this is to say – is that in the context of my niche field, my salary would indicate I’m a manager. This obviously isn’t a problem right now, but when I think about changing jobs in 5-10 years, it seems like it’s going to be an issue! To keep as close to my current salary as possible, I’d need to move into middle management. But I have no management experience and my current job has no opportunity to gain any. My boss oversees the interns, we have no volunteers, and the leadership positions I’ve held in my non-work life don’t involve managing people either.

I can’t see a workplace giving an outsider with no management experience a chance at a manager position, but maybe I’m wrong? Is this a non-issue and I’m just catastrophizing? Could you give any tips on gaining management experience when your job description doesn’t allow you to manage people?

Well, first, do you want to manage people? If you’re doing it just for the money, it very often goes badly. But assuming it’s something you want to do, can you talk to your boss about your long-term goals and whether she’d be willing to help you find ways to get management experience without leaving your current role? For example, would she be willing to let you manage an intern or a cross-departmental project? In particular, managing interns is a lot of work and she might be delighted to unload some of that.

You might worry this is like saying “please help me prepare to leave,” but it’s really saying “please help me stay here longer by collaborating on ways my role could evolve.”

Related:
how can I get a management job without management experience?

4. Am I supposed to save all my questions for the end of the interview?

As the interviewee, I’m curious when it’s most appropriate to ask questions during an interview. Are you supposed to wait until the end? Or is it appropriate to slot them in at (what seem like) natural points in the conversation? I always wonder if I’m making myself at home by jumping in with a question in minute 5. It happens naturally but I do hope it shows I’m interested in the job … with the added bonus of taking up time!

The best interviews feel like real conversations, where it’s natural to ask questions of your interviewer as they arise. But many interviews are more structured than that and/or you can tell you have an interviewer who’s going to stick tightly to their list of questions and will want you to hold your own queries until the end.

That said, in all but the most highly structured interviews, it’s nearly always fine to ask your own question if it arises organically in the conversation (like “I was surprised you asked about X, since I didn’t realize that was a significant piece of the job — can you tell me more about that?” after they ask you about your experience with X or, after talking about your experience using software Y to do Z, asking what software they’re using to do Z).

5. Do more women write in than men?

Do you have a feel for if more women write in with questions vs men? I know you can make a somewhat educated guess based on the first name, but was curious if you formally tracked this metric and/or took it into account when crafting an answer.

I don’t formally track it, but yes, far more women write in with questions than men. That tends to be true of advice columns in general; they’re just generally a medium that attracts more women. Maybe it’s like the old stereotype of men not going to the doctor as much as women do … but I suspect it’s that women are simply socialized to talk about interpersonal problems more.

Interestingly, when I first started Ask a Manager, I noticed that sometimes women would write in on their male partner’s behalf (like this or this) but men never wrote in with questions on their female partners’ behalf. That has changed dramatically over time, and it’s much closer to equal now.

Also, not really related but still interesting, I remember Jolie Kerr of Ask a Clean Person telling me that when she started a cleaning advice column aimed at men, she found men really liked to ask about cleaning their couches, a topic that didn’t come up with nearly the same frequency from women.

The post my boss takes on too much, an impossibly slow coworker, and more appeared first on Ask a Manager.

https://www.askamanager.org/2025/06/my-boss-takes-on-too-much-impossibly-slow-coworker-and-more.html

https://www.askamanager.org/?p=31690

Posted by Ask a Manager

https://www.askamanager.org/2025/06/the-completely-fake-project-the-company-wide-nap-schedule-and-other-stories-of-summer-interns.html

https://www.askamanager.org/?p=31441

Earlier this month, we talked about summer interns, and here are 12 of my favorite stories you shared. (Note that we are laughing with these interns, not at them. We have all been this young and inexperienced at some point.)

1. The disappearance

We had an intern go missing in a large U.S. City, away from home office. FINALLY got a hold of him after upteen voicemails/ texts. Turns out, he used our trip to meet up with a girl he knew in high school. We told him he either flew back with us, or forfeited his ticket home and was on his own. He chose to stay.

