my dishonest employee blames technology when he messes up

by Alison Green on November 6, 2024

A reader writes:

How do I deal with an employee, Miles, who is dishonest but gets emotional and doubles down when confronted with technological proof?

For instance, he’ll tell me he submitted a work product when the timestamps on shared documentation (which are visible to both of us) show that the work wasn’t completed by the deadline.

Separately, I’ve suspected that he’s using generative AI to complete work, and multiple AI detectors — which I acknowledge are imperfect — also say large parts of his work are AI generated. (It may be fine to use AI in other circumstances, but it violates our policy prohibiting using AI to write external-facing documents, which he’s responsible for.)

If I confront him, Miles gets defensive, frustrated, and visibly emotional, denying that he missed the deadline or that he uses AI or whatever, and insists he doesn’t know why the timestamps/AI detectors would say that he did. I feel like I’m arguing about reality. Or maybe I am crazy and things like timestamps and multiple AI detectors (and just my own instincts that something is off) are giving me the wrong impression?

I wrote back and asked, “How’s his work aside from this? I’m skeptical you should be keeping him on and wondering what the rest of the picture looks like.”

Honestly, I think he struggles with time/task management. When I set really strict deadlines and help him break down the work into small chunks (outline by this date, draft by this date, etc.), the work is good. My armchair psychologist take is that he gets in a shame/insecurity spiral when he feels like he’s falling behind, leading to shortcuts and dishonesty. But whenever I try to get to the underlying problem, he says the technology is lying, and I’m not sure how to dig deeper. How do I correct a missed deadline if he insists (to the point of getting emotional) that the deadline wasn’t missed?

I think you’re probably going to end up needing to fire this guy, but let’s break it down a little more.

First: is it acceptable for the person in Miles’ position to need that much hand-holding with time management? Is it okay that you have to break work into such small chunks for him, or does the person in this job need to be able to manage their own work more independently? If it’s the latter, it might make sense to just focus there: he needs to manage the work more autonomously, without missing deadlines, period. If he can’t do that, there’s your answer.

But for some jobs, it would be more reasonable to help him with those aspects of the job. If that’s the case here, then let’s look more closely at the defensiveness, denials, and potential lying.

The first thing to do there is to bring in IT. If Miles says that the timestamps on shared documentation are wrong or otherwise claims technology is malfunctioning, then let’s take that very seriously and ask IT to investigate. Most likely they’ll confirm that he’s wrong, but who knows — it’s worth verifying with them, at least. From there, if Miles continues to blame technology, you can hold firm: tell him that IT says he’s wrong, that these supposed tech snafus aren’t happening to anyone else, and you need him to meet deadlines, period.

You should also make a point for a while of checking right when something is due to see if he has submitted it or not — if he hasn’t, you can speak to him about it on the spot and sidestep the technology claims entirely.

With the AI concerns: focus less on whether he’s using AI and more on the qualities of his work that are making you suspect it. There’s something about his work that’s ringing those alarm bells for you — stilted writing, overly buzzwordy, weird leaps in logic, whatever it is. Focus there; those things are work quality problems and they’re easier to address without getting drawn into a debate about whether he did or didn’t use AI. (Although if he is using AI, he’s probably leaving tracks on his company computer that your IT team could find for you, if you want to know for sure.)

It’s possible that by approaching it this way, it will change things for the better — maybe there really have been some tech problems and by getting them fixed, it’ll let you both move forward without that distraction, or maybe by focusing on the specific weaknesses in his writing he’ll be able to use that feedback to improve. I’m guessing not — but the advantage of going into it with an open mind is that you’ll see pretty quickly that either he can do the job at the level you need or not, and you won’t need to get bogged down in the framing he’s currently trying to use (which is “I’m not responsible for any of this”).

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  1. Sola Lingua Bona Lingua Mortua Est*

    I think you’re probably going to end up needing to fire this guy, but let’s break it down a little more.

    100%. Shifts blame, makes demonstrably false claims, isn’t accountable on either quality or timeliness? Take a long, hard look at why you want to keep him–is it just to avoid recruiting his replacement?

      1. duinath*

        Same. Adding the frustration and “visible emotion” when he’s called out and needing handholding to get things done is just salt on the wound.

      2. Caramel & Cheddar*

        Yeah, even without the “breaking company policy” part, I was confused how he was still working there or wasn’t at least on a PIP.

    2. Person from the Resume*

      Very much agreed. He’s derailing valid feedback and consequences by getting “defensive, frustrated, and visibly emotional.”

      I’d go with “software timestamps do not lie. Please stop denying you were late.” (Perhaps have IT investigate if he’s the only one using the software, but if it works for everyone else but him … don’t even bother IT.)

      Checking at the time it’s due is great advise too.

      LW needs to work on staying unemotional and keeping on track. And also asking him to stop denying, getting frustrated, and emotional.

      I know this isn’t easy, firing this guy might be easier. I might go to that because he’s not a good worker and you believe he’s a liar. Plus he has have two recurring problems where he’s claiming the software is lying instead of him.

      1. Banana Pyjamas*

        From personal experience, timestamps CAN lie. If there are multiple servers, and the clocks on the servers aren’t correct or don’t match, it can cause this issue. At a previous job the Kronos server time didn’t match the rest of the servers, and we had to clock watch in Kronos to make sure we were signing in/out correctly because IT refused to fix it. I’ve also had issues with clocks on online submission programs being off by a few minutes. That being said, I would only ask IT to look into this if there is more than one server, or other people have reported similar problems.

        1. Ellie*

          Yes, they can lie and I’ve seen them lie before too. But they usually lie in predictable ways. For example, I’ll go back and check the timestamp, and realise that a server is on the wrong timezone and all of them will be out by an hour. Or I’ll see that they’ve all been set to the same time with the name of an admin, who must have run a script which updated all of the files together. They don’t just lie randomly for one person.

          However, Alison’s suggestion to check bang on the deadline is the answer here. He can’t argue that he’s finished it if the file isn’t there. Then keep checking back, twice, maybe three times a day, until it lands. Or ask him to email you as soon as its in, and check it right away. Then keep a record of how often he does it.

          The AI thing could be a huge problem on its own though. We’re not allowed to use them either, and certainly not with any proprietary information. I’d ask IT to investigate that on its own. It could be grounds for an instant dismissal, without any of the rest of it.

        2. Glitsy Gus*

          Yep. I had a situation where the server thought I was on the east coast, but everyone else in the office was set to west coast. It looked like I was doing everything WAY later than everyone else for about 4 months. It was easily fixed once we figured out the problem, but when everyone just ASSUMES the timestamp can’t be wrong it takes way longer than necessary to check the settings. It can’t hurt to run it past IT and have them double check.

    3. Peanut Hamper*

      Notice that OP wrote “dishonest but gets emotional…” (emphasis mine).

      That shouldn’t be a “but” — it really should be an “and”. The latter doesn’t excuse the former in any way.

      I do believe Miles’s time here is limited.

    4. OhGee*

      for real. “gets defensive when caught in lies, doubles down with more lies” is not something that will change easily.

      1. Elbe*

        Agreed. Even if the LW wanted to help, the LW isn’t this guy’s therapist. This is not something a manager can control. Being honest and being able to take feedback are two of the most important traits and this guy doesn’t sound like he has what the role needs.

  2. Keymaster of Gozer (she/her)*

    Consult with IT. Not only do we have ways of finding out if someone is telling the truth but it’s also a very common request! I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve sent back system logs and other proof that someone was/wasn’t logged on when they said they were or deleted a file they swear they didn’t.

    We can even show sometimes where the information was copied from.

    Faced with the proof from IT it generally goes one of two ways:

    1. Person admits they panicked and asks for leniency and HR handles it from there
    2. Person swears that it’s a conspiracy and IT have edited the information. HR rolls their eyes and puts them on a disciplinary.

    Although, being *from* IT I’m very biased against anyone who tries to blame the technology for their own faults/laziness.

    1. N*

      I really appreciate your IT perspective here. I often feel like I’m bothering IT when I go to them with something like this

      1. Djs*

        As an IT person, I would *want* to know if there was a potential problem with something under my domain being wrong. Even if the answer is always “yup, I checked it, this person is lying”, the last thing I want is for people to lose trust in whatever I’m providing for them. Even if the loss of trust isn’t based in facts.

      2. Keymaster of Gozer (She/Her)*

        Trust me, you’re not. We love to pretend we’re Sherlock Holmes on the holodeck given half a chance :)

        1. Djs*

          You actually want to make them come to you, not “damnit- that weirdo is doing that crappy Patrick Stewart accent again” :)

          1. Keymaster of Gozer (she/her)*

            If you don’t like people doing impressions of Star Trek characters then I definitely recommend you avoid any department I’m working in :)

        3. GovSysadmin*

          This, 100%. A lot of IT work can be kind of boring, so my favorite thing is to have some sort of weird problem to track down. It’s also nice to be able to do the (friendlier) equivalent of PER MY PREVIOUS EMAIL by being able to show exactly in the logs when my mail server delivered it to yours, person blaming my email server for losing your message.

    2. I'm just here for the cats!!*

      This is great advice! I’m also wondering if IT could block AI websites. I’m actually surprised it hasn’t been blocked since it doesn’t seem to be something the company wants people to use.

      1. Impending Heat Dome*

        Could be part of a program that’s part of their office suite. Photoshop has generative AI in it, for example, and CoPilot has been around a bit too.

        1. rebelwithmouseyhair*

          Can those functions be blocked? I mean, there’s a client of mine who loans me a licence to work using their software, and I see that they block the use of AI on it.

      2. ProdMgr Replaced By AI*

        You can block AI websites but it only gets you so far. You can’t stop someone from using AI on a non-company device and then copying it over, for example.

        1. Observer*

          You can’t stop someone from using AI on a non-company device and then copying it over, for example.

