Rolling My Eyes While Giving Feedback, Company Is Forcing Me To See Their Doctor To Get Prescription Coverage, And More

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.

It’s four answers to four questions. Here we go…

1. Should I avoid rolling my eyes while giving feedback to a coworker?

My workplace rarely fires people for performance issues, and it’s led to us retaining a few people who everyone agrees have performance issues but where no action is taken. I have a few colleagues who I’ve given regular, repeated feedback to about basic things like not completing the scope of a project they outlined they would complete or not understanding a topic that they work on regularly. The first time I give someone feedback, I always give them the benefit of the doubt that it may be a one-off. But there are now a couple (of the dozens of colleagues I work with) where I don’t have hope that their performance gaps are coachable. They are both below me in rank, but don’t report to me.

I always keep my words factual, but I’ve now started to receive feedback that I should avoid negative body language, such as eye rolling. Is it reasonable to expect someone to control unconscious body language even if everyone agrees that the negative body language is in reaction to unacceptable performance, not anything personal?

It feels like these employees’ performance issues have now become my problem. Would a man be expected to always be extra “nice”?

Rolling your eyes at someone while giving them feedback is incredibly rude. This isn’t about being “extra nice”; it’s about not showing open contempt while speaking to a colleague, and that’s a reasonable (and very normal) expectation of both men and women.

If f you truly can’t control outward signs of contempt, you’ll need to find another method of providing the feedback (like in writing where your eye-rolling can’t be seen) or ask your manager or someone else to deliver it in your place.

For what it’s worth, your company’s refusal to deal with performance issues is a much bigger problem than any individual low performer could be. Direct your contempt there.

Related:
my boss says I’m too much of an “open book” emotionally

2. My company is forcing me to see their doctor to get prescription coverage

I have been taking weight loss medications (think Wegovy, Mounjaro, etc.) for over a year and I am ecstatic to finally be losing weight after a lifetime of struggling with obesity. But I recently received a letter from my employer stating that starting in 2025, our health insurance plans would no longer cover weight loss medications unless they were prescribed by the online clinic they have partnered with which specializes in weight loss. They’ve marketed this partnership as an amazing new benefit to employees. You get to meet with a dietician, download their app, track all your food, connect your activity tracker, all for free! And then maybe, if you qualify, you get to meet with a prescriber. I get what they’re trying to do. The medication is expensive and they need to reduce the number of employees taking them. Note that while we’ve received company-wide emails touting this new amazing benefit, the part about weight loss medications has only been sent quietly via snail mail to the people currently taking them.

I am pretty terrified that I will become a victim of the prescription reduction targets they’re trying to achieve and am frustrated that they believe the opinion of a doctor I’ve never met is more valuable than that of my physician who specializes in medical weight loss and whom I’ve been working with for more than a year. While I don’t believe it will be good for my mental health to reinvigorate a numbers obsession back into my life (calories eaten and burned, pounds, grams of macronutrients, etc.), I am willing to do many of the things my company has outlined to prove I am worthy. But the RX can only come from their doctor.

I’ve already expressed my concerns to our third-party benefits support provider and plan to appeal the rejection I will receive when my physician prescribes me this medication in January. In the meantime, I have begun jumping through their hoops, some of which seem invasive, make me uncomfortable, and are all pretty time consuming. (Each day you open their app, you have a new long list of “things to do” and information to share.) Is there anything else I can do in the meantime to convince my company that their doctor is not better than my doctor and that abruptly cutting off care will not be good for my health? For context, I work for a large global publicly traded company that manages several “operating companies” and I personally am located in Massachusetts.

Probably not, I’m sorry. Less than 20% of large companies in the U.S. cover weight loss drugs in their insurance plans at all; they’re increasingly being excluded from coverage because of the cost. About half of those that do cover them are adding requirements like your company’s. If you want to continue to get them through your insurance, this is likely the only way you can do it.

3. Do I have to continue my old boss’s gift-giving tradition?

Early in the year, my boss moved across the county to a new job, and I was given his role. I am now the manager of our small office and my coworkers. Several of us have been here since this branch opened; we’ve been peers all along and have held various levels of supervisory status. We are a client-facing operation so that title is not so much for internal supervision as it is procedural for client issues.

My boss used to give everyone gift cards for Christmas, either for specific stores or a general Visa-type card. Last year I was given $100 and two others $50, and the rest of the staff $25. No one else exchanged gifts that I know of. I was pleased, I admit. I mean, who doesn’t like free money?

But I think I’m a bit of a hypocrite because I am not a gift-giver or holiday-minded person by nature, and I somehow feel weird about taking over the gifting role. I’ve never exchanged gifts with these folks, and it kind of seems odd to start now. I appreciate them hugely, and I tell them so often (they really do make my work life easy), but giving gifts seems … too personal? But maybe that’s just my anti-holiday streak talking. Would it be really egregious to skip the individual gift and do some sort of a group recognition?

You’re fine skipping the gifts. You’re not obligated to give gifts, even as the boss. That said, before you decide, are you sure your old boss was buying those gifts personally rather than them being “from” the company? If they’re paid for by the company, it would be Scrooge-ish to stop the tradition.

However, giving different amounts to different people is weird! If it turns out the company will pay for gift cards and so you continue giving them, everyone should get the same amount.

4. I can’t convince myself to start job searching

My boss sucks, and isn’t going to change. I work for a micromanager who plays favorites, and while I’ve been able to find ways to work around this for years — work from home was great! — I’ve finally reached my breaking point. This isn’t healthy, I don’t deserve to be miserable at work, and there has to be something better out there.

The problem I’m facing is actually taking the plunge and starting a job search. I know I need to get out! I feel strongly about this! There are positions on my industry job board that I’d be qualified for! And yet: I can’t bring myself to update my resume and put myself out there.

I think there’s a lot of things playing into this hesitation. This is my first professional job, which I came to without the traditional educational background. It’s been made clear that it’s Very Unusual for someone without the traditional background to hold a position in our industry. And while I am at a crisis point with my boss, I love the work itself; under different management (which likely won’t happen at my organization for many years), I’d be happy to stay here indefinitely. What if I can’t get hired into another job in my industry? Am I insane for considering moving out of my low-cost-of-living region? Is it foolish to throw away my current position, where I’ve got middling seniority, when my industry (and the world!) may become increasingly turbulent in months and years to come? What if, what if, what if…

At the end of the day, I know the answer: I’m miserable, and it doesn’t hurt anything to see what’s out there. Job searching and leaving a job are two different decisions, and I should view them separately. What I could use is advice about how to make that leap, emotionally, from “I know I need to look” to actually looking. Any guidance about how to get over the hump would be greatly appreciated.

Look at this way: you’re just gathering information. If you’re worried that you won’t be able to get hired into another job in your industry, the only way to confirm or disprove that is to apply for jobs and find out. If you’re right about that, you’ll find out by … not being offered other jobs. It doesn’t make sense to decide that preemptively, rather than testing the market.

And you’re not obligated to take a job just because it’s offered to you; you can job search simply to see what’s out there and to compare those jobs against your current situation. If you decide you’re not ready to make the move once you’re offered a specific, concrete job, you’re allowed to decide that. But by not even looking, you’re taking away all options from yourself and just ensuring you’ll stay where you are, with a boss who’s making you miserable. If you end up choosing that in the end, after comparing it to other real options, so be it — but do yourself the favor of letting it be a real choice.