were we wrong not to interview a volunteer for a paid job? by Alison Green on March 25, 2025 A reader writes: I would really love your opinion on how we handled this hiring process — and on the subsequent fallout. I work for a public library that has a very large volunteer base and a small paid staff. When we have a job opening, which is rare, volunteers are welcome to apply. We traditionally grant them a phone interview (i.e., they make the first cut) as a courtesy, though that is not official policy. A few volunteers have been hired over the years, most recently about three years ago. One volunteer, Stephanie, has applied twice (two years apart) and made it to an in-person interview (second round) both times. Enough time had passed after the first rejection that we gave her the second opportunity, and to her credit, she does have an impressive resume of high-level administrative work and did well in the short phone screenings. However, in both in-person interviews, we found that she was rambling and unfocused despite our best efforts, and she expressed hesitations about performing some key parts of the job (working under pressure, multi-tasking). She also made some offhand comments that came off as elitist and lacking compassion, and we really don’t feel she’s a fit for our community-focused, fast-paced environment, nor would any of us particularly look forward to working with her. The reason we gave for rejecting her both times was the standard “there were candidates whose skills and experience were a better fit,” though we took extra care with the wording due to our ongoing relationship. Stephanie just applied for a third time (nine months after the last rejection). A volunteer has never applied more than once, so we have no precedent for this. We (hiring committee of three) already knew she was a “no” and did not invite her to a phone interview this time. We felt that continuing to interview her would send the wrong message. As the hiring manager, I sent her a kind, personalized rejection that she had not made it to the interview round this time, citing the large and competitive applicant pool (true), and reiterated that we value her and her volunteer work. Although she had told the volunteer supervisor there would be no hard feelings if she didn’t get the job, Stephanie did NOT take it well. Long story short, over the course of four weeks, she has approached our director in public expressing her shock and disappointment at not being interviewed, sent an angry and accusatory email directed at me for being “unfair,” made passive-aggressive comments about our new hire, and accosted the director at work with an angry diatribe about how she “can do the job” and had been owed a courtesy interview. Along the way, she made a racist comment about a previous hire (“I know you hired her because she’s Black, but I think that’s great”), claimed to be more qualified than any of our recent hires, and “threatened” to stop going above and beyond in her volunteer work (okay?). I’ve never seen anyone lose their cool like this over a hiring decision. At least she has validated for us that we made the right call, I suppose. We truly want to learn from this and regret that there are hard feelings that might have been avoided. Were we wrong in not granting Stephanie a courtesy interview a third time, as she believes? Should we have been more direct about the reasons when we rejected her the last time (or this time)? And if she were to apply again down the road, as she said she still plans to do, what do we do? It doesn’t sound like you did anything wrong. You’ve interviewed her twice and knew she wasn’t going to be a competitive candidate, so chose not to lead her on or misuse her time. She’s not owed repeated shots at a job just because she volunteers, and a lot of people in her shoes would prefer not to have their time wasted or their hopes raised if you already knew you wouldn’t hire them. If you could go back and redo anything, I’d say it would have been better to have a conversation with her where you provided some feedback on why you weren’t going to interview her, in recognition of the fact that she volunteers with you and has shown a long-running interest in being hired. But the fact that you didn’t do that in no way warrants her response! (And it sounds like you did send a personalized note, not just a form rejection.) Can you have a conversation with her about it now? Given the way she’s been acting since, it sounds like you’ve got to do that to address both her frustration and the fact that she can’t go on being so disruptive about it. Ideally in doing that, you’d give her some feedback about why you don’t think she’s the right fit for the job. “Rambling and unfocused” can be tough to give feedback to a candidate on (although not impossible), but “hesitations about performing key parts of the job” is much easier — as is the part about making comments that aren’t aligned with your community-focused culture. You’re not looking to debate any of this with her, of course, but because she’s a long-time volunteer, it would be respectful to share those concerns with her so that she has a better understanding of why she was passed over. Depending on how that conversation goes, you might also need to tell her point-blank that she can’t keep accosting people about the decision and to ask whether she wants to continue volunteering, knowing that that behavior can’t continue. You may also like:interviewer fake-rejected me to see if I would "fight for the job"a rejected candidate keeps demanding to know why we didn't hire himmy volunteer is into BDSM and wants to be a servant at our living history events { 145 comments }
are these men hitting on me, or legitimate business contacts? by Alison Green on March 25, 2025 A reader writes: In the past year or two, quite a few people (typically middle-aged men) have been reaching out to me via LinkedIn (I am a 20-something woman) trying to recruit me. While I do have a lot of experience, I’m wondering if it’s odd that some of these professionals are reaching out to me, as I am under the impression it should be the other way around. They are the ones with the experience and connections while I’m the one building my network. My settings are set to the “not seeking a job” setting, and it’s clear on my profile that I am currently employed, and yet I still receive these fairly regular messages. After connecting with them, they often message me with professional questions, like what I’m studying or what my career goals are, that turn into where I live, how old I am, what I like to do for fun, etc. While none have them have been outright creepy, many are definitely heading in that direction and my spider senses tell me to shut it down before it gets too far. I tend to respond to the messages I get because they often ask about my interest in a potential job or industry and I don’t want to turn down a future opportunity. But how can I tell when someone is generally interested in my experience or just in the fact that I am young and a woman? This is a problem many of my friends have also experienced, too. I answer this question 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. You may also like:men are hitting on my scheduling bot because it has a woman's namemy boss wants help with her dating app profilemy boss sent my client a flirty message from my email account { 116 comments }
