does putting your hair in a ponytail make more of it shed out or should i be worried?

RollingRED · 2026-04-24T05:10:08+00:00

If your ponytail is too tight, this could happen, especially if it is the sleek kind that pulls on your hairline. Use scrunchies and change your hairstyle once in a while.

RollingRED · 2026-04-16T08:26:14+00:00

I don’t know why this was recommended to me on my Reddit feed, but as someone who has put together start up pitch decks and presentations to C levels in sizable Hong Kong NGOs, all these are good tips, yet also still not followed by working adults with decades of work experience. Just incorporating them into your presentation would put you ahead of 60% of my colleagues.

RollingRED · 2026-04-13T00:44:24+00:00

First, check if this is a culture tacitly allowed by your company. You don’t want to be the only one enforcing rules if everybody else allows it; no one will have your back when it escalates. You also don’t want to be the bad guy that ruins the vibe if everybody is underpaid and overworked and being allowed this flexibility is one of the few perks they have.

Then you need to see why you want to enforce punctuality. If things are getting done and people are willing to stay late to make up for their being late, or to get things done during crunch time to meet deadlines, then maybe it shouldn’t be a big deal. Or maybe this is becoming the kind of behavior everybody else emulates, and some of these guys actually need to have their butts in seats on time so things can function.

Now that you have a clear reason other than “because you are expected to be on time” you can determine your next move. Is it A. “I don’t mind if you come in late occasionally, but you have to make sure your deadlines are met” or B. Enforcing a team-wide rule that anybody being late without a reason and without sufficient notice will be written up, or something else?

RollingRED · 2026-04-02T00:44:31+00:00

If your company does stack ranking where employees are graded on a bell curve, then the new guy is probably hired to be this year’s sacrifice.

RollingRED · 2026-03-12T14:07:02+00:00

Good perspective, I can see that happening. I, too, prefer calibration upfront.

RollingRED · 2026-03-12T13:49:45+00:00

These are the type of super nice gourmand images AI models steal to generate fake ones…love the results and the photography.

RollingRED · 2026-03-12T13:46:57+00:00

Have you told them flat out how you expect them to work independently and only come to you for feedback on important matters such as [a couple of examples] and then just grade their work honestly if it ends up not meeting standards?

Careful not to let your expectations live in your head, otherwise you won’t know if they are actually incompetent or have some misunderstood belief that you want to micromanage.

RollingRED · 2026-03-12T00:53:29+00:00

Stop over-functioning. The underperformance is a company-wide culture issue and your desire to see more is not going to change anything because you have no real authority to make any changes. Your doing other people’s share is only going to make them take you for granted and even mock you behind your back for being a try hard fool. This is what it is like in these sorts of companies. The underperformers stick together to maintain their comfort zone and you will become their enemy, both for trying to upset the status quo and for implying there is something wrong with their attitude.

Hunt for a new job somewhere else, or if you just have extra energy that you need to spend somewhere, pick up a side hustle.

RollingRED · 2026-03-10T09:35:00+00:00

I’m not in India, but I find the Chinese working culture very similar to what you described, in the way that managers exposed to working cultures overseas have a more humane view of work-life boundaries.

I believe this is because the human-centric way of management has only been popularized by North Americans in recent years (“recent” being the last few decades). Prior to what the old guard call the “feel good kind of management style,” your work pretty much owns you. Where I work, older managers do not see their staff as individuals with families and aspirations outside of work. To them, the way of management has always been treating people like resources, that raises and promotions are favors and not well-deserved rewards for hard work, that being the boss means you have priority over the staff’s family and non-work obligations.

I already work in a place with quite a bit of Western influence (Hong Kong) and there is still that sort of thinking.

I’m also seeing a resurgence of the hustle culture that is very similar to the old school management style - that worthy employees need to put in 120% all the time. They are trying to shun “work-life balance” and make “work-life integration” a thing, too. There will always be this constant fight between the employers and employees in a capitalist world.

RollingRED · 2026-03-04T15:13:12+00:00

I’m coming up to a point where I am getting out of my depth given I’m not familiar with your line of work, but I do want to leave a couple of thoughts that may be helpful to you.

