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coworkers want me to do work that’s not my job, boss constantly changes his mind, and more
Jul. 8th, 2026 04:03 am![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png){kind=small}
askamanager_feedIt’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…
1. Did HR handle my complaint incorrectly?
Last year, a high-up, well-respected VP, “Frank,” announced he would be resigning. We were all gathered in the office for a different event which ended up falling on Frank’s last day with the company.
I, a woman in my 30s, was wearing a work-appropriate dress that fell to just above the knee. However, I have many leg tattoos on my quads that were slightly visible. Frank noticed my tattoos and beelined over to me to make comments about how he loves a woman with tattoos. I laughed him off and said “so do I!” to try to move the conversation along.
Later, Frank messaged me on our company’s Teams app to further ask if “he could see all of my tattoos” and heavily insinuated he would like to see up my dress. The messages were definitely flirty in nature and included a lot of emojis. As it was Frank’s last day and the man has a good 20+ years on me, I tried de-escalating by treating it as a joke and responding along the lines of “in your dreams” and being very short. Frank continued to message me about 5 other times insisting he was “just joking” but also making it very clear that if I’d be interested in showing him, he would be thrilled. I stopped responding. When I checked my Teams later, Frank had edited out the worst of his messages and even commented about “having a Freudian slip” in there. (Teams marks when messages have been edited.) Thankfully, he did not approach me in office for the rest of the day and left without incident.
After mulling this over for a few days, I approached my manager and let her know about the interactions, requesting that it was noted simply in case Frank returned to our company in the future and continued to make inappropriate comments to me. I stressed that since he was no longer an employee of the company, I did not want an HR investigation and simply want a note made in his file for the future.
A few days later, I received an email from HR telling me they contacted Frank about his messages and told him he will not be eligible to return to the company. I panicked and requested a meeting with HR to understand what’s going on — did they use my name? Did they tell him I had reported this? After three days of waiting to hear back from HR with multiple follow ups from me, no response from them, and HR moving the meeting twice, I join a meeting (now over a week after the incident) where the HR rep is brusque and texting on her phone. HR explains they reached out to him, let him know there was inappropriate conduct from him, and inform him he is not to reach out to any of the other employees at our company. I ended up being so frustrated with the situation that I was brought to tears — which embarrassed me! — as I explained that the way this was handled was extremely stressful for me and no one informed me of anything happening until I receive an email from HR that my situation was “handled.” No one from HR ever asked me for my story, asked me any questions, or even made an attempt to contact me about the situation. I ended up having to spell out to the HR rep that this felt like, in a situation where I already didn’t have a ton of power, any remaining power I had was taken from me and no one even bothered to talk to me directly. I won’t be reporting any future misconduct to HR at this company as I don’t feel I can trust them to keep it confidential or keep me informed on the process. I would appreciate any thoughts you have.
HR mishandled this — not necessarily by doing more than you’d wanted them to do, but by telling you about it after it was all over.
When a manager or HR becomes aware of harassment, the company is legally obligated to act, in some cases even if the person targeted says they don’t want anything done. If you report harassment, you can’t really say “but don’t investigate it” or “only handle it like X, not Y” — because they might be legally obligated to do something different, and they have obligations both to the law and to other employees that might be at odds with what you’re requesting. In this case Frank was no longer working there so it’s murkier, but I’m not surprised that HR felt they need to act regardless.
But when you talked to your manager, they should have told you that they’d need to let HR know, and HR should have talked to you to get more info before they contacted Frank — not so you could have said “no, don’t” but to get more information and explain how they were handling the complaint and how they’d ensure you were protected from any potential retaliation. It’s weird that they didn’t talk to you first, even if just to get more info (although perhaps less so if they’d had other complaints about Frank too).
If you wanted to, you could certainly go back to HR now and say you were dismayed by how this was handled and that it’s made you hesitant to report anything in the future, and ask how harassment complaints are typically handled and what protections exist for the reporter.
Related:
I reported my sexist team to HR — and now they’re doing a much bigger investigation than I wanted
2. Coworkers keep asking me to do things that aren’t my job anymore
Following a recent departmental downsizing, my role shifted from help desk support to project management. Even though I’ve clearly communicated this change — including putting a literal list of my current responsibilities on my door — coworkers constantly ignore it. I am constantly hit with, “I’m too busy to read the list” or “Can you just do this anyway?”
It feels like weaponized incompetence, especially since these same colleagues expect total perfection from me. I am exhausted from defending a boundary that shouldn’t need defending, and I’m on the verge of snapping at people for simply not paying attention. How can I handle this professional transition when my office environment refuses to acknowledge it?
My director and manager covered this with supervisors at multiple meetings but it didn’t make a difference. Staff and supervisors still drive me nuts.
Yeah, they’re not going to read the list on your door. People notoriously don’t read signs that are more than a sentence or two long — and sometimes not even then — so give up on that working.
But right now, your coworkers are used to you doing the things they’re asking you to do, because until recently it was your job. You’re going to have to retrain them — which is a pain to do, but will work in time if you’re consistent. That means that every time someone asks you to do something that’s no longer your job, you have to say, “That was moved off my plate and I don’t handle it anymore.” If you know who they should talk to instead, tell them that. If you don’t, say, “I’m sorry, I don’t know who handles it now, but you could check with X.” (X could be your boss or their boss.) If they push and ask you to do it anyway, say, “No, I’m sorry, I’ve been told not to do that anymore.”
If you do this consistently, people will get the message. With most people, it will only take one or two conversations like this for them to realize the system has changed.
