I snapped at work… how bad is it?

[Freakedfreaked]

Im in a mid management role, no direct reports but do work with people more junior, their job is to support me and my peer in the delivery of key business tasks.

I’m relatively new in the role (6 months) there are some obscure processes and policies I’m still finding out about. My performance in role has been met with praise from exco, so I’m doing well)

there is one jnr who frankly is incredibly difficult to the extent I dread working together because it’s a battle. A simple task is met with a huge amount of pushback and moaning and reasons why not to do something. Things mysteriously not getting saved etc etc. General rudeness. It has been escalated.

this is a persistent issue with everyone but I do feel it’s worse with me.

today, very simple bau task, the same nonsense very aggressive with it too. Then basically tattles to my peer on zoom, who then sides with me and invites me to the call. The junior guy then turns around and flips it on me, saying it’s not his responsibility and how the direction wasn’t clear. To which i pointed out it’s fine to ask a question if the ask isn’t clear but xyz needs to be done. He mumbles some shit sarcy shit about it not being clear, my peer says the email I sent was pretty clear and he’s been in role long enough to know what was meant. He mutters something under his breath. I snapped. I said, you can always ask for clarification and I don’t think the underhanded comments are needed, and it’s making me quite cross, so to that end I’m leaving this call. I think I was calm in my tone of voice, but I was shaking on the inside.

was I hideously unprofessional

my logic was, I’m not getting drawn into an argument of he said she said and playing the blame game, especially when I was feeling quite tense. They really landed me in it big time last week through not doing some key tasks. I had to work well into the night to sort it .

am I going to get a telling off?

That’s not relevant here

I experienced this from Jr male worked for me. He wrote a letter to my bosses’ boss saying the I “talked to him like he was a dog”. Which I clearly didn’t do, my managers knew me well and I defo had faults but dog talking wasn’t one of them.

The boss resolved by transferring him to work for another woman (more experienced than me and dept had easier work) and then he wasn’t happy & resigned. They made him feel important and “heard”, but really he had started digging his own grave.

He was pathetic, he had to write a poison pen letter to most senior man he knew because he was too weak to talk to me.

Keep a written log of his behaviour.

YABU for thinking you were wrong 😂

Wow. I'd have been tempted to respond "Name the time and place, and don't forget to call the ambulance before you arrive as one of us will need it, and I'll do whatever it takes to make sure it isn't me". Lets see if they are someone who's mouth is cashing cheques their body cannot cash.

You are fine. Don’t worry. If the shoe were on the other foot so to speak he wouldn’t think twice about it. A colleague of mine once slammed a door so hard the wall shook in the face of an administrator. She is sadly still employed, the administrator left. It was awful.

Are you new to the company as well as the role? I’m wondering if he wanted/still wants your job.

Don't apologise. You've done nothing wrong imo. I think by snapping at him, you might well have given him the impression that you are not prepared to put up with his nonsense and excuses any longer. Maybe he's just got away with it for so long and no one's pulled him up on it before. I really wouldn't give it any more thought (in terms of worrying about it). I think what you said was firm and to the point and you weren't going to waste any more of your time on a call listening to his excuses. You wanted the job done. End of.

My old granddad had a wonderful expression - some people work harder at getting out of doing the work. It's true. We've all encountered those types of people. He needed shutting down.

I’ve done the role previously at other places, obviously there are nuances. I’m sure he thinks he knows best though.

but he got the mother of all dressing downs today, for avoiding work yet again. Peer backed me and then was exposed to some of the really shoddy work that had been done, equally enraged. Sort of thing, that it takes one person to break but three to fix.

i feel vindicated

@Freakedfreaked EXCELLENT update OP! 😃 We told you you were worrying about nothing. 😊 I'm so glad he's finally been reprimanded - hopefully this will be the start of him mending his ways - or looking for a new job elsewhere ... 😉

It depends on what sort of boss you have- if this guy doesn't report to you why is he doing tasks for you? I think the chain of command needs to be better established-either this person works under you , or they don't.
It sounds as if this is not well set out and that is the responsibility of higher up the food chain, so in the meantime when you need something done say so completely clearly in an email in the form of bullet points-then they can't be whining it isn't clear and wasting loads of time in meetings.
Don't rise to ANY sarky or snide comments just say have you done all the things listed, and if not why not.

I read your title thinking you went bat shit crazy but that was a measured response.

Good that it's been escalated and hopefully it can be resolved with coaching etc and eventual termination if thet are no changes.

Darlings aren’t they these types in the job? .I reckon 20% of them take up 80% of your time in terms of managing. They never leave either you have to waste hours with HR performance managing the eejits. You did well to stay calm.

Actually the majority of jobs I've been in I haven't been managed by the people I do work for, and I've managed people who did work for me and others at the same time.

First situation, has mostly been where the work is business or project support but the work is for a functional area e.g. project/programme support and control you are dong things like the business case, process management & control etc, for a project managed by a functional specialist e.g. software PM specialist, engineering specialist. You can move from project to project over time, or specialist in certain phases of a project so you work on the project set up and start up, then move on to another project just starting up. This also has the business advantage of you having independent oversight of the project detail, ensuring that no corners are being cut etc.

In my current role, we have a small team of business support who do the same work for 6 different functional teams, who work for a big boss. But we also have a governance role to ensure that all the required financial rules are followed - though not the case where I am now, it can be a bit career limiting to do the governance part of your job and pull up the person who is writing your annual reports!

And of course shared junior resources are not at all uncommon. There can well be 6-8 specialists who only produce enough admin work for one person. If that one admin was managed by just one specialist then they could gobble up the majority of the capacity leaving the other specialists short of support. So the logical line manager for that admin person is the manager of the specialists who are likely pretty senior to the admin.

Well he was a right CF today, overhead the conversation, my instructions weren’t clear and my peer is difficult.

cross again is an understatement, especially in terms of lack of backing from manager.

@Freakedfreaked Hmmm, not a good update OP. Does your supportive peer report to the same manager as you and CF? If so, perhaps you and your peer could both complain to the manager (better still, both raise grievances) about CF to get his behaviour addressed once and for all?

That is quite professional

I walked out the office today saying you guys are the reason there is instructions on shampoo bottles. So yes I think your professional 😂