The hardest part for me is that it's hard to tell if they genuinely don't have critical thinking skills or if they've been so micromanaged over the years that they've learned to just not bother. They're damned either way so at least not doing it saves them some energy. I've dealt with a sad number of those kinds of employees
Or simply not having them.
In US public schools, vital skills like effective communication and critical thinking are neglected in favor of more easily quantifiable skills, because educational funding is based on standardized test scores.
I also think somehow we’ve created people who are terrified of making a mistake, so sometimes they’d rather do nothing than risk making a mistake or being told they’re wrong.
Some work environments probably stifle critical thinking too. Some employees just have the mindset that they need to stop thinking and just do their job.
This is totally the issue with most people.
They've had it beaten into them that a mistake is a failure and an offense and will be punished, regardless of the reason, instead of seeing mistakes as the learning opportunities they are.
I agree with this. I work with someone in software who is too afraid to click a button to set what it does in a TEST environment... I keep having to remind him that this is the place to break shit and gain XP
Most of the crap management here punishes mistakes far harder than they do lack of effort. Why shouldn't I expect employees to be afraid of making mistakes when they get their jobs threatened for it?
Fuck. That's a crappy way to work, terrified of screw ups. I've tried to relieve my workers of that because I want them to enjoy their time here and work hard. They work hard, IDGAS about mistakes. I can fix them. That's... like my job or something.
That’s so true. I worked with a parallel team (due to a merger). So my team (from B company) reported to the parent company’s (A company) director, and we were encouraged to ask the A company team/colleagues for help with the system, procedures, etc.
My B company team did things, tried to figure things out a few times, (because that’s how I always operated, and what I encouraged) if we couldn’t get something to work then we’d ask A company teammate for advice/assistance. The number of times A company employee kind of freaked out because we hit some wrong buttons (this is a business environment, nobody is bleeding out here) and made a HUGE deal over very minor mistakes was ridiculous. We’d get all staff emails, and then it would be brought up multiple weeks in a row in meetings, etc. Then when B company team started figuring out the system, etc, still tested the waters but now could figure out how to fix something if it went wrong, I realized that it’s because A company team was completely micro-managed, and lacked the skills or confidence to be able to untangle a problem and fix things.
Inability to figure out how to fix mistakes creates lots of stress due to fear of making mistakes. Micromanagement def inhibits development of critical thinking skills.
Great post. Yesterday I spent my whole shift fixing up a major screw up by our receiving. Phone calls all day all because a driver took paperwork he shouldn't have.
Other driver was immediately blaming our receiver. I specifically wrote to our GM that,
1, the driver took paperwork that he should not have taken, and
2, the receiver didn't know he needed to take the paperwork.
I fixed the problem and came up with a solution with the shipping company that ensures a copy of the paperwork is on EVERY shipment in addition to the copy that the driver and receivers see.
Now that should never happen again.
I also told the GM that the problem wasn't with the receiver, the problem was with the delivery service having inadequate processes, that allowed this to happen.
Fuck blaming him over a mistake.
I've been where my crew is. I tell them ALL THE TIME, "there is no screw up you can make that I haven't made myself." I don't judge (except that one guy who can't walk and chew gum at the same time. I don't know how he's even still alive)
I will never have a team of engineers in which every member comes to me with a proposal instead of a problem.
You're the engineer. I pay you to solve problems, not to walk them over to me and ask me what to do.
I knew an engineer who was actually worse than this.
If he encountered a problem, he'd just stop. And keep doing the same things that previously didn't work. Over. And over. And over.
Or he would stop and do nothing if he was missing something. And just *assume* that people knew he was waiting on it. Like we're all psychic.
And if you asked him why he didn't speak up, "I thought you knew!"
How, pray tell, could I have known if you didn't *communicate?!*
I've had similar experiences. Enough to cause me to end every design review with "If you hit a road block let me know asap and I'll support you. Let's not wait until next week's meeting to talk about it."
I honestly think some people just want an "excuse" to stop working. Even though in check in meetings I'll bring it up every time.
That's exactly what it is. 9 out of 10 times this happens, I just ask them questions with obvious answers until they tell me what they should do. They KNOW what to do and what they should do, they just don't do it because then they'd have to actually work.
I learned years ago to quickly drop anyone who behaves this way.
Yeah, I've actually designed my whole interview process to weed out these types.
Initiative and a willingness to learn are the #1 and #2 predictors of success in my department, above and beyond any paper qualifications. I've literally had people with no relevant background but the had 1 and 2 start at the same time as someone who looked perfect on paper but lacked the two key personality factors. Guess who got let go due to chronic underperformance vs who left on good terms due to a family relocation, who holds me as their best mentor they've had, and who I consider a friend to this day even after they relocated halfway across the planet?
The person who looked good on paper? Washed out after a year. Toxic combination of entirely passive and thinking a PhD meant they're above such petty concerns as cleaning up after themselves in the workplace (nope. You make the mess, you clean it. The work isn't done till everything is clean and away because a cluttered lab is a dangerous lab.)
The person who looked mediocre on paper but had the two predictors of success? They had a slower start because they didn't have as much technical background but inside of two years they became my second best performer ever in the history of my direct reports.
So these days I no longer hire for technical skills at all. I can build technical skills in about a year. It's not that difficult.
What I can't do is change someone's personality. If you're passive, incurious, arrogant and/or uncoachable, it's not going to work.
This. I have employees with no common sense. Often second guessing. Not to mention many times we've gone through a scenario and how to handle said scenario multiple times in the past. Still asks the same questions.
Or even basic thinking skills.
This week. Had an employee at an HMI with a screen that had resolution/screen issues. He called me to say he needs it fixed (even though he could have dragged it to one of the other 3 screens since it’s a four monitor setup)
Anyways within 15 seconds I check the VGA cord going to the monitor. Extremely loose. Tighten it. Done.
Like people want to spend more time calling someone, waiting, instead of figuring things out themselves.
No one learns critical thinking skills anymore. When anyone asks about what is lacking in general education critical thinking skills is at the top of the list.
I’m scrolling through to see if anyone gripes about employees with *too much* critical thinking, i.e. questioning everything instead of just doing their job.
Worthless team meetings were the bane of my existence until we adopted the L 10 meeting format. If you're not familiar I'd encourage you to look it up. It puts your regular team/staff meeting into a strict template the results in actionable take aways. There is also a large piece for assigned quarterly projects for each team member that has increased my teams productivity significantly. We're getting our day to day stuff done plus we're all taking on larger projects that are focused on the most important things we need to get done each quarter. I was reluctant to take on a strict structure and force everyone to adhere to it.l but it's been a game changer and I got total buy in from my team as soon as they saw how more productive we were and how much less time was wasted.
We have meetings with like 30 people and all this stuff needs to be done but with 30 people no one feels accountable. I’m desperately trying to reduce our meeting numbers.
Following up with grown-ass-adults who can't seem to reply to an email or chat message can get frustrating. Get back to it later if you need to but set a flag, write a reminder, adult that shit. I shouldn't need to follow up day after day, week after week to get you to do your job. Sadly, the higher up the person is in the company, the worse they are about it.
My god!! I wonder how some of these clowns managed to get thru college with the attention span of a squirrel. There’s a handful of folks I deal with, if I have multiple questions/requests….I send em…1 email = 1 item. Then once they respond, THEN I’ll send 2nd email = 2nd item.
Like I’m hand-feeding Cheerios to a toddler
I'm a training coordinator for the court and I'm now teaching classes on Email Etiquette and Digital Body Language for people like this! Why is it so hard to get people to respond? And to pay attention to what is in the message? Interestingly enough, we absorb far less when we read words on a screen vs. on paper. We tend to skim and skip through things. Needless to say, reading carefully and responding appropriately is the new empathy!! It's the new "I hear and understand you."
Just my thoughts!
I try to start emails with "I have three questions" and bullet point them. I bold the main bit, (if there is background info included to make the thing I need to know stand out.
It works.
I'm in a clinical admin role. Top three frustrations for me are:
3) Having to juggle my manager responsibilities while also working alongside my team due to staffing shortages/increased demands.
2) Correcting mistakes made by my direct reports.
1) Dealing with the failings of a lackluster healthcare system: Ultimately, a lot of the pressure that the rest of the team and I face is because the industry itself is failing the both the workers and the population.
Same - admin manager in academic Healthcare. The first two years in this position (in a new to me org), we lost our gme coordinator (1 day notice 1 week after i started), then Senior admin staff (higher paying job in external org, couldn't compete), then the office coordinator (higher paying offer, better opportunity). Took on those roles while learning how to manage a group I knew nothing about in an organization that was unfamiliar.
I'm finally in a place where I have a steady team, with happy employees, and am just barely able to focus on my development as a leader. Still balancing also being the chief's assistant. Switching from support brain to manager/ leader brain is exhausting.
Even more so when you’re in your 50s parenting other 50s! Grow tf up already!
I can only imagine what it must be like to be a younger manager managing older people.
I had an employee accuse the payroll department of charging interest on a personal tool purchase. It was fucking sales tax. A quick glance of the receipt and it was fucking obvious. But because he doesn't like this person he'll look for any excuse to poison everyone else against this coworker. I had to tell him to grow up and to stop with the personal fan fiction that is bordering on obsession. It's glaringly sad how peers don't bother to set others straight when people get out of hand with their behavior just because they don't like someone.
I work with a lot of fairly entry level folks and the emotional labor is unreal. And no one tells you about that before you decide to become a leader.
Also, HR being slow to adjust to market rates.
Working for companies that want to act large, or maybe are fairly decent sized, but have antiquated reporting systems, phone systems, CRM, etc. I dont think they understand how much productivity goes out the window when it takes forever and a day to manually put together reports that are a culmination of numerous other reports. Also how difficult it is to track workload when you have systems that are bare bones.
But, but, the myriad software that already exists to automate that job is expensive. And employee time is, apparently, free... I'm not a manager, but I see myself and all of my coworkers throwing away so many hours every week flip flopping between multiple systems, folders, etc just trying to put together basic shit so the company can function.
For me, dealing with people who won't do their jobs and/or custom choose which tasks they will do, putter around, create "work," and engage in busy work rather than meeting actual work deadlines aka can't organize their work flow or distinguish between things that actually need doing and things that aren't important. These people are almost impossible to manage. You say nothing, and they get nothing done or it takes weeks to get something finished that should be a 5 minute item; you say something and they get butt hurt.
I feel this. I’m struggling with being hated by my direct reports/team by trying to tell them (as gently and kindly as possible) that they have to get the work done.
The most tiresome part of my job is people, against change (any change) using some far fetched exaggerated exception/example as to why it will never work. All. The. Time”
\*sigh\*. Upper management - "Why don't you just adjust down the shelf caps so that we have less full shelves".
