updates: someone is deleting our work emails, the weekend retreat, and more

Welcome to “where are you now?” season at Ask a Manager! Between now and the end of the year, I’ll be running updates from people who had their letters here answered in the past. Here are four updates from past letter-writers.

There will be more posts than usual this week, so keep checking back throughout the day.

1. Someone or something is deleting our work emails

I really wish I had a great update about how everything magically stopped. Or my manager started to care that this was happening. But unfortunately, nothing changed. The deleting stopped for a little bit and then started up again. If I come across a deleted email, I forward to my manager. But that’s the last I hear about it.

I had left a brief message in the comments that this is something I just need to put out of my mind. Jane is probably not going to change anything. And my manager isn’t going to suddenly take this more seriously.

But in amazing personal news, after an excruciating five-year journey, my husband and I just became first parents to twins! A boy and a girl. I’m currently in week two of my maternity leave. I’m actually holding my sweet daughter as I type this. So I could not care less what is happening at work and it’s wonderful.

2. Teenager’s job wants her to go on a weekend retreat

The whole thing took an unexpected turn a few weeks after my letter. The supervisor in question was quite unexpectedly let go, and no information was provided to the employees other than “she violated company policy and we wish her well in her future plans.” Took everyone there by surprise, and there was a lot of speculation about whether these “girls trips” and activities outside of work had anything to do with it, but no one knows for sure.

When she was fired, five of the employees quit in protest, but the ones who stayed have been treated well by the management and the new outside person put in place to supervise them has been friendly and professional (no weekend getaways on the schedule!). Thanks again for your advice!

3. Is there a reasonable amount of yelling at work, or is any yelling too much?

It has been about nine months since Orion yelled at me in a video call, and he has gotten much better! I think you were correct that my firm shut-down made him feel sheepish and stop around me, but I suspect he also was spoken to about the problem in a more general sense. In a few calls I have seen him start to get worked up and suddenly take a breath and a pause, and he’s also gotten better at listening and making space for others to speak instead of feeling the need to explain (Orionsplain) everything himself. I can see the effort he’s putting in, and so I feel more forgiving when I find him difficult. I have also seen Cassandra, who had previously refused to work with him, back in meetings with him. I suspect that reflects changes in Orion’s behavior as well.

I was fascinated by dissenting opinions in the comments that I’m too sensitive. I can’t control my level of sensitivity much, I think it’s part of how my brain works. Reflecting on the incident, one of the reasons I reacted so strongly is that it was entirely new and my autistic brain didn’t have much of a script developed. With the experience of the incident and context from Alison, the commenters, and my real-life community, I would be able to deal with a similar situation much more easily in the future. But I’ll never be good at aggression and yelling in the workplace. That’s okay, even if it means I’m cutting myself out of high stress lines of work.

4. Should I lie about how many cats I have? (#2 at the link)

I’m the person who wrote asking if I should lie about how many cats I have when I started a new job. Thank you for posting my question! Your kind words and those of the commentors made me feel much better. I had previously dealt with a couple of judgmental people who called me a “crazy cat lady,” and those words really stuck with me once I began my new job. I had landed my dream job and was nervous about anything that could mess it up.

Reading the comments helped me realize it was unlikely that coworkers would drill me on my cat count. When pets came up, I just mentioned that I had cats, and no one questioned it further. Apparently, I’m the only one on the team that wants to know everything about other’s pets!

Cat updates! Apparently oblivious to our past experience, we found a stray in our neighborhood in really bad shape, so we took him in swearing we were just going to patch him up and adopt him out. And that’s how we ended up with a sixth cat.

The rest of the cats are doing well. There was a moth in the house that kept them entertained for most of this week.

Here’s a picture of our newest addition.