giving notice when boss is an abusive jerk, vendors keep sending unhealthy food, and more

by Alison Green on October 28, 2024

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

1. Do I have to give notice when my boss is an abusive jerk?

I have worked at my current job over three years. I am in the legal field and, because of the small geographic area, most of the people in this field know each other. My employer has had a very high turnover rate for such a small office. I am now the only paralegal left. My boss is so toxic and plays so many games that most quit. I have developed hives (I break out every Sunday from stress before going into work on Monday) and an ulcer. I keep up with the old paralegals and one has been diagnosed with PTSD from being there six months. Another has tremors now. We formed a prior and current employee support group with two more paralegals to help people get through the experience. Whenever there is a new hire, we try to pull them aside and give them the tools to just survive. We can’t warn people ahead of time to not apply because we signed a non-disclosure agreement.

My manager has already threatened to fire me several times. She gives the same canned speech to all of the employees whether you have made a mistake or are doing spectacularly well under the circumstances because she likes to see people cry and be flustered. It’s a game to her. She also hides items that are needed like client files, changes dates on the calendar without telling anyone, changes passwords that we need and says she hasn’t, and gaslights like you wouldn’t believe.

When the other staff quit one by one, once they gave notice she treated them even worse for that two weeks (as if that was possible). I don’t want to go through that. I am also hesitant because this woman belongs to all of these legal committees and organizations and volunteers her time to legal charities (this is all a mask to generate business, not because she is a good person), and I am sure she will drag my name through the mud in legal circles. I have finally secured another job and can now escape. But I am not sure what to do about notice given her behavior. I also don’t know if I can take any more abuse, especially an added layer because I tell her I am quitting.

You don’t need to stay the two weeks. You can have a health condition that you need to attend to immediately that unfortunately makes it impossible for you work your notice period. (This sounds like it wouldn’t even be untrue.)

I hear you that you’re worried that she’ll badmouth you in your small field — but isn’t she going to do that no matter what? If she’s going to trash-talk you either way, there’s no point in staying and being abused for two more weeks. If I’m wrong about that and she doesn’t trash people once they’re gone as long as they leave professionally … well, you still don’t need to work your notice period. You can still have a health issue that makes it impossible for you to stay, or if she’s abusive you can tell her that today will be your last day if that continues. Or maybe you’re someone who can handle a final two weeks since you know that you’ll be gone at the end of them and can let her bad behavior roll off you because she’ll never have access to you again. If so, great. But if not, then really, skip the notice period and cite a health emergency; you’re sorry but need to leave immediately to attend to it.

And then run that non-disclosure agreement by a lawyer because there’s a decent chance it’s written in a way that would be unenforceable in regard to the specific things you’d want to share with others.

Related:
can I leave before my notice period is up if my boss is being a jerk?

2. Vendors keep sending unhealthy food

I’m writing on behalf of my brother, who works at a small in-patient healthcare facility. Based on the nature of the facility, they have a lot of vendors, other organizations looking for them to make referrals to their patients, etc. Because of this, they get a lot of people “courting” them with little branded swag gifts, as well as bags of candy, meals, cookies, donuts, etc. While it would personally annoy me to have so many pens and pads of paper and coffee cups floating around, the bags of swag gifts are not that big of a concern. But what he and some of his coworkers are starting to have an issue with is the pretty constant barrage of unhealthy treats. This week alone they’ve gotten three big boxes of cookies for the office, smaller individual boxes of cookies for each manager, several bags of candy, and a catered breakfast.

My brother has been struggling with some pretty severe health issues including trying to lose a significant amount of weight. While it’s obviously not anyone else’s responsibility to help him with that, he is not the only employee who is finding the constant presence of sweets and food to be hard to resist. Do you have any advice for how they could ask for healthier options or to politely decline them altogether? Although at least a few of his coworkers have expressed the same sentiments that my brother has, he also doesn’t want to disrupt something that some people may be perfectly happy with.