          Well, to some extent, you can. Not with the snap of a finger, to be sure, but it’s definitely possible to make it harder.

          Also, if that’s what he’s doing, it’s generally possible for IT to figure this out. And it would be such an egregious over-step, because it means really thought out breaching of company policy, that it would make the real problem clear.

          1. Serena*

            Stopping someone from doing something isn’t really a “to some extent” thing. You either can stop them, or you can’t stop them. And here, they’re right that you can’t stop them.

            1. MigraineMonth*

              From my perspective, IT is all about stopping someone from doing something “to some extent”. No security system is hack-proof, but success is measured by making it too difficult to bother with when there are easier targets. No UI is foolproof, but it’s still better to have only 5 people with the ability to delete the prod database than all 600 people who enter data in it.

              If someone is willing to go home/to a coffee shop to use external wi-fi to access ChatGPT in order to generate a brochure on their personal phone, then re-type the entire thing on their work computer, that’s very difficult to prevent. However, most people use ChatGPT as a shortcut, so making using it sufficiently painful will prevent most people from doing so.

              1. Freya*

                Like, I prefer people send me invoices in pdf form and not as a Word document. Not because it’s hard to edit a pdf, but because it’s hardER than a Word document, which is so easy to edit that I’m scared I’ll accidentally move something when I’m reading it and copying and pasting the info into the accounting system.

                Also, there’s the issue of virus macros, which, while not unheard of in pdf files, are less common than in the Word and Excel files I receive as a bookkeeper.

            2. MrDoubt*

              I disagree. In many cases a solution for some problem can only account for so many possibilities, for example if you wanted to stop people from removing data from company owned devices there are a number of solutions you can employ like blocking certain websites, blocking usb drives etc. but if someone has a phone and can take a picture of it all those solutions have failed. at that point it is no longer a technological problem but a social/process problem

              1. Mongrel*

                “Perfect is the enemy of good”
                Security is about doing the best you can with the tools you have, if you can stop it being an IT problem then you can hand it back the Managers to sort the rest out.

                Although I’d put a small wager on the fact that most people who are using ‘AI’ to help with work are exactly the sort of people who’d find it too much bother to transcribe a document from a picture

        2. Snudence Prooter*

          You can tell them that if they’re doing company work, it has to be on company computers, though, especially when you’re trying to short circuit the suggestion of AI generated work. Plus, that means easier access to the time stamps on the documents, which would help him show he’s completing the work on time. So he should bow out as a double win!

          1. Snudence Prooter*

            You can tell them that if they’re doing company work, it has to be on company computers, though, especially when you’re trying to short circuit the suggestion of AI generated work. Plus, that means easier access to the time stamps on the documents, which would help him show he’s completing the work on time. So he should count it as a double win and definitely love the idea, as someone who is completely innocent!

      3. Sneaky Squirrel*

        Even if they could, would that a hinderance to advancement for IT to do so though? Generative AI seems like it’s going to be here to stay and it’s likely only going to get more robust. I think it would be smarter for companies to adapt training and policies around AI rather than shielding their staff from it.

        1. Observer*

          What will happen in the future is not really relevant.

          Right now companies have some real issues that they need to grapple with in dealing with AI. It’s a matter of “shielding” staff from it. It’s a matter of making sure that you are using products that are truly fit for purpose, that don’t create security or other issues, etc.

        2. Joron Twiner*

          A lot of companies don’t allow AI for certain features because it basically grants the AI companies rights and access to proprietary data. If you use AI to write a marketing blurb for a new product, now info about that product is on AI servers and could be used or misused. Many companies have policies even about using machine translation in order to keep their secrets secret.

        3. Learn ALL the things*

          If generative AI reaches a point when it can reliably accomplish tasks without making up random lies, the companies that have banned and blocked it can reconsider their policies. Until then LLMs are unreliable and provide untrue and even dangerous content (remember the AI generated recipe where one of the ingredients was glue? Or the app that identified poisonous mushrooms as safe to eat?) and I maintain my belief that they have no place in a professional setting.

    3. Ansteve*

      I’m in IT. I will go to bat for a user with genuine issues that stop their work. But if your manager calls the helpdesk asking if a system has been down all morning that we show was up and no reports of issues were made, I am not responsible for that bus I just threw you under.

      1. Lana Kane*

        Love that analogy but I see it more like being a spectator to that gorgeous swan dive they just took in front of the bus.

    4. Jessica*

      One place to start is by letting Shifty Sam know that every time he reports failure and blames it on a tech problem, you will want to see the open ticket he has with IT about the tech problem.

      2. Keymaster of Gozer (she/her)*

        And the added bonus if you inform IT that you’re going to be doing this you’ll have us watching his PC like a hawk.

        I cannot overstate how much we LOVE helping you out catch liars in their tracks!

  3. Caramel & Cheddar*

    “There’s something about his work that’s ringing those alarm bells for you — stilted writing, overly buzzwordy, weird leaps in logic, whatever it is. Focus there; those things are work quality problems and they’re easier to address without getting drawn into a debate about whether he did or didn’t use AI. ”

    I think both are necessary here — LW says that it’s against their org policy to use AI for the tasks he’s been assigned. Providing feedback about the quality is important, obviously, which he would need regardless of how he’s coming up with the content. But since AI isn’t allowed for these documents, a zhuzhed up version of his AI first draft is still breaking company policy, which seems like something worth addressing.

      1. Caramel & Cheddar*

        Sure, though as Alison mentioned, there are probably traces on his computer that IT can find (e.g. browser history, etc.).

          1. MigraineMonth*

            A keylogger seems like real overkill if you just want to know if the employee accessed a generative AI site.

            (Also, most human writers go through drafts of content that are refined in each version, rather than spitting everything out word-perfect the first time.)

            1. Sloanicota*

              Yeah but I agree versioning software would lend credence to the theory. The record would probably show a single copy-paste of a huge block of text that’s unusually wooden/occasionally hallucinates, and then edits to those elements specifically before overall touch up edits.

          2. Fnordpress*

            If my company made me install a keylogger, I would quit that day. No company should be installing software on employees’ computers.

            If you’re imagining that he’s working on a company laptop or something, I still think singling out one person and remote-installing a keylogger would be invasive.

      2. Caroline*

        If they use Microsoft products, there’s often a version history in the document that will be very different if the document was written from scratch vs copied and pasted in bulk from AI and then edited a bit.

        1. Ellie*

          Yep. You can also check the browsing history, application logs, etc. IT will be able to determine what he’s using quite quickly, unless he is particularly good at covering his tracks, which this guy clearly isn’t. You can also give them a copy of the text you suspect is coming from AI, and they will be able to help.

    2. NetClari*

      I agree with this. in some industries, the data privacy concerns from using AI would be a much bigger concern than the actual work product. I like Allison’s solution of asking IT to help check if he is accessing AI tools while writing. I agree that AI checkers don’t do anything.

      1. Cat Tree*

        Yes. My company is pro-AI and had even developed their own generative AI tools. BUT for data privacy we can’t use any outside AI and we have strict boundaries around certain things that can’t even use our company’s AI.

      2. ferrina*

        Yeah, if he’s putting proprietary information into a public AI engine, that data will now go to the AI company. That’s a big issue. IT should be able to help track if he’s accessing AI tools on his work computer.
        And if he is, that could help speed the path to his dismissal (which given all the other issues, seems inevitable)

      3. DrSalty*

        Agree, our business is the same way. We are investigating use of AI to improve processes, but putting sensitive, proprietary client data into a public AI system like ChatGPT is a MASSIVE problem.

  4. Madame Desmortes*

    Depending on the kind of place you work in, you could also move for some technological policy enforcement — ask IT to block chatbots on the work network. If that tanks Miles’s output, well, you know something about how he works.

    1. Bananapants Modiste*

      If I were Miles using AI to do my work, blocking chatbots at work would make me take my work home and have the AI write it there.
      But maybe there’s a policy about that, too.

      1. Strive to Excel*

        At that point you put in a computer-specific block & require all internet connections to be done either through a company VPN or through the company’s own internet. Those are useful restrictions to have on company computers anyways.

      2. Lenora Rose*

        A true thing about cheating and crime is that a lot of what we call “preventative” measures can’t actually STOP the cheating or crime as long as someone is determined. What they do is make it inconvenient, make it take time, make them require extra steps to accomplish the goal.

        And 90% of the time or more, it’s enough. A lot of people are looking for the easy way, and putting up blockades makes them go, “oh, it’s too much work now” and stop. And of the remaining batch, for another chunk of cases, forcing them to take more complicated steps makes them do something that exposes them.

        So talking about how “Well if you do this, they’ll just get around it by…” is actually not always true.

        2. Insert Clever Name Here*

          Yeah, exactly. It’s why locking your car door is such an effective way to keep it from being broken into. Someone can absolutely still smash your windshield, but what’s overwhelmingly more likely is that they’ll just go on to another car in hopes that it’s unlocked.

        3. bamcheeks*

          Yes! Plus many people are very good at convincing themselves that even if you know something’s not ~~technically~~ allowed, if it’s easy to do, it probably isn’t that big a deal. The more defences you have to work through, the harder it is to trick yourself that it’s OK really.

        4. metadata minion*

          Yes — especially in this case, where it looks like this is someone who’s overwhelmed and panicky. That is, it’s very unlikely that he has some deep desire to use AI specifically; he’s turning to it because he needs to hand in something fast, and if it’s now really annoying to access, AI isn’t a quick cheat anymore.

        5. Bilateralrope*

          True. But you don’t have to tell everyone about the anti-cheating method immediately. Giving you time to catch the employee and fire them if their behaviour is bad enough.

          In this case, the employer also has the advantage of knowing how the work should be completed. So they could install monitoring software, wait for the employee to submit documents, then look to see if the logs show the documents were produced in an approved way. If they don’t, the employee has some explaining to do.

