A reader writes:
This situation actually happened to my mom, but when we talked about it, I was surprised by how different our feelings were about it.
My mom works as the president of an organization that is not doing well. She was specifically hired because there were a lot of issues with the organization, and all her career, she’s been hired as the “fixer-upper.” She gets headhunted by an organization, comes in to clean it up, then a different organization calls dibs. As I’m sure you can imagine, being an outsider called in specifically to start making huge changes does cause a lot grumbling, so she expects some level of resistance — especially because she’s a woman in a male-dominated field. But because of that, she also tries really hard to be professional to everyone. She sees it as “these people are always going to think I’m a bitch, but I won’t prove them right.” Most employees from previous organizations (and her current one) did end up liking her, or at least acknowledging she’s doing what’s best for the organization.
Over the past month, she has had to start making some really tough choices, including firing people, which has obviously increased people’s ire. A few days ago, she was in a meeting with a group of managers and she was discussing how they needed to change how they do events. One of the men in the meeting, who has been affected by the tough choices, interrupted her and said, “We could always do [event they did six months ago]. Oh, I suppose you don’t know that one, since you missed it.”
Six months ago, my dad died. The event this man was talking about was the same weekend as my dad’s funeral. Also, while my dad wasn’t directly hired by the organization, he did a lot of volunteer work for it and had signed up to volunteer at this event the man was talking about. He was known in the organization by his own merits, not just as the “president’s husband.” Many people in the organization came to his funeral.
My mom didn’t respond to the man in the moment, but later, after the meeting was over and everyone else had left, she said, “By the way, sorry I missed your event, I was busy at my husband’s funeral.” He apologized and my mom accepted it. They haven’t had to speak since.
Personally, I don’t think she really did anything bad there: she waited until everyone was gone, made her (admittedly very snarky) comment to him alone, and accepted his apology. But she feels really bad about this interaction; she feels it was unprofessional of her to “use the dead husband card” (her words) and, from her perspective, the man meant to be rude, but probably didn’t mean to cut quite that deep. Plus, she’s been doing this for a while; she’s used to dealing with passive aggression and she’s never snapped back like that before.
But then, what else could she have done? I’m pretty sure snapping back right in the meeting, in front of everyone, wouldn’t be the right thing to do (no matter how much I kind of wish she did). I suppose she could’ve just left it alone — I know that sometimes you do have to let things roll off your back to preserve a healthy workplace — but that feels wrong in its own way as well.
So my question is: is there actually a “more professional” way to handle something like this? Should it have just been brushed off?
I think your mom’s remark was completely fine, particularly if her tone was calm and matter-of-fact rather than angry.
It also would have been fine for her to have responded in the moment, in front of everyone, with a very matter-of-fact “I’m guessing you don’t recall that that event was the weekend of Richard’s funeral, so of course I wasn’t there.”
If the colleague felt embarrassed or shown up by that, that would have been his own issue to work through. Your mom would have simply been supplying relevant facts, and his feelings about the snarky comment he chose to make would be his to deal with.
That said, my guess is that your mom, having spent her career as a woman with a lot of power in a male-dominated field — and as a woman frequently charged with doing things that people don’t like — has learned that her professional life is easier when she doesn’t hand people extra reasons to feel resentful or bitter toward her, and she’s probably had to develop a very finely tuned sense of when something is worth pushing back on and when it’s better to let it go. I’m guessing that’s why this interaction is still bothering her: she’s accustomed to absorbing little digs without responding, so she probably feels like she violated one of her own rules. But I don’t think she did — she didn’t humiliate this colleague, just waited until they were alone and then made a factual comment and accepted his apology. (If anything, her response sounds pretty restrained.)
Sometimes professionalism does mean letting things roll off your back, but it can also mean calmly making it clear that someone has crossed a line while not escalating it into a bigger conflict.
The post was my mom out of line in her response to a snarky comment from an employee? appeared first on Ask a Manager.
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