my coworkers won’t answer their phones, ever by Alison Green on March 25, 2025 A reader writes: I feel bananas asking this, but could you give me a read on how/whether people still use phones in office/remote office work in 2025? I have a fully remote, customer-focused job for a tiny organization, and no one on my team will use phones. I have the most customer interactions and am willing to answer my phone if one calls, but I wind up getting calls for everyone on my team, because none of my colleagues will pick up their phones or even return voicemails. At most, they will email and agree to schedule a Zoom, but mainly they just ignore calls entirely. I don’t mind helping out, but I have very different functions and access to systems from my colleagues and often I CAN’T help. I tell customers to contact the relevant person but they say, “Oh they never respond,” which I know to be true so what can I say? My colleagues have told me phoning people is old-fashioned and anxiety-provoking and they don’t want to deal, so they don’t, but the customers are … how we make money? I am not a receptionist and don’t have the ability on my phone to forward calls. I find it awkward and somewhat demoralizing to spend my time taking messages and asking colleagues to respond to calls. I have spoken to my colleagues about the customers having the right to do business how they wish, English language learners having better spoken English than written, and that a quick call can replace 10 emails. I have not found a way to bring up the fact that some of them tend to both lose and misread emails, so calls are better for nipping that sort of thing in the bud. I have brought this phone-phobia up with friends who work elsewhere, and some have said they just refuse to use their phones too! I don’t love using the phone but I don’t love lots of things about my job — that’s what the money’s for! Am I way out of step here? Is there a solution I am not thinking of for a fully remote office where only one person uses a phone? I should say, the volume of calls is actually pretty low, but it is still embarrassing when someone calls with a problem for a colleague and I have to tell them that person is just not accessible by phone, not ever. No, you are not out of step. Your coworkers are being ridiculous — and negligent, it sounds like. It’s true that lots of people don’t like phone calls! Before email and other text-based methods of communicating, calls were the only real option for quick communication so people used the phone without much thought; there were no alternatives. Now that we do have alternatives, a lot of people have grown much less comfortable with the phone — most likely, simply from using it so much less often. But it’s still a normal and required part of many, many jobs … and that clearly applies to your coworkers’ jobs because customers are calling them. In theory there are jobs where you could decide you won’t deal with customers by phone, but those are typically jobs where you are the boss or self-employed and have the standing to make that decision and to accept whatever trade-offs come with it, like potentially losing business. That does not appear to be the case for your coworkers. It sounds like it’s time to talk to your boss, since you’re ending up having to deal with your colleagues’ customers because they won’t. Tell your boss what you said here: you’re getting calls for everyone else on your team because they won’t answer their phones or return voicemails, you’re often unable to help, and when you tell callers to contact the relevant person they tell you they already know that person never responds. Tell your boss it’s interfering with your work and leaving customers unhelped, and ask for her assistance in resolving it. From there, if it keeps happening, cc your manager on every phone message you take for your coworkers. Having their boss cc’d on “Client X called and said they need to talk to you and you haven’t returned their messages” may get action where trying to appeal to their general sense of responsibility hasn’t. You may also like:back slowly away from your email and pick up the damn phonedealing with recruiters when phone calls make you anxiouscan I tell clients that I don't talk on the phone? { 360 comments }
mentee was fired for using a vulgar term, asking candidates which position in a band they’d choose, and more by Alison Green on March 25, 2025 It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go… 1. My mentee was fired for using a vulgar term I work in a regulated industry and there are specific education and license requirements to work here. My company has a mentorship program for those who are new to the industry. I am one of those with the highest non-management title at my company, and my manager encouraged me sign up for the program. I was assigned an entry-level employee from my company, “Wendy.” I thought things were going well. Wendy was bright and on the ball. But Wendy was let go from her job and I’m wondering if I should have done more to advocate for her. I think this was a misunderstanding. Wendy had (to me) expressed her admiration for one of the managers at our company. This manager, “Caitlin,” is several levels above my own manager and is well-known in our industry. The misunderstanding happened over something Wendy said that was meant to be a compliment, but Caitlin felt it was an insult. Wendy said Caitlin was “serving C-word” (not abbreviated when she said it). She meant this as a compliment. (I’m almost 50, and I am not on social media so I have never heard this saying but apparently it is supposed to be complimentary). Caitlin didn’t see it that way. She thought Wendy was insulting her. Caitlin felt Wendy was calling her a name to other people, clients, and online when she found out Wendy had been saying it. (Wendy never used the phrase in front of me.) I understand both sides. I completely understand why Caitlin thought it was an insult. I also see Wendy’s point of view and have never known her to be malicious. In fact, Wendy has always shown the opposite. My question isn’t about who was right, but whether I should have done more to advocate for Wendy. I feel guilty for not pushing back to my manager when Wendy was let go over this. I