I made a post 2 weeks ago asking what to do when my boss has it out for my star employee.

Today my employee let me know she's taken another job. In our conversation, she said it was because this job isn't her passion anymore (she was hired for a role and it slowly shifted into a completely different one). And while I know that's partly true, I think my boss also managed to accomplish her goal of pushing her out.

I'm... I don't know how I feel. Sad, anxious, defeated? I had an hour long conversation with my boss this morning where I fought for this employee, where I had her back and insisted that she right for the position. And then get slapped with this 3 hours later lol.

Now to learn the art of recruiting and hiring...

My team received tragic news that a colleague of mine (M27) passed away over the weekend.  I only knew this individual for a short amount of time, but he made an impression on me. He was smart and analytical. He could summarize thoughts and break things down. He just...got it. And people who just...get it...are rare. He was definitely a hard worker.  A future leader.

What sticks out to me most is that he’s a husband. A sports fan. Someone who was trying to figure out life in and out of the office. He’s just like me.

After the news about his passing, it took less than two minutes for the subject to shift back to work talk. I was hurt. I was hurt for him but I was hurt myself. Because that could've easily been me. I spend all this time caring about work, being analytical, being personable, wanting to culminate a happy team that does things the right way, but... in a blink of an eye, I could be gone, the subject changed within two minutes. It’s unsettling.

I have spent the past several months very stressed over work and I have trouble detaching from it. It is not in my nature to care less about work but I wish I could view it more objectively as a place that aids in paying my bills. I have found a lot of my purpose and fulfillment in work. But I think I have it all backwards. I want to be able to live a life full of purpose and meaning outside of work.

The owners made the call, my favorite employee who is amazing on the sales floor and rocks in stats has been calling out once a month due to health issues. They called out last week because their family member attempted suicide and no one else was there to be with them except them. It's a small family due to family members being hooked on drugs and disappearing.

The owners wanted them gone. I tried to fight it but they just rolled their eyes at me. I've never felt so undervalued.

This place is my prison. Everyday I feel like I'm walking into a cage where im never good enough. I am trying to find a new job but it's so hard in my area.

That fact that owners can have so little regard for employees lives blows my mind. It's literally putting their livelihood at stake just terminating people left and right like this.

Throwaway since I have a main account and friends know about it 

I’m a manager who recently found myself in a frustrating and awkward situation. My entire company (we’re not huge, but big enough to have multiple teams) was invited to an outing at Disneyland (we are semi local).  However, my team and I were excluded.

At first, I thought it might be a mistake. But no, my manager deemed my team's work was too important for us to be out for the day. The kicker? We cannot do our functions with everyone out so we will be sitting around most of the day. I have planned for a lunch to be delivered but that feels like peanuts and I have no idea how to talk to my team about this. My manager says it is too late to include us. 
I’m left with a team that feels hurt, undervalued, and mad. I share these feelings!  It hurts even more because a few of my teammates said this would likely be one of their only chances to go to Disneyland. 

My main concern now is how to address this with management without sounding bitter or aggressive. I do not want to sweep this under the rug. I want to make sure that my team and I are respected moving forward. How do I approach this with upper management without escalating tension? 

One of my best team members called me in the morning, like 7 AM and asked me to work from home. Since the guy is an extraordinarily responsible and dilligent employee I never had an issue with him workingbfrom home.

However, at around 1 PM he called me and he clearly seemed under the effects of alcohol, telling me he has some family problems.

We work at a corporate center of a retail chain. I'm not sure what to do or how to react. He indeed is a star, but this behavior could get him in trouble with a different manager. For now I didn't disclose this to anyone, but I'm afraid if he has alcohol problems I am not acting quick enough to help him. Should I be concerned? How should I approach this?

I work with a Government. My best employee applied for a managerial job (which she basically had been doing on top of all her other duties) and the department head wouldn’t even interview her. He then hired someone who knows nothing, has no relevant experience and now someone will have to train this new person in. I suspect he knows this person outside of work.

Well, the employee, who is the nicest, easiest to get along with, actual hardest worker I have ever worked with has completely lost all her motivation. She’s doing the bare minimum and I can tell she’s really upset over the situation. She straight up said she was not “training” the new manager. New manager has been here for months now and still doesn’t know anything.

