updates: the coworkers complaining about kids, the boss demanding location sharing, and more

by Alison Green on May 19, 2020

It’s a special “where are you now?” season at Ask a Manager, when I’m running updates from people who had their letters here answered in the past. Here are three updates from past letter-writers.

1. My child-free coworkers constantly complain about people with children

I’m still at the same workplace. The grousing specifically about children died down fairly quickly, and I didn’t end up having to address it directly. I did drop the info that I love kids and babies to V eventually, and she was sensitive to that and didn’t gripe about them in front of me afterward. The general grousing continued, though, with M being by far the worst offender. V likes to vent when she’s going through something (like the string of baby shower invites), but M will hold forth on any topic, for any amount of time, with 0 self awareness or regard for the people around him– and then utterly contradict himself in the next conversation, which is very annoying to be a fly on the wall to for years on end.

In fall of 2018, the seating arrangements changed, and M ended up sitting right next to me while V moved to another area. M continued to be visited by a parade of the cattiest people in the office and have irritating and insensitive conversations on a variety of topics. I really tried to tune him out and not feed into my dislike of him; but unfortunately as part of the seat move he also was asked to take on a few of my responsibilities, which he was not happy about. He started not only dropping frequent comments in my hearing about how demeaning my job is and how embarrassing it was for him to be next to me on the org chart, but behaving increasingly snippy and rude to me directly as well. Eventually I had to go to HR after he dramatically snapped at me in front of a client, and then again when I later tried to bring up the interaction and talk about it with him directly. I tried to bring up with HR that it seemed like being seated in the front, where he’s constantly interrupted, was really stressing M out and his behavioral issues might resolve themselves if he was moved to a quieter– but she basically shut me down and told me it wasn’t my job to tell my superiors how to organize their department. But M (or rather his supervisor, who never disciplines him) did get a talking to about professionalism, and M stopped being actively rude to me though the snarky comments about my/our job continued.

Our supervisors are both pretty tired of M too– as well as being a generally snarky and unpleasant person, he’s a little prone to inventing answers to questions he isn’t sure about, which can sometimes cause problems in the workplace. He also has a habit of taking on other people’s tasks, complaining/acting huffy because he has too much work, and then refusing help when it’s offered and continuing to take on anything anybody hands him. But his direct supervisor is very conflict-averse, and M is a grad student, so the assumption is that we can just wait this out because he will eventually quit to go work in his actual field. As his seat-mate, however, I am much more impacted by his behavior than the people making the decision to neither discipline him nor address the things that stress him out enough to behave the way he does… so I was planning to go into my performance review later this year and say, “Look, I know we don’t expect M to stay with us forever but can we discuss a more concrete timeline for moving him away from the reception area if he’s still here? After a year and a half in the current arrangement, I can definitely say it isn’t working well for either of us, and if this a given of my position here for the forseeable future, sadly that will impact whether I can plan to remain here myself longterm.” But then, of course, lockdown happened, and we all work remotely now. So I haven’t seen M for over a month, which is fine by me, and I’m hoping he is happier too, with fewer interruptions and people wandering by to see if he’d like to do their jobs for them so they don’t have to. Maybe by the time we return to the office, M will have grown up a bit, or maybe he’ll even quit in the intervening time and we’ll never have to see each other again. Only time will tell, but aside from the whole pandemic thing, working from home has been a very nice break from that environment, and I’m savoring it.

2. Company ordered people to quarantine, then told them to use PTO for it

My update is super boring! No one quit over the PTO thing, and it’s completely died out as conversation. I applied to two other clinics, but truly enjoy working for my boss and with my clients so decided to stick it out for now. My boss and supervisors have recently told me how appreciated I am and it feels good to see my clients doing amazing despite the current challenges and to get good feedback personally. I felt weird defending my workplace in the comments since seriously they were in the wrong over this, but I really am professionally fulfilled and enjoy the job immensely.