Having had similar issues in the past, I know that these vendor companies have budgets for this type of thing and their higher-ups are expecting that they spend the money and spread the goodwill. None of them have any objections to the occasional treat coming their way but it is almost every day at this point.

If all of his coworkers want to put a stop to it,  whoever’s in contact with the vendors could say to them, “Thanks so much for thinking of us with the bin of candy you sent over. We’ve got a lot of people here trying to eat healthier so if you can put us on a no-sweets list, we’d all be grateful.” They could add, “No obligation to send anything at all, of course, but if you’re looking for something the staff would love, fruit or veggies would be a huge hit.” This is a little awkward because you normally shouldn’t dictate what gift someone gives you — but this is business, they have a budget to spend courting your facility, and they’d probably appreciate knowing what would help them generate more good will rather than less.

But if other people there enjoy the gifts, your brother can’t really do that. In that case, he could look for ways to manage temptation once the food arrives — like asking to store it all in a designated area he doesn’t go in often but which other people know to check if they want it.

3. My colleague has no poker face

You’ve answered questions from people who don’t have a poker face, but my issue is with a colleague who doesn’t have a poker face.

She’s very good at controlling her expressions in meetings with clients or managers, but outside of that … all of her emotions are on full display. We work very closely and have a warm rapport, so I think it’s great that she feels comfortable with me. But, whenever I say anything she disagrees with, she visibly grimaces. The nature of our work involves a lot of dialogue and reconciling of different points of view and competing priorities. I absolutely expect and welcome push back. Once I’m done speaking and she shares her perspective, we’re always able to quickly reach a solution without drama. But the grimaces really irritate me. They throw me off when I’m talking, and I find myself pivoting in the middle of a sentence because I worry that I must sound very incompetent to provoke such a strong reaction. Lately, I’ve found myself speaking up less in meetings when she is present.

When she’s grimacing at me, should I pretend I don’t see it? Call it out on the spot? (If I’m leading a team meeting, I’ll call on her to share her opinion when I see a grimace.) Avoid looking at her entirely? Or is it on me to reframe the situation in my mind?

I’m a fan of naming it on the spot because (a) people don’t always realize how visible it is, (b) calling it out can convey “you are doing something noticeable enough that people are thrown off by it,” which in turn can limit how often she does it, and (c) she’s being rude and you’re not obligated to pretend you don’t see it. She is deliberately communicating something with her face (or at least deliberately not stopping it as she does with others) and it’s okay to respond to that.

So the next time she grimaces: “You grimaced when I said that. What’s up?” or “Your face looks like you really disagree.” Say that a few times and see if she starts doing it less frequently. If not and you have to work with her a lot, at some point it might be worth saying, “I don’t know if you realize how often you grimace when I say something you disagree with. You don’t do it around managers or clients so I’m guessing it’s not uncontrollable, and it really throws me off when I see it.”

4. Is it normal to ask your current manager for a reference?

A few years ago, I had a coworker reach out to me in a panic to ask if I could give a reference for a job she was applying for. She said she was asking me because she’d already asked our manager and our HR director (also a partner in our small company), and they had freaked out. Apparently, they were blindsided because she hadn’t said anything about being unhappy at work or job hunting, they called her disloyal, how dare she, etc. They both refused to give references.

When she told me all this, I was shocked. I would never ever ask someone at my current employer for a reference outside a few very, very specific cases (e.g., a trusted same-level coworker). The risk is too high! Case in point: in my coworker’s case, now our manager and HR were mad at her, and if she didn’t get the job, they might make her life difficult or fire her. Luckily, she did get the job.

When I mentioned to her that asking a current employer for a reference was a very unusual thing to do, my coworker said she’d done it before and her family members hadn’t seen an issue when she asked them. Is this any way this is a thing that’s considered normal, maybe in certain industries? Or was I right in being baffled?

