Got a Reply

I got a reply to the letter I wrote to my supervisor’s boss.

Good things about the reply:

1. It did not make me regret writing my letter.

2. It was respectful and nice, if perhaps written using a template from A Quick Guide to Management. Thank employee for raising concern. Assure employee that input is valuable and appreciated. Give indication that concern has been heard. Thank employee again for raising concern. Sign off and say, “Whew, THAT’S taken care of!”

3. It was an email, not a phone call.

4. It did not make me think, “Welp, that’s it, now I HAVE to quit” OR make me hunt for gifs of burning things to the ground.

5. It did not contain fuel for ragey mental arguments in the days/months/years to come.

6. It was not instead an email from the supervisor, saying “Boss forwarded your concerns to me.” (This was my lying-awake nightmare.)

 

Less-good things about the reply:

1. It did not sound at all like any of the fantasies I had where the boss would be appalled, APPALLED, at the treatment of his staff by this supervisor, and perhaps the reply would be followed by a company-wide apology from the supervisor. Paul reminds me that this would never, ever, ever happen. I know, I KNOW, obviously I DO know, there is no need even to agree with Paul because I TOO agree with Paul—but still. There is that little deflated feeling when the scene ends up playing out in an ordinary way, devoid of triumphant swelling music.

2. It did not sound as if anything will be changing as a result of my letter, or that the boss thought the concerns I raised were anything to get all het up about.

 

I AM glad I wrote my letter. One of my biggest concerns was that this would be one of those things that would seem like a really great idea beforehand, but silly and/or melodramatic after the fall-out (or even “as soon as I pressed send”). A gentle slump onto the side of “Eh, that was surprisingly uneventful” is VASTLY PREFERABLE to an exciting plummet into “WHAT WAS I THINKING??? DID I THINK I WAS IN A JULIA ROBERTS MOVIE OR WHAT???”

And Paul thinks it is highly possible that the boss WILL speak to the supervisor, even if what the boss is saying is “Employees are getting upset for some reason, so could you change the perfectly-acceptable way you do X” instead of “You are mean and unfair so could you stop, and also I was thinking we should hire Swistle as a consultant, she’ll basically be your boss, just send all staff communications through her from now on so she can edit them to sound as if a reasonable human being wrote them to other reasonable human beings.”

25 thoughts on “Got a Reply

  1. The Awktopus

    I’m so glad to hear you got a response! Even if the letter you got was written using a template, it’s likely that whoever sent it HAD to use a template. I imagine that the company has to be very careful about what they put into writing in these situations, so writing a personalized email might have been potentially risky. (Though it would also be a lot more satisfying for the recipient!)

    It’s also possible that you were the first to complain about this issue, and the supervisor’s boss sees it as an isolated incident. As you mentioned yesterday, not everyone who works for your company is in a position to be able to complain about these things. (Which is totally unfair–ANY employee at ANY level should be able to complain if they feel they’re being mistreated, but I digress.) But if your supervisor is disrespecting his/her employees, and continues to disrespect his/her employees, other people will complain.

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  2. Suzanne

    This sounds like a decently good result, but I agree: not as satisfying as it would be if there had been a repercussion of some sort, or some promise of action.

    Does this… prompt any sort of… decision on your part? Or maybe it is too soon to tell. And there is no harm in postponing the decision.

    Reply
  3. Melissa

    I’m glad you got a reply – even if it wasn’t perfect. Hopefully it will inspire change.

    I have a situation that happened a month or so ago. My kindergartener came home and said she was worried bc B in her class threatened to bring a gun to school and shoot my kid’s BFF. I agonized over whether to contact the teacher. Tortured myself to a froth but ultimately decided I could not live with myself if B brought a gun to school. I don’t know B or his access to guns. I emailed the teacher and copied the principal (as the teacher was ready to deliver any day. I basically was thanked for my concern and told it was likely because they had recently had an intruder drill. I cringed And cringed and then I thought again about a gun at school. And decided I didn’t care that they probably thought I was overreacting. Still. Ugh.

