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.”

I dreamed last night that I was in a building that was on fire but I kept not leaving. I kept thinking, “I need to get out RIGHT NOW,” and then I’d get distracted by trying to find the cat, or trying to figure out if I should bring anything with me, or trying to put on pants. It went from “I know the house is on fire but I see no evidence of it yet” to “I feel the heat and hear the crackling and smell the smoke and the floor is feeling as if maybe half of it has been eaten away by flames,” and STILL I didn’t leave. I feel as if I could make a good allegory with that.

It’s been a week since a supervisor sent out a pretty bad email, and I am still thrown for a loop by it. I wish I were more the “roll my eyes and go on doing what I know is a good job” type, but I am NOT.

Anyway, my degree is in business management / HR, so I tried to think of this from the other side of things. It went like this:

1. Should supervisors speak to employees this way?

2. Should anything be done about it, if they do?

3. If something should be done about it, what should that something be?

The answer to the first question in this case is just no, they should not speak to employees this way: the email was scornful and unfair.

The answer to the second question is harder: it really depends on how serious, how frequent, what the rest of the supervisor’s behavior looks like, etc. Insufficient information to make a call on this one.

The answer to the third is what interested me most. I’d been thinking that if someone said something to me and I didn’t like it, the correct thing was to go to that person and talk to them about it. Which, duh, I would rather stand in a burning house trying to put on pants. But then I realized that is what you do in PERSONAL relationships. In WORK relationships, that is not always the answer.

Some work relationships are between co-workers of equal rank, but in many work relationships there is a considerable imbalance of power and authority. If a person of higher rank has a problem with a person of lower rank, they have the power and authority to ask the person of lower rank to change. When it’s the other way around, that when there’s a problem—especially if the lower-ranked person fears the consequences of criticizing someone who has input over their schedule, pay, work load, evaluations, reputation with upper management, entire work environment, etc.

This is why there is a different system in place for dealing with a supervisor’s bad behavior: the correct thing in many of those cases is for the employee to go to the SUPERVISOR’S supervisor. This accomplishes many good things:

1. It means there can first be confirmation that the behavior WAS out of line with company standards, removing the “Wait, IS this a thing?” element, and making sure the criticism of the supervisor’s behavior is fair. Like, let’s say an employee got all upset because the supervisor said nicely that they had to stop coming in half an hour late all the time.

2. It means that if the supervisor’s behavior does need to be criticized/corrected, the criticism/correction can be done by someone of higher rank than they are.

3. It means the entire thing is on record with the company, which should make retaliation more difficult.

As soon as I realized all of this, I stopped having trouble figuring out how to write the email. It went from “Wah, wah, I don’t like it when you talk to me like that / Wah, wah, that’s not FAIR, I didn’t do anything wrong!!” (letter from me to supervisor) to “I would like to bring something to your attention and let you decide if and how you would like to handle it” (letter from me to supervisor’s boss who is also my boss).

The next question was whether to actually send it. There is the matter of COULD a person complain, and then there is the matter of is THIS one of fights I want to fight. I’m not going to send a letter every single time anyone does anything I think was wrong—so is THIS one of the very, very few letters I want to write?

I went for yes. In this case, the email from the supervisor significantly sapped my loyalty to the company and my willingness to take extra shifts; it also made me feel falsely accused and inappropriately punished. This is presumably not the effect my boss’s boss would hope for. Possibly I am the only employee who had that reaction, while everyone else rolled their eyes and got on with their days, but possibly NOT. If other employees feel as I do, this is a serious issue and worth a letter.

Furthermore, I am only willing to be spoken to in this way by a supervisor a very limited number of times before I quit, so it does not feel like a waste of a letter: if I wrote one letter for each time I was willing to be spoken to this way, I would end up quitting before I ran out of my limited allotment of letters.

I am in a rare position: I don’t need the money from this job (I WANT it for the kids’ braces and college, but it’s not the groceries/rent income), and I can easily find another job, and we’d be fine during the time of acquiring that new job and waiting for the first paycheck from it. My personal risk is low: if the response from the supervisor’s supervisor is terrible, or there are other unpleasant consequences of my letter, I can think, “Whew! How nice to have it made so clear that quitting this terrible company is the right thing to do!” Many of my co-workers are not in that position AT ALL: if THEY complain, their personal risk is very high.

