It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…
1. Disgruntled ex-employee keeps contacting current employees
We had an employee, Lark, who served as a director in our business for about eight months. She chose to put in her notice and leave the company this summer. During her tenure, she repeatedly told several members of leadership that she was unhappy, looking for another role, and hoped we would just walk her out. She never said anything like this to me or my husband (the owners of the business).
At the end of the first week of her notice period, we told her that she seemed stressed and was dealing with a lot and she could just take the following week as paid vacation time and not return to the office.
After she left, we found out that she was routinely inserting herself into situations that a director should not have been in (such as sorting out daily tasks for entry-level employees) and was constantly telling people that she was the only one who got anything done and she was their “buddy” or “champion.” She never raised any of the issues she was supposedly advocating for in any management meetings.
Now that she has been gone for six weeks, we are hearing that she is regularly contacting current members of the management team to ask how project X is going or if they completed project Y — work-related issues that she has no business being involved in at this point. It is causing team members to mistrust senior leadership or not be honest with us.
She doesn’t work here, so what can we even do? Everything is hearsay right now because the people she’s contacting won’t show us the evidence (one told us before he quit, which is how we know). We need our team to see how toxic it is for any former leader to be inserting themselves into private business matters and undermining the leadership team. But we also know that if they don’t trust us and we tell them to stop sharing this information with people outside the company, it may give them more reason to mistrust us. What do we do with this toxic behavior?
This is bizarre! Why on earth is someone who no longer works there asking people whether they’ve completed specific tasks? It almost sounds like a continuation of the problems when she was there and wanted to be seen as everyone champion, and now that she’s gone she can’t let go of her identity as Extremely Involved … but it’s pretty wild to see that happen when she was only there for eight months, and it’s quite weird that the rest of your staff doesn’t find it odd.
In any case, it’s not strange or suspicious to remind employees that they can’t share internal info outside the company; that’s a very normal policy to have.
The fact that people don’t think it’s weird that a former employee is still inserting herself in this way makes me think that you might have deeper cultural issues than whatever’s up with Lark. The only way to solve this is to lean in hard to good management right now — meaning make sure managers are appropriately engaged with the work their teams are doing, hearing people out and ensuring people have opportunities for meaningful input that you take seriously, being as transparent about possible about decision-making, ensuring people are recognized and rewarded for good work, and otherwise demonstrating through your actions that you’re operating with integrity and openness. That’s the best counter to a toxic former employee like Lark who’s trying to undermine you — but it will take sustained commitment on your end to doing that.
Related:
my toxic former employee is still spreading negativity on my staff
2. When a toxic ex-BFF joins your company
This question is for a very dear friend of mine, Marlie. Marlie works in a very competitive industry. We are both still at the beginning of our careers and are close with a lot of friends from college. Marlie had a close college friend, Amanda, who she bonded with over their shared field and similar backgrounds. After college, they both landed jobs in major cities. They stayed in touch and traveled together, and I joined them on a few of these trips.
They had some personality clashes, but things really started to fall apart about a year ago during a vacation. Some of Amanda’ bad behavior included: not bringing her wallet and making us pay for most things (this happened almost every time we’d go out with her), lying and calling Marlie names behind her back, almost abandoning my friend when she decided to hook up with a guy my friend had expressed interest in (this has happened more than once), calling Marlie desperate and criticizing her taste in men, cursing us both out while drunk, and unfollowing Marlie on social media and leaving her texts on read.
Fast forward, Amanda lost her job a few months ago and has been searching for a new one. Meanwhile, Marlie is thriving in her job and is very happy. A few weeks ago, after a year of no contact, Amanda reached out asking for interview advice, as she’s interviewing for an open position at Marlie’s company. Marlie never responded.
The interview was last week, and there’s a real chance she’ll get the job. Marlie is nervous about the potential of Amanda joining her company and worried she will disrupt the positive work environment. They wouldn’t be on the same team, but she would still see her regularly. Amanda would also likely try to reconnect, especially given the social dynamics at the office. If Amanda gets the job, how should Marlie handle this situation? How can she maintain boundaries with minimal drama and questions from coworkers?
Polite professional distance.