    Reply
    1. Monica

      Oh my god! I would HOPE that they would contact the parents of B, even if they were like “Just so you know, he said this thing, so maybe talk to him and let him know that’s not okay…also lock up your guns if you have any.”

      I have a 17mo and I am already super freaked out about this possibility. Or at play dates… I don’t want to be the “overreacting mom” but I do plan to ask parents if they keep guns at their house before my kid is allowed over there.

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    2. Maureen

      Melissa, you did absolutely the right thing, and I would hope this is something the school would take extremely seriously.

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    3. Sky

      Due to (their interpretation) of federal privacy laws, our school will not tell the parents of child A who report a problem caused by child B anything about how it was addressed: whether the parents of B were called, or whether B was punished in any way.

      So it is very likely that your school called the other child’s parents and notified them, but cannot tell you about it.

      And for those of you frustrated by this policy, I have found I can sometimes get around it by saying “I realize you can’t say anything specific about your response to child B, but what is the school’s usual course of action when a young child asserts he plans to bring a weapon to school?”

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    4. British American

      You totally did the right thing contacting school! Shame that they kind of blew you off on that one.

      I had to contact school because a child threatened to bring a knife to school and hurt my kids. The threat happened on the walk home, so I wasn’t sure if the school could even help, since it wasn’t on school grounds. But the school was great and had the counselor meet with my kids and they called the boy’s parents about it. They offered to have my kids meet with the kid, whilst the counselor was there as a mediator, but my kids didn’t want to do that. Hopefully more went on behind the scenes at your school.

      Reply
  4. Monica

    Thank you for the update!

    I suspect your #4 and #5 are reasons why that template is a template. Tried and true method of assuaging these kinds of situations.

    That being said, I ALSO would bet that the boss DID/WILL talk to your supervisor, even if it was the first time anyone brought something like this to their attention. If it’s the first time, it was probably like a “hey, maybe rethink this”. If it wasn’t the first time, they wouldn’t be able to tell you that, but the conversation would probably be more like “hey, STOP THAT”. Either way you did a good thing by sending the email, because now it’s on record for if anyone else sends another one.

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  5. Nicole Boyhouse

    I’m glad you wrote it. And who knows – maybe it will be the catalyst for change. Maybe not, but if you hadn’t written it perhaps the chance of change would be zero. So good job!

    Reply
  6. Alice

    That last paragraph had me chortling :)

    I agree with everyone here – HR’s hands are very tied with what they can / cannot put in writing for this kind of thing, so this remains a very satisfactory response on their end, I’d say!

    Like Suzanne, I’m curious if this changes any Feelings or Timelines about your job overall?

    Reply
  7. Matti

    I think you totally did the right thing in writing the letter. Usually complaints of this nature go into a file, and if there are other complaints, or others issues that this supervisor is aware of, maybe someday the contents of your letter will be used as evidence for firing or reprimand. Even Julia Roberts had to collect A LOT of evidence before she saw results.

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  8. BRash

    Even if nothing happens now – since one of your motivations was that others have a lot more to lose by bringing these kinds of things up – when one of those people does bring up similar behavior in the future because the balance of “what they have to lose” vs. “dealing with this BS again” tips too far, it’ll be at least the 2nd time, so you’ll be giving more weight to their concerns, which is a double (or triple, or quadruple) drip in the helping other people bucket. Wow that was a lot of commas, but I’m still not going to go back and edit.

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  9. EAB

    I’m in management in my field, and I actually had a situation this week where one of my indirect reports went to my boss over a minor disagreement. I was really unhappy about it, because I just don’t think it’s appropriate to go to someone’s supervisor (especially a junior employee going to a director-level) unless there is solid reason to believe you can’t have a productive conversation about it. Power disparities do exist, but if you have a decent boss, it’s possible to manage up and raise concerns in a non-confrontational way.

    My boss handled it by affirming his general trust in me but promising to investigate the feedback and encouraging the employee to talk with me directly in the future. When I had a good explanation for the situation, he was pretty displeased with the employee for having run to Daddy. That wasn’t my intent, but I hope the employee will learn to be candid and work with me in the future.