No, it’s not normally done! A decent manager won’t freak out at someone for job-searching, but (a) not all managers are decent — yours being a case in point and (b) even when a manager doesn’t freak out, it’s not in your interest to tip your hand that you’re searching until you’ve accepted another job and are ready to give notice. Otherwise you risk being moved off of high-profile projects that would help your resume or even pushed out earlier than you wanted to go (which doesn’t necessarily need to be malicious — it can just be something like they need to cut two roles from the team and figure you’ve got one foot out the door already anyway).

There are exceptions to this like times when you trust your boss to know you’re looking without having any repercussions, but those are the exception to the rule.

Related:
my interviewer wants a reference from my current boss

5. How to get better at double-checking my work

I just had my first performance review at my new job and overall it was good, but there was one criticism: I need to doublecheck my work more. This is something I have heard before but the thing is, I do doublecheck! I reread and reread but it’s like my brain and eyes refuse to see the errors, it just fills in with what’s supposed to be there. It’s easier to spot errors in other people’s work, or if I can take a break for a few hours, but that’s usually not possible. I have been criticized for taking too long doublechecking things before as well. What are some effective and efficient methods of checking one’s own work?

Things that often work for people:

1. Read your work out loud to yourself. The function that makes your brain gloss over errors doesn’t seem to kick in as much when you’re reading out loud.
2. Change the font. This is weird, but when the work doesn’t look as familiar to you, your brain may read it as more “new” than when it looks identical.
3. Hold a piece of paper up to your screen so you can only see one line at a time. This can slow down your brain and make sure you’re seeing what’s really there.
4. Print it out. If you’re used to reviewing work on a computer screen, printing it out can help you spot errors.
5. Look at past errors and see if you can find patterns in them. If you realize that you frequently miss X or miscalculate Y, you can build in a check for those things in particular.

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{ 49 comments }

{ 49 comments… read them below or add one }

  1. Daria grace*

    #5 when I was doing a lot of entering long numbers off scanned forms for financial transactions that really really couldn’t be wrong, one thing I often did was copy the number I was entering into a small notepad window and drag it right above/below the number on the scan to compare. Sounds clunky but really wasn’t when I was in the rhythm.

    I haven’t done it so much but I’ve heard others swear by reading the document from bottom to top to spot stuff that’s wrong

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    1. Abogado Avocado*

      In journalism school before SpellCheck, we were taught to read our work from the bottom up (last sentence first) to find errors. It works because you are reading your work out of context and your brain is less likely to gloss over errors.

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    2. Indolent Libertine*

      I’ve also proofed things by reading truly backwards, meaning starting with the last word of a sentence. This *only* catches misspellings and typos, of course – you can’t be reading for whether it makes sense using this method – but for finding keyboarding errors it’s great because it really removes all context and leaves you just looking a series of words and completely short-circuits the process where your brain fills in what you know you meant to write.

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    3. Clementine*

      If it’s stuff like misspelling, grammar and typos, why not try running it through an AI writing program and asking it to highlight or correct them? It will take the computer seconds to pick up stuff you might be poring over for ages.

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      1. Alz*

        This! It has been a game changer for me- make sure you ask it to highlight what it changes so that it doesn’t go imagining things.

        I also used to use google translate English > English and then get it to read it to me. I have a habit of run on sentences and it really highlights it when you feel like the computer is going to run out of breath

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    4. The Prettiest Curse*

      I proofread much better on printed documents than on screen, so my method is to cover all but one line of the printed document with a ruler or another piece of paper, then move slowly downwards one line at a time. Especially useful if you read fast.

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    5. Miko*

      Also if it’s strictly something written (document, article, long email), not only change the font but the font size. Copy it into a new word or google document and set it to something ridiculous like 30 or 36. Fewer words on the screen really helps me see left out words or clunky phrases. For creative writing I even try to open it on a different device. Something I typed on a laptop, it’s easier to see mistakes when I look at it on my phone.

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  2. Observer*

    #3 – Coworker who grimaces.

    The problem is not that she doesn’t have a poker face, it’s that she doesn’t think she needs to be polite to you. We know this because she *is* capable of not grimacing, and she controls herself when she is talking to customers or managers. Which means that she is making a choice to not control herself when dealing with you – and it’s a choice that she is making specifically for you / non-management people.