2. The nap schedule

One year the interns accidentally (?) published a company-wide public Microsoft Calendar of their nap schedule to take naps in the nursing mothers/meditation room.

While it was happening, no one could figure out why no one could access that room during the day. Until the calendar was found.

3. The expanding foam

I’ve only known one intern to get outright fired.

He was helping the facilities engineers with some maintenance on an industrial expanding-foam injection gun; imagine a much larger, stickier, denser version of the “Great Stuff” style foam you would use to seal gaps around a door frame.

The real engineers had to divert to an emergency call before the job was done, and told Intern that the tool was very expensive and complicated and that he should wait for them to return and should absolutely not touch it while they were gone.

He decided to ignore this and impress everybody with his Gumption! and brilliance by continuing to tinker with the equipment himself.

The end result was a ball of expanding foam the size of a Volkswagen, with the injection gun buried somewhere in the middle of it.

4. The Halloween decorations

Not an intern, and not exclusively in the summer, but an undergrad student working in an academic lab (which is the academia equivalent of an unpaid intern, I suppose).

She was very enthusiastic about holidays and wanted us to be more “festive” in decorating. Near Halloween, she showed up to the lab with a carved pumpkin and a candle to spruce the place up. She was very miffed that she couldn’t a) light a *real* candle in a lab chock-a-block full of flammable chemicals and b) leave a slowly rotting gourd in our very much indoor lab for multiple weeks…

That, along with some other lab safety issues, meant that she was shuffled off to another lab in the department that dealt with significantly lower chemical hazards than us. Everyone was much happier with that arrangement!

5. The fabrication

From the academic side of internships. I helped create an undergrad major that a semester long internship junior or senior year that had a heavy academic component, e.g., in the field four days and then on Friday seminars where they linked their experience with the subject matter of their program and created integrative papers, and projects which were eventually presented to a wide audience. They also kept analytic journals where they applied reflective steps to what they were doing.

One student fabricated it all: the journals, the examples for analysis, etc. They only caught them when the director of the program ran into the person running the nonprofit where the student interned and commented on the terrific experience they were having. The director had never met the student. Further investigation showed they were in fact fabricating everything. And this was before AI made this even easier.

Obviously there should have been contact between college and agency routinely, but the person supervising had been reading and discussing the experience with the student and did not undertake that step.

6. The improvement

We had an intern who informed us with great confidence that the ERP system the university used wasn’t very well written, and he’d put together something that should work better, so who would he talk to about replacing SAP with the javascript app he’d cobbled together in a week.

7. The streaks

Maybe six or seven years ago, weird, dark streaks appeared on a couple different walls in our office. Each streak was maybe a foot tall, but nearly two feet long. The streaks appeared out of nowhere, but grew darker and more pronounced over the course of the summer. Near the end of the summer, staff scrubbed away the marks — but not before we realized the cause.

An intern had been handling newspapers and print publications, and his hands were grimy. He would just … rub his hands along the length certain (random?) walls as he walked by. Over and over again. All summer. The height/length of the marks depended on how close he was to the wall and how long he would drag his ink-stained hands across the surface. Wash your hands, people!

8. The dress code

My old company’s one and only intern had to be told not to wear mini skirts and extremely high heels to the office. She tried to argue this, her argument was “But I look really good!”. A few weeks later she showed up in PJs. Her argument was “I sit in the back row, no one is going to notice.” She was extremely grumpy about being sent home to change that day.

9. The disappearance, part 2

We invited our new intern to join our annual planning workshop at company headquarters, which was a short flight to a large U.S. city. Intern left our group dinner on day one and we never saw him again. Someone overheard him on the phone saying he was excited to meet up with a childhood buddy that night. He sent a text the following morning that he was sick and would join midday. He never showed up or communicated with us again. We had a small hope he would at least be at the airport for the return flight three days later.

Our manager was told by HR she needed to stay in company HQ city so we could ensure that this kid got back safely since we were obligated to get him home. After day five, she was able to hand over responsibility to someone at HQ and return home.