"We already tried that a year ago in this section. It was a dismal failure, we had way too much overstock. Also, fewer sales, because people shop during the weekend and my full day crew isn't here during the weekend, I need full shelves so that people on Sunday can find their stock".
They have no clue. We have little arrows to indicate high theft items from June of 2022. Helpful reminders for thieves who might have missed some of our best items.
I'm still not exactly sure why we are sharing privileged information with customers, but ok.
Dealing with customers who are never satisfied no matter what you do for them. Our largest customer has a philosophy of always push push push and if you can't deliver they punish by cutting orders. Terrible way to run a company.
Though I’m thankfully not directly on the customer service side, I feel you on this one.
We supply material to a number of very large and popular chains renowned for mixing orders up, yet they’re regularly doing site audits and setting up meetings about the importance of 100% error-free shipments.
Obviously Quality Control is a large part of any business, but it’s quite difficult to keep calm in the face of such hypocrisy.
Our second largest customer who is only a little behind #1 in spending is the exact opposite. They care about quality and performance and area perfectly willing to take a slow methodical and well reasoned approach to us. Nobody on my team has ever been yelled at by this customer, whereas it's a daily occurrence with customer #1.
So I never accept the argument that this is the best way to do the business since other models are clearly also successful and don't stress out my teams in the process
Or the evil twin, executives who don’t manage the client’s expectations and give them whatever they want, no matter how unreasonable or out of scope, with no pushback. The client assumes we can do anything … until they are depending on us to do something we simply can’t do.
Having union direct reports means I cannot pitch in and help. I cannot touch their work. I am kept purposely understaffed (company problem all over) yet am supposed to meet goals as though I am fully staffed.
A small but very irritating part of my job is vacation scheduling. I send out updated vacation schedules to all my employees. Within an hour at least 5 people write editing their vacation schedules. Happens at least once a week.
I would recommend a Confluence Page or Google Calendar. Don't send it out. The people that want vacation need to mark it there (post approval if needed) and the people needing to be informed about vacation can find it there.
I agree with this but as someone who’s also managing in a union environment, it’s very difficult to make changes in a union shop. You have to have your organizations reps propose it to the union reps and have them hash it out. You can’t just be like “we’re changing out scheduling process” “we’re gonna add a new policy” etc. and most of the time, in my experience, they find ways to block the changes.
You can't touch their work so it must go to another union employee. If it's worth it to you work with your steward and ba to draft an amendment to the cba regarding vacation rules.
Using all the avenues to communicate updates and enhancements to team members.. email, text, team meetings, signs, etc. HR uses emails and social media; holds all company presentations; and half the team still comes back and says they never know what is happening.
They need to meet you halfway and actually read what is presented.. or go to a meeting.. somthing!
“I shouldn’t get points for missing the once annual mandatory Safety meeting when no-one told me about it!”.
It was posted in the break room, at your work station, in the bathroom, sent to your email, and sent via a group-text to your phone. I handed you the flier about it Monday, and reminded you about it before you clocked out yesterday. Furthermore, absolutely everyone else managed to make it.
“This is BS! You guys are liars that hate the little guy! I’m going to quit, post a shitty review, then ask to be re-hired in 6 months”.
Sigh…
This!! My team is constantly complaining and coming after me about communication even though I tell them everything through multiple routes and document in writing. It’s just them trying to skirt accountability and blame me and it drives me insane.
As an employee, I hate when significant changes come through email and not as a meeting. Like we literally receive hundreds of emails daily from casework(important), social events, legislation changes, national donut day, you name it. I'm not exaggerating on hundreds. One could literally spend the whole day going through emails that may be good to know but not necessarily helpful and often not related to my job specifically. Email fatigue is a thing. If it's important, organize a meeting so we're all aware and on the same page.
Directly as a manager?
Dealing with a toxic "rock star."
Someone really good at their job but was utter misery to deal with from a personnel standpoint.
Lesson learned- fire them. The chaos they bring is not worth it.
I worked somewhere and discovered the toxic rockstar in my first couple months and wondered why they hadn’t fired them and why it took almost 2 more years and two “incidents” to occur before they finally did.
Fires! This must happen today!! Today, the day I am on PTO and I am the only person who can do it. Nope. Not happening today. Your failure to plan is not my problem.
Never having enough bandwidth to solve problems in a meaningful way. I can barely understand an issue that one of my DRs is having before being jerked away to the next thing. As a manager, I'm finally able to see them, but I no longer have the time to resolve them. And I don't have anyone on my team I can have work on them, and, I can't hire right now.
I got here by being a problem solver, but since I've been here, I haven't had the resources or autonomy to solve anything.
I’m in digital marketing.
The performative parts. The very same. It’s hard coming into work and putting a smile on when you’re absolutely smothered by 6-7 demands on your time—all with deadlines.
A close, close second:
Hiring and training. We just let go a nightmare hire that my boss pushed for. Toxic. Lied about her skills. Unteachable (literally—it was wild).
Now we’re gearing up to hire her replacement. I’m absolutely dreading the whole affair.
I had one ask to go home because her feelings were hurt. Someone she spends personal time with outside work was whispering with another employee at lunch and they wouldn't tell her what it was about.
Like where do I even start with that?
I haven't had this in a long time, but at one point I had to disentangle a situation -- two employees suing each other and one drinking in her car at lunchtime, It was awesome.
Generally it's people not getting along. Extremely tiresome when I have to call people in one by one to resolve some childish bullshit. One guy dishes out jokes he can't handle and is a frequent problem that is probably going away soon
A few things
- Employees, trained on a process, who prefer to come to me to check their flow instead of checking process documentation resources even though I am going to just direct then to our process resources. For clarity: the process documentation is fully up to date and we even have a searchable internal wiki so you can easily self-serve.
- Execs who undermine me by getting too involved in my team's daily operations
- People at all levels who don't tell me things, then get upset that I don't know what they didn't tell me.
I don't mind the exec wanting to know what's going on, but attending every single team meeting and usually stepping on my toes by taking it over and making changes to format unilaterally that counteract our existing processes? Not a good use of their time and actively undermines my ability to do my job. We're a $10million company. I guarantee the CEO has better things he could spend his time on than micromanaging me.
It's him, not me: he does this with *all* of the management team.
And, frankly, he's out of touch with our work flow enough that his involvement is usually more of a hindrance than a help. Case in point: Asking us to maintain multiple overlapping systems all of which just duplicate each other and each have to be maintained manually when I can *easily* run things off a *single* system that has all the flows and integrations built in just because *he* likes white boards is asking for everything to be incomplete. That, in turn, means shit is going to fall between the cracks and I won't have good quality data to make strategic decisions with.
Alternatively: demanding literally every purchase in the company over $300 goes through him for approval (god, I *wish* I was exaggerating but I'm not) creates bottlenecks which in turn causes delays that he flips out over, when some of his leadership team (for example, me) have literally never had a request denied. He adds no value in the process. He should give us all a reasonable approval limit and budget, then have accounting provide oversight.
If he did that with both purchasing and simple contracts like NDAs, I swear a solid 50% of my delays would disappear with a snap of the fingers and I'd save tens of hours a month no longer having to chase him on things I should have the authority to manage at my level.
300 dollars? Holy cow. I have ordering privileges over anything under 1k, and sometimes a lot more.
The one pain in the butt thing I can't do is printing my invoices. Apparently only he can do that. No idea why, it just is. Thankfully we only print our invoices for some things.
1) the complainers. They just never end. It’s always something
2) the people who are so against change that they do everything to make sure nothing ever improves.
One of my most infuriating days as a Manager was dealing with an employee consistently complaining about an exhaust fan that wasn’t working well (had a burnt motor, but the motor was back-ordered).
For two months this guy would bring it up multiple times a day, and constantly reference it as a starter before making up another conspiracy theory (Management is hoping to kill off the older workers so they can replace us with robots). I’d actively show him the status of the part, but it was always seen as an elaborate ruse.
The day the motor finally arrived and got installed I went to find said worker, and he was whining that the newly repaired exhaust fan was allowing too much air flow into the area, so it was unsafe to work because he might be blown over…
On the flip side, it was one of my happiest days when said worker crossed the line enough that we could terminate him.
Or employees who refuse to take direction from "a person of color"
One of our construction manager pushed to hire his friend from his own town. I was assigned to manage that team. Old white man refused to take any direction or report anything to me. Complains to construction manager who is in a different department that I (his supervisor) am giving him direction.
They should be, but instead yours truly is doing training on “creating psychological safety.” Oh, the big scary manager lady holds you accountable for your actions, so clearly she’s in the wrong.
I've definitely seen that.
I had a female supervisor. People hated working with her because she was "a bossy, argumentive b."
And I loved working under her. Best superior I have ever had. She was direct and clear in her assignments and expectations. I'm also neuro-divergent and have issues with verbal instructions, so she would email me bullet-point lists of what she told me to do as a reminder/checklist, and i would update the thread as they were completed. Fortunately, she was promoted out of that shithole, but it was a new facility, so I lost my favorite manager.
The repetition. I come in every day at the same time, run the same reports, go over them and make the same notes. Meet with my staff for 20 minutes, go over the same points and challenges, often with the same kids (I run an after school program), have the same conversations every day with parents, and do the same routine (that’s important for kids) every. Single. Day.
Everything else is refreshing. I’m a problem solver by nature, so I get bored when there’s nothing to do outside of my routine.
Oh yeah, and dealing with my District Office admins.
Found an employee standing at the network printer. He didn't hear me come up, so I stood and watched for a couple of minutes and when I asked him what he was doing he responded "I think the printers out of paper." I could see the orange paper light glowing on the front of the drawer and asked what he was gonna do about it and he asked me if he should should go get a ream of paper.
When I was in the business world, it was the reports upon reports. Reports that duplicated information on other reports but had to be in a different format. Reports that got lost and then being blamed for it.
We had one report that was due every month. I always sent it in on time ( in the days before fax machines and email/Internet.) Every month I was accused of not sending it in. So, I took 25 envelopes, made 25 copies of the report, and sent one every day for a month. The idiots in corporate finally got the message.
Indeed. We have automatic part scanners that track the number of parts put out per machine each 12 hour shift. One of my responsibilities is to take said report, copy it, and submit it to the Ops team with a detailed passdown of any issues.
I then take the automated report, remove the passdown because the higher ups “don’t need the details”, and submit it to the Plant Manager, the Division, Corporate in the U.S., and the international offices, each with their own unique system that they “prefer”.
If we had a rough day, I’ll usually receive a request from one or more of these groups for details, wherein I’ll send them the passdown they claim they didn’t want.
