boss talks to me like I’m a baby, coworker is making me late, and more

by Alison Green on December 10, 2024

I’m on vacation. Here are some past letters that I’m making new again, rather than leaving them to wilt in the archives.

1. My boss talks to me like I’m a baby

I am wondering how I should address a slight issue I am having with my boss. Because I am quite short and young-looking (I am actually in my early 20s, but probably look like I am in my late teens) my boss always makes pretty patronizing remarks about my appearance. She calls me things such as “cute” and “babyface.” For example, last week I had to give a presentation so I wore boots with a slight heel, and she said “Aww, are you trying to look taller for the important people? You’re so cute!” And if I can’t reach something, she says “Aww, honey, should I get you a stool so you can reach like a big girl?”

The comments make me quite uncomfortable, not because I am embarrassed about being short, but because I feel that any comments about a person’s physical appearance are inappropriate in the workplace, even if intended in good nature.

I’m young and pretty new to the job, so I don’t want to sour my relationship with my boss (who in every other way is a great boss) by calling her out. But I do find it very patronizing and demoralizing. Everyone always thinks that I am younger than I am (I get ID’d all the time still!) but I’m trying to prove myself in my industry and I don’t want to cower down to her comments. How should I address this?

Wow, that’s really inappropriate. Those aren’t minor comments at all; they’re actually pretty insulting. You say she’s in every other way a great boss so she probably doesn’t intend to be insulting — but she is.

I would try this: “Jane, when you talk about my height or call me ‘babyface’ or ‘cute,’ it undermines my ability to be taken seriously. I would really appreciate it if you didn’t refer to my height or my appearance at all.” If you want to soften the language a little, you could change the start of that last sentence to “could I ask you not to refer to…” But really, this an incredibly reasonable request, and if your manager truly is a good boss as she otherwise appears to you to be, she’ll respect it and stop with the comments.

But I’m really struggling with the idea that she could be a good manager and still be saying these things. If it was just “cute” and “babyface,” sure. She could be misguided there but great otherwise. But it’s hard to take remarks like “Aww, are you trying to look taller for the important people?” and “Aww, honey, should I get you a stool so you can reach like a big girl?” as anything other than deliberately infantilizing.

– 2018

Read an update to this letter here.

2. My boss is furious after my coworker pranked her

Today our boss came to my desk to talk to me, in an open office area of about 40 cubicles. Her back was turned to my coworker. As she was talking to me, my coworker pulled out a fake spider and put it in my boss’s shoulder. My boss turned around, yelled, was in shock, and told her, “How dare you! I am afraid of spiders! If you do that again, I will seriously quit!” Sorry to use the obscenity, she then called my coworker an F’ing bitch (but she didn’t abbreviate it), then stormed into her office and slammed the door. Our team sits pretty close to each other and we all just looked at each other in shock. My coworker who played the prank was shaking and tearing up. So she Skyped and emailed our boss an apology.

My coworker became nervous when our boss didn’t respond and kept her door closed. I advised my coworker to give her time and let her cool down. As the day went on, my boss sent me work-related emails and I assumed she would slowly come around.

Later in the day, our boss wrote a complaint to the owner of the company and the HR manager and copied my coworker, who told me that the email said “how dare you do that” and that this is harassment.

I agree what my coworker did was wrong, but can she get fired? I guess it is possible because we live in Florida and it is an at-will state. What are your thoughts?

Legally, yes, she could be fired, but it’s pretty unlikely that she will be. It’s more likely that she’ll be told not to pull pranks on people in the office again, which is a reasonable outcome.

I don’t fault your boss for having a strong initial response; while her reaction was a lot, some people are indeed terribly freaked out by this kind of thing. But it makes no sense that she’d send a letter to the owner or HR; she’s a manager and has the authority on her own to talk to your coworker and make it clear she shouldn’t do something like that again. She doesn’t need to borrow authority from anyone else, or have them handle it for her … and it’s not harassment in the legal sense. I would have expected her to handle it professionally once she’d had a chance to calm down after the initial shock, and it doesn’t seem like that’s happened.

– 2015

Read an update to this letter here.

3. My coworker won’t leave work on time and is making me late

I have recently started carpooling with a coworker who lives nearby. She doesn’t have a car, so I pick her up from her house and drop her off after work and she makes a contribution toward fuel costs (about one-third, which I’m fine with). It’s only an extra five minutes each way on my journey (well, it should be — more on that later), and it’s nice to have some company in the car and also help toward fuel.

My problem is that she is never ready to leave work on time in the afternoon! I need to leave on the dot of our finish time in order to miss the worst of the traffic. An extra minute late leaving generally results in an extra three to five minutes on my commute, so leaving five minutes late means getting home 15-25 minutes late. I’ll get to her desk at the end of work and she will still be answering emails, or tidying up, or want to use the bathroom before setting off, so I am always late home which is starting to really frustrate me. I’ve tried saying in the morning “I need to leave on time tonight” but it has no effect. We do the same job which is busy but not overwhelming so it’s not that she can’t get her work done in the workday. To be honest, it feels like passive-aggressive dawdling but I have no idea why. She’s always ready to leave on time in the morning. I’d feel bad ending the carpooling, partly because I appreciate the gas money but also because my coworker is pregnant and I’d be subjecting her to a 60-minute commute via two buses rather than 30 minutes sitting comfortably in the car. Any advice on how to deal with this coworker would be welcome!

It sounds like she has a different definition of “on time” than you do. She might not realize that a few minutes would have such an impact and may think that what she’s doing is on time. If you haven’t been really explicit with her about what you mean, start with something like this: “The way traffic works, I need to leave precisely at 5 p.m. If I leave even at 5:03, it adds 15 extra minutes for the commute. 5:05 means it takes 25 minutes longer. So I need to be literally walking out the door by 5 on the dot. You’re often still tidying up at 5, or need to use the bathroom before we go, or so forth. Can we change our arrangement so that you have all that done and you’re standing with your stuff by the door at 5:00 on the dot? I realize that’s really rigid, but it makes the commute much longer if I don’t.”

That might be enough to fix it. But if it keeps happening, then you could say, “Hey, I’m happy to keep carpooling, but I’ve got to walk out the door right at 5, with or without you! So if you’re not ready then, I’ll need to just leave. Given that, does it still make sense to keep our arrangement?”

If it still happens after that, go ahead and leave without her or end the arrangement because it’s not working for you. And if that happens, you’re not subjecting her to a 60-minute commute by bus; with this kind of ample explanation and warning, she would be subjecting herself to that.

– 2017

4. Can I ask to room with my fiance at an upcoming work trip?

This question is very hypothetical, since my fiancee is currently temping at my workplace, although she’s going to be interviewed for a permanent position this week.

In the next few weeks, we’re likely to need to make roommate arrangements for an upcoming 2-day event that my company puts on every year. All employees are strongly encouraged, although not required, to attend, and everyone at my level will be sharing a hotel room. I know that it’s fairly common to room with coworkers in other departments, as my fiancee would be if she was hired, and we are the same gender, which is also required.

We keep things pretty professional, but friendly in the office, and usually only cross paths when we come in in the morning and leave at night. (This is an almost aggressively casual office though, so we also try not to stick out too much by being overly formal with each other.) I’m afraid that asking to room with her (if she gets the job, big if still, I know!) would harm the image we’ve created for ourselves, even though it would only affect our non-working time. What do you think?

I don’t see why not. I’m assuming that people at work will know about your relationship, or at least that you’re not planning to hide it, since professionalism doesn’t require that you go so far as to deny that a relationship exists when one does. Given that, it would probably be weirder if you didn’t room together.

The only wrinkle I can see here is that she might not be hired by the time rooming assignments are being coordinated, but you can cross that bridge if/when you come to it.

– 2015

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{ 282 comments }

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  1. Wayward Sun*

    It’s probably not passive-aggressive. Some people just have trouble switching quickly from work mode to non-work mode. I realize this is an old letter, but one solution that might work in this kind of situation is having the person set a reminder 15 minutes before they have to leave (or sending a reminder yourself), so they have time to wind down and switch modes.

    I don’t carpool because I’m very much like this. I’m somewhat ADHD and have a very focus-oriented job, so I can easily stay 30 minutes after without even realizing it.

    1. allathian*

      I’m so relieved that my job has flexible work hours. I generally try to finish at a good break off point, regardless of what time it is.

      Carpooling wouldn’t work for me, either, but luckily I live in a city with good public transit and a 45-minute commute to the office door-to-door. I take the bus to the train station and the train’s unaffected by the rush hour.

      1. KateM*

        I used to *walk* to train because of rush hour – 20 minutes of walk was often faster than taking 3 stops by bus. Even back when I lived in another part of the town and had to take the bus, I often walked those three or four stops and entered the bus only once it was past the city centre. Occasionally walked past of three buses of my line on my way. Only when it was a really bad weather, I was like “meh, I’ll just be sitting in this dry and warm bus instead”.

    2. Meet outside*

      Or one could agree to meet outside, at the door or at the car. It is easier to make someone wait in a warm and cosy office and to understand the stop time as a soft stop.

    3. Ellis Bell*

      This is me too. I would hazard a guess that the colleague is mid-flow mode, and the appearance of OP at the end of the day switches them to “wrapping up” mode, whilst OP expects them to already be done with loose ends. I would suggest OP show up at five to, or ten to five, say “If you’re ready to go, I need to leave in the next x minutes to beat traffic”. I seriously doubt the colleague is seeing the impact of just a few minutes, as they’re not driving, and they’re making a huge time saving just by carpooling, so it needs spelling out.

      1. bamcheeks*

        Yes. Or say, “let’s meet at the car at 5.” That changed “be at car” to a hard deadline for me, whereas “leave at five” is much softer!

      2. Texan In Exile*

        Nah. OP shouldn’t have to manage the passenger. I like “Be at the car at 5 because that’s when I am pulling out.”

        3. Good Lord Ratty*

          Yep. The car is now a very small bus with scheduled departure times, and it leaves at 5 pm on the dot.

      3. biobotb*

        No, it’s not the OP’s job to change their schedule even more to accommodate their coworker. They’re already accommodating her, the coworker can change her workflow to accommodate the person who’s doing her a favor.

    4. Allonge*

      Could be, but the way to handle it is like you do (don’t carpool) or for the person to set a reminder for themselves, not for OP to do that.

      OP does need to spell out the impact of 1-2 minutes late, as that is a bit unusual though – under normal circumstances, in a car, 5.00 or 5.02 is no big deal.

      1. Despachito*

        I am thinking this too – if I carpooled with someone and was two minutes late it would not cross my mind that it may be such a problem.

        OP needs to spell this out for the coworker very clearly – if she does not know she is probably thinking that two minutes are not a big deal – and then to stick to her guns and leave on time. There was no update AFAIK but I think a reasonable person would understand and oblige.