3. My boss wants me to “share my location” with her constantly

Thank you so much for answering my question! And for the commenters weighing in as well. I’m so glad I wasn’t crazy after writing that in. Like, I knew I wasn’t, but my workplace had convinced me at times that this just was how it is. I wasn’t able to respond to comments because (go figure) I had to travel a bunch after I wrote that question in.

However, after I wrote in, I didn’t hear much from my boss about the location tracking until about a month later. One of our coworkers had to travel and got into a car crash (but was fine, she did call my boss right after) and that spurred so much concern from my boss that she was asking me multiple times before my next trip. “Have you turned it on? I don’t see you on my phone. I’m just wanting to make sure you’re safe. Can you turn it on now?” I again said I was uncomfortable, and then the privacy reasons and lastly something about my battery life. It would not end! I was not the only one, she was asking our team of 5 to do it too. What worked was me going to my senior coworker who knows my boss very well, and asking her what she was going to do. She said it was ridiculous and got the team together to basically push back together. That ended up working!

I did end up having to talk to HR (but not for this reason, other reasons. Whoever in the comments said bees were all up in here was right.) Gratefully, I ended up leaving that job after making it to a year and started a new position two months ago, where my coworkers and boss have much better boundaries. I feel like I still have some kind of work PTSD from my previous position. My boss cried when I left, but thankfully she didn’t ask to track my location on my last day out.

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{ 91 comments }

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  1. pleaset AKA cheap rolls*

    “I’m just wanting to make sure you’re safe.”
    People say stuff like this a lot, and I’m not sure they understand what they mean. As far as I can tell, it’s that they just want to know that the person is safe. They can’t actually do much about it.

    1. WellRed*

      At what point does it become concern trolling, though? I do agree with your point that they can’t do anything about it anyhow if you aren’t safe all of a sudden.

      1. Amy Sly*

        I think for most people it’s not concern trolling nearly so much as taking out one’s anxieties on others. They worry about their own safety, so to distract themselves they worry about everyone else’s.

        It’s still obnoxious, and it has virtually nothing to do with you, but it’s not hostile the way concern trolling is.

        1. Mongrel*

          Agreed Concern trolling, as I’ve always understood it, is “I’m ignoring your point because of the presentation. If only you weren’t so salty\emotional\sarcastic\businesslike more people would listen to you”

          This appears to be much more, stalkery.

          1. Rowan*

            Small correction: what you describe is generally known as “tone policing”. “Concern trolling” is when someone is saying something negative in the guise of being concerned for you. For example, making comments about what you eat out of supposed concern for your health.

    2. Sedna*

      Depends on the person, but in some cases I think it is “I am going to manage my anxiety over the unknown by [intrusive process]”. Which is understandable, but their need for peace of mind doesn’t trump your right to privacy & independence. Nor is it your job to manage someone else’s anxiety. (In most cases, idk what’s in y’alls job descriptions.)

    3. E in MN*

      Agreed. Also, what would prompt escalation, and what would that escalation be? Since the boss seems to have some serious issues with (at minimum) boundries and anxiety, I wonder if she’d call the cops if her employee wasn’t where she expected them to be and didn’t answer her calls for like half an hour.

      This kind of surveillance might encourage someone to leave their phone at, say, the hotel if they plan to go somewhere they don’t want their boss to know about, which would actually be less safe.

    4. Foxgloves*

      I’m also not exactly sure that they would even know what “safe” looks like through an app!? Like, travelling in a different direction to what is expected- would the boss have assumed it was kidnap, when really it might have been a road closure and diversion!?
      There’s no way for instance that the boss could have known through location tracking that someone had been in a car crash, so I really don’t understand the idea behind the whole thing. Glad for OP that everyone was able to push back on it together and that it all worked out in the end (though very sorry about the work related PTSD, I can also relate to that!).