    She’d probably claim that she just “doesn’t play games” or some excuse about being “an open book” or the like. But the thing is that this would not be ok, even if she did this to everyone. It’s just worse when she is *choosing* to only be this way with *some* people.

    I’m not trying to demonize her. It’s just that you should feel very comfortable calling her on it, and I think that Alison’s wording is good. Just don’t let her fluff around. You notice it, and it’s legitimately throwing you off.

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    2. allathian*

      Thank goodness for remote work! It’s so much easier for me when I don’t have to school my face all the time, only in video meetings.

      I essentially work in two modes, either I’m aggressively neutral, or I’m showing all my emotions on my face. I’m a fairly negative person by nature, so most of those emotions are going to be negative even when I’m working in an organization whose values I share, doing tasks I mostly enjoy, and working with people I like. Sure, I can and do smile at work, but it’s nearly always intentional rather than an instinctive reaction to something pleasant happening. The only exception I can think of is when someone smiles at me and I smile in instinctive response.

      Maybe the LW should follow her own suggestion and try to school her own reactions to the grimaces. By all accounts the grimacing coworker isn’t grimacing at her. If the coworker showed open dislike towards the LW as a person, that obviously wouldn’t be okay. Sounds to me like she feels safe and comfortable enough with the LW that she doesn’t think she needs to wear her work mask around her.

      So yes, the LW can ask the coworker to stop grimacing around her, but then she should also be prepared for the coworker to be less warm with her. Masking takes mental energy, and the LW is essentially telling the coworker that she isn’t a safe person to show negative emotions to at work, and is thus relegating the relationship to a purely professional one. Which is okay, but the LW isn’t allowed to be annoyed if she can’t have it both ways. Figure which you value more, a completely professional demeanor at all times, or a warm relationship with your coworker. You probably can’t have both, and even if you told her later that you miss the warm relationship and would be willing to take her grimaces if that’s what it takes, she’s unlikely to trust you again, LW.

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    3. Sally McSalamander*

      I don’t know about that. I have a tragically expressive face, so I work really hard in important meetings to keep it “still”, which is EXHAUSTING. I will often miss parts of the meeting because I’m focused on not emoting too obviously. And so with coworkers I like and trust or when I’m really focused on the conversation I’m having, I often forget to control my face. I’m not choosing to be expressive at that person, its that I’m forgetting to not be expressive. It is not malice, I do often make a small face when I disagree with someone, but that’s more because I’m either nervous about talking it out with the person or confused how they got to that conclusion. I’ve had coworkers comment on my face and I do try to remember to be less expressive around them, but sometimes I forget.

      Maybe #3’s coworker is being a jerk, but ascribing malice where there probably isn’t any seems like a sad and unproductive way of going through life.

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    4. Luna*

      #3 The LW says they work together just fine once discussion starts. This falls squarely into the same category as someone insisting another “smile!”. You don’t get to police another person’s face. The work is what matters, at work. Be annoyed, it’s going to be ok.

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      1. Grimace Shake*

        Yeah, I agree with you. It’s normal for people to react to what someone is saying. I don’t get why this bothers LW3 so much.

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        1. Myrin*

          I mean, OP explains why it bothers her right here: “They [the grimaces] throw me off when I’m talking, and I find myself pivoting in the middle of a sentence because I worry that I must sound very incompetent to provoke such a strong reaction.”

          I have a coworker (who’s also become a friendly acquaintance outside of work) who, as soon as you open your mouth to talk to her about anything, starts nodding incessantly, and really vigorously, too. You would not believe how incredibly distracting it is (to the point of making me lose my train of thought), and it’s especially jarring when she then doesn’t actually agree with you.

          It’s certainly not something she does intentionally, she possibly isn’t even aware of it, but good lord am I glad that my ADHD makes it so that I’ve always automatically looked just to the side of someone’s face when talking to them so at least I only see her bobbing up and down in my peripheral vision. And that’s with a gesture which – contrary to grimaces – is generally interpreted as “positive”!

