Your Manager Is in "Three Back-to-Back Meetings." He Is, In Fact, on LinkedIn.
It is 2:14 PM on a Tuesday. You need a decision from your manager. The decision is small. The decision is binary. The decision will take, on his end, twelve seconds of cognitive effort.
You open Slack. His status is set to the red dot. The status message reads: "🗓️ In back-to-back — replies will be slow. Ping for urgent."
The status was set at 9:04 AM. It has not been updated since. You note this. You make a decision about pinging.
You do not ping.
You instead do the thing reasonable adults do, which is wait. You move on to the next task. You drink coffee. The coffee is from the cold brew can he, somehow, also has on his desk in his Zoom tile. You wonder how he ended up with the same brand. You decide it is a coincidence. You decide it is not a coincidence. You decide not to think about it.
At 3:47 PM you check Slack again. His status is still red. Still "back-to-back." His green dot, however, is on. The red status icon and the green presence dot are doing different things. The red is the public face. The green is the leak.
You consider, briefly, what he is doing.
What he is doing
He is on LinkedIn.
You know this because you can, in fact, see it. You are on LinkedIn yourself, on a separate tab, because at 2:39 PM Marcus posted something. You scrolled. You arrived at Manager OTG's profile. Manager OTG has, in the last hour, liked four posts. Three of them are about leadership. One is a video of a CEO crying about layoffs. The CEO laid off 18% of his company. The video is captioned "What real leadership looks like." Manager OTG has reacted with the 💯 emoji.
You return to Slack. His status is still "back-to-back." You return to LinkedIn. He is now commenting on Marcus's post. The comment is six paragraphs long. The comment is a discussion of "frameworks." The comment ends with "Thanks for sharing this, Marcus — this resonates." Marcus has not yet liked the comment. Marcus will not like the comment. Marcus has been at this company for eleven months and has, in that time, developed instincts.
The Zoom that is not happening
You decide to investigate further. You open the calendar app — the one your company pays for, which is some combination of Google Calendar and a wrapper. You search for Manager OTG. His calendar is, in theory, public to the team. It is, today, blocked off in 30-minute increments from 9:00 AM to 6:00 PM. Each block is labeled either Focus Time or Hold (External). None of them are real meetings.
You know none of them are real meetings because you can see, in his Zoom waiting room indicator (you have access for reasons that are not relevant), that he has not joined a Zoom since 11:14 AM, when he was on a call with his own manager for 26 minutes.
You consider what this means. You consider it for less time than you would like, because you have, in fact, work to do, which he does not.
The decision you need
The decision you need is whether to push a date by two days. It is the kind of decision a manager exists, in part, to make. You have, in your DMs to him from earlier today, laid out the trade-off in 41 words. He has read the message. You know he has read the message because Slack tells you it has been read, and you know the read-receipt is real and not a function of him scrolling past, because the message has been read for sixty-three minutes and your screen has not been updated.
You try, in your head, an alternative explanation. He is, perhaps, in the bathroom. He is, perhaps, on a call you cannot see. He is, perhaps, doing work.
His LinkedIn now shows him commenting on a second post. The post is from a man named Brad, whom Manager OTG has never met, who has 142,000 followers, and whose post is titled "Why we promoted a barista to VP of People." Manager OTG has commented "🔥 such a powerful reframe. Saving this." The post has 8,400 reactions. Manager OTG's comment will get 11 likes by tomorrow. He will refer to this in his next 1:1 with Dana as "engagement."
You decide
You make the decision yourself. You push the date. You send a Slack to the team — not to him — explaining the push. You frame the decision as a recommendation rather than a decision, in case he wakes up. He will not wake up. Two of your peers reply within four minutes with the 👍 emoji. The work continues.
At 4:22 PM, Manager OTG's status changes. It now reads: "🚶 Stepping away — back in 15."
You consider, for the second time today, what he is doing. You consider that he has been "stepping away" intermittently for the entire afternoon. You consider that "stepping away" is, in his vocabulary, the verb form of "doing nothing." You consider that he is, in this exact moment, in his kitchen, eating a string cheese over the sink. Then you let it go. You do not have time for this. You have things to do. The "things to do" were originally his.
The Slack at 11:47 PM
You receive a message from him at 11:47 PM. The message is one line. It says: "Hey — wanted to circle back on the date thing. Let's chat tomorrow."
The message arrives without context, as if the date thing had not already been resolved nine hours ago, as if you had not, in fact, made the decision for him.
You consider replying. You consider three different replies. You do not reply. You set your phone face down. You go to sleep.
His green dot is still on.