    2. LemonSkye*

      House of Evil Bees. It comes from the Captain Awkward blog/site/column, and is shorthand for a bad or abusive situation that, after leaving and getting perspective, you cannot understand for the life of you how you willingly stayed in it for as long as you did. The signs were all there to run screaming, and you were the “This is Fine” dog.

      2. MusicWithRocksIn*

        It came from a news story I think, were people were living in this house but there was a buzzing noise, and they eventually investigated and found a giant bee colony in ALL OF THE WALLS. So the house looked normal, but the walls were all filled with bees, the end lesson being that the house could not be saved or fixed and you gotta take what you can and run into the night.

        1. MusicWithRocksIn*

          I mean to say – Yes – it came from Captain Awkward, but when she did the house of evil bees thing she referenced that news story.

      2. Checkert*

        THANK YOU. That’s what I thought this was all about, because what isn’t about AD?

    1. Sedna*

      Oh Lord, that was supposed to be a reply to Parfait. Well! Regardless, I am very happy that OP3 has departed the office full of bees. You are an adult & deserve to be treated like one.

  4. WellRed*

    OP 1: I think your approach hasn’t been ideal. Why complain to HR instead of your manager? That’s not what HR is for. And now, instead of going into YOUR annual review to talk about M, you should be talking about your accomplishments and then maybe, the impact M is having on you if any. Although I would rather see that as a separate accomplishment. At the end of the day, however, I suspect you work for a dysfunctional companies with managers that won’t manage and your best bet is to find a new job.

    1. Avasarala*

      Agreed, I would not use the annual review to talk about someone else. I would start making M your manager’s/his manager’s problem on a daily basis. Otherwise you wait for one meeting per year to complain about someone else, they say “OK”, then what, you wait for your next annual review to follow up? I don’t like that ratio of “days spent dealing with M” to “days pushing someone to do something about M”.

    2. Reluctant Manager*

      Agreed. I would be so unimpressed with my direct reports coming to me to say their colleagues are stressed and asking how long another staff member would be employed there! You have standing to say how M’s behavior affects your work and how it reflects on the company when he’s rude in front of clients. You certainly have standing to say it’s inappropriate for M to call your work demeaning, or that M’s negative conversations are outside the standards for even casual office chats and you need them to be outside your workspace.

  5. Blarg*

    I know it is a typo in letter 2, but I really want OP to work for (with) boas. Either the feathered kind or the constrictors. Both are fun in their own way and potentially worth sticking out a job for.

    1. OP#2*

      I have in fact worked in a feather boa before! A big component of what I do is teaching play skills and it’s literally fantastic.

        1. KoiFeeder*

          Rubber, rosy, and kenyan sand boas are all very nice boas that are easy to keep, whenever you land in a situation where you can have some pet snakes.

          1. Quill*

            A college buddy has a ball python and I want to love him but 1) quarantine 2) shy snake

          2. Free Meerkats*

            When I was a kid, Mom worked for the Reptile Gardens of South Dakota. During the summer, I could hang out with all the snakes I wanted to. Reticulated pythons really like to hug. :-)

          3. Jean (just Jean)*

            Sitting here laughing at my sudden urge to get up and RUN! because SNAKES! when they are mere topics of conversation *online*. You can’t get much more abstract than that. Clearly I have an irrational aversion to snakes.
            Okay, back to being calm and collected.

          4. Tiny Soprano*

            One of the only two snakes I’m genuinely sad I can’t have in Australia is the Brazilian rainbow boa. Working for/with a boa would be such a dream-job!

    2. LunaLena*

      I had happy visions of OP2 twirling around in a feather boa while presenting choice morsels on silver trays to colorful boa constrictors.

  6. Batty Twerp*

    Wait, #3 – your boss *cried* when you left?!
    This, coupled with “I just want to make sure your safe” and I had to go back and double-check the original letter – she *genuinely* believed she was your mother, not just paying lip-service to the relationship. And not just any mother – she’s verging on Mother Gothel territory!
    Yikes x 10000000!
    I’m so glad you’re out of there!

