open thread – November 29, 2024 — Ask a Manager

My best friend (Angela) made a pretty big mistake at work and almost got fired. While I do think she was treated too harshly, I don’t think discipline was unwarranted. My partner thinks everything that happened to Angela is wildly wrong. I’m not sure Angela is learning the right lessons from this but I’m willing to hear I’m off-base.

Angela and I met when we worked at the same company. She still works there, while I left 2 years ago. She is a high performer, and was promoted into my old job when I left, a senior-level individual contributor role.

Angela really wants to be a manager. She was made a temporary manager for another team when their manager went on parental leave, and that settled it for her, it’s all she wants.

Recently a few management positions opened up, including the manager for the team Angela is on. I thought she stood a good chance of getting the job, but it was far from a guarantee. The competition was fierce, and several other people with more management experience than her also applied. She didn’t get the job in the end.

Angela was very upset, and vented to me quite a bit. She said she feels unmotivated to try in her current role and is job searching outside of the company. The way she phrased some things came off a bit immature, but otherwise she’s very valid in feeling unmotivated and wanting to work elsewhere.

What I did not know is that Angela was very open about her displeasure in not getting the job at work. She told a ton of people currently working there how upset she was, including both her boss and someone who would have been her subordinate had she gotten the job. She also changed her LinkedIn to say she was open for work, which was her biggest blunder.

Angela’s boss (my former boss) Jenny called Angela into a meeting and told her “I am going to fire you later today unless you can convince me not to.” Angela called me crying after thinking she was done for. Fortunately Angela did manage to convince Jenny not to fire her, but it was a close call.

Angela is now behaving herself at work, doing her current job satisfactorily and is not talking to anyone at work about what happened. Her chances of getting a management job in the future here are over, and she knows it. She is still job searching, but is doing so much more quietly. She now hates Jenny and thinks she’s pure evil for moving straight to threatening to fire Angela instead of asking her what was wrong. Angela does not think she did anything wrong herself.

While I agree that threatening to fire Angela was too harsh, I do see why Jenny moved straight to discipline and did not ask Angela about her feelings. I love Angela and I know she’s a good worker, but her response to not getting the promotion struck me as immature and unprofessional. Some of what she did could lead staff to be resentful towards whoever does get the job, including someone that person will manage directly.

I thought Jenny was going to write her up for unprofessional behavior and tell her to cut the crap immediately or she would be fired. Going straight to threatening to fire her that day was too far I think, but I see why it was on her mind. Also, I worked with Jenny for years. She is a cutthroat asshole, but she is also predictable. If you keep your head down and do a satisfactory job she will leave you alone. Make her look bad though and you’re screwed forever. When I started job searching 2 years ago I hated every minute I was at work. As far as Jenny knew though I as a happy little worker bee fully dedicated to the company’s mission.

I haven’t told Angela any of my thoughts, except that I agree that Jenny was overly harsh. I don’t know that I should, it’s too fresh of a wound and I think she needs me more to talk to than she needs me for advice. I have told my partner my thoughts and he thinks I’m wrong, that Jenny is pure evil and Angela’s actions were reasonable. His career is unusual though and he’s never had a “normie” job like this one, so that might be clouding his understanding of the situation.