It’s “where are you now?” month at Ask a Manager, and all December I’m running updates from people who had their letters here answered in the past. Here are three updates from past letter-writers.
1. Can I report my coworker’s drunken, racist aggression outside of work?
My two coworkers and I discussed the weekend’s events and ended up reporting the incident with Fergus the very next day. My boss was horrified and immediately had him sent on a flight back to his home country that evening, and told Fergus’s manager that regardless of the outcome, he was not welcome in our country program again and he wanted another teammate assigned to our program. It turns out, Fergus had visited my boss’s office the day before to tell him that over the weekend, he “maybe had too much to drink” and may have “offended” me and my coworkers. He had also visited my coworker’s office to try to apologize to her, but she sent him away. The commenters were right — he was already trying to cover for himself.
My coworkers and I were asked to write statements, and HR began a process for a disciplinary hearing. However, very soon after, Fergus resigned with immediate effect, so we never had the hearing. I received a personal phone call apology from the C-suite member in charge of Fergus’ department, and Fergus’ team now has a policy where teammates are not allowed to consume any alcohol while on business trips out of their duty station.
For those wondering about my coworker who took care of Fergus while she attempted to sober him up, she was okay and he was not abusive towards her. She did have to endure his self-loathing rants as well as prevent him from escalating his poor choices further as he attempted to find other, harder substances later that evening. Eventually he calmed enough that she called a taxi to take him to his hotel. Looking back, I wish we hadn’t left him alone with her.
Thank you to your advice and all of the commenters for reassuring me that I had every right to report the incident. I’m thankful to work for a supportive manager who took the matter seriously and acted immediately and decisively!
2. I get possessive over my work (#2 at the link)
About possessiveness in general, I did a deal of self-reflection. Part of it was about my perceived worth at work — I really struggle with self-assessment and imposter syndrome, so to a great deal my possessiveness over my work was tied to my self-perception. This came to a crisis point this year when, for reasons far outside my control, my role was split in half to cope with the expanding scope of the workplace. The planned goal is to have us both working in far more depth with smaller groups rather than one person working with a shallow group. Despite my knowing that, my lizard brain decided that I was obviously about to be fired (thanks, lizard brain) and it was a very stressful time.
I decided that the most helpful thing I could do was work with my new coworker to make sure the transition was as smooth as possible, so that it felt less like something was being stolen from me and more like I was helping someone grow. Also, it keeps me from *sounding* possessive even if my emotions are haywire. So far she seems great and my role is not in danger. I definitely feel under-utilized right now and am hoping to reach out to my boss for more projects, but I’m still being trusted with the management of major clients and working on improving things there.
As far as measuring my work worth, I’ve picked a couple of specific metrics I know we’re working on improving and focusing on those. I’d love more day-to-day affirmations that all is good, but my former manager got promoted, I now have a new manager, and I do not yet have a regular one on one meeting set up with her. We do have a workplace culture of calling out specific people who’ve done good work, but that’s more for the operations crews than our finance department. I spend a fair amount of time telling my nerves to quit it, because I don’t intend to make my manager the keeper of my mental health. However my workplace is one where you’re encouraged to close the laptop and go home at 5, emergencies are rare, and I trust these people to have my personal cell number because they’ve proved they don’t abuse it (the only work text I’ve ever gotten was to tell everyone the power was out, don’t come in to the office). On the whole, I’m happy here and it’s a good environment for me to heal from some damaging patterns.
As to the specific project that prompted my email, I realized that my specific frustrations were that a) my prior work on the project would end up automating me out of it and b) that I wouldn’t have a chance to clean up my terrible spreadsheet from last year. I’m happy to report that I did get the project again and I did have a chance to improve on my prior year design. I’m still hesitant to hand it over to someone without giving them a walkthrough, since it’s still a complicated and unintuitive sheet, but I feel like I had the chance to actually finish the project. I’m still working on getting actual layers of review in place (small business finance, y’all) but I feel a lot better about it.
3. My spouse’s company is suddenly competing with mine (#3 at the link)
A bit of a boring update here. !e both got reassigned to different accounts, completely independent of the fact that we were married and competing for the same work. Just routine agency shuffle. Also, we had a baby and I’ve been on maternity leave for a good portion of the year, so even more unplugged from reality! More than anything else, that has shifted my perspective on the issue. I couldn’t care less anymore because I have bigger priorities now!