feel like I could have spoken up about this being a misunderstanding and how Wendy was bright, did good work, and was nice to everyone around her — basically how out of character it would be for Wendy to insult anyone, especially someone she admired. No one blames me for what happened and I was asked to participate in the mentorship program again. But I am afraid I did a disservice by not pushing back on Wendy being let go, and I’m afraid of making the same mistake again. What do you think? I would appreciate hearing what you think. First, for people who don’t know the expression, it basically means “unapologetically feminine and powerfully badass.” It is intended to be complimentary — and it very much would not sound that way to anyone who didn’t know the meaning. Anyway, this isn’t on you. You really weren’t in a position to intervene; mentors don’t typically have that power (unless they have significant influence and authority in general, but that would be something that existed independently of their mentor role). Yes, you could have explained where Wendy was coming from, but I imagine Wendy did that herself anyway. The issue is that she displayed pretty terrible judgment! It would be one thing for her to have said that about Caitlin once, but saying it repeatedly was just tremendously bad judgment in a work context, where lots of people won’t know the meaning of a very vulgar and insulting-sounding slang phrase. Her intentions matter, but the outcome matters too, and the outcome in this case was that she was going around using a wildly vulgar phrase about a well-known woman in your industry without contemplating that it might be misunderstood or otherwise become an issue. I wouldn’t have fired her for it (to me it’s a coaching moment, not a firing one) but I’m also not surprised that someone did. There was no real room for you to do anything differently. If you’d heard Wendy use the phrase, you could have corrected her, but you didn’t. Your job as a mentor is to support your mentee’s growth, give advice, and be a sounding board, but the role isn’t that of a manager or a mediator. You were well-positioned to be a sort of character witness, yes, but I’m not sure it would have mattered in this case. This was Wendy’s mistake, not yours. 2. Interview question: which position in a band would you choose? I was driving around listening to Crosby, Stills, Nash, and sometimes Young and started pondering a theoretical interview question: if given a choice, which member would you choose to be? I realize far too few people know that band so I started pondering a different question: assuming you would play any position, which position in a band would you choose (lead singer, lead guitar, bass, or drums)? The idea is that question could potentially give somebody an idea of just how confident in themselves a person is. A person who picks drums is someone who can keep a project moving and is reliable but is not necessarily out front leading, for example. I am not in any danger of conducting interviews any time soon, but since I spend quite a lot of my working day on the road, I think of things like this. I’m curious what you think! Well … it could be something to ponder outside of a work setting, but I would recommend against it as an interview question! Too many people don’t know enough about music to know how to even begin thinking about which position they’d choose. And even if they do have a well-informed answer, it won’t tell you the kinds of things you need to learn to make a good hire. You don’t want to ask candidates questions just for the sake of asking questions, or because a question seems fun — you want to get really clear on what’s needed to excel in that position and then ask questions specifically designed to get at those things. Unless you are putting together a new prefab boy band, this question won’t do that. A boring answer to a fun question, sorry. 3. I think my manager wants me to be a different person I am a middle school teacher. I recently started at a new school with a very corporate culture. I received an employee evaluation from my principal. Evaluations from principals are pretty normal, but this was a very lengthy evaluation with a lot of corporate jargon, which I’m not used to. Reading the evaluation made me feel like the principal dislikes me personally and wants me to change my personality. One of the things it said was that I “did not contribute to a collegial environment.” This might just mean that she doesn’t think I speak up enough at meetings, since she mentioned that when we met to discuss the evaluation, but the language makes it sound like people find me actively unpleasant. I don’t know what I could have done to make people feel this way. I asked a friend who works in the corporate world what she thought, and she said not to ask for clarification and not to disagree — she said all they want to hear in response to these evaluations is “yes, I’ll do that.” It’s true that I’m not very talkative or bubbly, but I don’t think I’m unpleasant. I resent being expected to pretend to be someone I’m not. This has me feeling like they don’t really want me here and I should leave this school and possibly education altogether. Am I misreading this? Whoa, wait — that’s a big leap that isn’t warranted by what’s happened. Your friend’s advice was bad and you should disregard it. No good manager just wants to hear “yes, I’ll do that” in response to feedback if you don’t understand what it means. They want you to implement the feedback, yes — but you can’t do that if you don’t understand it, and in that case you need to ask questions so that you do. Ideally you’d go back to your principal, say you’re taking the feedback seriously, and ask for more information so you can make sure you’re both on the same page. Ask for more specifics about what she’s asking you to do differently. You can’t evaluate the feedback without that. After learning more, if you still think you’re being asked to change your entire personality, you can think about whether it’s a role you want to stay in. But there’s no way to assess this without getting more information — and jumping to possibly leaving the entire field over one person’s unclear feedback would be recklessly premature. 