The first sign that the department review would be more difficult than I had anticipated came on Monday morning, when Patricia called to tell me that three employees had asked to withdraw from their scheduled interviews. She spoke quietly, although I could hear the activity of the human resources office behind her. One employee had said that the timing was inconvenient. Another claimed that the concerns previously submitted no longer seemed important. The third had offered no explanation at all. On its own, none of those decisions would have troubled me. Taken together, however, they suggested that the atmosphere described in the earlier reports had not disappeared simply because management had announced a review.
I stood beside my office window with the phone against my ear, watching the morning traffic crawl through the intersection below. A delivery truck was blocking one lane, and drivers were edging around it with little patience. I had arrived early to prepare for the interviews, expecting difficult conversations but hoping employees would welcome an opportunity to speak privately. Patricia's news reminded me that an invitation to talk was not the same as a guarantee of safety.
"Did anyone say they were concerned about consequences?" I asked.
"Not directly. But one person asked whether their manager would receive a list of participants."
"What did you tell them?"
"That the individual interview schedule would remain with human resources and that we would report themes rather than attribute confidential comments unnecessarily."
"Good. We should make that assurance clear to everyone."
Patricia hesitated. "Rebecca, I think some people are waiting to see whether we genuinely intend to protect them."
I understood. Employees who had watched concerns disappear into administrative folders were unlikely to trust a new process simply because a new director had arrived. They needed to see consistent behavior, not reassuring words. I asked Patricia to send a short written explanation of the interview procedures, including who would have access to records, how information would be handled, and how retaliation concerns could be reported. I also requested that participation remain voluntary while making clear that existing concerns would still be examined through other available evidence.
When I ended the call, I opened the department's performance reports again. The manager from the airplane had submitted the additional figures I had requested, along with a carefully written note promising his full cooperation. The message was professional and prompt. I wanted to believe it reflected the sincerity I had glimpsed during our previous meeting, when he had finally apologized for refusing to move his foot. Yet the employee withdrawal requests complicated that hope. His cooperation had to be measured against what people experienced in the department, not merely what he wrote to me.
The first interview began shortly after nine. A woman named Sarah entered the conference room carrying a small notebook, although she never opened it. She was a project coordinator in her early thirties, with a deliberate way of speaking and an expression that suggested she had rehearsed what she intended to say. Patricia sat beside me, explaining the purpose of our conversation and the limits of confidentiality. Sarah listened without interrupting, then folded her hands tightly beneath the table.
"I don't want anyone to think I'm trying to get somebody fired," she began.
"That isn't what we're asking you to do," I replied. "We're trying to understand what helps your team work effectively and what makes the job unnecessarily difficult."
Sarah glanced at Patricia. "People have complained before."
"I know."
"Nothing really changed."
I waited, giving her room to continue.
She described a department where deadlines were closely monitored and mistakes were discussed publicly. The manager expected immediate answers during meetings, even when employees needed time to verify figures. Suggestions were sometimes dismissed before the person speaking had finished explaining them. Sarah had learned to prepare several versions of every report because she could never predict which detail would provoke criticism.
"He's good at his job," she said after a while. "I want to be fair about that. He understands the projects better than almost anyone. But when something goes wrong, people stop thinking about how to fix it. They start thinking about how to keep him from getting angry."
Her description remained with me long after she left. It was not the complaint of someone unwilling to work hard. It was the account of a competent employee who had begun devoting more energy to avoiding humiliation than to solving problems. I wrote the distinction in my notes because it captured something the performance figures could not show.
The next employee offered a different perspective. Marcus, a senior analyst, respected his manager's technical judgment and credited him with introducing procedures that had improved reporting accuracy. He did not believe the department was failing, but he admitted that junior employees rarely challenged decisions. When I asked whether that concerned him, he paused.
"It does now," he said. "We missed a problem last quarter because two people were afraid to bring it up. They thought they'd get blamed for noticing it late."
"What happened when the problem was finally identified?"
"We fixed it. But we lost time."
"Did anyone raise the communication issue afterward?"
Marcus rubbed his thumb along the edge of his notebook. "Not formally. We knew how that conversation would go."
By lunchtime, a consistent picture had begun to form. The department was capable of producing strong work, but information did not move freely through it. Employees anticipated criticism, withheld uncertainty, and sometimes delayed reporting problems until they had prepared an explanation designed to protect themselves. The manager's demand for accountability had produced a culture in which people were reluctant to acknowledge the very issues accountability was supposed to uncover.
I returned to my office with a headache and a stack of notes that required careful organization. Lauren had left a sandwich on my desk beside a message reminding me of an afternoon budget call. I ate mechanically while reviewing the interview summaries. The man from the airplane had once insisted that his foot was not bothering anyone because it was not physically hurting them. I wondered whether he approached workplace concerns in a similar way, recognizing harm only when it matched his own definition.
A quiet knock interrupted my thoughts.
Lauren opened the door. "He's here."
I looked up. "Who?"
"The department manager. He says he wants to ask about the interviews."
I checked the clock. He was not scheduled to meet with me until the review was complete. Nevertheless, I asked Lauren to show him in. Avoiding him would serve no purpose, and I wanted to know what had prompted the visit.
He entered without his usual folder. His jacket was unbuttoned, and there was a faint crease between his eyebrows. He looked tired, though nothing about his appearance suggested the frantic embarrassment of our first office encounter.
"Rebecca, I hope I'm not interrupting."