      2. StarTrek Nutcase*

        My employer was really pushing carpooling, but from experience giving sporadic rides I just couldn’t deal with carpooling despite prime parking & small gas reimbursement perks. I too had to leave precisely at 5 pm or my 30 mins became 45-60 mins. And it’s not just extra minutes, it’s the increase in crazy driving by others. My social anxiety was already stretched thin by the end of the workday that an extra 15-30 mins (all in crazy traffic) made me panicky.

        That said, I doubt the LW was capable of being frank enough with her rider & enforcing the time requirement especially as she thought she should consider the repercussions to her rider if she stopped providing carpooling.

    5. One Duck In A Row*

      Yup, now that I have to pick my daughter up from school I have a pretty rigid time when I need to leave work. I have the flavor of ADHD that generally makes me get places early, because I hate being late and over-estimate how much time I need for each step to get somewhere on time, and end up doing things like sitting in the car in the clinic parking lot for 10 minutes because I’m 20 minutes for the “check in 20 minutes before your appointment” time, which I realize is already earlier than they actually expect people to show up, and it just gets embarrassing at some point.

      Anyway, I can’t get to school pickup early because there literally isn’t enough room and cars start to block traffic on a main road, and if anything gives me more stress than being late it’s the glares of hate I can feel from other drivers when I may be inconveniencing them. I made that mistake on the first day, being somewhat unfamiliar with how pick-up lines work: If you’re gonna be early, you better be bring-a-snack-and-a-book early, otherwise aim for the far end of the acceptable pick-up window to avoid the traffic sh*t-show. So my window for leaving work really is a couple of minutes most days – I want to be positioned so that I’m pulling up to the school at about 3:19-3:20. I have a phone alarm set for 10 minutes before I need to leave work so that I can make sure to pee, pack up, grab anything I might need for finishing my work day at home, etc. I snooze the alarm so when it goes off again, it’s basically my 1 minute reminder. Outerwear on, actually finish packing up, get butt out the door.

      Honestly I hate so much about this. It gives me daily anxiety to have to be that exact, and of course there’s always the chance I’ll be late because of unexpected things slowing down the drive significantly. I don’t have control over how exact I can actually be because other humans exist in the world, and I can’t compensate by just being early, as usual, so I’m not actually late. (Pro-tip to those with anxiety and/or adhd: maybe don’t choose to settle in a smallish town without public transit and with only one main middle and high school because anxiety and adhd are genetic, and your kid will be just like you, and when they get bullied so incessantly that you need to find a private or charter school for them to attend instead you are going to have to figure out how to get them there and back every day without the luxury of a school bus or public transit they can take independently. *ahem* Just existing here, trying not to crumble, and trying to get to one specific building at exactly 3:19 every day. No biggie. *sob*)

      1. Cardboard Marmalade*

        One Duck: I do pick-up duty for my nieces in a similar smallish-town, no-bus situation, and I just park the car about a 15-minute walk away from the school and pick them up on foot. If, as you say, sometimes getting to something too early is a possibility, is there anywhere in the neighborhood of the school where you can park and walk from? I’m sorry this is such a stressor on you. It is wild to me when schools have rigid schedules without the infrastructure to support making them happen.

        1. Lenora Rose*

          If a school was built 50 years ago (or in some cases 100 years ago) it’s not shocking they don’t have the infrastructure for a problem they likely didn’t have nearly as much back then. And getting infrastructure overhauls large enough to accommodate long lines of cars is not a small ask.

      2. Irish Teacher.*

        Yup, now that I have to pick my daughter up from school I have a pretty rigid time when I need to leave work. I have the flavor of ADHD that generally makes me get places early, because I hate being late and over-estimate how much time I need for each step to get somewhere on time, and end up doing things like sitting in the car in the clinic parking lot for 10 minutes because I’m 20 minutes for the “check in 20 minutes before your appointment” time, which I realize is already earlier than they actually expect people to show up, and it just gets embarrassing at some point.

        It seems so weird to me that there are people that don’t do this. I mean, any step can take longer than expected so I always round up. I don’t have ADHD but am very likely some other flavour of neurodivergent, possibly autistic. My thinking is “right, it’s a 15 minute walk so I need to give it 20 minutes in case of busy roads, etc, then I want to be there 10 minutes beforehand, so that’s 30 minutes. Better give it 35, to be sure.”

        1. Wayward Sun*

          I’m actually very good at estimating how long it will take me. My problem is getting myself to leave on time. Switching tasks feels like wading through molasses, especially if I feel like I was making progress before I had to stop.

        2. Ellis Bell*

          If you’re interested in what the reverse is like, this is the best explanation I’ve got: Imagine that time stops running reliably and starts jumping ahead without warning. Always ahead, never backwards, but you definitely lose time unexpectedly, like not noticing when sand falls from you after visiting the beach. You could happily wait for a friend in a cafe for two hours without really noticing the time passing. You glance at something interesting for what feels like moments, but when you look up, an hour has gone by. You busy yourself doing something that feels like five minutes but when you check the time, it’s closer to thirty. Because of this time blindness you’re fundamentally at a disadvantage of judging how long things should ordinarily take, because you’re never sure how long they took last time. You also get distracted during these time jumps from seeing those variables which affect your timings. So, you might succeed in timing your commute; for once you were fully focused and remembered to turn a timer on and off, and you record that it took 30 minutes, but you didn’t see that traffic was unusually quiet that day, so you are surprised when it takes 45 minutes the following day. Not that it matters, because you lost time around the time you planned to leave anyway so you were going to be late even with quiet traffic.

      3. JustaTech*

        One Duck: Now that I’m an adult I have so much more understanding and sympathy for how incredibly stressed my mom was about our morning commute. If we were 5 minutes late leaving the house it added easily 15+ minutes to our drive – and drop off is super strict!

        I didn’t really understand how stressed it made her until we moved and we started riding the train into the city – even though the train was even more strict (it was leaving at 6:58 come heck but not high water), but getting to the train was predictable, and the train being on time was *not her job*. Like, if the train was late all you had to say at work or school was “the train was late” and all was forgiven, but “there was traffic” – no, that’s your problem.

        Hugs all around!

    6. Momma Bear*

      I briefly commuted with a neighbor. I hope LW was eventually just upfront about it no longer working. I also wonder what the arrangement would be after the baby was born – daycare can add a lot of time to one’s day.

    7. Freya*

      I also try not to carpool except with people who are flexible on time because I do the ADHD hyperfocus thing and… yeah. We have a running joke in my office about throwing each other out when we get absorbed in a task and forget to go home, because we all do it on a regular basis.

  2. pope suburban*

    That first one is just…I understand one must be professional and I have remained composed in the face of horrific verbal abuse, but I genuinely do not know if I could stop myself from looking at that person like she had two heads and asking, “What the f?” It’s so rude, it just short-circuits the work part of the brain and goes right to the only question that matters.

    2. Ellis Bell*

      OP was new to the job, to the profession and this was her boss, so it wouldn’t be surprising if she was smoothing it over or doing a nervous laugh response. However, don’t underestimate someone’s obliviousness. Sometimes you give people a frozen look of horror, or are literally staring at them to see where their common sense is, or even ask them “what?!!” and it rolls right off them. Even the grandbosss’ scolding didn’t really hit them in the way it should have done, they were still rolling their eyes.

    3. Archi-detect*

      That and saying that she is otherwise a good manager- like it doesn’t matter some bad acts outweigh all the good. We wouldn’t be having this discussion if the manager was hucking eggs at her at random, this is just the verbal version of that

      1. Pastor Petty Labelle*

        Yeah, OP could brush off the earlier comments as jokes — if you squint hard enough. But the Shorty McShortFace was definitely not meant as a joke. It was intended to be mean. When called on it, boss didn’t apologize but rolled her eyes at being told off by big boss.

        OP was new to the work world so I get that she didn’t realize how bad her boss was.

        1. Zona the Great*

          Plus, even if it were a joke, it was super lame and dumb and not funny even in a good-faith effort of finding the funny.

      2. ferrina*

        I was horrified by the original letter, but the update was exactly how this boss should have been handled.

    5. juliebulie*

      I didn’t stop getting carded regularly until I was well into my 40s. And I am 5’3″. No boss, coworker, or other adult has ever treated me the way LW1 describes. (And a good thing too because I’m not sure how I would have reacted. I might have cried due to flashbacks to the bullying I endured in grade school.) It is way, way, way outside the norm. I hope we get a good update to this letter.

      2. JustaTech*

        I’ve known a lot of short women in my life (I’m an average height woman) and what I’ve learned is, never, ever, mess with a short woman because they will take no prisoners.

        My experience is of course colored by my short litigator aunts, my short fencing coach, and my very short (and really very kind) Latin teacher who took no guff from anyone.

  3. Chairman of the Bored*

    I always find it helpful to phrase carpooling plans in terms of *vehicle* departure time.

    So not “we’ll leave work at 5” but rather “the car is leaving the parking lot at 5”.

    This way people can work backwards and schedule as much additional time as they need for their packing up and bathroom breaks and last cigarette and whatever other tasks their brain registers as “leaving” that don’t involve actually getting underway.

    2. Be Gneiss*

      It took *years* to sort out that while I thought “leave at 10” meant walking out the door at 10, my husband thought “leave at 10” meant pulling out of the driveway and into the road at 10. Throw in 2 kids (now young adults) – one who is waiting in the car 10 minutes before it’s time to go, and one who thinks “leave at 10” means start looking for socks at 10 and we had all kinds of chaos that was finally cleared up with a LOT of conversation about what “leaving” meant to everyone.

      1. PostalMixup*

        Early in my marriage my in-laws said we were leaving at 5:30. So at 5:25 I got up to use the bathroom and put on my shoes…and found them all standing at the front door with coats on waiting for me. Turns out their “leaving” time is actually “this is the absolute latest we can be pulling out of the driveway, and we should aim for at least 5 min earlier than that.” I now have my spouse translate departure times so I know what time to actually start getting ready.

      2. Wayward Sun*

        I have a friend who seems to think “we should leave at 10” means “get in the shower at 10, then get dressed, then leave at 11.”

  4. KateM*

    #2 – “leaving five minutes late means getting home 15-25 minutes late” plus “I’d be subjecting her to a 60-minute commute via two buses rather than 30 minutes sitting comfortably in the car” is approximately equal to “if we leave five minutes late, her commute is going to be 60 minutes anyway”, isn’t it?

    1. Anonythis*

      I read it as LW gets home 15-25 minutes late – the coworker is dropped off on the way, so probably wouldn’t experience that amount of delay. It’s possible the major traffic snarls are even between coworker’s house and LW’s house!

      1. KateM*

        You mean, traffic between coworker and OP causes OP to spend 30 minutes on road instead of 5? Yeah coworker can take her train if she can’t understand it is a problem.

    2. Strive to Excel*

      Even if the same amount of time is spent, spending your commute sitting as a car passenger is a lot less stressful than two bus rides. Especially if you then have to worry about traffic affecting your ability to catch the second bus.

      1. KateM*

        And at the same time, it’s a lot more stressful for the OP. Why should OP gain more stress so that their carpooler could have less?

  5. kanomi*

    LW1: What a monster! “You’re not important” isn’t even subtext, but out in the open. The comeuppance in the update was well deserved.