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      2. nnn*

        Someone scowling at something you said isn’t the same as being ordered to smile. A change in expression communicates a message and most human brains respond to that.

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        1. Boof*

          Without seeing the face in question, my first thought is it’s pretty normal human interactions to use our face as part of conveying our thoughts – not sure why OP doesn’t like the heads up that their colleague is disagreeing with them. If they’re disagreeing too vehemently that’s one thing but we’re not talking about dismissive eyerolls here, just a frown – it seems a bit much to call that rude to me.
          That being said if it’s throwing the OP way off I guess they could bring it up once but yeah, I’m another person who would have a very hard time not showing any expressions when I’m really engaged with something and it’s not me being rude, it’s me being engaged.

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          1. Theon, Theon, it rhymes with neon*

            Okay, so it’s not just me. To me, grimacing/not grimacing is a matter of formality, not politeness. In some contexts, you wear a suit and tie and censor yourself a lot, to be on the safe side, maybe even use last names instead of first names. Just because you’re capable of doing that, is it rude not to always wear a suit and tie, always exercise maximum self-censorship, and address someone by their first name?

            If I’m not grimacing, I’m probably also polite-smiling and polite-laughing on cue, because I’m not relaxed enough to spontaneously laugh or smile, and I’m definitely treating it like a situation where I’m not supposed to. So the possibility of the relationship becoming less warm is very real.

            If it were me and grimacing bothered me a *lot*, I would frame it as a “it’s not you, it’s me,” and treat it basically as a “Can you make this change as a favor to me?” situation. But I would extend some grace, because in the grimacer’s shoes, I’d definitely be having to constantly remember to code switch from a mostly informal relationship to a formal mode of interacting on this one point.

            I *can* do this, because my partner’s anxiety disorder means she parses any negative emotion as anger at her, but it’s definitely been a case of meeting in the middle. Sometimes she just has to ask, and I have to clarify, “Sorry, that’s my confused look, not my mad-at-you look.” Because never showing confusion to your partner is *exhausting*. It means always being on guard.

            And I have checked with coworkers and friends to ask if I’m coming across as angry and she’s the only one comfortable telling me… but the consensus seems to be that no, I come across as confused when I’m confused. People indicate that it’s normal and fine to do that, and they decline my offer to try to censor it away. It really does seem to be a case of my partner growing up in a family where the safest bet was assuming that, when in doubt, people were mad and needed to be appeased.

            (By the way, it helped a lot when we figured out that was what was going on. Because I didn’t understand why she always thought I was mad at her, when that’s vanishingly rare!)

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            1. Theon, Theon, it rhymes with neon*

              “is it rude not to always wear a suit and tie, always exercise maximum self-censorship, and address someone by their first name?”

              The way that sentence is constructed, “not always exercise maximum self-censorship” is more clear: I meant the “not” to cover the second clause too, but then I added a third that it doesn’t cover.

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            2. allathian*

              It wouldn’t be fair to expect the grimacer to code switch on this one point, either she’d be informal and warm with grimaces or more formal with less warmth without grimaces. The LW really can’t have it both ways.

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      3. Nodramalama*

        Someone grimacing or scowling at you is not the same thing as asking someone to smile. A scowl is not a neutral expression. It is a negative one. So either LWs coworker needs to voice their issue, or work on being polite. Because frankly, grimacing at someone as they’re talking is not polite.

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        1. ASD always*

          They do voice their issue once it’s their turn to speak, though. You can’t fault the coworker for not interrupting LW when they disagree.

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    1. Scottish Beanie*

      Very true but, even in public roles, there are ways to circumvent your current manager if you believe they’ll try to sabotage your prospects.