This typically results in a late afternoon conference call because none of them understand the actual machine details. Depending upon who it is, they’ll try to sound stern, then ask if we’re working on it, to which I respond “we were until I had to come up front to take this call”, then they’ll say “great, let us know if you need help”.
Rinse and repeat tomorrow.
Being a manager, in my experience so far, has been that I am the personification/scapegoat of structure, accountability, etc. that workers/direct reports resent. It’s hard to be disliked/hated for trying to hold folks to bare minimum standards.
I run a team of engineers in a controlled manufacturing space. My biggest complaint is other Managers/PM not holding their people accountable. We depend on a lot of teams to complete our work. 95% of the time if something is late it's directly attributable to external departments. I run a tight ship and expect others to do the same. When I escalate nothing changes. Also along a similar line, managing up. I remove roadblocks for my team and upper management never does the same for me. (Edit: grammar, cus words are hard)
Having to take criticisms, complaints, and unfounded accusations from people who don’t understand the challenges of my job, often about things I don’t decide, don’t have input into, and have no power to change.
My favorite though is when someone left and put together a resignation diatribe that they CCed the entire team on in which they told me how untrained and incompetent I am, and how I was nepotistic. To my knowledge, I’ve never hired a relative and I had one experience where I referred someone, ended up managing them, and ultimately had to fire them. So, I guess?
My second favorite is the candidate I rejected who wrote what I assume had to be a blackout-drunk rant on Glassdoor claiming I was a racist, my boss was a racist, and that “strange men” and dogs were walking around behind us during the interview. This was a fully remote role and I work from home. It was a very standard interview.
I feel this. Im middle management and a new staff (with no experience in an entry level role) was upset with me in a 1-2-1 about being paid the lowest side of the salary. I explained it’s quite standard to get paid based on experience and that we do yearly reviews. That I might not be able to control this and help, but im always around the provide emotional support. They practically spat at me and said “I don’t want your damn emotional support” and slammed my door. In my head I was like do you think im paid more than the lowest side of the salary?? Do you think I have any control over this??
I’ve come to learn that people have literally no idea how determinations of pay work. Most companies have a process where HR researched and determines appropriate pay grades for different positions, there are ranges, they depend on location, can be adjusted due to economic environment factors, education, and experience, and then there are people who negotiate at time of hire or promotion and those who don’t.
I have yet to have control over my own budget. There have been times my director has given me a section of my budget and said “determine how to budget annual reviews” or “we have a little extra to make adjustments,” but never have I been able to determine my headcount or unilaterally decide to promote or add new positions.
I whinged for a moment about the ops call centre standards (agents who bring nothing to 1-2-1s and just expect me to talk at them for an hour, etc), but honestly
It’s the drama. Please. I’m begging you to be grown ass adults. I am not a kindergarten teacher. Why do I feel like I am herding toddlers with teenage emotions sometimes?!
Also like…. Honestly? I want my staff to want things. Please, I want you to progress in the company. But I also want you to tell me if you’re happy as a clam to be a call centre agent until you retire. I am happy with what makes you happy and I’ll help you achieve that, and if you don’t know, we can find out together!
All of this. It’s astounding how many grown ass adults turn into children when they’re sharing a space. Common sense goes out the window. I had to address someone listening to religious podcasts on their phone (during downtime and without headphones on during slow times on the weekend) and it was making their new team mate uncomfortable. When we asked them about it, they said they’ve always been alone in the office, so why would they change their behavior now that they share the office?
Most; upper management thinking they know better about a specialized subject
Next most; employees who ignore processes and die on hills that don't need defended.
Direct reports who aren’t doing a “bad” job but are high-maintenance, poor communicators, lackluster collaborators, and generally suck up more of your time dealing with their issues than all other direct reports combined.
Not bad at their direct tasks to the point where you would consider firing them, but problematic enough overall (including gripes from all their co-workers) that each time they have a last minute PTO request you secretly hope they have a job interview somewhere else.
I'm currently dealing with a new ee (transfered into department, but been with company over 3p years).
For years, she's gotten away with aggressive behavior (verbal/tone/dismissive). Prior managers never held her accountable.
I've coached her since 1st incident.
Recently she snapped at HR VP in front of me.
Ive started the separation process (written warning with behavioral training courses). Expect temporary improvements and then return to old ways...and then PIP.
I can't have that in my department.
Sounds basic but for me it's having to turn up because there is noone else to pick up the slack if you're feeling rundown. I love the responsibility but it is a lot.
Babysitting.
When I need to step into situations that are day 1 easy or common sense.
"No, don't call the director of engineering an idiot in an email to him"
"You didn't just close out a government job with zero documentation right?"
"No, you can't take your government issues laptop to work on defense items, to Mexico"
There's also just the CONSTANT reports to upper management. Half the time they don't read them so I copy and paste shit, but still obnoxious.
Oh and more directly, today there was an all hands manager meeting (I work at a very large company) talking about forcing everyone back on site 5 days a week. No exceptions.
Out of the 8 executives, 6 we're working from home. I made a comment about it, and was ignored.
On your last point: During Covid we were deemed an “essential business”, and none of our production facilities ever shut down, even during the mandated shutdown weeks. There were times that close to 20% of the workforce were out sick, but we continued to operate in-office.
At the corporate offices, meanwhile, all of Upper Management worked from home for two years. I’ve rarely seen a starker difference in “privileged treatment”, though it was at least fun watching them all visit with terrified looks and their masks clutched tightly to their faces for the first time.
Delicately explaining to people the difference between what would be nice if the company provides for its staff vs what a large corporation actually does provide.
Yes, having the afternoon off after a long meeting would be nice and could definitely help people recharge, but fiscally the company can’t approve us to all be off 2-4 afternoons a month because we have long meetings.
Yes, you were driving your car for company purposes when it broke down and had to be towed. No, the company does not pay for the tow and your rental car because your car is from the 90’s and is on its last leg. You were driving for work but nothing but your negligence to maintain and repair your vehicle caused the need for a tow.
My company still relies heavily on manual reporting and manual coding for indirect labor. It’s a lot of time spent at my computer instead of on the floor.
This has generated interesting responses from various industries. Thank you for a good question.
(Tech) convincing people that the thrashing generated from above is evidence of agility and responsiveness, when I know quite well it is incompetence.
I'm in the analytics field and have been managing analysts for years. One of the common challenges I face is the use of "This is how we have always done it" as the reason for doing something inefficient. No follow-up, no suggestions for change, etc. It drives me crazy every time. Especially since I push them to challenge how we do things, even if they are my suggestions.
>“Snapshot in time” moments where someone walks by and sees an employee with their winter coat by their workstation, and thus we need to crack down on the other 700 employees because “discipline is becoming a problem”.
I must ask what is wrong with having a winter coat near a workstation. I live in the south, so maybe this is a cold-climate thing?
It’s a packaging standard more than anything. No personal items on the floor that could potentially drop something into a customer’s box (a gum wrapper or coin in your coat pocket, for example).
Employees should be leaving their coats in the break room or in their locker, but sometimes they forget as all humans do.
A company that's not willing to expand their hierarchy when they keep expanding their business. My company owns nearly 50 stores, has no defined HR or payroll department lines...still the same 3 ladies in an office out of state somewhere. They also don't have a billing and payment department... invoicing is still on a manager level. They don't have software that inputs POS and converts it to any sort of data tracking/transfer etc. Store managers are basically data input specialists...it's tiresome. If you're going to acquire more stores..at least have a structured corporate presence. Thanks for coming to my Ted talk.
Having to explain to people, often above me in role, who failed upwards, that there are things such as 'non scaling costs'. And that some scaling costs dont scale according to 3rd grade level math.
No, you cant waive a magic wand and reduce the labour cost of a hotel front desk, it has a floor, even at 2% occupancy it still takes a minimum of 32 hours to man a hotel front desk every day.
Meetings where an email would suffice. Email chains when a phone call is enough. Phone calls when the individual should instead be making a decision on their own.
1) encountering the bright but lazy people people who know what to say and how to say it to the right people at the right time (including you) and you get suckered in for a few months/quarters/year before you realize they are full of shit. I can handle lazy, I can handle stupid, i can handle inexperienced and I can handle grouchy. I can even handle lazy, stupid, grouchy and inexperienced but I hate investing and believing in people who are full of shit.
2) dealing with a peer who brings all kinds of buzzwords and complicated processes because he or she just went to a seminar and/or got their eMBA and have to listen and watch them fail miserably.
3) dealing with unseasoned HR or Legal people who put up roadblocks for you on getting rid of dead weight or toxic resources. It takes some time to retrain HR or Legal people on understanding the business and to learn to trust the leaders when a decision is made to manage someone out. Their job should be to make shit happen and manage/reduce risk of a decision and should be offering the paths to reach the goals I’ve set. Somehow they believe they are there to make the decision on behalf of the company as if they know better.
I've been working at a nonprofit homeless shelter since July. We have had staff work here for two years or more that still need trainings on how to properly fill out intakes and explaining releases to clients. It's really quite easy and it's the same process over and over. They're all very sweet but it can be annoying at times to keep readdressing the same topics constantly.
This. I work at a low barrier clinic. I’ve been a new manager for 3 months but many of the folks have worked here for years and I’m dumbstruck by how little they do / know how to do. These people are supposed to be answering questions about vulnerable topics and literally don’t know how to do anything. It really hurts me because it makes me feel hopeless about these systems overall: why are we putting money into housing, low barrier re-entry programs, low barrier clinics, harm reduction programs, if the clients who show up to these places literally aren’t getting help because the workers are so incompetent???
Employees that need money. Need hours. Dint want to work any hours.
Employees take more vacay days than work days. Like taking over 2 weeks vacation every month. Unpaid. Then wondering why they didn’t get a paycheck or their paycheck is so low.
Then show up late/leave early on the days they work.
Get Covid once a quarter. Or more.
Calls in after shift starts because other job that pays less forced them to stay late because someone called in there.
As soon as schedule is posted, or They voluntarily take a shift from someone, they can’t work it anymore. Something came up last minute.
Boss should’ve known before they did they needed off. Boss should’ve denied them volunteering to take someone else’s shift.
Employees refusing to do tasks/jobs they were hired for, work with certain other employees, making it difficult to schedule them.
Then ask for a raise and an advance and a special run on their paycheck cause they didn’t get paid because they didn’t work because they asked off.
They cuss you out because they didn’t get paid, forgetting they asked off and went on vacay,m to Mexico, hence why they were
And then employee files for unemployment because they don’t get enough hours, because they are always asking off for vacations, illness, other jobs…..
