Do managers ever just tell someone to crack on anymore?

[Havesomecommonsense]

I have a really nice workplace. BUT I'm getting a bit fed up with management taking every little comment and tackling it when actually a bit of filtering or common sense is needed:
Recent examples :
A member of staff came in and brought doughnuts, left a sign on them in the staff room saying help yourself. Later in the day, my colleague came out with a doughnut and said "there's doughnuts in there" bit later, I went in, 2 colleagues were in there and I said " I heard there was doughnuts"
Next day my manager talks to me and doughnuts lady and says that one of the members of staff felt left out as when I said I heard there was doughnuts, I'd clearly been part of something they weren't as they only discovered the doughnuts when they went in the staffroom. We explained and my manager was fine but then said to doughnut lady that next time she should go round the office telling everyone so no one felt left out.
This is mental. Why didn't manager say that nothing in that situation is abnormal?
There are other examples but tbh I don't know if I can be bothered to type them out as they seem so trivial. But why is manager trying to alleviate anyone feeling anything other than joyful? It's like any fleeting normal emotion is someone else's problem to solve
Anyone sympathise?
Ps before all the performative lot come on here and say
Why are you all eating doughnuts instead of working in silence. Sounds awful, I'd hate to chat to my Co workers and have snacks, you're there to work.
We are a normal workplace just like all the others , only on MN is work like the white cubicles in Severance

It's possible that the complainer has either been raising a lot of "microagressions" recently as so the manager spoke to you to show something was being done before it escalated higher

The person complaining, for example, might have felt that the way you said about hearing about doughnuts meant you'd been told specifically and that it was felt they were not being told specifically so they didn't get any doughnuts. Maybe someone conscious about their weight saying it was just another way they were being picked on for being fat or maybe a slightly lonely colleague who feels left out. It might be they've spoken to the manager before about how they've felt other incidents have reflected this state - a chair swap meaning the overweight colleague feels they are being set up to break the slightly rocky chair they now have, a coffee run the lonely colleague didn't hear about, a conversation that ended when the lonely colleague approached, a lift not being held as they rush towards it, an innocent comment about pigs being misheard etc

Saying "oh but I might have had anxiety which was set off by being told off" - if you have that level of anxiety then your manager should be informed anyway because they need to know how to approach you with any criticisms about your work, they could then have approached this differently too. If that was the case and not you making statements to try and shame them

People like this tend to ruin it for everyone, but equally they tend to work off low resilience themselves and may not actually have the capacity to 'crack on' the way that most other people would know to. I think that creates a hard balance for managers to follow because a) it's their job to support ALL their staff including the ones they secretly dread coming to their door b) they are bound by the expectations set by HR in terms of how any complaint is followed up and handled c) they ultimately want a functional team who get on OK and have low rates of absence etc but equally d) they don't want their team to feel like they don't have their back. The problem is that if someone has felt 'left out' that can quickly escalate to a complaint of bullying or intentioned isolation and that does need to be addressed by a manager even if they know that's not what's happening. If it wasn't addressed then the manager is leaving themselves open to a grievance. So it's really a no win there. Which is why some people are just extremely difficult to manage such as your doughnut lady. I would have empathy for the manager who is dealing with this headache.

Rather than telling the Doughnut Lady 'that next time she should go round the office telling everyone so no one felt left out.' the company should do two things;

1 Install a Tannoy system in the building so that the Doughnut Lady can announce the arrival of doughnuts.

2 Put a camera in the staff room, focused on 'doughnut donation area', to provide a live picture of the doughnuts to all desktop computers to save people working in the office the disappointment of finding that that the pink one with coloured sprinkles has already been consumed or, worse, that all the doughnuts have gone.

(See en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trojan_Room_coffee_pot ).

my sympathies, OP. i once received a complaint for doing a similar kind gesture involving food. I had offended someone's dietary sensitivities when I left post-holiday treats for staff in the breakout area.

whilst your manager might have been obliged to do something, i now think giving oxygen to this sort of pettiness is a sign that the culture isn't a fit for me. sadly it's becoming way more common. i wish more people felt able to tell people like this to stfu and do the job they're paid to do instead of moan

Exclusion is often used as a synonym for bullying which might have made the manager feel obliged to say something.