    LW2: I sympathize with the spider-shoulder victim here. She might be insecure as a manager and the cruel prank stripped her of her essential dignity.

    1. MsM*

      I don’t even know that she needs to be insecure. If it’s that severe a phobia, it could have shaken her to the point that she really didn’t know how else to handle it in the moment.

      1. Allonge*

        Yes, I think it’s possible that she was freaked out in the moment, reacted with little control over what she was doing, then embarrassed by the whole thing, which then lead to the admittedly bad longer term follow up as she was still shaken.

        Obviously not optimal, but then – who on earth pranks their boss(!) with a fake spider at work?

        1. Resentful Oreos*

          Indeed, who pranks their boss with a fake spider at work? Are these grade-school kids playing pretend or something?

    2. RIP Pillowfort*

      She doesn’t have to be insecure. I have a high startle reflex and getting scared like that spikes my anxiety and blood pressure.

      I’ve been pranked like that. It was a rubber snake in a chair. I also physically startle if you put a hand/tap me on my shoulder or walk up behind me when I’m not expecting it. Do I get mad when it happens? Not for the typical human interaction issues but I did for the rubber snake in the chair. Because that was not kind. You know you’re doing it to startle or scare someone into a reaction of some sort. Putting a fake spider on someone’s shoulder is pretty mean.

      At best it was a serious lapse in judgment but the people that put the rubber snake in my chair did it maliciously. They knew it would upset me and that’s why they did it. That’s not baseless speculation. They literally told me that’s why they did it and laughed in my face about it. I wasn’t their boss, but I did seriously lay into them about it because that was the only way to get them to stop.

      1. Emily of New Moon*

        I’m the same way. I also have a high startle reflex. When I was a kid, my friends thought it was funny to startle me. That was typical kid behavior, but if an adult did something like that to me at work, I’d be furious.

        1. JustaTech*

          This is me too, and my old boss, which did once lead to an honestly amusing day in the lab where we were testing dropping a thing, and every time we dropped it, it went “bang!” and he shrieked and I shrieked and our other coworker laughed, and then importantly, *we* laughed.

          I had another coworker who, while she wouldn’t attempt to startle me, would absolutely record me if we were doing a similar test and she thought she was going to get a “funny” reaction out of me. She doesn’t understand it, but that’s a big part of why we’re not friends now that we’re not coworkers.

    3. learnedthehardway*

      Agreeing. I think the coworker was really off-base for expecting an apology, too. I mean, you purposely scare someone out of their wits in a professional setting, and then think they owe you an apology for swearing at you?!??!

      1. Apex Mountain*

        I don’t know if they’re owed an apology or not, but imo the manager’s response was way over the top. An initial reaction as it’s happening is one thing, but slamming doors, reporting to HR? Disproportional

        1. Emily of New Moon*

          Her reaction was actually quite typical for someone with a severe phobia, though I can see how one might think otherwise. For the prankster, it was the equivalent of, “Look outside, there’s a moose in the yard! Ha ha, made you look!” To the spider-phobic, it was the equivalent of shouting, “THERE’S AN ACTIVE SHOOTER IN THE BUILDING! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!” and then “Just kidding. There’s no shooter, ha ha ha!”

          1. Apex Mountain*

            If the prankster knew that the boss had a severe phobia I’d be more in line with that (do we know they have a severe phobia btw? it wasn’t mentioned in the letter).

            As wrong as the prank was, a boss/manager still needs to be able to regulate their emotions in the workplace

            1. Emily of New Moon*

              That’s why I said that from the prankster’s point of view, it was like a five-year-old playing Made You Look. Silly and immature, but harmless. But she didn’t realize that her boss had a severe phobia and would react as though she had told her there was an active shooter when there wasn’t one. Hopefully, she learned her lesson and won’t prank people at work anymore. What’s funny to someone might not be funny to someone else. Personally, I think it would be funny to yell “EEK! A mouse!” and then when my co-workers look up, point to my computer mouse. However, I know that some people have severe rodent phobia, so I don’t pull that particular prank.

      2. ferrina*

        I don’t think the coworker is too off-base for wanting an apology. Being sweared at by the boss is jarring and inappropriate, and the boss should apologize.
        But the coworker was also way out of line for the prank, so they need to be prepared to let this go even if they don’t get the apology.

        1. JustaTech*

          The apology ratio is very different here: the boss was wrong to swear at a direct report, but the prankster was *more* wrong to put a spider on the boss’s shoulder. Especially if they knew the boss is afraid of spiders.

          In my mind it would go “Boss, I am really sorry I put a fake spider on your shoulder. That was completely inappropriate and unkind and I will never do anything like it again. It was unprofessional and I was wrong.”
          “I appreciate your apology, and I am sorry that I swore at you in my panic about the spider.”

      3. Meep*

        When I read the update and saw that, I literally thought “WTF is wrong with you?” Then again, they thought pranking their boss was a good idea. I am glad they shipped off somewhere else.

    4. Meep*

      Re LW2 – I have c-PSTD from a horrible manager. (Yes, I was diagnosed.) For awhile, anytime someone came around the corner and instantly started talking to me without warning, I would startle and yelp, because that is how she would enter a conversation. Still do it sometimes even though we have moved office twice since she was fired.

      Sounds more like a trauma response, which is harder to control or address after.

    5. Resentful Oreos*

      Re LW2 – I’m more in sympathy with the prank victim as well. I don’t have a fear of spiders, but a close friend does, and while she is more the type to say “aaaa get it off me oh my god aaa get it off me” than to swear at someone, it’s still hard to control what you say when something scary is happening to you in the moment.

      Also: who decides it’s great to prank their *boss* with a fake spider? What the heck kind of a workplace is that? Or is it just one employee with a grade-school sense of humor? I don’t think pranks like that are appropriate for a workplace.

    6. Matthew*

      Do not pull pranks at work. Do not pull pranks at work. Do not pull pranks at work.

      Show some respect for your coworkers and some respect for your own professionalism. It’s not that hard! Just do not pull pranks at work. Period.

  6. Despachito*

    OP2 (the pranked boss). I read the update and was pretty taken aback that the prankster held it against the boss that the boss used foul language, given that the boss was obviously in shock because of the stupid prank.

    I can’t wrap my head around the mindset of a person who genuinely thinks they can do something like that to their BOSS.

    Not that the boss handled this ideally but if she has a phobia of spiders I can’t blame her one bit for her initial reaction, and I think the prankster should be mortified and give, not demand, an apology.

    1. spcepickle*

      I am with you. My office is really casual and we swear often (we work in construction). But if someone put a huge spider on my shoulder there is a high probability someone is getting hit as I flail around. And the person who did it is for sure getting scolded.
      The boss in the letter did sound insecure and talking to HR was an over reaction. But yelling at the person in the moment was just human.
      The outcome that the pranker is kowtowed, has better professional norms, and kept their job with no repercussions is the exact outcome I would hope for.

    2. tabloidtained*

      Whether the reaction was warranted or not, ideally she’d have cooled down and apologized for calling her employee a bitch. Prankster apologized.

      1. Smithy*

        I do agree. I think a supervisor not providing the space or opportunity for restitution and moving forward wasn’t helpful.

        If I’m in a professional context, and entirely on accident something heavy falls on me and my initial reaction is to swear – apologizing to coworkers/colleagues for using that kind of language isn’t the same as saying it’s my fault I’ve had something heavy fall on me and had that reaction. Rather it’s more acknowledging that’s how I typically communicate in the workplace and if it’s a situation where someone happened to drop something heavy – that I’m not swearing at them but rather the situation.

        I get that with phobias/pranks there’s always going to be mixed commentary around how culpable one party is over the other. But I think in a situation where ultimately the way forward includes people working together again, finding a resolution is important. Being scared in the moment and swearing at someone due to a phobia/prank is understandable, but not seeing any need to apologize for using that kind of language with a direct report is also a problem.

      2. Katara's side braids*

        Yeah, it’s interesting to see people reduce it to just “swearing” when it was specifically directed at a person. It’s one thing to be scared and yell “f” at the universe, and another to say “f you” (or in this case, call them an f ing b). IMO, if an apology is warranted, it would be for leveling that word directly at their subordinate. Not for “swearing” in general.

        1. Katara's side braids*

          Aaand now as I go back through the comments, I’m realizing most people are addressing the fact that the swearing was directed at a person. I had just been reading the comments on the update to the OP, some of which did address it as just “swearing.”

  7. Expectations*

    I just had a long post about how OP3 reads to someone who medically can’t drive eaten by the site. I don’t have the energy to recreate it. Suffice it to say she comes across as bananapants to me, and that’s coming from someone who lives in a place where traffic escalates quickly and who genuinely appreciates rides when available. People do not function with to the minute precision and an extra 10-15 minutes isn’t even going to register with someone who has likely missed buses that run once every 90 minutes because they had to use the bathroom or who missed the last bus of the day because the boss unexpectedly stopped by at just the wrong moment. Especially when they’re paying you for the ride (not objecting to that, but in my experience most people turn down gas money when offered and I’d feel that this is more of a business relationship than a favor which gives me more agency in the process). I had a lot more context and nuance in the original post, but these are the key points in a somewhat blunter tone.

    1. Expectations*

      To be clear, OP has the right to end the business arrangement if it’s not working for her, but that doesn’t make her position more reasonable. Even the most organized, prepared person is not going to always meet to the minute precision expectations.

      1. duinath*

        I don’t agree that being on time most days is an unrealistic expectation. Nor do I agree that that is a precision expectation.

        It’s basic, bare minimum stuff imho.

        1. londonedit*

          I think ‘if we leave at 5:01 instead of 4:59 it’s an issue’ is really quite precise, though. And I’m a very punctual person!

          1. duinath*

            I think “leave at 5” means “be ready to leave at 4:55” so we may be coming at this from different angles.

            1. ferrina*

              “leave at 5” has wiggle room (most people assume that means give-or-take some minutes), so OP needs to say “I need to leave at 5 on the dot”.

              From there, the coworker needs to adjust accordingly. For me, this would mean doing my last email check at 4:50 and shutting things down by 4:55, or planning to take public transit home and reaching out to let the driver know they should leave without me.

          2. Allonge*

            It’s quite precise if you put it like that, but OP did not invent this for no reason at all, and I am sure they would be ok with leaving at 4.57 as well. For whatever strange confluence of events, this is just how traffic works for them.

            And ‘we have to leave by [time]’ is not an unknown thing. What’s strange here is how fast things get worse, not that there is a hard deadline for leaving.

        2. amoeba*

          Hm, I mean, I agree that it should be possible for the coworker to leave at 5 on the dot – but I also would never expect “leave at 5” to mean that. For me, “leave at 5” would definitely include “going to the bathroom” and things like that, and as a non-driver, I also wouldn’t know about the disproportionate impact that an extra 1-5 mins would have! So I’d just be really grateful to have that spelled out clearly (including the explanation), because it would literally just never occur to me that 5 means “walk out the door dressed and ready by 5.00”.