        6. fhqwhgads*

          Yep. You never need to stop someone entirely. You need to make it slightly more inconvenient to do the thing you want them to stop, and they probably will.

        7. iglwif*

          Yeah. Some people will be motivated enough to still cheat even when it’s difficult. Many people will cheat only when it’s easy.

        8. MigraineMonth*

          Kind of awesomely, this is true about suicide methods too. If you have two high bridges in town, putting barriers up *at just one* of the bridges to keep people from jumping lowers the overall suicide rate.

          1. Lenora Rose*

            Also one of the (many) arguments about why not to have a gun in the house. There was a country who discovered a couple of decades ago that having their military service members leave their weapons behind when they go home reduced suicides in that demographic by an astonishingly high number. And a similar stat for not having gas ovens in a home for the housewife/stay-at-home demographic.

      3. Observer*

        take my work home and have the AI write it there.
        But maybe there’s a policy about that, too.

        There should be. And those policies can be enforceable.

    2. Leaving academia*

      The letter writer said AI is appropriate in other circumstances, but not for external-facing documents. Assuming they mean the company doesn’t have a blanket ban on generative AI, and assuming it doesn’t have own internal system (or copilot or gemini), then other employees could be affected by a block when not doing anything against policy.

  5. Judge Judy and Executioner*

    If he’s lying about stuff that is easily disproved like time stamps, what other lies is he telling? I don’t think I could look past blatant dishonesty in a direct report. I would be validating with IT that he’s lying, and then have a serious conversation with him. If he gets emotional, recommend the EAP, and let him know you will give him time to calm down, but you need to revisit the topic with him the next business day to resume the conversation. It sounds like he need therapy to work through his emotions when he gets caught in his lies, and this is beyond PIP territory. PIPs are for things like “needs to improve time management and work more autonomously”, not for employees that have problems with the truth.

    1. Observer*

      If he’s lying about stuff that is easily disproved like time stamps, what other lies is he telling? I don’t think I could look past blatant dishonesty in a direct report

      Very much this.

    4. MigraineMonth*

      Overall agree, but I’m not sure this is a case where it’s appropriate to recommend the EAP. While I guess getting emotional when being called out on a lie could be a result of anxiety or issues from one’s family-of-origin, I don’t think an EAP is set up to help with that.

      1. Judge Judy and Executioner*

        If an employee of mine got emotional and we were unable to continue a conversation, I would express concern and ask questions. With this guy, this is already a pattern, so it would be a serious conversation of “Miles, I’ve noticed that you tend to get emotional when we have discussions about deadlines. This is a crucial part of your role, and it seems to be negatively affecting you. I’m not sure if it’s related to anxiety or something else, but I’m worried because is impacting your work. If you are feeling overwhelmed and emotional, I want you to know there are resources, such as our Employee Assistance Program. We need to be able to have conversations about deadlines, and we will need to continue this discussion tomorrow when you’ve had a chance to reflect.”

        For me, I wish that a former manager had recommended the EAP when I was struggling with my own emotions and frequently crying at work. I ended up seeking therapy on my own, but the EAP could have helped get me started. If Miles is callously lying, I agree, the EAP isn’t set up to help with that. But if there is something else going on, usually EAPs are good places to start.

  6. Zahra*

    Not to go towards armchair diagnosis… his struggles are similar to those people with ADHD live with. Whether he has ADHD or not is beside the point. If the struggles are similar, it’s a good idea to see if the solutions work for them. It’s not the LW’s responsibility to point their employee towards ADHD resources, but if the employee was writing, I’d definitely suggest it.

    However, for the shame/insecurity, if you have an EAP, please do direct him that way!

    1. Mentally Spicy*

      You can’t diagnose something like that from a letter written about a third person. Not should you. Whether he has some undiagnosed or undisclosed condition or not I don’t think it materially changes the advice anyway.

      1. Strive to Excel*

        I believe Zahra is saying whether or not he actually has a condition, LW could try X solution anyways because the problem he’s having could be helped whether or not there’s a diagnosis involved.

        1. Anonym*

          Yeah, a lot of the time and task management advice and resources for ADHD are useful to the wider audience of folks who struggle with those things. Appreciate the point about not diagnosing, but I think Zahra’s within bounds here.

          If OP wanted to give the advice, it might be framed as “time and task management” but that might lead them to ADHD resources either way.

    2. TinkerTailorSolderDye*

      Actually, I’m in agreement with Zahra here; not diagnosing, but wheeeeeeeew boy this sounds damn near identical to my stepson’s problem with the truth; a good, valid possibility, and I’m bringing it up to the psychiatrist this afternoon when we go in.

      1. Nobby Nobbs*

        I was just thinking that it sounds a lot like my problem with the truth during my own teenaged ADHD/anxiety/depression feedback loop era. In case it helps with your stepson: the problem wasn’t that I thought lying was okay, exactly. It was more that I’d gradually lost the ability to prioritize long-term consequences over short-term discomfort, and the lies became a (scarily easy, after the first few) means to push the immediate consequences of not doing something I should have just a little farther into the future.

        2. ferrina*

          Yeah, I’m ADHD and this pattern is not uncommon with ADHD people. You miss a deadline because of time blindness, then you make up some kind of excuse, even “oh, I definitely sent that”. I did that a little when I first started in an office job, though I stopped within a year. I do know someone that took this approach long term and carried it into his marriage and would regularly lie to his spouse over little things to get out of trouble (not that he was actually in trouble, but if he didn’t do his share of housework, he would lie to his spouse about it to avoid that conversation). It predictably ended in divorce, and I was always confused as to why he did this. Your explanation shines some light to his thought process.

          But agree with Zahra that regardless of whether it’s ADHD spurred or not, it’s not acceptable and this manager needs to take steps to let this person go. ADHD symptoms can contribute to this behavior, but this behavior is still a choice and can’t be allowed to continue. (And like Mango Freak says below, as an ADHD person, it’s my job to manage my symptoms and get accommodations if needed; it is absolutely not my manager’s job, and guessing a person’s diagnosis and trying to manage their healthcare decisions for them would be wildly inappropriate for a whole different list of reasons)

    3. Mango Freak*

      Nope, shut it down. If you need accommodations at work, ask for them.

      I have *severe* ADHD. It’s not my employers’ job to guess that I might need accommodations–it’s their job to listen and respond reasonably when I request them (and ideally to create a work environment that makes this easier or less necessary). It’s also their job to hold my work and behavior to a professional standard.

      I don’t go around lying about easily disprovable things, and I hate when others do.

      1. El l*

        Exactly. It is not manager’s job to figure out employees deal.

        It’s not even manager’s job to figure out if it’s a mental/health condition period. There realistically isn’t time, there probably isn’t knowledge. Only employee and their docs can go there

        …and I don’t think it’s productive for manager or indeed anyone else to bend over backwards thinking it’s neurodivergence or mental health.

      2. MigraineMonth*

        I think that if the manager had written in saying “I have an otherwise awesome employee who has trouble meeting deadlines, what resources could I point them to?”, a lot of people would recommend strategies identified by the ADHD and other ND communities, because they’re awesome strategies for anyone struggling with deadlines. (Seriously, I am in awe of the creativity and collaboration shown in the few strategies I’ve learned about.)

        Unfortunately, that’s not the letter written, and I agree that the main issue (dishonesty, becoming emotional when called out on lies) cannot be fixed with more handholding or resources. The manager sounds like they’ve done a lot trying to help the employee meet deadlines, but at some point it is on the employee to do so or at least be honest about not doing so and ask for accommodations.

  7. Sloanicota*

    I feel the way to address this is probably more annoying than OP wants to undertake, but once you have shown him how to break down the work tasks into deadlines, you’re going to have to check in – yourself, not through an automated tool – to see if he’s meeting those interim deadlines earlier in the process. Have him email you draft one or whatever, and follow up with him the minute you don’t have it in your inbox when you were supposed to, and then the same with task 2 etc. This is annoying. You shouldn’t have to do it. If you have to keep doing it more than once, you can follow the suggestion to let him go because he can’t handle the time management aspects himself.

    1. RagingADHD*

      Yes, it did make me wonder why LW is relying on timestamps to know whether the work was completed on time. If it was late, didn’t that impact anybody? Why do you need timestamps?

      If the person downstream (whether LW or otherwise) has the work when they actually get to it, then it was functionally on time, whether or not the timestamp matches whatever the putative deadline was supposed to be. Not to excuse Miles, but why is the deadline set in such a way that nobody actually notices?

      If it’s something like blog posts or social media that are supposed to go out on schedule, then the solution is to not have Miles be the one who hits “post.” Then you will know whether his stuff is late, because someone will see it.

      1. Mad Scientist*

        It could be that missing deadlines does impact people / they notice and complain to LW, and then when LW asks her employee about it, he insists that he actually did email that document on time and they must have received it late because of IT issues.

        Or they say a task is complete but then you open the file and there’s no progress, and they claim syncing problems or whatever.

        Plenty of possibilities here!

        1. RagingADHD*

          Well, to my point – if people are constantly complaining because they don’t have the work product they need, I’m still not sure why LW is getting drawn into arguments about the change log on the shared files. Either the stuff got delivered or it didn’t. The timestamps aren’t really relevant.

          If Miles were actually having chronic IT issues (which I doubt), he should be on the phone pre-emptively checking with the recipient to make sure they got the file, working directly with IT to solve the problem, etc. Trying to do this by autopsying the file data is just going to drive LW up the wall.

          1. Elbe*

            Not sure I understand this take. If one employee says they didn’t have something when they needed it, and this guy is saying that they did, of course the LW is going to check a timestamp to determine who is telling the truth. Any time there are conflicting accounts, the LW is going to have to look somewhere else to verify. I don’t think that the LW relying on timestamps is an issue at all.

          2. MigraineMonth*

            If Miles were actually having chronic IT issues (which I doubt), he should be on the phone pre-emptively checking with the recipient to make sure they got the file, working directly with IT to solve the problem, etc.

