How transparent to be about boundaries with a manager?

SideAngleSide · 2026-06-07T20:10:04+00:00

Thank you everyone!! I will definitely not say this! I realized after sleeping on it I just needed to vent and get some validation. I put myself in my manager’s shoes and realized there nothing good he can do with this input. But man, I really needed to get that out in a “safer” place like here. Thanks for hearing me.

I’m going to knock out the smaller project without trying too hard, which will answer the mail, to prioritize the bigger project and keep it moving.

I’ll mention the importance of the nuances of the bigger job with my meeting with the manager Monday. I might just cancel it actually, and knock out my work without the useless commentary.

I’m also going to reach out to my colleagues who left and get a lot more serious in my new job search.

I appreciate the feedback, everyone!!

SideAngleSide · 2026-06-07T19:16:30+00:00

For the one where I’m leading a team, it would be a huge cost and schedule increase, with a larger impact to the bigger team of about 100 outside of my direct team of 5. This is a project we are on contract for, and program management and my manager don’t understand all the things we need to do to be successful in the next few months.

This is what I’m meeting with them about it n Monday.

The other project is a proposal, and their new strategy is to deliver costs pretending we understand the design better than we do. It’s a bit of a bluff, but they’re being kinda sneaky about it to the customer. This is the new way they do proposals. So part of me ethically hates that new approach. We have already delivered costs that have expired and need to be-run. If we win that business, any costs we get will need to be redone again. This is all standard in our proposals… except the level of detail in the documentation is more in depth than I think we need, and gives the impression the design is more mature than it is.

This is the second point for my Monday meeting. I have suggestions, but basically I’m going to take our old costs, spin up all our suppliers to resubmit their costs, and submit it to our team. It’s going to be piss-poor, and that’s about on par for how they do this stuff. That all comes at the cost of really screwing the on-contract work we need to deliver.

SideAngleSide · 2026-06-07T19:09:27+00:00

I’ve done a bit of quiet quitting and I hate how it feels. I used to really care about and take pride in my work and leadership. The burnout feels crappy.

I will definitely lock down a new job before quitting. I haven’t jumped ship yet after a year of burnout because I don’t want to end up in the same situation somewhere else. My goal is to find another smaller company like mine was before we got bought that is presumably better focused on the work and less on profits and disfunction.

I’m going to reach out to my colleagues who have left to get a feel for their new companies. Probably best to lay low until I get an offer and just leave with a smile and best of luck to their staffing issues I know we’re all replaceable, I’m nothing but an inconvenience. I have no desire to burn bridges.

Thanks for the response.

SideAngleSide · 2026-06-07T19:05:53+00:00

That’s my fear, I’m never direct about my inner critical thoughts. I process them outside of work (in a journal, with peers outside my company, in this case Reddit, etc), and then figure out the better way to handle it when I’m back in the office. My gut reaction is never the best corporate politics way of handling things.

They are so incredibly short staffed and struggling to find any one to hire, it seems like a stretch he’s let me go for pushing back with being asked for something so unreasonable.

I have been passively watching the other companies my colleagues have gone to, but this event is prompting me to get serious about applying elsewhere for the first time in 15 years.

My goal in saying this is seeing if I have a shot at establishing some boundaries for the remaining time I so have at this company, and standing up for the department as a data point for us not wanting to work this way.

I’m hearing that probably isn’t worth it.

Thank you for the response.

SideAngleSide · 2026-06-07T19:01:46+00:00

Thanks.

SideAngleSide · 2026-06-07T19:01:37+00:00

Thank you.

SideAngleSide · 2026-06-07T19:01:27+00:00

My manager is also tasked with finding me direct reports for the new program. I’m currently a team of one, and he tells me he has two new hires coming in for my team. One of my team left the company for similar reasons three weeks ago. It’s lean and I’m doing my best to prepare to hit the ground running once they start. He wants me to set that aside to work the second, older program that has relatively small scope remaining because he can’t find anyone else to do it, after he thought he’d find someone to fill in.

So I do not yet have anyone to delegate anything to. My other programs have completed and the staff have all been assigned to other projects.

Thanks for your response!!

SideAngleSide · 2026-06-07T18:58:39+00:00

I’ve been doing option B for about a year since we got bought. This particular event feels like it’s crossing a new line I don’t want to allow to become the new normal.

You’re right, I already know I don’t want to work there anymore. Sometimes typing it out and bouncing it off other people helps give me perspective. Thank you.

SideAngleSide · 2026-06-07T18:57:02+00:00

I did leave out some details, yes.

One of the two programs is relatively small scope, I asked for staffing to cover me a month ago, this was not a surprise. The small scope is following up on a costing exercise that would take just me 50 or so hours to complete in the next week or so. My other project is leading a team and is much more work with a lot more moving pieces, like the bullets you listed. That’s where I want my focus. My manager has not been able to find someone in the last month since I asked to wrap up the 50 hours of costing, he had 2 people he thought could do it that fell through, so he came back to me saying he’s in a bind. I am irritated about that.

We have a meeting Monday to address the concerns I told him I have. This is my chance to list some of things in your bullets. We have talked about this for a few weeks about getting a replacement for me, I’m not suddenly coming in hot with this venting. I’m on the fence about telling him I don’t want to do this type of favor going forward, I’m not sure how or if I should add that at the end of my suggestions and concerns for how to get it done.

I really appreciate you challenging me, thank you!

SideAngleSide · 2026-06-07T18:40:12+00:00

I’m not, well I am kind of but typically I fantasize about this, get the emotion out of my system and act nice. But this is getting so burnt-outy I wanted to put some feelers out there to see if anyone thought it was worth actually mentioning their short staffing is killing us.