          (Also, tbh – if my work time is until 5, that would usually be the time I turn off my computer! Maybe she feels like shutting down 5-10 mins before would actually be, well, time theft? I’d definitely feel a tiny bit weird walking out fully dressed at 5.00 for that reason…)

          1. Emmy Noether*

            Yes, I’m used to car departure times being a bit squishy, as in within 5-10 minutes. Although I would probably notice if my colleague always popped up at my desk ready to go exactly at 4:59 and would try to match that, since the carpooling is a favor to me (yes, even if I contribute money. It’s less than a paid service would cost).

            Talking about it will most probably solve this though, since she’s on time in the morning, so she can be if she knows it’s important.

            1. Learn ALL the things*

              I get the feeling that the coworker thinks “we leave *at* 5,” which a lot of people would interpret as being sometime within 5 minutes of 5, while the LW wanted to leave *by* 5, with 5 being the latest possible leaving time. I hope this was something that could be resolved with a simple conversation to set expectations.

          2. MCMonkeybean*

            I agree, and I think quite a lot of people view it as if the work day ends at 5 you are working until 5–and *then* you gather your stuff to leave.

            If this arrangement stresses OP out to much it’s definitely their perogative to stop it, but I find their rigidness pretty unreasonable personally.

            1. Riley*

              That is how I have always seen it—and I have always (since graduating) been salaried, exempt, non-union. Then I got to work with some union tradespeople, and considered packing up to be part of their paid workday. Blew my mind. They walked in, coats on, tools in bags, at 7 am sharp and walked out, coat on, tools in bag, at 4:00 on the dot. It changed how I think about start up and shut down time.

            2. Statler von Waldorf*

              That depends on the job and industry. It’s probably one of the bigger differences between blue collar and white collar work that I’ve seen. White collar workers tend to think this is normal, and blue collar workers usually think that working for free is for suckers.

              I’m blue collar at heart, so I personally find their rigidness very reasonable.

              1. Ace in the Hole*

                I’ve worked in blue collar jobs for most of my life, and I don’t know anyone who would think you can expect to walk out the door at exactly 5:00 if that’s when your shift ends.

                Getting off work at 5 meant “5:00 is when you punch out.” Then you go to your locker, grab your stuff, change your boots, use the bathroom, etc. and *then* you walk out the door a few minutes after 5.

                Now that I’m in an office job I see way more people who jet out the door exactly at quitting time.

            3. Allonge*

              It’s not unreasonable exactly – if 5 minutes late start results in 40 minutes late arrival, that is very reasonable to want to avoid.

              It’s just not self-evident – car travel normally is a bit more flexible.

      2. Falling Diphthong*

        Taking gas money toward a shared vehicle isn’t a business arrangement–it’s helping out with a one-direction favor (coworker will never give OP a ride*). If you want to treat it as a business arrangement, just take an uber. This is why people often turn down cash for favors, that it can feel like an attempt to move this from “this person kindly did me a favor” to “this person is my staff, performing a service for me in exchange for money, which they need to keep doing.”

        For what it’s worth, I think the the original concept behind uber was that people about to head to the grocery store would see if someone in the neighborhood wanted a ride, and get a few bucks in return. It turned out that there wasn’t much demand (in either direction) for this.

        *My husband drives an electric car, and a coworker gave him a pack of triple A batteries as a thank you for rides while his car was in the shop.

        1. mittens*

          Was the pack of batteries meant to be a joke? Or was the guy clueless? I could see the right people pulling it off as a funny joke.

          1. Falling Diphthong*

            It was “I would normally thank you by purchasing a tank of gas on one of these rides, and that won’t work, and everyone can use triple A batteries.” With a bit of mild humor.

      3. Meep*

        I used to drive my sister, my cousin, and the neighbor kid to school when I was a senior and they were all freshmen. I would make them leave at exactly 6:30 AM or they weren’t getting a ride. We would get there at 6:50 AM and school started at 7:30 AM. One day, we left at 6:35 AM and they were SHOCKED that we barely made it into the parking lot at 7:29 AM.

        I don’t think OP is “bananapants” for not wanting to deal with extra traffic and waste her time.

        1. Kit*

          Yeah, my spouse’s commute to high school was like this; it’s just the way traffic worked between his neighborhood and the school, because cities are like that. Given a choice between being early and being late, he too preferred to be early, even though he would have much appreciated the opportunity to sleep in! This is just how it is sometimes, and given how stressful driving in high-volume traffic can be, I don’t blame OP either, it’s not just the waste of time, it’s the extra aggravation.

    2. londonedit*

      I do understand where the OP is coming from, because it is annoying to be consistently late home, and traffic is annoying, but I also think maybe that’s just the trade-off for doing the carpooling. I’d find it difficult to stick to ‘the car is leaving the car park at precisely 5pm and not one minute later’ – that would mean I’d need to make sure I’d done everything I needed to work-wise, been to the loo, shut down my laptop and packed away, ready to walk out of the door before 5. Sometimes you can do that, and sometimes you can’t! I’d understand more if this colleague was routinely making the OP wait 15 or 20 minutes before she’s even thinking about being ready to leave the office, but a minute or two? That seems incredibly rigid. I’m sure it does make a difference to the traffic, but is getting home 15 minutes or so later than the ideal really such a huge issue? Maybe it’s because I’ve always taken public transport to work, but sometimes these things happen – the Tube line you take is down, or you sit in a tunnel for 10 minutes because there’s a fault on a train in front, or you leave the office a bit later than planned and you miss the train you usually get, or whatever. You can’t really say ‘I will be home at 5:43pm every single day’ and then get annoyed on the occasions when you’re home at 5:57, it just doesn’t work like that.

      1. RandomNameAllocated*

        Unless they work in a factory or near one, and there’s a shift change at 5, so if the LW leaves at 5 on the dot, they get ahead of the wave of leaving workers, but if its 5o’c + 1-2 mins they get caught up in the rush?

      2. Roland*

        It was a favor OP was doing for the other person so OP can absolutely decide it works like that. It doesn’t really matter how reasonable they are or aren’t being to the coworker in anyone’s opinion because declining to do a favor isn’t a moral judgement, it’s just declining to do a favor.

        1. londonedit*

          Is it really a favour if it’s a sort of official carpool and the colleague is giving the OP money for petrol? The OP isn’t doing it out of the goodness of their heart. From the colleague’s point of view, she could also write in to Alison and say ‘I started carpooling with a colleague a few months ago, and it’s been absolutely brilliant because it saves me dealing with unreliable public transport. I give her petrol money and she seems happy to drive both of us to and from work. The only thing is, she gets very impatient if I’m not ready to leave at precisely 5pm – I think she’d actually like me to be ready before 5. My hours are 9-5 and while I do try to leave on time, sometimes I’m a couple of minutes late, if something crops up or if I need to pop to the loo before I go. It’s never more than a minute or two, but my colleague complains that it has a knock-on effect and makes her late getting home. I don’t like feeling pressured to rush at the end of the day – can I say something to her, or do I just need to accept that I’ll have to find a different carpool partner?’

          1. Statler von Waldorf*

            Yes, it’s still a favor even though money was changing hands. I assume she’s not a professional taxi driver. It’s not her job to provide transportation to anyone. Therefore, it’s a favor. What makes you think this is some sort of “official carpool?” To me, that would be the boss paying a wage to an employee to transport staff, and that’s not what is happening here.

            This is why I refuse to accept money for favors, BTW. As soon as you take a cent, some entitled person will tell you that means you can no longer enforce any boundaries because they believe that you accepting money once makes them entitled to whatever favor you were providing until the end of time.

            And yes, if the colleague wrote in with the letter you wrote, I’d tell them they need to either be on time or accept they’ll need to find a new carpool partner. The driver makes the rules, the passenger deals with it or doesn’t ride.

          2. Texan In Exile*

            Paying for 1/3 of the gas doesn’t begin to cover the expenses of owning a car. It’s still a huge favor because now you have someone in your car which means it’s hard to do errands or have quiet time.

            1. KateM*

              Let’s do some math.
              Let’s say that OP normally uses $6 worth of gas on their 30-minute commute. Coworker pays $2 and this means OP has to pay $4 to get home.
              Now, coworker causes OP to drive about twice as long. That probably means that OP also uses about twice as much gas. Now the cost of commute is $12. Coworker pays a third – that’s $4 – and OP has to pay $8. This means OP now has to pay $2 more than she would if she was travelling alone. Doesn’t sound like a good deal anymore, does it?

          3. Allonge*

            How is ‘I get home 25 minutes later if we leave 4 minutes later’ not a reasonable complaint though? OP loses close to half an hour from their life every working day (or is risking it). That is not an insignificant thing.

            This is not about hating on ‘late people’ or being pressured at the end of the day. It’s exactly like taking a bus/train though: you need to leave at a certain point or only catch the next bus.

            Nobody forces coworker to carpool either.

          4. Elsajeni*

            I mean, I think the answer to that letter would be “yes, you should probably try to find a different carpool partner”! It would be nice if the person who’s most convenient to carpool with was also perfectly compatible with you schedule-wise, but if they’re not, they’re not. (For what it’s worth, I also think that if the situation was reversed — the passenger was always ready to go at 5 on the dot, the driver tended to linger, and that meant the passenger got home later than they would if they’d driven themselves — the driver’s schedule would still “win,” and the passenger would need to either accept getting home later or find a different arrangement.)

      3. KateM*

        Maybe for OP, those 15-25 minutes of consistently being late home would be indeed worth paying a bit more for gas. Actually, it could even be cheaper for her because coworker pays only one third of gas cost but causes OP to use up to 2x as much gas because of driving longer! Don’t see that we should judge OP for not wanting to spend twice as much time and money on her commute home.

      4. Magpie*

        This isn’t the same thing as the tube line sometimes being down though. If you walked to the tube with a co-worker every day and they consistently made you leave a few minutes later than you otherwise would which led to you missing the earlier train every day, that would be more analogous to the situation OP is experiencing. You could be home 15 minutes earlier many days if you hadn’t missed that earlier train because of your co-worker and maybe you’d start to want that lost time back.

      5. Artemesia*

        The OP probably needs to stop doing car pooling them. AND this is not carpooling. Carpooling is when you take turns driving. She is providing chauffeur service which is ending up costing her hours ever week. And now it is the expectation that she is obligated to do this. Time to end the service. She can have a fig leaf of an appointment the opposite way for a while, but she needs to end it.

        1. Ace in the Hole*

          Perhaps carpooling means slightly different things depending on where you are… I would definitely call this carpooling. In my dialect, it refers to any sort of peer ride sharing (as opposed to something like a shuttle or a cab). Could be people take turns driving, but often it’s one person consistently driving and others contributing gas money.

      6. AMH*

        15-25* minutes a day. Yes, that would be a big deal to me — losing anywhere from 1-2 hours a week to avoidable traffic would stick in my craw. I do agree that LW needs to have an explicit conversation with her coworker who may not realize the reason for rigidity, and then they need to make a decision on whether to continue the arrangement — I don’t think it’s passive aggressiveness on their coworkers part because to the minute times are unusual.