HR notified his emergency contact per protocol. When we inquired about notifying the police, HR said the intern had been in contact with his brother and was posting to social media so there was no reason to believe he was in danger. I believe he is still living his best life partying it up in Minneapolis four years later.

To this day, every trip to HQ gets the comment that “Maybe you’ll run into Joey on the train/bus/coffee.” Oh and interns are not allowed to travel with us anymore.

10. The birthday

My intern works part-time, two full days and Friday is a half day. Since Thursday was his 21st birthday and we’re in the U.S., I told him if he wanted to shift those hours to the afternoon, we could do that as a little birthday treat. He, having spent most summers with the European half of his family and feeling he’s familiar with drinking, said he would be fine. He underestimated the power of an American 21st birthday.

On Friday, I heard from him about 2 pm. He apologized profusely via text — he got home at 7am and was still unwell and he thinks his mom might have called? From what I can piece together listening in to him and some junior team members since then, he woke up on a friend’s lawn at daylight, in that fun still-drunk-but-also-now-hungover state, then stumbled home to continue suffering in bed.

I spoke with him his first day back, and we agreed that the lessons learned were not to over-drink, and either plan the birthday party for a Friday night, or take the day after off work preemptively. Luckily he is an intern, so all it means is he’ll have to deal with gentle ribbing all summer while he repairs our impression of him. But he’s already doing work a bit more advanced than we thought we’d get out of him, so as long as he lays off the midweek parties, he should be fine.

11. The wooden ball

I worked for a childcare center located at a large university for staff, professors, admins, grad students, etc. Over the slow summer months between semesters, we hired interns from the school of education on campus to work as assistant teachers. Most of them were amazing, loved kids, and were just thrilled to get experience and mentorship in a real classroom, but there were always a few … outliers, shall we say.

One summer, I had an intern so unenthusiastic and disengaged, Rachel, that I sometimes wondered if she had a pulse. I honestly considered asking her why she was pursuing education at all, as she seemed both uninterested and unfamiliar with children and how they work, as evidenced by The Wooden Ball Conundrum of 2021.

We had a ramp set with wooden golf-ball sized balls that the kids loved, but required a fair level of supervision from adults. They were HARD and if thrown, could really do some damage. One busy morning, I noticed a child ominously tossing one of the wooden balls around, dangerously close to his peers’ heads and to our glass tank full of hermit crabs. My spidey sense was tingling for potential disaster. I was managing 15 other things, so I called to Rachel, “Hey, please go tell J to give you that wooden ball because it belongs in the block area for safety.”

She sighed heavily and ambled over to him. A minute later, she came back to me, empty-handed. I asked her where the ball was and she said, “He said no.” With a shrug. I was baffled and I think I said something like, Wwhat??? You’re the adult and it’s a classroom rule?”

Of course he said no! Kids often say no! All the time! Unreasonably! It’s your job to keep them safe anyway! You cannot let a four-year-old outwit you! She also fell asleep every day during nap time, alongside the kids. I hope she changed majors.

12. The hero

I was the notorious summer intern.

Years ago, I was an intern in the compliance department of a massive company in the manufacturing industry. While I was waiting to catch a ride home, I saw a guy clearly struggling with PowerPoint. I offered to help, and he took me up on it—but every time I fixed the issue and walked away, he messed something else up and hollered “Hey, intern!” across the open office to get me to come back.

After about the fourth round of this, I turned and said, “You’re acting like a real asshole. I’m a human being and deserve to be treated with respect.” I told him this was the last time I was going to fix it and that if he wanted it to keep working, he needed to turn around and walk away from the screen.

Cue silence. Turns out he was a Very. Important. Executive. And to make things worse? My dad worked in management at the same company. Everyone, including the exec, started calling my dad to gossip about the event. I still can’t visit without someone telling this story.

Thankfully, everyone agreed the guy had always been a jerk. He was told, more or less, that if he didn’t like being called out by a tiny teenage girl, maybe he should change his attitude.

Fast-forward a year: he was not-so-politely asked to leave the company. I was the lucky intern assigned to pack up his desk and ship the boxes overseas—to the only place that would still hire him.

