The Teacher's Pet Problem

You probably already know who it is. One colleague gets the good assignments, the early invites to strategy sessions, and the public praise from your manager — for work that is, honestly, pretty ordinary. Meanwhile you are doing solid work and cc'd on the summary email after the meeting you were not in.

This episode is about that. Not just the frustration of it — the actual mechanism behind it, and three concrete moves you can make from where you are right now.

We pull from three real situations shared this week: a brand-new employee whose manager openly admitted to favoritism on day five of the job. A burned-out first-time manager whose upper leadership kept shielding an underperforming employee from any accountability. And a wider pattern the internet keeps naming — where loud, visible workers get rewarded not because they perform better, but because they stay on the radar. Each case is a slightly different angle on the same underlying dynamic: a manager using access and approval as tools to manage their own comfort, not the team's performance.