      7. mittens*

        but is getting home 15 minutes or so later than the ideal really such a huge issue? Maybe it’s because I’ve always taken public transport to work, but sometimes these things happen

        I’ve had long commutes (1.5 hr+) on public transit before. Now I drive. My normal drive home is about 25-30 min, but if I time it wrong, it’s 45-50 min — so same ballpark as the OP. And, *yes* that extra 20 minutes at the end of a long day really does make a difference. In part because when I’m on public transit, it’s a little bit of chill-out time. I can play a game, listen to music, read a book. When I’m driving, I have to be hyper-aware: cars in front, behind, ice?, people jay-walking. It’s far more exhausting to have to pay attention to all that.

      8. Riley*

        “ that would mean I’d need to make sure I’d done everything I needed to work-wise, been to the loo, shut down my laptop and packed away, ready to walk out of the door before 5. Sometimes you can do that, and sometimes you can’t!”

        LW manages to do it every day.

      9. varied*

        “Sometimes you can do that, and sometimes you can’t!”

        …and on the “can’t” days, co-worker should plan to take the bus.

        1. Allonge*

          Exactly. And so does everyone who needs to catch a train / bus not going that often, and so does everyone who needs to pick up a child from care that charges extra by the minute and cannot afford it and so on.

          It’s not impossible to do. To be sure, it would be incompatible with how I work now too, but that just means that I could not carpool with OP, not that either of us is unreasonable.

    3. KateM*

      I would actually expect someone who needs to catch a bus that runs every 90 minutes to be MUCH more aware of schedule than a car-user. I was a public transport user in an old job and car-using boss complained once about me leaving work at exactly when the clock struck, which was the last moment for me to leave to speedwalk to station. If anything, I suspect the coworker thinks that it doesn’t matter when it’s a car, especially as she can just sit back and not stress about traffic (unlike OP).

      1. Account*

        Good point. Yeah, when I used the bus regularly, I was REALY aware of what time it was, for all the reasons mentioned!

      2. Insert Clever Name Here*

        This is my thought exactly. When I took the bus, it left at its scheduled time whether I was there or not so this shouldn’t be a huge revelation to the coworker (though OP should definitely say “hey, I’m leaving the parking lot at exactly 5pm from now on” as a kindness since she’s been waiting up til now).

      3. bamcheeks*

        I believe there’s an actual rule for this that city planners use — it’s either every 15 minutes or every 20 minutes, but that’s the magic number where people stop treating the bus/tram/tube/train times as an appointment and just turn up to wait for the next one. That means you get a rapid increase in people using public transport, which makes it easier to schedule to that frequency, and you hit a virtuous circle where it becomes much more sustainable.

        I do think it’s very likely that LW’s co-worker understands “leaving on time” to be “leaving within 4-5 minutes of 5pm”, rather than “leaving on the dot at five”, though! I almost certainly would unless someone spelled it out to me that they absolutely mean out of the door bang on 5pm.

          1. SarahKay*

            Yes, I also found it fascinating, and in fact I can totally see it being the case.
            My bus runs every half hour so I schedule my time carefully to minimise the wait while ensuring I won’t miss it.
            If it was every 15 minutes I would still pay some attention to the timetable (or, more to the point, the live bus times on the app) but overall I’d be much more relaxed about just getting to the stop whenever.

        2. Emmy Noether*

          That tracks with my personal experience. 15 minutes is the limit where I will look it up if I’m on a tight timeline, but just go and catch the next one if I have time. Under about 8 minutes looking it up is fairly pointless, and I suspect they stop trying to hit the schedule exactly anyway, they just try to keep them coming.

        3. doreen*

          I’m sure the co-worker understands “leaving at 5” as “leaving within a couple of minutes of 5” – and I agree about the bus times. I live in a city with good public transit and I’ve never known the bus or train schedule – the bus/train might come once an hour between midnight and 5 am, but there’s one at least every 15 minutes during the times I travel so I really have no idea if the bus I get on at 5:07 is the 5:05 bus that came a little early or the 5:10 bus that’s a little late or a 5:07 bus that’s right on time. You can’t count on being home at a set time even if you drive and if being 15-25 minutes late is that annoying to the LW, maybe they just aren’t suited to car pooling.

        4. metadata minion*

          Yeah, when you get to “every 15-20 minutes” and the bus is regularly 10-15 minutes late anyway, there’s no point in even looking at the schedule. But if it’s something that runs every 30 minutes or longer, I’m going to be there at least 5 minutes early even if the bus is almost always late, because otherwise the time I’m running late is guaranteed to be the one day the bus is running on schedule.

      4. Expectations*

        It’s not about being unaware of the schedule, but pointing out that sometimes you do miss that bus that only leaves once every 90 minutes or even that last bus of the day no matter how well you plan for it. And the consequence of missing that bus is so much more extreme that it makes someone freaking out over 2 minutes which result in a 10 minute total delay home seem ridiculous. Plus the bus person typically builds in extra leeway, so they would plsn to leave at 4:45 if 5pm if the absolute latest they could leave (or similar). The person driving is allowed to have whatever feelings and act on them if they wish, but it comes across as a gross overreaction and unreasonable expectation to meet 100% of the time. At a minimum, they should plan to leave at 4:45 if being gone by 5pm is an absolute requirement. If the job doesn’t allow it then those requirements are incompatible.

        1. Falling Diphthong*

          I think this is a really backwards way to frame the favor asking, if you hope for more favor granting. “Sometimes I’ve wound up waiting an extra 90 minutes for a bus! So I don’t even think about any time less than that as an inconvenience for someone.” That’s a good reason not to want to listen to your coworker who isn’t giving anyone rides gripe about the traffic every day, but it’s something to be keenly attuned to in someone expending their time to give you rides.

          1. Expectations*

            No, I’m not framing any favor asking this way.

            I’m pointing out that telling someone we’re leaving at 5pm and expecting it to be 5pm on the dot every day is incompatible with life, and that doesn’t change when the consequences are more severe.

            If you have an “on the dot” requirement you plan for it by adding buffer time. So if your requirement is leaving at 5 on the dot, you try to leave at 4:45. You don’t expect 100% adherence to 5pm when trying to leave at 5pm.

            So if this is important to the driver, they should be telling passenger they want to leave at 4:45. If this is not possible, a requirement to leave at 5pm on the dot every day is not reasonable.

            1. Expectations*

              Sorry posted too soon. Meant to include:

              And then decisions can be made regarding whether to continue the arrangement accordingly.

              1. Ccbac*

                The driver should definitely be more specific about what they mean by 5pm (such as by saying explicitly, “The car will leave the parking at 5pm on the dot” or something similar that makes the departure time very clear).

                The driver absolutely does not need to build in a buffer time for the passenger– the passenger should be doing that for themselves as they are an adult. Different people will need a different amount of “buffer time” (ex. I know that it took me 3 minutes to grab my stuff and speedwalk to my car at my last drive. My coworkers may have needed more time to make the same journey) and I would view the driver baking a buffer time into what they tell the passenger as the driver treating the passenger as an inept child.

                1. Falling Diphthong*

                  Agree with both of these–the driver should be clear that she needs them to be walking out the door at 5, not near 5. And the buffer building to ensure that happens easily, virtually every time, comes from the person receiving the favor.

            2. My Day*

              Certainly, life happens. No one can expect everything to go right all the time, and we can expect normal humans to be gracious about that. But once the expectation is set that the car leaves at 5 (which may yet need to be done by the letter details), I would expect life to happen much less frequently than every single day, which seems to be what was happening at the time the letter was written.

              1. Llama lamma workplace drama*

                I’m sure that if the coworker was always ready to leave on time except for an occasional outlying event it would be fine. But it seems the coworker doesn’t even attempt to leave on time and I find this to be rather rude. If someone is giving you a ride then you need to be ready to leave when that person needs to leave.

            3. varied*

              It most certainly is reasonable – for the LW. If it’s not reasonable for co-worker, then co-worker needs to make other arrangements.

              It’s not complicated, and it’s not the LW’s responsibility to adjust to co-worker’s needs.

        2. Eldritch Office Worker*

          “sometimes you do miss that bus that only leaves once every 90 minutes”

          And if it happened every day no one would be giving you sympathy

    4. Nonsense*

      She was doing her coworker a favor, regardless of getting gas money. Her coworker might have been saving time but she wass costing the LW hers. If she wanted to keep getting rides and therefore keep saving time, she should have been paying attention to the clock.

    5. I should really pick a name*

      For future reference, if a comment doesn’t appear, it has gone to moderation and will show up later.

    6. Learn ALL the things*

      I turn down the offer of gas money for a one time thing, like when we have an off site meeting and my coworker who doesn’t drive needs a way to get there and I’m going anyway. But for something like this where it’s twice a day, every day, in perpetuity, it’s reasonable for them to make an arrangement for the passenger to help out with gas money.

      1. Expectations*

        I agree with you, actually, but in my experience people don’t accept gas money, to the extent that I’ve gotten somewhat more lax than I used to be about offering. This is true for both one time and repeated rides, although it’s been years since the one time I had a daily ride to work with a coworker (he would not accept any money)

        1. Statler von Waldorf*

          My experience on people accepting gas money is the complete opposite.

          I think your attitude on the subject is more due to your social class than anything else. If you can’t afford to gas up without it, you take the money or walk. Declining gas money when offered is a privilege most poor people just don’t have.

      2. Annie*

        Yes, absolutely. A one-time thing I wouldn’t expect anyone to take money.

        But this is a daily arrangement, and it is costing the driver more money every day to take this co-worker home. Even though the coworker isn’t driving, it definitely is a car pool and really the coworker probably should be paying half the cost. She’s getting a ride and not having to drive at all or use her car (if she has one).

        And because the driver is basically providing that service and it is somewhat of a business arrangement, the drive should be able to say “we need to leave the office by 5” and have it respected 95% of the time (there may be some extenuating circumstances once in awhile that prevent the coworker or driver from being exactly on time). That should be the exception, though. It’s not that hard to be ready by 5.

    7. Falling Diphthong*

      An extra 10-15 minutes isn’t even going to register.
      This approach just sets up a positive feedback loop that chases away people who were initially willing to give rides, but only if their time was respected.

    8. bye*

      Coworker is paying for the ride because LW is doing them a favor, not because coworker is being overly nice.

    9. Seashell*

      If you previously missed buses and had to wait for 90 minutes, then you should be extra thankful that someone is willing to drive you to your door and you should go along with any requests they make of you that aren’t criminal. Maybe LW didn’t explain that a few minutes can make a big difference, but once they do, the non-driving person should either cooperate or find another way to work.

    10. Kivrin*

      It would be a big deal to me — 15 or 20 minutes might be the difference between being able to fit in a workout before dinner or not. And the extra 15 minutes of driving would carry an exponential fatigue/ stress for me. I have noticed that people who don’t drive often don’t take into account the actual stress of being behind the wheel — understandably because to non-drivers being in a car may feel the same as an uber or a bus or what have you. But it’s an actual fatiguing experience to be the driver and I wouldn’t want to add an hour or two of that time every week.