4. Interviewer wants me to tell them my current salary During an initial job interview, the interviewer disclosed that they were originally looking for someone more junior than my experience, but they were reconsidering the experience needed to be successful in the role and believed that it may need to be a more senior position. Fast forward multiple interviews — I’ve asked for the salary range they would pay for the role, and the HR manager says they don’t know and that the team has not discussed it. They would like me to disclose my salary. I am hesitant to share because my cash requirements would differ based on the equity package and its structure, and I don’t think this can be adequately explained with a simple number. I likely have one more interview before we get to an offer. In this scenario, is there any advantage to me being a first mover and disclosing my salary range with the caveat that it’s flexible based on equity package? There’s no reason you need to disclose your salary. Instead, you should tell them the range you’re looking for — the range that would make you seriously consider leaving your current job for this one, along with whatever caveats you have about the structure of the equity package. That’s the part that’s relevant to them, not what you’re making now. 5. I was fired for something my boss said was OK to do I asked my boss if it was okay to drive a company vehicle home. He said it was okay. His boss told him to write me up and fire me, so he did. Is this legal? Also, should my boss had been fired as well for telling me that I was allowed to? What can I do? Is suing the company a possibility? If I do sue, would I win, or would I just be losing more money and wasting time? It’s not illegal to fire you for an unfair reason (and this definitely sounds unfair). Most employees in the U.S. are at-will, meaning that you can be fired for any reason at all, as long as it’s not based on illegal discrimination (i.e., firing you because of your race, gender, religion, disability, or other protected class) or retaliation for engaging in legally protected conduct (like firing you for making a good faith complaint of sexual harassment or discrimination). There are two exceptions to this: (1) if you have a contract, which most U.S. workers don’t, or (2) if your company has an employee manual that commits to always using specific disciplinary procedures before firing someone; if it does, they’re usually obligated to follow those procedures first. But aside from that, it’s generally legal to fire someone for any reason, even if the reason is unfair or illogical. People often hear the term “wrongful termination” and assume it means that there’s legal recourse if you were fired for a wrong or unfair reason, but it really just means that you were fired for one of the illegal reasons above. However, you can file for unemployment, and if you explain you were fired for doing something your manager specifically gave you permission to do, your chances of getting benefits are good. I’m sorry this happened. You may also like:I got in trouble for saying "bite me" in a meeting, the best day to apply for jobs, and moremy coworkers are in a self-help cult, I pretended I’m allergic to bees, and moreI ignored my boss, is reneging on a job offer unethical, and more { 836 comments }
the pinstripe suits, the fancy espresso machine, and other weird hills coworkers chose to die on by Alison Green on March 24, 2025 Last week we talked about weird hills to die on — people who became so strongly committed to a minor fight that they lost all sight of logic and decorum — and here are 10 of my favorite stories you shared. 1. The newsletter Our Fortune 500 company hosted a weekend company-wide softball tourney, which was won by a team led by a guy known around the office as Hothead. Monday morning arrives and the company-wide daily email goes out with important company announcements. One of the items included was the results of the previous weekend’s softball tourney. Hothead was livid about the fact that it included only the team name (not individual team members) and that it also included the team name of the runners-up. He sent a scathing email to the comms person responsible for the newsletter about their “failure to recognize exceptional individual achievements” in the newsletter and demanded they send out a second email identifying each team member of the winning team. The comms person said no, so he made a nasty post on the company’s internal bulletin board; the posting was so snarky that it got removed within a couple of hours of posting it. That made Hothead even more incensed so he skipped several levels of management and brought “the glaring omission” to the attention of the VP of Comms, head of HR, and a couple of C-level execs via email. He got a call from HR and ripped them a new one. He was brought in immediately for an in-person meeting with HR — with security present — and ordered to undergo anger management therapy. He refused, escalated his behavior, and was escorted from the building. Security cleaned out his desk for him. 2. The pinstripe suits Many years ago, I worked for a very conservative smaller bank. The CEO was very old school, with a rigorous dress code. For decades (literally), the bank bought all staff four nicely tailored suits every two years. For the men, two were navy pinstripe, two were navy solid, and there were five company-supplied approved ties. For women, they were the same navy, and women could choose skirts or pants. This was described in the employee handbook. The solid suits were to be worn on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, the pinstripe suits on Tuesday and Thursday. I’m not kidding. Toward the end of my tenure there, they decided to stop buying pinstripe suits. All four suits were the same dark navy. One older gentleman in our mortgage department was livid that they got rid of the pinstripe suits, and threatened to quit unless the decision was changed. He literally sent a resignation letter to the CEO (who he had known for decades). Eventually a compromise was reached. It was added to the company handbook specifically that while we were not buying new pinstripe suits, if an employee had a pinstripe suit brought by the company, that as long as it was in good shape and looked professional, the employee was allowed to wear it on Tuesday or Thursday. 3. The supplies When everyone was sent home for Covid, there was a lot of discussion about reimbursement for things like printer ink and other supplies. But one group got all up in arms about three specific items: paper towels, hand soap, and, of course, toilet paper. On the argument that they got these items for free while working at work, so their at home usage went up for all of these things. They were livid that they were not going to be reimbursed for the toilet paper they had to use while working from home. And since we use the giant industrial rolls, they couldn’t just take some home. There are a couple of them who still sneak extra office supplies home to “make up” for the injustice of having to provide their own essentials during that time. 4. The walking track I run a senior center. Our building is laid out in such a way that our internal hallways can be used as an indoor walking track, which many people do utilize. Since we opened the facility, everyone seemed to all walk in one direction: counterclockwise. This went on for about a year, when we had some requests from patrons to switch directions. Not only to shake things up, but also so walkers could better enjoy some large murals we had had installed. We announced the change at the start of the new year, and you wouldn’t believe the backlash. I had people telling me and my team that they were “never going to come back again!” I had folks telling us, “You can’t make me walk that way! I won’t do it!” and I had one person crying about how this change was too big and too dramatic and he would find somewhere else to walk. After a week of this, we decided to hang up mirrors at the corners and tell people to walk whichever way they want and just not bump into each other. My colleagues and I still laugh about how we ruined everyone’s lives by changing the direction of the walking track; it still comes up years later in department head meetings. 