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Comment by Vanit | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand how a manager wrote that letter and thought, "this is okay".

And if I'm her manager's manager, two points:

1. I have failed to train the manager properly, and need to consider whether that's because I'm a bad manager or the environment is such that it's time to leave; and

2. If I have spent some effort with my team and this manager to prevent such idiocy, the manager who made the decision needs to be either demoted or fired.

This is a more common scenario in customer service than it should be. The fact that seniority was the only criteria is an indicator that it's not a good environment. The fact that this manager thinks she needs to lecture the woman who quit on "professionalism" (especially for the reasons stated) is an indication that it's a terrible environment.

But I'm inclined to believe this is someone trolling "ask a manager." In what customer service job does someone with six years' tenure have lowest seniority?

This is just a case of "shitty person acting shitty" and unfortunately in this scenario that shitty person was in a position of leadership. It's tempting to try to learn from these stories but often it is a complex environment-driven issue that will not translate 1:1 to our own lives. The simplest advice that I always try to remember when reading stories like this is just to be kind to other people. If you do that 9 times out of 10 it'll come out ok.

Me neither. I can't even believe it is true. It is too obvious that the manager is wrong, no one in his right mind could think to be in the right after such behaviour, especially not after the introspective necessary to writing it up. Add in the caveat of the switch for concert tickets, that's just ridiculous.

I don't know the site this is on. Is it a reliable one? If not, I bet this is a marketing stunt.

I absolutely believe it. I've seen managers do similar things, even crossing the lines into illegal areas. Managers that grew up with the company, starting when it was small, maybe even owning parts of it sometimes think that the company is family and that everybody needs to be as emotionally attached to the company as they are. Unlimited unpaid overtime, working for month without a single day of are just normal and obvious to them, it's all family. Leaving the company is a personal insult - since we're all family. You don't leave the family, do you?

Either marketing, a troll, or the employee that quit looking for pats on the back by writing their version of the story from the perspective of the manager.

As a semi-regular reader, I would say that the site author is absolutely reliable and writes pretty good columns both there and for other sites, but there have definitely been troll/joke letters in the past which have been gone up (a couple of borderline believable letters revealed by over-the-top follow-ups, etc).

I'm not 100% sure that this is one, though - there are some red flags but I've definitely had managers I could imagine doing this. And I can see the point in printing the letter even if you think it's not real but that someone out there might do the same thing for real.

It comes off as something that was fabricated and would be forwarded in a chain e-mail to get a rise out of people. There are way too many details that only serve to agitate the reader (the concert tickets, other employees being helped out by their friends but she doesn't have any, foster homes, and so on).

The whole thing is fiction, plain and simple.

It's so ignorant and full of "I'm doing something stupid, but the employee was brilliant" comments that I can only assume it was actually written by the employee herself trying to pretend-rationalise her manager's behaviour.

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