The post the completely fake project, the company-wide nap schedule, and other stories of summer interns appeared first on Ask a Manager.

https://www.askamanager.org/2025/06/the-completely-fake-project-the-company-wide-nap-schedule-and-other-stories-of-summer-interns.html

https://www.askamanager.org/?p=31441

Posted by Ask a Manager

https://www.askamanager.org/2025/06/should-i-give-people-a-heads-up-before-their-coworker-is-fired.html

https://www.askamanager.org/?p=30558

A reader writes:

I am working with HR to let someone go. The person is directly involved in a number of active cross-functional projects.

Typically terminations in our organization are communicated post-event, but I feel like I will be blindsiding several team members. The termination shouldn’t be a major surprise as this individual has had performance issues, including interpersonal issues.

Would you ever recommend giving select team members — potentially managers and project managers — a heads-up that this event is coming so they can somewhat prepare? I thought about communicating it vaguely, e.g. “change is coming that may affect this project,” but that would just create more confusion and paranoia. Or, do I just sit tight and deal with the teams after the deed is done?

I answer this question — and two others — over at Inc. today, where I’m revisiting letters that have been buried in the archives here from years ago (and sometimes updating/expanding my answers to them). You can read it here.

Other questions I’m answering there today include:

• Text-speak at work
• Keeping in touch with a coworker who got laid off when I didn’t

The post should I give people a heads-up before their coworker is fired? appeared first on Ask a Manager.

https://www.askamanager.org/2025/06/should-i-give-people-a-heads-up-before-their-coworker-is-fired.html

https://www.askamanager.org/?p=30558

Posted by Ask a Manager

https://www.askamanager.org/2025/06/getting-out-of-note-taking-at-meetings-hr-is-concerned-about-a-halloween-photo-and-more.html

https://www.askamanager.org/?p=31692

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

1. My company is undoing all our DEI work

My (private) company is (seemingly) bending over backwards to undo DEI initiatives. Affinity groups’ budgets have been cut (I recognize that I’m in a privileged position for our groups to even have budgets), recruiting is unable to spend money to attend events that might have a higher percentage of under-represented people, and in general there’s just a huge level of scrutiny about anything that sounds like DEI. Again, this is a private company! Is this just normal for the next few (I hope) years, or are there orgs out there that are NOT doing this?

There are a lot of orgs out there that aren’t doing this. Some are changing the language they use to avoid trigger words for the current administration, but not cutting the programs themselves. Others aren’t changing anything. Your employer is either cowardly or showing their true colors, or both. They’re far from the only company operating that way, but there are lots of other employers maintaining a commitment to DEI.

Related:
should I remove DEI work from my resume?

2. Can my friend get out of taking notes at meetings?

My friend works for a mid-sized IT department mainly supporting end user needs (think desktop support, sometimes under someone’s desk and sometimes fixing software issues remotely). Her management conducts almost all team/department meetings remotely but won’t allow the meetings to be recorded; however, the managers expect team members to rotate who will manually take notes in each meeting. My friend has a few reasons why she is very uncomfortable and anxious about being selected to be the note-taker, like typing that quickly, spelling, and grammar.

My opinion is that note-taking for technical meetings would be a specific skill. I’ve asked my friend to provide to me a copy of her job description with essential job functions to see if there is any reference to being required to type at a specific speed or with accuracy. Her setting up for a “not in my job description” argument seems like a worse outcome than letting everyone see she is not a good note-taker, but her anxiety about it is real. I have already advised her that feigning a finger injury isn’t sustainable and might even lead to other problems, such as being questioned about needing an accommodation, etc. Do you have any guidance for how she can get out of the note-taking?

If it’s rotated among everyone on the team, I don’t know that she can — particularly if her main reasons are spelling and grammar, since she could easily run the notes through a spell-checker/grammar-checker before sending them out. It’s true that note-taking is a specific skill, but it’s also a task that gets regularly shared in the way her team is doing.

