Manager stands up for employee after she gets a poor performance review returning from maternity leave: ‘She’s being unfairly judged’

Have you ever gotten in trouble for standing up for someone else?

We’re not ashamed to admit that we judge managers a lot here at Fail Blog, and we fully believe we have a good reason to. Even though a manager’s role is basically to guide and be there for their employees, we all know most managers do the exact opposite. It’s very hard to find a good manager to work under, and most people find themselves quitting their jobs not because they don’t like the work, but because they can’t stand their boss.

So, it’s easy to find us criticizing bosses and managers for their inability to do their jobs. Every time a manager refuses an employee’s PTO request or unjustifiably fires someone, we are there to call them out and make sure everyone knows how wrong that behavior is.

When we stumble across cases like these, where the manager is actually a decent human being who cares about their reports, we feel the need to shout to the world that there are still some decent people out there. Bosses who risk their necks for their employees and truly care about their happiness in the workplace. Reading stories like these, where a manager does everything in their power to keep their employee from getting in trouble for her low performance after returning from maternity leave, makes us see that there are two sides to every story. Hearing that this manager was told by HR that they would be put on a PIP if they didn’t put their direct report on a PIP too, opens our eyes to the hardship of being a manager. After all, they have to report to someone too, and it must not be easy to do so when one of their employees is not doing their job properly.

We want to shout out this manager for trying to give an employee who’s clearly struggling the benefit of the doubt and the time to recover from a challenging time. We hope neither of them will get fired for trying to do the right thing, but only time will tell…