aggravating coworker, boss wanted me to share my LinkedIn login, and more

by Alison Green on October 25, 2024

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

1. How do I stop being so aggravated by a coworker?

I have a coworker who is a kind person with a lot of great qualities. They’re good at their job and an asset to the team. There is, of course, a big BUT: I find them to be a ton of emotional labor to deal with. I’m not looking to change their behavior; it’s pretty benign if exhausting, and definitely not causing any real work problems. I’m hoping for ways to respond, better framing, or personal mantras that will stop the slow creep into BEC territory.

They like to show enthusiasm by asking to participate — everything from “That looks good, you should bring me a bagel next time!” to “The complicated costume piece you’re making is so cool, make me one?” or “A picnic with your friends on the weekend sounds great, where should I meet you? Haha.” Logically I know they aren’t expecting a bagel, costume piece, or invitation to a picnic with my friends who they’ve never met, but I have no idea how to respond! I’ve tried deflecting with things like, “Oh, I’m never making another one!” or responding with a clear no or not responding and changing the subject. Mostly I’ve resorted to just sharing less to avoid it, which opened a can of worms of the “we never talk anymore, what’s up, are you okay?” variety. Clearly, I need to find a way to be okay with the interaction and move the conversation along.

They are also a big sharer, which I don’t have an issue with, I also like sharing what’s going on in my life as a way to connect with coworkers. The problem is that they start a conversation with a carousel of “Remember my weekend plans from three weeks ago? With Parker? Where we argued but I hadn’t talked to them since?” I probably remember the plans vaguely, but the details slip away quickly! I’m more than happy to have the conversation this is opening, or even listen to a “on the previous episode” recap, but the quiz makes me feel like a terrible person who doesn’t care about my coworkers.

They’ve self-disclosed with some neurodivergence and struggles with anxiety, and they interact this way with everyone at work. I just need to find a way to let it roll off my back like it does everybody else.

You are over-thinking it and making it harder than it has to be! From this point forward, when this coworker invites themselves to participate in future bagels/sewing projects/picnics/etc., your strategy will be to assume they aren’t serious and respond accordingly — which means much more lightly. You say that logically you know they’re not really inviting themselves along or making a claim on your bagels or sewing time, but you’re still responding as if you have the emotional burden of fending them off anyway. Give yourself the gift of treating it with less seriousness! So:

Coworker: “That looks good, you should bring me a bagel next time!”
You: “Ha, yeah, they’re good.”

Coworker: “Make me one of those costumes?
You: “Sure, just find me the 3,000 hours it takes to do them!”
or
You: “My favorite part of it was…” (In other words, you don’t need to engage with what you’re hearing as a request. You can take it as them just expressing interest and enthusiasm and continue as if they’d said, “Oh, cool!”)

Coworker: “A picnic with your friends on the weekend sounds great, where should I meet you? Haha.”
You: “Haha! Yeah, the weather is supposed to be nice. So (topic change)…”

Similarly, you don’t need to put so much weight on not remembering small details they shared previously. You can say, “I don’t remember — fill me in?” or “I think so? Tell me anyway.” You’re not a terrible person for not remembering everything and I doubt they think you are either; that’s something you’re putting on yourself. They clearly like you and aren’t offended; you’re borrowing trouble by wanting to ascribe negative meaning to it!

The whole theme of this answer is: lighter. Receive them with more lightness, and respond with more lightness. It’s only a big deal because you’re framing it as a big deal. You can choose not to.

2. My boss wanted me to share my LinkedIn login

Last week’s question “My company wants me to share its posts on my personal LinkedIn” reminded me of a situation I was in a few years ago, and I’m wondering if you have some thoughts on how I could have better managed it.

I was in a role that was sales-oriented: I would meet with prospects, pitch our company’s business, write proposals, etc., but the job description did not include prospecting for leads.

