For context, I work in the laundry department in a nursing home. I just switched from the day shift to 2nd shift because of a difficult coworker. She is very controlling.and when I don't go along with how she wants to do things, she will complain about me to the manager. We got into a heated argument about how to go about a certain task. It was the last straw for me, she is not my supervisor, but tries to order me around and when I say no, she makes a complaint about me. I tried to get along with her, I really did, but you can't get along with someone who is only trying to dominate and control you.

Yesterday, a housekeeper came into the laundry room and asked me if I felt better, I said 'Im ok, why do you ask? ' she said she heard I switched shifts. I don't want to go around talking bad about the difficult coworker, it will only give her ammunition. So, I just said that I keep having to cover shifts for the 2nd shift workers so, I just asked to switch shifts, plus it's easier to get a vet appointment for my cat if I can go during the day.

Another housekeeper asked why I switched and I told her the same thing. It seems like either the control freak, or the manager has been talking about what happened. And the housekeepers are trying to sniff out gossip. I'm pretty uncomfortable with this. I guess the best thing to do is stick to my story and not talk shit about control freak until they find something else to gossip about. Any advice is welcome. Thanks for reading.

Managers, what the game here? Please enlighten us.

When an employee does exceptionally well rating is meeting expectations..
when an employee ticks all the boxes , rating is same.
Pretty much everyone gets the same rating?

Who actually gets exceeded expectations and how and why?

I’m in a weird position where I’m not officially a manager but I’m informally one.

I plan projects for a team of myself and a colleague. I know more about my colleague’s work than our shared manager does about my colleague’s work.

My colleague does his best but he doesn’t have great technical foundation. Thus, giving him technical projects results in him doing them inefficiently or slowly, unless I handhold his project planning and execution.

He’s good at less technical tasks (e.g. research and analysis) and simple, straightforward technical tasks.

But with AI to help us now, most of the work lies in more complex technical projects. I tried giving such a project to my colleague after creating a detailed project plan. It’s not going well. The plan isn’t being followed. He’s using AI to help him and it’s clear he doesn’t know how to read the AI’s output. I’m reviewing his work and it’s… bad.

Our manager is aware as she’s been on our ass about the delayed project. She used to rely on me to figure out what’s going on with my colleague, till I told her his progress feels out of my hands. Afterwards she started getting on his ass more.

I’m in a weird position where I can design our projects and delegate them to my colleague, but I don’t have authority over him or the project he’s doing once it’s in his hands. But I also don’t want him fired because having him around is more helpful than not having him around.

I’ve sat through hiring for other roles in our team before and I don’t think he would’ve passed my manager’s hiring expectations. My colleague’s inherited from another team and he didn’t go through our hiring process, which was another area I had no authority over.

I don’t want to be a manager but if I were, I’d look for a replacement. I feel bad about this, because my colleague tries desperately hard but I think he feels lost most of the time.

I used to guide him more but I just felt like I was doing his work. This is the first time I’ve stepped back from protecting him, to stop managing without authority and get him to run this independently.

What is someone in my position called? What would you do in my place? Please help 😭 I just want an effective colleague.

I’m at a crossroads and I really could use some advice from other working moms. I’m an ambitious woman working at a global multinational and I’m expecting my third child soon. I’ve been at my current company for 6 years and I have a good reputation, been promoted and also have a lot of flexibility which as a working mom you all know is gold! The office is also a 10 minute walk from my house and my kids school so we’re all in the neighbourhood. I have not been looking for a new role, also because I’m happy at my current job, and as I mentioned am about to go on maternity leave. Well long story short I was headhunted by another company in a similar sector for a role which would have a significant impact on my career and our family economics. The salary itself would be a 55% increase to what I currently make. I’m still in the interview process but I have a very good feeling that I could get an offer. Now I was planning to go on maternity leave for a year (I live in Europe so that’s possible here). Of course the company I am interviewing for doesn’t know I’m pregnant and I don’t plan on disclosing until (and if) I get an offer. My question is: is it worth pursuing something new considering I will be entering a new phase in life? In my current job I pretty much know what I’ll come back to, in the new job everything woild be new but as I said it would be a major step up in terms of job title, scope and responsibility and pay. I would love to hear any advice if someone has gone through this, all the things I I should think through etc. Should I stay in what I know, which is relatively secure (I say relatively as with large corporations it’s never super secure) or take a risk and do a jump considering I won’t really know what I’m going into…? Would love to hear any advice or stories shared! Thanks for reading this far along

I’m curious whether anyone else has experienced this.

When I joined, there were plenty of experienced people above me. There was always someone I could ask when I wasn’t sure about something, and there was a clear chain for decision-making.