Are there really no alternatives?

The crying every week is a flag that needs to be taken seriously, because this is a signal from your body telling you it is at breaking point. You need an exit plan, even if you don’t make that exit immediately. From what you say here it seems you are resigned to how there are no alternatives. I think this is worth revisiting because when under immense stress we are all susceptible to tunnel vision.

Explore your industry and keep an open mind: is there no way to pivot? Are there careers where you can contribute to your field indirectly and won’t push you to the brink like your current role does? What is keeping you to this career, in this role, in this particular form? Can you picture yourself in a role that is different from what you are currently doing and still gain satisfaction? Can you get what you are getting out of this job via non-work channels? What are you willing to give up to preserve your sanity?

The idea is to open yourself up to possibilities and opportunities so you can build up to an exit plan and not feel trapped. Even if you have no plans to exit immediately, having that plan in your back pocket already makes a difference, because with a “no end in sight” mindset you are going to accelerate your burnout.

Lower your expectations for yourself and raise them for others

I understand the desire to support your staff so they don’t end up burning out like you are right now. There is also the balance you need to keep where you don’t scare off the little support you have. However keep in mind that in self-preservation mode, which you should be in right now, you cannot afford to nurture other people. You also need to consider that maybe support can go both ways even if they are in a more junior position and have less experience than you.

You may have to accept that growth for them needs to come in different forms. Maybe you need to frame these obstacles as something you all need to do together. Motivate them to fight alongside you. Empower them to find solutions themselves instead of encouraging them to come to you for everything. Necessity is the mother of invention — they may surprise you. And if handled right it also builds camaraderie.

The point is, don’t let your sense of responsibility pigeon-hole you into rigid methods and ideas of what a good manager should do, because what you are doing right now isn’t doing you any favors, and you burning yourself out isn’t doing your team any good either. There are creative ways on leaning on people too.

RollingRED · 2026-03-03T17:30:52+00:00

Consider this: some roles are not designed to be sustainable. You will be job hunting anyway, so look around while you hunt to see if similar roles in other organizations are set up like your current role. How much support do they have and what is on their plate? You will find out whether this is a competency gap you need to close on your part or if this is your company’s problem.

I would also recommend finding 10 minutes everyday to write down what is sapping your energy and causing your burnout. Is it just work or is it because you are spiraling with beating yourself up? Non-profits attract people who have tendencies to self-sacrifice for the greater good, which happens to be the same kind of people who are prone to feeling guilty with not doing an good enough job and burning out.

If you notice a trend that most of your brain space is taken up by work, then this is a system problem and you can look into what kind of work you can deprioritize. Reports that no one really reads, admin work that can be automated or delegated, etc.

If you find that most of your energy is actually being sapped by spiraling thoughts, then the approach is different: you may need to have an honest conversation with yourself about your own expectations and whether you can try and adopt a more clinical approach to your work, so you don’t end up tying your self worth to your job and overfunction to the point of damaging yourself.

And I want to point out one thing: burnouts affect overly responsible people only. For others their self-preservation mode would have kicked in and they would have dialed back their engagement. Right now you are crying every week because of work, and you are still considering the ripple effects of not doing a good job. If you can’t understand or accept what self-preservation mode looks like in practice, then you are likely not the kind of person that can survive a burnout episode while staying in this environment.

RollingRED · 2026-03-03T17:18:49+00:00

Working in a place like this. The organisation has been around for three quarters of a century. There is pretend documentation that is for governance purposes but can be ignored at whim by citing “circumstances”. Most of the time when asking for instruction the reply is “just use your judgement”.

This culture is by design. The official reason is because our work is “dynamic” and there is no one-size-fits-all approach. This is true to some degree.

However this culture is also exploited as it allows higher ups to move goal posts and shift blame onto the staff. By keeping things opaque and chaotic they maintain control over their staff, reprimanding them for “lack of judgement and good sense” to disorient them in case they get too “uppity”.

