Hey boss, it’s you.
In every job I’ve held, some version of my manager has turned me into his listening ear. It’s an occupational hazard for those of us who sit at the front desk.
The manager will approach my desk and ask, “Is so-and-so here yet?”
“Not yet.”
A growl. Exit, stage left.
When I don’t want to go out for lunch and unwrap my sandwich, hoping to inhale thirty minutes of peace along with my turkey on wheat, he’ll prop an elbow on the counter. Telling him I’m on break doesn’t work. He treats that as an invitation and starts talking about an employee he considers difficult, one who never cooperates, never meets expectations.
I’ll nod along because he’s right; the employee is difficult. Others feel drained by the employee’s attitude, pick up the employee’s slack, and watch the employee get away with murder.
My manager wanders off lighter. For him, venting creates instant relief, but his over-sharing drains me.
I understand why he talks to me and doesn’t act. Tackling a problem employee, especially one who gets defensive, can backfire. They can rally allies, telling their version of the story in the break room or behind closed doors.
But all the manager has done is talk. The difficult employee keeps coming to work unaware they’re the star of a daily matinee. They’re not given a course correction or a chance to improve.
And I’m not the manager with the authority to fix the problem. My nod doesn’t launch a performance plan. My empathetic face doesn’t schedule the hard conversation. I don’t hold the keys to accountability or change. I’m the audience, not the solution. I don’t want to hold information I shouldn’t have heard.
Worse, every time my manager confides about a team member, my morale sinks. I learn that the problems I can’t fix will likely fester forever. I’m reminded that my manager’s honesty travels everywhere except to the person who needs it most. I worry I’ve become part of the problem because I’ve listened.
Here’s what I wish managers like mine understood. When managers don’t handle problems but complain about one employee to another, it affects the way employees like me show up. We still do our jobs, but we don’t work as hard as we could because we’re drained by living with messes that never get fixed. We’re polite to our manager, but we stop believing in him. Our trust erodes, and we polish our resumes at night.
We don’t want our managers to talk to us about our coworkers. We expect our managers to have difficult conversations with those who need them. To set and uphold standards. To name what isn’t working. To offer support and correction.
That’s leadership.
Employees like me can offer sympathy. But we can’t offer courage.
© 2025 Lynne Curry, PhD, SPHR, SHRM-SCP
If you like this post, you might want to hand your manager a copy of Managing for Accountability, https://bit.ly/3T3vww8, and let him/her know that it’s a tool kit for how to bring difficult employees in line. If you’d like to keep the supportive angle, you could get your manager a copy of Navigating Conflict: tools for difficult conversations, https://amzn.to/3rCKoWj.
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Yes, it’s nice to be counted as that listening-to-the-venting ear, esp. if it’s only once in a very long while. But when it becomes frequent and routine, there are problems that the boss definitely is not dealing with, an things will probably get worse. Yes, the manager needs to act, to have those difficult conversations, to analyze the problem(s) and work on it (them), and to hold people accountable.