Without putting on a cape or whatever (although…is that an option?), this is a job for Swistle: I can afford the risk, and I can write a business letter. I sent it yesterday morning. Now we play the “flinching every time I hear the new-email sound” game. Oh no, I just thought of something: what if the supervisor’s boss CALLS me??

I finished the somewhat-disturbing-somewhat-upsetting-but-pulls-me-back-to-it book I mentioned in this post, and I am ready to recommend it, right before I start reading it again right from the beginning:

Mr. Splitfoot, by Samantha Hunt. When I got to the last part I had to go into my room and shut the door, partly because I could not STAND to be interrupted even ONE MORE TIME by the family I was beginning to regret having, and partly because I wanted to be able to cry without being teased.

I was looking for a wedding registry, and an old one came up for a different person with the same name. On it were his-and-her bicycles, a video game system, a $500 DVD player, video games and DVDs, exercise equipment, and a $2,000 gift card. Literally, they specified that the gift card should be for $2,000. I love registries, and I love choosing what to buy (one big thing or several smaller things? the pretty bowls or the pretty towels? something fancy or something useful?)—but let me tell you, that one would have been a toughie.

 

The company I work for recently sent out two emails to all caregivers. In two fell swoops, those emails demolished my last remaining feelings of loyalty. This is not a company I want to work for. They are icky. Paul says any other company offering entry-level work would be just as bad, but if that’s the case I’d rather find something that’s just as bad but without the constant calls to fill shifts.

The decision now is how to proceed. Because even though my intention is to leave the company rather than to try to get them to stop being unfair and stupid, I still don’t want to leave either of my two main clients. One of them I could leave with very little discomfort for either of us, but I’m happy and comfortable working for him now, so I’d prefer not to leave if I’m going to be working for the other client anyway. The other client, I feel like I CAN’T leave. I know I literally could, but it would be so, so, so much better, for me and for her, if it didn’t have to happen.

If I could have things exactly as I wanted them, this is how I’d want them:

1. I’d continue with my usual schedule, with just these two clients.

2. I’d be called to fill shifts ONLY for these two clients, no other clients.

3. I’d be taken off the texting list, so I’d no longer have to pay per text to receive multiple bulk-sent texts per day asking for people to “step up” and take shifts.

4. When my favorite client no longer needs me, I’d leave.

5. The knowledge that I am staying only for the clients and not for the company, and only until the clients no longer need me, would free my mind to stop having mental arguments about everything my supervisors are doing wrong. The dramatic decrease in one of my least favorite parts of the job (getting continually asked to work extra shifts) would dramatically increase my job satisfaction levels / decrease my stress levels.

6. All of this would be accomplished with no explanations or confrontations or discussions.

 

I can have the first four, I believe. The fifth one is a hope, but we won’t know until we try. The sixth is the one I can’t have. If I want them to stop calling me and stop sending me to new clients, I have to tell them so.

Whenever I turn my mind to the issue, my first thought is, “This is not even hard: all I have to do is explain it and tell them those first four things. Ta da!” But then I start to try to write the email, and I get stuck. It only seems easy until I try to write the next word after “Dear Supervisor,”.

There are so many options for how much and what kind of WHY, and so many options for how to say it. I could go with an “It’s not you, it’s me” explanation, but that’s so unsatisfying. On the other hand, it kind of IS me, insofar as “I can see other people are willing/forced to put up with something I hate, but I am not” is “me”.

I could go with a mild “It’s you, and here is why” explanation, but I believe in this case, with the particular people involved, this would lead to further pointless and frustrating discussions. Like when you’re trying to break up with someone and they keep wanting to discuss it, acting as if they just want to understand / fix things, but actually wanting to demonstrate how reasonable/easy they are, and to explain to you why you’re wrong about everything and there’s clearly something wrong with you.

I could hit reply on one of the recent awful emails, and start with “I have recently come to a decision about…,” without referring to the email itself, but letting the implication stand.