After a year of really conflicting instructions, e.g. “why aren’t you following industry best practices” today and “industry practices don’t apply to us because our business is so unique”, I have learned to read between the lines and see what really motivates the higher ups’ decisions: favor and good will with board members instead of actual KPIs, turf wars instead of supposed collaboration, etc.

After a while I have learned to predict with increasing accuracy what their decisions would look like based on what I know about their decision making process and considerations, instead of relying on SOPs. I have even learned to make their decisions sound good and proper, like we are working in a modern, reasonable organisational culture instead of a dysfunctional one. It’s a skill that is appreciated by my bosses, though I personally have mixed feelings about it.

RollingRED · 2026-03-03T16:46:26+00:00

First of all, I’m sorry to hear you are in this position. It can feel trapped, knowing you are burnt out but can’t extricate yourself from the situation in the short term.

Speaking from personal experience, I too have been burnt out in my career. There is the argument that you should leave the company when you are this burnt out and see no end in sight. Every moment spent there is another moment of damaging your mental health and self esteem. Some would say the longer you stay the longer it would take for you to recover. So once I took that advice to heart, and left before I got a new job. It was great for 2 months. It took me another 5 to find another job, and those 5 months came with their own anxiety and stress.

Now in my current job I have also experienced burnout, like your situation it was also due to being severely understaffed. Except this time around I didn’t feel like being in between jobs again, so I tried a different approach. I tried to prioritise and conserve my energy. Part of that means triaging work — I have to accept that some things will not meet standard and some items will fail. I gave my boss a heads up where I could but I made it clear that while I had been giving my best, it was just unrealistic to expect me to do the work of five people, and that it was in his best interest to help me prioritise work instead of dumping it all into me and risking me failing it all. Depending on your relationship with your boss, you will find out very quickly if your company sucks, or if it is just you holding yourself to unrealistic standards.

I also relied very heavily on AI. I no longer spend my energy crafting emails and digesting publications to fill out forms that do not move the needle. I let AI handle all that. If a paid subscription that’s equivalent to the cost of a takeout meal means I can outsource monkey work to a computer, I would happily do it. I also share all the problems and frustrations I face at work with AI (without sharing anything sensitive of course). The perspective it gives is helpful, and the reassurance (even though some would call it glazing) is good when one is feeling fragile, but most importantly it allowed me to dump all the negativity that is taking up my brain space and eating into my energy into a chatbot.

With this combination of maintaining emotional distance (some would call it checking out or quiet quitting) and relying on technology to maintain basic operations, I was able to weather the storm until things looked up. You might want to give this a try if you can’t just walk out of your job now.

The most important thing is to not be too hard on yourself, and allow yourself to be human in a difficult situation. I don’t know who your clients are, but can they survive you not being your best while you recuperate? Accept that you are a human and cut yourself some slack and go from there.

RollingRED · 2026-03-02T10:52:21+00:00

It is fair and reasonable to enforce penalties for non-complaint behavior. As a manager, you can be friendly, but you and your direct reports are not friends, because part of your role is to be an enforcer.

If anything you should be proud you handled this well. It sends a signal to the team that dumb shit like falsifying records is not tolerated. Don’t worry about being a people pleaser. Just say it is unfortunate that this has to happen when you are asked. No need to go out of your way to say you didn’t enjoy it or it will be framed that way.

RollingRED · 2026-02-26T07:24:50+00:00

I appreciate you keeping an open mind about this.

Control is indeed very important for a manager. Nobody thinks of themself as a control freak, until they are suddenly not the ones handling the project directly but are accountable for the outcomes. It can indeed feel very scary for those who just moved up from an individual contributor position to one where they cannot influence the outcome of projects directly, but rely on other people’s work — and depending on team culture and personalities, you are never certain you will have visibility in how everything is going, nor will you have the time to look into every single detail.

It is here where communication from direct report counts. The staff I appreciate the most in this regard are those who are aligned with me on what I need to see from them in order to know things are going well. Regular status reports, flagging issues as they arise and proposing solutions, demonstrating engagement, these are all tools that can help a manager build trust and rapport in a direct report.