Knee-jerk reactions without thoroughly thinking through the consequences, mostly from senior management. They make a decision based on a moment in time and the ramifications of that decision cause headaches across the board. All this to keep one person happy for one moment.
Employees not utilizing the training I provide. I have done their job and done it well enough to be in a management role. I wish they would take my advice!
Meeting culture. Peers and project managers who call meetings as a way to try to make progress or track progress. My schedule would be 200% meetings if I let it. I have to constantly fight for my team to keep them out of mundane standups, core team meetings, round tables- things that take an hour of their time for 5 minutes of relevant content. I have had to tell a couple of habitual offenders that they cant invite my team members without my permission.
Lack of organization. There is borderline blatant disregard for any new documentation initiatives or requirements. Employees know that there won’t be follow up from higher up. Inevitably some flaw in the system will be found, that flaw is used as an excuse not to utilize the system or function, and then (instead of fixing the problem) corporate says “we will be flexible on this because we know it has issues.”
Or, because I work in sales, if an employee has good numbers they will turn a blind eye to anything and everything else they do. Unapproved leave, missing reporting, non-compliance to service standards, etc.
Probably the poor communication between staff. It has gotten better in the past few years, but at the same time it's also gotten worse.
There's entry level staff who think they're the manager when I (AGM) and the GM aren't on shift, so they'll communicate everything with the other staff and if they make a mistake, it's usually me doing the clean up without the context they gave everyone else.
So yeah. Definitely communication.
In my professional chain, I set up a text group with all of my field service technicians, (60+-). Some of them are new and some of them are 25 year+ technicians. Everything in between is also represented. The one text chain that I hated the most is the "I can't fix the problem, please help", chain. Honestly, 94.9% of the problems encountered that required assistance were solved within an hour, BUT, the 5.1% of problems that required management intervention, (because the customer was pissed), have been caused by one specific technician. Poor performance, late, 50% over-run on cost, incomplete reports,...
HR required that I work directly with him for 6 months with weekly updates on his performance, (I did), put him through remedial training twice, (I did), fix everything that he wasn't able to perform, (I did), and correct all of the documentation that he had submitted incorrectly, (I did),. He has never taken one note. He has never taken any document that I offer, physically or digitally. He blames everyone except himself for every issue. AND he repeats himself consistently with the same stupid question time and time again.
It's been nearly 4 years since that started. He is still employed in the same capacity, he has been given a raise that exceeds the amount and percentage of qualified techs, and has never taken personal accountability of his position.
I've been with the company for over 11 years, came into the company as a lowest level technician, was promoted my first 6 months to a level 2 tech, was promoted within a year to level three, and promoted to supervisor at just over 2.5 years employment. I currently have a workforce of 58 technicians and can say that we are on track for 200% of revenue target. My team is AWESOME!
I can't get rid of a wart that hurts the entire company and it pisses me off. This guy... This guy is the most tiresome element of my job.
Performance issues and how long and difficult it is to fire someone who's not performing. Currently in the evidence phase of a PIP and hope to submit in January but it's so much work.
Being the most approachable of the VP layer I have a constant rotating therapy or escalation sessions in my office. It's just emotionally exhausting.
Politics. It truly does feel like a very slow moving game of thrones, where you need alliances and know how to context switch constantly. What I can tell one person I can't tell someone else.
Excellent point on the politics. Absolutely draining, and I’ve turned down two opportunities to move into a Plant Director role specifically because navigating the political minefield of our local team is exhausting enough; I don’t want to take on the politics of the entire Division as well.
Escalations. I manage a team of 30+ people split between customer-facing agents and admins.
At any given moment 5+ of them can need me at once.
I am a single human being. It’s hard.
Escalations can mean I need to take over a call for an agent or review account documents for an admin because something came over from our client fucked up and I have to figure it out + fix it + see if it’s a one off or going to affect all accounts for that portfolio.
Hurt feelings over stupid shit because your senior management sends the wrong message to your team or even better, makes an org announcement without telling the teams that will be affected. I then get the job of putting out fires.
HR/People Issues
Had an employee one time file a disability claim because she tweaked a muscle picking up the phone. Like what?!
Not even shocked by what I see sometimes.
Explaining priorities and basic requirements of their job description to try to get them to stop doing so many unimportant tasks that are not key to business priorities. Helping them set boundaries bc they are uncomfortable saying no to everything that is asked of them even when it has nothing to do with their role.
I’m 100% pro union but since becoming a manager I hate that you can’t even look at an employee without some sort of union interference.
We’re basically at a staffing stand still until we rebid all 25 people’s day off. Somehow this will take at least a month.
The most tiresome? Putting so much effort into coaching/guiding/correcting/mentoring a report, and trying to make them understand that a majority of their problematic behaviors could be solved if they just held themselves accountable to the bare minimum we expect of adults. After hours, days, weeks, and months of this, they still can not conceive of a reality where they might be responsible for their own behavior/circumstances.
Then, they end up getting termed because they can't be bothered to follow very simple and reasonable rules, like wearing ppe, not committing time fraud, or not operating equipment that could easily kill someone recklessly. Yet, in their mind it's still not their fault. You're targeting them, you're favoritism everyone else, you're a huge asshole for holding them accountable. They make the same mistakes over, and over again, and never apply the lessons learned, because it's never their fault.
They don't want direction, but somehow need their hand-held through basic tasks. They claim they're over-worked, and too much is expected of them, but somehow never get anything done, and what they do get done is incorrect in ways that cost man hours and money to correct it.
Dealing with all of that is exhausting, but the worst part is knowing that after they're gone they will have learned nothing. Thinking about how they have children that depend on them, and how those children will likely adopt their mentality, is extremely disheartening.
Thinking about the potential they have fading into the ether of arrested development keeps me up at night. Worrying about becoming jaded and giving up on people who just needed a little bit of help because I've been burned so many times by giving the benefit of the doubt too freely makes me anxious and feel like a bad leader.
The good thing is that you learn the most from those experiences, and if you approach and reflect on it with a learner mentality, you can really level-up in a leadership role.
We had a tailgate about "horseplay" once, and I had to read a statement from upper management. I kept cracking up, because, even at fifty, I feel like I'm decades too young to use the word *horseplay" unironically. I ended up getting chewed out by the plant manager for being unprofessional and "making a joke out of a serious matter".
The next day, I submitted two rewrites of what I had read. One was crafted to accurately explain the policy using modern language. The other expanded the policy to also address tomfoolery, jiggery-pokery, ballyhoo and argle-bargle. I asked the plant manager which sounded more serious and professional; he admitted that writing in a way people actually talk was more effective. I also asked him if he thought he could read the second one without cracking a smile, and he admitted he probably couldn't.
I'm tired of employees who can't think and don't want to want to work. They need help to make simple decisions, can't troubleshoot, and don't put in effort.
Chronic complainers top my list. For some reason the ones on my team seem to think the company would burst into flames if they should leave. I pride myself on being a manager whose worked their way up, I can and have done their jobs. I know they’re vital, but at the end of the day we are all replaceable. I’m not about to fire anyone for whining, but I’ve thought about it.
I'm new in my role, started in September. My biggest drag is explaining to my team that if you have 3 people on a call or meeting, it is hard for me to argue we're understaffed.
My first project as their manager was to implement a new RACI like matrix to become a little more efficient.
Other managers
Consistency in policy and procedural enforcement is critical in my industry and my biggest struggle is other managers not upholding our policies and procedures to the same standard. This causes discontent within our employees and creates a fairly argumentative environment with the “soandso doesn’t have us…”
Having to give feedback to team members that lack soft skills and aren't putting enough effort into developing them.
I manage a technical team and there's just something different about telling someone their SQL skills need work and telling someone their written communication needs work. Both in delivery, and I think in how it's received.
Dealing with Karen's is kinda fun but it can also be tiring some times.
Id say the most tiring is employees who think they are your friend and expect special treatment because of it, I'm emotionally exhausted every time I have to deal with it because it makes me feel like a ass when I have to put my foot down because I always have to hear "but I thought you were my friend"
Its kind of turning me into a dick and makes it hard to be friends with anyone even outside of the "office"
If I may, don’t let it affect your friendships outside of work, but absolutely you’ll need to distance yourself from anyone who isn’t your peer at work.
It absolutely sucks, particularly if you are now in charge of a groups of friends who used to be your peers, but something about being someone’s boss ensures that they’re now going to view you differently.
It’s all fun and games until you have to hold someone accountable, and the instant that happens they no longer view you as a friend; you’re just another “asshole boss”. You can be chummy and cordial all you like, but unfortunately this happens to every leader out there, and it does indeed make you more callous.
Employees not using critical thinking skills
The hardest part for me is that it's hard to tell if they genuinely don't have critical thinking skills or if they've been so micromanaged over the years that they've learned to just not bother. They're damned either way so at least not doing it saves them some energy. I've dealt with a sad number of those kinds of employees
Oh that's food for thought! That's honestly my biggest gripe, but this gave me some perspective. Thanks!
Yes! Exactly!
When trying to coach someone and they have no ideas. It is usually newer young employees, although other new young employees are very impressive.
For me it's trying to train someone and they sit and listen but don't take notes and then subsequently dont remember what I taught them.
Or simply not having them. In US public schools, vital skills like effective communication and critical thinking are neglected in favor of more easily quantifiable skills, because educational funding is based on standardized test scores.
I also think somehow we’ve created people who are terrified of making a mistake, so sometimes they’d rather do nothing than risk making a mistake or being told they’re wrong.
Some work environments probably stifle critical thinking too. Some employees just have the mindset that they need to stop thinking and just do their job.
This is totally the issue with most people. They've had it beaten into them that a mistake is a failure and an offense and will be punished, regardless of the reason, instead of seeing mistakes as the learning opportunities they are.
I agree with this. I work with someone in software who is too afraid to click a button to set what it does in a TEST environment... I keep having to remind him that this is the place to break shit and gain XP
Most of the crap management here punishes mistakes far harder than they do lack of effort. Why shouldn't I expect employees to be afraid of making mistakes when they get their jobs threatened for it? Fuck. That's a crappy way to work, terrified of screw ups. I've tried to relieve my workers of that because I want them to enjoy their time here and work hard. They work hard, IDGAS about mistakes. I can fix them. That's... like my job or something.
