I think my disastrous ex-employee is co-opting queer identity — Ask a Manager

A reader writes:

I work in a country with strong job protection, have a boss who is reluctant to do performance improvement, and I just transitioned out of managing a team. One of my reports was a recent-ish hire I’ll call Pam, who is mid-career but entry-level. Pam volunteers for an optional LBGTQ+ employee resource group. She originally joined the group at my suggestion, as a straight ally. (Pam described herself as straight woman with a husband and said she was worried about being seen as homophobic because she is originally from a non-LBGTQ-friendly country.) Pam is now the group lead for our region, which is unusual for an entry-level employee. I accidentally found out that Pam is describing herself as gay/bi/queer, out only to folks associated with the resource group.

I am skeptical. I think Pam is straight and exploiting the group … and I’m unsure what my responsibility (if any) is here, as an employee and as a human being. I also think I could be wrong, and I know Pam is a landmine. Knowing the landmine part, though, I feel uneasy for folks in the group, none of whom I know particularly well.

Here’s why I think Pam isn’t being truthful. In her short time with our company, she has consistently demonstrated misplaced ambition, attention-seeking, and moral challenges. Pam believes that just spending time around higher-ups will get her promoted, even after being repeatedly told to deliver on her work commitments first. The LBGTQ+ group provides her face time with directors. Pam also craves attention to a disruptive degree: she has DM’d and called busy senior managers 20+ times a day about trivial or non work-related matters and created drama by inventing crises, then casting herself as the heroine. Coming out to coworkers she barely knows and swearing them to secrecy … could be true, but sounds a lot like another “Pam Show” episode. Lastly, Pam has not shown good ethics in the rest of her work. She refuses to do tasks or sabotages them because they are “not important” enough, actively hides her lack of understanding and progress, and disregards instructions. She repeatedly makes careless mistakes, blames others, and breathlessly chases execs like they’re pop stars while disdaining to speak to anyone below senior IC level (i.e., almost everyone who she needs to interact with and learn from). She gets in a spooky rage when spoken to about these problems, brags about how attractive she thinks she is, and tells outright lies that have affected my relationship with my manager.

All in all, Pam is not skilled or productive or pleasant to be around and if it weren’t for the labor law protection, I would have fired her outright. So I feel conflicted about her representing an employee group of any kind, even without suspicion of pretense. Pam is a big reason I asked to return to independent contributor status. I think she’s kind of off her rocker and poses a risk, and was not comfortable managing her when I’m not empowered to mete out consequences. By risk, I don’t mean physically dangerous, but her behavior has been so outside workplace norms that I wouldn’t trust sensitive data or anyone’s reputations and careers around her.

I have no one at work I can discuss this with. Do I continue to keep my concerns to myself?

Leave it alone. You might be right that Pam is straight and pretending not to be in order to gain some form of advantage with people in the LBGTQ group, but it’s also possible that she’s not. It’s not uncommon for someone to describe themselves as straight to one group of people, while being out in another group where they feel safer, or to have their identity genuinely evolve over time. Either way, it’s not something you should get into investigating or opining on. The potential harm if Pam is faking it is vastly outweighed by the messiness and harm of trying to police what sexual orientation people claim (particularly at work).

Also, there are much, much bigger issues with Pam! If you were still her manager, my advice would be to tackle those issues very assertively; refusing to do work and sabotaging projects, repeated mistakes, refusing to follow instructions, creating fake crises, interrupting senior managers, and fits of all rage would all be more than enough to focus on without worrying about how she’s identifying to the LBGTQ group, and are all squarely within her manager’s purview.

None of that is yours to address anymore since you’re not her manager (although I hope you fully filled in whoever is now her boss about those problems — and if Pam continues to cause issues for your work in your new role, you should raise that to her boss). But you can comfortably put her participation in the LBGTQ group or anything she says about her sexual orientation in the “not my business” column too.