office music is too repetitive, coworker is taking advantage of flexibility, and more

by Alison Green on August 23, 2024

It’s four answers to four questions. Here we go…

1. Our communal music is too repetitive

I work in a creative department at a fairly conservative company and am in the office four days each week. My coworkers and I share an enclosed space with individual cubicles. Much of my job involves writing. Though I can often write without “locking in,” “getting in the zone,” etc., sometimes I do really need to focus with minimal distraction.

Recently, a coworker brought in a small bluetooth speaker, and we have taken turns playing music to liven up the space a bit. My manager is fully on board. To make it easier and spend less time fiddling with bluetooth, we’re using a shared device to connect to Spotify. My coworkers – understandably – are not taking too much time to find and select music to play. They come in, press play on the device, and let the playlist roll.

I love listening to music. I don’t love listening to the same playlist over, and over, and over again. But it apparently only bothers me to hear the same songs day in and out. I will try and put on other music, which helps for a bit, but eventually we find our way back to the “default” playlist, which I guess is based off what you have played previously on the platform (It’s only about 150-200 songs). When this happens, I can barely focus on what I’m doing. I’ll pull out my own ear buds, but they tend to mix with the music on the speaker and make the problem worse.

I really don’t want to be the person that needs to turn off the music. This seems like something my coworkers really enjoy, based on how often they’re finding their way back to turn on the speaker after it’s been off for the day or after a meeting. But it’s beginning to make me hate certain songs that I had no feeling about previously, let alone the effect on my productivity. I guess the solution is just to get up and change the music when it starts bothering me — but I worry I’ll come off as overly concerned about playing DJ when really, I just don’t want to listen to “Bittersweet Symphony” for the fifth time this week!

If it really becomes a problem, I know that I would be able to just say I need some quiet for a bit and turn it off. But do you have any suggestions for how to handle that without being the office spoilsport?

I think you’re overthinking it! Just say, “Y’all, I love having the music on but I can’t take so much repetition, so I’m going to take charge of switching up the playlists unless someone else wants to” and then do that. It shouldn’t be a big deal. If anything, people will probably appreciate it.

Alternately, spend some time this weekend making a ridiculously huge 30-hour playlist and then never think about it again.

But it’s also okay to say that having music on all the time isn’t working for you! Having to write while subject to someone else’s musical choices would be rough for a lot of writers.

2. Coworker is taking advantage of our WFH flexibility

I lead a highly engaged team of exempt employees that work remotely ~90% of the time. Our department is very supportive of work/life balance and doesn’t penalize for things like doctor’s appointments or getting kids off the bus. As long as meetings are covered and work gets done, it’s all good. We have a few required in-office days each month which occur on a regular, predicable cadence.

One team member bends this flexibility more than anybody else. Although their work output is good, there have been several instances of this person sending the team a list of sporadic upcoming times that they may not be available during the day due to their child’s daytime extracurricular activities. This once resulted in a last-minute scramble to move an important meeting that had been scheduled weeks ago. Another time, they asked our manager to be exempt from all in-office days for a couple of months to accommodate a different voluntary, child-related activity (manager said no). This employee recently called into another important meeting but couldn’t be heard over the background noise. They were out of the house on an errand that could have happened at another time.

I reported this to our manager (who agrees with me) but can’t help wondering if I’m being unfair. If this person was working around something more necessary and immovable, like healthcare needs, I wouldn’t think twice. I don’t care if people work from a public place like a coffee shop or library as long as they can be fully engaged in meetings. I don’t have kids myself but have never encountered anybody else who has required this level of daytime flexibility for non-essential activities. Nobody else on the large-ish team does this.

I understand that if this person had just quietly blocked their calendar without providing any details, I would probably not be writing to you … but here we are. Is there any way to equitably standardize what appropriate flexibility looks like, or should I just erase the details from my brain and pretend they’re shuttling the kids back and forth from doctor’s appointments?

Extracurriculars are different from medical appointments. It’s reasonable to say that while your team tries to allow employees flexibility with life stuff that comes up during the day, including kid-related needs, people are expected to prioritize important meetings, participate in in-office days, and take work calls from a quiet place where they can focus and without disruptive background noise, in all but the most unusual/unavoidable of circumstances. And it’s reasonable to define “unusual/unavoidable” as medical things or rare personal emergencies.

Since your manager seems to agree with that, she needs to clarify those expectations with your coworker, who seems to be translating some flexibility into total flexibility.

3. HR has implemented a screening test for applicants that nobody can pass

Several months ago, our HR department implemented a screening test for all applicants that they must pass before being hired. This is a timed test, and the questions and acceptance criteria are the same for all jobs. None of the hiring managers had seen the test or knew anything about the questions when it was implemented.

Only about 5% of screened applicants have passed the test. As you might imagine, this is causing issues with hiring managers as they are unable to fill open positions with candidates they have already evaluated and identified as good hires.

There has been such disruption that HR decided to have all current employees take the test and use the average score to consider adjusting the acceptance criteria (individual scores are supposed to remain anonymous). This was the first time any of us had seen the test questions, and now it is clear why applicants are not passing. Most, if not all, of the questions do not pertain to the jobs we are hiring for. There are math word problems, word analogy problems, inductive reasoning pattern problems used to screen engineers, logic puzzles, etc., all with a big timer counting down the available time at the top of the screen.

I see a LOT of issues with this. The aptitudes and abilities being tested are not relevant for all positions, and some are not relevant for any positions at our company. (Nobody here needs to know the exact definition of “obfuscate” as part of their job.) It is biased against candidates who are functionally fluent in English but use it as their second language. It is biased against candidates who would perform their jobs well but do not perform well on timed tests. It may not be illegal, but I can’t see how it is useful.

I raised these concerns with HR, and also told them that if this test had been required when I applied to my position several years ago, I likely would have withdrawn my application. I would have seen it as a huge red flag that my performance would not be evaluated objectively based on the job requirements but on random criteria instead. I suspect many applicants are either not completing the test or choosing answers at random because they have similar concerns.

Am I off-base that this is a bad practice? Is there anything else I can do as a hiring manager to convince HR to change this practice?

You are not off-base; this is ridiculous. It’s a fundamental principle of hiring effectively that you screen based on the must-have’s and nice-to-have’s for the role you’re hiring for, not on factors that have nothing to do with someone’s ability to perform the job. Coincidentally, that also happens to be a fundamental principle of ensuring you have a diverse workforce with diverse perspectives.

HR shouldn’t have this kind of power. You and other hiring managers should push back hard, pointing out that HR’s job is to support managers in hiring people who will perform their jobs well, not to throw up roadblocks to finding and hiring those people. Insist on hearing a justification for the test and why it should trump your own assessment of what you need in candidates, insist on seeing data about outcomes, and escalate it as high as you need to.

4. Adult photos at work

Is showing a coworker a nude pic of a celebrity considered sexual harassment?

If they don’t want to see it, yes. If there are people nearby who don’t want to see it or hear about it, yes.

You may also like:
{ 633 comments }

{ 633 comments… read them below }

  1. LoV...*

    #LW1: This gives me flashbacks to when I worked in a grocery store. The same bland songs over and over. I had the opposite problem though, I started to like the handful of songs on the playlist that I actually thought were ok a lot more, just because they were so much better by comparison.

    1. Seal*

      Years ago I occasionally worked at one of the concession stands of a local sports arena. It was home to an NBA team but also hosted concerts and other events. One time I was working during a multi-day run of a Disney ice show. Unlike other non-sporting events there, Disney set up and staffed a rather ridiculous number of souvenir stands and piped in “It’s a Small World” on a loop before and after the show as well as during the intermission. When the music finally stopped about an hour after the show ended, all of the Disney employees let out a simultaneous and weary “YAY!!!”. The arena employees practically fell over laughing.

      1. Ugg Enthusiast*

        I worked in a lab that played commercial radio stations to help with the monotony of sample processing. This was fine unless our boss came in the help us process samples on big days. She refused to listen to commercial music and changed to alternative station. The station had an album of the week. They would play one song from said album each hour. One fateful week of intensive sample processing the station choose to highlight a death metal band. We were not allowed to turn off or change the station as ‘it would be over in a minute.’

        2. Maglev to Crazytown*

          In grad school, my research lab was like this… I had brought in Linkin Park’s Meteora CD, among others. And accidentally left it in there by the stereo. Apparently the international students in our lab loved the hell out of that CD, as it was playing like 16 hrs a day, for nearly a semester…

          1. MigraineMonth*

            I worked at a charming little toy store with innumerable problems: always understaffed; could never contact the owner; scanner and card reader broken; and constantly fielding calls from upset customers, vendors, and even the electric company.

            The one benefit to being the only person working at the toy store *in December* is that there was no one to make sure I was playing the one CD of Christmas music the owner had dropped off rather than the random other CDs back there. Customers were puzzled and then slowly delighted as they realized they were shopping to the strains of Paul Simon’s “Graceland”, Mary Chapin Carpenter’s “Come On Come On” or the soundtrack of “The Lord of the Rings” instead of the ever-present Christmas music.

      2. curly sue*

        My mother (now retired and in her late 70s) has stories about her summer job working at a jewellery stall at the Canadian National Exhibition, right behind a Parks Canada booth that had the “OnTAR-I-AIR-I-AIR-I-O” song going on constant repeat, all day, every day. She still twitches when she retells it.

          5. Summer*

            My husband changes the channel as soon as he hears the first note of that commercial!! I truly don’t understand why they still run with it when so many people loathe that jingle!

        2. AGD*

          Ottawa here – my dad still sings that song from time to time! I think we the AAM regulars have a poster named after it too? :)

        3. Old Woman in Purple*

          My husband twitches whenever a Menards commercial comes on. “Save Big Money At Menards!”

          1. goddessoftransitory*

            Hah, MST used that soooo many times! “Gettest thou a cemetery full of savings at Menards!”

      3. Llama Llama Workplace Drama*

        Duff Beer for me, Duff Beer for you.. you have a Duff and I’ll have one too…..

      4. MsM*

        My parents are still traumatized from having gotten stuck on the It’s a Small World ride for an hour 50 years ago.

        1. Butterfly Counter*

          Ha! I think my aunt and uncle were on that same ill-fated ride! They talked about considering swimming/wading to anywhere else to get away from the music.

      5. Jeanine*

        ok hearing that song over and over would be enough to drive me to do something bad. Good lord. One time though I worked at a radio station and the day they changed format they plaed We Built This City by the Jefferson Starship on repeat for 24 hours. I kinda liked it, I really love that song and still do.

      6. goddessoftransitory*

        I worked in a store with a truly ancient sound system–actual 8 tracks! As you can imagine, the selection was somewhat limited. But the worst was Christmas, because not only did we only have ONE Christmas music 8 track, it was of the blandest, most secular “Rudoph the Red Nosed Reindeer” tunes out there, in the most saccharine arrangements ever recorded.

        And to top it all off, we had a toy department that sold those parrot and toucan toys that record things and “parrot” them back. They’d all record the soundtrack and start blasting it at random–a whole row of these damn birds squawking “Here Comes Santa Claus.”

      7. Reluctant Mezzo*

        This is where the movie The Escape Clause messed up. Yes, Martin Short was duly punished. But the scene I wanted to see was that of dancing, twirling elves to a chipper little tune, and then we suddenly realize that one of the elves is Martin Short…

    2. Vique*

      Hotel I worked at had one (!) CD of Christmas music that was played for over two months straight, all day, every day for the holidays.
      So when I read that LW1 listens to the same playlist daily it didn’t sound too bad, as I assume the playlist doesn’t repeat throughout the day.

      1. TomK*

        I had this one year I worked retail and it was awful. The one CD didn’t even have well known Christmas songs! Do you know “Dance a Merry Christmas Polka”? Because I’ll be singing it on my death bed.

        1. Retired Merchandiser*

          I used to do merchandising at a Service Merchandise and at Christmas they had this small mechanical Santa that danced and played the same song OVER and OVER!! It was right next to the area I was working, and it really got on my nerves. Finally one day I slipped over and turned it off, and the lady at the jewelry counter said, “Oh thank you!! That thing is driving me batty!!” Of course, when the manager came through and realized it was off he’d restart it. but he never knew who was turning it off, and those poor folks got a couple of hours relief each week.

          1. Wendy Darling*

            Several years ago my downstairs neighbor put up a christmas decoration that played a musical-greeting-card-quality rendition of Jingle Bells over and over forever, and after two days of bleep-bloop-bells I went to the management office and begged them to do an intervention.

            Luckily they did because much longer and I would have ended up doing some kind of Mission Impossible thing off my balcony to disable it.

        2. AngryOctopus*

          CVS played a 4 hour playlist over the holidays. Working an 8 hr shift at that time was trying at best, and then coming back to the same loop…yeah, not great.

        3. sparkle emoji*

          My Christmas season retail job had a playlist that was about 2 hours long and it had Michael Buble’s Santa Baby cover. The lyric changes to make the song more macho get even more grating when you hear it 4 or 5 times a day.

          1. Learn ALL the things*

            Michael Buble’s Santa Baby is a travesty. If you’re not going to lean fully into the sugar daddy aspect of that song, why even bother?

            1. London Calling*

              Listen to the Eartha Kitt version (probably on YouTube) and be left in no doubt at all that this isn’t REALLY about Christmas at all.

          2. Florence Reece*

            Same, except my personal hell was Wonderful Christmastime by Paul McCartney. At least 3 times a day every time I worked for the entire holiday season, which started in late October. I started that job as a Beatles fan and left that job very personally hating Paul.

            (Temporary Secretary, an ironic ‘favorite’ by my DnD group, did not help. Curse you, McCartney!)

            1. beth*

              I feel seen – I have retail related PTSD when I hear that song. I still hold a grudge against Paul. Happy X-Mas (The War is Over) is a close second.

              1. Cathy with the Yarn*

                Lennon and McCartney definitely made each other better and these two songs demonstrate exactly how.

          3. Shinespark*

            My Christmas seasonal retail playlist trauma song is Destiny Childs’s Twelve Days of Christmas. It was over ten years ago, but I must have heard that song four or five times a day for three months straight.

            My best friend and I still sing “Quality T-I-M-E!!!” when we want to annoy each other.

        4. aunttora*

          oh man! In high school I worked at a really fancy candy store owned by a locally famous European candymaker. If you’ve spent time in the PNW you probably know it! This was so long ago, the music was actual record albums played on a turntable. He only allowed three: soundtracks for Carousel and the Sound of Music, and at Christmas time, the Nat King Cole Christmas album. Most of the time we opted for no music.

        5. DogFace Boy*

          I love the Merry Christmas Polka. But then again, I’ve always been into the alternative music scene.

        6. becca*

          Why is “Feliz Navidad” allowed to continue to exist? Surely there are better Spanish-language Christmas songs we could be playing? “Feliz Navidad” fills me with the opposite of the holiday spirit and makes me want to charge Jose Feliciano with a crime. Any crime.

          2. Jackalope*

            Worst story I’ve heard in relation to this song: a friend was at a school that was singing Feliz Navidad for a Christmas program or something. Apparently the person running things decided that the English lyrics weren’t okay for a school. For those of you who don’t know the song, those lyrics are “I want to wish you a Merry Christmas from the bottom of my heart.” So he changed it to…. “I want to wish you a Merry Christmas with lots of presents to make you happy.” Not dealing with the religious issue at all, and getting rid of affection for the person you’re singing to in favor of unbridled capitalism. And it doesn’t even scan right!

        8. ggg*

          OMG, I do.

          I worked at Express and we had little dance routines to all the Christmas songs. My personal least favorite was “simply having a wonderful Christmastime.”

          I also worked at Arby’s and at least we had, like, four cassette tapes with different vibes that we could rotate.

        9. Lizz*

          at least it wasn’t Christmas Shoes. nothing gets me in the mood to shop like a story about a young child’s dying mother.

          2. Princess Sparklepony*

            I have never heard that song but I have heard of it. I hope to go to my final reward without ever hearing it.

        10. Reluctant Mezzo*

          I remember one radio station which played five different versions of ‘Silver Bells’ in a single hour. Suddenly, the station which played metal didn’t sound so bad…

      2. Harper the Other One*

        I just had a flashback to a retail job I worked where the first year, they had a Christmas playlist that was only 2 hours long. And because they didn’t want to work on anything referencing religion, there were three different versions of Let It Snow, two versions of Chestnuts Roasting, two of Santa Baby (plus Michael Bublé’s Santa Buddy)… I worked 8 hour shifts and the playlist started November 1. It was THE WORST.

        They obviously got brutal feedback (probably from both customers and staff!) because the following year they changed the playlist and didn’t start playing it until December.

        1. getaway_grrrl*

          Ours was longer than two hours, but given how early in the year they started playing it…ugh. I still cannot listen to Barbra Streisand’s “Jingle Bells” without wanting to stab my eyes out.

          1. RG*

            THANK YOU. Barbra Streisand’s “Jingle Bells” makes my blood pressure skyrocket every time I hear it, and it was very popular in the Christmas music rotation when I worked retail.

        2. Panicked*

          I worked at Victoria’s Secret for awhile in college. They had four playlists for the whole year. They were classical/opera mostly, so really pleasant. Except around Christmas. Started in late September and ran through January. Holiday music (for me) is strictly a December 1-25th thing, so hearing All I Want for Christmas is You on January 15th is like an ice pick to the ears.

          1. AnnieG*

            All I Want for Christmas Is You is like an ice pick to the ears on any day, not just Jan. 15!

        3. Distracted Procrastinator*

          the worst part of this is that if you break out of the “classic” Christmas songs that were recorded in one 10 year period over 60 years ago, there are a ton of great non-religious Christmas songs. So many fun ones in the last 10 years even. I put together a 10 hour playlist of songs that were released in the last 15 years that were new songs, not a rerecording of a classic. I add to it every year. I think my favorite is the Stretchy Pants song.

          There’s no need to have such a short playlist!

        4. Georgia Carolyn Mason*

          I start putting in AirPods before I go into a store right around Halloween, but I was shocked and horrified last year by Christmas music in some store in mid-October! I felt super bad for their staff. I wish I hadn’t totally blocked out which store it was, because I’ll probably blunder in there again this year.

      3. WeirdChemist*

        I was lucky enough to only work one year of Christmas in retail, but that year made me hate holiday music for a while… it was the radio so less repetitive that some in this thread, but I once heard three (3) separate covers of “My Favorite Things” in a single hour.

        Also, in the non-holiday season, the store had a random hour in the afternoon where they played experimental jazz everyday

          3. Kyrielle*

            *sighs* That, and Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah. (But I’m usually so glad when that one comes on that I don’t want to tell them they have it mis-categorized. It’s a nice change. Of course, I wasn’t getting three covers of it in an hour, either!)

          4. goddessoftransitory*

            GAHHHHH! I KNOW! It’s supposed to be a song of personal encouragement, stuff you think of to get out of feeling hopeless–not a shopping list!

        2. JustaTech*

          The year I worked Christmas at a Half Price books was the year they instituted the rules that 1) all music had to be available for sale (ie, can’t bring anything from home) and 2) Christmas music is required.
          Thankfully, for some reason we had a bunch of box sets of ballet music, so one day someone managed to slip the Nutcracker into the CD player (at least it doesn’t have lyrics). And then, because we had *obviously* just played orchestral Christmas music, no one questioned the next CD, which was a Cinderella ballet. (Swan Lake is too recognizable.)
          Then someone on closing shift said “screw it” and played metal and everyone got in trouble and the managers set the CDs for the rest of December.

      4. Lore*

        I temped in the marketing department at Radio City during Christmas season one year. The elevators are shared by the dressing room floors and the office floors so essentially the building is one giant green room. Which means the show is piped in at 11 am, 1 pm, 3 pm, 5 pm.

        On the plus side you occasionally got to share an elevator with a camel.

        2. Princess Sparklepony*

          One day long ago, we were in a cab getting to an early morning appointment and we were waiting at a light with a couple camels over on the sidewalk. Yes, the Radio City Christmas show camels were getting their outdoor exercise. I didn’t see if their trainer had a pooper scooper with him.

          I do love that memory.

      5. Good Lord Ratty*

        “as I assume the playlist doesn’t repeat throughout the day.”

        I think it’s safe to assume it DOES repeat throughout the day – that is precisely the problem.

        1. wendelenn*

          It says 150-200 songs, so if you say 3-4 minutes per song it probably doesn’t for an 8 hour shift.

          1. Miso*

            And the LW complains about the song she hears five times during a WEEK – not a day, a week.

            I gotta admit, that doesn’t sound bad at all to me, but I can also listen to an album 10 times in a row when I like it and can’t listen to my playlists on shuffle because then the songs aren’t in the right order…

      6. The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon*

        I must confess, all these comments about Christmas playlists have prompted me to put on my personal holiday music playlist. In my defense, I work at home so nobody else will suffer for my nonseasonal decisions.

        1. Brisvegan*

          Totally off topic, but I love your username, Rise and Fall!

          Did you see that they are making a Murderbot streaming series?

      7. Wonderland*

        it’s a 100 to 150 song playlist. assuming an average of 3 min per song, it’ll be at most each song twice.

      8. MigraineMonth*

        I mentioned this up above, but the one good thing about being the only employee in a toy store in December is that there was no one to get me in trouble for replacing the one CD of Christmas music with random non-Christmas CDs.

        A number of customers thanked me for giving their ears a break.

      9. AnonymousSassenach*

        At an assisted living facility I worked at, one day someone in the office accidentally put the music on repeat mode and my patients and I had to listen to Silent Night by Josh Groban for an hour and a half. The music played through all the hallways and the therapy gym- there was no escaping it.

    3. Varthema*

      When I worked retail, at some point Motown was deemed the only acceptable Pandora playlist (yes, it was Pandora). Now, I love Motown, so when it first started I was psyched. Now whenever I hear “ABC” or “Second That Emotion” or likewise I get stressy and cringey and full of that weary dread that is unique to starting an 8-hour retail shift. ruined a whole genre!!

      1. kicking-k*

        A hotel I once waitressed at as a teenager used a tape loop of Sixties covers during breakfast. I was a terrible waitress and hated the breakfast shift (it started very early, people make more mess than at any other meal, and in this country they don’t usually tip at breakfast, either). So I inevitably associate “Mister Tambourine Man” and “Runaway” with clearing up congealed baked beans (why order them if you don’t want them? almost no-one seemed to eat them) and fielding complaints about why we didn’t have this or that specific breakfast item.

      2. Maglev to Crazytown*

        “Second That Emotion”???

        I have been seriously hearing that as “Second-hand Emotion” my entire life. Which has made perfect sense to me… empathy is totally a second-hand emotion.

        1. Lyric Lion*

          “Oh, little girl, in that case I don’t want no part
          I do believe that that would only break my heart
          Oh, but if you feel like lovin’ me
          If you got the notion
          I second that emotion
          Said, if you feel like giving me a lifetime of devotion
          I second that emotion, oh”

        2. Miss Muffet*

          I think it is Second Hand Emotion in “What’s Love Got to Do With It” so maybe that’s the song you’re thinking of? I’ve never heard of this other one…

        3. MigraineMonth*

          @Lyric Lion and @Miss Muffet are both correct!

          Smokey Robinson says that if you feel like loving him, he “seconds that emotion” (agrees).

          Tina Turner asks what love has to do with sex, because after all, love is only a “second-hand emotion” (worn-out/useless).

        5. You were right!*

          You heard correctly. Tina doesn’t want love; it’s a second hand emotion.

          Who needs a heart when a heart can be broken?

      3. Spero*

        I once implemented a Motown only playlist in the small giftshop where I worked around 2000-2006, but it was a necessary activity: the only other approved option by the store owner was CAPTAIN AND TENILLE!!!!!
        We were close to Detroit and so Motown was a commonly used playlist for elevators etc anyway, and our clientele often mentioned that they enjoyed it!

      4. Rainy*

        I worked at a barbecue place when I was younger and the owner played Motown all day everyday, which was fine except around Christmas. He had a mix CD of Motown Christmas songs that included that popular hit, “Backdoor Santa.” One of my coworkers HATED that song. One day the owner, who went home every afternoon to nap or run errands, whatever it was he did, made what turned out to be something that sounded like the normal mix CD for long enough that he could lock the office (which contained the CD player) and get out of the parking lot before it turned into six hours of Backdoor Santa. Within 20 minutes, my coworker, who started out laughing while she kicked the office door trying to bounce the lock open, was screaming profanities in Spanish and flinging herself at the wall of the office trying to make the CD skip.

        That was a rough day all around. By the time the owner came back for the dinner rush we were all so pissed he had to snap the CD in front of us to prevent us all walking out.

      5. Wendy Darling*

        I had reggae-loving night-owl bongo-drum-owning stoner neighbors my first year in college. I have now permanently associated reggae with long-term sleep deprivation, and hearing Don’t Worry Be Happy absolutely enrages me. Oh the irony.

    4. Insufficient Sausage Explainer*

      I feel for LW1, but it could be worse. The playlist could include the Verve song I loathe even more than Bittersweet Symphony: The Drugs Don’t Work (my college roommate and I put that, Seasons in the Sun, and Emmaline on an imaginary playlist called ‘Songs to Top Yourself By’).

      2. WantonSeedStitch*

        One of my freshman year roommates played that Verve album daily. I was definitely ready to claw her eyes out a few times.

        1. Tammy 2*

          The girl in the dorm room next door had her CD alarm clock set to play that song. Every. Morning. At 7. AM. I didn’t have class until 10. I still have a Pavlovian reaction to that violin.

          1. Wendy Darling*

            There was some real A+ dorm drama my sophomore year in college. The buildings were U-shaped, and someone with a room on the other side of the U from mine apparently put “Take Me Home Country Roads” on repeat, cranked the volume, locked up, and left the building (and possibly the entire campus — rumor had it the offender had left town for the weekend).

            I do not know what inspired this act of sonic violence. I assume things had gone badly wrong with one of his neighbors. But we all just had to listen to John Denver on infinite repeat for a few hours until someone got fed up, climbed out the neighboring window, climbed across the planers, jimmied the offender’s window, and turned the music off. Luckily (?) the windows were notoriously easy to jimmy.