    It sounds like your uber-supervisor is taking a similar approach, which is really a good thing — you work for someone who’s handling this professionally, yay! I’m sure she will talk to the supervisor, but she’s also likely to continue backing the supervisor publicly, kind of like parents presenting a united front to the kids. She can privately coach the supervisor not to do that again, but publicly slapping someone down is generally a worse move than living with the consequences of their actions. Of course, it’s also possible that your supervisor sent the email at the direction of her boss to begin with!

    I’m glad you feel like you got some positive things out of sending the email, though. If you haven’t read much about managing upwards, some of those concepts might be useful in dealing with your supervisor and her boss in the future. Good luck!

    Reply
    1. Swistle Post author

      If my issue with the supervisor could have been described as a minor disagreement, I would have gone to her directly; I’ve had to do so on other occasions. In this case, though, the main issue is that the supervisor is speaking to and about the employees in disrespectful, scornful, sneering ways. My feeling is that if a supervisor is doing that at all, the situation needs to be dealt with from OVER her, rather than by one of the people she’s so disrespectful and scornful of. A supervisor (or anyone) who doesn’t already know it’s not okay to speak to/about fellow human beings in a certain way needs to hear it from someone she considers superior to herself.

      The problem is if the supervisor’s boss ALSO speaks to/about employees in disrespectful/scornful/sneering ways. Then the supervisor gets a satisfying eye-rolling session with the boss about how ridiculous the employees are (and how ridiculous they are to complain about being treated as if they are ridiculous), and her behavior is reinforced. That’s when I believe the company is doomed—and that it OUGHT to be doomed.

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    2. Shawna

      Since Swistle mentioned she has a degree in business management / HR in her last post (plus she really seems to have thought this through and know what she’s talking about), I’m inclined to go with her judgement that in fact she had that solid reason to believe she couldn’t “have a productive conversation about it”.

      Reply
  10. Elizabeth

    SO well written – as always! Thank you so much for reporting back to us. Next job: writer/editor/reviewer. You need a column in a magazine or something….

    Reply
  11. Jen

    Coming from being on the inside of management, I would imagine something will absolutely be said to the supervisor. We had a new person start and he said some very off putting things in a meeting (sort of along the lines of “no more excuses, slackers”). Anyway several employees mentioned it to us managers and it was quietly elevated to new person’s boss who talked about it with him privately and he’s been much better toned since. So it was good you said something because in our situation it had bothered EVERYONE in the meeting but if those that complained hadn’t done so, well this guy might have continued running around insulting everyone.

    Reply
    1. Shawna

      Ugh, we just got one of those people in at my work… in the top position in our organization. He has basically said he thinks we’re all process-driven pencil pushers with no service-orientation, and up to this point the product we have delivered is no good. And there is no one above him to tell him that maybe insulting the work that’s been done before his arrival isn’t the best foot to start off on.

      Reply
  12. Carmen

    Two things:

    1) Your #6 has happened to me. I still lie awake thinking about it.
    2) I fully support the company (I might venture to say ALL companies) hiring you as a consultant for staff-wide emails.

    Reply
  13. Shawna

    Your #6 sort of happened to me. Early in the school year, when my oldest was in JK, I got a really bad vibe about the teacher and asked to have my kid moved to another class. The principal had the teacher call me to discuss my issues with her. There was nothing to really point to at the time and it was SOOOO uncomfortable that I basically said whatever I had to to get off the phone and let it drop, and my daughter remained in the class she was in.

    Big mistake.

    That was the only year that we had any real issues with bullying in that school. (For example, my daughter would get punched in the face for no reason by a kid in her class, then we’d be told it was just the kid acting out because of frustration he was experiencing over a language barrier.) Six years later she’s still the worst teacher we ever had, and her class was the only one in which our kid wasn’t treated decently – in fact my daughter has been pretty popular with her peers ever since the year after this one.

    I should have listened to my instincts and insisted she be moved.

    Reply

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