"I have a few minutes. Please sit."
He remained standing for a moment before taking the chair opposite me. "Some people are nervous about these interviews."
"I'm aware of that."
"I've told them they should cooperate."
"How did you tell them?"
He blinked. "At our team meeting this morning."
"What exactly did you say?"
He shifted in his chair. "That the review was happening, that everyone should be honest, and that I expected people to handle it professionally."
I put down my pen. "Did you say anything about who should participate or what they should tell us?"
"Not directly."
"What does that mean?"
He exhaled. "I may have said that I hoped nobody would use the process to settle personal grievances."
The sentence explained more than he appeared to realize. I imagined employees hearing it from the man whose conduct they had been invited to discuss. Even without an explicit threat, the warning could easily sound like an attempt to control what they said.
"That may have discouraged people from speaking," I told him.
He frowned. "I was trying to prevent exaggerations."
"Employees need to be able to describe their experiences without worrying that you'll decide their concerns are personal attacks."
He looked toward the window. "I suppose I didn't think of it that way."
I allowed a brief silence. Then I said, "You told me you would cooperate properly. That means allowing the process to happen without trying to influence the people involved."
"I wasn't trying to influence them."
"Perhaps not deliberately. But your position gives your words weight. You need to consider how they will be heard."
He pressed his hands against his knees. I could see frustration building, but he made an effort to contain it.
"What would you have preferred me to say?"
"That the company is reviewing how the department operates. That everyone has a right to speak honestly. That nobody will be punished for raising a concern in good faith. And that you will not ask employees what they told us."
He repeated the last sentence quietly. "I won't ask them."
"Thank you."
He stood, then paused before leaving. "I really am trying, Rebecca."
I looked at him. For the first time, his defensiveness seemed mixed with something closer to genuine uncertainty. He was accustomed to defending his decisions. He was less accustomed to being asked to examine the effect of those decisions on others.
"I believe you're making an effort," I said. "But effort and improvement aren't the same thing. You have to give people room to tell you when something isn't working."
He nodded, though I could not tell whether he fully understood.
That afternoon, Patricia and I completed two more interviews. One employee described a recent meeting in which a colleague had tried to explain a delayed project and was interrupted repeatedly. Another said the department had become unusually quiet during discussions, not because everyone agreed, but because disagreement seemed exhausting and risky. Neither account involved an extraordinary incident. What disturbed me was their familiarity. Small acts of dismissal, repeated often enough, could shape an entire workplace.
Near the end of the day, Patricia brought me a copy of an email sent by the manager to his team after our conversation. It stated that employees were free to participate in the review, that honest feedback was welcome, and that no one should fear retaliation for expressing concerns. The message was brief and lacked the elaborate justifications I had come to expect from him.
"That's better," I said.
Patricia nodded. "Two employees have already asked to reschedule their interviews."
I set the email on my desk. It was encouraging, but I resisted treating it as proof that the problem had been resolved. A single appropriate message could not erase years of strained relationships. Trust would require repeated evidence that speaking honestly no longer carried the same risks.
When I returned home, Megan was sitting at the kitchen table painting her fingernails a pale shade of pink. Daniel had spread newspaper beneath her hands, and she was concentrating so fiercely that her tongue protruded slightly between her teeth.
"Mom, look," she said, holding up one hand. "I did this one all by myself."
I admired her work. The polish extended unevenly onto the skin around several nails, but she was enormously proud.
"That's a lovely color."
"Do you think the airplane man got his polish off?"
Daniel glanced at me over the kitchen counter.
"I don't know," I said.
Megan considered the question. "Maybe he needed help."
"Perhaps."
She returned to her painting, then looked up again. "Did he say sorry?"
I hesitated. "Yes. He did."
"Did you?"
"Yes."
"Then that's good."
I watched her carefully steady the brush against her smallest fingernail. Children often made forgiveness seem simple, perhaps because they did not yet understand how much work sometimes followed an apology. Megan was satisfied that we had each admitted doing something wrong. I wished the matter could end there.
Later, after she went to bed, I sat with Daniel and described the workplace concerns without revealing confidential details. He listened while I explained the difference between the manager's technical competence and his difficulties with employees.
"Sounds like he knows how to manage projects but not always how to manage people," Daniel said.
"That's what I'm trying to determine."
"Do you think he can change?"
"I don't know."
Daniel considered that. "Maybe he hasn't had many people tell him no."
I thought of the airplane, the armrest, and the expression on the man's face when I refused to accept his explanation. He had seemed genuinely astonished that his preferences did not automatically settle the matter.
The following morning, Patricia called before I left home.
"Rebecca, we need to discuss something."
Her tone was different from the previous day. More serious.
"What's happened?"
"One of the employees who agreed to speak with us says the manager approached him privately after yesterday's email."
I straightened.
"What did he say?"
"According to the employee, he asked whether they were planning to say anything that might damage his reputation."
I looked toward the kitchen window, where Megan's schoolbag hung from a chair.
The manager had promised not to question employees about their interviews. Less than a day later, someone was reporting that he had done exactly that.
"Has the employee provided a written account?" I asked.
"Yes."
"Then we need to review it carefully."
I ended the call and remained still for several seconds. The man's apology on the airplane had been sincere enough to surprise me. His apology in my office had seemed even more meaningful. But now the question was no longer whether he understood that his behavior had been wrong.
It was whether he could resist repeating it when he felt his authority threatened.