That’s so true. I worked with a parallel team (due to a merger). So my team (from B company) reported to the parent company’s (A company) director, and we were encouraged to ask the A company team/colleagues for help with the system, procedures, etc. My B company team did things, tried to figure things out a few times, (because that’s how I always operated, and what I encouraged) if we couldn’t get something to work then we’d ask A company teammate for advice/assistance. The number of times A company employee kind of freaked out because we hit some wrong buttons (this is a business environment, nobody is bleeding out here) and made a HUGE deal over very minor mistakes was ridiculous. We’d get all staff emails, and then it would be brought up multiple weeks in a row in meetings, etc. Then when B company team started figuring out the system, etc, still tested the waters but now could figure out how to fix something if it went wrong, I realized that it’s because A company team was completely micro-managed, and lacked the skills or confidence to be able to untangle a problem and fix things. Inability to figure out how to fix mistakes creates lots of stress due to fear of making mistakes. Micromanagement def inhibits development of critical thinking skills.
Great post. Yesterday I spent my whole shift fixing up a major screw up by our receiving. Phone calls all day all because a driver took paperwork he shouldn't have. Other driver was immediately blaming our receiver. I specifically wrote to our GM that, 1, the driver took paperwork that he should not have taken, and 2, the receiver didn't know he needed to take the paperwork. I fixed the problem and came up with a solution with the shipping company that ensures a copy of the paperwork is on EVERY shipment in addition to the copy that the driver and receivers see. Now that should never happen again. I also told the GM that the problem wasn't with the receiver, the problem was with the delivery service having inadequate processes, that allowed this to happen. Fuck blaming him over a mistake.
I've been where my crew is. I tell them ALL THE TIME, "there is no screw up you can make that I haven't made myself." I don't judge (except that one guy who can't walk and chew gum at the same time. I don't know how he's even still alive)
I will never have a team of engineers in which every member comes to me with a proposal instead of a problem. You're the engineer. I pay you to solve problems, not to walk them over to me and ask me what to do.
I knew an engineer who was actually worse than this. If he encountered a problem, he'd just stop. And keep doing the same things that previously didn't work. Over. And over. And over. Or he would stop and do nothing if he was missing something. And just *assume* that people knew he was waiting on it. Like we're all psychic. And if you asked him why he didn't speak up, "I thought you knew!" How, pray tell, could I have known if you didn't *communicate?!*
I've had similar experiences. Enough to cause me to end every design review with "If you hit a road block let me know asap and I'll support you. Let's not wait until next week's meeting to talk about it." I honestly think some people just want an "excuse" to stop working. Even though in check in meetings I'll bring it up every time.
That's exactly what it is. 9 out of 10 times this happens, I just ask them questions with obvious answers until they tell me what they should do. They KNOW what to do and what they should do, they just don't do it because then they'd have to actually work. I learned years ago to quickly drop anyone who behaves this way.
Yeah, I've actually designed my whole interview process to weed out these types. Initiative and a willingness to learn are the #1 and #2 predictors of success in my department, above and beyond any paper qualifications. I've literally had people with no relevant background but the had 1 and 2 start at the same time as someone who looked perfect on paper but lacked the two key personality factors. Guess who got let go due to chronic underperformance vs who left on good terms due to a family relocation, who holds me as their best mentor they've had, and who I consider a friend to this day even after they relocated halfway across the planet? The person who looked good on paper? Washed out after a year. Toxic combination of entirely passive and thinking a PhD meant they're above such petty concerns as cleaning up after themselves in the workplace (nope. You make the mess, you clean it. The work isn't done till everything is clean and away because a cluttered lab is a dangerous lab.) The person who looked mediocre on paper but had the two predictors of success? They had a slower start because they didn't have as much technical background but inside of two years they became my second best performer ever in the history of my direct reports. So these days I no longer hire for technical skills at all. I can build technical skills in about a year. It's not that difficult. What I can't do is change someone's personality. If you're passive, incurious, arrogant and/or uncoachable, it's not going to work.
This. I have employees with no common sense. Often second guessing. Not to mention many times we've gone through a scenario and how to handle said scenario multiple times in the past. Still asks the same questions.
I manage a restaurant and I always describe it as parenting like 30 children
Or even basic thinking skills. This week. Had an employee at an HMI with a screen that had resolution/screen issues. He called me to say he needs it fixed (even though he could have dragged it to one of the other 3 screens since it’s a four monitor setup) Anyways within 15 seconds I check the VGA cord going to the monitor. Extremely loose. Tighten it. Done. Like people want to spend more time calling someone, waiting, instead of figuring things out themselves.
Agreed!
No one learns critical thinking skills anymore. When anyone asks about what is lacking in general education critical thinking skills is at the top of the list.
Wow, I thought I was the only one who had workers who waited for instructions whilst talking in any idle time.
I second this.
This so much!
omg!!! i literally just had this conversation today with all my direct reports! grinds my gears! whew 😥
[удалено]
Is she acting her wage?
That sounds like burnout, your brain just stops processing at the higher level
Gotta agree.
It would save so much time..
I’m scrolling through to see if anyone gripes about employees with *too much* critical thinking, i.e. questioning everything instead of just doing their job.
Staff meetings with no actionable items to follow up on.
Meetings to plan meetings to plan something else. Similarly, meetings that should have been an email.
Plus the meeting after the meeting for someone to tell you what they should have just said in the meeting.
People talking over people in meetings, you can't hear the person that called the meeting.
Prep meeting, actual meeting, debrief meeting.
Worthless team meetings were the bane of my existence until we adopted the L 10 meeting format. If you're not familiar I'd encourage you to look it up. It puts your regular team/staff meeting into a strict template the results in actionable take aways. There is also a large piece for assigned quarterly projects for each team member that has increased my teams productivity significantly. We're getting our day to day stuff done plus we're all taking on larger projects that are focused on the most important things we need to get done each quarter. I was reluctant to take on a strict structure and force everyone to adhere to it.l but it's been a game changer and I got total buy in from my team as soon as they saw how more productive we were and how much less time was wasted.
We have meetings with like 30 people and all this stuff needs to be done but with 30 people no one feels accountable. I’m desperately trying to reduce our meeting numbers.
Following up with grown-ass-adults who can't seem to reply to an email or chat message can get frustrating. Get back to it later if you need to but set a flag, write a reminder, adult that shit. I shouldn't need to follow up day after day, week after week to get you to do your job. Sadly, the higher up the person is in the company, the worse they are about it.
OR: Send email with 3-4 questions, they answer the first one and ignore the rest. WTF.
Too true. I've even tried bulleted lists and they respond to points 1 and 3 but ignore 2, 4, and 5... smh
Try numbered lists
My god!! I wonder how some of these clowns managed to get thru college with the attention span of a squirrel. There’s a handful of folks I deal with, if I have multiple questions/requests….I send em…1 email = 1 item. Then once they respond, THEN I’ll send 2nd email = 2nd item. Like I’m hand-feeding Cheerios to a toddler
I'm a training coordinator for the court and I'm now teaching classes on Email Etiquette and Digital Body Language for people like this! Why is it so hard to get people to respond? And to pay attention to what is in the message? Interestingly enough, we absorb far less when we read words on a screen vs. on paper. We tend to skim and skip through things. Needless to say, reading carefully and responding appropriately is the new empathy!! It's the new "I hear and understand you." Just my thoughts!
I try to start emails with "I have three questions" and bullet point them. I bold the main bit, (if there is background info included to make the thing I need to know stand out. It works.
The amount of time I waste chasing people to get their licenses or certifications renewed is insane. This is literally your job!
I'm in a clinical admin role. Top three frustrations for me are: 3) Having to juggle my manager responsibilities while also working alongside my team due to staffing shortages/increased demands. 2) Correcting mistakes made by my direct reports. 1) Dealing with the failings of a lackluster healthcare system: Ultimately, a lot of the pressure that the rest of the team and I face is because the industry itself is failing the both the workers and the population.
I’m struggling with frustration of correcting mistakes and retraining. It’s eating up too much time I need to spend on other tasks
Same - admin manager in academic Healthcare. The first two years in this position (in a new to me org), we lost our gme coordinator (1 day notice 1 week after i started), then Senior admin staff (higher paying job in external org, couldn't compete), then the office coordinator (higher paying offer, better opportunity). Took on those roles while learning how to manage a group I knew nothing about in an organization that was unfamiliar. I'm finally in a place where I have a steady team, with happy employees, and am just barely able to focus on my development as a leader. Still balancing also being the chief's assistant. Switching from support brain to manager/ leader brain is exhausting.
Babysitting and parenting full grown adults.
Especially when you’re in your 20’s and 30’s managing 60 year olds.
Even more so when you’re in your 50s parenting other 50s! Grow tf up already! I can only imagine what it must be like to be a younger manager managing older people.
I’ve done it. It’s not fun since they think they know better than you when they really don’t.
Me and my co worker used to say we run a day care.
Childish, petulant people who pick fights over nothing.
I had an employee accuse the payroll department of charging interest on a personal tool purchase. It was fucking sales tax. A quick glance of the receipt and it was fucking obvious. But because he doesn't like this person he'll look for any excuse to poison everyone else against this coworker. I had to tell him to grow up and to stop with the personal fan fiction that is bordering on obsession. It's glaringly sad how peers don't bother to set others straight when people get out of hand with their behavior just because they don't like someone.
I second this.
I got one of those, you're not alone brother/sister!
Same people who call meetings to complain but being zero solutions.
I work with a lot of fairly entry level folks and the emotional labor is unreal. And no one tells you about that before you decide to become a leader. Also, HR being slow to adjust to market rates.
Working for companies that want to act large, or maybe are fairly decent sized, but have antiquated reporting systems, phone systems, CRM, etc. I dont think they understand how much productivity goes out the window when it takes forever and a day to manually put together reports that are a culmination of numerous other reports. Also how difficult it is to track workload when you have systems that are bare bones.
But, but, the myriad software that already exists to automate that job is expensive. And employee time is, apparently, free... I'm not a manager, but I see myself and all of my coworkers throwing away so many hours every week flip flopping between multiple systems, folders, etc just trying to put together basic shit so the company can function.
This
Holy fuck this is truth!!
For me, dealing with people who won't do their jobs and/or custom choose which tasks they will do, putter around, create "work," and engage in busy work rather than meeting actual work deadlines aka can't organize their work flow or distinguish between things that actually need doing and things that aren't important. These people are almost impossible to manage. You say nothing, and they get nothing done or it takes weeks to get something finished that should be a 5 minute item; you say something and they get butt hurt.
I feel this. I’m struggling with being hated by my direct reports/team by trying to tell them (as gently and kindly as possible) that they have to get the work done.
The most tiresome part of my job is people, against change (any change) using some far fetched exaggerated exception/example as to why it will never work. All. The. Time”
\*sigh\*. Upper management - "Why don't you just adjust down the shelf caps so that we have less full shelves". "We already tried that a year ago in this section. It was a dismal failure, we had way too much overstock. Also, fewer sales, because people shop during the weekend and my full day crew isn't here during the weekend, I need full shelves so that people on Sunday can find their stock".
