manager gets anxious about how I manage my time, telling my boss it would be OK to lay me off, and more

It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…

1. My manager gets anxious about how I manage my time even though I never miss deadlines

My supervisor often assigns me projects well in advance of when they’re due. The problem is, she quickly gets anxious after assigning me work and mentions it repeatedly and hovers around my desk to check my progress on it. She doesn’t ask about it; she just watches what I’m doing and gets increasingly irritated and anxious if I’m not dropping everything to do the task she assigned.

For example, at this beginning of this week she assigned me a project of the sort I’ve completed many times in the past. I know exactly how long it takes me and even if I build in several extra hours for something odd going awry, I can easily complete it in less than two work days. I have spent the days since she assigned it working on a long-term project that isn’t due for several months with plans to start the project my supervisor assigned four days before it is due. I’ve told her this, but she seems deeply concerned that I won’t finish on time. I have consistently completed my work on time and I have given her no cause to think there is any reason to doubt that I’ll have this one done on time.

I’d understand her anxiety if I had a history of not meeting deadlines or if I were goofing off, but I’m trying to stay in the flow of working on my long-term project for a few more days. Am I wrong to do this? Should I just drop everything to do her assignment even though I know I’ll have it completed well with in the desired time frame?

Can you ask her about it? Name what you’re seeing and ask what’s up: “You’ve seemed concerned recently that I haven’t started projects right away, even though I always meet deadlines. Part of my satisfaction with my job comes from having some autonomy in how I plan my time, and I think you see that pay off in my always reliably turning work in on time. Do you see it differently?”… followed by, “If I’ve misunderstood a deadline or if it has changed, I’d of course want you to tell me, but otherwise I’m hoping you will trust me to continue turning work in on time even when I’m juggling it with other priorities.”

Alternately: “Have I done something to make you worry that I won’t reliably meet deadlines? As far I know, I’ve never missed a deadline, so I want to ask that you give me space to show that I will continue to do that. Of course if that changes, I would expect you’d need to manage my work more closely, but so far I think my track record of not turning anything in late has earned me some autonomy in how I manage my time. But if there’s a piece of this that I’m missing, I definitely want to hear your feedback.”

Related:
my boss gives me deadlines and then gets annoyed when work isn’t finished early

2. I’m struggling with my ego after not getting promoted

I have a question about checking my ego in a role I feel overqualified for. I’m in a job for which I have a lot of experience, and I think I would have been a shoo-in for a (modest) promotion had it not come to light that I am leaving in a few months to go back to school. The job is just an elevated version of my current role, including all the same tasks.

A while back (before school was a factor), the organization chose not to open interviews for this position after someone left; they can flex the number of people who have this title and are choosing to constrict that number supposedly because they do not want to offend the people who have applied multiple times/were rejected/are not any more competent than they were last time they applied. (I have never applied before, having only been here for about 10 months, though that timeline for a promotion is not out of the ordinary and the pace/type of work means one can thoroughly demonstrate competence within this period.)

There is a broad range of skill levels here, and though I pride myself on expressing a lot of praise and charitability on the outside, inside I have been finding it harder and harder to tamp down my judgmental thoughts when people conduct this job in a way that demonstrates a severe lack of critical thinking. I’m vocally supportive of alternative approaches to our work and can often find something to appreciate in how a coworker operates, even if it’s different than what I had in mind, but I feel like I’m being beat over the head with conduct that I find basically incorrect.

I’m struggling to put this in perspective. I am leaving shortly, this should not matter, this job is not intrinsic to my identity — yet every day, multiple times a day, decisions are made that lack any strategy or nuance, and these decisions affect the rest of the team and the clients we serve, so the amount of patience required is significant. We’re a nonprofit social service agency so are spread thin in terms of the resources we have to support vulnerable people; these utterly inept decisions matter a lot. But I usually have strong work-life balance and good boundaries regarding how responsible I feel for our clients, so I think a lot of my frustration is based on ego. Why do I care? I should just focus on my own work, right? I’m in therapy, etc. and can mostly discern this is a personal issue. I know I need to work on letting go, but I’m struggling.

I’m leaving soon, so I don’t think it makes sense to lobby for a promotion (right?), but that’s still a few months of learning to surrender this egoism. I think this could be a character-building experience and would love your help in making it such.

I suspect you’re struggling because it seems self-evident to you that you were well-qualified for the promotion, certainly better qualified than some of the people currently in the job — and so it’s a blow to the ego to think that wasn’t recognized and rewarded.

But the thing is, knowing you’re leaving in a few months would absolutely be a reason not to promote you in many organizations. It really could be nothing more than that. It doesn’t make sense for them to go through the work of processing the promotion when you’re on your way out the door, or to put in the work of acclimating you to the new role. Moreover, some promotions (especially ones where tasks don’t change) are in large part retention devices, and it doesn’t make sense for them to put resources into trying to retain you when you’ve already shared plans to leave in a few months.