Also, if people seem truly stumped about who to go to in place of you, that’s something you should flag for your boss, because that would be a sign that there’s a gap they need to solve or they need to better communicate whatever the new system is supposed to be.
3. My boss changes his mind constantly, then blames me
My manager is a great technical lead, but his managerial skills are less so, and he externalizes stress so he changes his mind on a dime, which often puts me in an awkward position. For instance, we had a new security project I was heading. It was initially suggested by my manager, who then got cold feet, and I only got the go-ahead for it because I promised to roll it out to our test group super slowly. Think 10 users a week. A month later in my annual review, he tells me he’s disappointed that it hasn’t moved faster in the rollout, and that once the first few batches had gone out without issue, he expected me to “speed it up.” He said nothing about this prior to it.
Another example is I am still waiting for him to make a decision on another project which he has left me on read for … but he has publicly asked for an update on progress in a tone that suggests there should be movement on it by now.
I’d take initiative more, only when I press forward with plans he’s in on, he changes his mind last minute. Example: we have an ongoing task that we don’t have the resourcing to handle, so we had a team meeting about it. After more than an hour of discussion, we agreed to change how it was handled and we’d nail down the finer points in a meeting later that week that I agreed to arrange. He was present for all of this! But when I arranged that meeting, I got rebuked (publicly) because he thought there were other things we should be putting our time towards and he disagreed with the entire notion. Again, he was present for the team meeting! He was literally there! He said he wanted us to come up with a solution, and we did!
I am not the only target of his mercurial nature but I am the most frequent one. I am getting increasingly fed up, but feel my grounds for pushing back are limited as I’m currently on an “informal PIP” to get my technical skills up to speed after a prolonged maternity absence. Any advice other than “get tech skills up to speed and then get the hell out of dodge”?
“Get tech skills up to date, then get the hell out of dodge” is the right approach. Or even skip that first part and just get out. Your manager sucks and isn’t going to change, and that “informal PIP” would be a danger sign all on its own; combined with your boss’s inability to stick to or even remember his own decisions and his willingness to penalize you when that happens, it’s all a big red GET OUT NOW sign.
4. My husband doesn’t want to ask for a raise
My husband has been at his current company for five years. Earlier in this time there, the company went through huge layoffs and had to seek additional funding. They are now doing … fine. But they are still not in a stable financial position.
In addition, his last review had one item that was “needs improvement.” He hasn’t had another review since then but has received positive feedback from his manager.
He has not had anything outside of a cost-of-living raise since he started at the company. When I’ve spoken to him about it in the past, he referenced the layoffs and unsure financial position as reasons why asking for a raise would be tone-deaf. Then this last round of reviews, he mentioned both their financial position and the fact that he had a less than stellar rating.
I am of the opinion that despite the other factors there is no reason not to ask for a raise, especially after so much time. He told me about doing so would reflect badly on him, and that I don’t understand.
I can think of a few situations where it might be inappropriate to ask for a raise (not enough time on the job, in the middle of layoffs, while on a PIP) but I don’t think any of the factors in his situation count. Especially because it’s been a couple of years since the layoffs and no one has been laid off since. When do you believe it would reflect badly on you to ask for a raise and what would you advise my husband to do in this situation?
It depends on how significant the criticism of his performance was, how recent that was, and what’s happened since then. If it was in the last six to eight months and the criticism was more than something minor — if he was told he needs to significantly improve his work in a particular area in order to meet expectations — then yeah, this probably isn’t great timing for asking for a raise. He wouldn’t need to be on a PIP for that to be true.
I do think you’ve got to trust your husband to read the situation for himself, since he’s the one in the job and observing all the dynamics firsthand. If you think there’s a broader issue like he’d never ask for a raise even if he had years of glowing feedback and every reason to think a raise was warranted, that’s something you could talk to him about — but that would be less about “you need to ask for a raise in this specific situation” and more about “if you won’t advocate for yourself, it’s going to have a real impact on what you earn long-term.” But absent something like that, you should trust his read.
5. Was it weird to send thank-you cards after an internal interview?
About two years ago, I interviewed for two different internal jobs/promotions in my department within a month. I didn’t receive either. For the first interview, I did not write thank-you notes, but for the second interview I did. Important to note that I interviewed with the same two people each time, and both were people I was currently or have in the past directly reported to. When I wrote the thank-you notes for the second interview, I approached them the same way I would have if I was not already working for them, except that I handwrote the notes on company-branded “Thank You” postcards (yep, we have those, I hadn’t seen one used since before the pandemic, but I still have some blank ones myself). And I left the cards on their keyboards one morning before they came in (a day or two after the interview).
We never spoke about the cards and I never expected them to be acknowledged, but I’m preparing to apply within the department again and wondering if what I did was ok or if it could have come off as weird because I was an internal candidate. For some additional information, this time, assuming I get to the interview stage, I’ll be going for the same title I was in my last (thank you note sent) interview. I’ve been told that we’ve restructured our interviews so now there will be two rounds. I’m confident the same two people will be involved in the interviews again, though I’m thinking the person with the higher title might be in the second round.
So, I’m just curious if your stance on thank-you cards changes when it’s internal interview versus external. Do you think what I did was weird? Should I approach thank-you’s differently or skip them altogether when I’m an internal candidate?
I don’t think it was weird, but this time I’d just email the notes rather than handwriting them, since email is the convention for this type of note.
And they’re still worth sending; don’t skip them just because you’re internal.
Related:
thank-you notes: they’re not about thanking anyone
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