She definitely shouldn’t argue that it’s not in her job description; people are generally expected to some things that aren’t written down in their descriptions. You can argue from that angle if you’re, say, an accountant being asked to do welding; it’s not an argument you can use when it comes to shared team logistics, and it’s likely to reflect badly on her. She’d be better off working on getting more comfortable taking notes.

If she were the only one being asked to do it, I’d answer very differently, but it’s not unreasonable for a team to make this a rotating task.

3. HR is concerned about a provocative online photo of my employee

I work as a manager for a hotel and want to promote a young lady who has worked super hard at the front desk. Her guest satisfaction scores are absolutely wonderful, and she is by far my top performer. Recently a job opening came up and when HR did a Google search of her name, it turns out that one year on Halloween she won “sexiest costume” at a bar. There are two pictures of her in a revealing costume that popped up alongside her name. I’m not a big believer in getting into employees’ personal lives because working at a hotel is not a sensitive profession, and honestly I have no problem with the pictures. I only care about anything that would affect her work and this doesn’t at all. I thought it was 2025 and by now everyone has seen a sexy Halloween photo or a bikini picture, and I just find it ridiculous that HR would even bring this up! I’m allowed to promote her anyway. Should I just promote her or am I missing something here?

You should promote her, and you’re not missing anything. Her Halloween costume has zero bearing on her ability to do her job or her behavior at work.

Your HR needs to get in the sea.

4. I regret going back to my old job

My sector has been experiencing massive layoffs. The lead-up to these layoffs was unexpectedly brutal in my department, which was hit especially hard. When my manager from a previous job (Job B) heard about these layoffs, he reached out to me and offered me my old position back. I wanted out, so I took it and moved back to that city.

In retrospect, I shouldn’t have. The work is boring, the position’s a downgrade, the pay is bad, and I find myself often irritated by my coworkers. I suspect I’m mostly mad that Job B isn’t what Job A was before layoffs ruined it. I thought I could spend my entire career in Job A. I’m sad all the time. I regret that I didn’t try to stick it out at Job A, take a chance in the job market, or accept a grad school offer abroad that would’ve used up all of my savings. I played it safe when I maybe shouldn’t have. I’m seeing suitable, better-paying options pop up, and I want to apply.

But I’m only two months into Job B. My manager pulled a lot of strings to hold it for me and is VERY excited to have me back. He considers me a friend and takes slights very personally. I don’t know how I could leave without destroying my reference from him and my reputation within the company. Part of me thinks I’m being too emotional, and that I should stick it out for at least a year, maybe take this time to explore grad school possibilities again. Another part of me just wants out no matter what, and I’m not above giving whatever reason to leave if it pacifies my manager. Late at night, I almost wish I could have a complete mental breakdown instead of this sort of-functional depressive state just so I’d have a valid reason to quit.

I’m very in my own head right now and would appreciate a third-party take. Thoughts on how I should navigate making this decision, factors I should consider? If I do apply for other jobs and leave, what sort of wording or reasoning could I use with Job B?

Simply looking around at options doesn’t obligate you to take a new job if it’s offered. And who knows how long a job search might take. Since you’re unhappy at this job, it makes sense to start a search and see how it goes.

If you get an offer, you can compare it to your current situation and decide if it’s worth potentially burning a bridge with your manager or not. Given the state of the job market, it’s possible that enough time will have gone by that you won’t even be leaving “right after” your boss brought you back. Either way, you can frame it as, “I really appreciate you going to bat to bring me back. You’ve been a wonderful mentor and I really value our relationship. This other opportunity fell in my lap and I don’t feel I can turn it down, but I want you to know how much I appreciate everything you’ve done for me.”

Will that pacify him? Maybe, maybe not. But it’s a thing that happens, and you’re allowed to put your own needs first. (Moreover, if you’re miserable there, it’s actually not good for him if you stick it out anyway since it’s likely to affect your work over time.)

5. Employer is requesting performance evaluations that I can’t access

I’m currently a finalist for a position that I’m very excited about. The hiring manager initially requested my current supervisor as a reference. Because our team is small and my supervisor isn’t aware that I’m job searching, I explained that I’d prefer not to share that information prematurely, as it could potentially put my current role at risk.