      1. doreen*

        I don’t think it’s only non-drivers who don’t account for the fatigue/stress – I hate to drive and it wouldn’t even occur to me that an extra 15 minutes of driving would make a big difference in someone’s level of stress/fatigue. And all being 15 minutes late would mean to me most days is 15 minutes less of watching TV. Which is not to say that it’s not a big deal to you or the OP, just that you’ll probably need to tell the car pool that 15 minutes does indeed make a difference to you and so you have to leave at 5 on the dot.

        1. KateM*

          How long is your drive? If your regular commute is 2 hours, then yeah, 15 minutes is only 12.5% of additional time and doesn’t matter that much. OP’s regular commute would be 30 minutes, and 15-25 minutes is 50-83% of that – 1.5 to almost twice as long.

          1. doreen*

            My regular commute was anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour depending on where I was working – and even doubling the 15 minute commute to 30 wouldn’t have made a big difference in stress/fatigue for me. I’m not saying it’s not different for the OP or other people – I’m just saying the driver can’t assume anyone, driver or not knows that without being told.

      2. A Simple Narwhal*

        Yes, as someone who drove to work for the first 7 years of the their career and has taken the train for the last 7, it’s shocking how much different it is mentally! An hour on the train is so much less stressful than an hour driving, especially if that drive involves sitting in traffic. On the train I can get work done, read, shop online, watch a show on my phone, crochet, or just sit and zone out to music or a podcast. Essentially I can relax and do whatever I want for the trip. While driving you can listen to something, but your brain is otherwise actively engaged that entire time. It can be a lot!

        1. varied*

          Yep. My small city has an excellent system of bus transportation, and I ride to and from work for free every day I am in office (I’m on a hybrid split).

          I control my high blood pressure with medication, but also use bus time to relax and not get upset at inconsiderate drivers as a means of controlling blood pressure and abating driving-associated stress. The drivers get paid to deal with that, so, win-win (and the drivers are fantastic!).

    11. Artemesia*

      Who turns down gas money? Everyone I know who provides a ride like this expects and receives gas money. Gas is hellexpensive.

      But if she isn’t at the car at 5, the car leaves. The key is to make this totally clear. ‘if we leave even a minute or two late, it adds 15-20 minutes to my commute as the traffic gets crazy and if we are 5 minutes late it can add a half hour. The car is leaving the parking lot at (X) and I’ll meet you there. If you aren’t there, I will not be waiting.’

      1. Expectations*

        I would happily pay gas money to anyone who drives me anywhere, but the answer has always been no, to the point where I’ve gotten lazy about offering it (I am still pretty religious about offering to pay for the tank if they get gas while I’m in the car which happens periodically because there’s a relatively inexpensive gas station near where I live, but folks still generally say no).

        1. Wayward Sun*

          This is a cultural thing that varies from place to place.

          Where I grew up it was customary to offer someone who did you a favor some form of payment, and it was also customary for them to turn it down. This absolved both of you of the burden of having accepted charity from another person. If it was a really big deal you could offer a second time and sometimes they’d accept.

        2. Hroethvitnir*

          I’m more than happy to give (free) lifts to friends, because if everyone is generally considerate it evens out in shouting coffee/beer/food. I’m happy to give one lift to a coworker I like.

          When I’m driving you every day, I’m going to need money and consideration – and I just straight up wouldn’t taxi a coworker. It’s actually a pet peeve calling “one person drives the other/s around for a nominal fee” carpooling.

          I used to be lucky enough to work in a tight knit team of good friends where only a couple had cars. Even with people I adore, it got old being in a confined space where I’m the only one having to concentrate for an hour, plus the mental load of collecting and delivering people. (I liked it, but boy did my brain need a rest occasionally.)

          I think if the LW genuinely doesn’t mind, one conversation is fine, because yeah most people won’t assume 2 minutes matter. But if it’s just making your life stressful to no benefit, I thoroughly recommend stopping.

    12. HonorBox*

      Coming from someone who is (thanks to my dad) very punctual: This all kind of reminds me of a conversation I have had with my new driver daughter about timing. It is one thing to have your own plan and schedule, but you also need to plan accordingly for things that are not under your own control. For my daughter that means that while under perfect circumstances, she can be out of the house at 7:10 to get to school on time, it might be better to be out the door at 7:05 because it is raining, or there’s a train on the tracks, or there’s an accident blocking the street, or there’s just an unusual amount of traffic one morning. This is similar to the boss stopping by, or a last minute phone call. There are some situations in which your plans don’t work perfectly. OP cannot be SO rigid with departure time that they don’t account for other stuff that might be happening outside of their own control.

      Having said that, I do think OP needed to have a specific conversation with the coworker. Maybe there just isn’t full understanding of how departing late impacts OP because those delays occur after coworker is dropped off. Or maybe the coworker isn’t bothered by an extra 10-15… they may be laid back and not bothered. They may not even realize it because they’re not behind the wheel. But OP has a right to set some specific parameters. And they have a responsibility to do so for the coworker’s sake.

      OP may need to get out the door at 5 on the dot daily. And maybe that works perfectly for them. But perhaps the coworker can’t for one reason or another. Perhaps they can, and OP just needed to do a better job of outlining why it is so important for them to get out the door on time. But they do hold the keys here, and if coworker is unable to be ready consistently at the appointed time, they can end the carpool relationship. OP is doing the coworker a favor, even though there’s a dollar figure tied to it. And if OP and coworker can’t come to terms on what that looks like, then it doesn’t make sense to continue.

      1. Matt*

        “OP cannot be SO rigid with departure time that they don’t account for other stuff that might be happening outside of their own control. ”

        Of course they can. Public transit would be as well. It’s not that OP will administer corporal punishment in response to a delay. Just leave on time, as a bus or train would do.

        1. Disappointed Australien*

          Especially since the bus service is always there as a fallback. Leave at 5 past 5, walk to the bus stop, take however long the bus takes to get home.

          This is not “car pool home or sleep in the office” territory.

          But it does remind me that a big advantage of the bicycle is that travel times are much more consistent. I have a friend whose new job is near my workplace, and it’s ~60 minutes to ride to the train station, train, then ride to work for either of us (route etc from when I used to work in the office more often). After driving a few times my friend looked at the costs and bought a decent ebike. Turns out that “45 to 100 minutes by car” is a really annoying number as well as being way more expensive than an ebike.

    13. Eldritch Office Worker*

      As someone who medically can’t drive, if someone was doing me the kindness of carpooling and said we had to leave by 5:00 I’d have my coat on at least five minutes before that. Every day.

      2. Six for the truth over solace in lies*

        Same. I can’t drive due to vision issues, and you bet your sweet bippy that I get ready early, pay my share of gas, and, if someone drives me frequently, occasionally buy them lunch. I can’t imagine otherwise.

    14. Nonsense*

      Ok, hang on, on reread, are you saying that’s okay for coworker to consistently be late because she’s paying for the ride? That is not how it works in the real world. If you’re late for a cab or an Uber, they will leave and they charge you a fee for it. The bus doesn’t hang around either. The LW would have been perfectly correct to leave without the coworker, regardless of money, because even the paid services leave when you’re late.

    15. boof*

      I disagree; unless the coworker’s job is one that she HAS to be there until 5pm (so cannot get ready to go beforehand) coworker can absolutely decide to get ready to go 15 min before and be totally ready to go at 5pm barring extreme circumstance. Costing their ride an extra 25 minutes because they wants to take 5 extra minutes is both rude (because the ride is doing her a favor) as well as on the wrong side of the social calculus.
      So it’s true most people can’t be precise to the minute and the compensation is to plan to be ready early.
      Now, if the coworker’s job is one that they have to be working until 5 on the dot, then maybe this carpooling situation isn’t going to work the way LW wants it to, so they can decide what that means for their willingness to do their favor (or if there’s some other form of compensation that would make it a fair trade).
      Sadly there’s no follow up, I hope LW3 at least had a direct conversation about the impact of coworker deciding to start getting ready to go when it was actually time to leave etc etc.

    16. My Day*

      I mean, if the coworker sets expectations that We Leave At 5PM, as a transit user, I’m getting ready to go at 4:50PM, because I absolutely understand that the train that leaves the station at 5PM doesn’t wait for me! Someone giving me a regular ride is absolutely something I’d see as a favor, also- they’re going out of their way and it’s not a normal part of a business relationship.

    17. Generic Name*

      Uh, people do function with to the minute precision all the time. Like the OP. Or anyone who needs to be aboard an airplane before the cabin doors close at a precise time. Actually, the second group gets there early, but the folks closing the cabin doors sure do.

    18. Croque Mademoiselle*

      I mean, it’s just a slight shift in expectations. I think your response is an overreaction to what OP wants to do. If I were the OP, my view would change drastically based on how often my coworker is late, what they are doing when we are leaving, and their attitude. It’s not bananapants to want to be on time.

      Once every 2 weeks, they are wearing their coat at 4:59, frantically typing the last words of an email to a client that must get sent that night, ready to dash out the door as soon as possible? Sure, life happens. Every single day they are just starting to pack up at 5:02, seemingly just realizing that it’s time to leave, and they have to use the bathroom and refill their water every time? That’s annoying and disrespectful. Even when “life happens”, just shifting the schedule by 5 minutes will help reduce the impact on when everyone gets home.

      OP should clearly state that the leaving time is becoming an issue for them. If the coworker is a reasonable and considerate person, they will change their behavior to accommodate. No one is asking for German train schedule precision, just more consideration to other people and their time.

      1. Matt*

        OT, but you’re probably talking about Japanese train schedule precision. German trains on time aren’t easy to find nowadays.

        1. Disappointed Australien*

          Most train services aim to be on time or slightly late, very rarely early. So you can safely arrive at the platform one minute before departure, but not one minute after. Sydney IIRC trains can be 5 minutes late but “on time” and they only manage that 90% of the time.

          And if it’s anywhere like Sydney you may well be waiting 30 minutes or more for the next one. Tokyo has the huge advantage that you very rarely care about missing the train because there’ll be another one in five minutes anyway. My “train only” trip to the office is ~60 minutes of travel time but 30-40 minutes of transfers, to the point where it’s always faster to ride my bike to a train station ~30 minutes away then catch the train (busier line that also has expresses, and it’s one train ride not three)

  8. duinath*

    For the pranker update, I understand that being called names in the office is uncomfortable, but expecting someone you pranked to apologize to you for the way they reacted to your prank is pretty unrealistic imho.

    If you want people to behave in a professional way, don’t intentionally freak them out. I do understand LW feeling awkward about the whole thing as a bystander, though.

    1. Nebula*

      Yeah, while I think the boss did overreact by bringing HR into it, the pranker showed some gall imo by thinking she deserved an apology as well. Like, you did something meant to upset someone and they got upset. You reap what you sow.

      1. Testing*

        Yup, I was surprised commenters in the original thread generally agreed the manager should have apologised.

