I want to armchair quarterback this: > I suffered through a particularly acute week of on-call pain. At one point I was in my third or fourth video call about

I want to armchair quarterback this: > I suffered through a particularly acute week of on-call pain. At one point I was in my third or fourth video call about the same long and protracted smoldering SEV and, in a moment of frustrated weakness, I made an offhand comment about just being tired of repeatedly handling the same problem. [...] With the utterance of a single sentence, I opened a rift in the relationship with my manager that remained until the day I left that job. It's possible that the manager dropped the ball in two ways: 1. Perma-haranguing an employee, when manager should instead have had a talk with employee about what was bothering the employee. (And split it, between the little that really needs to be said right now, while employee is already overextended, and what can happen after they recharge.) 2. The root cause of the recurring problem might be something management should've tackled already. Which is additional reason not to blame the employee, for calling out the problem in frustration.