The hiring manager responded positively but is now asking for my most recent performance evaluations instead. Here’s the complication: my employer recently switched to a new performance evaluation system, and I no longer have direct access to my prior evaluations. The only document I currently have is a record of my performance goals.

I can requested my full personnel file from HR, but it might take some time. In the meantime, how should I communicate this situation clearly to the hiring manager, and is there any alternative documentation I could provide?

All you can really do is be straightforward about it: “Normally I’d be happy to provide them, but we just switched to a new system and I don’t have access to previous ones. I’ve requested my file from HR but I don’t know how long that might take. What would work instead?” Ideally you’d offer additional references if possible, and it would be especially ideal if some of your them were from your current job (not your current boss, obviously, but someone like a senior colleague who’s worked closely with you or no longer works there and who you trust to be discreet).

For what it’s worth, though, unless you’ve been at this job your whole career and you don’t have any other references from the past 10 years, it’s not reasonable for them to be so hung up on this. Most companies hire without talking to current managers or seeing performance reviews.

The post getting out of note-taking at meetings, HR is concerned about a Halloween photo, and more appeared first on Ask a Manager.

https://www.askamanager.org/2025/06/getting-out-of-note-taking-at-meetings-hr-is-concerned-about-a-halloween-photo-and-more.html

https://www.askamanager.org/?p=31692

Posted by Ask a Manager

https://www.askamanager.org/2025/06/my-boss-is-being-a-jerk-since-i-resigned.html

https://www.askamanager.org/?p=31664

A reader writes:

My company is, to put it plainly, a difficult place to work. I’ve been here three years and, in that time, multiple people have left after staying less than a year. The expectations on us are high to the point of often being unrealistic, and we’re frequently given deadlines that are impossible to meet. As a result, people tend to work lots of (unpaid) overtime on nights and weekends, and people burn out quickly. You’d think we’d at least be paid well in exchange, but no – our salaries are actually below market. Needless to say, I’ve been actively looking for a new job.

Two weeks ago, I finally received a job offer I was excited about and I put in my notice. Our company asks professional-level staff to give two months of notice, and I gave that plus an extra week (so nine weeks total). Despite the conditions here, I’ve had a pretty good relationship with my boss, Sally, and I thought this would help the news go over better. While I was expecting her to take it badly when I quit (in the past, she has tried to refuse other co-worker’s resignations!), she actually did handle it well – at least at first — and I’ve been spending time training my replacement, trying to leave in work in good order, and continuing to manage most of my projects until I leave.

However, as of this week – the third week since I gave notice – Sally has been behaving different toward me. She has started loading me up with a bunch of additional work outside of what we agreed I would handle in my remaining time, even though that will leave me without time to get everything done. Today she asked to meet with me, chastised me for the quality of my work, and said she had seen a noticeable dip in my work in recent months and now understood why (i.e., that I had been job-hunting and trying to leave). She said she expected me to give 100 percent during the rest of my time here and that I should think my “legacy” at the company. It’s definitely true that I’ve been less engaged in some of the big-picture planning conversations … because I’m leaving! I think my priority should be training my replacement and wrapping things up as much as possible in the next few weeks.

After that meeting, she sent a very long, harshly worded message about how she understands it’s normal to switch off to some extent once you land a new job, but my attitude was impacting her own workload and having a negative effect on team morale (I guess it’s not her recent demands that all staff work unpaid overtime or witch hunts punishing staff members for not doing a task correctly). She then went on a lengthy rant calling me and other co-workers robots. I did not engage and answered very noncommittally that we would finish our collaboration “strong.” But I am unsure about how to respond if these sorts of comments continue, as they are quite emotional and very draining to receive. I would like to finish up my time in my current position well and on a positive note. How do I navigate my last few weeks (if this is even possible) with these sorts of comments?

You can read my answer to this letter at New York Magazine today. Head over there to read it.

The post my boss is being a jerk since I resigned appeared first on Ask a Manager.

https://www.askamanager.org/2025/06/my-boss-is-being-a-jerk-since-i-resigned.html

https://www.askamanager.org/?p=31664