5. The fancy espresso machine My office was making plans for renovations, and the director got it into his head that we should have a big lounge area with couches where we could all bring our laptops and work together socially whenever we wanted.* My department head suggested we should get some sort of fancy espresso machine for this space, which the director roundly shut down as an unforgiveable extravagence. Department head was not to be deterred. He brought the espresso machine up at every meeting – department meetings where none of us could do anything about it, all-staff meetings, department head meetings where he reportedly got into arguments with the director each time. Finally he retired (possibly in part because of the espresso machine). We have an annual party where we invite our recent retirees back to make nice speeches about them and hear them make a speech too. He used his speech to bring up the espresso machine. * This is its own issue but let’s just say not many people were enthused at the prospect of leaving their private offices with dual monitor setups to balance a laptop on their knees on a couch. In the end, the renovation was much more mundane and mostly involved expanding the boardroom so all the staff could fit in it at once. 6. The microwaved fish I’m sure I’m not the only person who’s seen office drama over fish in the microwave, but a few years back it got to a ridiculous level. We had two microwaves in our cafeteria and someone (don’t know who, we were a decent amount of people in the office at the time) would microwave fish regularly. One day HR put up signs on the microwave doors saying “please don’t microwave foods with strong smells.” Well, the fish cooker must have taken it personally because they lost it. They first wrote a note in red on the sign to protest, then stuck up printouts from websites explaining the benefits of eating fish, all the while continuing to heat up their fish. 7. The pages I have worked as a graphic designer for various nonprofits (often the only designer on staff). One department head at a library where I worked was adamant about maintaining her own preferred formatting/layout in design pieces that included work from a lot of other departments too (think annual report). So while everyone else was satisfied for me to take their images and text and use everything to make a nice cohesive design, this woman had to have “her pages” just the way she wanted — meaning multiple exclamation points (in a row, like “!!!!!”) and tiny pictures often arranged in an arc with WordArt titles. I did push back, my boss pushed back, but because she was a department head it didn’t go anywhere. Eventually I just ended up exporting her original submitted Word docs as a PDF and plonking the whole thing into the annual report rather than trying to recreate her bananas layout ideas in InDesign. So if you were perusing our annual report, you’d get through about 20 pages of nicely-designed content, then suddenly a couple pages that looked like a 12-year-old made a flyer in Microsoft Word. She was happy. I was not, but I was tired. 8. The title Between college and law school, I took an unpaid internship with a local district attorney’s office. I was hired on full time at the conclusion of the internship as a research and writing assistant for the attorneys, which made the office manager who supervised me lose all her marbles in spectacular fashion. She pulled me out of meetings with the attorneys to do things like move boxes, rearrange files, and sweep floors. When one of the supervising attorneys told her off for it, she retaliated by ordering me office-branded notepads with my name and the title “temporary assistant district attorney intern.” You better believe I still have a few of those notepads hanging around and still laugh at them some 20 years later! 9. The start-up software Someone in my company’s IT has decided the hill they are dying on is that Adobe Creative Cloud must automatically load every time we log into our workstation. On our already slow work computers that’s connected to an even slower virtual desktop using firewall software known to lag, it means a 15-minute start-up sequence on a good day. There have been many complaints and we’ve begged them to just change the startup settings so CC isn’t a startup app but they refuse to budge. No one knows why. Every time someone requests this be changed, IT sends an email reply with the subject line “Why Adobe Creative Cloud Will Remain A Startup App” that is a long manifesto over the importance of Adobe CC in computing history without actually explaining why it needs to be in startup. There is not one single CC app we need for our jobs and we’re not even allowed to use Acrobat for PDFs. 10. The dress code This isn’t mine, but my father’s. I am still proud of him for it, actually. He was a high school history teacher from the 60s into the 90s. Very well-respected, wrote many textbooks, loved by his students. What he hated – and I mean hated – was having to wear formal clothes while he was teaching. The students could wear jeans, why couldn’t he? He actually organized a rebellion among his fellow teachers who were also sick of having to get dressed up every day – suits, dress shirts, ties, pantyhose, dresses, heels for the female teachers, dress shoes for the men, etc. – so they were quite willing to follow my dad’s lead. He fought with the assistant principal. He fought with his department head. He fought loudly with the principal. He went up against the school board. He declared he would quit over this if they would not relent. Finally, he organized a day of resistance. He got as many teachers as possible to come to work dressed in jeans. I think about 60 teachers did. The principal couldn’t send them all home, so he acquiesced. From that day forward, teachers could wear jeans. There was much rejoicing. And I think, cake. You may also like:is it weird to start dressing like my boss?our disruptively cheerful new coworker treats us like toddlersmy office has a mandatory feelings chart { 338 comments }