It is a totally ridiculous situation though.

Our manager has so little actual work to do this is exactly the kind of micromanaging nonsense she'd stick her beak into. Never lifts a finger to help with any actual work of course - she might break a nail. She claims she was a teacher and treats us all like six year olds even though not one of us is under 45 and we all have decades of experience. It's infuriating and undermining.

It’s not clear why you were singled out to me. Should have been a full staff meeting really!

Don't be so patronising with your severance comment, it doesn't have to be all or nothing. Sounds like you have bigger issues if all you can care about is this doughnuts nonsense, who cares.

It could be all or nothing though. I had a similar experience (not food-related) where someone complained about lack of personalisation in a service a staff member was unofficially providing to others. It did not affect work, and enhanced morale. Because of the complaint, managers banned it completely. Once they had to manage it outside their workload, it stopped.

This is why I don’t ever want to manage people again.

I found as a junior manager that the 20% who took 80% of the sickness and absence leave were the same people who would be the doughnut-aggrieved.

Hahahahahahhaahaha this is the most ridiculous reading of it possible. None of this happened

It's not patronising. It was referring to performative people who always come on work based threads and insist they've never heard of or worked anywhere where totally normal things happen.
Also, a lot of things on mumsnet is trivial who cares stuff, it's a chat forum.
If you don't like the thread , just move on, sounds like you have bigger issues if you have time to be annoyed by this thread, who cares?

So you know every single thing every other colleague does and experiences and every other report that's gone in?

In my old office, the donut person got the team admin to send a teams message or email to the old office with a note saying basically first come first served.

I think it really depends on the size of the team or office as how well that might work for you.

No bit if you extrapolate all that angst from someone saying they heard there was doughnuts, its your responsibility to get some therapy or at least work on evidence
Like "ooh where did you hear that"
Me: "dave just walked past my desk eating one and told me"

Crisis averted

The problem as a manager is that the people who most need to be told to crack on are also the people who are most likely to feel very slighted indeed by being told to crack on, and to see it as something larger.

I am really struggling with a member of staff who gets upset and writes formal emails about the most ridiculous things, but she is very clear (some might say strategically clear) that this is related to her neurodiversity so the instruction from our HR function is more or less that I must pander to it (obviously this isn't how they put it) and I must try and move mountains to stop her encountering molehills so that I am not discriminating against her and failing to take account of her specific needs. The time and energy this takes me appears to be entirely irrelevant, and the impact on the rest of the team is only a marginal consideration.

I would be so cross at someone using the team admin's time like this!

These sort of people can actually quickly become the bullies. I remember being hauled in for mispronouncing someone’s name. It was something like St John and I honestly thought I was being correct in saying “Sinjun” - but no, instead of the person just correcting me, they went straight to HR. It was very upsetting; I think they felt sort of empowered with using offence as a weapon.

I wish people could just get a grip. I bet the doughnut person was the same sort who thinks every friendship group is a "clique".

We have a set place in each office area where cakes and the like go. I did put a note saying, "to celebrate me being here 6 months" when I took some in a while back. But basically, you see them or you don't.

I have suggested a couple of situations where there may be a much bigger picture than you getting all pissy because the manager spoke to you and how that incident might be part of more than you know

Well, I'd have told said person to piss off and stop wasting my time. Depending on what day it was, I may have phrased this more suitably. There again, I may not!

If said person should have been dissatisfied with my response they would be perfectly entitled to take it to my own manager..... Who will tell them to go get fucked.

Seriously? Does this shit go in the typical workplace? How the fuck have we got here? 🤷

Again, you are exaggerating
'You all getting pissy'

There is no 'all' and we didn't get pissy

Sorry misread.
I also did not get pissy

There is no world in which a woman saying she heard there were doughnuts, with no history or backstory warrants someone saying this.
There just isn't
I don't even know who it was that reported it, I don't even know if they just said it in passing, amd manager has been over zealous