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      1. allathian*

        This. That said, managers in my government agency are rated on whether they are willing to advance their reports’ careers, even if it means them going to work for someone else. They’d get dinged in their performance evaluation if they tried to sabotage a report’s efforts to find another job. People also tend to work quite long stretches, I’ve been here for 17 years. I’d easily get a reference from my former manager and my grandboss who used to be my direct manager before her promotion who are still here, if I needed one. If I needed three, I’d have to ask my current manager.

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    2. Baffled Teacher*

      Yes, it’s very normal in education as well! It’s common to tell your principal in the spring if you’ll be leaving in June; if you’re looking for another teaching job it would actually be a huge red flag if they couldn’t contact your current district.

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    3. anonymous anteater*

      It’s pretty normal for academia, where 100% of the first positions after college are 2 or 3 year contracts, so it’s a given that you are hunting for your next job.

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      1. LW4*

        Aha, I knew there would be industry exceptions! Makes perfect sense if it’s contract based work for sure. In this case it is very much not A Thing for my industry in my experience, except in one case when I had an especially chill team lead explicitly tell my whole team they would serve as a reference if we ever wanted to move on. But without that reassurance I would not have asked for a reference from them for fear of losing my job with nothing lined up.

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        1. Theon, Theon, it rhymes with neon*

          Yeah, I tell my team this, because my best boss told me this and I was favorably impressed, but I also tell them that you shouldn’t do this with every boss you have!

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    4. Pandas*

      Yeah, I was thinking that as someone also in the public sector. All my previous managers have been references, if you have a good relationship with your boss its pretty normal I think. I think that’s because to retaliate in the ways described (firing, eliminating a role, demotion) would take a ton of work and time, and there’s generally so much work because governments are chronically understaffed that they could never afford to take you off of projects even if they wanted to. And all places I’ve worked, layoffs were contractually by senority so that’s not a factor either.

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    5. Nodramalama*

      Yeah I think its very industry dependent. Public servants where I am are definitely expected to give the name of their current manager

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      1. Ran*

        This was one of the ones where I was immediately ‘Americans have such odd norms around work’; it would never occur to me to avoid asking current manager.

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  4. coffee*

    LW1, do you know if she has dragged past employees through the mud? I just wonder because, strategically, it would be in your boss’s best interests to keep quiet about what’s going on with her employees. If it’s a small field then after a while the people she’s talking to will start to notice the high turnover and that will reflect on her. (But of course not everyone has the self-awareness needed to realise that.)

    Anyway, I’m so glad you have another job now! If you’re breaking out in hives then you could possibly get a doctor’s note saying you’re too sick to work the remaining two weeks, if you needed. That’s a clear health issue.

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    1. Ellie*

      Yes, I’d go the doctor’s note too. Almost anyone can contact a doctor, plead stress, and get two weeks off of work as a result. With the litany of issues you’ve cited, you shouldn’t have to speak to more than one or two. Also, are you able to work from home at all? That could be a way to make the final two weeks a bit more palatable.

      Did everyone before you work out their notice? It seems odd if they did.

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  5. AnonyChick*

    For LW#5 (help with self-proofreading), do you have access to any sort of text-reading software? If so, I suggest having it read your work out loud. It’ll sound clunky as heck, because it has no idea what it’s reading, and that can help just by slowing you down and forcing you to focus on what it’s saying, but it’ll also help you catch those things your eyes and brain gloss over: reversed words, missing words, misspelled-in-a-way-that’s-accidentally-another-word words, etc.

    (NOTE: I am NOT recommending that you use any type of AI software! I’m thinking more along the lines of Word’s “Read Aloud” feature.)

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    1. Honoria Lucasta*

      yes! any kind of built -in accessibility tool that would read the screen for you is a great proofing tool! I’ve had my papers “read” back to me at 2x speed and I could definitely hear where the errors were when I might have missed them visually.

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    2. nnn*

      Yes, this is the MVP! Catches errors like “pubic health” and “and the and the” and “wit hit” when it should really be “with it”.

      (And, as an added bonus, you don’t have to do the work of maintaining visual or mental focus – the software reads to you at a steady rate of speed, keeping you on-task, and all you have to do is listen)

      If you’re checking numbers against each other, you can read one set of numbers with your eyes while the read aloud reads the other set of number out loud.