when an employee doesn’t want to make a formal complaint, can I act anyway? by Alison Green on March 24, 2025 A reader writes: I’ve got an employee who had a weird encounter with another employee. It wasn’t harassment but it’s made her feel uncomfortable whenever he’s around. She doesn’t want to make a complaint though. Is there anything we can do if there’s no complaint made? I answer this question — and three 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: Telling employees to stop taking guidance from coworkers with bad advice How to test job candidates on their ability to recall info My boss was abruptly fired — should I reach out? You may also like:my employee is patronizing when I correct his workmy terrible intern is a VIP's son and can't be firedmy boss wants me to be friends with her son, how do reference-checkers verify my resume, and more { 107 comments }
my coworker refuses to share her calendar and says she’ll quit if she’s ordered to by Alison Green on March 24, 2025 A reader writes: I work at a small creative business with about 25 employees, Our structure is pretty flat, and there is no traditional HR or processes that come with working at larger organizations. There are three main departments. I run one, and my coworker who I am writing about, Maggie, runs one of the others. A small thing has become a big issue: While we all have open calendars to make scheduling easier, Maggie refuses to make her calendar open and keeps it entirely private. In addition, her calendar is often entirely booked with meetings, showing no open times to add anything. As a result, in order to schedule almost anything, the project management team is forced to reach out to Maggie to ask about flexibility on her calendar and wait for her response and/or approval to put something on (often she refuses and says she has no time available). As you can imagine, this creates a bottleneck and a considerable amount of frustration for the PM team, who cannot easily do their work. It also adds a layer that makes it seem like Maggie is the the most senior employee (she is not) and gives her an element of control over all meetings. To add to the frustration, it has become clear that many of the meetings on her calendar have only her in them and are personal appointments or time blocks to do things like “clean the house.” The PM team knows this because they can see all the other meetings on the calendar, so can see she is not booked with anyone, and more than once Maggie has forgotten to sign out of a shared computer and they have seen meetings on her calendar during work hours (10am-6pm) like “walk the dog,” “pilates,” etc. While we keep a flexible work style with two days home and treat each other like adults who can use their time as they like to get their work done (we all often have things on our calendar like “dentist appt”), this calendar issue has become infuriating for many people in the agency. Maggie could open her calendar and make any blocks she wishes to private, but she refuses to do this (and has even said she would quit over it). As a result, her calendar has become a source of mockery. The PM team is convinced it’s all fake vs. having respect for blocked times, her relationships are suffering because she is seen as uncooperative, controlling, and sneaky (hiding something), and the vibes are getting more and more toxic. How would you suggest we move forward with this situation, which is currently at a stalemate? Force her to open her calendar or offer a consequence (no idea what that would be), allow her to quit over it (I would not hate this option), allow her to continue keeping it private and change how we schedule, all make our calendars private (petty but would a point), let it go? I wrote back and asked, “What has Maggie said about her reasons when asked why she wants to do it this way? And what does Maggie’s boss say about it?” Maggie refuses to elaborate other than to say that she thinks it’s a violation of her privacy and she wants a private calendar When the CEO, who is her boss, spoke about it, she told the CEO she would quit if forced to open her calendar. That was about a year ago, and I don’t think the CEO really understands the implications. This week I spoke to the CEO about it being an ongoing problem and someone else sent the CEO screenshots of Maggie’s calendar to show the scheduling blocks are all personal. So we’ll see if there is action taken but when I spoke to the CEO, she expressed she felt like she had no way to force Maggie to comply. You have a Maggie problem, but you also have a CEO problem. Or at least you do if people have clearly laid out to the CEO what problems this is causing — that it’s creating a bottleneck and making the PMs’ jobs harder and that Maggie hasn’t offered any reason for being so committed to not complying with a practice everyone else uses. If the CEO’s response to that is still that she has no way to force Maggie to comply … then are there any policies or accountability in this organization at all? What would the CEO do if someone stopped coming to work? Refused to meet deadlines? Wanted to walk around the office pants-less? Obviously these are bigger deals than “won’t share her calendar,” but the point is that the only way offices can function is if there are shared agreements around expectations and practices and if people are actually held accountable to meeting those. But I’m curious about whether the CEO does know how much of a problem this has become. Often when stuff like this gets shared, it’s shared in a sort of shorthand that doesn’t communicate the full extent of the problem. So if there’s any doubt about how much the CEO understands, the next step is to go back to her and describe in detail the specific issues Maggie’s intransigence is causing, and then state clearly that things are at a crisis point and the CEO needs to use her authority to intervene because a year of trying to resolve it with Maggie directly hasn’t worked. This next part is out of your control, but from there the CEO should talk to Maggie and find out why she’s digging her heels. If Maggie isn’t willing to offer a compelling reason, then the CEO should tell her that this is an expectation of her job like any other, that she needs to comply with it because it’s causing XYZ work problems, and that the CEO is going to check in two days to make sure she’s done it, and that she needs to continue to comply going forward. And then the CEO needs to hold her to that like she would any other work expectation. The CEO may be thinking “I’m not willing to lose an employee over something as small as their calendar settings,” but this isn’t really about the calendar. It’s about someone insisting they’re going to cause bottlenecks and problems for their colleagues and claiming they feel so strongly about their right to do that that they’ll quit over it without ever explaining why it matters. That’s not about calendar settings; it’s about Maggie’s fundamental willingness to work respectfully and cooperatively on a team. It also makes me really curious about the rest of Maggie’s work, because I’m skeptical that this isn’t coming out in other ways too. You may also like:my boss wants to know what the private appointments on my calendar aremy boss called a mysterious meeting with me and I'm afraid I'm going to be fired3 of my employees are having a conflict ... and I can't tell who's right or wrong { 301 comments }