            Yes, he should be. He isn’t, because working proactively to solve a tech issue he invented to cover for not meeting deadlines would be a very difficult balancing act.

      2. fhqwhgads*

        I read it to suggest people noticed it was late, he said “nuh uh, I submitted it on time, you must’ve missed it”. They check the timestamp. It says he submitted late. He says “nuh uh, must be a glitch”. It’s part of the pattern of doubling down and blaming software, not that nobody notices until they check the timestamp. He’s just lying lying lying no matter what anyone says, and they’re refuting it with facts, and he’s still lying.

        1. Sloanicota*

          But once you observe this pattern, in the next round you call at Deadline +5 minutes and say, “I don’t have it, did you send it?” and if he says “yes” you walk over to his desk to see it right that second.

    2. Mango Freak*

      Since this is a chronic problem I’m sure it plays out a lot of different ways and we can just trust LW.

      Maybe sometimes LW hears from another coworker that they don’t have the thing they need. Finance complains about a late expense report. LW is personally looking at a file that mysteriously updates after they bring it up to employee. Etc.

      Not much to be gained from picking this apart I don’t think.

  8. Mad Scientist*

    Sounds a lot like my coworker who constantly has an absurd amount of “IT issues” usually right before a deadline. He has deleted files en masse multiple times. Any file he touches for any reason gets corrupted or deleted. 9 times out of 10, these “IT issues” are easily avoidable and entirely his fault. It’s exhausting. I know shit happens, but when it’s happening constantly and only to you, it’s time to consider that you’re the common denominator…

    Thankfully, I just found out that this coworker is resigning! Hooray!

  9. Jam on Toast*

    It’s not the technology, it’s the outcome that matters. Lots of people wrote bad copy and missed deadlines before shared drives and GenAI. I think you need to identity the professional shortcomings: an inability to meet agreed-upon deadlines, failing to communicate potential delays in a timely fashion, poor work product, a pattern of deflecting accountability and failing to act on feedback from their manager.

    That they may be hiding behind technology to shirk their duties is only tangentially relevant here. Lay out the pattern and then reiterate to this team member what the standards or expectations for your team are. They have to show sustained improvement. If they don’t, dismissal may be your only option.

    1. murderbot*

      Well the AI is also an issue if the company has a policy against using it because they’re concerned about how the information being fed in will be used.

    2. ArtK*

      It’s about the technology, too. Many companies have clear anti-AI policies due to legitimate fears of privacy violations and the AI mining corporate secrets for “training.”

    3. Observer*

      It’s not the technology, it’s the outcome that matters

      That’s not necessarily the whole story, though. In There are some real concerns about AI that smart companies *have* to worry about.

      It’s not that the LW should not address the other issues. But if the company has a policy specifically about the use if AI, then they *have* to address that as well. Because I’d be willing to bet that the policy is not really about the quality of the writing.

      1. Alz*

        Yeah, there was a nasty one in Oz recently where someone who wrote legal documents relating to offences against childeren was uploading source documents that included identifying features and getting AI to change the name to Child X. that info is all supposed to be totally locked down so in that case ends and method were important

  10. Killani S*

    Once employees start lying, there is no going back. It’s an undeniable sign of untrustworthiness, lack of respect, and poor judgment.

    1. Peanut Hamper*

      A lot of commenters on this site often recommend lying to get out of something or to avoid something, and it’s almost always a bad idea.

      Once you have a reputation as a liar, people are going to realize that you are unreliable at best. We have fables and fairy tales that address this.

      A single lie in the heat of the moment? Okay, that’s forgiveable. But a habit of lying? That’s where I draw the line.

      1. Pastor Petty Labelle*

        A lie, oh I have plans that can’t be moved when boss is asking you to work unreasonable hours? Ehh, not really a lie, my plan that cannot be changed is not working until midnight every night for a month.

        Lying about turning in work on time is a big deal.

        1. KitKat*

          Agreed. There’s a huge difference between white lies that smooth over social situations and lies about work product. I definitely do NOT see commenters here regularly advocating letter writers lie about work product!

      2. Dawn*

        There is only a moral imperative to be truthful when the person asking has the right to the information they’re asking for.

        1. Boof*

          Welp, if you can tell someone is lying about unimportant things, how is one to know they aren’t lying about important things? … not really sure what you’re getting at here; defense of lying about some things?

          1. Katie Impact*

            I mean, there *are* things it’s okay to lie about at work. It’s okay to lie if your boss asks you whether you’re job searching, or whether you’re pregnant. Those are important things, but they’re important things that your boss doesn’t have the right to know about until you’re ready to tell them. A boss asking whether work is being done on time is in a pretty different category.

          2. Dawn*

            Well, let’s look at what the commenter I was responding to said:

            “A lot of commenters on this site often recommend lying to get out of something or to avoid something, and it’s almost always a bad idea.”

            It’s true that the advice here is frequently to tell a lie to get out of things – like a three-day offsite retreat, or a holiday party, or dinner at the boss’s house.

            It’s true that the advice here is frequently to tell a lie to avoid something – like telling your boss that you’re job searching, or that you’re pregnant, or that you’re receiving treatment for an STD or that you have cancer.

            There is a lot of advice to lie – almost invariably when the alternative is giving a manager information that they have no right to, and that you probably don’t want them knowing, and when saying nothing at all would make things worse for you.

            It is fine and valid to offer something less than the truth for these and many other situations which frequently come up where a manager oversteps their need to know but one can’t diplomatically refuse a response without harming, you know, the job that pays their bills and keeps a roof over their heads.

    2. Seventeen Apples*

      I disagree somewhat. While lying does show poor judgement and lack of trustworthiness, this may be a trauma response that, if the employee recognizes and addresses can change.

      An example: I had an employee who lied a few times. I sat him down and went through impacts of his lies. He had a whole sob story about an abusive prior boss. I told him that I’m so sorry he experienced that, pointed him to our EAP, and reminded him that trauma response or not, he had to tell the truth when doing his job, so he needed to figure himself out. I provided a few other resources and reminded him that mental health is health and if he needed a few days of sick leave to start addressing issues now, he can use that sick time. He did and put in a lot of work to address the why behind the lying. I don’t work there anymore, but he’s pretty great according to my former teammates.

      I also had an employee, same story, but he kept lying through his teeth, so obviously it depends on the person. But I don’t think anyone is irredeemable (obviously depending on situation, if he lied about murdering someone, that is a whole other can of worms).

      1. ferrina*

        It can be a trauma response, but that’s a reason not an excuse. You aren’t responsible for the trauma you endured, but you are responsible for how you manage your trauma symptoms (PTSD/cPTSD is a mental health condition).

        A certain level of honestly is necessary in the workplace and part of professional conduct, and if you can’t meet that, then it’s reasonable for your manager to take steps (regardless of whether or not you have trauma; it’s never on the manager to diagnose/manage trauma, for a long list of reasons). The first step should usually be verbal feedback, and it sounds like in your first example, the employee responded to that and made the necessary changes. I’m not sure if anyone is irredeemable, but I do know that someone who doesn’t want to change won’t change.

      2. Kella*

        The motivation behind the lies is irrelevant for two reasons:

        1. Even if the lying is a trauma response, this person still has learned to rely on lying to avoid consequences, and has seen it work repeatedly. Dropping that habit requires leaning into the possible consequences, which is work that is difficult to do even when someone has the mental health support required. There is never a guarantee that even when called on it, a person will be willing or able to do that work, or the timeline on which change will happen if they do.

        2. When lying is established as a problem, the manager’s workload now includes verifying everything the employee says and does as true. Even if the employee immediately turns over a new leaf, significantly more work has to be done, for a number of months afterward, to verify that this change is real.

        I’m glad you were in a position to offer your employee that support and that it paid off. But in most situations, the cost and risk of doing so is going to be too high.

      3. Observer*

        While lying does show poor judgement and lack of trustworthiness, this may be a trauma response that, if the employee recognizes and addresses can change.

        That’s not relevant. It does not matter *why* he’s lying. If he’s lying he cannot be trusted. Now, if it *is* a trauma response amenable to therapy, etc. he would be wise to do the work.

        But the LW is not in any position to even consider that. Right now they have an employee who apparently lies. There is no way they are going to be able to trust him therapy or not.

    3. MigraineMonth*

      I’ll point out that it can also be a sign of a toxic workplace. If your employer says you have to donate a liver to the CEO’s brother if you’re a match, or demands to know all the details of the personal health emergency you had, or would harass you if they knew about your partners, or fires anyone who makes any mistake no matter how small, there is a huge incentive for employees to lie. When the incentives are lined up correctly, most people–regardless of their values in other situations–cave to the pressure.

      If an underperforming employee lies so they can get out of doing any work, that’s a problem with the employee. If your top performer lies because she needs one afternoon off after weeks of overtime and doesn’t think she can get it any other way, you need to take a long hard look at the culture you’ve created that made her think that was necessary.

  11. Scottish Beanie*

    OP, I think you’re getting into the weeds about how he feels, when you need to strictly address the patterns of late documentation and shoddy work. He knows he’s been put on alert that he’s not meeting goals, so his response should be to actively participate in mitigating the situation, not just wait for you to notice it. He’s hoping you remain flustered at his emotional outbursts, in an attempt to distract you from the fact that he’s not doing his job. I’ve worked with many people like this. Once you see the pattern, it’s impossible to miss.

    1. Pastor Petty Labelle*

      This. OP you are so focused on getting to accept what the technology says you are missing the big picture. The guy is missing deadlines and not turning out work product in a way that you need.

      Stop trying to get him to accept that the technology says X. Simply state, the work was not turned in on time and what was turned in was unacceptable — what are you going to do to make sure this doesn’t happen again. Work through solutions with him. If he throws up his hands and says But I did turn it on time, you need to get serious with him. Tell him his job is on the line and he needs to meet deadlines with acceptable work product. Then follow through on consequences.

