When you can’t do your job without your manager’s approval and your manager doesn’t want to give you approval, what do you do?
That’s the situation in today’s story where one remote employee is still waiting for resolution.
Let’s see how the story plays out…
Wait for feedback….ongoing
I have been with the company (10.000+ employees) for 4 years.
I switched departments last year due to relocation to another country and changed my contract to be fully remote.
I really enjoyed the company and position as well as daily tasks and was challenged in many ways and learned a fair bit.
But it wasn’t a position with (contractual) remote possibility, so I decided to change departments and to a fully remote position.
The new team was very small with just 4 people including the manager.
When I joined the team I started by organizing their chaos into a workable structure and road map strategy on how we can achieve the completion of the open tasks and requests.
My manager at that time was useless, but we got along fine and he let me do my thing.
However there are certain types of requests and changes where I do not have the authority to approve and it needs to go through my manager to the higher ups for approval.
In all that time, all the requests that I forwarded for approval (or just Feedback) were still open and waiting.
There’s a new manager.
No matter how many 1-1 or team meetings we had, they are being pushed further out pending approval.
For the first few months I had already completed all assigned tasks where possible and helped out in other teams when I could.
This particular manager was promoted after 3 months of me joining and hired his replacement.
The new manager joined us 3 months later and reports to my old manager.
At this point I mainly worked with other teams and helping them, all my tasks are waiting approval and no new tasks were given.
He has now been on this new team for 9 months.
I am somewhat relaxed with new people during the on-boarding process and make sure they have time to digest it all properly and understand the background.
So again 3 months later and having learned what type my new manager is, I gave up on explaining the complex environment and what is required to be able to deliver results for me/us as a team.
At this point, I have worked in that team for 9 months, onboarded my new manager and completed everything I could complete and helped my colleagues getting on with their open work.
Naturally other teams didn’t always need my help, so I was a bit idle for most of my managers onboarding time.
He got the manager’s request in writing.
Over and over again have I stated to my new manager that I have nothing to do, unless open tasks are given approval or new ones are assigned to me.
I asked to please escalate if any of it really needs to be done.
2 months ago my new manager exploded on me during a meeting to stop asking for approval on the open tasks and wait for feedback.
I specifically send a follow up email to get that in writing and promptly received a response back to wait for feedback or new tasks.
Now he does nothing.
Well, that’s what I do now.
I wait and do nothing besides the weekly team meeting where I have no updates.
I also no longer help out in other teams because of what my manager said.
(if the teams really needed my help, they have to go though my new manager, and any request received was rejected)
And I will keep waiting until (hopefully) it will explode.
Sounds boring, but since he’s working from home, that’s not too bad.
Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story…
This reader offers a suggestion…
Another reader would be prepared…
This person is in a similar situation.
Another reader has learned how to keep busy.
This reader has more suggestions of how to keep busy.
The manager is probably working remotely as well and doesn’t want more to do.
I wonder how long this will go on.
If you liked that story, check out this post about an oblivious CEO who tells a web developer to “act his wage”… and it results in 30% of the workforce being laid off.