      3. Reluctant Mezzo*

        As college students, my husband and I cleaned offices. I will forever associate “Benny and the Jets” and “The Night Chicago Died” with truly hideous black heel marks (we almost bought that one guy, whoever he was, better shoes).

    5. Hobbling Up A Hill*

      I’ve joked that my superpower is not being bothered by repeating songs. My default method of listening to music is playing a song on repeat for hours, especially if I’m writing, and I can do that without hating it.

      1. Damn it, Hardison!*

        I do the same thing! It feels like the repetition helps me focus. I once put together a short playlist (6 or 7 songs) that I listened to on repeat, every day, all day long, while I worked on a particularly nasty project for 5 months. Never got tired of it!

      2. iglwif*

        I can (and do) do that for specific tasks — for instance, when I was writing a book set in the Regency period, I put together a playlist of music from that period and played it on shuffle to get my brain into the correct gear.

        I also have a playlist I call “stim music” which consists entirely of songs that scratch a particular itch in my brain. If you looked at the range of stuff on that list you would go, “Wow, what a weirdo.”

        But it has to be music I have chosen myself. I once worked in an office where the department next door to mine (two cube farms separated only by a shoulder-high wall of filing cabinets) played commercial radio all day, and the amount of repetition drove me BANANAS — if I hated this pop song at 08:00 (say, “It Wasn’t Me” by Shaggy, or “I Will Always Love You” by Whitney Houston) I am going to hate it again at 10:30 and 13:15, and when I hear it again at 15:45, I am going to want to murder someone.

        1. Lenora Rose*

          I’ve found even my “I want to make a music playlist to focus on this project so it has to be all suitable for this project” playlists end up topping 200 songs just so I can survive.

          And yet when I get a new CD I love I will play it for a couple of months straight before it falls into regular rotation.

        2. MigraineMonth*

          I’ve heard that as a productivity tip: create a playlist (with no words or words in a language you don’t speak) that you always listen to while doing X task, and you train your brain to switch to “spreadsheets” mode every time you start your “spreadsheets” playlist.

          Does not work for me. I’m more distracted listening to songs in languages I don’t speak than in English, because my brain is trying desperately to parse words and distracting me with all its flailing about. I also need my music to match my mood/energy or it’s just grating. I might also be balancing hyperfocus and distraction? I’ve noticed that when I listen to “focus” music I do a great job focusing… but not generally on my *work*.

      3. AGD*

        This is fascinating, and by default I would have done some projecting and ignorantly assumed this wasn’t true of anyone! Thanks for teaching me something.

      4. WeirdChemist*

        In grad school I had a lab mate who controlled the speakers who always played the same album by the same band everyday at 3pm. To this day, I still occasionally use that band as my “ok, just spend the next hour powering through this thing and then you can be done for the day” music

      5. JustaTech*

        I have done that in the past: one summer I listened to “So Much For the Afterglow” on repeat, and the next summer it was “Melon Collie and the Infinite Sadness” (which is at least a double album). But, as several people said below, it was what *I* chose, and no one else had to hear it.

      6. Rainy*

        That’s an ADHD thing so I’m familiar with it from friends (and my husband), although I can’t do music and concentrate. My first deskmate in grad school would focus during exam periods by listening to one song on repeat for days at a time. Amazingly I still like Fireflies by Owl City, though. :)

        1. Dog momma*

          I used to do my homework with TV on. Dark Shadows, General Hospital, Star Trek, whatever. I CANNOT concentrate with music or even talk radio on. So I’m impressed you can.

          1. goddessoftransitory*

            I do chores and such watching MST3K episodes. Eegah! has gotten me through a lot of dusting and laundry! Ditto The Creeping Terror and Bloodlust.

          2. Rainy*

            TV on registers as nothing but background noise to me, I can work with the TV on no problem. Music? Too distracting. My husband (who also has ADHD) is the exact opposite–music helps him concentrate, he finds TV too distracting.

      7. Hush42*

        I tend to just have a song of the week… or sometimes month and I listen to it on repeat. This habit drove my brothers crazy when we were growing up. I have never been able to relate to people who talk about getting tired of songs. The only time that ever happens to me is if I use it as my alarm because then it just makes me unreasonably angry every time I hear it during the day.
        I’ve been told that listening to the same song over and over on repeat is an ADHD thing but IDK.

    6. But not the Hippopotamus*

      I worked in a retail store in high-school and my boss had a CD changer to play music. outside of the month of December, it was the same music all year long… and I basically hate all of them now. That was over 25 years ago.

    7. DawnShadow*

      I was going to comment on my time working in a grocery store too! Our store always, always played 80s music. Despite being born at the right time to appreciate said music a lot, I actually got bored listening to it 8 hours at a time every shift.

      Once I got to be shift supervisor I was in charge of the music, supposedly. We could change channels to different genres (like Sirius XM) and at first I enjoyed switching it up.

      The thing is, every time I switched the station, someone different would come to complain. The cheese counter lady hated soft jazz. The head of HR hated rap. The meat department guys hated indie music. The produce department hated country. On it went.

      Everyone hated 80s music at that point through having to listen to it for so long, except the general manager, which everyone else knew so they knew better than to complain. Guess what I ended up having to leave the station on so that I could do my own work without interruption.

      1. Ms. Eleanous*

        Agree 80s american music was horible.

        Maybe employees could each construct a 2 hour playlist and the playlists could be shuffled

        1. 80s music*

          Madonna, Prince Michael Jackson, Cindy Lauper, Bruce Springsteen and (at the end of the decade) Whitney Houston all horrible?

          Princes and princesses, all of them.

      2. Reluctant Mezzo*

        This reminds me of the radio station which Stephen King bought so they would play AC/DC 24/7. The workers finally begged him for a change. and so they compromised on AC/DC several hours each afternoon when Mr. King was writing.

    8. Katie*

      My husband and friend used to work in the electronics department of Target. They played Shrek again and again and again. 20 years later they both looooove that movie. My husband still watches it often.

      I saw Jimmy Neutron A LOT at my toy store job and appreciated the movie.

      Songs will just be background sounds to me.

      1. The OG Sleepless*

        My husband worked at a big box electronics store in the video department in the late 80s. They had “Top Gun” playing over and over on the TVs, because it had nice visuals and the booming jet engines showed off the bass of the speakers. Husband didn’t mind too much, but to this day he can recite every line of Top Gun.

        1. Reluctant Mezzo*

          I can do that for SLEEPER. My husband was paid to show it for other students at the college we went to, and I hung around him a lot.

    9. Alienor*

      At my college retail job, they had a CD changer in the back room with a total of three approved CDs that could play in the store. I was desperate to listen to anything else, so one night I swapped in a CD of my own. It was a compilation of Cab Calloway’s greatest hits, and we got through about three of them before customers complained, the CD got removed, and I got reprimanded. I don’t think anyone actually noticed that “Minnie the Moocher” was full of 1930s drug slang, they just wanted the bland songs back. Oh well!

      3. Agnes Grey*

        Ha, I worked in a bookstore with a similar setup. We were allowed to bring things and make suggestions but anything not-bland would get vetoed by management, including, memorably, “Star Time,” a then-new cd box set of James Brown albums that a co-worker had brought in hoping to play. I was back-up shift supervisor and one day got a call that our manager would be out – my very next act was to call the co-worker: “Bring Star Time!!!” Customers were dancing in the aisles that night and we enjoyed it all the more because we felt like we’d gotten away with something.

        1. The OG Sleepless*

          If you go to the Office Depot near me after about 8:30 PM, the music is a good bit louder than during the day, and the playlist gets a lot more interesting. I don’t know who is being a change agent over there, but I like it.

      4. The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon*

        Listening to Cab Calloway always makes me wonder, is “everybody eats when they come to my house” an invitation or a threat?
        Also, I love him.

    10. amylynn*

      While I was in college I worked in a restaurant for two summers. The second summer the owners decided to sell the land and close the restaurant. The gave plenty of notice, but that meant that just before the end we were short staffed. This being pre-streaming music so the music was on a tape loop and changing the tape was not a priority. And because we were short staffed I was working a lot (happy to pick up the money) and heard the same tape over and over for weeks.
      One afternoon, my manager came to me and begged me to work that evening, to cover a busser who said he would quit if not given the evening off. I agreed – on the condition that he change the music tape and “give Rockin’ Robin a rest”. He was desperate enough that he did.

    11. Mister_L*

      I might have mentioned this before, but years ago I worked as a guard at an annual fair.
      The carousel next to my gate had exactly one CD with folk music, which it played for about 8 hours a day.
      Let’s just say, I was very glad when the week was over and I never had to hear that CD again.

    12. HailRobonia*

      I used to work in a deli/bakery/cafe and our music was piped in from a 5-disk CD player from the owner’s office upstairs. I’m no music snob, but he had terrible taste in music. Some of the easy listening and classical music was unobtrusive, but there were a couple of total stinkers in the mix including an album called “Razz” which was “Rap Jazz.” It was like a square white dude heard about the concepts of rap and jazz and combined them in the worst possible way.

      One day a CD started to skip so I was sent up to fix it, and took that opportunity to permanently retire the Razz CD by dropping it down a tiny gap behind the safe.

      We also had a Christmas album and I would occasionally put it in rotation in the summer. I still giggle when I recall the customer who loudly proclaimed “Jesus Christ it’s only August!!!!”

      2. SpaceySteph*

        My head-canon is that someone else sabotaged (scratched) the CD that started to skip because they hated whatever it was, thus opening the door for you also get rid of your own CD-nemesis.

      3. Dust Bunny*

        Not my story: One of my former bosses, as a young adult, owned a limited number of LPs. He lived in an apartment above a bar and, by his own admission, played his LPs a lot. One night he got home from work to find that someone had broken into his apartment, stolen all his LPs, and replaced them with other LPs. Nothing else was touched.

      4. MigraineMonth*

        When I was working retail in December, I replaced the Christmas music CD with an… eclectic mix. Customers seemed bewildered by a toy store that wanted nothing to do with the Christmas season, but on the whole were thankful.

        (I got away with it because the owner decided not to bother scheduling more than one employee for the store. In December.)

    13. Dogbythefire*

      Same, here – sort of. Lots of repetition, but not bland. I, too, have found myself preferring some awful songs over other awful songs and realize I’m humming one at home. Gah!

      I’m often stuck listening to music that’s slightly too loud, and way too frenetic (’70s disco, anyone?) and way too repetitive. On top of the music, there are customers and phone calls and conversation. It’s a lot and sometimes I leave with my head buzzing. Whenever I can surreptitiously change the song or turn it down, I do! It doesn’t really seem to bother anyone else.

    14. Ms. Eleanous*

      Ugh! Spotify.
      I no longer patronize businesses with Spotify.. it can be truly bad.
      I was sort of relieved to hear that Spotify was being investigated for payola — I thought, well, at least no one’s taste is really that bad.

    15. Princess Pumpkin Spice*

      Yes! This reminds me of one holiday retail season, when the corporate selected holiday playlist had exactly 14 songs. In an average 6 hour shift, you’d hear every song 8 times. It was maddening.

    16. Mermaid of the Lunacy*

      I worked at K-Mart in high school (1990s) and we had the “K-Mart Radio Network.” I learned so many great soft rock songs from the 70s and 80s from hearing them over and over. “Key Largo” or “Baby I’m-a-Want You”, anybody?

      1. Spreadsheet Queen*

        Yes, but it was SO MUCH BETTER than the cassette tapes they had before that. At least the repeats were less frequent than every 40 minutes.

      2. Goldfeesh*

        In the very late ’90s the K-Mart Radio Network had one song on it that I really liked and I have never been able to figure out what it was. It reminded me of Blink 182. Wish I had tried a lyric search on Netscape back in the day because now I can’t remember enough of it to do so.

        1. anonprofit*

          Whenever I go into Cumberland Farms (gas station store in New England) the music is always great. I finally asked a cashier about how the music was picked and they said it’s a specific “Cumberland Farms radio” basically. No idea how much it repeats though.

    17. Kick In The Head*

      I once worked at a restaurant where they stopped paying for the rights of songs, so towards the end of the run they were down to maybe 10 songs, with EVERY OTHER SONG, like every 2 songs, being “Aint That A Kick In The Head.” Every time I hear that brass fanfare I get flashbacks to orange carpeted decor and over priced sloppy burgers.

    18. Pokemon Go To The Polls*

      I worked at Barnes and Noble during a holiday season where they played a on-minute-long musical Nook commercial starring Jane Lynch ON A LOOP. THE ENTIRE DAY.

      I may be exaggerating, it was over 10 years ago, but gosh it sure felt like it was on constantly.

    19. Another Kristin*

      Roughly a million years ago, when I was in uni, I worked at a Starbucks during the Christmas season. We had to play the official corporate-approved Christmas CD on repeat – mostly sort of soft jazz holiday standards, pleasant enough, but there was one song which I swear had the word “sleep” in it about 50 times in a row. I always worked the morning shift and whenever I was opening the store at like 5:30 AM and that song would come on, it was like a slap in the face from the higher-ups!

    20. Dust Bunny*

      Decades ago I spent the summer working at a water park. After a couple of weeks we could tell what time it was by what song was playing and how many times we’d already heard it. It became a mild form of torture. And that’s from someone who listens to music almost constantly of her own volition.

      If I never hear–dating myself here–“Kiss From A Rose” again it will be too soon.

      1. Gumby*

        Certain songs are very very tied to dances for me. Either choreographed ones from my high school dance team or social dances where some songs were used repeatedly through my college years.

        Kiss From a Rose? Cross-step waltz. I hear it and reflexively start looking for a partner.

      2. Reluctant Mezzo*

        “In the Year 2525” was big the year I was learning how to swim. It always smells like chlorine to me whenever it’s played.

    21. Emotional support capybara (he/him)*

      Same but with music AND certain movies! I worked for a now-defunct retail electronics chain whose surname rhymed with “shitty” and despite having never sat down and watched them start to finish I could just about recite The Lion King, Toy Story, and Jurassic Park from memory.

    22. retail flashback*

      This gives me flashbacks to my Kohl’s days. They started Christmas music in October and for a couple years played the same song that was in their commercials every hour on the hour. Drove us all mad.

    23. Elizabeth West*

      I worked in a place like that. They played a radio station with a ridiculously short playlist in the office, just the same twenty or so songs over and over and over and over. I do not care if I ever hear “Maggie May” again in this life or any other.

    24. FrivYeti*

      The greatest retail nightmare I ever experienced was a jewelry store next to where I worked, which I walked past to get lunch. For twelve hours a day, every day of the week, every week of the year, the store’s speakers only played a single song.

      That song was the theme song to Gilligan’s Island.

      Non-stop. On loop. Permanently.

      I do not understand how any staff or customers survived the experience.

      4. goddessoftransitory*

        Dear God, besides violating the Geneva Convention that has to be illegal! Like, copyright violation-wise.

    26. Spreadsheet Queen*

      Similar flashbacks to late 80s/early 90s retail. Where we had seasonal CASSETTE TAPES that you flipped over every 20 minutes. So, ONE cassette tape that you played over and over for the entire Christmas season. (We did sometimes pull one out from the previous holiday, if we could find it, because there would be at least a few song differences).

      So, yeah, the Muppets 12 Days of Christmas, featuring Gonzo sing/shouting “FIVE GOOOOLLLLDEN RINGS!” every 40 minutes, for months of 60-70 hour weeks (because retail functions on the backs of “management” working a zillion hours instead of adequate hourly staffing – no wonder retail managers are grouchy as heck and not very good managers to their people). Also, “All I want for Christmas is my two front TEEFFFFFFF”. May those songs rot in, well, you know where.

      Anyway, yeah, if you have time and energy, make a bigger playlist. Else, there’s really nothing wrong with requesting music-free focus time.

    27. Distracted Procrastinator*

      It reminds me of one of my college jobs in a restaurant with a dinner show. The pre-show music played over the speakers was the same 30 minute playlist every single day. It’s been 30 years and if I hear Tiny Bubbles played again in my lifetime it will be too soon.

    28. Esmae*

      I worked in a music & DVD store back in the day that had TVs playing an assortment of music videos, interviews, and movie trailers. That assortment was pre-recorded, about an hour long, and played on a loop that never got switched out. By the end of the summer I could lipsynch entire interviews.

    29. Arglebarglor*

      For about 4 years I worked as a bartender in a strip club that was part of a national chain. Every hour on the hour they would play Motley Crue’s “Girls Girls Girls.” And now, just because I thought of it, my brain is going “B-b-Body Shop and the Marble Arch/Tropicana’s where I lost my heart to those/ GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS!” Also, they played Sinatra singing “New York, New York as the last song of the night and to this day when I hear it I get an immense feeling of relief as it is time to go HOME!

    30. Not The Earliest Bird*

      I worked at CVS in the 1990s. We played the same songs at the same time, every day, except between Black Friday and January 2, when it was a new repetitive loop of Christmas/Winter songs. I could tell time by the songs that were being played. Rhiannon by Fleetwood Mac still triggers my need to go to the bathroom, because that was when I took my breaks. I worked there for two years. The music never changed.

    31. Ghostlight*

      I work in theatre so my life literally consists of the same music in the same order day in and day out. (Good when the show is great, not so much when you don’t love it or when you’ve been doing it for years.)

      The craziest thing though, is that with the proliferation of jukebox musicals, I’ll have a reaction when I’m out in the world feeling like I should be doing something at that moment when I hear the “real” version of a song from a show I’ve worked on. The first couple times I had a small panic moment and couldn’t figure out why I was stressing. Now I usually just laugh it off but it can be very disconcerting, especially when you least expect it!

    32. beth*

      I had a flashback to the late 90s when I worked at The Body Shop and they sent us a very short tape to play. I still can’t hear the song Waterfalls without getting agitated (and feeling compelled to talk about the loyalty card and shower gel promo since those ads were mixed in, but I digress)

    33. Meh*

      I was working a place where they had one special specific holiday playlist that was only about 10-15 songs long. They would neither switch nor turn off the music. I was the only one there from 730am – 730pm (everyone else cycled in and out). Guess who had no holiday spirit left.

    34. CuriousTeacher*

      When I was in high school & college (early 00’s), I worked at Old Navy during school breaks. We also had (and hated) the corporate-provided loop of bland songs interspersed with ads. It took me many years to stop hating all the songs from that loop, but I can still recite parts of the commercials (“Shopping for the perfect present?? How about an Old Navy gift card?!?!” Said in a ridiculous, over-the-top announcer voice…)

      The wildest part, though, was when a customer asked me, “Do you sell the CD with these songs?” And I just stared at her like “What? For the love of cake, WHY WOULD YOU WANT IT??” I honestly forgot that the songs weren’t terrible on their own, only when you had to hear them all flippin’ day!

    35. Vio*

      Reminds me of working retail at Christmas. From mid October to mid January there would be Christmas music playing in the shopping centre and as if that wasn’t bad enough it was about 8 different tracks on repeat and not even in random order. The customers got off easy, they only had to listen to it for an hour or so, but working there was awful.

    36. rebelwithmouseyhair*

      My ex would happily listen to the same playlist over and over. To the point that songs I have always loved now just get me annoyed. Luckily he didn’t like Bowie so I can still listen to my all-time favourites.

  2. nnn*

    #1: If you don’t want to spend time making a ridiculously long playlist, search existing Spotify playlists for the word “longest”. There are several that purport to be the longest playlist on Spotify, each well over 24 hours long.

    1. Goody*

      One recommendation with a huge variety – “1LV Crew” by RC Comms. It’s the stream played in Raising Canes restaurants, built by their team members, and clocks in at 60 hours 21 minutes with 974 songs.

      1. Goody*

        Also, because I hit send too soon, you can copy an existing playlist that someone else made to a new playlist in your own library so you can edit out songs that are absolute no-go for any reason.

        1. Paint N Drip*

          Did you get a kickback from Spotify to post this? Because you SHOULD be getting a kickback from Spotify to post this. I’ve never been drawn to Pandora/Spotify because my music tastes are specific but this has my attention.

          1. I'm just here for the cats!!*

            Because Spotify has hundreds of thousands of song options in various genres. It wouldn’t make sense to purchase all those songs on something like amazon music.

            1. Jeanine*

              Yes!! I absolutely love Spotify and have so many play lists on there. I will let my playlist run out and let Spotify pick the songs that come after and I have found some incredible songs that way.

            2. Lenora Rose*

              Not for a workplace playlist, but I absolutely DO still buy all the albums I want to listen to on MP3 or on CD, because A: Spotify pays artists a couple of orders of magnitude worse than if you buy the songs, and I believe in paying artists, B: I don’t trust something as intimately important as the music I love to any third party source I could lose access to by missing a payment.

              1. Jeanine*

                I gave up on that a long time ago. I’ve had Spotify for years and plan to keep on using it.

            3. Jackalope*

              I also find that I can run across a lot of music I would never have found on my own. For example, I looked up a specific type of music, discovered that it was a much wider genre than I’d realized, and stumbled across a playlist that’s something like 100 hours long and perfect for background music at work. Then Spotify thought I’d like a similar, related genre (which I did), and that got me several more hours of music. And so on. Plus I can just go look up a specific song or artist that maybe has just a handful of songs that I like and listen to them that way instead of buying them. This isn’t even going into the many podcasts and specific types of background noise (white/brown noise, for example) that can be found fairly easily.

      1. Catherine*

        You jest but the ten hour crab rave is truly a godsend when I just need to get stuck in the hyperfocus tunnel with an excel sheet.

        1. Anon Y Mouse*

          …what is this? I might need to find out. I ricochet between lack of focus and hyperfocus and would love to be able to turn the latter on without needing the adrenaline of a very close deadline…

            1. Another Kristin*

              the Monterey Bay aquarium puts out videos in the vein of “Lo-fi beats to study to” except the visuals are just footage of, like, mantis shrimp

            2. Goody*

              Ooof no a little too repetitive for me. I love that it exists, but my brain is fighting it when I should be crunching Excel.

        2. JustaTech*

          Oh man, that’s my favorite Beat Saber song, but I don’t think I could hyperfocus to it because I’d keep trying to dance/saber.

      2. human-woman*

        Thank you for this little gift on a Friday, my most head-down, meeting-light, GSD day of the week.

    3. Michelle*

      Spotify playlist “Songs to test headphones to” is 16 hours and highly recommended for background music

    4. A Library Person*

      When I was in a similar situation, I had a lot of luck trying to find completionist playlists, such as “songs written by [artist]” or “complete singles from [genre-specific label]”. I made sure to play the Throwback Thursday every week for a change of pace, and some of the genre-specific new release playlists can also be quite long and throw up some unique songs.

      One really important trick with Spotify specifically is to find playlists created by actual human users of the site; anything made by Spotify is going to include a lot of repeats between playlists (for example, my personal 90s playlist, the generic 90s nostalgia playlist, and pop hits of the 90s are all built around the same core songs). As long as you have complementary tastes or mutual tolerance for each other’s choices, I think you can find a solution that works!

  3. Jen RO*

    #3 – no advice, just commiseration. My company is owned by a private equity firm that forces all companies in their portfolio to screen their candidates using the CCAT (or maybe it’s UCAT now, I’m not sure what the difference is). We lose a lot of candidates, either because they withdraw or because they fail (most of the company’s offices, including mine, are in countries where English is not the main language). We’ve been complaining about it for years and nothing changes… they did at least lower the score you need to pass :/

    1. Annie*

      I looked it up. UCAT is like CCAT but shorter test length. And yeah, not only is it problematic for people with slightly below native-level English proficiency, it can unfairly shut out candidates who can do the job effectively but would need accommodation for one or more disabilities. It puts applicants in the difficult spot of having to disclose during the application process, opening up more avenues for bias against the applicant. And that’s if the applicant is even aware that their “bad at Assessed Task” is due to a disability!

      1. Anonychick*

        Came here to say basically this, albeit with a twist: I have learning disabilities related to math and spatial concepts. I would not be able to do well on a test like this. However, since I wouldn’t ever apply for a job that required (as a function of the job, I mean; not as part of the application process), I most likely wouldn’t even be able to choose whether or not to disclose my disabilities, because it would likely never dawn on me that I would be given a test involving such things until I had already tanked it!

        Honestly, it seems to me like basing hiring on the results of a test like this given to people whose jobs don’t require these skills would be exactly the sort of thing a good HR would tell a company NOT to do, because it seems like it just opens the company up to discrimination claims (because the vast majority of people with any type of learning disability would be incapable of doing well enough on it to move on in the hiring process, regardless of their actually relevant qualifications and/or abilities).

        1. Melicious*

          Yes, I came here to say that this could be potentially discriminatory if the test is not exclusively essential functions of the specific job.

            1. ADHDSquirrelWhat*

              which in and of itself shows how bad of an idea it is.

              “I’ve got a great idea! we’ll screen for neurodiverse people and anyone that doesn’t do well on these kinds of tests before the hiring manager ever SEES them! that’ll keep us from having to deal with all those pesky accomodation issues!” …. ummmmm

        2. My Useless Two Cents*

          I once had to take a math test for a part-time cashier position. It was part of their application. I remember thinking how stupid it was but it was easy, basic addition, subtraction stuff that took like 5 min to finish so I did it. I’m now convinced they were sorting out people who actually knew math as every time I went into the store after that the cashier couldn’t give you correct change for a $1 if the total was 50 cents.

          I swear I’m not bitter that I was not called in for an interview ;)
          (Store is now closed, the whole chain is defunct.)

          1. Elizabeth West*

            But doing math on the fly is part of a cashier job. That is why, as someone with severe dyscalculia, I don’t apply for jobs where I would have to do cashiering. I don’t know why they had cashiers who couldn’t do the math test, unless they were just blowing by it and hiring warm bodies.

            1. Vincent Adultman’s assistant*

              “But doing math on the fly is part of a cashier job.”

              Hmm have you been to any brick and mortar stores recently (especially any place that has any register system created after like 2002?). They automatically calculate everything. They automatically open and close the till (hence the rise in clerks not being able to break a 20 if you’re not buying something then and there—the till won’t open except during a transaction, except for a manager override).

              So many, many, many stores are replacing traditionally-staffed registers with self-checkout lanes AND those self-checkout registers don’t even accept cash. Walmart is big on this, as is Wawa, CVS, etc just to name a few. At that point, the cashier is more of a glorified babysitter to help with “item not bagged” errors and age-restricted items.