      This is not a court of law. You do not have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he turned in work late or used AI.

      1. el l*

        Yes, and all beautifully said.

        OP can’t lose sight of that core of the situation: “…the work was not turned in on time and what was turned in was unacceptable.” And: Despite repeated feedback, he’s not fixing it.

        Take AI completely out of these discussions if possible – it only gives you a means of how terrible work was done. It doesn’t tell you why his work product was turned in late and bad, and why this keeps happening. And in the end, even this doesn’t matter – he has to fundamentally be the one who does the mental labor to fix the situation and keep his job. Not you.

  12. many bells down*

    “You should also make a point for a while of checking right when something is due to see if he has submitted it or not — if he hasn’t, you can speak to him about it on the spot and sidestep the technology claims entirely.”

    Honestly, I don’t think this is going to work. He’ll still claim he submitted it and there must be some other technical issue. It’s just going to be “oh must not have synced right” or “maybe there’s an internet problem”.

    1. Not Tom, Just Petty*

      My interpretation of the plan was to contact him AS something is due, like quarter to the hour and ask for an ETA.
      “Will you be submitting that at 11 today or can you get it to me a few minutes earlier?”
      I know it sounds like a “gotcha” thing, but I agree with many bells down that anything after the time is going to be, “but I submitted it. It’s the system! It lost it and my final draft on my desktop.”

      1. Sloanicota*

        Yeah, a few times you might have to do the “show me the X draft” (on your computer, right now) at the time it is due. If you see there’s still comments in it or corrections haven’t been made, you can flag that he has officially missed the deadline for that stage. This is way more handholding that I would recommend longterm but if you want to get to the bottom of this, it might be worth doing once or twice.

      1. Caramel & Cheddar*

        Or, as they work through this period of extended oversight, cc/tag/ping/message the boss when the work is submitted. If he says “I submitted it on time but forgot to let you know!” as he inevitably will, that’s just another data point towards what to do with his long term employment possibilities.

      1. Sybil*

        I have the same problem with the high school students that I teach and I wouldn’t be too sure this mindset in the work world doesn’t come from what worked for them in school. “I did turn in [online assignment] to the correct place. It’s just the website that is not working!” Which is what they also tell their parents who then want to blame me for the zero.

        I just ask them to pull up the website and show me what they tried and how it wasn’t working. Sometimes, indeed, they are trying to submit it incorrectly, but more often they have to admit the assignment is not actually complete.

        1. Lexi Vipond*

          My (university) students are usually emailing me, so I sometimes end up in the odd situation of asking them to please send me a screenshot of something that isn’t there. But sometimes it really isn’t and they can send me a picture of the blank space, and that’s useful information!

          1. Hawkwind1980*

            One of the things I like about the new LMS our college adopted this academic year is that it sends students a submission receipt when they have actually sent something. If they claim an assignment was submitted and the instructor isn’t seeing it, we can ask them to forward the receipt and then sic the LMS’s IT on the problem.

        2. Jojo*

          My son did this during the pandemic. I checked in with his teachers, who were very kind and patient and would give him until the next day to resubmit. But…there was nothing to resubmit because he hadn’t done the work to start with. It was so frustrating, on top of all the other stresses of the pandemic.

          I solved the problem the next year by telling him that if he was getting good grades, I wouldn’t have any reason to give him a bed time or limit his video game time. Turned into an A student overnight. I wonder if the LW would have similar success with clear communication about his ability to keep his job being dependent on finding his own solutions.

          1. Boof*

            Yea I think LW needs to realize this employee may need to be fired and then clearly communicate that / start a PIP, unless there’s way more to this story not in evidence (like that this person is being expected to do way higher level work then they were hired or paid for, and that LW actually should be giving them much smaller projects/way more supervision)

      2. ferrina*

        That’s what I was picturing. Treat it like an IT issue; walk through the steps with him to see where the breakdown is occurring. Mentally set aside time to walk over to his desk, watch him send it, then walk back to your desk. Or if it has magically disappeared from his desktop, walk him over to IT.

    4. Elbe*

      The LW says that Miles has access to the timestamps, so I don’t see why they can’t ask him to complete this task.

      Right when he submits something, HE should check the timestamp to see if it is accurate and send a email with a screenshot immediately afterward if it is not.

      He’s the one claiming a technology issue, he’s the one who should be taking an extra step to find evidence of that, not the LW.

    5. Ellie*

      So he fixes it right then and there, and lets you know when its in. You can stand over his shoulder and watch what he’s doing when he submits it. It’ll be pretty obvious if its actually not finished.

  13. ClosingtheDoomLoop*

    I find it funny how everything seems to boil down to either quit the job or fire the employee these days as a solution. I don’t necessarily disagree with those but I’d love to see an analysis of the solutions suggested here.

    1. Caramel & Cheddar*

      I do wonder how much letting a situation play out too long before writing in impacts those kinds of stats, e.g. if you’re at the point where your boss/employee is making you write into an advice column, chances are higher than average that things are either approaching a place where they’re soon to be out of control or they’re already well out of control.

      There are definitely letters where people ask for advice in advance of something potentially becoming a program, but those are probably much rarer comparatively.

      1. N C Kiddle*

        There’s also the ever popular genre of “I know this is a low-stakes problem, but…” Which in itself shows that people typically think a problem has to be at a certain level before they’re “allowed” to write in about it.

    2. Sola Lingua Bona Lingua Mortua Est*

      I find it funny how everything seems to boil down to either quit the job or fire the employee these days as a solution. I don’t necessarily disagree with those but I’d love to see an analysis of the solutions suggested here.

      People and jobs are largely fungible in the modern labor market.

      1. linger*

        As we’ve recently learned, the most fungible position of all exists in an abandoned basement lab.

    3. Nonsense*

      It’s the same reason why people suggest divorce in relationship columns – by the time they’re writing in about a problem, it’s basically too late to fix it easily. Plus, as we often see in the updates here and occasionally in the Aunt Agony columns, the problem they wrote in about was just the one they could name and there were a lot more issues under the surface.

      Also, far too many people have been stuck with a coworker who is constantly coddled by management while not doing their job.

      1. Richard Hershberger*

        Also, there is strong selection bias toward extreme cases. Most office muddle along more or less fine and there is nothing to write in about.

    4. SuprisinglyADHD*

      The common thread I’ve noticed is that if a problem can’t be solved by discussing the issue directly and collaborating on solutions/workarounds, then there often aren’t many other options besides “accept it as it is” or “either you or [problem person] should not be in this job”.
      We readers get a very curated list of letters, particularly the ones that are super-specific and delicate (eg: how do I help this employee whose house burned down without overstepping boundaries), the letters where simple troubleshooting has already failed, or the batshit bananapants situations that make everyone go “wat.”

    5. Leaving academia*

      I think there is a decent amount of “try communication” and “decide if you are willing to put up with it,” but letter writers might be better about including what they have already tried or whether they are willing to put up with the situation? Could certainly be interesting to see if that has changed (both on it’s own, but also in relation to answers). Particularly related to quitting, I wonder if there is a cultural difference in “just deal with it”.

    6. bamcheeks*

      I sometimes see complaints on here that there is too much, “time to find a new job” and that it’s the AAM equivalent of DTMFA. I think both of those things are actually really clear examples of “be clear in what the limits of your power are, and don’t forget them”.

      Overwhelmingly, problems are either, “Something is doing Thing I Don’t Like, and I haven’t told them because [reason]” or “I have told them, but they are doing the thing I don’t like anyway”. And people really often get stuck at that stage — sometimes because they think they’ve told them, or the other person Should Just Know, or because they’ve told the other person but the other person doesn’t care or doesn’t understand or doesn’t have the power to stop, but they feel sure that there must be something they can do to make them care / understand / have the ability. That’s when they write to problem pages.

      If you’re a manager, you actually can enforce consequences, starting with flagging the seriousness, moving to PIPs and disciplinaries, ending with firing. But for lots of other relationships, especially where you want something to change at work but those people are superior to you, or problems with partners or husbands and wives, you don’t have the power to make someone. “Start looking for a new job” or “break up with him” are a realistic reminder of what you CAN change, and what is in your power. You might decide that’s not the right solution and choose to stay with them and tolerate the behaviour, and you might feel you have very little active “choice” if there are major barriers to doing those things. But IMO it is important to recognise that those are the parts which are in your power, and “make this person stop doing the thing” probably isn’t.

    7. nnn*

      What are you basing that on? I just looked through the last 2 weeks of letters on the site and that wasn’t the advice for most of them.

    8. Dust Bunny*

      I read old advice columns and, honestly, nothing has changed much. Even in relationships the advice in the 1940s was “accept it or break up”. I imagine that if we had had AAM in 1950 the advice about handling incompetent and recalcitrant employees would be a lot of “fire them”.

    10. Kella*

      This isn’t about limitations of advice-giving but about the logistical limitations of attempting to influence the behavior of other humans. Ultimately, you cannot control another person’s actions, which means there are only so many actions one can take when someone else is the problem.

      When speaking in a work context, if you are in charge of supervising someone else’s work and there is a problem with their work, there are generally two options in your control: Give them feedback (and Alison’s advice will vary on how and what to focus on) or enforce consequences (which a significant amount of the time will end in firing, and even when it doesn’t *always* requires the possibility of firing for it to be effective.)

      If you don’t have managerial or other sources of authority and someone else is a problem, the things in your power to do are a. Communicate to the person about the problem b. Communicate with someone who does have authority about the problem or c. leave the job.

      You’ll notice a much larger range in actionable advice in letters from people who recognize that *they* are the problem, because they control their own actions. “Get a different job” will be the advice in those circumstances only if it looks like the problems aren’t reasonably fixable (like if the job does not at all match that person’s skillset and they have no opportunities for training, or if a disability or health problem is causing incompatibilities with the job responsibilities that can’t be solved with accommodation.)

