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One of the hardest aspects of being a new manager is learning how and when to write a bad employee up.

What would you do if your employee was disrespectful, a bad worker, rude to coworkers, and generally was a bad person?

That is the situation that the new manager in this story is in, so when she had to write the employee up, she brought the head manager in to help. Unfortunately, the main manager didn’t handle it well either.

Personally, I think the whole management team at this company is doing a bad job and that they should just fire the problem worker. Read through the full story below and see what you think about it.

Employee explodes on me, now what do I do?

Help, help, help! I’m caught up in a work situation that has me completely mystified, and it’s knocked me on my butt.

Managing difficult employees takes a lot of work.

I (late 30s, F) work in healthcare in the northeastern part of the US. Starting in April, I was promoted to supervisor (basically a manager), and inherited a hurricane of a woman for one of my supervisees (mid 30s, F, we’ll call her L).

Every week, I get panicked phone calls and emails about some situation or another that has upset her, and I spend hours of my time listening to her rants, deescalating her upset, and overall trouble shooting her complaints.

Why would a company keep an employee like this?

She had previously worked with other supervisors, who no longer wish to work with her and my boss keeps saying over and over he thinks I’ll be good for her.

One big incident happened around Easter, which was only a couple weeks after I had started working with her.

Employees can’t just adjust their schedule without telling their boss.

We work evenings to serve our community after work/ school hours, and L scheduled herself 1 hour of PTO in the evening for an Easter egg hunt at her home (she lives only minutes from the office), and she planned on hosting the rest of her normal telehealth appointments at home, but she didn’t communicate this expectation to anyone.

In addition, during your work hours you are meant to be available for your patients. I guess that one of her regular telehealth appointments cancelled, and the front desk scheduled a replacement appointment for a child.

(We don’t do telehealth for kids. If anyone has ever had a phone call with a child under 12, you know that it’s difficult to even chat, let alone get medically relevant information.)

Giving in to people like this is a big problem.

Even though I was with my family for our holiday celebrations (I scheduled myself to be off using my PTO, but I knew that if I didn’t handle this L would take her frustration out on the front desk again), I spent over an hour calming L down and trying to sort out how to solve this problem.

I provided a temporary allowance to see this child telehealth just to get L to stop yelling, but only if the patient’s parent agreed. Turns out, the parent did not want telehealth for their child so L had to come back to the clinic to provide the services.

She is a chronic issue.

At the next supervisors’ meeting, I discussed everything that happened and my boss told me that L had already been written up over the Christmas holidays for a similar incident, but no one had ever told me that this behavior was already an issue.

I guess because L bikes to work, she wanted to change all her appointments to telehealth since it was snowing and she felt that biking in the snow would be dangerous.

And of course, she can’t accept responsibility or criticism without lashing out.

Her then supervisor told her no, that the patients are coming to the clinic and need to receive their services as scheduled.

I guess that L blew-up and starting calling the front desk incessantly, and making comments about “white men” and that every man represents the patriarchy (her supervisor at the time was a man).

This should have all been documented and told to her as the new manager.

It only ended with the clinic owner stepped in and put a stop to it (it’s a small healthcare clinic, only two supervisors and the owner run the entire site).

In the write up, L was informed she could no longer ask to work from home with less than 24-hours notice. Since no one told me this, I had no idea there were already expectations set for L’s behavior. I kind of feel that my boss (the clinic owner) set me up by not telling me about this incident and write-up.

Why is she trying to be a ‘nice’ manager to this horrible employee?

Now, I’ve had plenty of supervisors who have ranged from disengaged to outright bullies, so I really, really want to be a healthy, supportive supervisor.

Plus, all the Charlotte readings of these terrible bosses, I don’t want to be mean. So, what I’ve been trying to do is use trauma-informed care perspectives.

Whether she has a ‘trauma history’ or not, she needs to act professionally.

This means we assume that everyone we come in contact with has a trauma history we know nothing about, and we treat that person with the compassion and empathy we would as if we knew their story.

I’ve gently shared with her that her escalated and demanding tone cause me stress too, to humanize myself and also help her learn about how to use trauma-informed care with her co-workers (she’s made more than 1 front desk worker cry with her ranting).

The amount and duration of phone calls has reduced, but now we’ve reached an explosion point.

Why keep an employee who you are relieved when they are out of the office?

For next Friday, L took off the entire second half of her day to attend her child’s pre-school daycare graduation.

My thoughts were great, we won’t have a repeat of the Easter fiasco and she’ll have the whole rest of the day with her family – no issues.

She just can’t accept that her job is not remote.

But I just got a phone call that L is furious that her Friday appointments have been rescheduled throughout the week and has ruined her 100% telehealth day for Monday with one person scheduled in-person.

I told her that we cannot reschedule clients based on inconveniences of travel to the practitioner, and if her patient will be in-person, she needs to come in-person.

If you can’t write someone up, you shouldn’t be a manager.