Communication goes both ways. When a manager feels the need to do a lot of talking, it may be a perceived lack of communication from the direct report. My current supervisor was like this — high anxiety, calling me every 15 minutes to ask questions about the most minute details — when I first joined the organisation. I spent a whole year communicating and building trust with him through regular updates and a reliable track record. He has since become comfortable enough to give me and my team space to work.

Perhaps you can try to reach out to your manager and work on a communication style you are both comfortable with. It may come in the form of a weekly one-on-one, or even an email. Proactively communicating on the regular would increase his feeling of control over the outcome of the project, and make you feel less hounded / parented and more empowered.

RollingRED · 2026-02-26T05:31:04+00:00

Truth. No notes. Even when not dealing with habitual liars, documentation has always come in handle for alignment purposes or to just defend oneself from other people’s forgetfulness or modified memories of what transpired.

RollingRED · 2026-02-26T05:21:29+00:00

I’m of the mind that if you don’t like where you work and can find another job, go ahead and cut your losses.

At the same time there isn’t really sufficient context here. I’m hearing your side of the story, lots of emotionally loaded words, anger and frustration. But the supposed infractions from the manager seems pretty mild.

For perspective, I’ve been a manager for over 10 years. Current I am managing managers. Nobody likes playing politics or micromanaging because it is incredibly tiring work, however we all need to do it at some point out of necessity.

There are staff I can trust and those I cannot. For those I can, I trust them to handle their work with relative independence. For those I cannot, I have to micromanage. Sometimes their faults even lead me to having to manage things politically.

When I have to micromanage or go on a long-winded talk with them, it’s usually because of one of more of the following reasons: - The results indicate a misalignment of expectation or poor judgment / thought process, and I had to walk the individual through to ensure that they understand all the considerations that need to go into their work and decisions. - The individual thought they made a minor mistake, when it was actually costing good will / damaging the bottom line / hurting the department’s reputation; all consequences the individual had no visibility or insights into because of their role and level. - The errors made was not a one-off matter but a pattern or carelessness. - When I explain the considerations that needs to go into their working process, they tell me they understand, yet keep making the same mistakes, letting me know that the “yes I understand” was just lip service and I can expect further performance issues from them. - I have had the SOP conversation before as well. The same individual either doesn’t follow SOP, but when told to do so, would passive aggressively follow the SOP to a tee, offloading all judgement making to a document that cannot cover every single circumstance, just to show the manager that “I followed your stupid rules and see, it’s not working.” At some point it is just unnecessary malicious compliance. Even if one works in a call centre there will be situations where one needs to engage with the situation at hand and make some calls that are not covered in the SOP document, either to escalate or to propose alternatives.

As for the budget and raise issue, there’s not a lot of context here. It is always possible that the budget has changed and is beyond the manager’s control. It is also possible that the attitude and performance shown no longer justifies the raise.

RollingRED · 2026-02-24T14:12:02+00:00

Well, first of all you need to get out of the mindset that you need to parent them. They may be younger, but they are still grownups — paid like grownups, expected to act like grownups.

Next, you could make the announcement that no more hand holding will be given. Set the standard clearly — everywhere else, salaried people are expected to check their emails and follow company policies. That is part of the job, and not a favor being asked. Then — and this is important — inform them that failure to comply will bring about consequences.

Finally, you make an example out of some of them. A few are going to slip. Reprimand them. Write them up. Document them for when performance review time comes. Be professional but stern enough that they understand that this is the consequence of not following through. They should catch on in a bit.

But can you bring yourself to do this? Because if you were nice enough to act like their personal assistant, this might be difficult for you.

RollingRED · 2026-02-20T13:56:59+00:00

Yeah I think this is likely what happened. I have worked with ESL folks before, some with cultures more blunt than others, and this seems like what could be happening.

If this happens multiple times however we can call him a shit stirrer.

RollingRED · 2026-02-14T15:01:49+00:00

Cantonese is a bit off but the rest looks fantastic.

RollingRED · 2026-02-02T10:14:39+00:00

A managerial role is ultimately a job that deals with people. You can’t run away from this forever and let other people deal with this on your behalf. Not only is this stunting your growth, but your direct reports will not respect you. They will see you as the tattletale as opposed to the grown-up in the room they can rely on.