    12. Elbe*

      There are always going to be patterns to letters, because people are people.

      I think that the most common response is, “Did you try talking about this?” There are so many letter writers who are trying to find a different solution when they really just need to have the uncomfortable conversation that they are avoiding.

      It makes sense, then, that for letters where communication is already taking place, the advice is mainly going to boil down to “accept it or leave”. Even the best columnists don’t have magic words to make unreasonable people reasonable.

  14. DivergentStitches*

    I would also allow Miles the opportunity to let me know if he has any medical condition that would require reasonable accommodations around the time management issues. I am neurodivergent and I struggle with that as well. If I hadn’t told my manager about my diagnosis and I was struggling and he had these sorts of conversations with me, I’d 100% tell him and ask for a reasonable accommodation.

    If he doesn’t have, or doesn’t say he has, a diagnosis, OP can guide him to the company’s EAP for assistance if needed.

    Just saying – once, I screwed up and I did cover it up dishonestly in a panic. I’m not proud of it. But again, neurodivergence.

    1. ferrina*

      You’re being very kind, but I think that’s too kind. I’m ADHD, and while many of these issues are things I’ve dealt with (yes, including lying to cover my time blindness), it’s also not the manager’s job to manage their employee’s health conditions. And these behaviors (whether or not they are caused by a neurodivergence) sound like a LOT. This isn’t a good employee, and if this behavior can’t change very quickly, this job may not be the fit for this person at this time. And that’s okay- keeping someone who is causing problems in the workplace often doesn’t end well long term. This person isn’t doing great work, isn’t meeting deadlines, requires a lot of time from the manager, and is regularly lying and getting emotional around basic work processes (i.e., getting feedback).

      You also can’t ask if an employee is neurodivergent. They either need to volunteer the information, or you have to operate as though they do not have a health condition. If you’re in the U.S., it’s a violation of the ADA to assume that an employee has a health condition. If you ask “have you been tested for a neurodivergence?”, that can open the door to an ADA violation lawsuit (no matter how well-meaning you are).

      1. Mad Scientist*

        Yeah, it would be incredibly uncomfortable to get that kind of question from my boss. It’s not appropriate to speculate, regardless of whether or not it ends up being true. I think an acceptable variation could be asking something broader like “Is everything okay?” And then they can share if it turns out they have a health condition or something going on in their personal life that would make them think this behavior is okay. (Which still would not excuse it)

    3. Elbe*

      I don’t think it’s good advice to have a manager prompt an employee to share a medical diagnosis. Even saying something as basic as, “Is there a medical reason for this?” or “Just so you know, you can share a diagnosis with me if you have one” is still way too close to requesting medical information for something this thin on evidence. All we know about Miles is that he misses deadlines, then lies about it, then becomes defensive. While it’s not impossible that it could have some underlying cause, the behavior alone doesn’t justify asking about someone’s personal health information.

      Realistically, Miles will need to improve his performance and stop lying even if he does have a diagnosis.

  15. GoodNPlenty*

    One of the greatest sucks on a managers time is a substandard worker who needs constant handholding.

  16. Machine*

    There is nothing inherently wrong with using AI, only that AI is worse at writing than people. AI looks to fake for external documents, internal who cares, and external document quality matters. LW’s company is focusing on the fact that he did not write it; the problem is that the quality is bad. I play around with Chat GPT all the time, and its logic boards are impersonal and fail at times. That is OP’s problem, that the documents make the organization look unprofessional, and thus, his work quality must improve. I would recommend LW to use AI to bounce and generate ideas faster to better reach the deadline.

    1. Best Coke Ever*

      For my uses, ChatGPT is great at coming up with a draft which I’ll then need to tweak a bit. But it often pulls in things I wouldn’t have thought of. As long as you know the limitations I think it can be a great tool

    3. Arrietty*

      If you’ve been expressly told not to use AI to write a work document, then it’s a problem if you do.

      1. Boof*

        Well yes but it might not be worth Proving it when it’s much easier to focus on the fact that it’s just bad work. “This reads like AI content, and we need better writing”

    4. bamcheeks*

      internal who cares

      I mean– lots of people? I am sure there are lots of use-cases where it doesn’t matter (and there are lots of external ones too), but the idea that internal communications can all be shit because who cares is a wild take on the value of internal communication.

      If you’re not adding any value beyond what AI can do, what’s the point of you?

    5. ArtK*

      There’s tons wrong with using AI. Whatever it generates *is* based on plagiarism. The publicly available models have mostly (all?) been trained on data scraped from the internet; despite a common myth, just because it’s available on the net, it doesn’t mean that it’s copyright-free.

      For technical stuff, you have *maybe* a 50/50 chance that the response will be correct. Again, the common models have been trained on things like Reddit, without anyone curating the training data; that means that bad answers are very easy to show up, because the training data is awful.

      1. Best Coke Ever*

        “Whatever it generates *is* based on plagiarism”

        This is just incorrect. There are so many uses for AI that you are lumping everything in with one pitfall

        1. Hroethvitnir*

          We are specifically talking in the context of generative AI, however, for which these concerns are extremely relevant.

          Honestly, I’d die for a more accurate and consistent use of words for different technologies lumped under “AI”, but that’s not going to happen.

    6. JFC*

      Yes, I feel like LW’s frustrations with Miles are spilling out into generalizing AI as being bad. It’s certainly imperfect but has helped me out in many situations. I would not send out an AI-generated document internally or externally without reviewing it myself first, but it’s a great tool to use as a starting point or if you are stuck.

      Re: the timestamp issue — is there any chance that Miles’ computer is showing a different time than yours? Times on devices can kind of be notoriously inaccurate. I’ve seen wacky times on otherwise perfectly usable computers before, and my old alarm system was always an hour behind no matter how many times I tried to correct it.

    7. Observer*

      LW’s company is focusing on the fact that he did not write it; the problem is that the quality is bad

      You have no way to know this. There are a lot of reasons why a company would not want AI to be used for public facing documents, and quality is only one of them.

  17. Double A*

    As a teacher, I see a lot of students doing exactly this. I’m working to teach them time management skills and also think critically about AI, but it’s an uphill battle.

    When it comes to AI use, I also think it’s important to spell out the WHY of your policy. In my teaching, I have a policy where if I suspect AI but the student has otherwise achieved the task, then I grade it as if they wrote it themselves because they have used the tool more or less effectively, and my feedback will address areas where it’s less than effective. But it’s my job to teach.

    If you don’t want AI used, explain why. If it’s for data scraping reasons, then it’s a hard line. If it’s because it’s poor writing, then you don’t even need to accuse him of using AI. You just send it back with the feedback about why it’s unacceptable. If he’s using AI to panickedly meet deadlines, then turning in something subpar late is going to lead down the path to firing.

    1. Good Lord Ratty*

      It’s… plagiarism. Your hypothetical student who used AI to write a paper for them didn’t complete the assignment; they got someone (or something) to do the work in their stead. The point of a writing assignment is learning to write well. If you don’t do the work of writing, you aren’t learning to write. You can mark an assignment written by a human person other than the student (e.g., if they’d paid someone $50 to write their paper for them), but that doesn’t mean the student did the work.

      Why is it suddenly ok when it’s not a third party person being paid to help the student cheat, but instead it’s a technological solution? It’s still cheating. It’s still not doing the work.

      1. Double A*

        This is incorrect; plagiarism is passing off someone else’s ideas as your own. You can’t plagiarize AI because AI doesn’t have ideas. That’s why AI use doesn’t fall under plagiarism under any honor code in any institution. It’s incredibly tricky territory for schools.

        Look, if a student wants to interact with AI to prompt their thinking and they get some useful ideas about that, I don’t see how that’s any different than a class discussion or reading articles related to the topic. You then need to have the skills to synthesize those ideas, wherever they came from, and AI won’t allow you to fake those skills.

        If a student just plugs a prompt into AI and hits go (which a lot of them do), the answers will be wrong. The writing is bad. It can’t follow the instructions. I can tell it’s AI. It’s those borderline essays that I will take at face value. The writing is kind of stilted, but it has a logical flow. It has supportive evidence that connects with the thesis. I don’t really know how (or even iff) the student interacted with AI to achieve the outcome, but they have achieved the outcome of writing a coherent, well-supported essay. AI does not do that on its own without someone having the critical thinking skills to coach it correctly. If you have the skills to use AI to write an essay that meets my criteria, you have demonstrated the thinking skills I’m looking for, and I will grade you accordingly.

        I mean, AI is a tool. I not only encourage students to use spell check, I require it. They are in high school; my expectation is that they have the basics of spelling down, and therefore can use a tool that helps them monitor that skill. If they understand the fundamentals of writing, they might be able to use AI to help them. If they don’t, AI won’t save them.

        I will say I strongly discourage the use of AI for high school students because I don’t think they generally have developed the writing and thinking skills to be able to use AI in a supportive way. But I *explain* this to them, I don’t use say, “AI is not allowed.”

        1. Boof*

          Thank you – I see AI as plagerism the same way photography is stealing – like yes photographing a work of art and selling a print is stealing. Photographing a person or something someone else has created and profiting off their image if they never consented is an ethical morass. Using a camera to make new and beautiful art, tho, it’s a tool.
          The morality or lack thereof of AI depends entirely on what it was trained on and what it is being used for.

        2. Murray*

          “AI doesn’t have ideas.” This may be true on its own, but AI does its best to serve up other people’s ideas, unconfirmed and uncredited. In a context where crediting others’ work is important, like an assignment with a reference section, that’s an ethical violation.

          “That’s why AI use doesn’t fall under plagiarism under any honor code in any institution.” This seems like an overreach and unknowable. And even if it were somehow true that wouldn’t give AI a pass; it could just mean that institutions are developing their policies (like the APA style guide is in the process of doing).