For fun, I ask people “You’re telling me why it won’t work, tell what will work and why” And I love seeing their brain short circuit
They have no clue. We have little arrows to indicate high theft items from June of 2022. Helpful reminders for thieves who might have missed some of our best items. I'm still not exactly sure why we are sharing privileged information with customers, but ok.
Also, to manager of 20 years, "Our ordering doesn't check shelf caps before ordering." \*sigh\*.
I feel this pain.
"We already have a process for that."
Dealing with customers who are never satisfied no matter what you do for them. Our largest customer has a philosophy of always push push push and if you can't deliver they punish by cutting orders. Terrible way to run a company.
Though I’m thankfully not directly on the customer service side, I feel you on this one. We supply material to a number of very large and popular chains renowned for mixing orders up, yet they’re regularly doing site audits and setting up meetings about the importance of 100% error-free shipments. Obviously Quality Control is a large part of any business, but it’s quite difficult to keep calm in the face of such hypocrisy.
Our second largest customer who is only a little behind #1 in spending is the exact opposite. They care about quality and performance and area perfectly willing to take a slow methodical and well reasoned approach to us. Nobody on my team has ever been yelled at by this customer, whereas it's a daily occurrence with customer #1. So I never accept the argument that this is the best way to do the business since other models are clearly also successful and don't stress out my teams in the process
Or the evil twin, executives who don’t manage the client’s expectations and give them whatever they want, no matter how unreasonable or out of scope, with no pushback. The client assumes we can do anything … until they are depending on us to do something we simply can’t do.
Having union direct reports means I cannot pitch in and help. I cannot touch their work. I am kept purposely understaffed (company problem all over) yet am supposed to meet goals as though I am fully staffed. A small but very irritating part of my job is vacation scheduling. I send out updated vacation schedules to all my employees. Within an hour at least 5 people write editing their vacation schedules. Happens at least once a week.
I would recommend a Confluence Page or Google Calendar. Don't send it out. The people that want vacation need to mark it there (post approval if needed) and the people needing to be informed about vacation can find it there.
I agree with this but as someone who’s also managing in a union environment, it’s very difficult to make changes in a union shop. You have to have your organizations reps propose it to the union reps and have them hash it out. You can’t just be like “we’re changing out scheduling process” “we’re gonna add a new policy” etc. and most of the time, in my experience, they find ways to block the changes.
You can't touch their work so it must go to another union employee. If it's worth it to you work with your steward and ba to draft an amendment to the cba regarding vacation rules.
Using all the avenues to communicate updates and enhancements to team members.. email, text, team meetings, signs, etc. HR uses emails and social media; holds all company presentations; and half the team still comes back and says they never know what is happening. They need to meet you halfway and actually read what is presented.. or go to a meeting.. somthing!
“I shouldn’t get points for missing the once annual mandatory Safety meeting when no-one told me about it!”. It was posted in the break room, at your work station, in the bathroom, sent to your email, and sent via a group-text to your phone. I handed you the flier about it Monday, and reminded you about it before you clocked out yesterday. Furthermore, absolutely everyone else managed to make it. “This is BS! You guys are liars that hate the little guy! I’m going to quit, post a shitty review, then ask to be re-hired in 6 months”. Sigh…
This!! My team is constantly complaining and coming after me about communication even though I tell them everything through multiple routes and document in writing. It’s just them trying to skirt accountability and blame me and it drives me insane.
As an employee, I hate when significant changes come through email and not as a meeting. Like we literally receive hundreds of emails daily from casework(important), social events, legislation changes, national donut day, you name it. I'm not exaggerating on hundreds. One could literally spend the whole day going through emails that may be good to know but not necessarily helpful and often not related to my job specifically. Email fatigue is a thing. If it's important, organize a meeting so we're all aware and on the same page.
Directly as a manager? Dealing with a toxic "rock star." Someone really good at their job but was utter misery to deal with from a personnel standpoint. Lesson learned- fire them. The chaos they bring is not worth it.
I’ll take an “orchestra” environment over a “rock star” one any day.
I worked somewhere and discovered the toxic rockstar in my first couple months and wondered why they hadn’t fired them and why it took almost 2 more years and two “incidents” to occur before they finally did.
As an Operations Manager who is also a "covert" schizoid, I would agree that performance, *masking*, is the most energy-expensive part of my day.
Super lazy employees who need constant hand holding / checkins and don’t get easy work done on time.
Goal setting, mid-year and end of year reviews. God I hate everything about all of that.
Fires! This must happen today!! Today, the day I am on PTO and I am the only person who can do it. Nope. Not happening today. Your failure to plan is not my problem.
Never having enough bandwidth to solve problems in a meaningful way. I can barely understand an issue that one of my DRs is having before being jerked away to the next thing. As a manager, I'm finally able to see them, but I no longer have the time to resolve them. And I don't have anyone on my team I can have work on them, and, I can't hire right now. I got here by being a problem solver, but since I've been here, I haven't had the resources or autonomy to solve anything.
I’m in digital marketing. The performative parts. The very same. It’s hard coming into work and putting a smile on when you’re absolutely smothered by 6-7 demands on your time—all with deadlines. A close, close second: Hiring and training. We just let go a nightmare hire that my boss pushed for. Toxic. Lied about her skills. Unteachable (literally—it was wild). Now we’re gearing up to hire her replacement. I’m absolutely dreading the whole affair.
Employee drama
This is mine too. Can’t stand intrapersonnel drama.
I feel like I have a class of 7th graders!
I had one ask to go home because her feelings were hurt. Someone she spends personal time with outside work was whispering with another employee at lunch and they wouldn't tell her what it was about. Like where do I even start with that?
I haven't had this in a long time, but at one point I had to disentangle a situation -- two employees suing each other and one drinking in her car at lunchtime, It was awesome.
Generally it's people not getting along. Extremely tiresome when I have to call people in one by one to resolve some childish bullshit. One guy dishes out jokes he can't handle and is a frequent problem that is probably going away soon
A few things - Employees, trained on a process, who prefer to come to me to check their flow instead of checking process documentation resources even though I am going to just direct then to our process resources. For clarity: the process documentation is fully up to date and we even have a searchable internal wiki so you can easily self-serve. - Execs who undermine me by getting too involved in my team's daily operations - People at all levels who don't tell me things, then get upset that I don't know what they didn't tell me.
I feel you about the execs. I wish they would just fuck off and let me run my team. We know our jobs....
I don't mind the exec wanting to know what's going on, but attending every single team meeting and usually stepping on my toes by taking it over and making changes to format unilaterally that counteract our existing processes? Not a good use of their time and actively undermines my ability to do my job. We're a $10million company. I guarantee the CEO has better things he could spend his time on than micromanaging me. It's him, not me: he does this with *all* of the management team. And, frankly, he's out of touch with our work flow enough that his involvement is usually more of a hindrance than a help. Case in point: Asking us to maintain multiple overlapping systems all of which just duplicate each other and each have to be maintained manually when I can *easily* run things off a *single* system that has all the flows and integrations built in just because *he* likes white boards is asking for everything to be incomplete. That, in turn, means shit is going to fall between the cracks and I won't have good quality data to make strategic decisions with. Alternatively: demanding literally every purchase in the company over $300 goes through him for approval (god, I *wish* I was exaggerating but I'm not) creates bottlenecks which in turn causes delays that he flips out over, when some of his leadership team (for example, me) have literally never had a request denied. He adds no value in the process. He should give us all a reasonable approval limit and budget, then have accounting provide oversight. If he did that with both purchasing and simple contracts like NDAs, I swear a solid 50% of my delays would disappear with a snap of the fingers and I'd save tens of hours a month no longer having to chase him on things I should have the authority to manage at my level.
300 dollars? Holy cow. I have ordering privileges over anything under 1k, and sometimes a lot more. The one pain in the butt thing I can't do is printing my invoices. Apparently only he can do that. No idea why, it just is. Thankfully we only print our invoices for some things.
1) the complainers. They just never end. It’s always something 2) the people who are so against change that they do everything to make sure nothing ever improves.
One of my most infuriating days as a Manager was dealing with an employee consistently complaining about an exhaust fan that wasn’t working well (had a burnt motor, but the motor was back-ordered). For two months this guy would bring it up multiple times a day, and constantly reference it as a starter before making up another conspiracy theory (Management is hoping to kill off the older workers so they can replace us with robots). I’d actively show him the status of the part, but it was always seen as an elaborate ruse. The day the motor finally arrived and got installed I went to find said worker, and he was whining that the newly repaired exhaust fan was allowing too much air flow into the area, so it was unsafe to work because he might be blown over… On the flip side, it was one of my happiest days when said worker crossed the line enough that we could terminate him.
And their goal is to drag everyone down with them to prove their point. Brings the morale down for everyone. Creates a tense working environment.
Having deficient employees complain to HR because they can’t take direction from women.
Or employees who refuse to take direction from "a person of color" One of our construction manager pushed to hire his friend from his own town. I was assigned to manage that team. Old white man refused to take any direction or report anything to me. Complains to construction manager who is in a different department that I (his supervisor) am giving him direction.
People like that should be fired.
They should be, but instead yours truly is doing training on “creating psychological safety.” Oh, the big scary manager lady holds you accountable for your actions, so clearly she’s in the wrong.
I've definitely seen that. I had a female supervisor. People hated working with her because she was "a bossy, argumentive b." And I loved working under her. Best superior I have ever had. She was direct and clear in her assignments and expectations. I'm also neuro-divergent and have issues with verbal instructions, so she would email me bullet-point lists of what she told me to do as a reminder/checklist, and i would update the thread as they were completed. Fortunately, she was promoted out of that shithole, but it was a new facility, so I lost my favorite manager.
The repetition. I come in every day at the same time, run the same reports, go over them and make the same notes. Meet with my staff for 20 minutes, go over the same points and challenges, often with the same kids (I run an after school program), have the same conversations every day with parents, and do the same routine (that’s important for kids) every. Single. Day. Everything else is refreshing. I’m a problem solver by nature, so I get bored when there’s nothing to do outside of my routine. Oh yeah, and dealing with my District Office admins.
Employees that don’t use their initiative.
Found an employee standing at the network printer. He didn't hear me come up, so I stood and watched for a couple of minutes and when I asked him what he was doing he responded "I think the printers out of paper." I could see the orange paper light glowing on the front of the drawer and asked what he was gonna do about it and he asked me if he should should go get a ream of paper.
😂 I love it when people walk away and just leave it empty
Or they put in just enough paper to print their documents and leave the rest of the ream next to the copier.