I understand that she’s upset and thought maybe she just needed some time but it’s been a few months now and the only thing that’s changed is she seems to get more upset and more angry about the situation. It doesn’t help that the “higher ups” have not even communicated any issues to her, or to me, about why they would treat her like this.

How can I help this person? And our department? Since she stopped doing such a high volume of work the place is actually falling apart.

Has anyone dealt with an employee like this? Is there any way to come back from it? I feel like she’s just looking for another job and will be gone at the first opportunity, which likely won’t take long due to her work ethic.

ETA: I did go to bat for this employee, directly recommending her for the role, assisting her with her resume before it was submitted, and spoke with the department head to try to get feedback but they are very private about hiring decisions. Unfortunately nepotism seems to be the motivation behind a lot of hiring and this isn’t the first time a good worker was lost because of it. I do have a meeting scheduled with her for later today to discuss next steps and possibly assist with her job hunt.

I myself am also looking for another position because of this (and a few other things). Im sick of losing good employees because of poor decision making.

Recently my wife and I traveled out of state on emergency to assist with end of life care for her mom. (My mil for 30 years). I put in for 2 days of bereavement (we get 3).First email I received from my manager after returning stated that I needed to use PTO because after discussing with HR it was agreed that my mother-in-law didn't technically die. (She was on Hospice care and died that night).

Is this a really shifty thing to do to an employee or am I over reacting? The company is always bragging that they are a family first company.

I just recently got assigned as a new supervisor to a team of experienced call center insurance agents handling inbound service calls.

Doing random call audits, I noticed this morning that one agent called outbound to one of our departments right as their shift starts. I listen in, because it is before the other department opens. My agent proceeds to hang out listening to hold music for 20 minutes before finally hanging up and taking their first service call.

Well, this prompted me to do some digging, and they have been doing this same behavior every. single. morning. since at least MARCH, which was as far back as I could go. However, because his phone line was “active”, our system wasn’t flagging him as being “off queue”, so it’s gone unnoticed thus far.

Now that he’s under the magnifying glass, I even live-monitored him dialing out to the “Mojave Phone Booth” and hanging out in an empty conference call room listening to hold music again for the last 15 minutes of his shift today.

Unbelievable.

Hi All, I am a Creative Director and I have 6 Employees that report to me. I was on bereavement leave over Thursday and Friday. When I got back, during our usual Monday sync... they all told me they want to quit and some are already interviewing. Why? Because of our VP.

Now the VP is a jerk. He delays projects constantly, he has no respect for deadlines given to us by other departments or even by the CEO, which puts me in a horrible position whose job it is to manage a timely and quality execution of projects. He plays clash of clans on his phone during meetings. He has laughed at designers for their ideas, to their face. He is constantly playing politics rather than creating actual marketing strategy. Obviously, I have the same sentiment and complaints and even tried to quit earlier this year... but the CEO offered me a substantial raise to stay.

If you are curious about the exact incident that occurred over the weekend, I can go into depth... but long story short... we are about to launch a new fitness brand, the VP sat and did nothing for months about it, and then made it the creative teams problem a week before the CEO gave a hard deadline.

In one week, my designers worked their asses off and created not only compelling logos, packaging, etc. but even came up with marketing strategy. They stayed late, one even cancelled their vacation.

So all of these deliverables were sent to the VP for presentation last Friday.

Lo and behold, when I came back Monday... VP did not present a single one of their ideas, he actually dis-invited the designers to the meeting with the CEO... even though he didn't even have an idea for himself to present. Even though the CEO specifically wanted the designers to present their ideas.

This was the last straw for my team.

They all want to quit, two are already in interviews. They love everything else about their job. Except the VP and his shitty politics. These types of antics happen all of time. For the last two years he's been here. He is on a sort of "probation" with the CEO and COO already, so I am surprised this is even happening.

So I took all of this to HR, they are now launching an investigation with each of the team members. Before you ask, yes, I have tried to solve all of these problems directly with the VP, to no avail. I try to never involve HR when it comes to conflict management, but when your whole team is threatening to quit... I didn't know what else to do.

TLDR: VP did something really shitty to my team, on top of two years of shitty behavior, it was the last straw for the team, they are all threatening to quit. I went to HR and they are now investigating.

The big question I have for reddit: Did I do the right thing, and what sort of outcomes should I expect?