          1. Murray*

            One more thing… “Look, if a student wants to interact with AI to prompt their thinking and they get some useful ideas about that, I don’t see how that’s any different than a class discussion or reading articles related to the topic”

            In academia, plagiarism isn’t just passing off someone else’s words as your own; it’s also passing off someone else’s ideas as your own (whether or not they passed though an AI on their way to your brain). In writing a research paper for a university class, after you “read articles related to the topic”, you’re supposed to paraphrase them into your own words, *and cite your source* in the body of the paper and your reference section.
            A conversation is less likely to be cited in student work, but journal articles include an acknowledgements section for this purpose.

  18. Richard Hershberger*

    Breaking tasks down: Many many years ago I was a department manager in a WalMart. (This is not nearly as exalted as it sounds, by the way.) The department managing was mostly hands-on, but we would be assigned another employee to cover the later shifts, after we were gone for the day, with a couple of hours of overlap in our schedules. There was this one guy who the others didn’t want, because he was not smart. It is hard to express this without it coming across as an insult, but think Forrest Gump. He was also a hard worker and a really nice guy. I lobbied to have him in my department, because I had figured out how to instruct him. If I simply told him the desired end state he would freeze up, no matter how routine the path was to achieve that end state. So instead I broke the task down into small steps: Take this stuff off the shelf and put it on a cart and take it to the back and put it on this shelf. Then take this other stuff from a different place in the back and put it on the cart, bring it out front, and put it on the shelf formerly occupied by the other stuff. Once I figured this out I could go home confident that the work would get done, where other employees who had no problem with how to do it would somehow find reasons not to. I loved the guy.

    For that role, this level of management makes sense. The role in the case of this letter appears to bear little resemblance. This guy, for whatever reason, simply sucks at it.

    As for using AI, I personally am pretty lenient, in that if the work product is good I don’t care how it was arrived at, within broad limits. The problem with using AI is that the output is poor. I can see someone successfully using it as a first draft or to break writer’s block, but in practice the people who use it surreptitiously rarely have the skills to turn it into something actually good.

    1. Not Tom, Just Petty*

      I think there is another a big factor in the difference between your employee at WalMart and OP’s employee in Spacely Sprockets: the guy. Your guy did not tell you that the boxes he needed to stock were still on the truck during his shift. Your guy didn’t tell you that the list of items to stock was missing so he had nothing to reference. Your guy didn’t tell you that he did stock everything, but someone else moved all the items back to the store room.

      1. CommanderBanana*

        ^^ This. This commenter definitely deserves kudos for learning how to manage an employee effectively, but this is apples to oranges.

    2. A Significant Tree*

      I read that as the point – some employees thrive with an adjustment to how they are managed, and some will not improve no matter what you try. OP’s employee is definitely in the latter camp because he’s prone to blaming and reacting, so it’s almost certainly not worth the effort to find the magic method of management.

  19. CubeFarmer*

    Miles sounds like the type of person who has always been able to get away with stuff like this, and he’s bewildered as to why this is no longer working.

    I would also follow up with IT to check on the time stamp issues (even though, yeah, you know that he’s lying.) The AI stuff is trickier, because the detectors are often wrong (I have run my own writing through them and it’s sometimes come back as AI generated.)

    One thing you could do is to ask Miles to send you daily updates/drafts about the work he is doing, and or, check in just before deadline as to the status of the project (i.e. look at the project.)

    1. Sloanicota*

      Yeah this is basically a form of weaponized incompetence, assuming that blaming tech/being bad at tech (such a fuzzy line!) is part of the shtick.

  20. CommanderBanana*

    Personally, I find the best way to handle people who always have mysterious “IT issues” is to take it really, really seriously, get IT involved, document everything, and act as though you really do believe them. It’ll usually become apparent very quickly that they are lying.

    1. FashionablyEvil*

      Right? If the company’s systems are actually eating documents or randomly moving things, that’s a serious problem! (My company had serious issues with Excel files on Teams a couple years back, for example.)

      1. CommanderBanana*

        And sometimes it is the technology! We’ve had bizarre tech problems that required mass removals and re-installations of some programs.

      2. JustaTech*

        Yes this! I have a boss who is *terrible* with his email. It’s not a total black hole, but just because you sent him that email doesn’t mean he will see it, read it, or act on it.

        But also, a few years ago emails started randomly disappearing out of his inbox. No one believed him, because he is terrible with email, until one day someone else happened to be looking at his screen when the email they were reading disappeared. Took IT weeks to figure out what the heck was going on.

  21. Observer*

    Focus there; those things are work quality problems and they’re easier to address without getting drawn into a debate about whether he did or didn’t use AI. (Although if he is using AI, he’s probably leaving tracks on his company computer that your IT team could find for you, if you want to know for sure.)

    Yes. There is very little doubt you could find out for sure, without the need for AI detectors. And if you can’t you probably need to give a good hard look at your IT and information security policies and procedures.

  22. Birb*

    I don’t use AI detectors because they are unreliable, and because neurodivergent people tend to get labeled AI (I’ve uploaded decades old papers I wrote and they’ve been flagged as substantially AI) but I DO check each student’s version history to see if they likely used AI. It will show that they wrote a 1000 word paper in less than 5 minutes without backspacing or editing anything, no typos, and they’ll INSIST the technology is broken. I can’t imagine having to put up with that from an adult in a professional environment.

    1. ehhhh*

      Completely agree with everything you said…up to the ‘version control’ part. As an ND person, I tend to save separate copies of what I’m working on, mostly in case I need to jump back into an older version and use or edit an earlier section since deleted or heavily edited.

      The version I submit will not often have a version history in the traditional sense because of that (and it will usually have ‘FINAL’ or ‘FINAL DRAFT’ in the file name).

    2. anon24*

      One thing I wonder about this is students who write their paper elsewhere and copy it. I don’t use AI, never have, but I also don’t use Word because I don’t like it. I tend to write my papers in another program like Libre Office. But my school wants things submitted in Word because we have our accounts through Office and everything can be in the cloud. So I write my paper elsewhere, make sure it is good, then copy/paste it into Word, format it, and save it to my school account before submitting it. To anyone checking my version history it would look like I procured a paper out of thin air. Of course if I was ever confronted about it I have the other document saved with version history and I usually have a third document that is my very rough draft/outline/notes that I could also show as proof that I wrote the paper.

  23. el l*

    Noticed that OP didn’t answer the question when asked “How’s his work?” and instead speculated as to how he was feeling and why he was behaving how he was.

    It’s not your job to figure out his deal. What is your job is to get work done at the quality you need and at the time you need. Neither of which – given the ringing silence about his work quality – he’s meeting.

    Think you’re already in firing territory. All you’re doing now is documenting it.

    1. Hroethvitnir*

      Honestly, I think he struggles with time/task management. When I set really strict deadlines and help him break down the work into small chunks (outline by this date, draft by this date, etc.), the work is good.

      A lot of people are focusing weirdly on the fact she’s psychoanalysed it at all, but it was half of a reply to a follow-up question. She did answer the question: bad at deadlines, good when babied.

      1. ehhhh*

        Depending on the industry and role, it could literally be a basic expectation that OP won’t just provide a vague overarching deadline for a chunk of work. Breaking a project into stages or steps, and providing deadlines or check-in dates for those stages is pretty bog standard.

        It’s not being ‘babied’ – it’s literally management.

        1. Dancing Otter*

          When I was in middle school, learning to write research papers, we had deadlines for thesis/topic, for bibliography, for outline, for draft, for final version.

          Are you suggesting good management consists of treating professional employees as though they were middle schoolers?

  24. Cat Lady in the Mountains*

    So, I’ve been on the other side of IT issues no one believed until our IT team got involved. I had emails from an important client start not reaching me at random. They had time-stamped proof that they had sent them. I was about to be put on a PIP over it before my manager agreed to pull in IT (I couldn’t do this myself because of our IT escalation processes), and they discovered that system-level spam filters had started catching some emails from the client’s sender domain, and I would have had no way to receive or even know I was missing the emails. Turns out a temporary employee at the IT firm had adjusted the system-level spam filters without anyone’s knowledge.

    All that is to say – the open-minded approach but doing some serious digging really is the fairest way to go. If you learn he was lying, now you never have to wonder/doubt yourself for moving him out of the role. If it turns out by some crazy fluke that he was telling the truth, now you can fix the problem.

    1. CommanderBanana*

      ^^ This. My firm (stupidly) uses the same email address for marketing as we do for actual correspondence, and it’s not at all unusual for someone to unsubscribe or mark as spam our marketing emails, and then they don’t get actual emails from us they need because their spam filters are blocking that email address.*

      *No, I don’t know why we do this, yes, I’ve mentioned it.

      And I’ve been on the other side of this, where a coworker lied about copying me on emails and I didn’t get them because…they didn’t copy me and lied about it.

    2. Reading Rainbow*

      Yeah, I think it’s always worth investigating even though most people who blame technology are going to turn out to be wrong (intentionally or not). Very weird things do happen that can’t be easily spotted on the surface.

      I was once in huge trouble because I had been in charge of scheduling a meeting of a ton of VIPs that took several months to arrange and the #1 most important person to be there did not show. When we went to them, they were confused and said they thought it was off because it was not on their calendar. All eyes went to me, and for several days I was in might-get-fired trouble because I could not prove that I had not messed up the calendar entry. Inexplicably, they were no longer in the calendar system for the meeting. I remembered it very clearly! I had sent the invite, seen them confirm, and seen them in the attendee list! I had checked to make sure and it had been fine last I looked! No one believed me and even worse they were clearly Very Unhappy at me for lying and deflecting about it. But I knew I wasn’t, I just could not prove it. There was no digital paper trail of them being removed or even having been invited in the first place. I was in deep s–t.

      Finally, really afraid of how much hot water I was in, I went to an admin who sometimes worked with the VIP and asked them if they remembered seeing the invite. I figured maybe she could back me up. “Yes I saw it,” she told me, “I declined that.”