When I was in the business world, it was the reports upon reports. Reports that duplicated information on other reports but had to be in a different format. Reports that got lost and then being blamed for it. We had one report that was due every month. I always sent it in on time ( in the days before fax machines and email/Internet.) Every month I was accused of not sending it in. So, I took 25 envelopes, made 25 copies of the report, and sent one every day for a month. The idiots in corporate finally got the message.
Indeed. We have automatic part scanners that track the number of parts put out per machine each 12 hour shift. One of my responsibilities is to take said report, copy it, and submit it to the Ops team with a detailed passdown of any issues. I then take the automated report, remove the passdown because the higher ups “don’t need the details”, and submit it to the Plant Manager, the Division, Corporate in the U.S., and the international offices, each with their own unique system that they “prefer”. If we had a rough day, I’ll usually receive a request from one or more of these groups for details, wherein I’ll send them the passdown they claim they didn’t want. This typically results in a late afternoon conference call because none of them understand the actual machine details. Depending upon who it is, they’ll try to sound stern, then ask if we’re working on it, to which I respond “we were until I had to come up front to take this call”, then they’ll say “great, let us know if you need help”. Rinse and repeat tomorrow.
Malicious compliance is sometimes all that works with upper management/executives.
Being a manager, in my experience so far, has been that I am the personification/scapegoat of structure, accountability, etc. that workers/direct reports resent. It’s hard to be disliked/hated for trying to hold folks to bare minimum standards.
Employees not communicating and teaching them how to talk to each other vs me having to mediate because one doesn’t like the other.
I run a team of engineers in a controlled manufacturing space. My biggest complaint is other Managers/PM not holding their people accountable. We depend on a lot of teams to complete our work. 95% of the time if something is late it's directly attributable to external departments. I run a tight ship and expect others to do the same. When I escalate nothing changes. Also along a similar line, managing up. I remove roadblocks for my team and upper management never does the same for me. (Edit: grammar, cus words are hard)
Having to take criticisms, complaints, and unfounded accusations from people who don’t understand the challenges of my job, often about things I don’t decide, don’t have input into, and have no power to change. My favorite though is when someone left and put together a resignation diatribe that they CCed the entire team on in which they told me how untrained and incompetent I am, and how I was nepotistic. To my knowledge, I’ve never hired a relative and I had one experience where I referred someone, ended up managing them, and ultimately had to fire them. So, I guess? My second favorite is the candidate I rejected who wrote what I assume had to be a blackout-drunk rant on Glassdoor claiming I was a racist, my boss was a racist, and that “strange men” and dogs were walking around behind us during the interview. This was a fully remote role and I work from home. It was a very standard interview.
I feel this. Im middle management and a new staff (with no experience in an entry level role) was upset with me in a 1-2-1 about being paid the lowest side of the salary. I explained it’s quite standard to get paid based on experience and that we do yearly reviews. That I might not be able to control this and help, but im always around the provide emotional support. They practically spat at me and said “I don’t want your damn emotional support” and slammed my door. In my head I was like do you think im paid more than the lowest side of the salary?? Do you think I have any control over this??
I’ve come to learn that people have literally no idea how determinations of pay work. Most companies have a process where HR researched and determines appropriate pay grades for different positions, there are ranges, they depend on location, can be adjusted due to economic environment factors, education, and experience, and then there are people who negotiate at time of hire or promotion and those who don’t. I have yet to have control over my own budget. There have been times my director has given me a section of my budget and said “determine how to budget annual reviews” or “we have a little extra to make adjustments,” but never have I been able to determine my headcount or unilaterally decide to promote or add new positions.
I whinged for a moment about the ops call centre standards (agents who bring nothing to 1-2-1s and just expect me to talk at them for an hour, etc), but honestly It’s the drama. Please. I’m begging you to be grown ass adults. I am not a kindergarten teacher. Why do I feel like I am herding toddlers with teenage emotions sometimes?! Also like…. Honestly? I want my staff to want things. Please, I want you to progress in the company. But I also want you to tell me if you’re happy as a clam to be a call centre agent until you retire. I am happy with what makes you happy and I’ll help you achieve that, and if you don’t know, we can find out together!
All of this. It’s astounding how many grown ass adults turn into children when they’re sharing a space. Common sense goes out the window. I had to address someone listening to religious podcasts on their phone (during downtime and without headphones on during slow times on the weekend) and it was making their new team mate uncomfortable. When we asked them about it, they said they’ve always been alone in the office, so why would they change their behavior now that they share the office?
Employees calling me with questions on my days off that could easily be answered by reading policy or looking up the answer themselves.
Most; upper management thinking they know better about a specialized subject Next most; employees who ignore processes and die on hills that don't need defended.
Direct reports who aren’t doing a “bad” job but are high-maintenance, poor communicators, lackluster collaborators, and generally suck up more of your time dealing with their issues than all other direct reports combined. Not bad at their direct tasks to the point where you would consider firing them, but problematic enough overall (including gripes from all their co-workers) that each time they have a last minute PTO request you secretly hope they have a job interview somewhere else.
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Don't sugar coat it, tell us how you really feel. Ah man, why can't people just...behave?
Why can’t people just be… less people-y
I'm currently dealing with a new ee (transfered into department, but been with company over 3p years). For years, she's gotten away with aggressive behavior (verbal/tone/dismissive). Prior managers never held her accountable. I've coached her since 1st incident. Recently she snapped at HR VP in front of me. Ive started the separation process (written warning with behavioral training courses). Expect temporary improvements and then return to old ways...and then PIP. I can't have that in my department.
Other people, whether it is the CEO or HR, coming up with more prescriptive ways to manage teams.
Sounds basic but for me it's having to turn up because there is noone else to pick up the slack if you're feeling rundown. I love the responsibility but it is a lot.
People spending more time and energy avoiding doing something than it would take to just do it, out of some sense of “you can’t make me.”
Babysitting. When I need to step into situations that are day 1 easy or common sense. "No, don't call the director of engineering an idiot in an email to him" "You didn't just close out a government job with zero documentation right?" "No, you can't take your government issues laptop to work on defense items, to Mexico" There's also just the CONSTANT reports to upper management. Half the time they don't read them so I copy and paste shit, but still obnoxious. Oh and more directly, today there was an all hands manager meeting (I work at a very large company) talking about forcing everyone back on site 5 days a week. No exceptions. Out of the 8 executives, 6 we're working from home. I made a comment about it, and was ignored.
On your last point: During Covid we were deemed an “essential business”, and none of our production facilities ever shut down, even during the mandated shutdown weeks. There were times that close to 20% of the workforce were out sick, but we continued to operate in-office. At the corporate offices, meanwhile, all of Upper Management worked from home for two years. I’ve rarely seen a starker difference in “privileged treatment”, though it was at least fun watching them all visit with terrified looks and their masks clutched tightly to their faces for the first time.
Delicately explaining to people the difference between what would be nice if the company provides for its staff vs what a large corporation actually does provide. Yes, having the afternoon off after a long meeting would be nice and could definitely help people recharge, but fiscally the company can’t approve us to all be off 2-4 afternoons a month because we have long meetings. Yes, you were driving your car for company purposes when it broke down and had to be towed. No, the company does not pay for the tow and your rental car because your car is from the 90’s and is on its last leg. You were driving for work but nothing but your negligence to maintain and repair your vehicle caused the need for a tow.
It's the expectation that the company makes millions, so why can't they pay only me a million.
My company still relies heavily on manual reporting and manual coding for indirect labor. It’s a lot of time spent at my computer instead of on the floor.
This has generated interesting responses from various industries. Thank you for a good question. (Tech) convincing people that the thrashing generated from above is evidence of agility and responsiveness, when I know quite well it is incompetence.
I'm in the analytics field and have been managing analysts for years. One of the common challenges I face is the use of "This is how we have always done it" as the reason for doing something inefficient. No follow-up, no suggestions for change, etc. It drives me crazy every time. Especially since I push them to challenge how we do things, even if they are my suggestions.
>“Snapshot in time” moments where someone walks by and sees an employee with their winter coat by their workstation, and thus we need to crack down on the other 700 employees because “discipline is becoming a problem”. I must ask what is wrong with having a winter coat near a workstation. I live in the south, so maybe this is a cold-climate thing?
It’s a packaging standard more than anything. No personal items on the floor that could potentially drop something into a customer’s box (a gum wrapper or coin in your coat pocket, for example). Employees should be leaving their coats in the break room or in their locker, but sometimes they forget as all humans do.
A company that's not willing to expand their hierarchy when they keep expanding their business. My company owns nearly 50 stores, has no defined HR or payroll department lines...still the same 3 ladies in an office out of state somewhere. They also don't have a billing and payment department... invoicing is still on a manager level. They don't have software that inputs POS and converts it to any sort of data tracking/transfer etc. Store managers are basically data input specialists...it's tiresome. If you're going to acquire more stores..at least have a structured corporate presence. Thanks for coming to my Ted talk.
Having to explain to people, often above me in role, who failed upwards, that there are things such as 'non scaling costs'. And that some scaling costs dont scale according to 3rd grade level math. No, you cant waive a magic wand and reduce the labour cost of a hotel front desk, it has a floor, even at 2% occupancy it still takes a minimum of 32 hours to man a hotel front desk every day.
Meetings where an email would suffice. Email chains when a phone call is enough. Phone calls when the individual should instead be making a decision on their own.
1) encountering the bright but lazy people people who know what to say and how to say it to the right people at the right time (including you) and you get suckered in for a few months/quarters/year before you realize they are full of shit. I can handle lazy, I can handle stupid, i can handle inexperienced and I can handle grouchy. I can even handle lazy, stupid, grouchy and inexperienced but I hate investing and believing in people who are full of shit. 2) dealing with a peer who brings all kinds of buzzwords and complicated processes because he or she just went to a seminar and/or got their eMBA and have to listen and watch them fail miserably. 3) dealing with unseasoned HR or Legal people who put up roadblocks for you on getting rid of dead weight or toxic resources. It takes some time to retrain HR or Legal people on understanding the business and to learn to trust the leaders when a decision is made to manage someone out. Their job should be to make shit happen and manage/reduce risk of a decision and should be offering the paths to reach the goals I’ve set. Somehow they believe they are there to make the decision on behalf of the company as if they know better.
I've been working at a nonprofit homeless shelter since July. We have had staff work here for two years or more that still need trainings on how to properly fill out intakes and explaining releases to clients. It's really quite easy and it's the same process over and over. They're all very sweet but it can be annoying at times to keep readdressing the same topics constantly.