        1. Nonsense*

          Because commenters on this site live and die on the hill that pranks should be allowed in the office and anyone who doesn’t agree is a big meanie. Happens every time a prank letter comes in.

          1. Apex Mountain*

            I don’t like pranks in general but I do think the boss’s reaction was way over the top – you can’t scream at employees, swear at them, slam doors, write them up to HR(!).

            Come on, that’s extremely unprofessional

            1. amoeba*

              Yeah, I mean, being called a “F*ing b*tch” would definitely warrant an apology in my world! Like, wtf? Sure, the fake spider wasn’t great, but the misogynistic insult was also in no way acceptable for a boss. It’s not like she just yelled “oh f*ck” or used a “normal” insult like, idk, “a*hole*. That one’s pretty bad.

            2. MsM*

              If you put a spider on someone’s shoulder and aren’t expecting at least a little screaming, I don’t know what to tell you.

                1. Ellis Bell*

                  It’s not simply a prank or surprise though – it’s a phobia (a really common one!). You don’t get over the reaction to a phobia just by realising its a fake spider a few moments later. It was extremely uninformed of the coworker to assume that a spider is only going to cause a few moments of panic (and that would too many anyway).

                2. Apex Mountain*

                  @ellis I hear you but calling your employee a F***ing bi*ch is certainly worthy of an apology in my book

          3. Heidi*

            I don’t know about that – I’ve gotten the impression that there’s an equally vocal group that maintains that pranks are tantamount to bullying and have no place in a professional environment.

            1. Tea Monk*

              I wouldn’t go that far but pranks have a big downside ( triggering phobias, making people w anxiety anxious, making people think you have way too much time on your hands ) and little upside ( what’s the upside of upsetting people at work? )

              1. Happy meal with extra happy*

                It’s a know your audience situation. Many people find certain pranks funny even as the “pranked”. We only hear about either extreme pranks or extreme reactions on this site, but in many offices, they’re just generally found to be funny by all sides.

                1. Statler von Waldorf*

                  “they’re just generally found to be funny by all sides.”

                  What I find funny is how pranksters keep insisting they are in the majority when this comes up despite the complete lack of evidence that this is the case. It’s a classic bandwagon fallacy.

              2. Irish Teacher.*

                I agree with Happy Meal with Extra Happy that it’s a “know your audience” thing. There are people who like being pranked and if you know somebody does and the prank isn’t unprofessional for the office (like something that made a mess of their workstation could be problematic even if they found it funny), have at it, but I agree that if you’re not sure or don’t know somebody well enough to be aware of things like their phobias, then it’s not a good idea.

            1. Falling Diphthong*

              I would agree. But certainly the site sometimes throws up a discussion that hits “Wait, this thing I thought was extremely obvious and agreed on is not?”

          5. Myrin*

            I’m surprised to hear someone say that because… well, it’s not true. I really don’t know how to say this differently. I’m personally so-so on pranks and in the ten years of reading this site, that attitude has always been almost the most positive towards pranks (with a few exceptions, as is always the case) – Alison has even pointed out numerous times over the years that her readers famously dislike pranks.

          6. tabloidtained*

            I don’t think this, but I do think it’s worth apologizing to the employee. It isn’t about who is right or what is warranted, it’s about maintaining professional norms.

        2. Seashell*

          I could see expecting the manager to apologize for the language used, but not for getting angry over the prank.

      2. Hlao-roo*

        The way I see the situation (and from a quick skim of the comments on the update, the way I think a few of those commenters saw it), there are three things that happened and two of them deserve an apology:

        1) The original prank–the pranking coworker should apologize to the boss. And this happened: “she Skyped and emailed our boss an apology.”

        2) The boss’s shocked yelling in response to the prank (“How dare you! I am afraid of spiders! If you do that again, I will seriously quit!”)–to me this falls under “you did something meant to upset someone and they got upset.” No apology needed.

        3) The boss calling the coworker an “F’ing bitch”–even though this was in the heat of the moment, the boss should have apologized to the pranking coworker.

        I agree that the boss over-reacted by escalating to HR and the owner, but I don’t think that’s the part that had the pranker wanting an apology.

        1. DisgruntledPelican*

          I agree the boss should apologize for the name calling, while also making it clear that this kind of prank was unacceptable.

          I also think the prankster needs to apologize again. In my opinion, apologies in the heat of the moment when the wronged party is still in the middle of their initial reaction aren’t real apologies. They’re just desperate wishes to undo a situation you caused. A real apology should be articulate calmly and appropriately when the recipient of the apology is in the right frame of mind to even hear it, let alone accept it.

        2. KateM*

          No, I would put calling “F’ing bitch” in the heat of moment under 2). What would go separate would be contacting HR and the rest what happened after and that I could consider overreaction, but I’m not sure if someone can even apologize for that…

      3. Seashell*

        I would think the boss brought HR into it either because she expected the pranker to complain to them over the language used so she wanted to get ahead of that, she would need their input to fire someone, or she mistakenly thought it actually qualified as harassment that would necessitate HR’s involvement.

      4. Pastor Petty Labelle*

        Agreed. The boss might not have handled things in the best way. But in no way did she owe the pranker an apology. You prank someone, you get what you get. You don’t get to complain about their reaction. You don’t want to be called names and reported to HR, don’t prank people. It’s not difficult to refrain.

        1. Apex Mountain*

          Disagree – the prank was wrong the but the response in my opinion was way over the top.

          Things go wrong all the time at work – the manager should be able to control herself a bit better than to start yelling and swearing. And reporting to HR?

          1. Nonsense*

            The coworker showed inappropriate judgement in the workplace. As Alison would normally advise, you report that to your manager or to HR. Since this was against the manager, the next level up is HR.

            1. Apex Mountain*

              Well in this case her advice was the opposite – she thought it made no sense to involve HR, and that the manager didn’t handle it professionally

          2. Pastor Petty Labelle*

            I said the manager didn’t handle it the best way. But the pranker sulking and expecting an apology was being precious. Don’t want to be called names, don’t prank people.

        2. MsM*

          Yeah, I don’t get the pearl-clutching, either. Presumably the prankster wanted some kind of unguarded reaction. Congrats, you got one. It’s like the coworkers who ignore personal space and are shocked when someone accidentally (or even “accidentally”) steps on their foot. You’re the one who took this interaction out of the bounds of professionalism in the first place; if you’re not prepared for an unprofessional response, maybe think twice before doing it.

          1. Eldritch Office Worker*

            Yep, I fully agree with this. If you don’t know how someone will react to something like this, you deal with the consequences of your poor judgment.

        4. Resentful Oreos*

          As the saying goes, the prankster played a stupid game and won a stupid prize. I don’t know what they were expecting.

    2. Still*

      There is such a thing as disproportional response though.

      To take it to the extreme, if the boss freaked out and stabbed the prankster with a pair of scissors, that would clearly be very wrong and I think the boss would obviously owe the prankster an apology.

      Now, calling anyone, but especially a subordinate, a f*cking b*tch, is in no way as extreme as bodily harm, but it’s still veeery far outside if the realm of what’s acceptable at work. I can see someone shouting it reflexively in the moment, but I think it absolutely calls for an apology after the fact.

      The prank was not okay either, but at least you could argue that the prankster thought (wrongly) that it would be received positively – there are people who enjoy being pranked and would find it funny. It was misjudged, but it likely wasn’t intentionally malicious – after all, why would you do that to your boss if you thought they would hate it?

      On the other hand, I don’t think being called a name like that by your boss could ever be perceived by anyone as anything but incredibly negative and disrespectful. That’s just not an appropriate response from a manager, regardless of the situation.

      1. Despachito*

        The manager was obviously not in an appropriate state – she was scared and very likely her phobia was triggered.

        I don’t think the prankster deserves an apology in this case – I’d call it a typical FAFO situation. Her behavior was VERY unprofessional – would she place a spider on the shoulder of a CEO, and if so, what would she expect? This is not a classroom and a schoolmate (even then it would be questionable), this is WORK and the BOSS.

        A person whose phobia has just been triggered like that deserves a WIDE berth for their initial reaction, which is understandably irrational.

        Perhaps the correct behavior would be to apologize for the foul words and fire the prankster on the spot.

      2. Nonsense*

        The coworker intentionally set out to scare their manager. That was the entire purpose of the prank – to scare her. Why else would anyone put a spider – a common fear – on someone? Because they think their fear reaction is funny, and they were hoping to get others to laugh at the manager’s expense too. Explain to me what positive intentions are behind that.

        And quite frankly, the only reason the coworker was called a f’ing bee at all was because of the situation she created! If she hadn’t pulled the prank, the manager would have no reason to react so extremely. The coworker was hurt by her own actions.

        1. Happy meal with extra happy*

          Many people ultimately find such pranks as funny shenanigans, even if they were the victim of the prank. Clearly in this scenario, the coworker didn’t know the intended victim well enough, so she shouldn’t have done it, but in many scenarios, this is not a big deal.

          People on this site who hate pranks (totally valid!) never seem to understand that there is a decent part of the population who find them funny and amusing on both sides.

          1. MsM*

            No, I understand that just fine. What I don’t understand is taking that risk with someone if you don’t know for sure they fall in that category. Especially if you have a vested interest in staying on that person’s good side.

            1. Happy meal with extra happy*

              Did you read either the comment I was responding to or my comment? I specifically said in this scenario the coworker shouldn’t have done it because she didn’t realize what the response would be. I was responding to someone asking for an explanation of why people pull pranks beyond just a mean-spirited intent.

            2. Resentful Oreos*

              And their *boss*, to boot. If I were Merry Prankster’s boss, even after apologizing, I’d be privately questioning their judgment from then on.

              1. Parakeet*

                The fact that it’s the person’s boss makes the boss’ name-calling worse, because of the power differential. That doesn’t make the pranker’s judgment any better, it just makes the boss’ behavior (the name-calling, not the initial startle response) worse. If the pranker asked for my advice I’d say this was a really dumb thing to do. But the boss – someone with power over her – calling her obscene names still warranted an apology.

                I notice that a lot of people seemed to assume the boss has a clinical phobia and literally couldn’t control her reaction, because she used the word “fear.” But we don’t know that. Not every fear is a clinical phobia. I also remember that in the original letter there was context of it being Halloween (which also doesn’t make the pranker’s judgment any better but probably provides a little bit of an answer to “why a spider?”).

              2. KateM*

                I’m not scared of spiders at all and try to be nice to them, and I would be questioning such a pranker’s judgement from then on anyway.

          2. Learn ALL the things*

            This is an important factor, I think. If you’re going to do a prank, it needs to be as consensual as possible, and for that to be the case, you have to know the person you’re pranking extremely well. Like, I knew for a fact that my coworker would laugh herself silly when she came back from vacation and found that I had gift wrapped her desk while she was away, because we had known each other for a few years and I had a good grasp on her sense of humor and her likes and dislikes. If you don’t have a really good idea of how the person you’re pranking is going to react, that’s not a good prank and you shouldn’t do it.