              And a lot of places (not just mom and pop stores but bigger chains) don’t accept cash anymore either, even at staffed registers. Or they strongly encourage exact change only. The latter sprung up during COVID because of a coin shortage but I still notice a few random stores that haven’t done away with that policy. (I imagine it’s also a security feature—less cash on hand so less of a robbery risk especially in high-crime areas. Maybe also less staffing needs too somehow?)

              I’m not saying you need to go apply for cashier jobs or anything but like, there honestly is very little actual math involved in cashiering nowadays even in mom ‘n pop stores (who actually may be less likely to even accept cash). And I say this as someone who has worked retail off and on over the years, who also struggles with “dyslexia but for math” dyscalculia. Just throwing that out there as a data point.

              1. kupo*

                yeah, but someone will be getting $0.23 back and hand you 2 pennies and you need to be able to do the math on the fly to make sure their math is correct and that you should be giving a quarter back. And a lot of the time it’s harder math than that to do in your head. How to count back change was part of my cashier training, but handling random change they throw at you after the transaction is already complete isn’t something that can be trained if your brain just doesn’t work that way.

                1. Vincent Adultman’s assistant*

                  I mean, we still have basic calculators. A lot of employers might not allow cashiers to have their phones out at the cash register but who’s gonna notice an $8 basic calculator right next to the drawer?

                  And there are ways to train people to do that type of random change calculation (a manager at one of my first jobs would do that with new employees–but again that was back in the dark ages of pre-2000s). Whether or not a manager is willing to train their employee on it (either because they themselves don’t know or wouldn’t think to do it) is a different story but that’s something you’re always going to run into at work. Maybe not with the specific example of making change but with other random things.

                  I’m just pointing out that Retail America seems very heck bent on making human cashiers obsolete or at least turning them more into babysitters for when the self-checkout machines act up. And more and more stores are doing away with accepting cash (which is a whole other bag of worms) so in 10, 15, 20 years, the retail landscape is going to look very different.

                2. Junior Assistant Peon*

                  Handing a cashier 2 pennies and a 20 when the total is 19.02 breaks their brains. Instead of getting a $1 bill back, I’m likely to get 98 cents in change plus the two pennies.

            2. Peaches*

              I have dyscalculia, and I worked as a cashier for three years at a store that served around 5,000 customers daily. On the rare occasions when I had to handle a more complex transaction with a lot of change, I just grabbed the calculator we had at every register. Not once did a customer mind—in fact, they appreciated the extra thoroughness. Don’t gatekeep yourself out of a job.

        3. Elizabeth West*

          Same here, and I will back out of applications that require them. I’ve ended up in interviews where they were placed in front of me, and I took them, but I will not do that anymore. If the employer insists, then obviously they’re not the right employer for me, and therefore I don’t feel bad about politely withdrawing.

      2. AcademiaNut*

        Not to mention that students who need to take these sorts of exams to get into university programs study for them, often extensively. There’s an entire industry around it. They don’t find out that they’re going to be tested on high level vocabulary, word problems, spatial reasoning and math games after they apply.

        That’s not even getting into the various well known biases of things like IQ tests.

        1. I don't know either*

          And that’s just the built-in biases and not everything around it.

          I technically qualify for Mensa but declined membership and suddenly “woops there was a mistake you don’t qualify actually”.

          That childishness is exactly why I declined. Real “YOU CAN’T QUIT YOU’RE FIRED” vibes.

          2. Sheworkshardforthemoney*

            My ex was a proud Mensa member. Who told me that since I was only a high school grad at the time, I was unlikely to pass the test. I passed the test with a higher score than him. It’s been decades and he’s still butt hurt especially when I told him the test was meaningless and I had no interest in any Mensa activities.

            1. MigraineMonth*

              I’ve never understood bragging about being in Mensa. So you’re a certified genius, and the most interesting thing you’ve decided to do with that level of intelligence is… take a test?

              At least if you join a knitting club you end up with 20 skeins of yarn and a half-finished sock.

              1. Random Dice*

                Last I looked, Mensa wasn’t even that hard to get in – they take SAT scores that definitely aren’t genius. (And SAT scores are very much study-able.)

          3. Cj*

            I was a member of Mensa for a while, just to see if I could get in. But I got in based on my Act scores, I never took a test that Mensa administers to see if I qualify.

        2. Learn ALL the things*

          I’ve realized over the years that being good at standardized tests is a skill unto itself, and it doesn’t actually have any bearing on other skills. I’m great at tests, but all that really tells you about me is that I’m great at tests.

          My sister and I have essentially the same skill set and the same level of intelligence and problem solving, but I’m good at standardized tests and she’s not. I don’t deserve any particular job more than she does because I’m good at something that hardly ever comes up in the workplace.

          1. Paint N Drip*

            I’m the same! I’m not specifically earth-shattering intelligent but fairly great at standardized tests. I KNOW they aren’t actually a good measure of anything really, and they’re generally an unfair basis of judgment, buttttt I kinda wish there were more of them in adulthood lol

            1. anon here*

              Tragically, I owe most of what I love about my life to being really good at standardized tests (met my husband in college; big boss liked my resume because of the shiny names on it).

            2. Annie2*

              I’m with you. I grew up thinking I was a genius because of the mandated standardized testing every few years said so. In reality, I’m just good at standardized tests.

          2. Not One of the Bronte Sisters*

            I’m incredibly good at standardized tests! I always say it’s my stupid human trick. I taught for Kaplan TestPrep for years and yes, there is a whole industry. But in the workplace this is irrelevant, DEFINITELY potentially discriminatory and prevents the hiring of qualified people for no good reason! I agree with Allison. Push back and push back hard!

          3. Arglebarglor*

            I took SO MANY test prep courses as a kid that as a result I’m great at standardized tests and actually enjoy them. It’s weird.

          4. kupo*

            This is why I hate technical interviews. tmThey’re like a standardized test and spoken essay test in one and they’re horribly discriminatory, IMO.

          5. goddessoftransitory*

            Same thing with crossword puzzles and other types of mind teaser–you can get really really good at them, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that particular set of skills transfer over to other areas of life. More like you get very adept at figuring out all the different ways the creator can mean “Oreo.”

        3. Boof*

          What’s wild to me is IQ tests sort of evolved through two different pushes, one which was totally reasonable and good and one that was totally terrible and (dare I say it) stupid (“illogical” haha)
          — I believe IQ testing was very first done by someone for french public education to figure out what grade children belonged in. Totally makes sense to me as a screening test to figure out the current fund of knowledge if there is a standardized fund of knowledge desired and classes to assign based on learning more / skipping what you already know!
          — then the phrenologists who thought bonkers things like skull shape determined one’s destiny and who ran around catagorizing women as superior by how attractive they found them on the street etc decided that intelligence must me an intrinsic, immutable, genetic thing and that a test can determine that. Ignoring the fact that intelligence is based on a lot of things, genetics only being one factor (Genetics; education/environment; health conditions, age/experience, so on and so forth). And that’s when this notion that an IQ test produced a number that was a one true fixed permanent level of one’s intelligence forever happened. Thanks phrenologist I hate it.
          / rant / just because something is standardized doesn’t mean it’s useful or impartial etc, just means it’s easy to measure.

      3. Grenelda Thurber*

        Agh, having a countdown clock on the screen for each question would cause me enough anxiety that I’d probably fail the test even if I could ace it otherwise. Really hate timed tests in general and double for timed questions.

        1. goddessoftransitory*

          Where I work used to have the time, including seconds, on screen, and I’d have to tape a little piece of paper over it because it distracted me so much.

    2. SarahKay*

      Commiserations from me, too. I used to work retail for a department store chain and if you wanted to move up to a management position you had to pass a set of three tests: one English, one maths, one maths-logic type stuff.

      I like maths and logic, and read lots, so sailed through the tests. Unfortunately I’m not a particularly good manager – I worked very, very hard to be about average at it.

      Meanwhile I had a colleague who actually was an excellent supervisor and would almost certainly have been an equally excellent manager – except that she consistently failed the maths and logic tests and so wasn’t promoted. Eventually she moved to a different company that did promote her and benefitted from her skills, because they weren’t using tests that were utterly irrelevant to the role.

      (I am now a very happy individual contributor, and have had an explicit conversation with my manager that giving me direct reports will mean me looking for a new job. He is a sensible man and leaves me in peace to rule my spreadsheets and feed him data.)

      1. GrumpyPenguin*

        I know these kind of tests and I hate them with a fiercy passion. I always was terrible at math and almost failed to graduate because of it. Sometimes I wonder if that could be something like dyskalkulia, but I’m grown up now anyway.
        I had to take far too many of them in the screening phases of interviews. I´ve had day-long assessment-centers with all sorts of tests, interview rounds, roleplay and group projects and the like. It felt more like I was trying to get into a famous university than just get a simple job. None of the tests had anything to do with the actual job. These tests do screen people, but not in the way they are intented to: Talented people who are bad at tests fail and talented people who are annoyed by the tests both apply elsewhere.

      2. ferrina*

        I am an excellent test taker. I love taking tests, and I often do extremely well without really trying. (really annoyed my friends when I’d take practice LSATs with them)

        What does it mean in life? Very, very little. I know obscure words that no one actually uses- no application to real life communication. I can parce written math stories, but in real life the stories aren’t nicely spelled out for you. I tend to do a little better with resource allocation (similar skill to understanding the written math problem), but that doesn’t mean that I have the skills to increase access to resources or inspire my people to their best work (people are often a workplace’s greatest resource). A test doesn’t measure how good you are at asking the right follow-up questions. And it certainly doesn’t measure performance over time.

        Tests are orderly, you are shown an array of options, and one of them is correct. In real life, situations can be messy, you need to come up with options on your own, and their may be multiple correct options or no options that get you what you want. Real life experience is still the best predictor of how someone will perform in a real life situation.

        1. So they all cheap-ass rolled over and one fell out*

          I am (or at least was in my youth) an excellent test-taker too. I even scored in the 99.9th percentile on the old SAT (they later re-scaled the SAT so it can no longer detect quite that high of a percentile). I have had a reasonably successful life, but by no measure whatsoever is work performance/business value in the top 10%, never mind the top 0.1%.

          We can’t rule out some correlation between test-taking ability and workplace performance. But there’s so, so many other aspects that are going to be more highly correlated that even spending time giving candidates these tests is wasted (the time could have been spent on better assessments).

      3. Jay (no, the other one)*

        This is true for every standardized test I’m aware of. The MCAT predicts how well people do in the first two years of medical school – the basic science courses that are usually assessed by (you guessed it) standardized testing. They do not accurately predict how well people do in their clinical work in the last two years or in problem-based or cased-based learning, which uses actual clinical cases to teach basic science classes.

        I am really good at standardized tests. This has served me well in many ways, and I’m grateful for the ability, and I also recognize that this particularly ability has nothing – zero, zilch, nada – to do with how good I am at my day-to-day clinical work.

    4. Also-ADHD*

      I’ve heard stories about these tests being mandatory but never seen one in the interview process (I have seen personality tests, which I also hate as part of hiring). I would probably “pass” because I test well, and I’m still pretty good at that kind of SAT style stuff, but I’d definitely decline to take one and see it as a red flag. If the score were low, I would be even more baffled at the point—why am I getting an unnecessary test I’m not even expected to do well on because it didn’t relate to the job? I do work in a field where neither a technical skills test or a writing test is wildly out of place, and skills clearly matter, and tests on those things don’t bother me—in fact, if they’re good, I would say they make me feel better about the employer and their understanding of the work folks should be able to do.

      1. Hotdog not dog*

        I work in the financial industry. Back in the day, they used 2 screening tests- one was a “personality” test and the other was supposed to predict whether you would pass the licensing exams. I did well on the personality test, but not the licensing one. The catch? I already had the licenses.

        1. AlsoADHD*

          IF there was a licensing exam outstanding, and IF the test actually matched that well, I would get that 2nd requirement (personality tests are always so biased, and really those assessments shouldn’t be used for decisions like hiring, promotion, etc. in a good People Operations system—but I digress there). I think valid tests for the skills needed are fair, but if you already had the license, that should be the exemption!

        2. Been There 2*

          Financial industry here too… years ago I applied for a position at a small firm (6 staff) for which I was fully qualified. I met the owner for the first part of the interview: I towered over him with my 2” heels. He was probably around 5’4”. I was introduced to the other 5 staff members and couldn’t help noticing they were all shorter than the owner. The interview wrapped up with a ‘personality’ test. I wasn’t hired but somehow I think it had nothing to do with much else other than perhaps I wasn’t short enough.

        3. allhailtheboi*

          Bit of a similarly farcical situation – I’m a British citizen but my mum immigrated here and is trying to get citizenship. She can pass the practice citizenship tests but I can’t!

          1. MigraineMonth*

            Indeed, the vast majority of birthright US citizens could not pass the US citizenship test unless they got very lucky with the questions they were asked. I think immigrants may be the only ones who have any idea how our government is supposed to work.

      2. GrumpyPenguin*

        I don’t mind specific tests for certain jobs, but several hours filled with personality and “intelligence” tests is simply too much. Unfortunately, they have have become more and more popular here in Germany, so you can’t really avoid them. Most companies use the same or similar tests, so there are now study books for these tests. Just a huge waste of time and money, but there is not much you can do about it as a single person.

      3. Zephy*

        I had to take a quote-unquote “skills test” as part of getting promoted from basically a generalist to specialist position in my department. The questions were pretty evenly split between:
        – material directly relevant to the position (internal policies, Federal laws governing our work, common calculations);
        – ethical/behavioral questions (“you see a coworker stealing pens from the office, wyd”);
        – SAT-style math word problems (“Johnny has five apples …”); and
        – Random other stuff, including one question that tested the skill of reading an analog clock face. The question was something like “here is a picture of a clock. The current time is 10:15. What will the position of the hands be 25 minutes from now?”

        Reader, I wouldn’t know where to find an analog clock if I wanted to look at one within ten miles of this building. I’m sure there are jobs where telling time on an analog clock specifically is actually important; mine is most assuredly not one of them.

      4. Great Frogs of Literature*

        A company I used to work for started using one several years after I was hired. I only remember hearing about it because HR asked one of the really talented maintenance guy/engineers who’d been there for ages to take it, because they wanted more candidates like him, and weren’t getting any coming through the testing process. (Spoiler: he did badly on the test. I think they wound up scrapping it.)

      5. sparkle emoji*

        I’ve run into it a few times and if it’s 30 minutes or less I’ll usually just do the test to see. I’ve had some where the battery of tests were set up to take several hours and that wasn’t clear up front. Just a barrage of 15-50 minutes exams on every little thing, one right after another, that need to be done all in one sitting. Those ones are the worst.

      6. MigraineMonth*

        I worked for a company that requires every single employee to pass a personality test. (I suspect it’s a screening tool to select insecure underachievers.) As a result, they’ve never been able to fully staff the maintenance department.

    5. Nonanon*

      Wait hold up I just had to do a screen for adult ADHD and I’m VIRTUALLY certain they gave my the CCAD/UCAT (I don’t know what the difference is after a quick google and I kind of don’t care enough to get into the weeds). That’s… really not a good sign.

      (I mean GREAT for my ADHD screen, not so much for your employer)

      1. ferrina*

        Wait, does a high score or low score mean that you have ADHD? I have textbook ADHD, and I score extremely high on academic-type tests. (My hyperfocus always kicks on when I’m taking a test)

        1. Irish Teacher.*

          I’m no expert, but I doubt either a high or low score necessarily means you have ADHD. Plenty of people without get either. I suspect it is more a combination of ruling out other things (like somebody who has a very low score may “zone out” in situations because they don’t have the academic ability to understand them and are confused and bored or somebody with a very high score may “zone out” in certain situations because it’s so basic to them that they lose interest) and also about seeing patterns in how you do.

          I know that one marker of autism can be an uneven score, like doing really well in some areas and really poorly in others. An autistic person could have an average IQ of say 100, but where an NT with a score of 100 might score 97 in one section and 102 in another, an autistic person might score 80 in one section and 120 in another. (Not true of all autistic people, of course, but it can be an indication.) I’m not sure about ADHD, but there might well be patterns that are common there too.

          1. Anon with autism*

            This is just anecdotal, but I can say as a person diagnosed with autism that uneven ability thing rings true: I scored in the 98th percentile for verbal on the SAT, but in the 35th for math. I am really, really good at certain things (anything language-related) and really, really bad at others (spatial reasoning and math).

            1. Arglebarglor*

              I am not autistic and I score this way as well. When I took the NLN test (National League for Nursing, some nursing schools require this before admission), I scored 99th percentile in language, 97th in science and….2nd percentile in math. I blew that exam so bad, I still had 30 questions of 70 unanswered after 45 minutes. And I studied my ASS OFF for it. Fortunately I got in, but just had to take a remedial math class.

          2. VarianceIsNormal*

            Most people actually do have a statistically significant difference in their abilities across different types of materials. What is unusual is for it to be on opposite ends of the bell curve. My dad is neurotypical but has an extreme difference in his math (blows the top off of scores) and English/Verbal (near the bottom of the barrel, although he is perfectly good at normal activities in these areas). In fact, when people saw his SAT scores back in the day (late 50s) they would often ask him what boat he got off because he got an 800 in math and 3xx on the verbal section (After a lot of work and multiple tries he managed to get ut up to 4xx).

            I am considered very rare because I do score really well in all areas (for example, my worst score in the differential aptitude test most folks in the US take in 8th grade was 95th percentile in spelling and clerical speed and accuracy – I got 97th or 99th percentile in everything else and perfect scores in abstract reasoning and spatial relations – most of my fellow high achievers have at least 1 and often 2 scores in the 70s or 80s). Most IQ tests are not actually designed to test different types of intelligence independently; for those that are most people do have a pretty wide variance (again, my mom’s area of research and something she discussed a lot).

        2. Learn ALL the things*

          Same. I have inattentive style ADHD and standardized tests have always been super easy for me.

      2. Mentally Spicy*

        I didn’t have to do any tests like that when I was diagnosed with adult ADHD. Fortunately! I just tried a practice test and got so bored I gave up at question 14 out of 44!

      3. AlsoADHD*

        That sounds like a terrible screen for ADHD if it’s focused on cognition. ADHD doesn’t necessarily impede cognitive functions (it *can*, but there’s no correlation for example with ADHD and low SAT/ACT scores, low IQ, etc). ADHD isn’t even always a “learning disorder” (you can have an “Other Health” learning disorder under something like ESE law and you can certainly get ADA accommodations, both in school and at work), though some individuals may have a learning disorder where one of the causes is their ADHD.

    6. Ultimate Facepalm*

      My company does this IQ test stuff, and also has a personality test that screens for Aggression, er I mean, Assertiveness. And runs this fortune 200 company like a startup with a Go-Fight-Win-Kill attitude.
      So we are constantly working with unreasonable deadlines and people who attack when they are stressed.

      And yes, it absolutely screens out contractors who have proven that they are great at the job but who aren’t good test takers, or God forbid, are laid back and collaborative.

      The company has a horrible reputation.

    7. goddessoftransitory*

      Reading about that test gave me unpleasant impressions of it being like the “literacy” tests they forced POCs to take in order to vote back post Civil-War era (designed, of course, to eliminate them from the rolls) and–today, unfortunately.

  4. duinath*

    LW1, I once worked in a …warehouse type situation, we were supposed to trade off controlling the music. I made a playlist with music I liked, and added in everything I could that my coworkers had mentioned liking as well. …We didn’t really trade off after that, but they didn’t seem to mind? I got comments, like “oh I love this band” and yeah. That’s why it’s on there.

    Basically, make it very long, and make sure there’s something for everyone, and maybe you’ll have a better time. Avoid anything you think they won’t like, avoid anything you don’t like.

    1. Freya*

      Re: #1 and playlists

      We have playlists that are owned by one particular person but they have invited other people to add songs to. The owner can cull anything they deem inappropriate (such as duplicates), but non-owners can only add songs.

      My physio has one of these for our group pilates class – he created it starting early last year. Over the course of the hour, he puts it on random and we generally get at least one pick from everyone who’s ever added a song (gives the group attending the class something to chat about if there’s an awkward silence as compared to a comfortable silence) because it’s currently 21 hours long. Only 66 songs on that playlist were my contribution (about 20%)…

    2. Green great dragon*

      Definitely make playlists, make them open to everyone, it’s really easy on Spotify to add songs as you’re listening at home so in my experience you’ll soon end up with 100s of hours worth of music. I’d suggest having multiple playlists (Friday afternoon playlist, wet day playlist, covers playlist, songs related to your industry*) so you can quietly move on from the ones that were full of current hits that do not stand the test of time. Give everyone 3 vetoes a week or something.

      *Puns encouraged.

      1. Green great dragon*

        To add – an instrumentals only playlist may be a good idea if you can concentrate better to music without lyrics.

        1. RVA Cat*

          This. Movie scores are great for this. Vocals in foreign languages you don’t speak can also work.

            1. Modesty Poncho*

              I do so much video game music during my day since I work with words and can’t have lyrics. Some recommendations:

              Persona 5 (does have lyrics on some tracks, but the Japanese accents are so thick they don’t bother me)
              Mario Galaxy 1 and 2
              Xenoblade Chronicles series
              Undertale and Deltarune

              1. Jackalope*

                Skyrim is fabulous for basic background music. Final Fantasy is great if you want something more intense, say if you need to push yourself to work faster on something. (I also find it useful for housework.)

          2. Be Gneiss*

            That’s funny, because I can tune out pretty much any kind of music if I need to focus…except anything with vocals in a foreign language. My brain just can NOT ignore that as “background noise.”

          3. spuffyduds*

            Also Vitamin String Quartet doing instrumental covers of pop songs! My “writing” playlist is pretty much them and Zoe Keating cello songs.

            1. JustaTech*

              Yes! Strong seconding Vitamin String Quartet! It’s the right balance of familiar and “no words” that really helps me when I’m writing or have to read something really boring but important.

              1. Emmy Noether*

                It’s so interesting how this is so different for people! For me, if I hear an instrumental cover of a familiar song that normally has words, my brain is busy supplying the words. It’s more distracting than hearing the words.

                But then I can’t concentrate to music anyway. Best case, I tune out the music completely and it’s pointless.

    3. ferrina*

      Playlists are one of those things that I tend to like in theory, but I don’t want to be the one doing the admin lift for it. If you are offering to coordinate the playlist and I can just hand you a list of the songs I like, I would be delighted!

    4. sparkle emoji*

      I used to work in childcare where we could play age appropriate music on a speaker. I basically did what you did, and made a long playlist with a mix of kid requests and songs that we liked when we were kids. I personally really like making playlists and so I was happy to do that upfront work for everyone, but there are enough people like me out there LW can search and find one if they don’t want to make it themselves. There’s a handful of influencers who make themed ones(search strut workout playlists on Spotify) if you want to have one theme each day and cycle through.

    5. Ultimate Facepalm*

      I quit my job at McDonald’s in a big flounce when I was 16 over the music.
      The rule was that whoever was washing dishes got to pick the music. So I had to wash dishes one day. I was not allowed to pick my usual classic rock and decided they could wash their own dishes.
      In hindsight, there was a lot of racism and harassment there so I am not sorry at all.

  5. Wren*

    #3: I applied for a library cataloger job at a community college. The first part of the interview was a compterized test that sounds like this, but all math and spacial reasoning problems. For a job where the main skills required are reading comprehension and attention to detail. I’ve had multiple similar jobs at universities, museums, and libraries and never had to do anything similar. It was a huge red flag to me and ai didn’t bother going to the next interview after I’d apparently passed the test.

    1. Mermaid of the Lunacy*

      I know “ai didn’t bother going” is a typo, but I like it because those tests are probably graded by AI bots. :P

    2. MigraineMonth*

      I was once interviewing for a software development job and completed a skills test.

      Me: “I have a question.”

      Interviewer: “Yes, you are interviewing for the software development position. No, you will not be working with machining parts out of metal or assembling things from blueprints.”

      Me: “Oh, good. In that case, the test…?”

      Interviewer: “Sorry, HQ makes us give all applicants that test for all roles. We don’t care about your score on that section.”

      I guess they really didn’t, because I definitely bombed that section and they did offer me the job.

  6. Disappointed Australien*

    LW3, I’m really curious about how HR did on that test. And also why the average mark in the rest of the company wasn’t zero given what you were told. To me that’s an instruction to score slightly less than the minimum you would accept from a candidate.

    1. Sheworkshardforthemoney*

      Personally, I believe that HRs use these tests as proof that they treat everyone the same. That’s if everyone lives a solid middle class life and don’t have learning disabilities.

      1. Snow Globe*

        There have been court cases about employment tests, and it is generally held that the company must prove that success on the test correlates to success on the job. The company is opening itself up to legal liability for using a test that has no correlation to the actual job.

        1. Melicious*

          Spoiler: it rarely does! My husband is a brilliant engineer. Creative problem solving and intuitive big picture understanding of complex systems are major strengths. He would BOMB a test like this due to dyslexia and poor memorization skills. He almost failed out of school because professors would make the students memorize complex equations for tests. Guess what? At work, you can just look them up.

          1. Science KK*

            THIS. I work in a scientific research lab and I would definitely fail this test! I do math very slowly, sometimes I need to Google something or have someone double check my work.

            But I can plan my experiments around this! No one has ever minded helping me double check something. I can’t imagine how many folks they are probably losing to this.

          2. rebelwithmouseyhair*

            yes! At translation school we had to translate without even a dictionary during tests.

            1. rebelwithmouseyhair*

              oops submitted too soon somehow.

              I asked why we couldn’t work in normal conditions, because after all part of our skill nowadays is to know how to quickly find the right answer on Internet, and was told that the best candidates always came out top whatever the conditions for the exam.

              I suspect that teachers couldn’t be bothered to come up with new tests once theirs was posted somewhere on the internet.

        2. MigraineMonth*

          It’s also an incredibly dumb way to make hiring decisions.

          “Your resume is outstanding and your writing sample is exactly what we’re looking for, but I’m just not sure about hiring a marketing director who can’t tell me when a train that departs Dallas at 5:45pm going 32mph will pass a train that departs Austin at 3:12pm going 84mph.”