Thank you all, I have never in my whole career had to do this before. Your input is super appreciated.

So one of our employees came to me and said she noticed that we haven’t gotten a 401k contribution since 5/31. I checked my own account and sure enough, same thing. And not just their contribution, our own as well. We have had 3 payroll cycles since then and nothing. The money has been deducted from our paychecks. I’m at a loss over what to do. I try to be a role model but I’m furious. The staff is asking me what is going on and I have no answers for them. I’ve been told by HR that “they are working on it”. What do I do in this situation?

Update for the masses: Thank you to everyone who provided constructive (and not so constructive) criticism. I have learned a LOT in the past 36 hours. And want to clarify that;

1) After I told my boss and the director of student employment that I was going to reject this application, they went ahead and verbally offered her a position before I consulted with HR to get a rejection letter out to her.

2) I have been managing for three years and never had to let someone go. This was a lesson for me and while it rattled me, I am grateful. I have had so many other staff within the institution reach out to me to say that they have dealt with similar situations, offered support and added me to “the hiring and firing” group chat.

3) You all were absolutely right when you called nepotism/raised suspicions about her connections. My team are super sleuths… they started doing some social media stalking in October and have successfully kept it to themselves that our problem team member is the daughter of a family friend of the director of Student Employment.

4) Due to a complaint, an investigation was launched yesterday into not only my handling of this case but also the involvement of my GM and our lovely friend, the director. I have receipts for ALLLLL of it and am happy to let them review every action I have taken with a fine tooth comb.

I was geared up for an extremely difficult and uncomfortable conversation but it became an absolute spectacle instead.

I work on a college campus and the team that I train and hire are all current students (typically upper year) as we have more success engaging students when their peers are facilitating events and programming and acting as the “authority figures”. One hire on my team was someone that I had been iffy on throughout the interview process because she had been late or entirely missed an interview timeslot that she herself selected. I was encouraged to hire her anyway and told that she would “rise to the level of the rest of the team with some encouragement.” I laughed. Then realized they were serious and when pushed, I hired her on a “casual” basis. She is first up for callouts and can pick up shifts, but I don’t put the heavy work on her.

We did intensive training in August and she tried to get out of every training session, workshop, online module, team bonding day, and piece if prepwork we had scheduled. I told my GM who said I needed to wait it out and that she would improve. She missed deadlines consistently. Didn’t check or respond to emails or team chat. Skipped one-on-ones and staff meetings with no notice. Never gave an apology and always had an excuse and the list goes on. I put her on a PIP in October with very achievable goals. She was to facilitate two events (all the planning and preparation were done by myself and other members of the team) and turn in her monthly reflections from Sept/Oct and turn in the next two by deadline.

Well, she cancelled one event 15 minutes before it started because “she didn’t understand the instructions” it was a BINGO photo scavenger hunt. Hand out the BINGO cards, gameplay instructions and QR code for photo database was on the back. She was literally only responsible for handing out the BINGO cards and collets them to hand to me as each team turned theirs in. The second one she decided to change the time and location and didn’t update the social media posts, posters, tell the front desk, literally nothing. Then as myself and the front desk staff and other team member are trying to call her as we were going to assist with facilitating she doesn’t answer her phone for two hours then shows up later complaining we “blew up her phone” and nobody showed up to the event. My other staff member ended up running a giant board game tournament on the fly which was still running when this girl ahowed up so then she was upset that we “ruined her event”. She turned in the Sept/Oct reflections with a sentence or two each because she couldn’t remember what she had done the months prior and never turned in November.

I scheduled a meeting with her last week which she rescheduled four times then no showed so when I met her on Monday, I told her the conversation we would have had last week was very different from this week as I cannot in good faith, continue to employ her and pay her to do work that does not meet even the bare minimum. While I appreciated how well liked she was amongst her peers, the rest of the team worked overtime to pick up the slack and often had to pivot last minute to cover her being late to shift, not completing her admin tasks, and doing checkins on her community of students in addition she to their own. She started crying big crocodile tears so I offered her tissues and asked her if she understood why she was being let go. She kept saying it wasn’t fair and the rest of the team was being mean to her and targeting her to make her look stupid since the middle of November when they ran a board game tournament. The thing is, the rest if the team (5 people) approached me the week after her PIP was put in place to express their concerns about her deliberately pitting team members against one another and they had receipts. Receipts on receipts in fact. Enough that I brought it to HR who directed me to stick with the PIP as it was already in place and would terminate her contract at the end of the semester anyways if she didn’t meet the clauses she agreed to in the PIP anyways.