We had an outside group to generate leads for us. Their one and only lead generation tactic was leveraging LinkedIn. They asked me and other folks at my company for our personal LinkedIn account login credentials, so that they could pose as us and reach out to people via LinkedIn to see if they were interested in hiring our company.

I said absolutely not. My boss didn’t understand why, but ultimately didn’t force me to share my login. Instead, my boss told me to use the scripts developed by the outside group to reach out to people myself (who I did not know or have any real connection with) to “grow my network” and prospect for leads.

Extremely reluctantly, I followed directions. This meant scouring LinkedIn for people with titles that seemed like the sort of folks who would be hiring our company, who also had something else in common with me. I’m talking the most tenuous of connections — we both attended the same massive university, or lived in the same giant metropolitan area — by saying something like “hey, I’m building my network, can we connect?” and then if some sucker actually said yes, it was off to the sales pitch.

Needless to say, this sucked and was not productive in any way. I made very few contacts and we never got one legitimate lead from this. And I felt super dirty doing it — my personal LinkedIn is supposed to represent my actual network, not a bunch of people I cold called.

Anyway, I pushed back a lot and we finally stopped, but my boss was unhappy that this wonderful method for finding new business didn’t pan out. When we had layoffs, I wound up being on the list, and I can’t help but think this was in part due to my not being a team player with the LinkedIn stuff. But this was bananapants, right? What could I have done differently here?

Yes, bananapants — particularly expecting you to turn over your login so someone else could pose as you and say who knows what to people in your network.

I don’t love your framing of “what could I have done differently?” because you’re not to blame for not thinking up a way to convince your boss that this was both slimy and ineffective. I suppose you could have simply not done what they were asking but reported that you had (how would they know? I’m not a fan of lying but I’m also not a fan of pressure to misuse your network this way) or you could have told your boss you were getting angry messages from people who were then blocking you so you couldn’t continue without decimating your network. Or you could have held firm from the get-go and said you weren’t going to use your account that way, and pointed out that lead generation wasn’t part of your job (although I suspect you had the type of boss who would have responded that lead generation is everyone’s job).

All this was really about was that your boss sucked.

3. Navigating a vendor relationship after escalating an issue

I work in a high-profile scientific library. At the end of each year, we update our collection of journal and service subscriptions for the next year. It’s a busy period and involves a lot of negotiation with providers, agents, scientific societies, and so on, as well as internal budget negotiations. I handle both, but I’m not a manager, just a librarian.

Last year, one of our long-standing vendors didn’t respond to my invoice request for 1.5 months. I tried several approaches: (1) emailed their only salesperson, Jane, from different email addresses to ensure my message wouldn’t go to spam, (2) emailed the head of the sales department and tech support, (3) called their sales and general public service line—this was very difficult as we are in opposite time zones, and I had to make the calls late at night but I reached voicemail, (4) sent direct messages to their social media pages, and (5) faxed them.

Despite all these efforts, I still received no response. Time was running out for budget planning, and my manager wasn’t helpful. She told me she didn’t know what to do but emphasized that we needed their materials.

I decided to email their C-level executives using the email addresses provided on their website. I got my manager’s approval and wrote an individual letter to three people, apologized for taking an unusual and desperate step, didn’t mention Jane, and simply explained that I was having trouble reaching them and asked for assistance. I emphasized that maybe it was me who was doing something incorrectly here.

The next day, I found about 15 emails from C-level executives. They were apologetic, cc’d sales and other people I don’t know, and promised to help. That same day (night for me), Jane finally responded and her email had a very sad tone. I could sense how bad she felt. In the end, we renewed our subscription. I thanked both the C-level executives and Jane and that was the end of it. However, I feel very badly that I might have caused harm to Jane. I’m not sure if there were any consequences for her, but I know she didn’t lose her job.

Now I need to repeat the negotiation process with them for the upcoming year, and I’m unsure how to proceed. My manager has quit, so I have no one to consult with. Should I reach out to Jane again (she’s still the sales contact) or should I approach it differently?

