can I ignore a toxic employee during her last few days?

A reader writes:

I have managed someone, let’s call her Rachel, for over a year and a half. The majority of the experience has been negative — she’s rude, feeds on drama, and produces low-quality work. I’ve had several discussions with her on improving her performance. After a lot of painful experiences, she resigned while I was on vacation. She only gave a week’s notice, and since I’m on vacation we will only have two days overlap.

I know as a manager I have the responsibility to be professional and courteous, but I can’t stomach the idea that we even have to interact at all on those two final days. I have even contemplated rescheduling our team meeting to the day after she leaves because I don’t want to hear some passive-aggressive spiel from her about how she’s going to some place that appreciates her and her skill set. And I certainly don’t want to have a fake conversation where we thank each other for our time and work together, because that would be a lie. While previously I’ve tried to be encouraging in difficult conversations, now I feel like I don’t have to put on any pretenses anymore, especially since she resigned in a petty way. Is it okay if I ignore her or have very minimal interaction with her on those final two days? And what are your thoughts more broadly about minimizing interactions with toxic employees that you manage directly or are part of your division?

I answer this question — and two others — over at Inc. today, where I’m revisiting letters that have been buried in the archives here from years ago (and sometimes updating/expanding my answers to them). You can read it here.

Other questions I’m answering there today include:

• My company is skin-crawlingly positive
• Telling my employee about a job somewhere else without seeming like I’m pushing them out

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