    2. Sloanicota*

      I agree, it sounds like this company is already on the road of de-prioritizing the test (comparing the employee’s scores to the applicant scores). OP should at least push to hear the results of that experiment. Hopefully the employees didn’t put in maximum effort. I’d expect the applicants to be more nervous and thrown by the timer ticking down since it’s a higher-stress activity for them.

      1. Pastor Petty Labelle*

        Company shouldn’t just deprioritize but throw it out all together. This was HR going rogue in deciding how hiring would work and they did it really stupidly. CSuite needs to look at HR and say dump the test now.

  7. My oh my*

    For the second letter, I work with lots of people in similar positions. At least three are homeschooling children (!!!), another regularly skips meetings to go take their children somewhere, another leaves early often for children sporting events.

    It just makes me feel like a chump sometimes, esp because a fair number of these people are managers. I do take a long lunch every day, and go for a swim! So at least I have that.

    1. kicking-k*

      I am the person who sometimes has to skip out for school or medical-related things. I am on flexitime, hybrid and can choose my days, and don’t have a lot of meetings, and it’s never been an issue to anyone else but oh, I hate it, especially if it’s more than once in the same week! When I’m at work, I want to *be* at work. This week I had to WFH at no notice one day because one was sick, then two days later take off at 4 for a curriculum information meeting.

      Until recently I was the only one with younger kids on the team, but soon there will be three of us, and my (very nice) manager has said that we’ll need to think about how we handle that. I don’t know what he has in mind.

    2. Anon for this post*

      Ok with the homeschooling—I homeschool my eldest and it’s like having a very quiet coworker. She’s less distracting than my irl coworkers ever were.

      1. GrumpyPenguin*

        That’s because you are basically her manager. You would have a hard time grounding your coworkers for being disruptive, as tempting as that sounds.

      2. Learn ALL the things*

        But, like, when does the teaching happen? Is she just learning things out of books and online curriculum, or are you giving actual lessons? I think one technique would work fine for somebody who is also supposed to be at work at the time, and the other would really not.

        Also, I have a friend who was homeschooled when we were growing up, and she sounds like the way you describe your kid, but her siblings were VERY MUCH NOT. There’s no way their mom could have been working a separate job while she tried to wrangle her kids into learning.

        1. Anon for this post*

          She’s 13, and extremely independent, so I can set lessons ahead of time and just check in occasionally. My point is just that homeschooling doesn’t equal total active parenting in all cases, and the interruptions can be more minimal than your chatty coworker Margie who won’t leave your office.

          1. rebelwithmouseyhair*

            Then again, I know people who homeschool and it’s like a full-time job for them. Kids like your daughter are pretty rare.

            1. SunnyShine*

              As someone that was homeschooled, no, she’s not rare. That’s actual normal in homeschooling. Most learned to be independent.

        2. Not your typical admin*

          Another homeschool mom here. By the time you hit late middle/high school most kids are pretty independent. For example, my daughter is 15 and a sophomore. She’s taking two online duel enrollment classes at the college she wants to eventually attend, and does history class with my dad who’s been a teacher for 48 years, so she gets assignments from them. For her other subjects I lay out her readings and assignments for the week on Sunday evenings and she checks it off as she goes.

        3. Banana Pyjamas*

          Homeschooling doesn’t have to happen during the business day in most places. California does have laws that it needs to be during certain hours. We don’t live in California, and that’s the main thing that gives me pause about moving there. We homeschool at bedtime because that’s when our child is most focused, so a law that requires school hours to be completed before x time is not it. The main issue with homeschooling is finding childcare your child won’t age out of. It pretty much limits you to home daycares. Also school-at-home is NOT homeschooling. So a child attending a virtual charter or online public school is NOT homeschooled. Homeschooling is parent facilitated, while school-at-home is facilitated by a school (system).

          1. AlsoADHD*

            When I adjuncted at virtual school, we did have some homeschooled children who came for particular subjects of interest (but were homeschooled primarily) at the high school level–especially our AP and dual enrollment subjects, so I had quite a few (that’s what I taught, only courses with college credit options). They might also engage in extracurriculars at local schools or virtual schools.

      3. mbs001*

        You can’t homeschool and work at the same time. Your employer shouldn’t be paying you to homeschool your child. That wouldn’t fly at my firm.

        1. Anon for this post*

          Good thing I don’t work for your firm! I realize that people who are paid to be on the clock may have a different situation, but I’m not hourly, I get my work done just fine, and my kiddo is way ahead of grade level on everything. So it looks like actually I *can* homeschool and work at the same time.

          1. EchoGirl*

            I think part of the problem here is definition. I feel like maybe there should be different terms for “being at home while kid is doing remote/online schooling” (particularly if the kid is older), where the parent is there to be a responsible adult but doesn’t need to be hands-on all the time, vs. “parent acting as a teacher”, which is what I think most people think of when they think of homeschooling and requires a lot more time and energy from the parent. The former, which is what it sounds like you’re doing, could be reasonably workable while working from home (depending on the kid obviously), the latter would be where a problem is likely to crop up.

    3. Sloanicota*

      I was a bit confused by this letter. OP says she “leads” the team, which I hope means she is the supervisor over this employee and their manager – in that case, she should tell them directly the expectation that personal flexibility doesn’t come at the cost of productivity (like the meeting that had to be rescheduled). But some of the wording made it sound more like OP is a peer, in which case, complaining once to their boss is already more than enough. It’s their bosses’ job to handle them, not yours, if you’re not their supervisor (or grand-boss).

      1. Mockingjay*

        OP is likely a team or task lead, meaning they distribute tasks and monitor workload and task completion, but have no supervisory or managerial authority to evaluate someone’s performance.

      2. Hyaline*

        There are orgs where “team lead” doesn’t give any real management oversight–like “you’re team lead on the Llama Feed Procurement project, and Timmy is team lead on Llama Grooming Schedules” where you and Timmy are peers on a larger department that gets broken down into various teams for various projects. There may be some leeway to manage people’s work and time for the thing you’re leading but not really any teeth beyond asking nicely.

        I’m with you that elevating to their boss is the only real step, and LW needs to make sure they’re elevating actual problems (“We had to reschedule a meeting” or “Timmy’s schedule changes so frequently that we can’t plan adequately”) not annoyances or perceived “that’s not fair” about the use of the time, in order to get any traction getting this addressed.

        1. LW #2*

          You’re right about my role. I’m basically Dwight – Assistant To The Regional Manager. Our manager is on the same page as I am and plans to address the issue with my coworker. I wrote in because I felt like a tattletale and selfishly wanted to hear from a neutral third party that I did the right thing, even though I had concrete examples of how the coworker’s behaviors were impacting the team and our projects.

          1. Pastor Petty Labelle*

            Tattletaling in this instance would be – Amadeus took a 5 minute extra long lunch, Johan said he had a doctor’s appointment, but he was really taking his kids to school. You know things that had no work impact.

            If it has a work impact, it is information that your boss needs to know, it is not gossip or telling tales, or getting people in trouble. It has a business function and it is a business, not the school playground.

          2. Hyaline*

            I think your focus on the effect on outcomes makes this very much not tattle-taley. If it were just that you didn’t like that Joe uses the flexibility to take his kid to tuba practice, that’s not really your business. Even if it was that Joe seemed to lean into the whole flexible hours thing more than anyone else, but his work remained fine, and he didn’t inconvenience anyone, and it didn’t impact anyone beyond “feeling unfair,” that’s not really your business. But if it’s that “we can’t get this project done” or “teammates are picking up Joe’s slack consistently” or “we’re scrambling to accommodate Joe’s bonkers schedule” those are measurable issues and can and should be addressed!

          3. Umiel12*

            Before the pandemic, I had a co-worker who was one of the very few people at my organization who was permitted to work from home. It was frequently difficult to get in touch with her, but one day someone managed to get ahold of her, and she was at her kid’s softball game while still on the clock. The next day all WFH privileges were revoked for everyone, and she quit as a result (or maybe she was asked to quit).

            1. Exhausted Trope*

              This is what I always thought about when I worked in office. There were a couple of people who were allowed to wfh but everyone knew that there was very little actual work being done. These folks had no children, weren’t caregivers of any shade, they just wanted the freedom to do other things (volunteer work, run an LLC, hobbies, etc.) and to come and go as they pleased. They got away with it. Now my partner has a coworker who comes late around 10 am and leaves at noon every office day or just doesn’t come in at all. His excuse? He’s got to drop off and pickup his child at parochial school. Said child is 16 and school’s out at 3:00. WTH? I wonder what his excuse will be once his kid graduates?

        2. Sloanicota*

          Agree that it’s fair the raise specific work impacts that affect you, but not necessarily insist on the change *you* think needs to happen (reduce his flexibility) and not because you don’t think it seems fair or don’t like how it looks or whatever.

      3. Random Dice*

        I also noticed that – not your circus, my dear, and stop trying to manage your peer! All you have control over is your own reaction, and right now you’re failing at that.

  8. Educator*

    Many of us in the education world spend wayyy too much of our time fighting against bad tests. You have two of our key arguments already–that many tests discriminate against language learners, and that timed tests often test the ability to manage time rather than relevant skills. Here are a few more arguments from our playbook if they might come in handy:

    -Tests are also often bias against people who have a different background, cultural context, or race/ethnicity than the people who designed them.
    -Timed tests are challenging for people with learning differences or who are neurodiverse in ways that have nothing to do with their mastery of the content, and everything to do with the design of the test. Most of us don’t have timed tasks as part of our jobs.
    -Testing does not make students smarter or your job applicant pool better–it is a distraction from the real tasks of school/hiring.
    -Test taking is a skill that can be taught and learned. Some people may do well on a test without actually knowing the material just because they know how the questions work.
    -There is no unbiased way to test for aptitude and trying is unethical–everyone should be seen as having potential and judged on what they actually do, not what a test says they could theoretically do.

    2. Martin Blackwood*

      re: test taking skills. If youre not taking tests regularly, those skills are going to decline. Work is not a series of timed tests.
      As an example, my team had a little training on i think it was on the company’s environmental initiatives? it was a slide deck and a quiz at the end. My coworker took the quiz a few times and had to write down the questions and reread the powerpoint to pass. I, someone who was regularly taking tests much more recently and had some test taking skills explictly taught, impulsively went to the quiz after about three slides and got only one question wrong by guessing.

      1. Ganymede II*

        Someone above mentioned the UCAT test, and it is such an good example of a test not reflecting real life. I spent 10 minutes trying a practice test, and the text comprehension part seems very focused on ensuring people can understand an ambiguously-worded text. But in a real life job, if you read a text/ email that’s ambiguously worded, the correct thing to do isn’t to try to decipher the original meaning on your own by re-reading it 12 times. The correct thing to do is to go find that person, or give them a call, and say “I want to make sure we’re on the same page. Can you clarify what you meant by XYZ?”

        There is a very small amount of jobs in which “deciphering meaning post-facto” is a key skill, and they have better ways to select for that than a standard test.

    3. nnn*

      Added to all these, tests tend not to reflect the balance of what you need to know vs. what you can look up in real-world conditions.

      To use the specific example LW gave, in real-world working conditions, if you don’t know the definition of “obfuscate”, it’s a quick google away. The fact that you can’t rattle off the definition from whole cloth with no research is almost certainly irrelevant to the job.

      If the job involves refining communications and making optimal word choice, you should be double-checking words whose nuance you’re uncertain of anyway. If the job involves providing actual formal definitions, you should be copy-pasting the definition from the primary source preferred by your organization.

      And on top of all that, are the 5% of people who are passing the test actually good at the job? Or is the company now hiring a bunch of mediocre people who happen to be good at word problems?

      1. Freya*

        I *do* know what obfuscate means… but it’s entirely irrelevant to my bookkeeping job! And I’d never use it in work communication, because it’s too complex a word for me to expect people to know without looking it up, which makes it bad communication!

        1. TeaCoziesRUs*

          I mean… if someone is obfuscating data in order to embezzle funds you might use it. Might. Depends on how cryptic you want that message to be. :)

          Personally I enjoy both using and receiving arcane words. I even tend to say it loud, “Ooooh. Good word!” But, I am a word nerd.

          1. Also-ADHD*

            I used the word “obfuscate” this week in a convo with another colleague who is also nerdy and uses high level language but I code switch, as do they, down in many meetings and settings at work. I don’t care whether my reports, team, peers, or boss knows the word or most words frankly (even if it’s a commonly used one, as long as they know how to Google), though there are some roles I hire for that overall writing skills and vocab matter (they can still look stuff up, but people with an overall crappy vocab usually aren’t excellent writers) and when they DO write for samples, using the word “obfuscate” or similar high Tier 2 words in writing would be a mark down usually. We want our communication level to be ESL friendly, around a 7th/8th “reading level” in vocab, conversational in tone usually (a few settings might be formal), and accessible.

            1. The Unionizer Bunny*

              HR teams who write policies that way are aiming to have rules that everyone can understand so that everyone can follow those rules who wants to. HR teams who obfuscate the wording of their policies are looking to trip workers up so everyone breaks the rules, or arguably has, whenever HR wants to selectively discipline them. Fortunately, this ambiguous wording often leads to rules that a reasonable reader could interpret as chilling their NLRA-protected rights, which makes the policy a violation of the law. (Because a worker who is discouraged from exercising their rights may internalize the rules and not consciously want to exercise their rights, the government doesn’t require that anyone have tried to exercise those rights and been punished for it – the mere fact that an employer has done something which would have discouraged a reasonable worker is unlawful.)

            2. anon here*

              I am struggling with this lately! One of my direct reports does not have the vocabulary I was (unconsciously) expecting. Their writing (an important part of our job, and it tends to be very formal) is . . . medium. (To your point that overall vocab tends to correlate with writing level.) How do you coach someone on “please get better at English”?

              1. The Unionizer Bunny*

                Ask them to spend some time on training where they read through other works in the archives and then consciously try to emulate that “style”. If they’re new to the field, this may be a pure stylistic difference where they’ll naturally adjust over time, but you can accelerate it.

              2. AlsoADHD*

                I think one of the reasons writing skill aligns with vocabulary is that it aligns with reading. (So ESL can be a factor with idioms, and I’ve worked with people who are excellent writers in their first language and only good/passable in second languages etc. I’ve also worked with translation groups so I’ve seen that in English but also like with 2nd language Spanish etc.) One way to get better at writing — at high levels — is to read more. That also enhances most people’s vocabularies. It’s where I learned new words, personally, and I think that’s a common experience and even proven through research (and I know the “reading makes your writing better” is proven through research, particularly reading a variety of things).

                My job function/team overlaps with creative areas, where good writing skills are necessary (conversational, for creating communications for all staff, marketing programs, supporting development, etc.) as are formal business communication skills (for project management and dealing with ELT etc.) So, for us, we almost need some creative writing skills, a rarity in roles that aren’t fully creative, and it’s a little bit of a different skillset maybe. But when I want someone to punch up their writing, I suggest reading high quality content examples in the area as well as doing something artistic (reading or even watching a film that is high quality etc.) and taking some time away to get into creative mode. But that’s not for general business communications.

                For general business communications, examples still help. And also if the problem is Tier 3 words (jargon) rather than Tier 2 words (like obfuscate, a high level word but not a specific business or area jargon), training programs may exist to help them directly or many organizations have like a “Common Language” deck (my team actually maintains my org’s deck on that, in coordination with our Operations team, since we’re People & Communication focused). Really, though people become better writers through writing. Some people need help with audience as well–if you find they’re writing for the wrong audience, coaching to that is useful!

      2. Margaret Cavendish*

        I remember thinking this in high school science class, when we were told to memorize the first X elements in the periodic table. This was in the TWENTIETH CENTURY, if you can believe it – pre-smartphone and pre-Google. And even then, I knew that if I were in a situation where I needed to know the atomic weight of helium, I would also be in a situation where I would be able to look it up.

        Knowing how to use the periodic table is definitely a skill, but memorizing it is a different skill entirely. I would imagine even people who use it regularly still look things up, rather than trying to remember it all.

    4. Mangled Metaphor*

      Our company does a timed test only for those applying for specific data-centric positions.
      It’s in the form of a maths test, but if you’ve got a C (or equivalent) in GCSE Maths – a prerequisite to pass initial screening – it should be no problem. Literally the third question is “what is 25% of 100?” and a calculator is provided.

      It’s not a maths aptitude test, it’s an attention to detail test. Which is impossible to test for what they can actually do, until they’re in the job and making mistakes. It cost the company (and one major client) a lot of money before the test was implemented. 6 employees didn’t make it through probation – and these weren’t newby mistakes they were making, they were very obvious “no, Kate Middleton’s surname isn’t Kate” mistakes. Mistakes which are critical for the success of our clients as well as our own company. (Obviously higher stakes than the Princess’s maiden name.) And the pressure to do it under relatively timed conditions is an industry standard, not one our board of directors came up with to piss off job applicants.

      Incidentally, our pass rate ratio is the inverse of OPs – only 5% failed to read the questions properly to the point where they would be considered unsuitable to proceed, and neurodivergence, ESL etc is not considered a barrier to success.

      1. WS*

        +1, I have done a similar test for a pharmacy-related job where attention to detail was very important. It was relevant, the timing was generous, and about 80% of applicants pass. Also, we were told in advance that there would be a test and what it was for! I think that’s a very good reason to have a screening test and very obviously not what OP’s company is doing.

    5. Michelle Smith*

      “Test taking is a skill that can be taught and learned.”

      Yep, and some of us are just better at it than others naturally. I never really had to work hard to do well on standardized tests. I’m really good at guessing the right answer, even when I know very little to nothing about the material. It never seemed fair to me, but since it worked to my advantage, obviously I used that in my favor.

    6. iglwif*

      Louder for the people in the back!!! Whatever problem one is trying to solve, “give everyone a standardized test” is almost guaranteed not to be the best solution.

      I think the overwhelming majority of perfectly competent people in the overwhelming majority of jobs would not do well on the test OP describes, because none of what it measures is in any way relevant to our jobs. And yet, here we are, doing our jobs just fine.

    7. Texan In Exile*

      “Tests are also often bias against people who have a different background, cultural context, or race/ethnicity than the people who designed them.”

      I had to take a pre-employment test that asked what the person in charge of an apartment building was called and I had no idea as the only time I had lived in an apartment was when I was five years old and my dad was in Vietnam for a year.

      (The correct answer was “superintendent.”)

      1. MigraineMonth*

        That’s the opposite of the usual problem!

        Often the vocabulary is parts of a house that wouldn’t be found in most small apartments (“balustrade” or “foyer”); or words that would be familiar to people who own racehorses or yachts but not to people who own fishing boats.

      2. NerdyLibraryClerk*

        That really does point out just how nonsensical these kinds of tests are. I live in an apartment building, and have for years. The person in charge of it has the title of “manager.”

        (Landlord would be another option, proprietor, caretaker…)

        If the right answer means you need to think exactly like the person who wrote the test, there may be something wrong with it.

    8. Some Words*

      “Tests are also often bias against people who have a different background, cultural context, or race/ethnicity than the people who designed them.”

      So the tests inherently filter out diversity, whether intentional or not. That sounds like a very very strong argument to dump the tests.

    9. Elizabeth West*

      Yep, re the timed tests.

      Just for everyone’s information, if you apply through Indeed and they ask you to take an assessment, like for office skills, you can request extra time.

    10. EchoGirl*

      Not to derail too far, but this is actually an issue the NFL (in case anyone’s unfamiliar), that’s the highest league of American football) has come up against in recent years. As part of their evaluations of players, they have players do timed tests to measure their “football intelligence”, and the issue cropped up because they were assuming anyone who didn’t do well on the test must be unintelligent or not understand the game well. As recently as last year, there was a case where a prospect* scored poorly on a test and everyone tried to assign meaning to it — then he actually got to the NFL and was one of the best rookie players ever at his position. It’s almost like it’s really hard to create a written test to measure skills that are intended to be used in a completely different environment.

      *For those who follow the NFL, the person in question is CJ Stroud.

    11. rebelwithmouseyhair*

      “Some people may do well on a test without actually knowing the material just because they know how the questions work.”
      Yes to this. Raising my kids in France as a native English speaker, taught my kids English at home. My son got 3/20 in an English test, which was to count towards their end-of-year mark.
      I looked at the test: the pupils were basically being asked to regurgitate a set of rules. My son hadn’t learned the rules because he saw that he knew intuitively how to apply them. The three points he earned were for the three examples that were required. In other words, all the sentences in English that he wrote were perfect.
      There was a parent-teacher evening shortly afterwards, so I took the test in to ask the teacher and ask her what the point of the test was. I pointed out that if my son got 3/20 writing perfectly in English, it followed that other pupils could get 17/20 without writing a correct word in English. She promised not to take my son’s mark into account for the end of year mark. I told her she shouldn’t take it into account for anybody, because regurgitating grammar rules is a useless skill and she should be assessing the pupils’ ability to communicate!

  9. Dhaskoi*

    LW4 – If you know or have reason to suspect that they wouldn’t want to see it and you show it to them anyway, *Extremely* yes, although I have trouble conceiving of any workplace where this would ever be appropriate or acceptable.

    1. Rhymetime*

      Yes, do not do this under any circumstances at work. Here’s an unpleasant example of why this is not a good idea.

      I once left my wallet on a city bus, and fortunately someone had turned it in. I went to their office to retrieve it and behind the person at the counter helping me were male employees looking at nude images of women and making fun of their bodies.

      This was long before sexual harassment in the workplace was widely recognized as a problem. I found out the name of the agency director and wrote a letter with my contact information. A manager from the agency called to apologize. He asked me questions about details, and promised that it would be addressed. While I appreciated his appropriate response, I would much rather have avoided the situation altogether.

    3. Troutwaxer*

      I like the way Allison handled the question. Very terse, almost a vibe of ‘why are you even asking? Of course it’s harassment.’

    4. Rex Libris*

      Yep. There is no sentence containing the words “coworker” and “nude pic” that equals anything work appropriate.

      1. Random Dice*

        I assume that Alison, like me, inferred that he had already shown that nude picture to coworker(s) and was trying to defend it after he got in trouble.

        No dude.

        Stop being a creep.

      1. Velawciraptor*

        This is 99% correct. One of the major exceptions I can think of is attorneys.

        If you’re a member of a law firm and the nude photo is part of a case you’re working (say you represent the celebrity and it’s their picture that was leaked without permission), showing the photo at work to others working with you on the case can be legitimate. Or, if you’re on the criminal side of things, it’s not unusual for rather intimate photographs to be part of discovery (sex cases, autopsy photos never worry about modesty, etc.).

        But if it’s not part of the actual job, that stuff needs to stay out of the office.

        1. SBT*

          Yeah, very few cases where there’s a job need for it. At my last employer, my boss (Head of HR) once said to me “this job has involved looking at porn way more than I realized it would.” The stuff people would put on work computers, cell phones, etc. never ceases to amaze. I feel bad for the IT and HR folks out there who end up having to see it in the course of an investigation.

          1. Book Wyrm*

            I said that same thing as an HR generalist! I had to look at/talk to people about porn and naked pics way more than I ever thought I would. One time, I was looking through a terminated employee’s files for something and clicked on an obscurely titled pdf… and found out that comic book style porn is a thing.

          2. Elizabeth West*

            WHY
            Just…WHY

            Facilities Manager at OldExJob was also the IT person. He told me once that he often found p*rn on work computers (he wouldn’t tell me who, for which I was profoundly grateful since it was a very small office).

            For the life of me I will never understand this.

            1. Jamoche*

              Downloading it in a place where it doesn’t use up your own bandwidth, and family members won’t see it.

          3. postscript*

            As a long-term IT folk, can confirm. Have had too many unpleasant experiences with men (100% of the time it’s been a man) intentionally displaying porn in front of coworkers, or fouling up their work computers with the malware they are tricked into installing to look at such sites.

        2. GenX Enters The Chat*

          I work in family law. Unfortunately we end up with nude and explicit photos and videos in adultery situations. Luckily I’m not one of the people who has to deal with them, and they are in VERY CLEARLY LABELED folders so nobody stumbles across them.

      2. MigraineMonth*

        There are a handful of jobs where nudes are part of the work (e.g. photographing nudes, drawing nudes from a photo, modeling for nudes). There are another handful of jobs where handling inappropriate photos is part of the work (e.g. IT getting rid of pornography, taking down flagged-as-inappropriate posts on social media, prosecuting based on evidence photos).

        You should already know if you are in one of those jobs, though, and even at those jobs a coworker shouldn’t be showing you nude photos that you don’t need to see.

    6. iglwif*

      Agreed. No one whose job description does not specifically include looking at nude photos should have to look at nude photos in the workplace, ever.

    7. Green great dragon*

      Unless you know for sure they do want to see it, definitely not. And knowing they do is a necessary not a sufficient condition.

      Refraining from showing the nudes is never wrong.

      1. Bear in the Sky*

        And if you know for sure that they do want to see it, show it to them outside of work.

        If you don’t know them well enough to get together with them outside of work, you don’t know them well enough to know for sure that they want to see it.

    8. becca*

      Also if the nude photo(s) are of the sort that were leaked online without the celebrity wanting that to happen, I would straight up avoid that coworker as much as possible, regardless of the sexual harassment policy. That shit is invasive.

      1. Lenora Rose*

        This: the fact it’s a public figure does not make the existence of an unwanted leaked nude any more acceptable to share, ever, by anyone. And while there are celebrities who have of their own will made nude spreads, those don’t seem any more work appropriate.

    9. becca*

      Also if these are the sort of celebrity photos that were leaked online without the subject’s knowledge or permission, the person showing them around is deeply creepy and I don’t want to be around them.

        1. MigraineMonth*

          Happens all the time. As does posting in response to the wrong comment. It’s a rite of passage for commenters on this site.

    10. LNZ*

      Also did the celeb consent to the photo being released bc if not that’s nonconsensual pornography and might be illegal in your state (and is assuredly immoral)

    11. Kuddel Daddeldu*

      If “work” is not the editorial office of an adult publisher (or the celebrity in question is perhaps Lassie,) leave the nude pics out of work.

