Manager crying?

[foxyrocks]

This is cutting a very long story short. But basically it’s been hell at work for maybe a year now. They put me on a PIP, which I tried my hardest, but they still failed me but they refused to do any check-ins or give me any updates on how I was doing. When they failed me, I said I wasn’t doing this anymore and it ended with them offering me money if I wanted to leave.

The alternative would have been an official appeal and placed on a further PIP if the appeal failed.

Today was my last day, manager walked me out and had tears in her eyes. Aibu to think this is bizarre behaviour when she clearly wanted me out?

Maybe they were tears of joy!

I am sorry to hear this.

can you recognise why you were on the pip? Do you feel there were areas you needed extra training on?

managers are still humans, you don’t know what their personal thoughts were, they obviously felt emotional over it. I think personally this shows they are a decent human being overall, I’d take it as a positive.

For starters your managers hands may have been tied.
But then as a human being she was probably upset. Ive had to dismiss someone who I really liked but he had taken the piss too many times so it was the end of the line. However it really upset me that it had to come to this, and also he had a young family, lovely wife etc and I genuinely wondered how they would survive.
But ultimately he had to deal with the consequences of his behaviour.
As you have said you really tried your hardest, which you probably did, but unfortunately sometimes someone's hardest isnt enough

She maybe likes and respects you for your hard work and personal qualities, and really wanted you to pass the plan. Managers often have to accept that people they would love to see succeed don't for whatever reason and yes, that is sad. Sometimes some roles are just not a good fit for good people.
She should have controlled her emotions in front of you though.

Maybe she just had hay fever?

Something similar happened to DH. Line manager was under a lot of stress, lots of people quit. Manager knew DH just had a baby so couldn't afford to quit. She decided to take out ALL her frustrations on him. Constantly undermining him, telling him he's not good enough, put him on a performance plan (he was doing the job of 3 people, 2 of whom were more senior than him and left). One afternoon she sent him a long 1 page email with all his failings.

He resigned. Turned out DH was very well liked by the people above her too and she had actively blocked his promotion so she wouldn't lose him. Senior people gave her a bollocking. She was in tears the day he left.

DH could have really claimed constructive dismissal in my opinion but he found a really good job the day he walked out so it wasn't worth the trouble.

I don't think it's bizarre. There are lots of reasons why she could have felt emotional.

She was probably crying with relief because it’s been stressful dealing with an underperforming employee!

Seriously though, in my whole working life managing a failing member of staff (twice) is the worst thing I’ve ever had to do. Trying to get someone to take responsibility for improving their performance and failing, however much help and support you give them is soul-destroying, particularly if you like the person on a personal level. I had sleepless nights trying to analyse whether I could do more, but ultimately the individual concerned needs to improve you cannot keep giving them feedback if they don’t take it on board.

Were you that bad at your job that it was worth £20k to get rid of you?!?! No wonder she was crying!!

That's not true, I've offered people a settlement to leave to move things along when it's clearly only going one way. You can offer a without prejudice discussion as an off ramp from moving to the next stage in the performance improvement.

I'd she she was sorry, exhausted and relieved all in one. Been there.

It is true that companies only offer settlement agreements when they perceive that there is a risk of some kind. However, that doesn't necessarily mean that they believe an employee has been treated unfairly or they think that they might lose at tribunal. Sometimes the risk might simply lie in allowing employee to stick around in the company for long enough to follow the necessary processes through to a conclusion.

I've offered an employee a settlement agreement previously, despite being 100% confident that he had been treated extremely fairly and that we would win at tribunal if he decided to take it in that direction. We could have continued to follow the process and we would have eventually sacked him anyway. However, it would have taken time to go through that process, and in the end, I made a calculated decision that it was better to pay him off in one lump sum than allow the process to drag on in a way that was causing intolerable stress for his line manager and his other colleagues while also having the potential to damage our reputation externally because of his poor performance

X post with @Evaka - agreed.

Crocodile tears, probably to show the rest of the workplace how "caring" she is, but despite that she's still able to make the "tough" decisions. I know all the tricks.

You know all the tricks? It sounds like you know fuck all tbh.

You have to be a psychopath to enjoy firing people.

More than you, tbh.

Absolutely this.

How so?

Please tell us about your own personal experience as a manager and exactly why you fake cried to pretend to other colleagues that you cared? Why exactly did you feel that you needed to employ such "tricks"? Were you insecure about how the rest of your team perceived you for some reason?

I saw a colleague go through this with someone in her team. It was a long process took a lot of paperwork and time locking in people to provide support for weeks. The staff member leaving was a mutually accepted decision so a little different in this case. My colleague was so wrung out by the end and was emotionally affected that the extra support didn’t work out. She was also hoping the best for the future of the staff member. It was a range of emotions that hit her pretty hard. While I never saw tears I definitely saw stress and anxiety from the entire process.

It’s really stressful dealing with disengaged / hostile staff members, she was probably crying due to that.

Where I work, 2 teams merged and I, as manager, inherited a person who was challenging to say the least. I started a PIP with him, and he resigned shortly afterwards. If he’d seen tears in my eyes on his last day (he didn’t), they’d have been tears of joy.

Potentially tears of joy

Or tears as she fears your going to make this drag

Or maybe she's actually sad she's had to do this and that she tried but the overall business let you down

Either way I hope you find a new job soon and you are ok

You have signed and agreed to the pay off but still involving a lawyer?

you have accepted the offer so no comeback from this? Why involve a lawyer when you have basically agreed to the ‘contract’ and took your money

Did you mention that you have another job offer? I used to work in a small/family strategy consulting firm and I had a crazy boss. To make the long story short, I was desperately looking to leave and in the meantime she fired me for performance. The last day I told her I had an offer from one of the big consultancies and don’t ask me why but she started crying non stop!!Nuts!

Based on this update, I think your manager is mentally unstable who can be sometimes very empathetic and other times uncaring. Hope you find a good job.