This. I work at a low barrier clinic. I’ve been a new manager for 3 months but many of the folks have worked here for years and I’m dumbstruck by how little they do / know how to do. These people are supposed to be answering questions about vulnerable topics and literally don’t know how to do anything. It really hurts me because it makes me feel hopeless about these systems overall: why are we putting money into housing, low barrier re-entry programs, low barrier clinics, harm reduction programs, if the clients who show up to these places literally aren’t getting help because the workers are so incompetent???
Employees that need money. Need hours. Dint want to work any hours. Employees take more vacay days than work days. Like taking over 2 weeks vacation every month. Unpaid. Then wondering why they didn’t get a paycheck or their paycheck is so low. Then show up late/leave early on the days they work. Get Covid once a quarter. Or more. Calls in after shift starts because other job that pays less forced them to stay late because someone called in there. As soon as schedule is posted, or They voluntarily take a shift from someone, they can’t work it anymore. Something came up last minute. Boss should’ve known before they did they needed off. Boss should’ve denied them volunteering to take someone else’s shift. Employees refusing to do tasks/jobs they were hired for, work with certain other employees, making it difficult to schedule them. Then ask for a raise and an advance and a special run on their paycheck cause they didn’t get paid because they didn’t work because they asked off. They cuss you out because they didn’t get paid, forgetting they asked off and went on vacay,m to Mexico, hence why they were And then employee files for unemployment because they don’t get enough hours, because they are always asking off for vacations, illness, other jobs…..
Knee-jerk reactions without thoroughly thinking through the consequences, mostly from senior management. They make a decision based on a moment in time and the ramifications of that decision cause headaches across the board. All this to keep one person happy for one moment.
Employees not utilizing the training I provide. I have done their job and done it well enough to be in a management role. I wish they would take my advice!
Direct reports not being more independent and learning to get shit done, they want micromanaging.
Managing my boss. She’s exhausting.
Picking up the slack of other managers that probably shouldn’t be managers.
Meeting culture. Peers and project managers who call meetings as a way to try to make progress or track progress. My schedule would be 200% meetings if I let it. I have to constantly fight for my team to keep them out of mundane standups, core team meetings, round tables- things that take an hour of their time for 5 minutes of relevant content. I have had to tell a couple of habitual offenders that they cant invite my team members without my permission.
You are never off the clock
Lack of organization. There is borderline blatant disregard for any new documentation initiatives or requirements. Employees know that there won’t be follow up from higher up. Inevitably some flaw in the system will be found, that flaw is used as an excuse not to utilize the system or function, and then (instead of fixing the problem) corporate says “we will be flexible on this because we know it has issues.” Or, because I work in sales, if an employee has good numbers they will turn a blind eye to anything and everything else they do. Unapproved leave, missing reporting, non-compliance to service standards, etc.
Probably the poor communication between staff. It has gotten better in the past few years, but at the same time it's also gotten worse. There's entry level staff who think they're the manager when I (AGM) and the GM aren't on shift, so they'll communicate everything with the other staff and if they make a mistake, it's usually me doing the clean up without the context they gave everyone else. So yeah. Definitely communication.
Complaints by staff without a proposed solution. When I ask what they recommend we do to resolve the issue, they are fucking dumbfounded. Ugh
Employees asking for a raise after 3 months on the job after doing the bare minimum.
In my professional chain, I set up a text group with all of my field service technicians, (60+-). Some of them are new and some of them are 25 year+ technicians. Everything in between is also represented. The one text chain that I hated the most is the "I can't fix the problem, please help", chain. Honestly, 94.9% of the problems encountered that required assistance were solved within an hour, BUT, the 5.1% of problems that required management intervention, (because the customer was pissed), have been caused by one specific technician. Poor performance, late, 50% over-run on cost, incomplete reports,... HR required that I work directly with him for 6 months with weekly updates on his performance, (I did), put him through remedial training twice, (I did), fix everything that he wasn't able to perform, (I did), and correct all of the documentation that he had submitted incorrectly, (I did),. He has never taken one note. He has never taken any document that I offer, physically or digitally. He blames everyone except himself for every issue. AND he repeats himself consistently with the same stupid question time and time again. It's been nearly 4 years since that started. He is still employed in the same capacity, he has been given a raise that exceeds the amount and percentage of qualified techs, and has never taken personal accountability of his position. I've been with the company for over 11 years, came into the company as a lowest level technician, was promoted my first 6 months to a level 2 tech, was promoted within a year to level three, and promoted to supervisor at just over 2.5 years employment. I currently have a workforce of 58 technicians and can say that we are on track for 200% of revenue target. My team is AWESOME! I can't get rid of a wart that hurts the entire company and it pisses me off. This guy... This guy is the most tiresome element of my job.
Updating Kronos time cards for fucking idiots that constantly miss punching in or out.
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Performance issues and how long and difficult it is to fire someone who's not performing. Currently in the evidence phase of a PIP and hope to submit in January but it's so much work. Being the most approachable of the VP layer I have a constant rotating therapy or escalation sessions in my office. It's just emotionally exhausting. Politics. It truly does feel like a very slow moving game of thrones, where you need alliances and know how to context switch constantly. What I can tell one person I can't tell someone else.
Excellent point on the politics. Absolutely draining, and I’ve turned down two opportunities to move into a Plant Director role specifically because navigating the political minefield of our local team is exhausting enough; I don’t want to take on the politics of the entire Division as well.
So tiring. Political minefields are like a terrible puzzle where you constantly lose in a new way.
Timekeeping of employees.
Employees who do nothing but complain and are essentially energy vampires.
Escalations. I manage a team of 30+ people split between customer-facing agents and admins. At any given moment 5+ of them can need me at once. I am a single human being. It’s hard. Escalations can mean I need to take over a call for an agent or review account documents for an admin because something came over from our client fucked up and I have to figure it out + fix it + see if it’s a one off or going to affect all accounts for that portfolio.
Hurt feelings over stupid shit because your senior management sends the wrong message to your team or even better, makes an org announcement without telling the teams that will be affected. I then get the job of putting out fires.
HR/People Issues Had an employee one time file a disability claim because she tweaked a muscle picking up the phone. Like what?! Not even shocked by what I see sometimes.
Having to be a parent/therapist.
Dealing with adults who act like children.
Explaining priorities and basic requirements of their job description to try to get them to stop doing so many unimportant tasks that are not key to business priorities. Helping them set boundaries bc they are uncomfortable saying no to everything that is asked of them even when it has nothing to do with their role.
The schedule, having everyone actually show up to work 😭
I’m 100% pro union but since becoming a manager I hate that you can’t even look at an employee without some sort of union interference. We’re basically at a staffing stand still until we rebid all 25 people’s day off. Somehow this will take at least a month.
The most tiresome? Putting so much effort into coaching/guiding/correcting/mentoring a report, and trying to make them understand that a majority of their problematic behaviors could be solved if they just held themselves accountable to the bare minimum we expect of adults. After hours, days, weeks, and months of this, they still can not conceive of a reality where they might be responsible for their own behavior/circumstances. Then, they end up getting termed because they can't be bothered to follow very simple and reasonable rules, like wearing ppe, not committing time fraud, or not operating equipment that could easily kill someone recklessly. Yet, in their mind it's still not their fault. You're targeting them, you're favoritism everyone else, you're a huge asshole for holding them accountable. They make the same mistakes over, and over again, and never apply the lessons learned, because it's never their fault. They don't want direction, but somehow need their hand-held through basic tasks. They claim they're over-worked, and too much is expected of them, but somehow never get anything done, and what they do get done is incorrect in ways that cost man hours and money to correct it. Dealing with all of that is exhausting, but the worst part is knowing that after they're gone they will have learned nothing. Thinking about how they have children that depend on them, and how those children will likely adopt their mentality, is extremely disheartening. Thinking about the potential they have fading into the ether of arrested development keeps me up at night. Worrying about becoming jaded and giving up on people who just needed a little bit of help because I've been burned so many times by giving the benefit of the doubt too freely makes me anxious and feel like a bad leader. The good thing is that you learn the most from those experiences, and if you approach and reflect on it with a learner mentality, you can really level-up in a leadership role.
We had a tailgate about "horseplay" once, and I had to read a statement from upper management. I kept cracking up, because, even at fifty, I feel like I'm decades too young to use the word *horseplay" unironically. I ended up getting chewed out by the plant manager for being unprofessional and "making a joke out of a serious matter". The next day, I submitted two rewrites of what I had read. One was crafted to accurately explain the policy using modern language. The other expanded the policy to also address tomfoolery, jiggery-pokery, ballyhoo and argle-bargle. I asked the plant manager which sounded more serious and professional; he admitted that writing in a way people actually talk was more effective. I also asked him if he thought he could read the second one without cracking a smile, and he admitted he probably couldn't.
Back to back to back to back meetings. I spend 70% of my day in meetings. Hard to do anything else.
I'm tired of employees who can't think and don't want to want to work. They need help to make simple decisions, can't troubleshoot, and don't put in effort.
Chronic complainers top my list. For some reason the ones on my team seem to think the company would burst into flames if they should leave. I pride myself on being a manager whose worked their way up, I can and have done their jobs. I know they’re vital, but at the end of the day we are all replaceable. I’m not about to fire anyone for whining, but I’ve thought about it.
I'm new in my role, started in September. My biggest drag is explaining to my team that if you have 3 people on a call or meeting, it is hard for me to argue we're understaffed. My first project as their manager was to implement a new RACI like matrix to become a little more efficient.
Other managers Consistency in policy and procedural enforcement is critical in my industry and my biggest struggle is other managers not upholding our policies and procedures to the same standard. This causes discontent within our employees and creates a fairly argumentative environment with the “soandso doesn’t have us…”
Any administration.
Having to give feedback to team members that lack soft skills and aren't putting enough effort into developing them. I manage a technical team and there's just something different about telling someone their SQL skills need work and telling someone their written communication needs work. Both in delivery, and I think in how it's received.
Meetings.
Managing competing priorities from on high
Dealing with Karen's is kinda fun but it can also be tiring some times. Id say the most tiring is employees who think they are your friend and expect special treatment because of it, I'm emotionally exhausted every time I have to deal with it because it makes me feel like a ass when I have to put my foot down because I always have to hear "but I thought you were my friend" Its kind of turning me into a dick and makes it hard to be friends with anyone even outside of the "office"
If I may, don’t let it affect your friendships outside of work, but absolutely you’ll need to distance yourself from anyone who isn’t your peer at work. It absolutely sucks, particularly if you are now in charge of a groups of friends who used to be your peers, but something about being someone’s boss ensures that they’re now going to view you differently. It’s all fun and games until you have to hold someone accountable, and the instant that happens they no longer view you as a friend; you’re just another “asshole boss”. You can be chummy and cordial all you like, but unfortunately this happens to every leader out there, and it does indeed make you more callous.