A reader writes:
I am a Millennial woman and my new boss is a Gen X man. We have been butting heads a lot, mostly because I think he lacks the basic skills and competencies to do his job. My frustration has gotten to the point where I feel like screaming most days.
This past week I had to send him yet another email where I tried to politely and professionally explain that he was yet again doing something wrong. I had two people read it for tone before I sent it. This is the opening paragraph to the 10 paragraphs he sent in response:
“I think [Name] that you would benefit from learning about the unconscious and the psychological defense of projections and transferences that emanate from the unconscious of a person, especially one with a highly dysregulated nervous system. I am a human being too — I have done it and can do it (still do it at times) and that’s why I know about it experientially. It’s also why I speak to the need for grace often (as well as accountability). Believe it or not (and that is a literal statement because I really don’t think you can believe it at this point in your life), I extend a great deal of grace to you. But that does not mean I am going to take on crap that you are trying to offload on to me. Nor am I going to just be a wallflower as a director of an organization that needs to address its challenges. Because you have been working in an all-female environment for so long, it’s quite possible that you (and others) take the masculine energy that I at times emanate as a threat, when there is no threat. But you perceive it as so. I’m sorry about that and I can be mindful of behaviors but I am not going to sit in analysis paralysis while we try to adjust to the chaos left behind in the emotional wake of the Trump Train.”
The best part about this email is that he voluntarily cc’d the board chair on it. He tries to paint me as a hysterical, flakey, incompetent woman, which fell flat because I’ve worked with our chair, a man, for the last 10+ years.
A few weeks prior to this email, I had asked an external project partner if I could use him as a professional reference as he has had nothing but very nice things to say about the work I’ve done with him for the last 3+ years. The day after I received this unhinged email from my boss, that project partner called me and asked how my job search was going. I said “not great,” and he asked if I wanted to come work with him. We later had a two-hour long conversation, and I’m being offered a pay bump and an opportunity to oversee a really awesome project.
So, now I need to write my resignation letter to my boss. Due to our summer PTO schedules, I won’t actually see my boss for another 2.5 weeks, and I won’t be starting my new job until mid-August. When he gets back to the office, I would love to have a polite and professional response composed that burns this man and his “masculine emanations” to the ground. Can you offer me any advice on what to say?
P.S. I spoke to an employment attorney and because our organization has fewer than 15 employees, it’s not required to comply with federal anti-discrimination laws. I apparently don’t have a lot of legal rights in this instance. While this is bonkers, I am working to put together additional documentation for the board that will hopefully inspire them to fire him.
Eww, my skin crawls every time I try to read the paragraph he wrote to you. From the bottom of my heart, thank you for not sending the other nine paragraphs.
I don’t think the issue is this guy’s “masculine energy.” It’s that he seems incapable of engaging on actual work issues and instead wants to psychoanalyze you and conclude that you just don’t know how to work around masculine men because of all that estrogen you’ve been steeping in.
I don’t have any real context for what’s been going on in your office or what he refers to as “crap that you are trying to offload on (him),” and an effective response would probably require knowing some of that.
But in this case, you really don’t need to respond at all! You’re leaving. This isn’t someone who’s engaging in good faith or in a productive way, and you’re on your way out. There’s no reason you need to work toward a greater understanding with him so you can both move forward, and there’s little that indicates that would succeed even if you wanted to try. So why bother?
Your resignation letter itself should be bland and dry, as should all resignation letters. They’re not meant to have any meaningful content at all beyond, “I am resigning and my last day will be X.”
As for responding to his ludicrous email, if you respond at all, at most you should say, “This email is inappropriate on multiple levels, and you should not be applying this sort of explicitly gendered lens to work interactions. I do not think it will be productive to discuss this further, so I will leave this with BoardChair to handle from here.”
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