The meek “please call me” was after the manager found out from upper management that they were far more replaceable then Caleb was.
Nah, “call me” always means “let’s make this a real-time social hierarchy game, because I’m good at exploiting verbal cues and expectations to shove people toward my desired goal.”
And also a way to move something to where there’s no proof of what was said.
The #1 reason in my experience. The only bosses who have ever said this to me are ones who were manipulative creeps where i made sure to keep a record (outside the company tools) of everything they ever said. It was never said to me like this, it was just standard operating procedure for that type.
There’s also the “oh shit, I’ll get this fixed, but nothing I say can be in writing or I’m definitely getting fired” possibility.
Nah boss, I just apologized for my misunderstanding, I have no idea why $Insubordinate_Contractor is saying that I said he’d better come in or I’m going to blacklist him in the entire industry and ensure he never works again … I mean, why would I say that?! I don’t have that kind of power!
Yup those of us who are not good at bad faith conversations need to get good at recognizing when one is about to happen and insist on written.
“We need to take this conversation offline” is a near-universal precursor to ethical dispensation.
In my experience “please call me” is more often business speak for “you’ve really got a problem now” than a statement of weakness. Like they’ve got too much shit to say to you to fit in an email, and they maybe don’t want what they’re about to say to be written down