You don’t have anything to feel badly about. You made repeated efforts to reach someone who could help you, including some efforts that were truly above and beyond what most people would do. This is a company offering a subscription for sale, and it’s reasonable to assume that they will be set up to respond to requests for it without you having to go on an onerous quest to make it happen. And judging by their executives’ immediate response when you escalated it to them, it’s clearly something they want their organization taking care of.

You didn’t go to Jane’s boss after she didn’t answer you within a day or because she sounded a little tired on a call or something else minor. You went to her boss after truly unusual efforts to reach her weren’t successful. (Social media messages! Faxes!)

Who knows what was going on with Jane — maybe she’s overworked, maybe it’s not her job anymore, maybe she was on a three-month bender. You don’t need to figure it out! You’re just someone trying to buy their product. Whatever problems occurred on their end, they can handle those internally.

For the upcoming year, follow whatever process they’ve laid out for you to follow. If that’s contacting Jane again, contact Jane again. You don’t need to tiptoe around what happened last time; if anything, Jane should be bending over backwards to get you helped quickly this time (and likely will after last time).

The only thing to do differently this time is that if she doesn’t respond to your email, don’t resort to multiple email addresses, late night calls, etc. — that’s way too much. Instead, if you don’t hear back in a reasonable amount of time, go back to the C-suite execs who got it handled last time and say, “Apologies for bothering you, but I had trouble getting our subscription renewed last year until you stepped in and I’m concerned the same thing is happening this year. I emailed ADDRESS on DATE and haven’t heard back yet. Can you let me know how to take care of this, both for this year and for future years?”

Separately: any chance you have a pattern of being excessively deferential in situations where it’s not called for? It really is okay to deal with people straightforwardly and to escalate when you’re not getting what you need from a vendor, without blaming yourself for problems that were clearly on their end.

4. Should people be able to prove summer jobs they worked decades ago?

I had a politics conversation this week, specifically about Kamala Harris’ claim that she worked at McDonald’s in the summer of 1983, and the Trump team claiming that’s a lie. This person said he thought it must be a lie because how could you not prove you worked at a job?

I tried to point out that this was a summer job from decades ago before everything was stored digitally, and I absolutely have jobs like that from only 20 years ago! Jobs where the company has since closed, or everyone who would have known me has left and the records aren’t kept, where I didn’t keep in touch with anyone, and I definitely haven’t held on to my old tax records from decades past. Even the IRS doesn’t promise to keep anything past six years, according to their website.

This person was still skeptical that anyone would be in that position, but it got me thinking! In your experience, how likely is it that people who have been active in the workforce for decades have an essentially unprovable past job? Are Kamala and I outliers, or is this common?

It’s extremely common. I am confident there is zero way I could prove I worked at TCBY the summer after I graduated high school, and that wasn’t as long ago as Kamala Harris’s McDonald’s job. Nor could I prove my Mrs. Fields’ Cookies job from high school, or the three months I spent being extremely cool working in a record shop at 17. You will just have to take my word for it that I ate a ton of white chocolate macadamia nut cookies and listened to way too much soft rock holiday music on repeat.

This was before everything was digitized, and who saves records from fast food jobs decades ago? It’s a ridiculous and impossible (and politically motivated) standard to hold anyone to.

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{ 41 comments }

{ 41 comments… read them below or add one }

  1. Daria grace*

    #2. Never ever hand over your credentials to anyone, especially not an external firm. It could easily get your LinkedIn account suspended if LinkedIn notices suspicious patterns of activity. It also puts you at risk of identity fraud if they loose your credentials or play loose with details found in your account.

