reported a coworker for hitting a child, the spooky question, and more — Ask a Manager

It’s “where are you now?” month at Ask a Manager, and all December I’m running updates from people who had their letters here answered in the past. Here are five updates from past letter-writers.

1. I reported a coworker for hitting a child (#2 at the link)

I figured out after doing some more research that he was actually not a current employee, although his LinkedIn made it seem that way. So I didn’t inform my employer at first. However, several months later I got called to testify in court, and he ended up being sentenced for hitting the child based on my testimony (but not for shoving me, that part never made it into the indictment, which I am totally fine with).

About six months later, when I was walking to work, he suddenly showed up and confronted me in front of my office. So at that point, I got my employer’s security involved and informed my boss and we ended up having extra security for a while. He never showed up again at my work. But I do see him around town and unfortunately we run in the same circles in a particular hobby that our kids share, so that has led to having to have some strategies to stay safe and unfortunately my kids and I can’t participate in certain activities around that hobby. What I took away from this is that anything that happens to you in a small town can end up being an issue at work!

2. My employee says he’s “already thought of” every suggestion I make

The short update: I didn’t say anything to my employee.

The longer update: Your advice and the advice from the forum were incredibly helpful in getting me to see that I was at least as likely to be doing something wrong as my employee and why. Just writing the letter and seeing how seriously you all took it made me feel validated — that his behavior WAS annoying and problematic. But once I had it off my chest, I decided to change my behavior instead of asking him to change his. Maybe I chickened out, but I didn’t feel good about bringing it up directly with him.

Instead, over these months, I have focused on letting him have time to think through a process thoroughly and to ask for his plan rather than jumping right into telling him what to do or how to do it better. By taking myself out of his planning or production process, I have shown him that he has ownership and my trust. And to his credit, he’s stepped up. While he still doesn’t do everything as I would, and there are still times when I will make suggestions, he’s been much more receptive to them and far less likely to come back with, “Yep, I was already thinking about doing that.”

In the past year, our organization suffered a significant crisis that required us to expand our skills into new and frightening territory. We had each other’s backs throughout the ordeal. That experience cemented our trust, and he’s more confident about fully inhabiting his role. Others at our organization have commented that he seems more productive and engaged.

So, I was the problem all along. Sigh.

But seriously, thanks, Alison, and thanks to the readers for giving me space to work out the problem and giving me great advice.

Sign me: A better manager now.

3. The spooky question

It’s brought me great joy that you enjoyed the tale of me asking my coworker if she had ever seen a dead body so much that you published it two years in a row! I know mine was a Mortification eek submission and not a regular question, but I have an update for you!

At the time of the story, I was working in an agency, and I was young and new and desperate for people to like me, so I was trying to make any conversation I could. Most of the women in that office were very cliquey (like, nine people wearing the same outfit in one day), and I was very much the outsider. Today, I’m a lot more secure in myself and happier!

I also (and this is what made me think to write in) work at a hospital now! Yesterday, five separate people told me about their experiences with dead bodies, unprompted. I don’t know that that’s a good or bad thing, but I’m not only NOT an outsider here, I’m well-liked and in a leadership position! I definitely am slower to speak though, and I’m not desperate to make conversation or friends.

4. AI attending meetings (#2 at the link)

Thank you for your response to my question about an AI notetaker unexpectedly appearing in a meeting — it was really helpful in helping me think about why I was uncomfortable with the AI notetaker and what sort of rules we might have around them.

As it turned out, the person who was using the AI notetaker didn’t realize it was attending all their Zoom meetings. And this did prompt my team to have a discussion about how to deal with AI notetakers; we now boot them when we see they’re in meetings, and check with the person identified as the “owner” of the notetaker. (I think in every case, they’ve been unaware the bot was attending for them.) We’re also working on a new notetaker policy, because it feels important that these meetings remain a space where people feel they can talk openly.

5. How do I not lose hope in a highly competitive field?

Thank you so much for answering my letter so many years ago. This is an update to the question I wrote during a very fraught time in my life.

I continued my search for the academic job well into the pandemic. However, the sudden loss of all work in 2020 nevertheless forced me (as it no doubt did others) to seriously reevaluate my life and priorities. I became aware that what I had been trying to do was simply not sustainable, neither physically nor mentally. In response to Alison’s “can you do this for ten more years” question, I finally realized the answer was “no.” I began to cast my net for a much broader range of jobs. Two years into the pandemic, I was hired for a directorship at a firm across the country. It was far from my home network and, though it let me remain in my field, it was not something I really ever imagined myself doing. But it turns out I am not only good at the work — I enjoy it!

Ironically, as soon as I was hired for this firm, a university in the area reached out to me to teach some classes there. It seems that my new industry job gave me credentials that were attractive for teaching! I don’t teach full time, but I actually really enjoy the variety of my life. I have a job that I like and keeps me comfortable, and I get to enjoy teaching the wonderful students at this school without the pressures of a full-time professorship.

Life isn’t perfect — in my field, I will never be rich, and my job is high pressure and public. My teaching contract is per-semester, so I also know that I’m not guaranteed to be able to keep doing it. I’m still far busier than is healthy, and I crave a better work-life balance. Even so, I feel very lucky to be employed doing work I love, and I don’t think it would have been possible to do that without doing some letting go. I’m also working with a therapist on creating better boundaries with my work and personal life, and have made good progress addressing my achievement/self-worth issues that some commenters astutely read between the lines of my original letter.

I really appreciated your gentle but forthright advice. I also appreciated the empathy of the comments, though some were hard to read. A few people felt that I had expressed entitlement, classism, or gendered expectations by my word choices, and that hurt; but I can see why I came across that way. My field is deeply male-dominated and I think that the past few years have opened my eyes both to the internal and external effects of that on others and on myself. I am beginning to see that that environment compounded my need to prove my worth in an unhealthy way. I’ve recently become involved in some organizations that strive to make my field friendlier and more welcoming, especially to my fellow women and nonbinary colleagues. This has been incredibly fulfilling and healing, and I am trying to learn as much as I can so I can strive to be as good a role model as I can for my students.

I sort of wish I could go back and tell a younger me that the perfect/most prestigious job is not the most important thing in the world; that there are so many facets of life that make it worth living, and that those facets are deeply personal. I think exploring what I truly wanted out of life beyond my career would have saved me a lot of grief and pain—and time. That said, in some ways I think I had to go through this to come to this point, which is of course still evolving.

Thank you again for publishing my letter, and to everyone for their kind insights.