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Either suck it up or say something directly to the person

mrsconn23mrsconn23 member
Knottie Warrior 10000 Comments 500 Love Its First Answer
in Wedding Woes

Dear Prudence,
I am the female manager of a small sales team. Recently one of my reps left, and for purposes of keeping up with his contacts I was given access to his email account as well as his old instant messages. As I went through his IMs I discovered something upsetting. My former rep and one of my current reps spent an awful lot of time talking smack about me. I get I'm the boss and I won't always be liked, but as I sat and read the conversation history, I could feel my face burning in humiliation and my stomach twisting in shame. It was like high school. He and she discussed my hair, my body, the sound of my voice, what I wear. I hate to admit it gutted me. I’m having a hard time even looking at the rep who did this. My sister says that I should make an announcement in my team meeting that I have access to the former rep’s emails and chat sessions in an offhand manner to let the remaining rep know I know. I can’t come across as weak or sensitive, so my instinct is to suck it up and pretend I never read the poison. What do I do?

—Smacked Down

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Re: Either suck it up or say something directly to the person

  • VarunaTTVarunaTT member
    Knottie Warrior 10000 Comments 500 Love Its First Answer
    She just needs to work on getting through it.  Going through the old e-mails, I've found where I was referred to as a liar and as Queen of Everything by people I pissed off.  You just have to suck it up, being a leader opens you up to that crap.

    Though as an employee, I'm pretty careful to not e-mail/message stuff like that through work.  People in this day and age should know better than saying something like that.  All that stuff belongs to the company.
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  • GBCKGBCK member
    Knottie Warrior 5000 Comments 500 Love Its Name Dropper
    The number of emails my boss and I have sent each other that say "I need to talk to you, not via email" is absurd--for just this reason.

    I would totally do what prudie mentioned and be all passive aggressive--in a meeting..."Oh yeah, I looked at all of John's emails" (while maintaining eye contact w/ the offender) "To determine if there was any information we needed from them" (then break to contact w/ the entire group--excessively chipper) "I wanted to take this opportunity to remind you that the IM system isn't for personal use--information on it belongs to the company and isn't private" (knowing look to offender, then back to the whole group and uberchipper) "it looks like, from what John said, that Suzy will need to handle the Smith account, but there's no other information we need to report"

    Then move on.
    It'd be head games, and entirely obnoxious.  But I still probably would.
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  • JCbride2015JCbride2015 member
    5000 Comments 500 Love Its Second Anniversary First Answer
    See, I would approach the remaining rep directly.  But I am not afraid of confrontation.  I think she should call the rep into her office, inform her that she read all the IMs, and give an excruciatingly long talk on the company policy regarding personal use of the IM system.  Make her squirm.  Then send around a group-wide email or mention in the next meeting about personal use of the IM/email system, so everyone is on notice.  That kind of talk in an office is totally toxic and the rep should be made to feel uncomfortable about it.  My office has email and IM and we would never say anything negative about a colleague on it!
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    "I'm not a rude bitch.  I'm ten rude bitches in a large coat."

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