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Is it a red flag that your boss asks you to explain yourself in front of other coworkers? (linux.community)

submitted 2 days ago by lenore582@linux.community to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

11 comments fedilink hide all child comments

every time I want to talk to my boss about something work related I ask for a private conversation, because this is the way it should be, at least I see it that way.

I work with several forklifts and mistakenly though 2 were broken because I couldn't start them. Because we all need the forklifts and my boss was on holiday I started looking for a mechanic within the organization, always informing the substitute boss as well.

Regular boss comes back from his holiday, asks me to come to the office, asks me point blank in front of everyone else to hear what I was thinking to do that. 2 secretaries and 3 coworkers heard the whole story.

I presented my side of the story and after a short discussion my boss a mechanic and me went to check the forklifts were the mechanic started them, so I was wrong all along.

I apologized to them both and repeated I wanted to save time, because boss was on holidays and I wanted to have all forklifts in working condition, because we all use them extensively.

If I was the boss in this situation I'd have conducted the conversation behind closed doors, not in front of the whole office. It feels like mobbing and makes it difficult to trust this person.

Is this a red flag or am I overreacting?

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[–] IWW4@lemmy.zip 6 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Your boss was on holiday that implies that the boss was out of the office for at least a day.

I am confused by your situation. You couldn’t start two of the forklifts, so you went to get help with that. It seems you couldn’t so what else did you do for the rest of the day?

As far as your boss asking you “to explain yourself” in front of others. Whether or not that is appropriate is situational.

I often have techs explain to a team of people how they resolved an outage or how they are going to set things up. That way I can get everyone up to speed on the effort or maybe other team members will identify things the lead had not thought of.

If someone was late for work, that would be a conversation I would have in private.

[–] sneaky@r.nf 5 points 1 day ago

I manage a team and came to say this same thing. If the topic is a lesson the whole team can benefit from, I bring the whole team in. The more obstacles that can be resolved without my involvement the better. Sometimes that means bringing the whole team in on a mistake, too. I do my best to ensure it's framed as simply as that though. A mistake to learn from. As well as ensuring the employee is in a good headspace to share that moment. It's not a punishment. Mistakes happen.

This may not be the case in your situation, but something to consider.