I found “detox” propaganda in the office kitchen, I made a huge political mistake, and more by Alison Green on March 24, 2025 It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go… 1. I found weird “detox” propaganda in the office kitchen I work at a small nonprofit of under 30 employees and we share one small kitchen. Articles relevant to our field or other interesting items are often left in the center of the table for us to read. I walked into the kitchen the other day and found a seven-page printout about “superhuman brain shakes.” I looked into the group that published it and the doctor behind it, and what I found did not sit well with me. The guy talks about “detoxification” and peddles supplements, all while vilifying prescription drugs and doctors. As someone who takes a prescription drug every day for my mental health, I don’t feel comfortable with something like this in the work kitchen. Would whoever put this information in the kitchen be appalled or look down on me because I take a prescription drug (which is needed in part due to the job, but that’s another story for another day)? On top of this gross pamphlet, we generally have a problem with people vilifying sugar, fatty foods, carbs, etc. I know these topics are pretty common but these beliefs are starting to feel endemic. Obviously this isn’t formal-HR-complaint level, but is it out of line for me to say something to the person who serves an HR function in our office? Or do I just conveniently hide this somewhere in the kitchen when no one is looking? I would love to just toss it right in the bin, but I know that’s not the way. Tossing it in the trash is the way. Someone left something gross in the kitchen, and putting it in the trash is appropriate. It sounds like the bigger issue in your office is the culture of moralizing about food, but that’s much, much harder to address. (You can still try, though! Advice on how is here.) But this one pamphlet? Trash it and be done with it. If you start finding more materials left for general reading that push a particular agenda, at that point it would be reasonable to suggest to your HR person that they put a stop to that, since common areas shouldn’t be used that way (and if they don’t stop it at diet moralizing, it’s very quickly going to spread to other topics as well). 2. I made a huge political mistake at work I’ve done something worthy of a Corporate Idiot of the Year award, and I’m mortified about my spectacular misstep with my new boss. I’m a team lead (no HR responsibility) who was recently told I’d be focusing on one shiny new initiative while giving up a current team. The colleague inheriting my team already juggles two teams and, to put it diplomatically, isn’t a strong team lead. Instead of gracefully accepting fate, I launched a one-woman crusade for “better alternatives” – suggesting other names, directly approaching my colleague (who was predictably uninterested), and escalating to both my boss and his boss. When communication about these changes moved at glacial pace, I prodded about timelines in a group chat, accidentally triggering a premature announcement from a Scrum Master rather than leadership. Brilliant move! This morning, my boss (who has only recently joined the company) pulled me aside and essentially lectured me about inappropriate meddling and how influence works in large organizations. He’s right, of course, and I sat there wondering if my keyboard shortcuts included “undo career damage.” I’ve scheduled a meeting with him to address my corporate mutiny, but I’m so ashamed and genuinely concerned about lasting damage. Is this relationship salvageable, or should I start looking for a new job? What specific steps would you recommend to repair trust while still eventually establishing myself as someone with valuable input? I’m going to take your word for it that this was really as bad as you say, but I think it’s worth considering that your boss sees this less as Devastating Mistake That Should Haunt You Forever and more as just a misstep that required some coaching. But if it’s really as bad as you think, then it’s worth reflecting on how you got there: do you have a pattern of overstepping your role or was this a one-off? If it’s a pattern, what is it stemming from and how can you manage those impulses differently in the future? Did any of this stem from legitimate frustrations with how your organization or team runs and, if so, are there conclusions you should draw from that (which could be anything from “if I’m going to stay here, I need to accept X” to “X is so messed up that it’s ruining my professional norms and I need to get out”)? Do you need better mentors to bounce things off and, if so, is that something you can put energy into cultivating? Have you had bad role models for how to handle this kind of situation and that played out here? There are a zillion interesting questions that could stem from this, all of which have the potential to turn this into something pretty useful for you! Assuming you do that, I see no reason why this wouldn’t be salvageable. Tell your boss you heard him loud and clear, you see where you misjudged, and you appreciate him pointing it out to you so candidly. When someone messes up, those are the things a halfway decent manager is listening to hear, and hearing them without prodding can be extremely reassuring. These may help too: how to rebuild your credibility after messing up at work how should you decide which battles to pick at work? 3. My coworker got an expensive baby gift and I got nothing I am part of a work group with two offices in different cities. Our group is around 10 people and we have the same boss who works in my office. We do some work with the other group and hold monthly Zooms together, but around 75% of the work my office does is independent of the other office. I am well-respected in my organization and love my job and like my team a lot. I had a baby about 10 months ago, and a colleague at the same level as me in the other office just returned from maternity leave. I found out during our