Some behavior is bad enough that it would warrant Marlie talking to the hiring manager and sharing her experience with Amanda, but the stuff on this list doesn’t rise to that level. Amanda sounds like a bad friend and not someone you’d want to hang out with, but it’s all pretty solidly stuff that points to just not renewing the friendship rather than anything more.
If Amanda does get hired, Marlie should be polite but distant. If Amanda makes overtures to grab lunch or otherwise hang out, Marlie should politely decline, saying she’s too busy or so forth. If Amanda pushes the issue, Marlie might need to say, “I want nothing but the best for you, but I don’t think the friendship was good for either of us so I’d rather just be colleagues with different boundaries than we used to have.”
3. Are these interview red flags?
I’ve been interviewing for a new job for the past two months. I thought I had gone through the final round (with the head of HR and the managing director) and then was told last minute that there was one more interview with a senior member of the team, who sits across the country from where this position is based.
As soon as we got through the pleasantries, she proceeded to tell me that they had to fire the last person in the role, their name, the dates of their tenure, and the fact that they failed multiple performance improvement plans before they were let go. We work in a niche and small field. While I don’t happen to know this person who was fired, I very well could.
I’ve never experienced anything like this before, and it is giving me very serious pause about the role. Is this a major red flag? There were other parts of the conversation that were alarming to me, namely, that this person relayed very different information about the annual sales targets (she said they were three times what I had been told by HR), bragged about leaving for the office at 5 am in the morning during the summer months, and gave me conflicting information about the in-office expectations. More seriously, a job can be the wrong fit for any number of reasons, especially at this phase of my career and I would hate to think that if I decided to move on in a year or two, I would be badmouthed all over town about it.
Run. This is going to be a clusterfudge.
If it were just the discrepancy in the sales targets, I wouldn’t be so worried (as long as the numbers sounded reasonable to you) because HR often doesn’t have the nitty-gritty info about a job in the way a manager will. But all the rest of this = huge red flags.
4. My manager gave me her personal money for a work item I bought
My company has a $300 cost limit for a certain type of equipment, but the internal website said the limit could be overruled by higher management approval. My equipment was failing, and the cost for a new one of the exact same brand, specifications, etc. was about $315. My manager approved the purchase, as did her manager, so I purchased the equipment. My reimbursement request was rejected for going over the $300 limit. When my manager and her manager got involved, they were told by the expenses team that despite what the website said, there was in fact no way to go over the cost limit.
In the end, I was reimbursed $300 by the company, and my manager insisted on Venmo’ing the remaining $15 from her personal account, which she was not reimbursed for. I felt really uncomfortable taking her personal money when it was our company that caused the error, but she insisted. The expenses team also promised to update the website to make it more accurate. How should this have been handled?
The company should have covered the full $315 because it had been approved by your management in accordance with their written policies. They can update the policy, sure, but your manager shouldn’t lose her own money because a written policy was inaccurate. (And really, $15? That’s a de minimis amount for your company to eat in the interests of staff morale.)
Don’t feel weird about taking your manager’s $15, though; I’m sure she would have felt far worse if you were the one out the money because of what happened and she probably felt partially responsible. I would have wanted to cover it myself too.
5. Starburst curation
My office has a communal candy dish that includes the little two-packs of Starbursts. A coworker has taken to opening these packets, eating only the Starburst flavors they like (pink and orange), and leaving the remaining Starburst squares (red and yellow) behind for others. On the one hand, this strikes me as absolutely unhinged behavior. On the other hand, this unhinged behavior means I also have a whole slew of red Starbursts (my favorite) at my disposal, without even having to gamble for them. Am I obligated to say anything about this behavior, for the greater good? Or, with two Starburst-happy employees in balance, am I in the clear to continue letting crime pay?
I’m not sure there’s anything unhinged happening here! If your coworker is opening all the packages and removing the pink and orange Starbursts so there are none for anyone else, then yes, this is boorish behavior. But if they’re just taking a reasonable amount of candy and putting back the individually wrapped ones they don’t like so someone else can have them, this is what top minds consider a classic win/win.
Either way, you are under no obligation to speak up and may continue enjoying the red cast-offs without qualms.
