Management Woes

We lost a promising manager this week, an unfortunate hazard of running a recovery program.

When this woman began volunteering for management she was overflowing with gratitude. Helping others was going to be her life’s work. And at first she behaved accordingly. She diligently worked long hours. She often wouldn’t take a break until a supervisor would force her to.

Although she did a good job with the mechanics of the program, after a while drama began swirling around her. She’s was rumored to be showing favoritism.  She changed some rules about off-property meetings.  She was possibly in a relationship with another client.  We kept hearing stories.

But our policy is to not take action based on rumors. While we listen to what clients say we don’t act on chatter or gossip. We know clients can be angry and vindictive. They sometimes try to get a manager fired. Our policy is to give loyalty to those who do the hard work of dealing with often emotionally needy clients. And if there is doubt, the benefit goes to our employee.

In this case the situation resolved itself. The manager took a pass on Mother’s Day to visit a once-estranged daughter who was preparing dinner for her. When the daughter called later, wondering why she hadn’t showed up, we knew there was a problem.  Not only did our manager not show up at her daughter’s, she didn’t return to her job until late in the evening – and only then to hand over her keys.

We’re not sure what happened. We hope she remains in recovery but the circumstances of her departure raises several questions.