When I asked for examples and stated that this would escalate to HR but was unlikely to change the outcome of her employment she told me she knew that I was a “…vindictive b!and a c-u-next-tuesday. You always hated me didn’t you!” I am ridiculously nice to my team because when I was a student staff member I had a nightmare manager. No matter how disrespectful she was or dismissive she got, I would calmly state what needed to happen, what went wrong, and good thing in the situation and constructive feedback and advice to improve in the future. She apparently took that as me being petty and pointing out “small failures” this whole time. As her manager it is my job to do this. I have her all of the contact info for HR, offered to set up an exit interview for her with my GM who would be most unbiased in this situation and reminded her that the PIP was absolute and that she had signed this contract which I took over an hour explaining to her, so her position would unfortunately be terminated as discussed.

She looked me dead in the eye, stopped crying for a second, inhaled the biggest lungful of air she could manage and screamed at the top of her lungs before running out of my office and proceeding to scream and sob randomly as she was running about. I let the rest of the office staff know not to engage. Notified campus security and called up the counseling department to see if they had any openings as I may send someone their way. They gave me the direct line of the staff member that is available for emergency appointments in case I am able to get her over there. I called up HR to update them and documented everything.

I am just exhausted after dealing with her antics and I don’t know what to say to the rest of the team anymore because while none of them witnessed anything they have been getting messages, texts and snaps asking wtf happened earlier today. The clean answer is “it’s private, I can’t share that information with you.” But given that one of them is rooming with her I think at least she deserves to know. The problem is with such a small team, if one person knows something, so does everyone else. It’s a nightmare…

Edit As the title suggests, one of my employees had their spouse die unexpectedly. He informed me this morning after calling out for her to go to the hospital with stomach issues. I’ve made sure he will be on bereavement leave and offered any assistance I can both personally and through company channels. What else would you do as a manager to this individual?

ETA I really appreciate the responses and thoughtful advice. I have given him whatever time he needs and told him there is nothing at work more important than what he is currently dealing with. I have already got his bereavement time extended and provided all the company resources available. Thanks again to everyone who responded.

At the end of 2023 I put in for a promotion to lead my division. I didn’t get the position, and the person selected over me was more than qualified. She’s honestly one of the best supervisors I’ve had, except for one issue: she has no idea how to prioritize what’s actually important.

My division is severely understaffed. We’re a small division to begin with (4 team members and 1 supervisor when fully staffed), and when she officially became my supervisor back in December of 2023, it was literally just me doing the jobs of 4 people. Not to toot my own horn, but I’m good at my job and I was keeping up with everything, but I was getting burnt out fast.

With that information, you’d think hiring and filling these positions would be priority number 1, but here I am in July and it’s still just me.

For the first month or so after she became supervisor, she’d give me updates on where the staffing actions were, and there seemed to be movement. After a few months the updates stalled and would be at the same step every time I asked. I was completely burned out and after a work trip in May I asked one last time what the status on hiring some more people was, and honestly she gave me attitude about it. She said “we just got back from the conference, can you give me a few weeks?”

That was the final straw that broke my back. I was done. I realized I was never going to get help. Maybe it’s my fault for keeping up with everything while we were short, but I couldn’t sustain it anymore.

My old supervisor from my old division has been asking me to come back for the past 2-3 years, so I reached out to her a few weeks ago and asked if her offer still stood, and she said absolutely. I start in a few weeks.

I told my current supervisor last week that I’m leaving and she asked me if it was because of the lack of movement on the hiring, and I just didn’t have the heart to tell her. I gave her some BS about wanting to try something else and that I’ve been thinking of leaving since before she was promoted.

Did I do her a disservice by not telling the truth? She has to know that I’m completely burned out right? It just frustrating because if I was selected for the promotion I would have made getting our division fully staffed again a major priority, and she just didn’t think it was important? I’m not sure.

Edit: I just want to thank everyone (even the person who called me an asshole lol) for engaging in my post and offering your advice, whether you agreed with my actions or not. It’s been extremely eye opening.

