December 2017

can I refuse to put up Christmas decorations at work?

A reader writes: My employer is asking all of us to decorate our offices/work areas for Christmas this year. The decorations are provided, and she thinks it will brighten up the office. I work as an administrative assistant in the front of the office. Because of some difficult personal reasons, I will not be celebrating […]

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we have monthly meetings about everyone’s mistakes

A reader writes: I’ve been working for a small company (10 employees) for almost a year now and I almost entirely love it. The exception being our monthly meetings where our boss starts off my addressing everyone’s mistakes from the past month. My boss generally doesn’t use names, but people often know or can reasonably […]

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my coworker has terrible imposter syndrome

A reader writes: Someone who I work with, let’s call her Sonja, seems to suffer from an awful case of impostor syndrome, and I’m looking for advice on how I can best support her as a colleague. We’re friendly, but not friends, and we have not worked together on a project before now, but we’ve recently […]

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something personal

It’s time to talk about why I left a job in 2010. I worked for a serial sexual harasser. I was his chief of staff. He was so good at his job that many, many people looked the other way. He had built the organization himself, personally recruited enough funders for a multi-million dollar budget, […]

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