  10. Lilac*

    As a neurodivergent person with (undiagnosed) dyscalculia I have lost job opportunities due to the kind of tests OP #3 describes. If I’ve applied for disability entry in a hiring process often their only accommodation is more time. Which does nothing to help the test be inherently less abliest.

    1. ThatOtherClare*

      IANAD but off the top of my head, these tests would disadvantage people with dyscalculia, dyslexia, aphasia, ADHD, anxiety, vision impairment, reduced reaction speeds, and aphantastia – many of which are conditions that can go undiagnosed or present on a spectrum of impairment. What a hiring disaster.

      1. Bunch Harmon*

        I just realized I have aphantasia a couple of years ago. It wasn’t until I read your comment that I connected it to my trouble with spacial math. Thanks!

        1. Irish Teacher.*

          Yeah, when I realised I had aphantasia, among other things, it explained my difficulty with spelling (can learn to spell a word in a matter of seconds and will probably know it for life, but I have to consciously learn it; I won’t know how to spell it from seeing it) and why I found geometry and trigonometry so much more difficult than other froms of Maths, to the point that in my pre-Leaving Cert., I actually considered doing the probability option instead of the geometry one even though we hadn’t covered that topic yet. I would have done way better on it if I had, but I was worried my teacher would think I did it because I didn’t remember what topics we’d covered, so I just mentally replaced my mark on the geometry (which was something like 8/50) with about 45/50 because I knew that if I could do much of the probability question without even having learnt it, I would get near full marks on it in the real exam, when we had actually studied the topic.

          1. HSE Compliance*

            I also have aphantasia (figured this out about 2 years ago), and this has just made it click for me why I struggled so hard with trig and calc but excelled with algebra and stats.

          2. Liandra*

            Oh wow, I never connected having aphantasia with that. I loved math and found most of it easy but struggled with geometry and trig. People always thought I was weird finding calculus, linear algebra, differential equations easier than “simple” geometry. I wonder if it is also related to my terrible sense of direction, I can never remember how things relate to each other in space.

            1. Irish Teacher.*

              I actually don’t have a bad sense of direction as regards knowing where I am going. I cannot, however, give directions because I cannot picture the route. I also can’t tell right from left.

      2. sparkle emoji*

        Yeah, I have dx’ed autism and maybe anxiety and the timer LW mentioned would be a massive issue for me. I can’t focus when I have to think about timing. And that’s as someone who is naturally good at standardized tests. This test seems designed to hit as many challenges as possible.

    2. GrumpyPenguin*

      Same here. I’ve always suspected I have dyscalculia, but never tested for it and failed a lots of tests. I never asked for accomodations though, since for many people “learning disability” equals “stupid”.

    3. Pastor Petty Labelle*

      Same. I suspect undiagnosed discalculia too, but no one believes its even a thing. So yeah saying I have trouble with math confuses people because its just logic right. Well no, I got an A in lgoic but often had to repeat math courses because the numbers just didn’t do what they were supposed to.

      But this test, specifically, should never have even started. This was a rogue HR deciding on their own without input from anyone else that this was how hiring was supposed to be. Then didn’t tell anyone either so that there could be pushback before it even started or hiring managers could adjust as needed. The problem isn’t the test – its rogue HR.

      1. kupo*

        I’m really good at the logic parts of math. My brain can only hold like 2 numbers at once, though, so I can’t even add in my head. I also have a hard time figuring out when to apply which principles to reduce an equation, for example, but somehow if I do enough of them it becomes a background process my brain can do and I can just rely on intuition. This means I got 4.0s in calculus and can do the bits of math needed for my job and my hobbies, and I can pick up any math I need to do and retain it as long as I keep using it, but I would probably fail this test.

    4. Elizabeth West*

      Diagnosed dyscalculia, and yeah.

      I once felt coerced into disclosing in an interview where I was surprised by one (on paper) and the interviewer didn’t believe me. F*ck that guy. As I said earlier, I decided I won’t do that anymore, not even if they say “wELL It’S jUsT a lOgIc tesT!”

      If it’s logic you’re going for, then logically, you can look at my resume and portfolio and ask me questions about how I did my work. ;)

  11. Adam*

    LW3, I agree with Alison that there is an organizational problem here, which is that HR should not be setting these rules. Instead of talking to HR, I’d be talking to the CEO or whoever is above HR and getting them to tell them to knock it off. Either that or looking for a new job.

  12. KateM*

    For LW#2, what is a voluntary extracurricular event? Is it everything extracurricular because you can really go just to school?

    I’m just having flashbacks to my child’s music school. Totally voluntary, nobody is required to go through it! But it was eight years of lessons which were rather fixed in time for you (and we had it easy as the actual instrument lessons, being one-to-one, were obviously where we could book a time about the same way you could doctor’s appointment – only music history and sol-la were totally unmovable due to being group classes), there crop up contests where you will be heavily side-eyed if you refuse to participate (i.e drive your kid to and fro), things like that. Of course, it is still voluntary – you can have your child drop out, very many children do, I think my child was in this particular instrument class and age group the only one to make it through eight years and officially graduate.

    1. GythaOgden*

      Probably need to make other arrangements for it. The person is actively missing work meetings and in-person days and not doing their job, and while it might take a bit of reorganisation, they need to come up with a solution to this themselves. It’s not their team’s problem.

      1. ferrina*

        This.

        For an optional activity- even one that you’ve committed to- it’s on you to figure out how that aligns with your work so that your work is still getting done (including still able to attend meetings). I’ve done more than my fair share of odd kid activities during work hours. It’s a privilege to be able to do that, and the flip side of that is that it’s on the employee to ensure that the kid activity isn’t impacting the work getting done.

        1. GythaOgden*

          There’s a lot of give and take — the colleague is taking, the job is giving, and sooner or later that balance will have to be addressed.

      2. BellaStella*

        THIS^^^
        I work with a guy who is a single parent and who has a tween. Every day he leaves at 3 to pick the kid up and is barely online after 4 and misses meetings regularly. Also he rolls into the office at 9:30 or 19 too and does not do much work but for the fun stuff he likes. I hope some day he leaves.

      3. Dandylions*

        OP literally said the parents work output is good. So your assertion they are not doing their job is off base.

        OP also literally said that if it were not for the fact that the parent specified on their calendar what these are for then they woulf not have a problem with the amount of time the parent is out.

        There was a last minute meeting scramble once. That’s a far cry from “missing meetings”.

        If this were a question about a person missing days and using flex time for something like, mental fatigue, and the boss saying they wouldn’t have a problem with the missed time if they didn’t know what it was for but they don’t view mental fatigue as worthy of using flextime then the answer would have been for OP to ignore the reason and focus on the work impacts and set expectations around that. We’ve literally had letters like that before and that was the answer. But a parent wanting to be present at ballgames? No you are fully ok to judge the reason for the flextime in that case. SMH.

        OP it your company truly values work life balance then set expectations with this employer. The blank meetings should be prioritized, you can’t take calls from places with excessive background noise, no more then X hours a week should be flexed barring emergencies. And do yourself and your direct reports a favor, tell them to drop the reason for the flextime from their calendars.

        1. GythaOgden*

          The OP is writing in because of the essential meeting disruption and the person ignoring in person days. That sort of collaboration is also part of the job output — similar to mine, in fact.

          She wouldn’t be writing in if there wasn’t some kind of a problem that’s affecting their ability to work together, and she’s also a team lead.

      4. Funny you should mention*

        Where are you seeing that work isn’t getting done? The OP stated that their output was good. The only xamples they gave where others were affected were last-minute resceduling of a meeting and not being able to hear them at a meeting one time. OP also said they’d have no problem with the arrangement if they didn’t know what was causing it.

        1. GythaOgden*

          When they say that the meetings are upended and the in-person days are not attended. Collaboration is work too and OP is also the team lead and thus responsible for those meetings etc going ahead in a timely fashion.

          Work is not just raw deliverables or output — it’s also team-based and thus if the person is letting the team down, the work /isn’t/ actually getting done. (Like, I’m also team lead on a project and if someone who was crucial to the project was not available when they were supposed to be for discussion on that project, they wouldn’t be getting the work done. I work in a highly collaborative environment, as do a lot of people, so someone who isn’t collaborating with others isn’t actually working.)

    2. Testing*

      Yes. Everything you described there is voluntary and extracurricular. Your child’s hobby is not something which should affect your work, your employer, or (least of all!) your colleagues.

      I get it, I have kid, they have hobbies, and it’s sometimes a scramble. But don’t be so afraid of side-eying music teachers that you end up being side-eyed at work.

      1. GythaOgden*

        Yeah. These are the employee’s issues to solve here, not their employer’s.

        A colleague of mine takes off frequently because her husband has a severe foot condition and needs to ferry him about. (Ironically they won’t send a district nurse out to see him at home because he has someone who can give him a lift to the hospital!) She busts her butt to be in meetings and work hard at her day job and is pretty much a hero for it given the circumstances. It helps because our org is very sensitive to the needs of others (like yesterday we heard one of the engineers had lost his son and was coming back on site to work because he wanted to keep busy, and my interim boss was really worried about him not being up to the job and being able to take adequate time off, which for us would probably be done through the sick leave system, but she was falling over herself to Do Something), but ultimately she’s still achieving things she needs to achieve as a senior manager. (She knows her hubby would have done the same for her. I know when I was in that situation five years ago my husband would have done the same for me.)

        The colleague here is not, and that’s the difference — the work isn’t getting done, the meetings aren’t getting attended, and the problem is becoming the employer’s. The employer has a right in this situation to push it back to the employee and tell them they need to make other arrangements.

      2. KateM*

        Yes, but what I mean is, it is a commitment made, and after that you don’t have much choice if you want to keep your child in it – in fact I find doctor appointments that were brought in more flexible than extracurricular activities. And this may very well be my child’s future career, too, so what you are saying is that I should consider my job more important than my child’s future. But I consider a year in child’s still-developing life to be more influential to their future than a year in adult’s well-established life.

        1. Elisa*

          Well, as long as you are willing to accept the hit to your job prospects, reputation, references, promotion opportunities, working relationships etc., you can make that choice. OP’s colleague can decide that ferrying junior to band practice is more important that the meeting they ought to be attending, but they need to realise that making that choice has consequences at work, up to and including losing that job because their choices mean they aren’t actually doing the work, and make an informed choice.

        2. Cordelia*

          well no, it’s not that you should consider your job more important than your child’s future. It’s that you are making a choice to put your child’s future before your job, and need to be doing that with the understanding that you might not be able to keep said job. That’s your choice to make. Your employer and your coworkers don’t have to put your child’s future first though.

          1. Smurfette*

            “Your employer and your coworkers don’t have to put your child’s future first though.”

            This is the crux of the matter. You can set your own priorities but your company does not have to buy in to them.

            1. Emily*

              Smurfette: Amen!

              Frankly, I am finding some of the excuses being given by some of the commenters for the co-worker to be a reach at best. The co-worker is taking advantage of the flexibility, and the manager needs to step in.

          2. Higgs Bison*

            I suppose this is one of the reasons attendance at upper level colleges is still biased against lower socioeconomic status, even with “need-blind” admissions and need-based aid that essentially makes it free for lower-middle class students . If there’s no stay at home parent, flexible schedule, or person to pay to ferry kids around, it’s hard to sustain the sort of resume that will attract admissions workers looking to build a class.

          3. Rex Libris*

            I’d argue that unemployment is detrimental to the child’s future, assuming the child’s future is what the coworker is actually worried about, instead of just finding that hanging out with the other soccer parents (or whatever) is more fun than working.

        3. Green great dragon*

          In the original letter, the parent is requiring important meetings to be rescheduled or being unable to participate in scheduled meetings, so the immediate question is whether one lesson for the child is more important than the meeting happening promptly/everyone’s time, or perhaps whether it’s sufficiently important that you get someone else to take your child.

          And I don’t think anyone’s trying to tell you whether you should consider your job more important than your child’s extracurriculars, just that it’s reasonable for your employer to tell you that actually that is the choice and if you don’t consider your job important enough to make other arrangements, you will lose your job.

          1. Pastor Petty Labelle*

            At the last minute no less. then asked for 2 months of no in office days due to the child’s extracurricular. this is one of those figure it out yourselves things. Even if your kid is the next Simone Biles or YoYo Ma, you still have to show up for scheduled meetings, etc. Otherwise you don’t have job to pay for those extracurriculars.

            Somehow the other parents on the team figure it out, but this one wants special treatment. Without really giving a valid reason. Yes a valid reason should be required for wanting a super flexible schedule when there is already flex scheduling.

          2. Rex Libris*

            Actually, if you’re using the job to pay for the child’s extracurriculars (never mind food, housing, clothing, etc.) I’d say the job is by definition more important than the child’s extracurriculars.

        5. Cthulhu's Librarian*

          Very few extracurriculars actually become someone’s future career, because very few children are the sort of prodigies who have both the talent and interest to stay with it and make it a career. Also, very few things that are done as extracurriculars actually match to decent careers.

          If your child is so talented and passionate about this thing that you think it’s more important to set them up for future success than to do and focus on your job, you can treat it that way. Your decision to prioritize your life like this is NOT your employer’s or coworkers’ issue, and they owe you absolutely no leeway or consideration in making that decision or arranging your life around it.

          1. DawnShadow*

            When my kids were young I knew some parents who had their daughters in Dance with a capital D. Every mom was stay at home and all the girls were home-schooled by their moms because the training was so intense and they had multiple week-long journeys to dance competitions all throughout the school year.

            None of those girls Dance as adults. I personally would really rethink my life if I were tempted to give up everything for my kids’ extracurricular activities.

          3. ferrina*

            Yes! This is a weird false dichotomy here- “it could be my child’s career, so I can’t miss a single thing!” But there’s a lot of things that won’t be your child’s career. There’s a balance to be struck.

            It sounds like OP’s office has a lot of flexibility. This isn’t expecting the parent to miss every single event that the kid has. It’s just asking the parent to balance the events with work, and if you miss a kid’s minor event (not something that takes years to achieve), that needs to be okay. If your kid’s theater program has twelve performances of Kid’s Bop Hamilton, you don’t need to go to every single performance- one or two is just fine.

        6. AF Vet*

          I can see your point – which is why I’m a stay-at-home parent to two kids in school. We choose to send our kids to private schools. I’m their twice daily shuttle, at 30+ minutes one way. They have extracurriculars at least thrice a week, which is additional ferrying. The only shifts I could easily work are 10-2, and that would leave no time for the errands I prefer to run during the work day – medical, groceries, etc – or for me to have any down time. I’ve tried holding down a job while managing family life and *I* could not handle both in a manner that I deemed good enough. It wasn’t fair to my employer to ask they work around any kid’s illness, husband going out of town unexpectedly, etc., yet if I gave enough of myself at work to do a job I was proud of, I didn’t have enough spoons to take care of my family well. I am competent at one OR the other, but not both.

          My husband’s job is NOT flexible and pays well enough that we can afford for me to stay home. We move too frequently for me to have any kind of robust social support network. He’s career military, which means the only way he’ll lose his job or his pension now is by having zero integrity and getting caught. (And this man would rather set himself on fire than lose his integrity.) If he were to die unexpectedly, we qualify for enough benefits that I still won’t need to work. At this point I’ve resigned myself that IF I work again, it’ll be in a field of esoteric knowledge where I’ll create my own work. That will only come once my husband is retired from active duty and my kids can ferry themselves around.

          This is MY life that I’VE chosen. These are the sacrifices we as a couple have agreed to. I don’t denigrate anyone whose calculus is different. The only ones I side-eye are those (like OP’s coworker) who SAY they want to work full-time but get their kids involved in voluntary extracurriculars that impact their work in a way that is disingenuous at best and thievery at worst.

          1. Hyaline*

            Ehhhh….”people who SAY they want to work full time but…”

            Let’s acknowledge that most people are not CHOOSING to work full-time, they have to. We don’t know this man’s circumstances–if he’s married/partnered, if the partner works, too, if the kids have special needs and these “extracurriculars” are crucial to their well-being, if he’s widowed because his partner was attacked an eaten by a bear last year and he had to move cross-country for a job that would support the family and keeping his kids in soccer holds onto that piece of normalcy they desperately need…I’m not disagreeing that if his overuse of flexibility is impacting work, the manager needs to address it and he needs to make some changes, but we can have that view without the most uncharitable read possible, which is that he’s actively choosing “thievery.”

            1. GythaOgden*

              If they need to work full time, then their energy should be on holding down the job. My parents moved heaven and earth to ensure I could keep my job when my husband got sick — they were both retired at that point and ferried him to his clinic appointments, right up until the last week of his life when my mum took him into hospital because we couldn’t cope at home any more and stayed there so he had an advocate that wasn’t too sick to get what he needed in terms of a private room. She was in tears at one point because she was angry that the hospital couldn’t afford a dying man a private room (wards are generally communal in British hospitals and even that’s a step up from what it used to be like with mixed wards — it’s only been banned since 2010) before he got a place at a hospice.

              So please don’t accuse us of not having been there or not understanding or whatever. Many of us have. Many of us have had to choose, or had to impose on relatives (my mum also helps out with my sister’s kids but she’s kind of a 74 year old Energiser Bunny and we both know she’s beginning to run out of steam). But this is life for most people and most people, even the richest and most successful in the world, have to juggle priorities.

              I’m in debt to my mum because by that time, even with a really supportive boss, it was sh*t or get off the pot time. My need to be employed but not present did not trump their need for reception coverage, but to be able to budget for a temp, they had to put me on a leave of absence. (I countered with a short burst of paid sick leave and then he died anyway, luckily after I was able to spend my last afternoon with him and I was back at work roughly a month after he died. I can be a bit touchy during August, as you might be able to tell.) I also said above that a colleague in a similar situation (although cross-fingers her husband isn’t dying) is moving hell and high water to juggle both her job and his care and again because she’s another Energiser Bunny kind of person she’s bossing it. Sometimes, the world doesn’t align perfectly for you and most of us can actually handle it responsibly.

              You have to make some sacrifices here for those you love (I made all the sacrifices and still lost my husband). You can’t have everything land exactly the way you want it to because you have a lot of conflicting priorities and your paid responsibilities. We’re in a time where a lot of people are very sympathetic to struggles with caregiving and other necessities, but unfortunately we also have to make do as much as we can because other people we interact with also have needs and priorities for us.

              There are limits that most people accept on their time in return for a paid job. Getting huffy and indignant that people should have to do what they’ve done for time immemorial gets a little exasperating.

            2. AF Vet*

              Exactly. Which is why I clarify that my choice is the right one for our family BECAUSE *I* can’t handle both responsibilities AND we don’t need the money. In MY situation, working in the way OP is describing WOULD be disingenuous. Yes, there can be, and usually are, extenuating circumstances. However, would you look askance at a coworker who is increasing your work load or making your life harder in order to attend a book club or work on a craft? Those are activities that are TYPICALLY for outside of work. To me there’s no difference between a kid’s extracurricular (particularly practices or weekly meetings – NOT recitals or camp outs or other more major events) and your own *on your work responsibilities.* If they’re interfering with work responsibilities – including meetings with clients or external teams, I’d expect a manager to correct your actions. If you’re missing work because of medical reasons or accommodations (yours, spouse’s, kid’s), I’d expect you to work WITH your manager.

              Sorry for the caps, but I want to emphasize certain words. :) I hope the tone doesn’t come across as heated, it’s not meant as such.

          2. anon here*

            This feels unkind. I too feel competent at work OR parenting, but not both; I too have a husband with a not-flexible job. The difference is my husband is a teacher, and he’s not paid well. I’m a government lawyer. We’re trying to make it work. It’s not that I SAY I want to work full-time; until very recently (thank you Public Service Loan Forgiveness) I had six figures of law school debt and daycare bills, and working full time is not optional. My kids do voluntary extracurriculars, but almost entirely on the weekends. I think you could have more empathy for people who aren’t well paid and don’t have your flexibility.

        7. HonorBox*

          Sure. But YOU are making that choice to make that commitment. If child can only take violin lessons at 1:30 on Wednesday, you have to decide, based on everything else, if that works well in your life. Or if junior needs to be picked up from school and shuttled to swim practice three days a week, and you’re stuck in a noisy pool during practice, you have a responsibility to determine if that works for your job and your life. For some it does. For others it may not. I guess my opposition to your statement here is that your job, its hours, and the responsibilities therein sometimes have to take priority when you’re scheduling a child for extracurriculars. You can’t force coworkers to regularly pick up the slack based on your lack of availability due to a child’s activities. Not to say that random things won’t come up, but if work expects a certain amount of availability during a particular set of hours, actively scheduling a regular activity is not going to be feasible to maintain good working relationships and productive employment there.

        8. KatCardigans*

          I think that’s a little rigid. Sure OP’s coworker can ferry the kid to their extracurricular when they don’t have a work obligation; it sounds like the company is usually pretty flexible with that sort of thing, that the coworker is generally on top of their work, and that meetings are scheduled well in advance. The issue is when they DO have a meeting or other work to do that’s going to impact their coworkers. And when they have that, then yeah, kid has to miss that day, the parent needs to find an alternate means of transportation for the kid to get there (friend? babysitter?), or, if age-appropriate, kid gets to be really early and find somewhere to sit quietly until the extracurricular starts. That is hardly dooming the kid’s future career.

        9. Amy*

          I don’t make recurring commitments for me or my children during work hours.

          So a Monday at 10am Pilates class for me or a 2:30pm kids’ judo on a Tuesday might be nice but my work hours are 8-4:30pm, so it doesn’t work.

          This is pretty normal. Many jobs aren’t going to let you have the perks of being a SAHP simultaneously with the perks of having a FT salary position.

        10. Irish Teacher.*

          I think it’s less about how flexible the appointments are and more about how necessary they are. People have to go to the doctor when they are ill; that’s non-negotiable, whereas kids do not necessarily have to attend a music school.

          That’s not to say music lessons are unimportant and yeah, in some cases, they might be more important than the parent’s job but most employers aren’t going to consider an employee’s child’s music lessons (or hurling match or whatever) to be more important than the job, whereas I would hope most employers would recognise that medical appointments are more important than the job.

          And companies/employers have to draw the line somewhere. Like yes, extracurriculars are important, but one could also argue that a week in France or Spain where your child will get a chance to practice a foreign language they are learning and experience another culture is more important than work and that helping your children with their homework every evening is more important than work as again that may benefit your child’s future. And it’s not just children. Driving your partner to work if he or she is unable to drive or you only have one car may be as important as your work. Spending time with elderly relatives who may not live much longer is definitely more important than work. Planning your wedding may be more important than work, for many people, religious obligations are more important than work. And so on. Many workplaces just can’t give flexibility for everything.

          There generally isn’t any choice when employees themselves have health issues and honestly, employees own medical appointments benefit the workplace as it is better to have them say miss a couple of days for a colonoscopy rather than develop colon cancer and miss maybe months. And society generally agrees that things like the death of family members and taking children or elderly family members to medical appointments and bonding with new babies are things for which workplaces should grant flexibility, but many (most?) workplaces can’t work around everything and children’s extra-curriculars generally fall under the heading of things parents are meant to find a way to make work without it affecting their own work. This could mean the childminder transporting the children to their extracurricular activities or a family member or friend taking them or their travelling with the family of another child doing the activity or the parent booking the child, if they are a preteen or teenager, a taxi.

          And that leads onto another difference between a medical appointment and an extracurricular activity. Parents generally need to be at their children’s medical appointments as information can get lost in being passed along and if there is treatment needed, the parent usually needs to hear that first-hand. You can’t really have a teen travelling by taxi to most medical appointments (maybe an older teen if they are comfortable going alone), but generally it is possible for younger children to be taken to an extracurricular activity by a childminder or babysitter or family member and for teenagers to travel alone or with friends.

        11. Insert Clever Name Here*

          My husband and I value commitments and it’s something we’re trying to teach our kids as well. We think exposing them to various activities is a valuable investment in them — not because they’re going to be soccer players or artists or whatever, but because exposure to diverse experiences makes for well-rounded people. It’s important that they learn how to problem solve, be team players, etc. in all sorts of different situations.

          Since they are children and our salaries pay for their ability to participate in extracurricular activities, the things we commit them to must fit within the framework of our jobs. This is something we talk about with them as we look at activities, because as the adults it is also our responsibility to help them learn how to balance conflicting priorities. And yeah, at the end of the day my job takes priority because again — if I lose the job that pays for your gymnastics, you won’t be doing gymnastics anyway.

          1. HonorBox*

            I’m agreeing with you and doubling down. You said you and your husband value commitments and are trying to teach that to your kids. There’s great value in that. And there’s great value in showing our kids that we’re committed to our work and committed to finding opportunities (for us and for them) outside of work, as well.

            1. Insert Clever Name Here*

              Yup. We have commitments to lots of things that are not our jobs and extracurricular activities for our kids (and even things that are more important to us than our jobs!). But for the purposes of this discussion, as it relates to the question posed by the LW, I’m talking about the relationship between extracurriculars for kids and jobs for adults.

        12. iglwif*

          I was a full-time-working parent* in the 2000s, at a company that strongly discouraged WFH for any reason, and the way I handled this was: if an activity happens during working hours but does not happen at school, that activity is not for us.

          Obviously this rule was modified somewhat once she was old enough to be self-transporting, in that this opened up the possibility of activities taking place in the gap between the end of the school day around 15:00-15:30 and mum & dad getting home from work between, e.g., 17:30 and 18:30. But we were still not signing her up for activities that would require either parent to take regular and significant time away from work. Work is what puts food on the table and pays the mortgage so we have a place to live — not to mention paying the fees for extracurricular activities.

          And yet, my kid still got to do all the activities she wanted — over the years she tried a whole variety of dance classes, Kodály music classes, indoor rock climbing, karate, soccer, Girls on the Run, and singing lessons, obviously not all at the same time — as well as the 2 activities that were her parents’ idea (religious school on Sunday mornings, and swimming lessons). All of these activities were available during the evening and weekend hours when we were not working and kiddo was not in school.

          *I still am, but my child is now a whole adult, which obviously changes the dynamics.

        13. blah*

          I am confused at how you made this conclusion from what Testing said. If you prioritize your child’s activities over your job duties in such a way that affect your coworkers, that’s bad.