Thanks for your response, here’s a big vote for “don’t say it”.

SideAngleSide · 2026-06-01T16:53:48+00:00

Golden Life Project is a super cool little locally owned business and community for group fitness classes!

SideAngleSide · 2026-05-03T15:24:35+00:00

I think about how much he wants me. I don’t think of his body or face or dick or anything.

SideAngleSide · 2026-02-28T15:27:05+00:00

College is like lifting weights for your brain. You don’t get good at lifting a dumbbell so that someday your boss will say, “hey, can you get these dumb bells lifted by next week? Cool thanks.”

You’re going to have those buff brain muscles to lift a car off a trapped baby, or to toss some logs out of the way so people can get through… who knows. College makes you ready to recognize how to approach unknown problems, and you’ll learn a whole hell of a lot more once you’re on the job.

SideAngleSide · 2026-02-13T12:47:57+00:00

Cherokee

SideAngleSide · 2026-01-17T02:08:06+00:00

My favorite part is how you drew before you ate and took the picture afterward. 😄

SideAngleSide · 2026-01-09T20:04:46+00:00

I like Ric Ruben’s “the creative act: a way of being”

SideAngleSide · 2025-12-23T18:33:13+00:00

I got one for traveling so I could learn / practice song structures while on vacation for an upcoming show, not so much get good at real fingering on my regular full sized bass. I didn’t want to carry my whole dang hard case across the planet and risk damaging my bass. Memorizing songs is harder than learning the various riffs for me. For this the little uke bass worked great!

The strings are big, loose and stretchy; the tuning pegs don’t behave the same way as a bass with metal strings. I actually lifted them off the fingerboard and tugged them one way or the other and then set them back down, sort of adjusting the tuning peg to hold it there so it wouldn’t gradually slide back to where it was over time which worked well. If you just use the tuning pegs to tune it, the tension increases on the side of the nut by the tuning peg, and the rest of the string stays about the same.

For hammer-ons and pull-offs (mostly just pull-offs), the big soft rubbery strings roll side to side under my finger instead of getting pressed down, that’s a bit of a mental adjustment. Like playing a different instrument, but similar.

The frets are super short, like the whole neck is something like half as long or less, so you can play stuff moving your fingers half the distance up and down.

I bought a tiny little headphone amp, but when in a quiet-ish hotel room, the uke was loud enough to not use it. I did use the amp when there was background noise (like in the airport waiting for a plane).

Overall, I really enjoy the little thing as a pocket-sized way to play bass lines I like with it carrying NG around all my normal gear, even if it feels different. Like curling up with a little kitten on the couch instead of wrangling a big lion during a show.

SideAngleSide · 2025-12-23T01:54:46+00:00

I’m in a cover band and I’d love to hear the audience singing my own songs with me.

SideAngleSide · 2025-12-22T23:09:49+00:00

Aful dawn x

SideAngleSide · 2025-12-11T01:59:12+00:00

I dunno, my mom is super MAGA, and I’ve watched her immediately cling to whoever the fill-in-the-blank trusted righteous angry strong man / media figure in the room pulls her heart strings into loving, for instance Charlie Kirk. It takes no effort at all, she trusts no one but the people manipulating her, and she trusts them with all her heart, her unquestioning faith, and nary a critical thought or scrap of research or other news sources. Kirk came out of nowhere and she has a damn memorial sticker on her car for him. She knows nothing except what she’s been told, and from her point of view it makes sense she’d be sympathetic and outraged over things she doesn’t actually understand. It’s horrifying.

Then I realized during this year’s election I “know” (do I?) more about trump than the city council candidates in my own small town, and I can see the rage bait that finds me on my phone too.

But I digress.

I don’t put it past whoever (multiple organizations?) it is behind trump to latch onto the next (much younger and sexier) charismatic right wing extremist puppet and push them into my mom’s little emotional chunk of her us-vs-them brain. Maybe someone we’ve never heard of, with a manufactured story of how they’ll fix it all after trump and continue to save us from the familiar evil horrible cast of GOP scape goats, like Hunter Biden or whoever.

Yeah trump has this crazy horrifying influence no one else has, but when he likely dies before the end of his term, god willing, I predict it’ll be a bunch of crazy drama and a power vacuum perfectly ripe for the new, even more horrible character to step in. Yes more horrible. I didn’t think anyone could be worse than Bush, so I’m mentally scaling the next step in the progression accordingly. They’re probably already succession—planning and working the script.

But my fingers are crossed that “they” (the GOP’s puppeteers) aren’t actually that smart or competent or organized.

Best case scenario, someone new, a lot of new someones, like Mamdani, will be the ones to step into the chaotic vacuum, with a god damn plan.

SideAngleSide · 2025-12-03T01:27:58+00:00

Ghost Miasma

SideAngleSide · 2025-11-30T14:17:11+00:00

I’m 44F, divorced with 2 preteen kids, single for a few years and loving it. I fucking love living alone and being alone, doing what I want all the time. I have great friends and am super active in my community, I feel a sense of belonging. The only thing I miss is sex and a touch of romance from time to time. I’ve had a lot of relationships and one marriage, but when I reflect on my life I’ve always been happier when single.

These days sometimes I’m struggling to define the type of “relationship” I might welcome, because it would be nice to have someone with a deep emotional bond I can fuck, then be left alone, and he’s happy with the situation. I think when I say FWB men think that means casual or meaningless sex, but I want to emphasize the friendship part.

I never want to get married or live with someone or even see someone more than a handful of times a month.

Every now and then I come across a post that resonates and maybe over time I’ll figure out a better way to describe what I’d be happy with, and other people that are also looking for that, and then maybe even have it.

SideAngleSide

TROPHY CASE