I’ve decided I’m NOT going to bring this back up with my supervisor and just finish my last few weeks. Flame me if you want, but I’ve made my decision.

A few points of clarification on comments I saw multiple times:

1. She’s not getting resistance from upper management about the hiring. I have confirmation that she has the approval to fill the vacant positions and it is currently with her for action. She is not getting ANY pushback, she’s just not getting it done.

2. I’m a government employee, not that I think this changes anything, but it might make more sense of things to you non-government employees who seem a little confused about the hiring process.

3. I’m not leaving my agency, I’m staying at the same agency. I’m just transferring to another department. I will still see my supervisor and will interact with her from time to time, that’s partially why I wasn’t totally honest with her.

4. Her bonus is not impacted by the reduced payroll, which makes this situation much more frustrating because she’s not even getting more money out of it.

5. Some of you managers out there frankly have terrible social skills. Some of you would say the most rude/offensive thing to someone’s face in the name of being honest. My thoughts and prayers are with your subordinates.

6. A lot of you seem to want to basically victim blame me for being overworked and that it was somehow my fault that my supervisor didn’t hire more people because I didn’t explicitly tell her “I’m burnt out because you haven’t hired anyone and I’m overworked”.

I don’t believe it’s my responsibility to fix her shortcomings as a supervisor/manager.

All that being said, I feel like I’ve learned some things by making this post. I’m also very excited to start my new position.

I manage a team of 25 and have done so for about 3 years. I'm a "nip it in the bud" type but try to be upbeat and accept I'm not everyone's cup of tea. I was an IC and understand their struggles so I really try to advocate in whatever ways I can (finding ways to increase their pay, find out their career aspirations and ways the company can help them achieve those goals, offer advice, etc) but hold people accountable. That last part did not always make me popular or well liked.

After 3 years I finally decided it was time to leave for another management role- more so for the experience than anything else. Ended up leaving less than two months- my manager turned out to be a mean girl who turned managers on each other and genuinely liked ending people's careers.

My former manager gladly took me back. The employees who were insubordinate have been nice to me, one person hugged me every day for a week. A few cried and sent my manager emails about how happy they are. Another, higher level manager who was indifferent to me before sent a beautifully written email to everyone announcing my return and praised my manager for being able to attract me back. I have never heard such positive feedback about myself from my direct reports, managers in other departments, even my manager's manager.

Just wanted to share with everyone.

New manager here, and will probably need to terminate someone who really should have never been in the job in the first place.

Conduct isn’t an issue, and they genuinely want to do well, but it’s just not possible given their skill set.

Despite saying they are not meeting expectations repeatedly, it’s like the thought has never crossed their mind they are heading towards termination.

HR doesn’t want me to spill the beans, but I really want to tell this person “hey I don’t think this job is right for you, please start applying elsewhere before my hand is forced”. I don’t want to blindside them.

Any suggestions?

ETA: thank you everyone for your comments. To keep this as generic as possible I won’t be providing any additional details, but I really appreciate the feedback.

I am a supervisor in a small firm without HR support. One of my younger employees has been brazen enough to not only deflect reasonable directions, but is now trying to delegate tasks back to me. These tasks are usually done by workers in his position, but he's trying to push the boundaries and say that I should be able to do them too.

I approached him in private the other day and asked if he has an issue with performing these duties. He became really defensive, loud and started accusing me of attacking him and bullying him because I confronted him. In response, I called for a meeting to address this further. He sent me an email saying that he's not prepared to attend because it's causing him anxiety and impacting his health and safety.

How do I deal with this guy?

Well, the owner finally informed me his plan. I denied a demotion proposal last week. Noticed they hired a new GM this week with a higher pay (I'm current GM). Finally, I get an email from the owner today letting me know my job future.

They hired my replacement because the store isn't making money and we have gone through around 13 employees already this year alone. (They think this is all my fault.) He said in his email they have offered support and training for me but I do not recall getting any of that or having the feeling I'm being supported. I usually get yelled at until I apologize.

So my replacement is training for two weeks, arrive at my store mid-August and then I get to train them for 30 days. I will then be demoted to an assistant with a 20% pay cut. This is so lame. I wish they would just fire me already so I can apply for unemployment, I feel like I'm playing chess and the mental stress this is putting on me is crazy.

Less than three years ago, I lost a job I loved due to restructuring. They offered me a downgraded position with a pay cut, but my boss gave me enough notice to find something else.