    1. Caliente*

      Have you seen the previews for that show Smothered? Which gives me the willies every time.

    3. Environmental Compliance*

      I once had a boss that:
      – wanted to meet my husband, so that she could “verify he’s a good person” (we had been together about 7? years at that point, married for 3, I had only worked there for about 6 months)……. and then attempted more than once to set me up with her son.
      – constantly asked if I was anorexic
      – constantly asked when I was going to have children, and why noooooooooot EC
      – attempted at one point to have me text her constant updates on inspections (lol no)
      – cried and moped when I gave notice

      She did, several times, tell me that I was “just like a daughter” to her. One day I snapped a little and told her I already had 2.5 moms, I really didn’t need another one. This confused her enough that she at least stopped saying it to my face, I just got to hear about it from a couple other staff who were also attempting to shut her the heck down. She only did this crap to me.

      She had no idea how to manage, and wanted to be your friend. For me, since I was the youngest in the office and happened to be around her kid’s age, this turned into (s)mothering. Fun fact: she also constantly complained that her kids didn’t want anything to do with her.

      1. Wing Leader*

        Oh, hell no. This kind of thing would make my inner bitch come out. I am usually *pretty* good at remaining professional and respectful with difficult bosses, but this is the kind of thing that would careen me right off the edge.

        I probably would have told her, in no uncertain terms, that she should try and think long and hard about why her kids wants nothing to do with her (though I doubt she would get it). I would also threaten to report her for sexual harassment, due to the constant inquisitions about my body/sex life/marriage.

        I may be very sensitive about this because, while I have thankfully never had a boss like this, my own mother was very much this way. Among other things, my mom tried to set me up with another man while I was married. And she knew very well that I was married.

  7. Eirene*

    LW1, M sounds like a dreadful person no matter what subject he’s chosen to direct his ire toward. Doesn’t he ever get tired of himself? God help him when he gets a position in his field where he can’t use being in grad school and having too much on his plate as an excuse to act like a jerk. But at least you have a reprieve for now!

    1. mrs__peel*

      Can’t wait until he finishes grad school and uses the Socratic method on everyone…

  8. zebra*

    LW1, I’m glad you all started coming to the realization that the real issue is just M being a jerk about anything and everything! The phrasing in your original letter about how you felt it was offensive to hear that they hated children because you once were a child was very bizarre to me, and I suspect it would to some other people as well; if someone came to me with complaints about a coworker’s venting with that reasoning, I’d find it extremely weird. I’m glad that you’re getting a break from his negativity for now, and if you do have to return to the office with him anytime soon, just do whatever you can to stop taking it personally since it doesn’t seem like any of his vitriol is actually directed at you.

    1. Red Wheelbarrow*

      To me sounded as if a good deal of his vitriol was directed at the OP. He repeatedly snapped at the OP and said demeaning things about their job in their presence. If you mean that his vitriol had more to do with his personality and his problems than it did with anything the OP had done, I agree. But he does seem to have been targeting them.

      1. zebra*

        I meant that all the kid-hating stuff was not actually directed at OP. When someone complains directly about you, you have standing to protest — but the general anti-kid complaints were being taken personally when it didn’t seem like they were meant as such. And although the kids were what seemed to annoy OP the most, it wasn’t really the main issue here and shouldn’t have been the focus of her approach.

        1. Treebeardette*

          Except they weren’t general kid complaints after a while. Just because the venting isn’t personal doesn’t give anyone the right to say whatever they want. It’s unprofessional to be that venomous and it’s not realistic to expect people to put up with it or else they will be “weird”.

          And he had directed a lot of his behaviors at her personally.