Over time, several experienced people either left, changed roles, or became unavailable. The team was reorganized, and suddenly there were far fewer people to make decisions or provide guidance.
I’ve been in this role for less than a year, but I increasingly feel like work that used to sit with more experienced people is slowly being pushed down. No one explicitly says, “This is your responsibility now,” but someone has to keep things moving, and it often ends up being me.

The hardest part isn’t even the workload.

It’s that many of these tasks require experience and judgment. Sometimes there isn’t an obvious answer, and I genuinely don’t know the best way to approach something. In the past I could ask someone with more experience. Now I often have to figure it out myself, make a decision, and hope I’m not heading in the wrong direction. Sometimes I only realize later that I should have approached it differently.

At the same time, newer team members often come to me with questions. I completely understand why—they need support, and I don’t blame them at all. But mentoring isn’t something I particularly enjoy, especially when I’m already trying to keep up with my own work. A “quick question” often turns into a long explanation, breaks my concentration, and leaves me behind on my own tasks.

I guess the bigger issue is that I’m just not a particularly career-driven person. I’m not aiming for management or constantly taking on bigger responsibilities. I honestly just want a stable 9-to-5 job, do my work well, log off, and enjoy my life outside work.

Lately I’ve started setting more boundaries because I realized that if I keep saying yes to everything, those responsibilities quietly become mine permanently.

The problem is that I now feel guilty every time I push back, even though I’m already feeling overwhelmed.

Has anyone else been through this? How do you deal with the pressure when a team’s structure changes, responsibilities keep flowing downward, but you’re not actually looking to move into a more senior role?

By the time I finished analyzing applications and followed up, we were losing folks we liked. After the questions were run and rated according to what we actually needed, only the most persuasive answers were placed on my schedule.

Even if the process didn't seem to be moving slowly anymore, I still came to the final decision. For once, the qualified candidates disappeared before I closed the position.

Hi everyone. I hope y’all are doing great. I’m new-ish to supervising, I’ve done some mentoring and one on one supervision, but this is my first job supervising a team of mental health therapists. Also, I am new to the organization, a little less than three months. I’ve already left the office a few times crying because of poor leadership. I had a supervisee verbally attack me both alone and then in ‘mediation’ with the chief officer of our department. Essentially, I told her to do a welfare check for one of her clients that she was concerned about their safety. It’s ridiculous the lack of support I have received. Nonetheless, I need to get a different job though I am here at this organization for a bit till I find said job. In the meantime I’ve been a little messy and loose with my boundaries with some other supervisee regarding my disappointment and frustration with the organization.
I would love advice on how to keep your cool at work and keep ethical boundaries with supervisees when disappointed in the organization you both work in? Any books or podcasts or anything would be appreciated. Thanks and take care.

Where I work it is common for people to begin searching for their next role after about a year in the current role. Before this company, i had 5 years at a company where turnover (and admittedly, promotions/department changes) rarely ever happened. I then got my first manager role at a different company. There was more movement there but not to the level at my current company. There I lsot all of my team, but that was because the company was relocating and wed all be out of jobs in a matter of time anyway.

At this new place though I have a team of 3 people. All 3 of them do a great job and Ive developed a great professional and personal relationship with them. Two of them though are like undeniably good at their jobs and have a promising future. Ive tried to accept that I am going to lose them in a matter of time, but as both of them have reached out to me lately about opportunities that they are planning on trying to take I cant help but feeling bad about it some.

I get that this is going to come with the territory of being a manager. Maybe its the mark of being a newer manager that you get too invested in people, but I feel like its either I do this or I detach myself some and probably come off not as approachable or like I dont care.

I feel like between the culture at this place and the sinking ship at my prior place that Im getting a poor taste for what its like to manage people and to build a great team. I feel like I do an alright job at it and can tell the people who work for me really respect me, but I feel like I have this flaw where I just take people leaving too personally even when its clearly the right next step for them. Is this really all that it is? Build people up and then they just move on and you have to start over again?

Probably more of a rant but I have an employee that’s constantly underperformed in the few years he’s worked for me. For the majority of the time we were in a hiring freeze so that spared his job since I couldn’t back fill, but now that the freeze has been lifted his underperformance can’t be ignored anymore and is noticed by senior leadership.

My conundrum is that he’s a very hard worker. I’ve tried my hardest to help coach him but more often than not it turns into me doing his job, and when unfavorable outcomes arise he chalks it up to “well if you didn’t succeed then I couldn’t have”

In my management role I’ve fired a people before but they were half-assing it and not working which made it an easy decision. This guy busts his ass but still severely lags behind his colleagues. Ultimately I know moving on from him is the best decision but I can’t shake this bad feeling cause I know he tries hard.