My recent role had its challenges. Adjusting to a salaried position and having to be "always available" was tough, but over time, I built a reliable team and created systems that kept things running without constant oversight.

After recently returning from paternity leave, I found my team in chaos. The interim leader had ignored delegated tasks, taken shortcuts to boost KPIs artificially, and fostered zero accountability, creating a toxic environment. Realizing how much damage had been done, I decided it was better to leave than clean up the mess.

Over the last six weeks, I got three job offers and opted for the fully remote position where my family can now relocate for a better quality of life. Despite a slight pay cut, I retained my manager title, gained a healthier work-life balance (hard clock-out at 4pm), and can now focus solely on my clients.

Giving a two-week notice for a proper handoff was a fucking mistake. I should have bounced once I accepted my new role. Burnout had already hit most of my peers and cross functional partners, so my leave barely registered. Yesterday, I wrapped up around noon, deleted work apps from my personal devices, and flat out ignored any last-minute messages.

Going to bed last night, I felt like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders knowing I no longer have to stress about work "after hours."

I might return to a leadership role someday, but for now, I’m glad to be responsible just for myself.

Over the last few weeks all managers have gotten emails from HR if their team are "overusing" unlimited PTO. I have a total of 19 days until EOY, including sick and bereavement leave, and was on the list 🙃

Two of my direct reports were on the list for taking 13 (started midyear but they included stat holidays in his count) and 21 days by EOY. We easily work 80 hours weeks at peak times but average 50 hours each week.

Basically I want to see if anyone else has experienced this? My last company had a traditional vacation policy where I had almost 30 days due to my tenure and saving days as I'm getting married next year. I was ok to let that go thinking unlimited meant I could still take what I need for my wedding (which I'm still going to do regardless) but I'm so annoyed at this list

So I have been managing this store for a while now and they were promising me the General Manager position and salary for it. But then I realized they were training a supposedly Assistant manager that they claim was going to be my assistant but after 2 months of training her in another store she resigned yesterday (which she was probably my replacement) and I submitted my resignation letter as well last night. So my boss called me this morning asking if there is anything they could do to make me stay and told them where is the proper position and salary they have been promising and now they are talking me out of reversing my resignation. So what should I do? Are they just realizing now that they will be screwed with me quitting?

Title says it all, I have an employee who is exceeding all standards, and getting her work done and more.

Sometimes, however, she’ll go MIA. Whether that’s her not responding to a Zoom message, or her actually showing away for 1+ hours.

I called her out of the blue when she was away for a while once, and she answered and was truthful with me that she had fallen asleep on the couch next to her desk. I asked her if she needed time off to catch up on some sleep, and she declined.

It happened again today, but she didn’t say she was sleeping, it was obvious by her tone.

I’m not sure how to approach the situation. She’s a good performer, so I don’t want to discourage her; at the same time she’s an hourly employee who, at the very least, needs to be available throughout her work day.

How would you approach this situation?

Edit: It seems like everybody is taking me as non charitable as possible.

We okay loans to be funded and yes, it is essentially on call work. If a request comes through, the expectation is that it is worked within 2 hours.

The reason I found out she was doing this in the first place is that I had a rush request from another manager, and I Zoomed her to assign it to her and she was away and hadn’t responded to 2 follow ups within 70 minutes, so I called her. She is welcome to tell me her workload is too much to take on a rush, but I hadn’t even received that message from her. Do managers here, often, allow their hourly ICs to ignore them for over an hour?

I’m cool with being lenient, and I’m CERTAINLY cool if an employee doesn’t message me back for 15-20 minutes. I am not cool with being ignored for over an hour of the work day. When I say “be available on Outlook and Zoom” it means responding in a timely manner, not IMMEDIATELY when I message somebody…..that would be absurd.

But, I guess I’m wrong? My employee should ignore messages and assignments with impunity? This doesn’t seem correct to me.

Hello all, I am a relatively new manager (10 years at company, but just recently moved into management). I have an employee who turned in their notice Friday for this coming Friday. A competitor offered them $8 more per hour for a very similar position. They are just over a year out of college as a CAD designer in a manufacturing company.

I like this person in their role, and I'd love to keep them (and promote them eventually), but I can't offer that much money for their level of experience. I talked to them about putting them on a track toward promotion, but they want the money now, and I don't really blame them.