        14. Magpie*

          You can’t just expect endless flexibility from your employer because your child participates in an extracurricular activity during work hours. It’s on you to either find extracurriculars that take place outside of your normal working hours or to find a different job with different hours or levels of flexibility. My siblings and I all participated in many different extracurriculars. My parents made it work by working different schedules so one of them was always home and available to watch kids or drive them where they needed to go. It would never have occurred to them to expect their employers to allow them to leave in the middle of the day to drive kids to soccer or dance class.

        15. CowWhisperer*

          Look up all of Allison’s advice about extracurriculars and resumes. High school extracurriculars matter a small amount about getting into college (much less than GPA, reference letters and testing) and signal that a candidate has no work experience when present on a resume.

          Your rationale may make arranging your life around your kid’s hobbies more palatable – but that doesn’t make it true.

    4. Also-ADHD*

      I think judging the why someone is out gets into weird territory, and the frame should more be “you must meet these expectations” and can only have X flexibility.

      I do think places mess up by claiming to be flexible workplaces and then being upset someone uses the flexibility, and the solution is for managers to be very clear on the limits of flexibility upfront, rather than wait to see how people use it. Otherwise you wind up with issues like people not taking enough vacation on unlimited—we all know it’s not truly limitless, so just give some guidelines, such as minimums, times requests may be more likely to denied, averages, and suggested maximums (excluding medical leave later isn’t a huge issue usually as that’s usually a different thing anyway). The same with flexibility.

      My workplace is remote and flexible and highly distributed. When I hire and onboard someone, I review our unlimited PTO with minimums, maximums, expected crunch times where requests should be minimized (rare but there’s two busy times for us and mine are prime PTO typically but it’s easier to share upfront). I review how we work, ask if the person has any thoughts on how they like to work they want me to know, address flexibility and when we want them to not expect it/prioritize work (ie, come to Zoom meetings, travel to this offsite, etc) and how we set and view deadlines and availability in Slack. No surprises, full clarity, and this means even conscientious people feel they can take full advantage of the flexibility as well as gives me clear reference to the folks going overboard if I need it.

      Just expecting “I mean I said it was flexible but I didn’t think you’d use THAT much flexibility” is a common issue and I think it’s on the manager and company. In this case, LW mentions the employee asking out of a mandatory thing (and I think asking is fine but wonder why LW even knows if not the person asked) and being declined. If they still didn’t come, that’s a problem, as it is if they didn’t attend meetings they were told had no flexibility. But I do hate the corporate double speak (Bring your whole self to work…ugh not that part. We’re very flexible here…but why are you working different hours and on yellow on Slack when I log on? Etc). Clarity is kindness. If places just say their flexibile, they shouldn’t be judging what you use that FOR — this doesn’t preclude flexibility from having limits though and it doesn’t change that your common expectations wouldn’t apply to disability or medical issues (often covered by other law or policy anyway).

      1. Also-ADHD*

        Should say “none are prime PTO” not mine” —just noting since that typo changes meaning.

        1. Also-ADHD*

          On mobile, it also used the wrong they’re (their) and a few other things. I have fat fingers today

        2. TeaCoziesRUs*

          I’d hope that no PTO during crunch times of, say, July and December, are brought up in interviews well before on-boarding. If I knew I couldn’t take most of Christmas break or a couple weeks during summer off, it would be a deal breaker for me.

          1. AlsoADHD*

            They definitely would be! Though our crunch times are usually May and September, so not too bad for most people. But even then, they are 100% brought up in multiple interviews, and they’re fairly light crunches (just less flexibility, ideally no PTO for 2 weeks in each month, and probably working that full 40, maybe 45-50 hours if things go sideways, but we track that and do team shutdown weeks in July and December already and we add on days to that if we have a crunch where people actually worked OT).

      3. doreen*

        I don’t know that I completely agree about judging why someone is out or unavailable. If someone is out/unavailable and it doesn’t affect anyone else, sure, no one should be judging their reasons. If someone says they aren’t available next Thursday afternoon when the meeting is being planned, I don’t care why. But I’m going to think a lot differently about rescheduling a meeting at the last minute because a coworker has a medical appointment than I will if it’s so the co-worker can take their kid to a dance lesson.

        1. Analyst*

          This. In this case, it’s the rescheduling that’s the biggest problem. If co-worker had that time originally listed as unavailable, that may have been fine. It wasn’t and a mandatory thing was scheduled. Changing it inconveniences others and shouldn’t be done for a kid’s extracurricular. Medical thing needing attention? Different.

        2. GythaOgden*

          Yeah — like my colleague, we know she’s out because her husband is ill and that she will turn her phone on in the car park of the hospital he’s being seen in if necessary.

          I think if we found out she was taking her kids ice-skating or bowling during that time, we’d be far less accepting of her absences.

          Just like someone struggling at work might be struggling because they’re ill. However, if they were working another remote job while they were supposed to be on the clock for their first job, then we’d start having issues.

          It’s always going to be the nature of the situation that determines expectations from that person. The danger in not differentiating between voluntary and non-voluntary situations is that everything is made suspicious or forbidden, not some things.

        3. AlsoADHD*

          Personally, I’m going to be frustrated either way (internally) at rescheduling, though my barometer would more be “Does this person do this frequently and do they care about the impact on others?” than whatever they’re rescheduling for. I think when we get into prioritizing the what, it gets ugly when we have different values.

          I don’t usually take off from my job when sick because it’s remote work (though I’d not go in person and get others sick), but others often do. I don’t have kids, but others do on my team and take off for all kinds of kids things, some of which seem silly to me (but I’m not a parent, and they have different values). The last time I took off unexpected was because my dog was sick, which I absolutely will prioritize, and some people would disagree. I also refused a meeting recently because it’s the day after a big video game comes out and I’m planning on being on PTO that day. To me, that’s an important mental health activity. Going to the doctor I work around other things and will reschedule for a big meeting. We all have different priorities.

          I do agree prior to the meeting scheduling, conflicts should be shared. I was unclear on LW if they are checking conflicts prior / how they calendar etc. Some people don’t check your calendar and just send a request or they send requests for way out and get surprised if you decline, while others do more checking before, so I wasn’t sure if rescheduling was “This person agreed and then went back on it” (which is not okay, but could be understandable in an emergency) or “This person wanted us to reschedule the planned time once they saw it.” Both are called rescheduling where I work, so it depends.

      4. mbs001*

        How about the expectations being that your are working and available from 9-5 when your employer is paying you to work — or whatever hours you’re scheduled. For most jobs, an employee who isn’t working during their scheduled hours isn’t doing what the company is paying them to do. You’re right that it really doesn’t matter why someone is repeatedly ducking out of work — though if that reason is an emergency or medical in some nature, then that makes it more reasonable. And hopefully, that worker would clue in their supervisor about their need to be away for appointments and the like.

    5. CityMouse*

      I’m a parent and, what? No. my kid’s extracurriculars are my responsibility, not my employers. As a parent I have sought out more flexible jobs that allow wiggle room for those activities, but that’s something you have to go out and find, not something you can demand.

    6. bamcheeks*

      I have primary-aged kids and I totally get this— figuring out the balance of “no you can’t do that because nobody can take you there” and “ok, if I finish half an hour earlier on Tuesdays and do email later in the evening you can go to brownies with your friend” and what’s ok and what’s pushing it is really hard. But “an important meeting had to be rescheduled st short notice” is the wrong side of the line if it wasn’t urgent.

      That said, as someone has pointed out further down, if this is summer-holiday-related rather than all year round, I’d give a little more grace. All the summer activities around here run from 9-4, 9-3:45, 10-4. Even the longest, 9-5, means starting and leaving work half an hour earlier and later than usual. We don’t have any family support and we can’t afford a nanny, so if I didn’t have flexibility to do this, I simply would not be able to work. I tried to explain this to a previous boss when she started talking about everyone coming back into the office four days a week, and she would not believe that there wasn’t some obvious solution I was missing, whcih was as frustrating as hell.

      So I would talk to the employee and figure out whether this is a “clearer boundaries”, “better planning and more advance notice”, or “actually couldn’t be helped but it was a one-off emergency” situation.

      1. Fairy*

        I feel like it gets worse as they are older. My son had practice for a school sports twice a day in the summer. Starts school at 930. I have some flexibility with my job, but schools don’t make it easy to balance.
        I am actually both a parent and a worker and I am a parent to an actual human.

        1. bamcheeks*

          Yeah, where we live they should be able to do short straightforward bus rides by themselves by secondary school and more complicated crossing the city / going to other towns by 13-14. So hopefully it’s only another 2-3 years for the older one and 4-5 years for the younger one!

        2. Rara Avis*

          The private school where I teach has before care at 7 a.m. and after care until 6 p.m. (included in tuition) because the vast majority of our families have both parents working. Lots of kids do all their extracurriculars at school (sports, performing arts, classes, etc.) My friends who have kids in local public schools have a terrible time covering the before and after hours, especially for middle school — an 11 year old is still really too young to be on their own starting at 2 or 3 p.m., but there are very few programs available for that age (that aren’t off-site sports programs that require a parent to arrange transportation).

          1. allathian*

            Depends a lot on the kid and the surrounding culture. If you’re in a culture where kids are dependent on their parents or other trusted adults for transportation until they’re old enough to drive, you’re stuck.

            I’m in Finland, and here kids as young as 7 (first grade in my area) can get their own bus ticket and travel unaccompanied by an adult to school. My best friend’s daughter who was 6 when she started school couldn’t wait for her 7th birthday in December when she could take the bus to school on her own (the cutoff is the calendar year). We don’t have buses run by the school district.

            My son started coming home alone from school when he was 10. At the time, both of us went to the office nearly every day, both had flexibility in working hours so one of us would time leaving for work to coincide with him getting to school on time. In first and second grade we’d walk with him to the school gates, after that on the train and he’d walk to school on his own. Until then he was in after school daycare, but he didn’t like hanging out with the noisy younger kids, but he was happy to be at home alone, or sometimes with his best friend.

            I realize that we’re very privileged to live in an area where it’s safe to send your kid to school on their own so early. Adults in general look out for the safety of the kids, and if there’s any trouble, it’s almost always caused by other kids rather than nasty adults.

            All of the above obviously applies kids who don’t have any developmental challenges.

            But there’s a reason why most kids get their first dumb phone or smart watch with preprogrammed numbers they can call in first grade!

            My son did a martial art until Covid hit and the place closed down, never to reopen. He’s also been in a coed scout troop since first grade. No team sports, though, partly because he was never interested, partly because neither I nor my husband were any good at them when we were kids, but mainly because the idea of being a soccer or hockey mom gave me hives. Parents are allowed to decide that they aren’t willing to volunteer so their kid can do an extracurricular.

            It also helps that getting a place in college is purely based on academic achievement in the vast majority of programs, there are no interviews or motivational essays to write. Some programs require an entrance exam and an aptitude test, and for the latter, proficiency in an extracurricular can be an advantage. If you’re going to study music at college level you aren’t going to get a place unless you’re fairly advanced already. But that’s an exception. We don’t have college sports because we don’t have scholarships, tuition is free for everyone up to a Master’s degree (COL are an issue, though).

  13. Jill Swinburne*

    #1, oh hell no. I can’t write with word-based songs – it would be like trying to do maths with someone shouting random numbers behind me.

    I doubt anyone will be upset with you if you just mention that and use some noise-cancelling headphones, with your own music or not. I often like instrumental music for writing, or pink or brown noise (not white, I find it too harsh). Or ask nicely if there can be quiet concentration times – maybe a couple of hour-long blocks a day or something. Then you’re not totally depriving anyone who likes it and finds it helps their focus.

    1. GythaOgden*

      Yeah, same here — I listen to YouTube videos or other light factual programming while doing data entry and so on (the privilege of working from home!), but I can’t do heavier, more engrossing work like writing up minutes with anything on at all. Music for me is even worse because I am a creature of habit and am thinking too much about what the song means and represents to get anything done while listening to it! For me it’s definitely the main event rather than background noise and I can only really listen to it while doing puzzles on my off time.

      With communal speakers you do have to come to some sort of compromise with other people’s tastes (part of living or working in a shared space — I definitely had to get to like and understand sports when my husband was alive, and in turn I think he learned some of my favourite shows off by heart long before I did!), but it might be an idea to negotiate with the speaker owner the kind of music they play or the volume they play it at, just like you would presumably be accommodating if other people asked for quieter stuff when it was your turn to be office DJ.

    2. Testing*

      Try music in languages you don’t understand! It widens the scope of music you can listen to and doesn’t mess with your writing.

      2. Delta Delta*

        I don’t speak Spanish and my favorite work album of all time is the Buena Vista Social Club soundtrack for this very reason.

        In fact, I might just listen to that today!

      3. sb51*

        For me, I can’t do that either, because it’s still human voices, and my brain tries and fails to fit it into English, which is almost as distracting as trying to handle English lyrics.

      4. misquoted*

        Yep! I can’t write with any English (or German) lyrics in my head, so if I want music to work by, I choose instrumental or a language that’s foreign to me. LW’s coworkers may feel the same or at least be willing to give it a try. It might be a nice change, and they might find some new favorites.

      5. TeaCoziesRUs*

        That’s one reason I LOVE what I call Zumba music (think Reggaeton, Soda, Latin pop), especially for how chores or other things where I need to have energy but not too much focus. I refuse to look up translations of lyrics because I don’t want to know if that awesome bop is misogynistic as hell, just a call for sec, etc. :)

        For general body-doubling YouTube videos that I’ve seen before work REALLY well, especially Midwest Magic Cleaning, Stitchery, Closet Historian, or Ask a Mortician.

        If I need to FOCUS, there better be complete silence.

    3. AFac*

      I am Goldilocks when it comes to writing, which is somewhat ironic because writing is a considerable part of my job.
      – I can’t work in silence, because then I get self-conscious about all the noise I make breathing/typing/turning pages.
      – I can’t have music at all when writing, because I lose focus and just start listening to the music.
      – I’m better with ‘color’ noise, but too much of it makes my brain fuzzy and puts me to sleep.
      – I can listen to people talking, as long as they’re not talking to me and there’s a steady level of emotion and cadence.

      My writing soundtrack is history documentaries: it’s not a constant noise, not a rhythmic noise, but the narrators are generally steady enough to be *there* to take the edge off of silence.

    4. Random Bystander*

      Yes–I write fiction in my free time and I select for instrumental only music to play in the background. Vocals would jumble my thoughts (not in a good way). Of course my musical taste does generally trend to instrumental (orchestral works).

      On the repetitiveness–I completely get that … When we were in the office, the person at the desk next to mine insisted on playing her radio without using headphones. Everyone else in the office used headphones with their music-providing device of choice (phones or dedicated things like MP3 players). The radio bled over what I was playing and they repeated the same dang playlist every hour, with only brief variation at noon (news). By the fifth iteration of the same song in the same blooming day, I was getting very annoyed and began to viscerally hate some of those songs, even if I wouldn’t have otherwise objected to hearing it on the radio when driving to the grocery (her radio station choice was the same one that I played in my car).

    5. Elizabeth West*

      Me either. Instrumental all the way.

      When I’ve been in workplaces where music was played, it was usually the kind of work where that wasn’t an issue, but hearing the same songs over and over is maddening.

      I like your suggestion of blocked-out quiet time. It’s worth a try!

  14. Mackenna*

    LW1: I like to listen to music while working but can’t concentrate if there are lyrics as I inevitably tend to listen to them to try and work out what is being said, which means I am not concentrating on my work. I get around this by listening to A State of Trance episodes. Each one is two hours long, what little vocals there are in the songs more often are using the vocals as an instrument as opposed to telling a story, and it is rare that an episode will include a song that annoys me or is distracting. There are only a few places each episode where the hosts chat, it is largely just playing the songs. I turn it down a couple of notches from the volume I would have music on to listen to recreationally, and it essentially becomes upbeat melodic background noise. I have told various colleagues about it over the years and quite a few now listen to it as well. I am pretty sure the recordings are available on Spotify. Why don’t you try one or two episodes to see if anybody objects? If nobody does, adding more episodes is a fast way to bulk up a low maintenance playlist.

  15. Drag0nfly*

    I thought there was a law against #3, called “Griggs vs. Duke Power.” I’ve seen it brought up so many times in other online conversations about giving prospective applicants tests. Lots of people think it means you can’t give would-be copy editors spelling and grammar tests, or accountants math tests or something. A POV I understood to be incorrect.

    I thought G vs. DP was meant to bar companies from doing exactly what the OP’s HR is doing here, and that’s testing candidates based on irrelevant criteria. You don’t test the plumber on how well she diagrams a sentence, and you don’t test the librarian’s ability to change a spark plug. The fact that the test has so many false negatives in excluding people who are proven to be competent at their jobs should have been a major clue that it was so much bull.

    I really want to understand how the OP’s HR was allowed to believe that testing candidates was any of their business. No offense to HR per se, but it’s clear from the OP’s post that their company’s HR is not qualified to assess candidates at all. They’ve been tested, measured, tried, and found wanting in the real world so that should be enough to strip them of this power. If I were the OP I would just skip HR entirely and handle recruiting candidates myself. I wish the OP much luck in taking advantage of this opportunity to reign in a wayward, destructively clueless department.

    1. Annie*

      Maybe a Griggs vs. Duke Power type ruling specifying a minimum level of disability accommodations to make available to all candidates during the application process is in order, e.g. accessible skills assessment guidelines requiring the availability of and compatibility with screen readers to assist with processing of text; calculator or digital equivalent, lined scratch paper or self-erasing pad or digital equivalent for math and logic assessments; closed captioning or transcript for spoken word and video assessments.

      1. Annie*

        Also, a requirement to give a general idea of the tasks to be performed during the test, e.g. answer math problems, read a passage and answer questions, play Tetris for 10 minutes; and the skills to be assessed, e.g. understand and follow instructions, attention to detail, communication skills.

    2. 1LFTW*

      My guess is that OP’s company isn’t in the US, or they haven’t heard of this case, or they think — probably incorrectly — they have a legal case for how the test is relevant to the job.

      1. HB*

        “I thought G vs. DP was meant to bar companies from doing exactly what the OP’s HR is doing here, and that’s testing candidates based on irrelevant criteria. ”

        I haven’t read the case in full, but I don’t think this is correct. Griggs v. Duke Power is a discrimination case. The problem with the test wasn’t that it was irrelevant to job performance, but that it was BOTH irrelevant to job performance AND had a discriminatory effect.

        “What is required by Congress is the removal of artificial, arbitrary, and unnecessary barriers to employment when the barriers operate invidiously to discriminate on the basis of racial or other impermissible classification.”

        That “when the barriers operate to discriminate” is the operative phrase.

        That means you can test candidates on irrelevant criteria as much as you’d like, so long as it doesn’t have a discriminatory effect (intent is irrelevant). Moreover, the discriminatory effect (if there is one) has to be against a protected class.

        For example, if an employer required new employees to pass some sort of test of physical abilities, that would easily show a discriminatory effect against people with certain disabilities. Therefore for the test to stand, the employer would have to prove that the test was actually related to job performance.

        There was another discrimination case I remember about an electric company refusing to hire women as linemen, and the reasoning they gave was that their linemen had to be able to lift heavy objects – I think they said around 45lbs. The judge asked the court stenographer how much her typewriter weighed, and it was a bit more than whatever the weight was the electric company had quoted, and then asked her to pick it up which she did easily. The electric company didn’t design a test in that case, but they were trying to argue that the requirements of the job precluded women. If they had truly been concerned about the job requirements though, they could have easily designed a weight lifting test. It could have still had a discriminatory effect against women, but so long as the test was *directly* related to the job requirements, it would have been fine.

        In this case, the test probably does discriminate against certain groups, but not necessarily against protected classes. Further, the test sounds so poorly designed that it’s probably even difficult to prove a discriminatory effect because so few people pass it.

        1. Hyaline*

          I guess—I can’t see how this test wouldn’t, in the course of apparently weeding out 90% of candidates, include people with certain neurodivergence and cognitive impairments in that 90%. Which could, I would think, fall under discrimination? Like— the number of people excluded should not determine if something is discriminatory or not. A company would have discriminatory hiring practices if they refused to hire anyone but white people even when whites are in the extreme minority in the company’s area.

          1. Observer*

            I can’t see how this test wouldn’t, in the course of apparently weeding out 90% of candidates, include people with certain neurodivergence and cognitive impairments in that 90%.

            Sure, but that’s not necessarily discriminatory. Now if it weeded out 90% of people with irrelevant impairments, but only 50% of otherwise qualified candidates, then you can show disparate ie discriminatory impact. But if it’s weeding out 91% of neurodivergent people and 88% of other otherwise qualified candidates, you’re not getting anywhere.

        2. Also-ADHD*

          This is right. While these tests might have a discriminatory effect, it’s not proven and open and shut (and language background is usually not a protected class—outside of like a K12 setting or some governmental settings). Most companies that use these probably also have statements offering disability accommodation etc. While how to use the tests could create some liability, it’s no slam dunk and they’re most likely legal in most cases BUT still dumb and bad.

          1. Dawn*

            But isn’t language background almost invariably a characteristic of race, national origin, or citizenship, all of which are protected classes?

            Like I’m pretty confident that if you can make the case that the test discriminates against people who speak English as a second language, that it by definition discriminates based on national origin.

            1. Littorally*

              Nah, that case wouldn’t work, because in the vast majority of US office environments understanding written and spoken English is a legitimate job qualification.

              1. GythaOgden*

                Likewise basic requirements for most UK workplaces are minimal GCSEs in English and Maths. It used to be a C or higher, but the grading system changed recently so I’m not sure what the equivalent is now. (Or just like you can discriminate against those without legitimate immigration rights to work.)

                Everyone does GCSEs as a matter of routine in school, and I’m sure people coming in from overseas will have equivalent school qualifications, so it’s a fairly safe bet to require those qualifications. I’d also presume that for those who didn’t get the necessary marks, they can make it up like Americans can pursue a GED.

            2. Princess Consuela Banana Hammock*

              That’s not quite right. Anti-discrimination law has different tests for whether something that has a discriminatory effect is unlawful. It is generally accepted to require English fluency in the workplace in the United States, and failing to provide a particular test in other languages is not necessarily unlawful or actionable discrimination on the basis of national origin. It depends on the job, the field, the test, the applicant pool, etc., etc.

              1. GythaOgden*

                Agreed.

                Generally speaking providing a range of linguistic services is important for /users/ of public services in the UK like healthcare. That’s the focus. In the workplace, you would be hard pressed to bring a case for discrimination if you didn’t hire someone who simply couldn’t function in English at all.

                There are a lot of efforts going on inside my government employer to make information and job documentation available in alternative languages (e.g. Ukrainian) and a large outreach programme being conducted towards a significant cohort of Nepalese staff at one of our sites (I urged my bosses to remember that there are two distinct languages spoken in Nepal, one with substantially lower privilege than the other and thus with the potential to go horribly wrong if they don’t actually communicate with the colleagues in question). It’s incredibly important for large, diverse workplaces to help employees access documentation in their own language for accessibility reasons (it’s also particularly important for people who are relative newcomers and are still learning). But it would also be ok to expect someone to be able to work day to day in English, just like I’d totally be expected to use Polish in day to day working conversation if I got employment in a Polish firm in Poland. (I have a diploma that says I can hold my own in that language enough to study at university level in it, but in terms of any kind of specialised jargon I’d still be a bit lost tbh.)

              2. Dawn*

                Right, ok, yes, English fluency, but I think in this case (“obfuscate,” etc,) it’s fairly obvious that the test isn’t testing fluency but is putting ESL applicants at a disadvantage.

                Of course I’m neither a lawyer nor an American, but if your pass/fail statistics show that all ESL applicants, or a disproportionate amount, fail the test due to the nature of it, doesn’t that still count as discriminatory? Or is this another case of “America’s burden of proof for discrimination is excessive”?

            3. AlsoADHD*

              Written/spoken English is a job requirement you can put in a posting as someone notes and even one that can be implicit in some job adds/other skills for jobs. There’s really no job I can think of where that would be discriminatory to request (unless you requested it of one demographic and not another, like you hired white folks who spoke Russian and had Basic English proficiency but you wouldn’t hire Latino/a folks who spoke Spanish and had the same level of proficiency). Race is the protected class there, though. National origin is somewhat protected (it is a protected class, but I say somewhat because citizenship etc. can still be factored in sometimes), but language status is not. Also, language status isn’t always related to nationality. You could be American, born in the U.S., and speak English as a second language (and there are populations that are/do which you can see in demographics sometimes).

              1. Dawn*

                But it’s not “basic English proficiency” here, is it? And “citizenship” is a third protected class.

                1. GythaOgden*

                  Citizenship is one of those areas where you need to balance the potential for discrimination with concerns like correct visas etc. It would be discriminatory if you didn’t want to employ Latinx people because you assume they may be undocumented, but if they /are/ undocumented, an employer can (and /must/ because of legal regulations on immigration) turn them down. I’m as white British as they come but I can’t be employed in the US as I don’t have documents, and so it’s not only fair for US employers to reject me, they legally /have/ to.

        3. Princess Consuela Banana Hammock*

          You’re correct that Griggs is an antidiscrimination case and that the application is more nuanced.

  16. M*

    Even if coworkers mutually agree to share or view nude photos, surely there has to be somewhere outside of work and not on work time when they can do this? Not all areas have to be grey.

    1. ecnaseener*

      Sure, but the question wasn’t “is this okay” or “would you get in trouble,” it was specifically “is this sexual harassment.”

      1. M*

        The two people sharing may have mutually agreed. It is potentially harassment to anyone else who hears or happens upon any part of the discussion or viewing. Why take the risk?

    2. Ex-Teacher*

      Id agree with you that, barring a specific work-related reason to be viewing nude photos at work, there’s no good reason that someone should be passing/showing nudes at work. It’s basically always a risk that if the recipient doesn’t want it, or someone else sees it and doesn’t want it, that it’s going to be considered harassment.

      That said, conduct is typically only considered harassment if the recipient/target of the conduct finds it unwelcome/harassing. If someone is okay with, or wants to see, nude photos, then showing them nude photos at work probably wouldn’t constitute harassment.

