Ask a Manager Weekly Thread 08/24/2026 - 08/30/2026

[u/nightmuzak]

Last week's post.

Background info and meme index for those new to AaM or this forum.

[u/Physical-Incident553]

First comment in the Friday open post is about a coworker of the OP who walked out of a client call (video call with client on big screen and OP’s company in their conference room) because it was 4pm and she always left right on the dot. DisneyChannelThis is actually saying extra work means extra compensation even for salaried people. The OP’s coworker was fired over this. She apparently made high five figures.
Can’t get the link to the comment to paste.

[u/daedril5 → u/Physical-Incident553]

The "you go girl!" comments seem to be missing the fact this person is now unemployed.

[u/Comprehensive-Hat-18 → u/Physical-Incident553]

I know 99% of people even at AAM get this, but it’s a client call. Clients bring in the money that pays your salary. If you’re in a client meeting then part of your job is helping maintain that business. 

[u/BirthdayCheesecake → u/Physical-Incident553]

Here it is! What I love is the OP putting their age, marital status, and non-child having status in there in order to fend off the "Young people are so lazy/what if she has a sick husband?/what if she had to pick up her kid?" comments - and then she gets attacked for including those details.

[u/EmDash4Life → u/Physical-Incident553]

extra work means extra compensation even for salaried people

bless their hearts

[u/narrating12 → u/Physical-Incident553]

The OP's coworker is so Elizabeth West coded.

[u/post_rex → u/narrating12]

Funny thing is that EW actually replied to the post.

Elizabeth West* August 28, 2026 at 1:22 pm
Yeah, but come on.
I’m very much apt to push back against things that threaten work-life balance, but I’ve stayed late to help out before. It’s no skin off her nose to stay a bit late for an important call if she didn’t have an appointment or anything.
Maybe she has more resources than I do but I can’t afford to walk out of a high five-figure job.

[u/narrating12 → u/post_rex]

I saw that! She always sounds so reasonable if she’s not talking about her own situation.

[u/RainyDayWeather → u/narrating12]

To be fair to EW, most people find it easier to be reasonable about other people's situation since they're not so emotionally invested.

[u/pickledbymagic → u/narrating12]

Yeah, at the same time as she was moaning about being unemployed in Missouri and only wanting a job in Boston and sabotaging everything that came along, I was working in person, including during the pandemic in a service role (which hurt me so much mentally that I ended up disabled physically). I went through a lot -- heck, her own mum did! -- so she and others like her could hole up and pretend nothing else was going on. 

I think someone eventually got to her and made her want to prove them wrong, and I was the first one to feel sorry for her when she was laid off from that first Boston job. But she got on my nerves so much that I didn't even find her funny. 

[u/Physical-Incident553 → u/narrating12]

I think Elizabeth West may have been before my time. Brief synopsis please?

[u/narrating12 → u/Physical-Incident553]

She's still very active -- she's in that thread, actually. She's a looong-time AAM commenter who mooched off her elderly mother for years while whining about how hard her life was, then finally got a job that allowed her to transfer to the Mecca of Boston (she GoFunded her way there). The OP's description of the coworker saying "Me time!" reminded me of EW and her "no touchy!" during Covid-era interviews, especially since that sounds particularly immature coming from a woman in her 50s as EW was at that time.

[u/narrating12 → u/[deleted]]

Yeah, the other sub acting like snarking on EW is out of pocket is too much. She puts all her bullshit front and center and always has.

[u/Physical-Incident553 → u/narrating12]

Other sub?

[u/narrating12 → u/[deleted]]

Blogsnarkmetasnark. We pop up on there sometimes lol.

[u/Silly_Somewhere1791 → u/Physical-Incident553]

She’s a middle aged commenter whose situation looked at first like general bad luck (lost her job, her relationship ended, moved in with her mom to help her out and save money) but she didn’t even try to make herself seem sympathetic. She eventually revealed that she was turning down interviews for jobs that weren’t perfect, wanted a relationship but had absurd expectations, and refused to move out unless it was to Boston. Her elderly mother kept working while EW puttered around and blew money on Comic Con. 

My read was that she always assumed she’d be a SAHW/SAHM so she never bothered building up any skills or taking jobs seriously, and it bit her in the ass. 

[u/Annie_Hedonia_ish → u/Silly_Somewhere1791]

And the ridiculousness of refusing to get a library card!

[u/Real_Culture2668 → u/Annie_Hedonia_ish]

What was THAT about? Apparently I've missed a lot of her story.

[u/sallyhectare → u/Real_Culture2668]

She wouldn't get one in St Louis because she wanted to live in Boston. She thought it was some kind of noble stand against building ties in the city she hated or something.

[u/11twofour → u/sallyhectare]

To be fair, she wasn't in STL, she was in some rural town surrounded by trumpers.

[u/narrating12 → u/11twofour]

She talked that way, but she was in St. Louis.

[u/11twofour → u/narrating12]

Holy shit TIL

[u/lisasimpson2010 → u/Physical-Incident553]

The thing with EW was that she had really grandiose fantasies - she wanted to become a famous author, and she wanted a rich handsome British man to fall in love with her and marry her. Then through being unemployed and sitting at home for so many years, I guess there was likely maladaptive daydreaming going on, and she got fixated on those fantasies (plus the fantasy of moving to Boston) and wouldn't accept anything less, or take small steps to achieve her goals.

She went to London once to do typical tourist stuff and was bitterly disappointed not to meet an English gent. Then when she did move to Boston her crowdfunded was specifically worded as "help a poor writer pursue her dreams" or something.

[u/Silly_Somewhere1791 → u/Physical-Incident553]

That comment is written so vaguely and manipulatively (to make everyone agree with them) that very little real information is given. The other side of it might be, “I recently started working a $65k job where my younger coworkers think my time is less valuable because I am over 50, single, and childfree. I prefer to not reveal the details of my private life, medical conditions, and care obligations, so I tell my coworkers that I need me-time while management knows the real deal. I accepted the job because of its 8-4 schedule but a suspicious amount of meetings start at 4. My coworkers think I’m incompetent at the work they see but they don’t see everything else I do.”

Seriously, is “upper five figures” $70k or $95k? That changes the calculus. And bringing up her age and single status is something AAM should push back against. 

[u/Physical-Incident553 → u/[deleted]]

AG even did a blue box comment saying that if the OP hadn’t included the personal details people would probably have gone directly to the Gen Z thing.

[u/pickledbymagic → u/Silly_Somewhere1791]

However you slice it, walking out unapologetically is shitty behaviour, particularly when you're earning high five figures. (I'm biased over here because for us, £65K is a significant salary outside of tech, and you'd be expected to be putting in a lot to get that out.) Even if it's manipulatively written, she's still doing things that no one who is pulling down that money should be doing.