latest monthly Zoom that before her leave, her team had collected money and given her a several hundred dollar gift. I don’t know for sure, but because of the cost, I suspect that people she manages gave money toward the gift. Knowing the team, I doubt they felt pressure to donate, but as I learned from you, it’s still not appropriate and gifts should not go up! I did not get a gift when my baby was born and I can’t help but feel a little hurt by finding out about my colleague’s gift. Small gifts aren’t completely unprecedented in my office so I figured at most, I might get a branded onesie, but didn’t really care when I didn’t. I would not have wanted my team, especially my reports, to give their own money for a gift for me. But considering the price of her gift and my experience buying *a lot* of expensive shit for my baby over the past year (why do so many things I can only use for a couple of months cost an arm and a leg!?), plus finding out about the gift during a call with our entire team, it just kinda stings. I’ve been considering raising my feelings with one of my trusted superiors/mentors, but I can’t figure out what I’d say without sounding greedy and hurt and I don’t even know what, if anything, I’d want them to do about it. I know with certainty that my bosses wouldn’t have deliberately decided to give one person a gift and exclude me. Honestly, they may not even know/remember that I got nothing since it’s been almost a year at this point! So I figure maybe it’s worth a reminder about being fair with gift-giving within our team? What do you think? Do I leave this alone and just get over it? Or is it worth bringing up and if so, what the heck do I say? The difference is almost certainly just because you’re in two completely separate offices. Different offices have different customs and norms; one might have bagels in the kitchen every Tuesday and a cherished costume contest every Halloween, while another has no weekly bagels but provides ice cream sandwiches every Friday in the summer and a “talking shrimp” at every meeting. Gift practices differ from office to office too, and that’s almost certainly all you’re seeing. The best thing to do is to chalk it up to that and leave it alone. 4. How do I brag about myself to my boss? I am in upper management at a smallish (~80 employees) company. I recently was featured in a vendor’s quarterly publication about successful folks in our industry. My bosses know I was asked, but now that I have the completed article back, I’m freezing on what to say when I share it with them! But I do want them to see it because, well, I want to be valued, and it would be silly not to! What’s my script? And can I ask that it not be shared company-wide? I cringe at the thought of staff reading it, even though I make several references to our staff and their feedback being a source of success. I can’t help but compare it to “manager wins the prize raffle at the holiday party” snafus (even though this publication came with no monetary reward). I just don’t want anyone to think I’m shouting “look at how great I am!” (Except maybe my bosses who sign my paychecks.) Forward it to your managers with a note saying something like, “Wanted to share this with you!” You’re allowed to be excited about it, they’ll likely to be happy to see it too (it reflects well on them as well as on you!), and it won’t look self-absorbed to simply send it along in a matter-of-fact way. But I would not ask that it not be shared company-wide unless you can point to some specific reason for that (like there’s currently tension over something you talked about in the interview or it reveals some specific detail about your private life that you’d prefer not to be circulated). This isn’t anything like managers claiming the best prizes in company raffles! You didn’t elbow other employees out of the way in order to get coverage for yourself (I assume). It wouldn’t be cringey for your company to share the article internally, and it’s normal for companies to share employees’ successes. That said, if you’re really uncomfortable with the idea of it, you could say, “I feel awkward about sharing this more broadly but wanted you two to see it.” 5. When should I tell prospective employers I’ve been laid off? Until two weeks ago, I worked for a federal contractor. All of the contracts I worked on were DOGEd at the beginning of February, and I was laid off, along with hundreds of other employees, about a month later. Between the contracts being terminated and my being laid off, I applied for a number of positions with my former position listed as current since it was current at the time. When should I tell prospective employers that I have been laid off? I am assuming it is unnecessary to send an email if I haven’t heard anything from the employer, but should I tell them during the interview? I don’t want to be misleading. You don’t need to proactively announce it, but you shouldn’t talk about the job in the present tense in interviews or otherwise imply you’re still there. If it comes up, you’ll just matter-of-factly explain what happened. You don’t need to go out of your way to hide it or to make sure they’re aware of it. You may also like:how can I stop people from stealing my food in the office fridge?can I bring a blender to work?I'm in charge of our disgusting office kitchen { 328 comments }
weekend open thread – March 22-23, 2025 by Alison Green on March 21, 2025 This comment section is open for any non-work-related discussion you’d like to have with other readers, by popular demand. Here are the rules for the weekend posts. Book recommendation of the week: Real Americans, by Rachel Khong. This is an epic family saga told in three generations: a pair of scientists who fled China’s Cultural Revolution, their daughter, and the son she has in America with the wealthy heir to a pharmaceutical company, whose business is intertwined with her parents in ways she learns of only later. (Amazon, Bookshop) * I earn a commission if you use those links. You may also like:all of my 2023 and 2024 book recommendationsall of my book recommendations from 2015-2022the cats of AAM { 898 comments }
open thread – March 21, 2025 by Alison Green on March 21, 2025 It’s the Friday open thread! The comment section on this post is open for discussion with other readers on any work-related questions that you want to talk about (that includes school). If you want an answer from me, emailing me is still your best bet*, but this is a chance to take your questions to other readers. * If you submitted a question to me recently, please do not repost it here, as it may be in my queue to answer. You may also like:my coworker insisted on inviting her sister to my weddingmy employee gave me an "it's her or me" ultimatumhere's a bunch of help finding a new job { 1,075 comments }