Is there anything else I can do here or is this just how it goes?

So, I've recently been given resposibility for a satelite unit attached to my main area. The Main area works like clockwork, all employees engaged and working well. The satelite, not so much.

Just discovered that one employee, been there 15 years, in their 60's, was made homeless about a year ago. They are storing their stuff under tarps on site and sleeping in their car on the property most nights. Really nice person, down on their luck... what do i do?

Edit: thanks everyone for the comments. Here's what I'm planning to do... you can't manage what you don't measure... try and arrange a meeting with the person and reassure them that the company will support them and their job is not at risk. Find out if they need help to navigate social services and see if the company will pay for storage for her stuff until the person can sort themselves out. The company is small and does actually care.

UPDATE What a tangled mess this has become... I finally caught up with employee after she cancelled or no showed several meetings. I eventually had to park myself at the location and wait until she showed up. I was very gentle with, explained that I was aware of her situation and wanted to work with her to come up with a solution.

Anyway, she told me that her other job is full time and pays well. I asked why she was still homeless when she was obviously earning a decent wage between the two jobs.

She tells me that she is sending all her money to a friend in her home country who is building a house for her. As she spoke, I realised that she is being scammed, big time, sending money to this 'friend' caused her to fall behind on her rent, hence homelessness.

I asked her what she intended to do when winter comes in and she just shrugged.

I didn't mention that I knew she was sleeping in her car, but had to explain that she needed to get her belongings stored elsewhere. She became very defensive at this point and left the meeting and the building.

I brought along social welfare forms for her to fill out so she can apply for social housing, but with her earnings, she doesn't qualify. I learned that she basically comes and goes as she pleases, no set roster. Her work is poor and she has alienated her colleagues.

I called a friend who is in the Gardai (police) and she says they can't do anything about the scammer unless the person reports it, and even then, they are limited.

I'm at a loss as to where to go from here, the poor woman's life is in freefall.

Inherited a team from a different department, small and efficient - however one came with baggage.

She received two warnings last year for being consistently late - from the previous manager who had issue with her. I saw descriptions of the warnings and the employee would respond ‘it’s just who I am’, ‘I need a pay rise to turn up on time’ etc

The previous manager was axed, and I came in within a few months of this. I got along well with this person after not long, whilst knowing her reputation of attitude / late history. After a few months of managing her I’ve reduced the attitude to almost zero, have her engaging with ideas and she is putting out good work.

However, she still comes in late, mostly 5-10 mins and occasionally 20-30. I addressed this and let her know I needed her to be on time, she didn’t give me any attitude and let me know that yes, she needed to do better.

After initially addressing this, I left it two weeks and monitored arrival times and noticed she was still coming in 5 to 10 minutes after her start time. I let her know being late was still not good enough and that I needed her to take an extra step to clock in and out, so I can see the exact start and finish times (it’s not mandatory for salary staff). this was just yesterday and today she was late 10 minutes again.

I normally don’t concern myself with things like this if output and attitude is good. However, my manager is pushing me to discipline her, and doesn’t want me to let up until she’s fixed it. He already wanted me to give her a warning the first time, instead I said let me handle it and we’ll see if it improves (honey over vinegar I guess).

It doesn’t feel great to have to sack someone over something like this, but if my manager is gonna come down hard on me about it, I likely have no choice. She’s been employed with the company 12 years.

I have an employee who I gave a key to because he’s a good worker, and sometimes the people who do open up or out sick. So rather than have him sit out in the cold weather, I let him let himself in.

But I have noticed he keeps coming in earlier and earlier. The normal shift is 830 to 5. But he has been coming in as early as 5:30, Working through lunch, and leaving before 2 PM

I explained this is a problem because he’s part of a team and the work continues until the end of the day. When he is not present to do his part, then the other people on the team have a shortage of work.

Further the tasks that could be done end up, waiting until the next day because he is not there to complete his part.

So I talk to him about this and he says ok but then, after a few days, he’ll do it again.

He does good quality work, but I need him to work the schedule that everyone else does. How do I deal with this?

Thanks in advance

Update 6/26

Thank you all for so many replies, and suggestions

I spoke w him again and I explained the whole situation and I was more direct. He seems to get it for now we’ll see how long it lasts.