I could leave it as explanation-free as possible, basically saying the four things that I want, not saying why, and saying I hope this will work for them. It’s still hard to figure out the first word after the salutation. …Actually, what if I started just as I started here: “If I could have things exactly as I wanted them, this is how I’d want them”? And then edited the four items to be more neutral (removing the reference to how much I hate the term “step up,” for example), but left them in a list just like that? I also might want to edit #4, so that I’m not promising to stay even if this goes on for years and years and other circumstances change. Hm. That has potential.

There is also the option of NOT telling them. I could just keep saying no to all other clients (“Oh, no thanks—I’m really happy with my schedule right now”), and volunteering to take fill-in shifts with these two clients. This would give me #1, half of #2, #4, possibly I’d still get part of #5, and #6.

I accidentally signed up for five extra shifts this week. I mean, I signed up for each one on purpose, but in each case I short-sightedly peered at the day itself on the calendar and thought, “Yes, I could do that.” And I am not even pretending that I am as work-busy as people who work this many hours (or TWICE this many hours) EVERY week, but it is a startling change to my routine and the days are just flying by and I am not getting much else done and I am feeling fretful and frazzled.

Well! The kids are not up yet, and I have coffee, and I am not not not going to reach into the open bag of peanut M&Ms on my desk, and let’s see what there is to say.

I am reading a book that is kind of disturbing and kind of upsetting but also pulllls me back to it, and that is one of the best things in a book. A lot is going to depend on the ending, but right now it is a book success. This comes on the heels of two book failures in a row. First I tried this one (I am linking, but I don’t want to lure the author here to read something negative), and I kept feeling as if I OUGHT to like it, and I DID kind of like it, and yet I didn’t want to go back to it, and eventually I was like, “I do not have to keep reading this: I can just SAMPLE it, as I did, and then send it back to the library.” Then I tried this one, and after awhile I was thinking, “Haven’t we learned our lesson by now, that we NEVER end up happy after reading books about young boys coming of age via inappropriate relationships with older women and acts of dangerous stupidity with other boys?” “We” in this case being the royal we. Many others certainly love this sort of book, considering how many there are.

I was so glad for all the advice on the post about our difficult new cat. I feel as if we are making progress with her, but on the other hand yesterday there were like three or four big snarling spitting rolling attacks, so maybe I am imagining it. But there was ALSO a time when one of the boy cats walked past her and she was alert but did not attack, and he did not provoke her predator instincts by hissing and darting away. And we’re shutting her in another room while we feed the boys, and they are getting used to this, so that when I close a door and then call them, sometimes they don’t have to be dragged to the food but instead trot right up.

I LOVED the suggestions on the best chocolate to buy from a store! I am planning a gradual tour-of-eating through ALL of them. What I chose for the recipient in question was a bag of Lindt raspberry truffles (I remembered AFTER posting that I DID know she liked raspberry flavoring in general) and a three-pack of Ferrero Rocher hazelnut chocolates (one of my own favorites, which I’d mentioned to her recently and she’d never tried).

Coffee is gone, kids are getting up, more another time!

We have a new cat, a 3-year-old female. We’ve had her for just over three weeks. She is simultaneously the worst cat ever and the best cat ever.

I will start with best, despite the word order of the previous sentence. She sits on everyone’s laps, even the little kids’ laps. She is super affectionate with people. She sleeps on beds at night. She cuddles with Edward when he’s lying on the couch feeling dicey. She purrs and does squeeze-eyes of love. I have never known such a lovebug of a cat.

But the worst: she chases the two other cats. We live in one of those raised-ranch-style houses where the main floor of the house is the upstairs; she no longer allows the boy cats upstairs. She will sit at the top of the stairs to make sure they don’t come up. If she catches them up here, she will attack them ferociously. Sometimes she will go downstairs and chase them around and attack them there, too. They are spending their days hiding under the beds or among the storage boxes. I count myself very lucky that the litter box is downstairs and that they have not yet stopped using it.

She is also MAD JEALOUS. Many of the attacks have occurred when she sees someone reaching down to pet one of the other cats.