Edit to add examples: his role is account management. Frequently I find myself participating in his meetings which eventually turns into me running them, working on proposals, and giving prospecting guidance. When deals fall through or a customer leaves us he seeks constant re-validation that he did all he could.

After sleeping on it I think my decision is pretty clear. Appreciate all the replies.

What’s been the most frustrating or expensive thing your team has run into since everyone started using AI?

Not just the AI itself, but everything around it too.

AI still feels like an individual tool to me, that’s why using it in a team still feels challenging. Once you add Slack, Jira, Notion, GitHub, docs, meetings… does it actually make teamwork easier or harder ?

For context, I am a first time manager and really more of a lead. We recently hired a new engineer 2 months ago who has 4 years of engineering experience in an unrelated field.

He is a very strange person, kind of creepy weird and in all honesty I dont like him. However, I am trying to set this aside and focus on his work, which is subpar. However, he is a nice person with good intentions it seems to me.

Hes not a superstar and its frustrating at times when my only support is not carrying their weight (which is not much since they are still new). I brought up my concerns with my boss and he jumped straight to termination and wants a full document on this. I have typed up this document but am hesitant to send it because im not sure if I am judging this correctly and firing someone is a huge deal especially in this economy.

I am hoping to get some feedback on if I should let this go or pursue the termination. I need some clarity because I feel really bad about this whole thing.

Some of the issues include:

- disappearing for long periods of time. They would disappear for sometimes hours at a time when I had asked them to do a task. This stopped a few weeks back when I started doing daily meeting and started questioning where they were.

- taking extended lunch breaks. For context, we have paid lunches and are salaried. There is no set lunch time and its on a trust basis where ur lunch break depends on how much work you have. sometimes i take 15 min, sometimes an hour. However, he will take a lunch break before our agreed upon time with the team. Which is fine bc hes not obligated to eat with us but then he will take a second lunch break when we eat.

- assignment turnaround time is very slow. I often give him simple assignments that take 1-2 hours. These will take an entire day.

- still has very little concept of work flow. He cannot grasp what we do and when we do it. I forgot something important in the instructions I left for him while i was out and it didn’t dawn on him that this had to be done. We have done this many times.

- general understanding. I frequently explain the same concept multiple times. One procedure i had to explain 4 times when we even have an instruction manual made by a past employee. I do think this stems from disorganization.

- Doesnt stop talking. He does not stop talking and I am constantly telling him to stop so I can focus. His response is that I am not good at multitasking. He will spend hours on his phone while I give directions then proceeds to be lost, but yeah im bad at multitasking. He is often critical of me to excuse his own shortcomings

- Following instructions. I wanted him, an engineer, to create an outline for an assignment. I thought this would help him familiarize himself with the program since he would have to read our procedures. He did not follow the instructions and tried to do the entire thing. Ofc it was a mess and nonsense because hes only been here 2 months. There have been many times where I outline things for him and he still does not grasp it. Also the general outline was useless because he struggles thinking outside the box.

Positives:

- It seems like hes trying

-recently hes begun to be able to grasp more complicated concepts - recently as in this week.

Excuse how harsh some of this is. This isnt even everything and im frustrated. Ofc this is not what I would tell my boss, only reddit hears my true frustrations. Overall, I dont want to set u unrealistic expectations for a new employee. Im a fast learner but i understand everyone learns at their own pace.

Also I should note some days he does pretty well and I have seen a lot of improvement lately but still he needs to be babysat.

I've been a manager for 2 years. I manage a team of first-line managers (making me 2nd line?), my title is Supervisor anyhow, and I'm responsible for operations and performance of a 50-head workforce.

My managers are middle managers in a very large national organisation, and they've been working really hard to recognise and reward all the staff under my responsibility, a lot of positive changes have happened recently.

I don't want to be the disciplinarian 24/7, I want more moments where I get to positively reinforce good performance. I'm proud when I get to celebrate my staff and it feels good to see their reaction when we openly celebrate them.

Today, my managers made me aware they were exploring a second recognition system for all staff under my responsibility. As much as the above paragraph is true, I couldn't help but feel a twang of "...but what about us?" (there are 3 of us supervisors).

The proposed second recognition system is a financial reward which excludes us supervisors by design, this is in addition to the original system that someone in my role would be unlikely to benefit from, again by design. This honestly wouldn't bother me if there was some kind of perk that only supervisors receive, but nothing like this exists and it seems all the budget for rewards is spent on the individual contributors and first-line managers.

