I've been in charge of the office for most of the past two weeks and I feel like I'm starting to understand why the employees like me?
I'm treating them the way I would want to be treated, which is to say that I give them the list of priorities and let them get on with it. If there are problems, I handle them. If there are absences, I don't care as long as the work gets done eventually. I mask extra hard to be friendly but also professional and just leave everybody the fuck alone.
I don't feel like I'm being taken advantage of, though I'm at least aware of the possibility. We're all adults here and everybody is well trained. They don't need somebody hovering over their shoulder all the time.
I want to believe that this is just how millennials would manage once the boomers retire and die off but the person right above me in the being-in-charge line of succession is 10 years younger than me, desperately wants to be a manager, lobbies for every promotion, and is a micromanager that nobody likes, so really I think it just comes down to that some people actually want to be managers and those are usually the worst managers