We first tried using a spritz-bottle filled with water, and spritzing her when she attacks. But she does not seem to care much about that, or at least it only seems to reduce the duration of the attack, not the number of attacks or the time between attacks. We’ve tried Feliway, the spritz kind and the plug-in kind—but we’re in a windows-open season, so I’m not sure those are getting a fair chance to work. We’ve tried various “Look, everything is FINE, just FINE!” approaches, such as putting her in the same room with another cat, and assigning people to pet and reassure and feed both cats at the same time.

At this point we have to feed them separately: the boy cats are losing weight because she won’t let them at the food dishes, and she is gaining weight because she is eating all three bowls of food herself. So now we feed her; then we shut her into a bedroom and coax the other cats out to eat.

When we took her home, I told the shelter and the children that if she made life miserable for the other cats, she would have to go back to the shelter. But at this point, that would be a devastating decision: the children lovvvvvvvvvve her like they’ve loved no other cat, in part because SHE loves THEM. I know it’s possible to return her, but it FEELS unthinkable. So if you have any experience with this and know of anything that can help the cats get along, I would love to hear it. This is the kind of thing where of course I can search it online, but there are one million articles saying one million things, and I’d like to cut directly to the personal experiences of people I know.

I dreamed last night that my Twitter options gave me only one possible action for relating to other Twitter users, and it was “cuddle.” No “reply,” no “retweet,” no “message,” no “block,” no “mute”—just “cuddle.”

I recommend this book:

How to Weep in Public: Feeble Offerings on Depression from One Who Knows, by Jacqueline Novak. I have been having trouble lately with sad/despairing moods, and this book made me laugh.

After Ted Cruz dropped out of the race, I started seeing a ton more of “If it’s Trump vs. Clinton, I’m not voting.” I can see where that point of view comes from: if you’re offered two options, and you don’t want either one, declining seems like a good idea. It’s like if you’re going to a wedding, and the reception menu choices are shellfish, when you’re seriously allergic to shellfish, or steak tartare, when you avoid beef for health and ethical reasons, and RAW beef freaks you out even more. If you don’t WANT either one, don’t PICK either one. Hoard some extra appetizers, drink extra wine, ask your tablemates if they want their rolls, eat the mints in your purse, and order a pizza when you get home.

But this is not a wedding reception. Instead it’s an episode of Survivor, where everyone on the island has to vote for what will be served for dinner, and then everyone will be forced to eat the winning option. You CAN abstain from voting, declining both options. But then you will be force-fed whatever everyone ELSE chooses, even if it means dying of a shellfish reaction.

No one who knows you will mistake your vote for enthusiastic support. No one will think, “Oh, she’s choosing BEEF? After all these years of declining beef at my parties and ranting about how bad it is, now suddenly she WANTS beef??” Everyone knows this is Survivor.

There is an update on the post Reader Question: Gift Ideas for a Student with Cancer:

Hello
I wrote to you a few months ago about a student in my third grade class who was out getting treatment for cancer. I really appreciated all of the suggestions, and thought it was time for an update. The good news is that H is now considered cancer free and has returned to school!
He was gone for four months. Using Skype to keep in touch was useful, but it was kind of hard to arrange times when he felt well and it was good timing for us. We did send lots of pictures and cards. Each week one of the third grade classrooms send cards. He sent in his Valentines and we sent his home to him. He also had a birthday and we sent a video of us singing and holding up signs. He sent us a video of his how to speech that we did in class. I liked the idea of the ” flat H” and if he had been gone longer I would have done that too.
He had a pretty low immune system when he came back and no hair but I warned the class about germs and stocked up on hand sanitizer. He wanted to just slide right back into the rhythm of the class, but that took a few weeks. What really helped was having the Child Life specialist from the hospital come in and give a presentation about cancer, chemo, MRI’s and ports. I think it really made H feel better – that everyone else finally had an idea of what he had gone through.
Now his hair is mostly grown in, he is caught up both academically and socially. He still attends a lot of special events for cancer survivors, but otherwise is a normal third grader. Thank you so much for your help!
Becky