    #4, I’ve got short term jobs from 10 years ago (so well within the digital era) that would take a bit of hunting to prove. I don’t remember the name of my manager for the seasonal role and they were also a temp anyway who wouldn’t be locatable or remember me. My bank only provides access to statements which would prove my pay going back 7 years. Maybe in the back of my cupboard there’s a tax return document or in the deep recess of my emails maybe there’s something mentioning it but unlikely to be something confirming all the specifics you’d want about a very recent job

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  2. Annie Edison*

    I was just thinking about the question of proving old employment recently while filling out job applications! I worked a retail job 20ish years ago at a department store chain that no longer exists (shout out to Mervyn’s!), and it’s been long enough that I couldn’t tell you the name of a single supervisor, let alone find contact info to verify employment. I’ve moved several times since and while it’s possible I have an old pay stub tucked away somewhere, the odds are slim to none that’s the case. That’s just going 20 years back; I have no idea how you’d prove employment at McDonalds in the 80s!

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    2. Artemesia*

      I could not provide any evidence or employment details for the greasy spoon I worked for as a teen, the college fashion board and retail job at Penneys or even the summer I worked in an institution for the developmentally disabled. All this long before computerization and I doubt anyone has those records anymore. And of course the second point ‘she never put it on her resume’. Sheesh. Who puts that on their resume once out of their teens?

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    3. UKDancer*

      I worked on a small gift shop when I was 16 as a Saturday job in the 1990s. It was owned by 2 ladies. The shop has been closed for years. One owner is deaf, the other is probably dead (she’d be over 100 if still alive) so no proof and I’ve no payslips (and can’t even remember if I ever got any).

      I worked in a Tie Rack shop near university as a student. The chain went bust over 10 years ago. I can vaguely remember some of the others but not well. No idea if records exist. 25 years is a long time.

      None of this goes on my CV because it’s got no relationship to my current job.

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  3. Theda Marinelli*

    I think it’s odd that, given the press this has received, that no-one has come forward and said “oh, yeah, I worked with her” or “yes, I was her manager” or “I was her friend at the time, and she did”.
    Clearly, however, a non-public-figure person would have trouble proving any short-term jobs even less old than that.

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    1. Ariaflame*

      Given the right wing’s propensity to send death threats, I can imagine people being unwilling to do so. Plus, it was the 80s. There’s a good chance people who worked with her didn’t pay enough attention to remember who all their co-workers were, especially if turnover was high.

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      1. coffee*

        I can’t name a single person I worked with at my high-school fast food job, and that was less than 40 years ago. It’s the kind of job where your shifts change a lot and you work with a lot of different people.

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        1. allathian*

          I can’t name a single person I worked with at the job before my current one. I’ve been here for 17 years and I’m on my 6th manager at this job, so I severely doubt it’s an issue.

          I’m in Finland, and the legal requirement for employers to keep employment information is 10 years. For normal security checks that’s the period they’re looking at. It’s only if you’re into Top Secret territory that they’ll look further. It helps that we have mandatory direct deposit, as in companies are breaking the law if they pay in any other way except by bank transfers, and they’re legally required to withhold income tax. The corollary is that a poste restante is sufficient to open a bank account, and it won’t be closed on you even if you lose your home.

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      2. Pink Sprite*

        I worked at McDonalds in the 80’s. I couldn’t tell you one of my coworkers, minus my boss. That’s it. And I do know that there were fellow high school students who worked there, but ask me who? No idea.

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    2. Daria grace*

      I don’t find it odd at all. I mostly have a decent memory but in jobs I’ve worked with high turn over much more recently than that I couldn’t still tell you for sure who many of my co-workers were. As for friends I knew back in high school days I’m sure some worked at McDonald’s but I couldn’t tell you now in my 30s which ones it was.

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    3. KaciHall*

      I live in the same small town I went to high school in. I worked at an ice cream shop that hired mostly high school girls. (Which, in a small town, means I probably knew all of them, or was friends of a friend with them.)