      It turned out that the admin had a blanket policy of declining/deleting any calendar entries for meetings she did not know about, as this VIP was constantly getting added to pointless meetings without prior discussion. The VIP knew about the meeting, but the admin did not, so when the admin saw it on her calendar she zapped in off there in a way that did not notify me or show her as a declined invitee, making it look on our end like I had simply never invited her in the first place. The VIP, for her part, did not know what the admin was really doing with her calendar and did not think to ask her or point me to her in the first place.

      If she hadn’t remembered declining that meeting specifically, I don’t know what would have happened. There should have been some kind of marker in the system that an invitee had declined, but for some reason there was not. All I could do was say “I swear I did it right!” Like, what other option did I have?

    3. JustaTech*

      Yup, I had the fun experience of suddenly not getting any emails from the entire country of France. (Literally.) Normally this wouldn’t be an issue, but we were working with a vendor over there (who we’d worked with before!) and I started getting phone calls “hey, why aren’t you answering our emails?” “What emails, you haven’t replied to any of my emails!”
      I had to use my personal email for a week until our IT figured out what setting had changed that they were blocking entire countries.
      (And it’s not like the emails went to spam or something, they were completely blocked back at the firewall.)

  25. Erin*

    I work in academic integrity in post-secondary. This comes up so frequently in students who plagiarize or cheat in their academic work – specifically issues with stress/time management and bad decision-making under those stressors. I’ll be saving this to show to students who don’t believe that this behaviour will impact them outside of school (a convo I try to have all the time with students).

    Just generally, I would recommend stating the issue, noting that his description of events do not match what you are seeing and that you are being forced to determine what might have happened based on all the information you have in front of you to fill in the gaps. I usually note that accountability and responsibility are incredibly important aspects of professionalism and that you want to understand what might have happened so that you can offer support or solutions. If he’s able to take any responsibility, then it can be really helpful to brainstorm with him – what happened, what could he do differently, what systems can you both put into place to address this pattern.

  26. Angora540*

    I read this and he’s too much work. I think you are dragging this out. I think he’s figured out that you are uncomfortable with the way he acts when confronted and is bullying you. The manipulation itself is a form of bullying for sure. I would get the report from IT; and have a conversation with him regarding the lies and unwillingness to accept responsibility for not performing. You can tell him that his behavior and not accepting ownership for his performance is not acceptable. That IT shows has shown that he’s not submitted anything that could be tracked. It would best if he found a position elsewhere and terminate him. If your employer requires a PIP; do it. Do not drag this out. You are not doing yourself any favor keeping him. He’s sucking away at your work time and reflects poorly on you for not fully addressing it.

    1. ehhhh*

      With respect, this is a long way from bullying. OP has all the power here.

      In many industries, breaking down an overarching deadline into stages and steps is bog standard people and project management, so it’s not ‘too much work’ at all.

      The reason behind why Miles is lying is the most important part here. It could be trauma, a medical condition, unreasonable deadlines and/or workload…or just that he is a liar. But the latter choice is the least likely in my may years of experience.

  27. DoctorOfTranslation*

    FIRST: Doubling down and reacting strongly certainly do make Miles come off as dishonest. When students, colleagues, clients, or bureaucrats pull this malarky with me, I tend to suggest that we “give each other the benefit of the doubt that all parties are acting in good faith” AND THEN ALSO immediately agree to get to the bottom of the “unreliable” technology, by running our very next work item or deliverable as a test case, roping in IT, Miles, OP, and whichever other parties are directly involved, in the stated spirit of “things can go wrong, let’s find out what’s behind this glitch” – no matter who or what we reasonably believe the problem is. No aggression, no accusations, no condescension, no disdain, just the facts, ma’am. Before running the test case, the parties ALSO agree that if no errors are found in “the technology”, then Miles and OP will sign a reasonable and clear PIP to improve performance and the work product so that it meets the needs of the role, as Alison always says. I’m guessing Miles wouldn’t agree to that, and would likely bow out at that point. See @Erin’s comment above on academic integrity = 100% agree!
    In a test case between Miles and OP, (run preferably on site, in person, in physical proximity of office spaces) this would likely show that the timestamps are in fact running correctly. There are many useful content management tools for writers/editors/translators, for example, that help make this process manageable – is OP actually using a good system, or is that part of the problem?
    Then, if the timestamp kerfuffle is the sole basis of Miles’ claims, he no longer has a leg to stand on. If something is actually wonky, then at least OP will have next steps to consider.
    SECOND: OP, are you hiring?! I’m a-lookin.

  28. SunnyShine*

    I find it odd that OP is focused on his emotions, timestamps, and checking his work through an AI checker than actual managing. Like, I get it, investigating employees sucks. But the first thing would be to check with IT and get his technology fixed. I also understand shame spirals, but this is an inappropriate way of “armchair diagnosing” because you don’t have proof of it other than defensiveness. People also get defensive when they are in the right and are being accused of being wrong. I’m concerned about your “instincts” and arguing with reality when you don’t have enough proof yet. Perhaps you are taking this personally or maybe you feel you need to manage his emotions for him? Either way, you’re going to burn yourself out just by arguing with him over this. Even if it feels like more work to look into it, just do it because it’ll save a lot of heartache later on.

  29. ehhhh*

    In most cases in the workplace, discovering the rationale – or the why – behind any lies, big or small, (or omission of details) is usually more helpful than purely dropping everyone who does it into the ‘lying liar who lies’ category. Because everyone lies.

    If I were OP, the first question I’d ask is if Miles’ workload is reasonable, and to make sure that all training, SOPs, communication/direction etc are all correct, clear, and up to date.

    OP says: ‘When I set really strict deadlines and help him break down the work into small chunks (outline by this date, draft by this date, etc.), the work is good.’

    Providing employees with written deadlines, including an overarching deadline and deadlines for certain steps is absolutely bog standard in many industries, especially the digital professions. As a manager and senior IC with late-diagnosed ADHD, this is something I do for myself, and any managers or stakeholders understand this is a requirement. When you have to break down an overarching deadline into stages, it also tends to mitigate any unreasonable expectations or deadlines, even inadvertent ones.

    As Alison says, this may or may not be expected or reasonable in Miles’ and OP’s jobs/industry, but it’s pretty par for the course in many industries. Has OP attempted to upskill Miles in how to do this himself?

    I also agree with Alison that OP should ignore any AI ‘detector’, because they are beyond useless and actively harmful.

    I don’t agree that this needs to end in firing Miles, because OP doesn’t know what the problem is: ‘My armchair psychologist take is that he gets in a shame/insecurity spiral when he feels like he’s falling behind, leading to shortcuts and dishonesty. But whenever I try to get to the underlying problem, he says the technology is lying, and I’m not sure how to dig deeper.’

    Certainly call in IT, but make sure that they know what they’re doing and will be honest, rather than just towing the company line and claiming that everything is working when it isn’t.

    To answer OP’s question: ‘How do I correct a missed deadline if he insists (to the point of getting emotional) that the deadline wasn’t missed?

    Take a trauma-informed response, and do some training in this and in how to effectively manage and communicate neurodiverse and otherwise diverse teams. Miles may just be a liar, but there could also be trauma (including from workplaces) or a medical condition or other personal life stuff that’s interfering. Talk to him.

  30. Diomedea Exulans*

    Miles might be lying about deadlines, but please do stop using AI detectors. They don’t work and you can’t easily end up accusing people falsely. I’m telling this to you as an AI engineer.

  31. For the love of decency*

    ooohh I’m going to need an update with this one! It reminds me of speaking with my teen daughter when responsibility is not being taken. You are not crazy.

  32. Jack Straw from Wichita*

    I’m sure I’m not the first to say so, but I’d really like an update on this letter!

  33. Religious Nutter*

    OP, one thing to consider is to simply shut it down when he starts lying. Right now you’re approaching this from a position of equality, which is normally a great position to take! However, I think this is a good example of why the hierarchies of management are necessary.

    When he makes a false claim, simply shut it down. Don’t bother with calling him a liar, simply do not accept his version of events as fact. You don’t need to “catch” him or “prove” anything. This isn’t a court. You’re his manager and you can simply tell him he’s wrong.

    “I don’t know why the timestamp says I finished it on Friday. I submitted it on Tuesday!”

    “The timestamp says the file was uploaded on Friday because that’s when the file was uploaded. We’ve discussed the importance of deadlines before, and missing this deadline caused consequences X, Y, and Z. I need you to turn in your work by the deadline.”

    “But I did!”

    “If you had, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. Now, let’s move past the question of blame, because that’s not why we’re meeting. The fact that this wasn’t in on time caused X, and that’s not great for our department. What can we do to prevent this from happening in the future?”

    The problem here is you’re negotiating with him. You’re trying to adjudicate this as though there were a question of fact. You know there’s not, and there’s no need to convince him of your version of events. Most of the time, taking a more egalitarian approach is absolutely the way to go, but he lost that privilege the moment he started hiding his mistakes.

    Another way to look at this might be to tell him that “technical errors” are his problem to solve. The system is “losing” his uploads? Okay, so he needs to verify that the upload is in place and visible to someone other than himself prior to the deadline. If he’s responsible for the document, then he’s responsible for making sure the computer didn’t eat his homework.

    1. Religious Nutter*

      I’m being a lot harsher about this than I might be about other issues because I work in IT, and your employee isn’t exactly unique in his brilliant tactic of blaming my profession for his shortcomings.

      We get questions like the ones you’re talking about every few months. “Employee says they sent X but I never got it, can you check?”
      “Sure, I can waste my time on a query to prove that they never sent that document.”

      It’s incredibly tiresome, and the answer is almost always exactly the same “it wasn’t the computer”. Flukes, glitches, and errors do happen, but the moment a manager comes to us saying “my direct report says…” I already know how the whole thing is going to play out.

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