        2. MusicWithRocksIn*

          Hearing someone constantly belittle something that you want to do can be petty demoralizing. If they are talking about how people who have/want kids are all so stupid/entitled and why and SHE is a person who wants kids then what she’s hearing all day is that people like her are stupid and entitled. It’s like if they were sitting around complaining that people who enjoy science fiction are all idiots and nerds, and there she is a person who very much enjoys science fiction but doesn’t talk about it, and now she feels insulted and like she can never talk about that thing and has to sit there listening to them talk about why they think she’s a nerd.

          1. Wing Leader*

            I agree that having someone constantly belittle what you want is hurtful and demoralizing. And I, as a childfree married woman, am constantly insulted and degraded for my choice not to have kids. People who do want/have kids are the “golden children” of society. People who don’t want kids (especially women) are the black sheep. So, you’ll have to forgive me if I feel minimal sympathy for someone who has the easy road (i.e. wanting kids, as society expects).

            That said, I don’t mean that M’s behavior is acceptable. Clearly it’s not.

            1. Blueberry*

              How about framing it as having sympathy for someone being berated about their life choices by someone else?

              I completely agree that the terrible pressure US society puts on women, especially, to have children is disgusting. As a childless woman I am so sick of people telling me how wonderful kids are, how God will send me a child, blahdeblahdeblah. But I am also a Black woman in the US, and I have had multiple people, both online and *in person*, tell me I shouldn’t have children/it’s a good thing I don’t have children because “Black people have too many children and can’t raise them without being on welfare,” etc etc etc.

              Yeah, several different people have told me to my face I shouldn’t have kids because I’m Black.

              And the thing is, those two sets of people, the ones who obnoxiously insist I should have / will have children, and the ones who racistly told me I shouldn’t, don’t cancel out. They’re both awful.

              Even though someone wants to have children, I don’t think that necessarily makes them culpable for the obnoxious twits who have repeatedly assailed your right to decide for yourself whether or not to have kids, and those people hassling you don’t make it any easier for someone else to have her decision repeatedly derided either. None of these awfulnesses cancel out.

              1. Gazebo Slayer*

                +10000

                Also, WTF? I am so sorry racist asshats actually said those things to you, and hope they are extremely ashamed of themselves.

            2. Gumby*

              This is eye opening for me. Sometimes people assume I have kids when they meet me as part of that ‘new person tell me about you and your family’ thing but not a single person in my life has insulted or degraded me for not having them. Zero. Nada. Even my parents don’t bring it up. (Thank you to my siblings who have provided adequate numbers of grandchildren. Though my parents are fairly good at the whole accepting us as we are thing so who knows if it would have been an issue otherwise.)

        3. Shirley Keeldar*

          I felt that the OP’s objection was not “I am a former kid” as much as “Kids are human too.” Having coworkers repeatedly denigrate a group of people is not something anybody should have to listen to.

    2. tangerineRose*

      If co-workers are venting about kids constantly and won’t stop when asked, this seems worthwhile taking to HR.

    3. Sc@rlettNZ*

      Zebra – I thought that was weird too. I’m childfree by choice. I don’t like babies and young children and have absolutely zero interest in them (although I don’t go around complaining to my co-workers about them!). But I’ve had more than one person try to rebut my reason for not wanting kids by replying “but you were a baby once” Like, that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever!!

      1. allathian*

        Agreed. Harping on other people’s life choices gets old very quickly, I’m sorry that you’ve been subjected to it. My sister’s also childfree by choice and she said that the best thing about turning 40 was that people pretty much stopped questioning her choices. She’s a great aunt to my son. I just wish people would respect the right of others to choose differently than they did. My pet theory is that the people who are most vocal in their questioning of others living a childfree life regret having kids of their own and would choose differently now given the chance. Being a parent and regretting it is one of the biggest taboos in our society today.

      2. Wing Leader*

        Same for me. I’m a childfree married woman, which I don’t generally talk about (it just doesn’t come up). But you better believe that I will be hounded with questions as soon as someone finds out that we aren’t planning on children.

