I am SO dreading the next few weeks. Like, truly dreading them to my core. It’s the annual review time at work, and I have this one person… Brenda. God, Brenda. She’s… fine. She’s a nice enough person, always brings in cookies for birthdays, asks about my kids. But her work? It’s just not good. Not good at all. And I’ve let it slide for months. For MONTHS. It started off small, little things I’d pick up. Missed deadlines on minor tasks, reports that needed a lot of editing. I’d think, "Oh, she’s just new, she’ll get the hang of it." Or "Maybe she’s having a bad week." And then a bad month. And then, well, here we are. I’ve probably done half her job for her without her even knowing it. Just quietly fixed things, rewritten emails, stayed late to patch up something she messed up so it wouldn’t fall on the team. I’ve always tried to be the "good boss," the understanding one, the one who doesn’t micromanage. Turns out, being the "good boss" sometimes just makes you a coward. The thought of sitting down with her and telling her she’s not meeting expectations makes my stomach clench. I literally wake up in the middle of the night sometimes thinking about it, my heart pounding. I play out the conversation in my head. How do you tell someone who is genuinely trying, who has a good heart, that they just… aren’t good at their job? That they’re letting the team down? I feel like such a fraud. I’m supposed to be the department head, the one who handles these things, and I’m frozen. It's funny, humans are so weird about confrontation, aren’t we? We'd rather just suffer in silence, or work twice as hard, or quietly resent someone than just have that one difficult conversation. It’s like we’re programmed to avoid pain, even when that pain is short-term and the alternative is long-term misery. And now it’s all coming to a head, and it’s going to be so much worse because I waited. It always is, when you wait. I just wish I could fast-forward past the whole thing. I just… I can’t. But I have to. Ugh.