      People shouldn’t be sharing nudes at work (unless you work in an adult industry, for example) but because of how laws are typically written, there is always a gray area. Sharing nudes at work is a stupid thing to do, but doesn’t always constitute harassment.

  17. Varthema*

    For LW2 – did the problem come up in the last month or two? asking because it may not be extracurriculars per se, it might be summer coverage. People with school-age children who don’t need childcare during the year can really scramble in the summer, because so many camps don’t give full-day coverage and they have to cobble together combos of camps, classes, babysitters, etc in order to be able to get a day’s work in at all. I’d ask a little bit first before jumping to conclusions.

    Not trying to minimize the disruption it’s causing, and maybe the parent is handling it poorly, but if your main issue is that you judge these less necessary than doctors appointments, you need more info. and the disruption may vanish in September! (and reappear next June – but if everybody knows that Bob’s schedule is a little chaotic in summers because of childcare issues, that’s easier to work around and accommodate if Bob is otherwise a great coworker).

    1. bamcheeks*

      Yes— we’ve had our kids in four different activities this summer, one of which is 9-3:45, one was 9-5, one was 10-4 and one was 9-4pm.

      I’m actually surprised the answer wasn’t Alison’s usual “focus on the impacts”— if someone is regularly phoning in from somewhere with too much background noise, or cancelling meetings with short notice, that’s the problem. It’s much easier to set minimum expectations for what you SHOULD do than define the difference between “some flexibility” “more than some flexibility”.

      That said, it’s also possible that she’d have had to cancel the meeting anyway and just take it as PTO instead. I had to cancel one regular meeting two weeks ago because the 10am-start activity clashed with my partner having a less immovable meeting, I asked my manager if he’d prefer that I booked annual leave or just made up the time on my non-working day, but we couldn’t reschedule.

    2. A Simple Narwhal*

      This is a good point. I used to have a coworker that summers were a really stressful time for him and his family because they were struggling with childcare while school was out.

      From what I recall it resulted in him taking almost all of his PTO between June and August and I don’t think he wasn’t dropping any major balls, he was just not around as much and days he wouldn’t go above and beyond, was very strict about when he left, and wasn’t available for the occasional after hours emergency (which were rare anyway). But we were fortunate in that our PTO is pretty good so between him and his wife they could make it work. We don’t know what #2’s PTO situation is or what the coworker’s home life is like so they may not be able to take the time off.

      To clarify I’m not excusing their behavior at all, but if there’s the chance this disappears once the kids are back in school it might be easier to know/plan that summers are hard for this coworker and might need more grace during that time. Again, assuming they’re otherwise wonderful the rest of the year.

      1. Varthema*

        The thing about the behavior is that upon re-reading, it sounds like it’s not actually disrupting the LW at all because the LW themself acknowledges that if the parent had just quietly blocked their calendar, they wouldn’t be writing in. So it sounds like it’s purely optics for the LW, in which case I really recommend either getting more info or just putting it out of mind until there’s a reason to raise it.

        1. A Simple Narwhal*

          That’s a really good point too that I glossed over. I think what stands out to me is how LW2 said “if this person had just quietly blocked their calendar…”

          It could totally be an optics issue, and maybe it’s not so much that they’re taking full advantage of the flexibility, it’s that they’re really shoving it in everyone else’s face.

        2. I went to school with only 1 Jennifer*

          I do love hearing about a father being so involved in his children’s care. And I mostly agree with your assessment, aside from these items:

          1. “This once resulted in a last-minute scramble to move an important meeting that had been scheduled weeks ago.”
          2. “This employee recently called into another important meeting but couldn’t be heard over the background noise.”

          Both of these are things that impacted other people. And since LW is the team lead, I think it’s legit they worry about the impact on other people.

    3. SpaceySteph*

      Yeah summer is extremely stressful. I basically didn’t work a full pay period between late May and early August because of managing it all. While our elementary school is right around the corner from the house, we had camps all over the city (up to a 30 min drive one way) and the hours were not nearly as consistent as our usual school + aftercare. Plus a couple weeks we didn’t have camp coverage at all so my husband and I had to tag team working from home.

      I’m so glad school is back in session.

  18. MissBaudelaire*

    I feel for you, LW1. I worked at a fast food joint that had some easy listening music station on Sirius that had a rotation of fifteen songs. I used to beg the manager to turn off the radio sometimes, and she’d take mercy on me.

    I also worked at a place where we were sometimes allowed to play music on our phones and sometimes not, depending on how irritable the manager was. And one woman brought in a radio, cool cool. Another woman decided the only station we would play was the country Top 20 station. I wanted to cry

    2. juliebulie*

      Funny you should mention Sirius. I have a trial subscription due to a new car. I am flabbergasted at how tight the rotations are. I don’t spend a lot of time in the new car, but I still hear certain songs or bands nearly every time I drive, which really isn’t that often. (And that’s with me splitting my time between four different stations.) I had considered listening to Sirius at home while I work, so I’m grateful for this free trial which has shown me that Sirius is definitely not what I need.

  19. BigLawEx*

    LW2 – these people kind of drive me nuts. I’ve been at more than one kids’ event where they want to shush everyone (including children!) so they can conduct a work meeting. Bleachers, sport courts, and parks are not conducive to meetings. Unfortunately, these activities tend to fall on mothers’ shoulders which vilifies them in both contexts.

    1. Industry Behemoth*

      I wish I were kidding about someone who wrote in to advice columnist Carolyn Hax, This person was so busy they took work calls everywhere including the bathroom, and actually wished other people would keep it down in there so they could hear.

      1. Jeanine*

        Taking calls or being on meetings in the bathroom is the most disgusting thing anyone can do. JUST STOP IT.

        1. Jeanine*

          possibly but we have seen stories on here of someone who was on video meetings while on the toilet. GROSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  20. Myrin*

    #3, what I’m missing in your letter is the reason this test was implemented in the first place – were completely unqualified people the only ones applying and HR thought they needed to change something? Did the head of HR take some sort of training where this was lauded as the Cool New Thing? Did someone new join HR who did this at their old job and thought it was the best thing ever? – and also, certainly more importantly, what HR’s reaction was when you raised the problem with them, including that you yourself would’ve withdrawn had you encountered this.

    Given the fact that you wrote this letter, I’m assuming they didn’t react favourably, and while I think the actions Alison proposed are the correct ones no matter what, I do think their specific though processes and reasonings are important for you and your colleagues to structure your approach and arguments around.

    1. Daniel*

      I’d be wondering if someone in HR is sleeping with someone at the company they bought the test from, or took a bribe from them, or something like that, given how unreasonable this is.

      1. bamcheeks*

        It doesn’t really need nefarious stuff like this IME. It can just be “got wow’d by a really good salesperson, didn’t have adequate governance in place to prevent that”.

    2. Alton Brown's Evil Twin*

      Or maybe the HR dept had some extra money and needed to spend it so their budget wouldn’t be cut the next year…

  21. mbs001*

    LW2 – you need to nip this in the bud sooner rather than later. This employee is one who is going to ruin the benefit for everyone so it needs to be made clear to her that she is abusing the privilege and she needs to stop.

  22. Smurfette*

    LW3 – I’m kinda gobsmacked that HR have not identified for themselves that this is a problem. Do they think screening out 95% of candidates is a good thing? Or are they just not noticing the impact that this assessment is having? Either way, they’re incompetent.

    1. RVA Cat*

      This, plus I’m really curious about the 5% who passed. I’m guessing they skew young because it’s testing their SAT and GRE skills.

    2. ecnaseener*

      Yep, they probably do think it’s a good thing! Saves them a lot of work on phone screenings and they can tell themselves they’re only hiring the cream of the crop.

  23. headphones*

    Yep #3 I’ve had to take that test twice as I’ve been applying around after a recent layoff. Just like you said—timed, math problems, SAT words, visual logic problems, etc. There were 50 questions, 20 minutes and a note saying that applicants aren’t expected to have time to complete all questions, just get as far as possible.

    Even more demeaningly, one company had me take an “emotional assessment” where they showed pictures of facial expressions and I had to match an emotion with each one. I guess to test my empathy? Struggling to picture the meeting where HR pitched that one.

  24. Angstrom*

    #3: My guess is that someone in HR read about “hiring diverse skillsets” or “the advantage of hiring generalists vs. specialists” and is going about it all wrong.
    The managers need to push back hard and emphasize need-to-haves vs. nice-to-haves.

  25. Cthulhu's Librarian*

    LW 4 – I’m trying to come up with a situation in which it would be acceptable to show a coworker nude pics of a celebrity at work. Maybe you’re make-up artists building a prosthetic for a movie starring this person? Or plastic surgeons preparing for a surgery? A forensics team looking at an autopsy report and comparing it to other images of a victim to determine if a parts of the body were stolen as trophies?

    Alison’s answer about sexual harassment is short and correct and to the point… but also, the workplace contexts where you might ever think of this as appropriate are so incredibly specific that you would inherently know if you were in one. If you’re asking how this could be viewed as sexual harassment, you very definitely do not work in one of those contexts.

    Your coworkers don’t want to know about your puerile interests. Don’t be That Guy. No one likes That Guy.

    Also, I long for the day when disseminating nude images of anyone without their consent is automatically a felony.

    1. Princess Consuela Banana Hammock*

      Hard agree. When people are torn on this issue, I recommend asking yourself if sharing the photo is critical/necessary for the performance of your job duties. If the answer is no, then don’t do it.

    2. Kuddel Daddeldu*

      Maybe an adult publisher, or the celebrity in question is Lassie?
      Otherwise, nude pics don’t belong into the workplace.

  26. Peanut Hamper*

    LW #1: It sounds like they’ve turned your job into a retail job.

    At least you aren’t working retail at Menard’s where every 15 minutes you hear their jingle. (Link in follow-up comment.)

    Yes, take a weekend and make a super-long playlist. This is the only way to retain your sanity.

  27. Vincent Adultman’s assistant*

    LW4: okay given how your question is phrased we can assume you’re being accused of sexual harassment. And I don’t know what you hope to accomplish honestly. If Alison had said no, would you have gone back to your boss or HR with a triumphant, “look, this workplace blogger said it’s NOT sexual harassment so get off my back!!” or something similar?? Because I doubt that would have gone over well.

    I’m also guessing that maybe your manner of delivery when showing the nude photos prompted the sexual harassment accusation. Were you bringing it up over and over, not listening when people said they didn’t want to see celebrity nudes, etc?

    In conclusion for everyone: don’t show nude photos at work, of anyone to anyone else. . Including celebrities. Duh. If a grown adult has to be told that in 2024, I would love to know how they aren’t considered incapacitated in other areas of life.

    1. Isben Takes Tea*

      This is extremely unfair, unkind, and condescending to the OP. I (and several others) read the question from the perspective of someone trying to confirm whether something they were subjected to could be legitimately framed as sexual harassment.

      It could be either; we don’t know. Let’s follow the commenting rules.

    2. sometimeswhy*

      Or it could be someone who’s being told by their harasser/their boss/their hr/their spouse that it’s totally normal for people to share nude pictures of celebrities with their coworkers and wanted a reality check.

    3. sometimeswhy*

      Or it could be someone who is being told by their harasser/boss/HR/spouse that of course it’s normal and they’re overreacting and they wanted some reassurance that they weren’t.

    2. iglwif*

      I very much hope that the LW is not the picture-shower but the person who was shown nude pics against their will, and is seeking confirmation from AAM that this is Absolutely Not Okay.

      1. Names are hard*

        This was my first thought. I don’t think people clueless enough to show the pictures would suddenly realize it wasn’t ok and ask.

      2. Irish Teacher.*

        Yeah, my assumption was that either the LW had been shown such a photo or was a bystander who had seen one colleague showing this to another and wondered if they should intervene/check in with the colleague who was shown it.

  29. Vicky*

    LW1 I’m the kind of neurodivergent that listens to the same song (single track, not playlist) over and over on repeat for multiple weeks at a time before skipping to something else. A constantly rotating playlist would be more distracting for me than just the same song. You’ve got some good advice, but just check in with your colleagues that none of them mind a longer and more random playlist, and if they do then perhaps fall back on everyone managing their own music with headphones / earbuds?

  30. Anon for this post*

    LW1, in addition to the advice on taking playlist control, I’d consider investing in better headphones. If your coworkers turn out to prefer their 90s Hits on Repeat or whatever, you’ll need to defer to them at least some of the time and good headphones give you an escape.

  31. CityMouse*

    The pass rate for the screening test is also low because candidates are seeing it and closing their computers. It’s insulting to make all potential hires pass a basic knowledge test (and I’m someone who likes puzzles).

    1. Danish.*

      Yup! I’ve got enough to do with a nice cover letter and a bit of customization. I’m not going to take a mini SAT just for the hell of it. Honestly lately I find myself closing out of job apps that make me retype all the fields from my resume as well, unless it’s a position in really, really interested in. I’ve got rsi and value my time.

  32. kalli*

    Spotify has a Smart Shuffle that adds in suggested songs ever 3-4 songs in the current playlist.

    It also has various mixes that pull out 4 hours/50 songs from your ‘liked songs’ by genre or date or artist.

    I pick whatever’s got the most favourites out of 2000s mix, 2010s mix, Daily Mix 1 (there are actually 6 daily mixes, roughly sorted by genre, 1 just happens to always have my favourite band who are great focus music), and a couple of artist mixes. If there’s a really good one I copy it to my playlists and add similar stuff. I do have a songs for work playlist as well.

    The trick to having those playlists not be super repetitive is to have a massive liked songs list so it’s not picking from a limited range. Additionally, the auto generated ‘This is…’ and genre playlists are not as frequently updated.

    But for real, smart shuffle and the new DJ channel will always have new stuff.

    1. Cthulhu’s Librarian*

      Or not even there.

      Let’s all assume that no one else wants to see any nudes I might have access to, and that the pictured individual probably didn’t consent to their nudes being shared.

      1. Peanut Hamper*

        Seriously. I think just about everybody over the age of ten can find pictures of naked celebrities on the internet if they want to. (So learn how to set those filters on your home network.)

        The issue of consent just makes this all the more icky. I would give any coworker trying to show me something like that the side eye.

      2. Alan*

        Yep, not even there. A coworker once sent me a (simulated) porno by office e-mail. I deleted that thing so fast. He thought it was “funny”. It was horrific and could have gotten both of us fired.

    2. The Unionizer Bunny*

      I figured out what you meant from the replies, but my first thought was “that’s a hilariously wicked question to put on the bar exam” – asking for a breakdown of the legal implications of encountering a nude photo in the professional context of it being on the bar exam, when everyone taking the test if well aware that the people whose potential crimes are to be explained are also the people judging success/failure. Does this imply a conflict of interest? Tricky!

      1. The Unionizer Bunny*

        Someone downthread raised the possibility that this could be a nude photo of the person sharing the photo, and it reminded me of this:
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEVlyP4_11M&t=1492s
        I remember watching it for the first time and trying to figure out (while watching the rest of the episode!) whether John Oliver had even broken any laws by holding an interview for work in the middle of Russia (which is arguably outside the jurisdiction of American laws).

  34. April*

    #3: I worked in a non-medical department of a large hospital many years ago and they did something similar. The staff was 75% immigrant and often had English as a second language. They realized that some people weren’t as fluent as they needed to be for the job (these were actually jobs you needed to communicate for) so they put together an English test with common words and phrases for the job. Someone in the position for a few weeks could easily pass, but they also made potential hires take the same one full of jargon one would only learn on the job. I pointed out to the HR rep that I, a local and native English speaker, couldn’t figure out a big chunk of it and she just waved me off. I did get hired and that wasn’t the least of their major HR problems, but I can definitely see it scaring off anyone who wasn’t a native speaker.

    I hope you can talk some sense into your own HR department because reputations around hiring spread fast.

  35. Bast*

    LW1 — Yes! I feel this 100%. I don’t want to be the “turn off the music” person either, but I need some variety. My office gets two radio stations that are both extremely repetitive (one worse than the other). I really can’t stand Bohemian Rhapsody anymore thanks to hearing it three times a day for weeks on end. The person I share space with has tried to be courteous and alternate between the two stations, but it doesn’t really help because there is some overlap (Taylor Swift, Queen, can’t escape them) and by the end of a day or two I’m sick of that station too. I’d be happy to sit in silence occasionally.

  36. Spicy Tuna*

    #3 – the test is ridiculous, but I had to LOL at “obfuscate”… at my last job, my boss and I tried to work that word into conversation on a daily basis!

    1. Isben Takes Tea*

      One of my dad’s (a systems analyst) favorite t-shirts when I was growing up said “eschew obfuscation.” I think I was the only one of my peers who had any sense of the meaning of those two words through college.

  38. Hyaline*

    LW2’s question at the end is such a good one: “Is there any way to equitably standardize what appropriate flexibility looks like, or should I just erase the details from my brain and pretend they’re shuttling the kids back and forth from doctor’s appointments?” because the answer is probably Yes, Both.

    1) Yes, companies SHOULD make an effort to clarify what they mean by flexibility and how they expect employees to handle and communicate their hours and yes, there are a lot of levers they could pull that would help with that–mandating “core hours,” allowing X number of flex hours, requiring calendars be blocked and up to date–that help individual flexibility not impact coworkers. In this case, I’m guessing a lot of problems here would go away if the company said “OK, 10-3 are prime hours, no flex time in there except extenuating circumstances” that could allow for meetings to be scheduled confidently. Likewise, like LW said, if this guy just had an up to date calendar and didn’t shift stuff around except for emergencies, it wouldn’t cause frustration in having to change meetings to accommodate him. And then you can rely on managers to follow up on and clarify that you need to be fully present (not a bunch of background noise) on meetings.

    But right now it sounds like they’re not doing that work, so you’re in the position of being mad at a team member for essentially “being flexible is ok, but no not that flexible and not that way.” The answer to #1 is probably above your pay grade and while you can rest content that you’re right that they *should* do something to clarify expectations, you can’t make them. It’s really on your manager to set guidelines for Flexible Coworker (and your manager may not have much incentive to do so unless it’s causing ACTUAL problems; you being annoyed or thinking his use of flexibility is unfair, whether justified or not, is in fact not a problem). Therefore,

    2) Yes, you probably are going to be happier and less pissed about this all around if you do just ignore what he’s doing when he’s not at work. Focus on the deliverables and if his absences or schedule cause concrete problems, bring that up. “We need to meet about the scratching post redesign by Friday, but Joe’s schedule isn’t allowing for that.” “We had to reschedule a client meeting because of Joe’s availability.” And depending on how your manager handles that, you might have to accept that his flexibility stays about the same, and maybe you’ll never believe kids’ extracurriculars is an appropriate use of workplace flexibility, but if he can manage and communicate better, it would alleviate the problems you’ve had.

    1. HonorBox*

      You make great points. If there are core hours, that might be extremely helpful in ensuring you’re not going to have to reschedule an important meeting last-minute. That sets some expectations for when people should aim to schedule non-work things during business hours. Can junior take piano lessons from 1:30 – 2:15 on Wednesdays? Not if core hours are 10-3.

      And focusing on how the absence impacts work and the rest of the team is far better than focusing on “why” someone is not online at the moment. Whether Joe has blocked his calendar for piano lessons, a run to the grocery store, a quick nap, or a doctor appointment really doesn’t matter. That Joe’s calendar makes him unavailable is the core issue. Coupled with core hours, this line of thinking will probably alleviate some frustration.

      Also, I’d add that it is probably important, no matter what, to communicate with the team that when they’re logging in for a meeting, whether by phone or online, it is imperative that they can be present and free from distractions. I had a phone call with someone a month or so ago who was at her son’s swim practice, but she was at a nearby pavilion and had she not mentioned swim practice, I would have thought she was sitting in her office. She was far enough away from the noise that I was none the wiser.

      1. SpaceySteph*

        I wanted to suggest core hours but I stopped myself because I wondered if that would be penalizing others on the team for what is really a This One Person problem, and I hate that the most. Company should consider if core hours are really necessary or if they’re just trying to avoid managing this one person who can’t use the flexibility reasonably.

        1. Anon for this post*

          I think it’s more of an overall expectations and clarity thing. Maybe core hours isn’t the “solution” here–but if core hours are the company culture but it’s never spelled out as a requirement, that’s an issue.

    2. anonymous anteater*

      I feel like it is not easy to get the messaging right here, and had similar issues (I am new at managing). I start out stressing flexibility and wanting employees to feel like this job is the right thing for them and overcompensate ‘trying to be liked’ as the employer. Then I end up regretting my earlier messaging, because their productivity is low, and it’s hard to get a hold of them etc. Basically I swing between ‘I understand that you have a life and I don’t expect you to live for your job’ and ‘ok, but doing a good job shouldn’t be your lowest priority’.
      I wonder if this happens to others and how to get it right.

      1. Not your typical admin*

        All of this! Flexibility is such a huge perk to a lot of people, and it’s very easy to oversell and then let things slide at the beginning of someone’s employment. Communication and clear standards at the beginning are so important.

      2. bamcheeks*

        A pretty good way to do it IMO is just to ask people to check in and confirm how they’re using their flexibility for the first few weeks / months until you feel confident a pattern is established. In terms of “having to do life stuff”, I think it’s fine for the first few months to have to check in with your manager to say, “I need to leave at four to pick up my kids on Tuesdays, is that ok?” or “I’ve got an appoint at ten, so would it be OK if work from home tomorrow?”

        I prefer this both as a manager and as an employee— as a manager, I can say yes quite easily to those requests and if everything clearly is OK, gradually shift to the assumption that that person can manage their time and doesn’t need to check in. If things are actually not OK, i can address it as early as possible without feeling like I’ve bait and switched them. On the flip side as an employee, it means I’m not secondguessing whether stuff like this is really OK, and I’m not trying to fly anything under the radar.

    3. FlexibleSmlexible*

      Core hours is really different from flexible schedule. Core hours is mostly inflexible schedule. Flexible schedule is work when you need/want so long as you put in your time, get your work done, and attend required meetings unless you have a valid excuse.

      I have medical reasons why I need a flexible schedule. If someone promised me a flexible schedule but meant core hours I’d have to quit.

  39. EAM*

    Regarding #1…

    I work in an office that wanted to do “music fridays” and played music over a bluetooth very similarly. I was so afraid of being the debbie downer and party pooper but I absolutely could not concentrate and it was giving me migraines (it wasn’t overly loud, I’m noise sensitive). The anxiety I felt coming into work those days and having to face that…

    The point being, there may be others that are having difficulty and keeping quiet. In a workplace that isn’t client facing and has music for customers (like a grocery/retail store), I beg everyone to switch to headphones if you want music for yourself and let the rest of us only have to deal with regular background noise.

    1. the quiet quitter strikes again*

      I don’t understand the need people have to make everyone listen to the same thing when they are a captive audience like at work or on the bus.

      Headphones! Use headphones! If you want to listen to the same generic pop playing in every major grocery store in America inside your cubicle, we have the technology to accommodate that!

      (And yes I have used sound cancelling headphones to counter this behavior, but I actually do kinda resent having to buy extra equipment to be able to exist around people being unnecessarily noisy. And earbuds for. listening to the same 20-50 songs on repeat every day are a lot cheaper than the kind of headphones you need to block out that particular kind of ambience).

  40. Miss Fisher*

    One of the largest employers in my city, that is the headquarters for a global brand, does multiple assessments prior to interviewing. If you pass and get the job, you are basically set for life. But if you don’s pass the assessment, they ban you from applying again for a whole year for any position.

    I have heard many intelligent people have not passed the tests.

    I looked it up and you have to take what is essentially a personality and attitude tests. I looked at some of the questions and I feel like its more geared to extroverts. Then there is cognitive function test, which looks like timed math etc assessment, plus role specific tests.

  41. Former Lab Rat*

    LW#3: But can everyone in HR pass the test? The devil in me wants the hiring managers to make every single HR person sit down and take this kind of test with a big clock flashing red numbers in the background. This sounds like a bad idea that got pushed through without any thought.

    1. The Unionizer Bunny*

      I wonder if the questions were selected by having everyone in HR take the test, and then they threw out all the questions they couldn’t answer. Resulting in a test that everyone in HR can answer.

  43. HonorBox*

    OP3 – That 95% of people aren’t passing the test is a huge red flag here. Thinking about it, it takes me back to college. A great professor I had once said that if 50% or more of the class gets a question incorrect on a test, he throws the question out because it was obvious that either he didn’t teach that point well enough or the question was worded so poorly that we didn’t understand.

    It would be one thing if you were getting so many candidates interested in roles that you needed a really, really defined way to narrow down the pool. But if hiring managers aren’t able to talk to people they deem to be otherwise qualified for roles, I have to believe that you’re not getting inundated with applicants and / or need more candidates to actually screen. There’s the issue.

    I think I’d get together with other hiring managers and collectively push back. You could certainly talk about the ways the tests are unfair which you outlined nicely. But I don’t think that’s necessarily the MOST important. You’re not getting enough qualified candidates because of the tests. You’re seeing candidates who, based on resume, seem to be great potential hires. And you’re spinning your wheels because the test is filtering out 95 out of 100 people who apply. HR should be helping you in hiring people, but in this case this testing process is hurting your ability to fill roles you need to fill. If they’re not willing to budge, I’d go to someone higher because if you are understaffed, you’re only going to dig the hole deeper because you’ll be putting more work on the employees you have, and they’re going to start looking elsewhere.

    1. Alton Brown's Evil Twin*

      Reminds me of a story my father tells. One of his really tough engineering courses, on the first midterm he got a 32. He immediately scheduled an office-hours appt with the professor to ask if he should drop the course.

      The professor said “Oh, no, don’t worry about that test. You’re the only one who got any points.”

      1. The OG Sleepless*

        When my mother was a brand-new teacher, the entire class failed the first test she gave them. Oops. Straight back to the drawing board; the problem was clearly with her and not the kids.

    2. AllInTheCurve*

      Hmmm. At my college nearly all exams were graded on a curve because they encouraged hard exams. And they sometimes deliberately gave you insanely hard problems to see the way you approached them. Or they gave easy problems that challenged an assumption to see if people could move beyond the assumption (I once had to prove that 1>0 based on a specific set of assumptions I was allowed to make. It was an easy 10-12 line proof but the majority of people in my class never got beyond thinking 1>0 by definition). I once took a pass/fail accreditation test that gave you actual course credit for a required class if you scored 50% or higher but the test was designed to make it almost impossible to reach that grade. So it all depends on expectations.