      3. KittyCardigans*

        But OP wasn’t saying that M and V should WANT kids because they were kids once—she affirms childfree lifestyles in her original post. She was saying that the vitriol against children is hard for her to understand, given that we have all had the experience of being children (so we should all understand that they’re real people—and it’s mean to be horrible about a group of people).

        Obviously it’s common for people to criticize sectors of society that they HAVE been a part of but aren’t CURRENTLY part of (for example, high schoolers are not kind about middle schoolers), but I still don’t think OP’s argument is weird. One reason I’m not a jerk about children is that I like kids, another is that it’s bad to be a jerk about a group of people, but a third is that I remember what being a kid was like and have empathy for people who are at that stage of life now. If I didn’t like being around kids and were a rude person, that third piece still might kick in.

      4. Eukomos*

        You don’t have to HAVE kids because you were a kit once, but it seems reasonable to ask for your sympathy for them as fellow human beings no matter what, but especially since you once went through the same experience of being a child. OP was just asking for her childfree coworkers to have basic respect for children. They’re people too.

        1. Gazebo Slayer*

          Seriously. As a person who doesn’t have or plan to have children, I am so damn tired of child-haters. You don’t have to want children, or enjoy spending time with them, but acting as if they’re vermin or unworthy of basic empathy is cruel. Also, they are making people like me look bad by association.

  9. Quill*

    #2 You work with boas? Snake pics please!

    (If this is a typo, don’t tell me, send me pet reptile photos anyway.)

    2. OP#2*

      Alas the closest I get is sometimes rocking a feather boa and drawing literally so many snakes you wouldn’t believe the requests to draw snakes I get regularly kids are straight up obsessed with snakes

  10. La Triviata*

    There’s a woman in my office – she’s the oldest employee, although I’m only five years younger – and she seems to have decided she’s the office mother. If I’m sick or injured, she’ll call and demand to know my status. Recently, I had a bad fall – bad enough that the security guard in our building wanted to call 911 and send me to the emergency room, although I preferred not to go. She called this older woman and reported that I’d come in literally dripping blood (I hit my nose and it bled horribly) who then called me, woke me up when I’d taken some pain pills and fell asleep, and then demanded I call her to report on how I was. um … I had a mother and she was never that concerned

    1. Jedi Squirrel*

      It’s hard to tell if she was really concerned or just super nosy. (No pun intended. I hope you recovered from your fall 100%.)

    2. Sara without an H*

      Ummm…it sounds to me as though you have two people with boundary issues. Maybe the “office mother” and the security guard have a folie a deux going???

      Love your pseudonym, btw.

      1. James*

        What would we see about a security guard that saw someone take a fall and walk away dripping blood and did nothing?

        The security guard did what security guards do: he tried to make sure folks were safe. The issue is that the Office Mother is so firmly entrenched in her role that the guard that going to her was a viable solution to the problem.

          1. James*

            I agree that the guard’s actions were a bad solution to the issue. I also (to respond to comments below) fully agree that Office Mother is WAY out of line, perhaps crossing over into harassment territory.

            All I’m just saying that I think speculating about secrete motives on his part is out of place. He did what security guards do, and what we would expect him to do had someone witnessing the incident (ie, call someone to watch the injured person to make sure they’re okay). The issue is that Office Mother has subverted office protocol, and that the various managers have allowed her to do it.

            1. Wing Leader*

              Well, La Triviata didn’t say what job Office Mom has, but I’m going to guess that she’s a receptionist of some sort. We have an Office Mom-type in our office, and she’s the reception person. So, if a security guard were to call about something like that, the information is naturally going to go her first. So, I would assume that’s what happened in this case. The security guard probably wasn’t trying to secretly contact this one woman. He just called the office and she’s who he got.

        2. That Girl from Quinn's House*

          Having had jobs with a similar responsibility, the correct thing to do is to call 911 and let emergency services deal with the refusal-of-care request.

