I’m fucking sick of my boss lying to me

[Triumphofdiplomacy]

I manage a team of 8. We have a work from office policy and WFH is not encouraged, in fact I’m actively encouraged NOT to allow my team to do it regularly, it must be a valid reason and not regularly.

My manager though, can’t get enough of it. His manager works at another site so rarely sees it and as my managers job Involves some travel he can just say he’s travelling. Most of the time though he’s working from home. He has kids, rushes off at 2 most days to do the school run and says he’ll catch up on his work later.

He’s completely disengaged from my team, seems to be disengaged from work altogether to be honest. His priorities lie in picking his kids up or spending time with them. I don’t know how he gets anything done to be honest.

The biggest bug bear for me though is that he’ll lie to my face. Tell me he’s traveling and won’t be in the office yet during the whole day, if I check his WhatsApp chat I can see he’s either online or has been online in the past 20 minutes. So he can’t be driving long distances (sites could take hours to drive to). So he’s at home probably. Having a day looking after his kids.

The issue is that we aren’t allowed to do it, nor do I allow my team too much of it. It’s company policy not to. We are expected to be present and in the office.
he does not lead by example.

His manager and the MD above him are largely remote but my manager is office based.

I want to report him to his manager but I know in the long term I’d come off worse. I just hate being lied to.

Wouid you speak to him and tell him you think it’s unacceptable? It’s not fair to the rest of us who are expected to be in office, I’ve lost all respect for him and so have my team.

Does your company have a whistleblower policy? If so, that’s where I’d start.

Whistleblowing is disclosure in the public interest, so unless your manager is misusing public funds or behaving in a way that constitutes a serious risk to the public AND that hasn't been addressed through internal company complaint or grievance processes then don't try and handle this via a whistleblowing disclosure.

You can either have a direct conversation with your manager, talk to THEIR manager and ask for clarification on the work from home policy (given what you've observed), or talk to your HR team about raising a grievance.

I agree, whistleblowing is not the correct route to sort this out. He could argue that he’s been traveling to other sites or for meetings etc. I just know he isn’t.

He’s at home a lot, you can tell this by TEAMS or his WhatsApp behaviour. It often shows him as available or just ‘away’ not giving him enough time to drive the long distances he says he does.

It’s really unfair on me and my team as we all have days where we could do with WFH but we make the effort to get in.

In the old days of using office land lines we managed to get a manager sacked for doing this very thing. A call into the office he was supposed to be visiting, then a call to his boss concerned something has happened to him raised the red flag!

I would ask him to look again at the wfh policy to see if he can help you and your team wfh. If he refuses then I’d try to catch him out in his lies as often as possible. Eg ask him where he’s travelling to and then call that location and ask for him.

He attends off site meetings, where I don’t know a lot of the time - up north is what we get told. So I can’t call him at his location unless it’s calling his mobile. Lies just trip off his tongue, he’ll look me in the eye and say it. I cannot stand a liar. It makes me not to want to work for him any longer. I have no respect for anyone that lies to me.

And there is no WFH policy. It doesn’t exist

My previous manager did this too. Plus with 3 DC at home and not in nursery/homeschooled he was rarely seen online working during core office hours (or evenings) or even present in the office. The only way he got the work done was to delegate key time sensitive tasks to me, and always right at the last minute! So the day before my holiday I updated his usual quarterly PowerPoint presentation with the #s swapped and left out a key slide, and switched on my OoO. When he couldn't answer the Qs from the attendees the hit the fan as it was obvious he was way out of his depth. His lack of online prescence/attendence then surfaced and unravelled fast as he'd been assuring his manager (in a different city) that he was in the office 4 days a week. He left shortly after "to pursue other opportunities".

It’s hard to stomach but frankly I’d keep out of it.
His boss will eventually find out.

If you really can’t put up with it, maybe in the longer term you might want to move on or maybe someone else will blow the whistle.

Good luck with it. From experience, I can empathise with how you’re feeling.