My best employee quit on the spot I wouldn’t let her go to her college grad | Hacker News Reader

My best employee quit on the spot I wouldn’t let her go to her college grad

askamanager.org

35 pointszac23or23 comments

This is apparently from 2016, and it sounds so, so fake.

I could convince myself it could have happened through most of the story, but the last paragraph is just over the top.

"Even though she doesn’t work here any longer, I want to reach out and tell her that quitting without notice because she didn’t get her way isn’t exactly professional. I only want to do this because she was an otherwise great employee, and I don’t want her to derail her career by doing this again and thinking it is okay. She was raised in a few dozen different foster homes and has no living family. She was homeless for a bit after she turned 18 and besides us she doesn’t have anyone in her life that has ever had professional employment. This is the only job she has had. Since she’s never had anyone to teach her professional norms, I want to help her so she doesn’t make the same mistake again. What do you think is the best way for me to do this?"

I'm not familiar with askamanager, but isn't making up letters pretty standard and time-honored for advice columnists?

This was my exact reaction. I have to conclude this is a troll - I still think so based on the wording and such.

My counter-example, however, was a grocery store I worked in in college where the manager wouldn't give the weekend off to one of the hardest-working, friendly shelf-stockers to attend his father's funeral. I was there. It really happened. He quit on the spot. I was right next them in this interaction. It was so enraging I wanted to quit out of moral-support, but I did not.

This sort of interaction is absolutely unfathomable in my current professional environment. Whenever I feel injustice, or underappreciated, I frequently remind myself of those times to appreciate what I have today.

  I have to conclude this is a troll

It could be a troll, or it could be the author herself, chasing clicks and trying to sell her book.

I can even imagine how someone would rationalize it: "I don't have any good questions this week, but I can think of a type of situation that does happen. What's the harm? Nobody will ever find out, and I can use it teach a useful lesson about management"

>I can even imagine how someone would rationalize it

But you make it sound like a big deal. Like it would be a shocking scandal or lead to lawsuits. Who do you think polices advice columns?

Ann Landers was a pen name for multiple people. People used to joke about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dear_Prudence_(advice_column) being 90% fake (I never read it, or Slate, on a regular basis, so it's only hearsay).

I had a job stocking shelves at Target once. I quit after a couple of days, because it was too stressful and nobody explained anything to me. I had been hospitalized some weeks before and was adjusting to my new psych meds, but I wasn't crazy enough to share my problems and ask for accommodations.

It ruined my life, because everybody wanted to know why I left my last job and required contact information for my previous manager, and I didn't know what to put down. Nobody wants to hire a job-hopper! Then after a month or so I couldn't explain why I had a gap on my resume, and I realized I would never be employed again, which is why I became despondent and drank myself to death.

...the first paragraph is 100% true.

She was the most junior employee, and yet she worked 6 years in a call center. Yeah, that's extremely believable. Oh, and the colleague that went to a concert... that was just a pure indignation pump.

I always wondered how many of these kind of reddit posts are real. This one is just over the top, but I'm betting there are quite a few that play things just a bit more conservatively and pull it off.

The manager actually wants to punish the employee by calling them and shouting demeaning things at them.

Note, there's an "update" from the supposed spurned employee, that sounds just as, if not more fake.

I skipped my own college grad, because I find ceremonies silly, but this poor girl (foster home background, no living family, a homeless stint, already the best employee despite having not graduated yet) just needed 2 hours to celebrate a major life milestone.

I'm sure part of her decision to quit had to do with her co-workers not willing to cover for her even though she did the same for them. I worked quite a few retail jobs in my time and understand her frustration.

And this person wanted to know if he should rant at her? Speechless.

By the way I'm actually surprised that managers know who the best employees are, because in my experience, they aren't usually rewarded or even acknowledged.

If you acknowledge them then they might ask for a raise. That's why the world is so toxic now: everybody tries to scam the few people that actually work.

It sounds like a troll, but one line stuck out because it's so common and it makes me irate every time...

>I said that if she could find someone to replace her for those two hours, she could start later.

You are a manager. This is your responsibility, not hers. Managers that punt their own responsibilities to their team members are the worst.

My God, do I hate that shit with a passion.

Yet, more and more this has become the norm.

That, and the managers standing around literally doing nothing as their people scramble to catch up.

Infuriating.

We have secretaries doing the work of a manager, and managers doing less work than we think secretaries do.

The ones who sit around recording things for the sole purpose of knowing who to blame when stuff goes bad are terrible people.

Peter Principle

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle

Surely the manager could have covered for two hours, that would be leadership.

Slightly related funny story, friend of mine was in the first few dozen employees of an engineering company that now employs 35,000 people around the world.

His boss came to him and said, "What would you do if Joe down the road offered you $10 an hour more?" (in the days when $30ph was top pay).

My friend thought and said, "I would have to take it."

To which his boss said, "Good answer, because if you had answered otherwise I would have to sack you for being stupid."

There was a follow-up in 2022.

https://www.askamanager.org/2022/02/update-my-best-employee-...

This!

Where is this? Absolute failure on management. Seems very culture based.

>Due to a new product launch, we are expected to provide service outside of our normal hours for a time. This includes some of my team coming in on a day our office is normally closed (based on lowest seniority because no one volunteered).

Even if you ignore the whole story about graduation I wonder why this considered ok? According to pov of this guy people should work their normal hours and plus a "little bit" more only because the management decided to save some money not hiring extra personal to provide the coverage.

Best employee, lowest seniority - how is that measured - by weight or height? You learned a valuable lesson - do not waste your assets this way in the future, or you may be the next asset 'wasted'. She also learned a lesson - the one about not suffering fools gladly...

How about the fact that no one on the team offered to take the shift so that the employee could attend her graduation? Over my long career, I've covered for, and been covered by coworkers more times than I could count. It's never been an issue. This manager's team has a terrible dynamic that likely starts from poor people management at that company. Quitting was the smartest move that employee made on that job.

Yes, as the top performer this would not be missed by the others, who might also resent her upwards aspirations = generally aversive attitude. if not openly hostile. Now she is gone they will have to be plugged into her shift breaches willy nilly

The clickbait title, the horrible treatment of a downtrodden woman without family, the hard-hearted manager that just wants to kick her when she's down. Oh the outrage!

Yeah this is so obviously fake. But it worked, and people clicked.

Cynicism is the new normal. Anything else, and you're the sucker.

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