          It sucks, because sometimes the person ends up with a crappy bill they can’t afford, but that’s really your only recourse. It’s never the wrong thing to do from a liability/doing-your-job standpoint.

        3. Bagpuss*

          Unless Office Mom is La Triviata’s manager, HR or the Security Guard’s manager, I don’t think that them calling her was ‘making sure OP was safe’ , nor was it doing their job.
          It is reasonable for the Security Guard to tell *someone*, if that’s part of their role, but not necessarily telling a coworker, unless La Triviata expressly asked them to do so.

          ;office Mom then phoning you is totally inappropriate and if this is a habit then I would recommend telling her explicitly to stop, and then speaking to her manager about it – t’s intrusive. (And I don’t think it is relevant if she claims she does it because she is convcerned – her alleged concern doesn’t give her the right to harass you at home or to know your personal medical information. Can you block her number?

          The issue of whether they should have called 911 whether or not the injured party wanted them to would, I would have thought, depend on the specific rules set by their employer and on the nature of the accident – it sounds as though La T was well able to make, and express, a decision.

          1. James*

            “It is reasonable for the Security Guard to tell *someone*, if that’s part of their role, but not necessarily telling a coworker, unless La Triviata expressly asked them to do so.”

            Where I work our Health and Safety Plans do not allow us to make this call. If I get injured someone MUST stay with me until medical help arrives, especially if it’s bad enough that I’m dripping blood and someone thought calling 911 was reasonable. The reason is, people were trying to hide workplace injuries for fear of retaliation from employers, which made their injuries worse due to being unattended. I can say no all I want, but my safety officer is obliged to follow protocol (me signing the Plan is my consent to this policy).

            So it’s not unreasonable to suspect that the guard had no choice but to call someone. That’s not the issue. The issue is that he chose to call the wrong person. He should have a very clear communications plan in place for such incidents, which includes a list of people to contact, and unless Office Mother is a medic, an EMT, an RN, an MD, or at least trained in occupational health, she has no business on that list. She has, as I stated above, subverted protocol at minimum. That’s not a minor thing to my mind, by the way; people die because of such subversions. I didn’t intend to come off as treating this as minor.

    3. Librarian1*

      This is what makes me so angry when people try to mother me: I have a mother and she’s never been anywhere near as controlling or interfering as these people are. She respects me as a person and trusts that I can handle things and that I’ll be okay.

      1. jasmine*

        I agree. Being an adult means you don’t need someone to mother you. But trying to play “office mother” to someone only five years younger than her… that’s even more weird!

  11. I'm just here for the cats*

    #3 I can only imagine if you had shared your location and she saw where you went. If it was not some place she approved of I’m sure you would have gotten a call or a lecture when you got back to the office. Glad you are away from that mess

    1. Abe Froman*

      I must admit, the temptation to turn on location sharing and then go to the most shocking locations would be high for me. Not helpful, but satisfying. XD

      1. E in MN*

        I was thinking the same thing, Sausage King! Every time you travel make a point to visit the local kinky toy store or something. :)

      2. willow for now*

        I have to drive past the strip club on my way to work, I could just troll through the parking lot on occasion

  12. pcake*

    LW1 – have you told M very courteously and politely but firmly to stop insulting your job to you or the people around you?

  13. Blast*

    She didn’t ask to track your location on your last day?
    Thats no good, now that your leaving the “nest” you need to be tracked more than ever. All those sororities are going to lure you in unless your second mom can watch where you are at all times

  14. willow for now*

    I have to drive past the strip club on my way to work, I could just troll through the parking lot on occasion

  15. beast368*

    LW2 – I’m glad you’re happy, but you’re in a job that gives you a WEEK off total per year for both vacation and sick leave. That means the employer encourages employees to come in when they’re sick. 40 hours total is not normal for most industries and you really should consider something else for the long-term.

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