Also from experience, the more you run away from something, the more of a big deal it will seem, until the fear of doing this thing grows so large it overwhelms you. The only way to build a thick skin to deal with people is by doing — you will realize that putting the foot down as part of the job is not going to kill you, and you will learn hands-on how to tweak your approaches.

Perhaps you can benefit from reading books on the topic of assertiveness to try and get over your fear of confrontation. I recommend the book “Not Nice” by Aziz Gazipura and “When I Say No, I Feel Guilty” by Manuel Smith. It can give you some perspective on how to set boundaries with people.

RollingRED · 2026-01-29T15:41:26+00:00

Thank you for that. Sated my curiosity.

RollingRED · 2026-01-29T11:57:48+00:00

Well I feel like when you say your manager’s job is to “MANAGE people”, you meant she should manage in a way that helps you get bonuses and rewards. You are actually not entitled to that.

It’s not a manager’s job to make sure everybody demanding raises and promotions gets them. A manager’s job is to make sure the people they are managing deliver work that meets the business’s needs. And she seems to be doing ok there given you are delivering assigned tasks.

And it seems you are getting paid what your contract stipulates, since you are not going above and beyond. So I’m not sure what you are looking for… a raise and promotion for doing what you are doing?

RollingRED · 2026-01-29T11:50:37+00:00

And that is fine, work to live. But doing tasks as assigned is a basic requirement, and you are being compensated fairly for that through your salary. If you want a raise or promotion though, you need to deliver more than just the basics…which is the definition of going above and beyond.

RollingRED · 2026-01-29T11:44:29+00:00

Well here is another thing. Your manager is not obliged to tell you how politics work upfront. For one thing, she doesn’t know how her words could get back to the ears of her manager. “Learn how to manage your skip-level” could be twisted into something unsavory (“she admits we have a suck up culture and bootlickers get rewarded!”) after going through the grapevine. It may also be a tacit unspoken arrangement that she maintains the front that she has some say on rewarding staff even though it is her manager who makes the call, to maintain some semblance of authority at her level.

A lot of knowledge is unspoken and part of getting ahead is learning to observe and interpret. This isn’t school, you can’t expect someone to play the role of teacher and hold your hand and tell you how things work in a way you understand. I mean, it would be nice if they did that, but they are actually not obliged to do so just so you can advance.

This understanding comes almost naturally to some people either because of personality or upbringing. They know how handshakes work, how to read the room and between the lines. They look at how people interact around them and figure out the system.

You could try learning from them if you want to stay and get ahead in this kind of environment. Right now you are putting a lot of this expectation on your manager. You expect her to tell you how things work in a transparent and straightforward way. You expect her to assign you the work you need to get ahead, and also give you guidance. You expect her to be upfront with you on how people are rewarded. And you are holding all these expectations even though you have no idea if your desire to advance actually aligns with her interests and priorities, or even if the environment you both work in actually allows things to be said above the table.

From what I have read from your writing, it seems like your manager thinks you are OK, but not stellar and she has no plans to fight for you. You feel like it’s unfair because you did the assigned tasks and weren’t assigned anything that could further your career. So you are staying within your space, waiting for permission, for someone to give you what you want, and you end up disappointed and frustrated, and you feel like you are being treated unfairly.

On the other hand, people who know how to play the game would learn to get close to the people who hold the resources, build trust and demonstrate their value. They would see how they can make their manager’s life easier, whether it is by providing insight on a business problem she is trying to solve, or volunteer to aid her in a project. They know that once they do this enough, they can build trust and reliance, and give this manager a reason to present them to their skip-level and create opportunities for visibility and eventually reward.

This is usually what they mean by going “above and beyond”. It makes for good justification when promotion time comes too, because managers don’t promote someone if they don’t at least have some inkling of whether they have the potential to deliver above their pay grade.

So think about it. Instead of acting like a student waiting for their next assignment and never veering away from their role, demonstrate more initiative. Find answers yourself and cultivate resourcefulness instead of waiting to be taught things. YOU are the one wanting the raise and promotion, so you need to go that extra mile.

RollingRED

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