      That said, a reasonable expectation for an employment test is that folks who should be competent employees should get whatever is considered a passing grade.

  44. But,DidYouDocumentIt?*

    #1, this makes me think of the TV show, Superstore where they have a song called Halloween Surfboard play on repeat, driving everyone mad.

  45. Delta Delta*

    #1 – A thousand years ago when I was in college I worked at a retail florist shop in a busy part of town. We had a big stereo and about 60 cassette tapes we could choose to play while working. It seemed to work that when one was over someone would just select another and pop it in and play it til it was done. Different people had different tastes, and because it was a cassette it was a finite length. If someone didn’t like Vivaldi’s Greatest, the next time around they could pop in Smooth Sounds of the Seventies. There was one unwritten rule though: during the valentine rush we had to listen to The Big Chill soundtrack at least every other time around. I don’t know why, but we did, and somehow it worked (and I can’t not associate “My Girl” with prepping presentation boxes of roses!).

  46. ClearTheCache*

    LW1: Also you can clear your cache on Spotify! It totally helps with the algorithm defaulting to those same songs over and over again.

  47. Spicy Tuna*

    #1 when I worked retail, they had an in-house radio station and it repeated the same songs frequently! Didn’t matter what shift I was working, I could guarantee I would hear certain songs ad nauseum.

    I have to have silence for brain work so I have no idea how anyone can read or write with music on! Years ago, the city was doing extensive work on the street / sidewalk in front of my office building. I was on the 6th floor but I could hear the jackhammers all day. I gave up and wore earplugs all day (this was before noise cancelling headphones were a thing). It drove me nuts!

  48. Feeling Feline*

    Under what circumstances would sharing celebrity nudes at work be required anyway? The only thing I can think of is if you are a portrait painting studio, and the celebrity wanted you all to work on their nude painting.

    2. Retired Vulcan Raises 1 Grey Eyebrow*

      Sharing nude pix of anyone at work, including of yourself, is very unprofessional and probably breaks company rules.

  49. Fluff*

    #3 Please push back.

    These tests are the neutral “fair” legal method to further promote systemic divisions which uphold the outdated economic pillars. The economy rising on an expendable classes of people. If we never see those who we do not see, we do NOT have to consider them. These tests let us do that and let us feel good about “screening for the best based on skill.”

    These tests are exclusionary on so many levels. We can legally exclude:
    – neurodivergence
    – auditory / visual; other disability
    – health problems
    – different country of origin
    – those impacted by the long term systemic economic drivers (working class, race, older).
    – privilege, wealth and access – take these tests at the library during opening hours anyone?

    More research is starting to suggest these tests prevent people from ever making it into the interviews.

    Also other tests are a cover for skills when they are testing compliance with authority.

    Good luck.

  50. Cupcake*

    I will never understand those tests for hiring, and I work in HR. They screen out so many good candidates, like OP mentioned, people who are not fluent in English but also folks who are fluent in English but don’t have an SAT vocab or aren’t great at math, people with disabilities, people from different cultural backgrounds, etc. I was the Director of HR at a small manufacturing company previously and a few months after I started a testing company reached out and asked why I was no longer using the testing system the company have previously purchased – it wasn’t intentional, it was missed in the handoff somehow. Long story short, I took the test and apparently wasn’t qualified to be the Director of HR. I had some other senior managers take the test and none of them passed. That put an end to that.

    1. iglwif*

      When I read this stat in the letter, I was reminded of how some USian universities yell loudly about how low their acceptance rates are, and kind of wondered whether someone in HR had decided this was something they, too, would like to be able to “brag” about.

    2. CommanderBanana*

      Hah – wow, suddenly as soon as management couldn’t do it, it was suddenly no longer necessary!

    3. 1-800-BrownCow*

      The manufacturing company I interned at when I was in college made me take a personality test before getting accepted as an engineering intern. According to them, all engineers and engineer interns had to have the right personality to be a successful engineer. Which apparently I have enough of an engineer personality as I passed and was hired (you needed to score 80 or above). Since it was my first “professional” job, I didn’t question it as I thought maybe it was common. But I did find it strange and was slightly stressed at the time since I’m a woman and wasn’t sure I’d have enough traits that fit what they considered a “Perfect Engineer”, which was obviously modeled after a male.

  51. Fluff*

    LW #4

    Here I get into the WHY. Why do you want to show this to a co-worker?

    I am curious. Was the nude picture of the celebrity endorsed by the celebrity? Is it an AI generated fake? Are you showing it as a legitimate work of art? Is there any trauma to the celebrity in the picture associated with it?

    For 99 % of the time this is not appropriate at work in the US. Save yourself and your co-workers – and maybe the lady (bets on this being a woman/ female presenting) in the picture – from the grief.

    The rare exception if you work in art and the image is related to the gallery or work.

  52. El l*

    op3:
    So someone put in a mandatory hiring test with the extreme rigor of hire/no-hire…and literally no testing was done on pass rates?

    And the affected hiring managers never saw it before implementing? Or had a chance for feedback?

    And it wasn’t some empire-building engineer type who pushed this – but HR??

    I take this as a sign of wider dysfunction.

  53. Nina_B*

    LW1 you should invest in some noise cancelling headphones, rather than just ear buds. I couldn’t live without mine! Creates a little silent bubble around yourself without much mixing of music.

  54. A perfectly normal-size space bird*

    One of my favorite sites is Listen to Wikipedia (http://listen.hatnote.com/). It plays tones every time someone edits or creates a page, with variations depending on a variety of factors. For example, the larger the edit, the deeper the note. Bells indicate additions to a page, string plucks are subtractions, and swells are new users joining. It’s very nice ambient music, especially during tasks where I can’t concentrate if I’m listening to music. Plus it gets around the sometimes prohibition on music that some managers have a thing about.

  55. zinzarin*

    LW #4, I wanted to add a little bit to what Alison said. I could see someone thinking “well, they didn’t tell me they didn’t want to see it until after I showed it to them, so showing them *that* picture wasn’t harassment, but any future celebrity nudes would be.”

    No; the first picture was harassment. It’s your responsibility to check with them before ever showing them the first picture.

    1. AnonymousSassenach*

      The week of the solar eclipse of 2017, a coworker was showing another a video on his phone of the “eclipse”. He then turned to show me. It was a photo of the moon and then a man suddenly moving his bare testicles across the frame. I was disgusted but it was my first job and I was too intimidated to report anything since he was popular with the rest of the team.

  56. Ivkra*

    LW 1, I had the same problem with my own Pandora stations, and every Spotify playlist I heard. My partner recently got a subscription* to Tidal, though, which seems to be both more ethical and a lot less same-y with algorithms. If you can get your office on board, switching services may help.

    *I note subscription because although they only ever advertise their own service, the ads are… Pervasive.

  57. Generic Name*

    #3 I’m really curious about if HR took that test themselves and if they did if they would get a high enough score to get an interview.

  58. Phony Genius*

    #3 reminds me of how Thomas Edison used to give a test to people who wanted to work for him. It was 146 questions, most of which had nothing to do with science or inventing. (You can take this test online if you search for it.) Just because a successful businessman used it then does not mean it’s a good idea now.

    1. l*

      Edison was NOT a very good businessman! He made a lot of money on his patents, but his skills at investing and running businesses were poor at best.

  59. Alan*

    Re #3, I’m reminded of when my employer decided to prioritize holding college degrees, if even if not needed for your job. They took all the non-degreed people, many of whom held very skilled and responsible positions, and gave them new titles, made them start clocking in, etc. It was profoundly demoralizing and I think a cause of some very good people leaving.

    1. Irish Teacher.*

      That reminds me of when I applied for a retail job for between my degree and post-grad and the district manager was like, “oh, this should be no bother to you because you have a degree” and I was just thinking, “what the heck has a degree in History and English to do with the skills necessary for retail?”

      1. Alan*

        I agree that it makes no sense. For the situation I described, they took machinists and very skilled technicians (among others) and said “You don’t have a degree, so we’re stripping you of responsibility and we’ll be watching you more closely now.” It was mind-numbingly stupid IMO, especially when the company depended on these people, and fresh-outs who contributed little but had degrees were apparently seen as more important.

  60. Melicious*

    LW3, gather a group and push back on this HARD. There are A LOT of people who can understand a thing, use it effectively in a work contest, but fail miserably at a timed written test. Bordering on discriminatory. Someone with anxiety and dyslexia who would do wonderfully in your job could fail this test because it’s time pressured and the logic and math don’t have application context.

  61. CommanderBanana*

    Re: the test – why is it that every time I visit this site, I find a new way that HR is being both horrible AND useless?*

    *Yes, I know this is skewed because this is an advice column and people working at companies with great HR are not writing in, but seriously.

    1. Rex Libris*

      There’s a certain brand of HR that thinks their purpose is to be the final word all things employment related, regardless of whether they know anything about the actual jobs involved.

  62. TeaCoziesRUs*

    #3 – I’m a weirdo who actually LOVES taking tests like the SAT, ASVAB, etc. I would STILL give your company a wide berth even though I know I’ll do well. I’m not looking to work with people who are just good at test-taking, and that skill is all most tests will measure.

  63. Steve*

    150-200 songs sounds like a lot, no? At 3-4 minutes per song, that’s anywhere from 8-13 hours, which is once every day or two.

    Regardless, noise-cancelling headphones. They’re game changing.

    1. Sol*

      I’d almost assume a typo and it should say 15-20 songs, because otherwise that’s 10-15 albums worth of music which I feel like is a decent amount.

      But then I can’t hear Hollaback Girl without instantly being transported back to working at Old Navy where I would have rejoiced at a 150 song playlist.

    2. Mianaai*

      I’ve run into issues with Spotify in the past where it wouldn’t shuffle a very large playlist all at once but rather in subsets of ~50 (based on my observations/experimentation). My best guess is it was loading ~50 songs into a pre-processing queue, shuffling them, and then populating them into the listening queue, and songs past those initial 50 would only come up after I’d listened to or skipped past all of that first batch. I discovered this after getting frustrated that I kept hearing the same songs over and over on playlists that should have been giving me more variety, and double-checked it by sorting the playlist by number of plays. I “solved” the issue by manually reordering the playlists occasionally, once I got sick of whatever was on top.

      I haven’t used Spotify in several years, but a bunch of other folks have reported similar behavior as well on Reddit and elsewhere – someone above mentioned that it now has a “smart shuffle” mode that pulls in additional songs, and I wonder if that was developed to help solve the problem? In any case, a really long playlist might not be a solution unless that same list would be played across multiple days without restarting/reshuffling it.

      Anyway, I figured I’d mention this as another possible culprit – if you’re shuffling some really big playlists but finding the music really repetitive, you might need to do some occasional manual re-shuffling.

  64. Elizabeth West*

    #3 —

    It is biased against candidates who would perform their jobs well but do not perform well on timed tests.

    This is why I refuse to take these tests. If a company wants to do this, I opt out. Not only are they unrelated to the job, but as someone who is neurodivergent in several ways, it doesn’t make me feel good and ain’t nobody got time for that.

    It’s lazy, and I also think this HR department got suckered into paying for this test (they are not free!). The personality tests are even worse — they’re no better than a horoscope. You might as well ask applicants what their zodiac sign is.

  65. spiffi*

    LW4 – reminds me of when I was young, just starting out in the world of work. A coworker, who was about my age, shared with me, that her BOSS would constantly show her photos of nude men off porn sites.

    His reasoning “I’m gay, so I’m showing you naked men, so it’s not offensive, like it would be if I was straight, and showed you photos of naked women! You like men! It’s all good!”

    She was unimpressed, but didn’t really feel like she could say anything, since he was her manager.

  66. RagingADHD*

    Re #3: In my most recent job search, there was 1 smaller company that was using a “critical thinking” assessment to screen all candidates. The CEO / founder read about this on a blog somewhere, and demanded it so that critical thinking would (supposedly) be a fundamental value of the company.

    He told HR to set the score so high for this position, that the interviewer told me that only I and 1 other candidate met the bar, out of several dozen otherwise qualified applicants.

    After a full round of interviews with the C-Suite the role would support, the other candidate asked a salary much higher than they were offering, and I didn’t want the job at any price. The place was a hot, toxic mess covered in a thin shiny veneer of startup jargon and low-effort perks.

    So basically, they screened for candidates who were savvy enough to see right through their bullshit. I don’t know who they wound up hiring, but I feel sorry for them because I know they are drastically underpaid and overworked.

  67. Danish.*

    I will always always remember the summer job I had three years running, great metrics, great feedback, everyone loved having me and welcomed me back each time.

    The fourth year, they had just gotten one of these tests, which I was required to take.

    Super awkward conversation when they had to tell me that according to the new test, I wasn’t an appropriate hire. Alas, if only they’d had some other way of knowing if I could do the job.

  68. Frankie Bergstein*

    As someone who has picked up the slack for coworkers over the years, I’m happy to do it when they have something like a dire health issue that they can’t help. However, if it’s something that they could have planned for (and not dropped the work on me), I have less patience.

    Also – and this is crotchety – if I am going to pick up the slack or inconvenience myself to accommodate colleagues on a consistent basis, I need that to be reciprocated and/or recognized by the colleague or by management. I feel resentful for all the times I have carried other people’s weight. Management and the colleagues were happy to let me do it and tight fisted when it came to recognition OR me not having to do it in the future.

    I left!

  69. Rara Avis*

    The private school where I teach has before care at 7 a.m. and after care until 6 p.m. (included in tuition) because the vast majority of our families have both parents working. Lots of kids do all their extracurriculars at school (sports, performing arts, classes, etc.) My friends who have kids in local public schools have a terrible time covering the before and after hours, especially for middle school — an 11 year old is still really too young to be on their own starting a 2 or 3 p.m., but there are very few programs available for that age.

  70. Observer*

    #4 – Adult photos

    If you have to ask, then the answer is yes.

    I’m betting that you are the person who showed the pictures, in an environment where it would be unexpected or after being informed that some people don’t want to see it.

    If you haven’t done it yet, just DON’T. There is absolutely no upside to it, and a ton of potential downside, even if you don’t give a flying hoot about anyone else’s comfort in the workplace.

    If you are annoyed that someone else complained about the pictures and are trying to prove that they are “too sensitive”, do yourself a favor and back off. This is not a question that would be asked by anyone with any consideration for others, but pushing it is not going to go well for you either.

    1. I'm Meeehlting*

      I surprised myself by my own reaction once, when a fellow member of a community business support network sent around an email of some snowmen in a compromising position. Among friends? Totally ok. Did I feel friendly toward her? Absolutely. Did I consider it inappropriate? Yes. And not even skin on display.

    2. Irish Teacher.*

      I assumed it was the other way around, that they had either been shown such photos or knew of coworkers who were and were wondering if it was worth reporting to HR as sexual harrassment or if it was more something they should just ask the other person to stop. Or that they had been called “too sensitive” when they asked the person to stop and were now wondering if they could take it higher and make a complaint.

      I could be wrong, but I feel that the sort of person who would show such a picture around wouldn’t even consider the possibility of it being sexual harrassment (though I guess they could have had somebody accuse them of it).

  71. HailRobonia*

    I don’t care who’s playlist we are listening to… even mine… but I can’t concentrate if there are songs with lyrics playing.

  72. 1-800-BrownCow*

    LW #1: This letter made me reminisce my previous job where I sat just outside the office of a guy in his early 50s who would repeatedly play the same music every day for weeks on end before switching to the next. Yearly from Nov 1 thru Christmas, it was non-stop Christmas music. Once for 2 months straight I heard the Titanic soundtrack all day, every day. I’m sure even Celine Dion would have begged him to stop. Then, the one I actually had a lot of funny moments with, was when he had a Disney animated movies soundtrack. As noted in my first sentence, this guy was in his early 50s. His children were in their late 20s and no grandkids yet, but apparently he was a big fan of Disney animated movies. It was great when people stopped by my desk about something work related and then stopped mid sentence with a look on their face and ask “Is that…the song from Aladdin???” Or Lion King or Little Mermaid or whatever song was playing. The confusion and then realization that this grown man proudly played Disney animated movie show tunes at work was quite entertaining. I mean I personally enjoy “singing” (or loudly belting out words) along to the songs when watching a Disney movie with my kids when they were young, from the comfort of our home where no one would hear me. But not so much while I was working though. Hearing the same music over and over every single day for weeks on end did get on my nerves pretty quickly.

    1. EvilQueenRegina*

      This is where we need Balthazar from Supernatural!

      (For those who don’t watch the show: this character hated the movie and the song so much he went back in time and saved the Titanic, so they wouldn’t exist.)

  73. newfiscalyear*

    Re LW4: Once, not thinking about my audience, I added a comic strip to a work email to the people on my team. The comic caption said “Nobody likes reverse centaur!” and showed a man’s head and a bare bum. It was funny, right, har har? After I sent it and my gross error was pointed out to me, I was MORTIFIED, to the point of tears. I couldn’t believe my lack of judgment. Thankfully, I didn’t get in trouble. So while, I may be ok with seeing a photo of a nude celebrity personally, I realize that not everyone is like me. Tough lesson learned.

  74. Beveled Edge*

    #1 sounds like the hell that is the “Christmas season,” which apparently starts before Halloween nowadays. >2 months of the same bad music over and over and over and over any time you need to step inside a store…

    If there is any social blow-back from asking for a break from the music do focus on your work, you might consider noise-canceling headphones or the kind of ear protection worn at construction sites. I had a neurodivergent colleague who used those ear covers because he needed complete silence to work.

  75. Prefer pets*

    thanks for suggesting Tidal…I’ll have to look them up. I’ve had a subscription to Pandora forever but they are driving me nuts constantly trying to turn my very, very different themed stations into the same 5 bands.

  76. George*

    #2 reminds me of my first tech job. I still don’t know how I got in. The parent company that owned MANY software companies required everyone to pass this huge SAT basically. I heard it was like a 95% fail rate. I took it online, and again in person to prove I wasn’t cheating. I later heard they shortened it as too many people, especially people without English as a first language, were not making it in, but they still kept it.

  77. justcurious18338021*

    #2 – That timed test must be from EPIC or some place similar. I had an interview for a COMMUNICATIONS PROJECT MANAGEMENT ROLE and they wanted me to do calculus, logic problems, all described above etc, AND I had to give them access to my webcam to record me while I did it. I told them it was insane and I wouldn’t do it, and they said whatever position I ever wanted there, I would have to do this to even get an interview. They will only be able to hire a certain type of person with this and miss out on so, so much talent. I feel for you. Unsure if they will listen.

  78. Copyright Economist*

    I hate to be the one who says this, but …
    The terms of service of Spotify indicate that it is for personal use only. If you want to play Spotify in a public space, like a workplace, there should be a subscription to Spotify for Business.

    1. Observer*

      Nope.

      If the LW were playing it for their store, that would be one thing. Also if it were playing all over the building. Coming off someone’s computer in a shared office is not what those licenses are for.

  79. Leif*

    LW1: Could you make a Spotify group playlist where people can all add songs from their own account? if everyone added a playlist’s worth of music it would quickly be the length of a workday. Additionally, there is definitely nothing wrong with asking for the music to be off for a bit or lower so you can focus, etc. I have experienced similar situations and was always overthinking how much of a deal it actually was.

    1. The OG Sleepless*

      That’s sort of what we did at my place years ago, except it was a Pandora station. I don’t even remember what the station’s official name was, but people kept thumbs-upping or thumbs-downing all kinds of things until the algorithm was playing a really strange mix all day, every day. If anything came on that somebody really hated, they would skip it. It was kind of fun because you literally never knew what was going to play next.

  80. Sciencer*

    LW#2, it sounds like some of these extracurriculars are during the school day – to me that suggests this was happening on summer vacation or other school breaks. If so, it’s useful to know that finding day camps/other coverage for kids during breaks can be horrendously difficult. In my area you have to be logged in to sign up at the exact moment it opens, usually 6 months in advance, to have any hope of getting a spot. It’s entirely possible that this coworker has cobbled together non-ideal daytime care/activities for their kids.

  81. Sick of Certain Songs*

    LW1 here, appreciate all the advice and commiseration on (sometimes extremely) limited playlists at work! I took the advice of one of the commenters to just pick a really long variety playlist available on Spotify and it’s already helping a lot, not to mention my coworkers seem to be enjoying having some different genres thrown into the mix. While one of them directly mentioned how often some songs were repeating beforehand, interestingly another one said they hadn’t noticed at all.

  82. More than one, actually*

    heh heh yeah, I mean… you’d have to be some kind of lunatic to create a playlist that will last you for 3 full days right? ha ha ha

    1. samwise*

      I’ve got playlists like this. I’ve been adding to them for years. Very easy to make a really really long playlist if you don’t create it all at once.

      1. More than one, actually*

        Two were created all at once but that’s because my music taste ranges from classical/international folk music through bluegrass and into noise/drone.
        I’m still adding to them though. :)

    2. Annie*

      Surely you jest, but if you think of all the songs you’ve heard throughout your life that sounded good at one point in time and put them all together, especially if you’re a “music person” always listening out for the next great thing, you’ll have enough for all that time and then some!

      1. More than one, actually*

        No, I really do have playlists that will last for days! I listen to such a wide range of music and they’re always being updated now because of great new songs/arrangements, etc., that my entire digital music collection would take probably a week to get through.
        It’s awesome. :)

  84. EvilQueenRegina*

    #1 reminds me of my university days, when my then-boyfriend and his friends always liked to go to the same pub. Some guy who was also a regular used to play Summer of 69 on the jukebox All. The. Time.

    It was years before I could bear to listen to that song again.

    1. The OG Sleepless*

      A friend of a friend in college made himself really, really popular with the locals at a Waffle House one night when he played the Waffle House Song 6 or 8 times in a row. How I miss jukeboxes.

    2. allathian*

      One of my favorites! But I wouldn’t want to listen to any song that often, either.

      When I worked retail the store had 4-hour tapes that looked like white VHS tapes on continuous loop that the store manager would switch every few weeks. The Christmas tape was the only one that bugged me after a while, that was only on between the Monday following the 1st Sunday in Advent and the day before 12th Night, though. (We were closed on Sunday unless the Saturday or Monday were closed for a holiday.)

    3. Irish Teacher.*

      What is it about that song?! When I was at college, there was one year when every Thursday night a group in a room near mine would play it on repeat until the early hours of the morning. At top volume. I think they might have put it on in one room and then gone down to a room down the corridor.

  85. Random Answer Generator*

    LW 3 here – I appreciate all the feedback and the confirmation that this is indeed bananapants. (And btw I meant no disrespect to those who know and love the word “obfuscate”, it was just one example of many I could have used to explain that the test questions are not relevant to our work.) A couple points of clarification-
    – None of our jobs are time critical to the point required to pass this test. We are just a regular company, not emergency medical providers or firefighters or the like.
    – HR did not implement this in a vacuum, it was done under the direction of executive management
    – HR listened to my feedback but does not have the authority to change course unless/until the test falls out of favor of executive management
    – I fully realize this is just a symptom of larger dysfunction.
    – I am actively looking to leave this company. Until that happens, I will continue to fight against this test. In my opinion, it is biased, discriminatory, useless, and just plain wrong.

    1. Harriet Vane*

      I’ll be rooting for you! Hopefully someone will anonymously send this letter, the excellent reply, and the comments to your executive management.

  86. Harriet Vane*

    Re. #1, I recently listened to a fascinating joint episode of the podcasts “Switched on Pop” and “Gastropod” about sound design and acoustic engineering for public spaces (mostly restaurants), and the last part of the episode talked about creating the perfect playlist. Apparently the best possible playlist is at least 40 hours long, doesn’t include too many smash hits but lots of pleasantly familiar tunes, is curated for lower- and higher-energy times in the rhythm of a restaurant’s day, AND has about 20% of its content switched out for new songs every couple of months, so that the whole playlist turns over every year. This is such a huge effort that businesses who can afford it hire playlist curators, which sounds like a fantastic job but is probably much more work than it sounds (and definitely requires more musical knowledge than I have). You can listen to the episode here:
    https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/switched-on-pop/id934552872?i=1000655898844

  87. asdf*

    #3 I interviewed with a company like this. I’d been through 3 interviews, and they made it clear I was their top candidate but said I had to take this 30 minute timed word problem and logic problem test before they could make an offer. I work in an unrelated field and it’s been 20 years since high school. I took it, I didn’t finish, I’m sure I failed, and then I withdrew because I didn’t want to work for a company that wasted my time on something that so irrelevant. Who knows what other garbage measures they have for real employees.

  88. ZK*

    Years ago, I was a key holder in a big box office supply store. We had satelite radio. They played the same Christmas songs every year, but at least didn’t start them until Black Friday. Until one year they started them super early. I had accidentally figured out how to change the “station” after a snow storm that knocked the satelite receiver out for a bit. Every morning I would walk in, go straight to the little closet room that held the system and change the station to normal music and then go about my job, while the rest of the employees cheered.

    By the next morning, corporate would have changed it back. Eventually the GM got a nasty message from corporate about not playing the correct station and the GM told them there was something wrong with the Christmas station and it wouldn’t play correctly. We got away with it until Black Friday when I finally gave in to the inevitable and settled in to be tormented by multiple versions of Marshmallow World and Silent Night for 8 hours straight. That was my last Christmas there, and I still refuse to listen to Marshmallow World.

  89. Merry xmas*

    Jimminy Christmas, if 200 songs is too few you’ve never worked retail at Christmastime. I work in a event venue that puts on a holiday show, I have to listen to the same 6 songs on loop during the show, and was treated like an utter nutbag when I requested they add 3-4 more songs to the playlist. If you have it in your power to change the playlist, your in a way better position than I am, take control before you hate all of those songs

  90. Agrippina*

    Sounds like the Wonderlic test. We use it (CPA firm) to test all potential new hires. We don’t have a minimum/maximum score requirement, but it’s absolutely the case that those who have scored well on the test have historically been the best performing employees (having both the necessary verbal skills for client communications and mathematical facility.)

Comments are closed.