      I can name 4 of them, first and last names. There were probably 20 girls on the schedule at any given time, and the ones I remember are someone I’d been in every class with since second grade, my best friend’s cousin, and two girls who were absolutely insane and made every shift entertaining. (Though honestly, I could have their last names mixed up.) And that’s from only twenty years ago. make it 40 and I probably won’t even remember them. How many people would?

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    4. Forgetful Fanny*

      If I was one of them and I remembered (doubtful in and of itself) I wouldn’t say a word as that would only invite unimaginable scrutiny into my life with ppl trying to prove me a liar and digging digging digging. And even people who believed me might be bothersome, asking what she was like, what I remember… Nah.

      Also, and I’m trying really hard not to break the rules and be political so I hope this isn’t crossing the line: in the context of the choices, that’s not why someone would not vote for her in my humble opinion. Even if that’s what they tell themselves, it’s not.

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      1. Daria grace*

        Absolutely. If it were a non-controversial celebrity you might tell people about it as a fun fact. It would make no sense to do so about a politician in a very toxic election season unless you remembered things incredibly relevant to their candidacy

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    5. Irish Teacher.*

      I dunno. I doubt I’d necessarily remember somebody I worked with for a few months 40 years ago.

      Heck, I know I worked with our Minister for Education only 8 years ago but I only know that because I read what school she worked in and I subbed there for a month or two. Thinking about it, I do remember an English teacher I THINK had her surname (I might have borrowed her copy of School for Rock to do for film studies with a class) but I couldn’t say for sure. She does have a super-common surname and a not uncommon first name and looks like the stereotype of an Englush teacher, which makes it harder!

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    6. Agent Diane*

      I worked at a KFC in the late 80s. I can remember incidents. I can remember the people in a non-specific way (big fry cook, mousy girl unsuited to the front counter). I couldn’t name a single one of them even a year after I quit, let alone now.

      Can you name people you worked with 30+ years ago?

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  5. Audiophile*

    I love it when people say they’re skeptical of Harri’s claim she worked for McDonald’s. There are so many better, more exciting jobs to make up than McDonald’s.

    I’m pretty sure I couldn’t prove that I worked most of the retail jobs I did, and this was less than 20 years ago. My first retail job said all I needed to do to resign was fill out one piece of paper with my end date and sign. I did, and years later, when I reapplied for a different role, the company claimed they couldn’t prove I’d ever left.

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    1. The Prettiest Curse*

      A while back, I had to compile a list of every job I’ve ever had for UK state pension purposes. If I hadn’t still had the payslips, it would have been impossible. There were so many temp office jobs I had 20+ years ago that I did for a week or two that I didn’t remember at all! If I totally forgot about the job, the chances of me remembering anyone else who worked there are non-existent.

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    2. ChattyDelle*

      I’m slightly older than Ms Harris. I worked at Kentucky Fried Chicken, but I don’t know if that was the summer between high school and college, or the summer after my freshman year in college. It’s a tiny detail about an insignificant job over 40 yrs ago. Lots and lots of middle class American kids worked these jobs. It’s a Nothingburger except for people desperate to find a “gotcha”

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  6. Pink Sprite*

    Re: letter 2: No one. Absolutely no one gets any of my passwords. Especially at work, especially my boss.
    My very own sister (my closest relative) doesn’t have any of my passwords. She knows where to find them should something happen to me, but now? Heck no. I love and trust her, but I don’t share passwords. The same goes for her.
    To give such information to a colleague or boss is unthinkable.

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  7. Certaintroublemaker*

    On Allison Gill’s Daily Beans podcast Monday, she actually tried to verify employment of her own high school McDonald’s job and got caught in the endless loop of 800 phone number menu trees and websites that referred her back to places that couldn’t help. So, no, Kamala is not going to be able to verify that job unless she is a hoarder of tax documents all the way back to high school. (I guess I won’t be able to, either.)