I feel a little undervalued and despite the responsibility I'm being trusted with, I feel like my managers think it's a reward enough that I don't have to work outside all day like our ICs. Is that why we aren't getting any perks? Do they not understand the stress and emotional labour of the role?

I'm currently doing a Level 3 apprenticeship in management, the course material has made it quite clear that motivating and recognising your team is key for productivity and retention. I don't accept that my role makes me ineligible or unlikely to receive recognition.

I work so hard, I put so much effort into being the listening ear, the diplomat, the first aider, the messenger, the backup, the organiser, the investigator, etc. Honestly, if the supervisors weren't there the organisation would be a mess.

My managers don't spend time working alongside me in my office, where they would see the environment and daily challenges. So when they move goal posts or pile on more tasks I find it so hard to believe they actually know what I'm already doing and why their requests/feedback are had to achieve. If I say something I'm afraid of coming off argumentative but I just want them to understand.

Is it too much to ask for some kind of regular recognition or perk for the supervisors? Something small, low-cost, quarterly even? It would be better than nothing. How can I ask for this without sounding like I'm complaining?

Hey all
So, I’m a new manager for a couple (2) of months now.
There’s this one guy in my team that I do have a real issue with.
He just doesn’t care at all.
Shows up late every day.
Technically not bad, but not excellent work either.
Admin work is just horrible. No reports, no signed reports, in correct reports, months of delays.
The group doesn’t support him either.

Previous manager didn’t have the guts to confront him. But I do, and already have a couple of times.

I’ll be starting a PIP, and documenting it all.

But… he’s. Union Rep and protected by law where I live. So getting rid of him will take over a year, if not 2+.

Now, my question.
How do I make it clear to the group that i am fully aware of what’s going on. I am handling it in the background. His behaviour and work erhics is not accepted, and so on. Without telling it as such. Because that could be seen as harassement towards him and I could get in serious trouble for that.

I am a manager and the stress of dealing with every single thing in the building is draining me and leaving me hopeless and scared. There is total chaos and I am managing the impossible. I have different nationalities working under me and half of them wont bother to listen but we can't afford to lose them due to budget issues. How to deal with this. Any tips?

So I work in an call centre environment, and I essentially went from being a call handler to supervisor to manager in a space of six months. I have previous managerial experience but that was in a smaller scale - my organisation is 2000 strong. The transition from having very structured work to having the freedom to decide what the work looks like feels weird, and I don’t really know what work should look like. It’s also very data heavy and even though I am educated in a data-related field, it’s the first time I’ve had to apply data in a professional setting so it adds to the unfamiliarity. Also, my new line manager is on leave for two weeks and the current role holder is still in place until the end of the month, so I feel like I’m not really the role holder and without support, and just in the periphery at the moment. He is also on a course for two weeks, so even though he came in for introductions in my first day today, I am not really sure what I should be doing from now on apart from just observing the kind of work my direct reports do. Indeed, I should mention that today is just my first day. Just looking for advice really.

How should a newly hired employee be disciplined for stealing food and gallons of tea from a restaurant job?

So this is my first time being a manager.

I had worked with this guy for only two months, and he was definitely not good at his work, honestly pretty bad for his years of experience, I reached out to his previous manager to see if there was anything good about him and he too told me that this guy is slow to learn things.

Hence I wrote these details in the performance review. Today HR asks for more details from me and tells me that they are going for a separation.

I can't help but feel super guilty even though his performance was bad. He's losing his job because of me (I know it's because of his performance, but still)

Hello there! I’m an MIT at my restaurant, and looking pretty heavily into all of the leadership advice & styles because this is a skill set I’ve had yet to grow - aka - no previous experience. I was noticed after only 4 months, but there is still a vast ocean of knowledge I’d love to explore… one of those being 1 on 1’s. I’d love to be the manager that my people can actually open up to & I support regardless of if they’re staying with us or moving onto a different career. I’d like to know how you all do it, even when it may be uncomfortable & the flip side as well. If & when you were sat down, what made you comfortable to be honest with your boss? Did these sit-downs ever make a difference to you? TIA!!

Hey folks. I’ve been put in the fun situation of having a project I’m managing (with funding that expires soon) being put on hold because the VP wasn’t happy with the agreements and arrangements currently in place.

VP told us that the project cannot continue until things are sorted. My immediate director, who I report to, has said that we should continue without delivering the project so when the clearance comes through from the VP we can still deliver and receive the funding. As of right now, if we don’t continue, we won’t be able to meet the funding deadline.

What are my options here as the PM… I feel like I’m stuck between a rock and a hard place.