So I don’t think there’s even a huge lesson about checking your ego here; if anything, I think the lesson is just to be realistic about how employment works, and how the dynamics change once people know you’re about to leave.

3. Should I tell my boss it would be OK to lay me off?

I work in higher ed, and our division was recently told to expect layoffs in the upcoming fiscal year, even in areas not directly funded by federal research dollars. I would honestly be fine with being laid off. My spouse is retiring this year, and I’ve been debating how much longer I want to keep working myself.

Should I say something proactively? I know you’ve advised not saying anything about planning to leave a job before it’s official, but in this case, I’m not worried about not getting assigned juicy projects or anything like that. (If anything, I’d be glad to be assigned fewer projects, even if I don’t end up leaving!) This is the last job I plan to have, so I’m not worried about developing in my career at this point — I just want to focus on my core responsibilities.

If it’s possible that I might leave during the next fiscal year anyway, do I have an ethical obligation to my teammates to say something now? I would feel terrible if the next thing I heard was that someone else on my team was being let go and thought that it could have been me instead. But I don’t want to make things awkward with my boss, either, since I still have to work with her every day, and I don’t want her feeling like I’m somehow less reliable because I could up and leave at any moment.

If you’re absolutely sure that you would be okay with being laid off (and potentially sooner than you might be expecting it would happen), then yes — you are in one of the few situations where it makes sense to say something if you want to. (You’re still not obligated to, though, and especially if you’re not 100% sure.)

If you do decide to, it doesn’t have to be an awkward conversation! It could be, “I don’t have any current plans to leave, but I do occasionally think about how much longer I want to keep working, and if you do need to cut someone on the team, I would be comfortable being the one picked.”

That said, keep in mind that layoffs are often about cutting the most expendable position, not person, and there can be other factors too (like you’re capable of picking up additional activities X and Y, while someone else isn’t). But it’s a reasonable thing to offer.

4. My PIP ended 23 days ago and no one has said anything to me

I have been dealing with an absolute chore of a manager who put me on a performance improvement plan (PIP) as a way to push me out of the company. I have tried to find new work, but have been unable to secure a new job, and have thus been very carefully and actively working towards completing the PIP.

Well, it’s now 23 days past the 90-day mark … and no one has contacted me about next steps in any direction. Have you heard of this before? Does this invalidate anything on their end since they have so thoroughly dropped the ball to exemplify my point of “it’s not me, it’s her”?

It’s not unusual for a PIP not be immediately dealt with at its deadline. It should be, and it’s unfair to leave the employee hanging and unsure what steps may be taken next. But it’s not uncommon for it to take longer. It doesn’t invalidate anything on their end or exempt you from any potential PIP-related consequences.

If you didn’t think your manager was trying to push you out of the company and also felt you’d met the terms of the PIP, there could be an argument for asking about next steps. But since you think she wants you gone, I wouldn’t poke at it unless you find the not knowing worse than any potential consequences of refocusing her on it. Leave it to her to raise it if she wants to.

5. My dad is terminally ill and I’m about to start a new job

My dad has terminal cancer and recently ended treatment to begin hospice care at home with my mom as his primary caregiver. My sibling and I are very close with them and help as much as we can, which our current employers and colleagues have been wonderful about supporting. We were given the “six months” speech, but his cancer is extremely aggressive so it’s very likely we have much less time.

I’m starting a new job after Memorial Day with a boss I worked for at a previous company. It’s primarily a remote position with fairly strict working hours, camera-on meeting requirements, and occasional in-office presence required, all of which I thought were doable before we got the dreaded news. On top of all the other ways we’re struggling right now, I have no idea when or how to let my boss know what’s going on and what timeframe we’ve been given. When we started the process of bringing me onboard, Dad was still stable and seemed to be responding to treatment, but things changed very rapidly after I accepted the new position.

My boss approached me directly for the open role and to my knowledge didn’t interview anyone else, so I know that he has a very high degree of confidence in me and expects me to be working at or above the same level as the last time we worked together. We’re both part of a loose social group of former colleagues who’ve become friends, even though my boss and I aren’t, so there’s a chance he knows my dad is sick but we didn’t discuss anything but work during the hiring process. I don’t normally share much personal stuff at work but this obviously isn’t something I’m going to be able to muddle my way through without telling anyone or asking for support. Any advice?

Oh no, I’m so sorry about your dad. I went through something similar with my dad right after starting a new job, too. The only thing you can really do is to give your boss a heads-up about what’s going on and what it could potentially mean for your work (like that you might need to take time off to be with him without notice) or even just that you’re not really sure and are figuring it out as things go along.

It’s definitely weird when you’ve just started a new job, but if these are decent people, they will rally to get you whatever flexibility you need.

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