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    3. Allonge*

      Also, for common (and common-to-you) typos: use the autocorrect features.

      For whatever reason, I tend to type ‘het’ instead of ‘the’. I set this up as an autocorrect and so it gets corrected as I type. Same for tricky names, words I use often (I have the same autocorrect for the name of the company I work for).

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  6. Thepuppiesareok*

    OP#5 what works best for me is either reading it line by line or word by word. block the rest so your brain doesn’t try skipping ahead. If everything starts to blur step away for a few minutes. Engage in something else like a bathroom break or making yourself a cup of coffee. It’s not always possible to wait a few hours to review, but I’ve been pleasantly surprised at how effective stepping away for a minutes and engaging in another task is. It’s like my brain is forced to reset itself.

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    1. Dahlia*

      When I was proofing an essay recently, I actually covered part of my screen as I did my final read so I could only see like 2 lines at a time.

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  7. Dumb lady, phd*

    OP#5:

    See if you can define explicit cross check parameters for your work. As an over simplified example, if you have a spreadsheet that ends with billings, bookings, and backlog, make sure the three numbers add up. The more intermediate sanity checks you can identify, the better.

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  8. Aphrodite*

    OP#5, I do two things: (1) Print it out and take it to an entirely different area of where I worked on it such as outside so the surroundings are dissimilar; and/or (2) read it backwards, word by word.

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    1. Ellie*

      Changing your surroundings really does help. I work from the office some days and at home on others. If something is important, I’ll write it in one location and then review it from the other. It’s weird but I find far more issues that way.

      The other thing that helps is time. If at all possible, write the document, leave it alone for a couple of days (a week is best), then go back and re-read it. Your brain will pick up far more errors. But its not always possible to do that!

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  9. Pop*

    OP2, my town has a food gleaning organization that takes donations six days a week. You can donate most food, including leftover catering. It might be worth looking into if there’s anywhere similar in your town and then have the office decide occasionally to donate catering or untouched trays of sweets.

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  10. Matt*

    #1 Do you have any way of filing an anonymous ethics complaint with your state bar association? It sounds like there’d be a lot of things for them to look into.

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  11. Retired @ last*

    Re: LW#5
    I listened to a webinar on writing earlier today. The instructor said that he doesn’t particularly like the “print it out” method for environmental reasons, but the reason it works is that you’re looking at the work in a different format. So he suggested looking at it in any different format, such as on a different screen – maybe switch to a tablet or phone – the spacing, etc. will be different enough to enable you to spot errors. I think even changing fonts or other appearances. (even temporarily) might help – so you’re not looking at the exact same text you’ve been staring at for hours.

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  12. Nodramalama*

    For lw5 I second changing the size and font. I think it’s because when you’re re-reading something your brain processes what you think you’ve said, but changing the font can trick your brain that you’re reading something new

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  13. NoDramaMamaLlama*

    I’m not sure if this is possible for you, OP#5, but I always recommend having a colleague or someone in a different department read it over. They’ve presumably never seen the document, and can better suss out mistakes and errors. That can be helpful for typos, spelling errors, grammar, etc.

    For content errors, I always cross-check numbers and dates. Often I will highlight facts and figures while writing, so I know to then double-check those areas when proofing. Hope this helps!

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  14. Retired Vulcan Raises 1 Grey Eyebrow*

    #5 Can you find a “check buddy” in your group, i.e. you check each other’s work.

    So much easier to spot someone else’s mistake and a coworker doing the same type of work is often more likely to realise something is wrong than someone from a different field.

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  15. Boop*

    I think LW 3 just needs to ignore the grimace. I’d be incredibly confused and annoyed if someone told me to stop making a particular expression.

    Part of life is dealing with other people’s harmless quirks. In thus case, the colleague makes weird faces, but they otherwise have a good working relationship. Telling her to stop making grimaces is a sure way to ruin that.

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