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  8. Random Academic Cog*

    I’m younger than Kamala Harris (though not by much), and I absolutely could not locate the Burger King and McDonald’s I worked at while I was in high school. And except for the one coworker I ended up dating, I couldn’t begin to tell you who any of the rest of them were. I think that’s pretty darned normal for those types of jobs, especially when we’re teenagers.

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  10. Honoria Lucasta*

    I think the advice to letter writer #1 is spot on. By replying to the tone/intent of the coworker’s remarks rather than the literal words, it’s much easier to treat the comments as un-frustrating.

    I sympathize, though, especially when the coworker uses “should” language. I’ve tried to stop using that myself in the last few years, i.e. “I would love to get coffee with you sometime” instead of “we should get coffee”. I noticed that it annoyed me, especially when coming from one particular person I knew who I’m not close to anymore, so I resolved not to impose it on others.

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    1. NforKnowledge*

      That’s a very good point, I will also be more mindful of “should” phrasing in the future!

      Though I think the coworker is being even more rude in their phrasing by not just saying “we should” but “YOU should”; the first is commonly interpreted as a request but I can’t interpret the second as anything but an imperious command (though presumably in jest). Maybe it’s having toddlers but I would get sick of being jokingly bossed around SO fast

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      1. duinath*

        Yeah, it would rub me so wrong. Get me this, make me this, I’m inviting myself to this, I expect you to remember every detail of everything I tell you… I believe LW that this is a person who means well, but I’m in BEC territory just hearing about it. I don’t think they’re very funny jokes, I guess is what I’m saying.

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  11. Thommasina*

    The Internal Revenue Service and Social Security would have a record of employment history for those jobs paid other than in cash or kind.

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  13. Snoozing not schmoozing*

    I had a job for six years, from my mid 20s to early 30s. Other than showing up on my Social Security records, I’d have no way to prove those years; the company no longer exists, anyone in management is dead, and I have no idea what happened to any of the younger workers, even the few whose names I vaguely remember. If I weren’t retired, it would probably be a pain to get the SS proof. There are brief jobs I had before that that I could never remember enough details to prove.

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  14. Captain dddd-cccc-ddWdd*

    OP1 (“you should invite me to your next picnic”, etc) – I feel like they have internalised the “x sounds good. Jokingly suggest including me next time” format and is just over-applying it in an attempt to be friendly and just slightly missing the mark. I’m sure most of us at some point have had an interaction with someone like “oh where are you going on your vacation?” – “Italy” – “ohhh have you got space for me in your suitcase?”

    So yes, just take these remarks in the “being friendly script” spirit they are intended. I might play along (although conscious of whether they would “get” it), otherwise just continue the ‘script’ using the format of “friendly acknowledgement of the joke – next conversational turn”.

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    1. Anglonemi*

      Came here to say exactly this, thank you Captain!
      This is a brilliant example of the “double empathy problem” – OP, if you didn’t know the person was ND, would you be concerned about their (over)use of this conversational trope or responding as if it was a serious request?

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  15. Elsa*

    LW1, the advice given is excellent, but if it were me I’d probably push back hard, once or twice, on the assumption that I’m supposed to remember details of my coworker’s life:
    “Remember my weekend plans three weeks ago?”
    “I don’t even remember *my own* weekend plans three weeks ago!”
    Or:
    “Remember my weekend plans three weeks ago?”
    “Nope! I don’t remember anything if I don’t write it down!”

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  16. Jay*

    I wish I could somehow prove that I was the A&W Bear standing on the roadside and enticing drivers by to come have a hamburger or hot weiner some 30 years ago.

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  17. Former Summer Lifeguard*

    I’m suprised by your response to #4, about summer job history. I recently started trying to track down my job history to start planning for retirement, contacted Social Security, and received a print-out in a matter of weeks with a list of everywhere I worked, including dates and amounts of pay. Admittedly I’m a bit younger than Kamala so my records only went back to the 90’s, but still, I live abroad and was able to access my full history in less than 3 weeks, including interim work.

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