L completely lost it on me, and starting yelling at me about how my expectations are unfair, and how everyone is against her and she has a young child at home and she’s the only one of the staff that has a young child. (She’s not the only parent, I have kids and so do many of the other staff but our kids are at least middle school aged or older.)

I couldn’t de-escalate her and she hung up on me. I’ve reached out to the clinic owner, and basically I have to write her up. This is my first write-up ever and I’m basically freaking out. I’ve only been a supervisor for like 2.5 months! I don’t know how to do this, and I hate it when people yell at me. I get all panicky and emotionally aggressive people really scare me.

How do I do this?

Oh, good. There are updates.

Update 6/21/26

After thinking over the situation more, I called my boss on Friday and told him that I don’t think it’s fair that it was known L was having behavioral issues before she was transferred to me and I don’t believe this situation is commensurate with my training and experience.

He can certainly help, but the write-up needs to come from her.

I told him I need him to help me with this write-up. He agreed and told me to do the paperwork for the write-up, and he’ll manage the meeting with L to discuss.

I emailed L immediately after that he will be joining our supervision meeting on Tuesday. So far, I’ve received one email and two voicemails with L freaking out, asking why the owner is coming and she feels like she’s getting in trouble.

This person really isn’t cut out to be a manager.

The owner told me to not respond, which I feel guilty to say is slightly satisfying because she’s been such a nightmare for me I don’t mind her sweating over her nasty behavior for a couple of days.

I am super nervous about the meeting, even though the owner will be there to basically manage it. I have been sitting here figuring out what I should do next. Despite my boss being at the meeting, I will have to speak at some point. What should I say, or avoid saying, in the meeting?

Now let’s see how the meeting went.

Update 6/24/2026

Holy smokes, I thought the write-up meeting was going to go poorly, but I never expected it to go this bad!

My boss ran the entire meeting, which was really helpful because I have no idea how to even talk to L at this point, and she’s made it perfectly clear she does not care about any behavioral boundaries or any de-escalation I try.

So, the boss kind of threw her under the bus?

I was a little disappointed at how my boss was coming more from a placating perspective, I wish he had backed me a little more firmly but whatever.

What really bothered me was that my boss told L that sometimes people can’t handle the emotional intensity, and that would never bother him but we have to respect others.

The bad management clearly comes from the top down.

L’s behavior was, of course, completely different with him than with me, since he’s the clinic owner he’s the one with the most power, which was also annoying.

When our boss reminded her of how the front desk staff is afraid of L, L sharply said, “I’m not responsible for their feelings.” Then when our boss asked L to explain what she thinks is going on, L made claims that I was ‘gaslighting’ her and basically played the victim the whole time.

L really knows how to play the victim.

L was completely insulting to me, claiming that I have “yelled” at her and that I make her feel bad. And how she suffered by not receiving a response for why this meeting was happening and she had been stressed all weekend.

L said she doesn’t want to hear anything from me anymore, and was just completely rude and dismissive to me in front of our boss!

She really needs to work on controlling her emotions.

At the end of the meeting, my boss handed L the write up paperwork and told her to read that when she returns to her office and L can follow up with him.

He walked out into the hallway with her, and the weeks and weeks of stress, frustration, and hurt feelings bubbled over and I started sobbing. Like ugly crying, so much so a little bit of drool came out.

What an awkward situation.

My boss walked back into the room, and I heard him say, “Oh.” I’ve worked at this clinic for years, and even when my world has fallen apart I’ve only ever been friendly and professional at work.

My boss has never even seen me be crabby, let alone ugly crying with my face in my hands, folded over onto my knees. He awkwardly patted me a couple times on my shoulder and literally said, “There, there.”

Why on Earth won’t these people just fire her?

I told him that I can’t do this anymore, I can’t be L’s supervisor. It’s obvious that she doesn’t respect me, and I can’t deal with the frequent calls and the constant intensity from her.

My boss agreed that she was a big challenge, and that it’s too much for a new supervisor who is just building skills. He agreed that he’ll take her on his caseload and will directly supervise her.

She is not showing that she is a good manager.

He also sent me home for the day. It was really embarrassing to walk out of the clinic early with red, puffy eyes but I was grateful to go home and just mentally check out for a few hours.

I’m not completely satisfied with the way the meeting was run, and I hate how much she got to me, but I’m relieved that she’s no longer my problem!

Why a company puts up with an employee like this is absolutely beyond me. There is no reason why they shouldn’t fire her.

Read on to see what the people in the comments have to say about this difficult situation.

This commenter says to think of it as just documenting facts.

The problem isn’t going to go away until they fire her.

Everyone knows she is a bad employee, but nobody will fire her.

The owner is a bad manager, though.

If you enjoyed this post, check out this story about an employee who decided to push back against time micromanagement.

This is exactly what I was thinking.

Sometimes, the difficult employee just needs to be fired. Why should a manager have to put so much time and effort into someone who isn’t even doing a good job?

This position clearly isn’t a good fit, but they refuse to fire her. It just doesn’t make sense.