          3. Nebula*

            I think you have to have a pretty firm understanding that such a thing would be welcome i.e. that the recipient would likely find it funny before trying a prank on someone – especially in a work environment. Yes, lots of people find pranks funny, but lots of people also don’t, so playing pranks on people when you don’t know where they stand on that particular issue risks a bad outcome like this one.

            I also think any prank which plays on a really common fear (like fear of spiders) is essentially mean-spirited. The boss shouldn’t have reacted the way she did, but at the end of the day, the main thing here is for the pranker to learn that maybe that’s actually not a great funny ha-ha thing to do to random people at work.

        2. Pescadero*

          Yes… but that doesn’t excuse ANY action in response.

          It’s like self defense – you can defend yourself, but the force has to be PROPORTIONAL.

          1. Despachito*

            I don’t think calling the prankster a bad name was unproportional.

            That would be if the boss stabbed her or something in this vein. Even if the boss flailed around in panic and hit the prankster I would not consider this unproportional.

            1. Allonge*

              Agreed (not about the hitting, but certainly swearing). Being sworn at is a very, very probable consequence of trying to scare someone, really.

              If manager wrote in, I would still advise her to apologise as the action was not office-appropriate, and there is such a thing as leading by example and so on.

        3. bighairnoheart*

          Sure, but a manager has a responsibility to not call their employees names, even in extreme situations–and if that responsibility can’t be met for some reason (a strong, instinctual fear response seems like a darn good one to me, but different people will feel differently about that), the manager needs to apologize to the employee about that. And in this case, the employee should absolutely apologize in turn for the prank and agree to never pull them on any employees again! That’s just as, if not significantly more important. But both likely have to happen for the working relationship not to suffer.

          Sucking it up and being a bigger person is part of being a manager, I think. You’re held to higher expectations. I’d probably agree with your comment more if it was two coworkers where there’s not that power dynamic added to it.

    3. EC*

      I have no sympathy for the prank puller. Is this person a five year old? How would they possibly think that was appropriate? A telling off was fine in this situation.

    4. Hroethvitnir*

      I agree – as someone who put my glow in the dark tarantula stress ball (it was so cool! I should see if they still exist) on my step-sister’s pillow as a teenager and really upset her

      I do think the boss should have not contacted HR/should have had a calm conversation where they conveyed that they’re OK letting it go but it’s very upsetting to be pranked like that. You might throw in an apology for swearing at them, but I don’t personally think it’s required.

      Wanting the boss to communicate directly and be professional after the fact is one thing. Being offended at not getting an apology? Yeah, nah mate.

  9. DJ Abbott*

    The boss in #1 sounds actively hostile to me. It seems like she was trying to hurt and undermine the LW. We don’t have information on why, probably the boss’s personal issue.

    1. Tuesday Tacos*

      That boss is just an outright bully. I also gasped when I read the party about the McShorty Pants! Is this middle school or what! Sheesh.

  10. Constance Lloyd*

    I had a coworker who would not stop calling me Little Baby Bird, despite multiple blunt conversations, consistent corrections, and her being no more than 10 years older than me. With my manager’s blessing, I finally snapped, “Mary, I’m f*cking 30. Either use my name or stop talking to me.” It worked, but if it hadn’t my manager was preparing to include it in the disciplinary action she was already assembling.

      1. Constance Lloyd*

        I loved her. We worked in disability rights advocacy, so there was no tolerance for infantilizing adults for any reason. This coworker may have stopped calling me baby bird, but her other performance issues were numerous enough she was let go within 3 months of my start date.

        1. Irish Teacher.*

          Yikes! Yeah, calling you a “baby bird” in that environment is even worse than it would be in general.

        2. Hroethvitnir*

          Yiiikes someone who thought that was OK works in disability advocacy! I’m glad your admonition worked, and your boss had your back, though.

        3. KateM*

          And it still took “multiple blunt conversations and consistent corrections” before you were allowed to finally snap and it still took 3 months to fire her??

          1. Constance Lloyd*

            Well I corrected her multiple times before I told my manager what was going on, then I was immediately given permission to swear at her. Manager was drafting a PIP for other more coachable issues, and she failed her PIP. I snapped at her within one month of my start date, and she was let go before I hit my 3 month mark.

    3. Resentful Oreos*

      Is your coworker Sandor Clegane by any chance?

      Jeepers, call me old and out of touch, but, pranking your boss? Calling people insulting nicknames based on physical characteristics? That kind of stuff has no place at work, even in a fun and freewheeling workplace.

  11. Captain dddd-cccc-ddWdd*

    OP3 (car share leaving work on the dot to avoid traffic) – Are OP and the co-worker hourly? Is their finish time (say 5pm) the actual time OP is referring to leaving? In which case perhaps the co-worker is conscious of not wanting to start packing up “early”, in the same way that when you start work at 9 (or whatever) that means that your coat is off, coffee in hand etc so that you are ready to start work at 9, it’s really just the inverse of that. Especially as she’s pregnant (because of how pregnant people are sometimes treated at work) it may be that she doesn’t want to give the appearance of leaving early. I often call out passive-aggressive behaviour but I don’t think this co-worker is being passive-aggressive.

    1. HonorBox*

      I don’t see it as passive-aggressive either. I think it is far more likely that OP and coworker have not had a specific conversation about how the afternoon commute is affected by leaving any later than 5. If specifics are laid out, perhaps there can be a change in how the coworker sets their daily cadence. That can be possible whether or not they’re hourly or salaried.

  12. Acronyms Are Life (AAL)*

    Did anyone else go read the other letters with the update to the first letter and see the person who deferred the teaching English in Japan job they got in 2018 until March 2020? I read that and went ‘oh…ehh..oh no’. Idk sometimes it’s just interesting to me to see what we plan and what happens doesn’t always work out for reasons outside of our control.

    1. Hlao-roo*

      Oof, yeah that’s too bad. I also feel bad reading some of the letters and updates at the end of 2019 where people mention their travel/new job/etc. plans for early 2020. I think it would be interesting to get updates from some of those folks–did they delay their plans until post-vaccine? End up going in another career direction entirely?

  13. HonorBox*

    Regarding the timing of the commute… If you’re ride sharing, even if you’re paying to ride share, I think it is the only respectful thing to do to be ready when the driver is ready. This situation doesn’t seem variable – and by that I mean, it isn’t like OP is leaving some days at 4:45 and other days at 5:05 – so it is pretty easy for the coworker to set their cadence appropriately. If you’re driving carpool to school and a kid is 10 minutes late getting to the car, it puts all of the others in a position to be tardy, and that’s not a fair position for all the others just because one person can’t get themselves out the door at the right time.

    I think if I were the driver, I’d do the following: Explain how leaving after 5, even by a minute or two, impacts the arrival time at home. Tell the coworker that the car leaves at 5, and they absolutely need to be ready to go. Then see how it goes. If they are later than 5, don’t leave them high and dry, but note specifically how much later I am getting home. And then the next day on the way into the office, just tell them that yesterday’s example put me home X minutes later, and then say that while I appreciate their contribution to gas, I’m going to end the carpooling at the end of the week. There’s no need to give them time to figure things out, but I think because it is a work relationship, doing something to give them a bit of time keeps things from getting weird and awkward.

    1. Eldritch Office Worker*

      I agree. It’s a consistent expectation, it can be planned around. If the coworker was taking a bus they’d have the plan around the driver’s schedule. If they were ubering they’d be charged if they made the driver wait more than two minutes. There is absolutely an expectation of courtesy and punctuality when someone else is driving you.

  14. Daisy Jones*

    #1 – I also have a baby face and the struggle at work is real. I’m in my 30s but often get mistaken for being a graduate or an intern. I had new senior coworker ask my supervisor if I had enough experience to lead the project I was on. He was like, yes, she’s the SME we hired specifically for this project. I’ve had interns try to befriend me, thinking I was one of them. Recently at a job interview for another company the interviewer asked me if I was ready for this level/grade of role so early in my career. He clearly hadn’t read my CV properly. I replied that I have been working at that level in my current role and that I have both the technical and soft skills to progress further over time. Frustrating.

    1. Zona the Great*

      I was once asked by an old man in a grocery store if the reason I wasn’t in school in the middle of the day was because I was pregnant (and I was at my fittest point in my life and happened to be holding my grocery basket in front of myself so I have no idea why he pegged me for pregnant). I looked at him like he was a moron and said, “no, I’m not in school because I’m 30”. He snapped back at how rude I was to him. Okay then.

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

      Same here. I work in a university and people often think I am a student. I’m almost 40!!!

      1. Student*

        I’ve always looked young for my age, and when I was in my late 20s, the Boomer women I worked with used to tell me, “You’ll appreciate it when you’re older.” I used to wonder how old I’d have to get before people started treating me like a grown-up. Now, in middle age, I still haven’t escaped it because I am a student, so staff routinely assume I’m 20 years younger. But I’ve never been treated as badly as OP1.

    3. Disappointed Australien*

      Same. I was just about finished postgrad and someone in their early thirties asked me which school I went to. They clearly meant secondary school so I replied “engineering school”.

      But it did cost me quite a lot in my early career, people would (mostly subconsciously) discount my expertise and experience because I looked so young. And trying to negotiate pay rises and promotions was a PITA. The benefit of not having to shave daily until I was in my 40’s didn’t compensate.

      Console yourself with the thought that when you’re 50 you’ll be mistaken for someone 40 and likely have the fitness to match. Or like my mother, be pushing 90 and bounce round the place like a 60 year old…

  15. Falling Diphthong*

    Fanfic for the update to #1: The boss was reassigned to supervise the office flock of ducks–or possibly geckos–and can now spend all day long mocking the ducks’ height, they don’t care.

    “Hey, duck! You’re like, what, 15 inches tall? Yeah, I’m taller than you.”

  16. Rebbert*

    I know the letter about commuting is from 2017 so no doubt, long since resolved, but I’m always shocked by how people tolerate really bad behavior for no good reason! After leaving late became a pattern (maybe after a week of late departures), it’s time to set a boundary: “Hey, I need to be out on the dot at 5pm. I’ll be taking off at 5, so just wanted to give you the heads up so you can plan your day to wrap up completely by then, if you want to head home with me.” Then if they’re still working at 5pm, don’t stand there like it’s a hostage situation. LEAVE. You do NOT have to tolerate people who are disrespecting you and for whom you are doing a FAVOR.

    1. Ellis Bell*

      If the colleague knew what time they were supposed to leave, or that she was making OP late, I would agree that it was bad behaviour. Remember she is on time in the morning, because it would be obvious if they were late for work. At the end of the day, the colleague has no idea that her interpretation of the leaving time adds any time to the commute. All she knows is that she finishes actually working at five, and then getting her stuff together and using the bathroom only takes a few minutes. When OP says “I really need to leave on time” the colleague is probably thinking “Yes I know! We already do.” What OP actually wants is for the work to be finished sooner than five, so they can leave exactly at five. She probably isn’t going to get that arrangement from her colleague without explicitly asking.

    2. I should really pick a name*

      I don’t think there’s been bad behaviour unless the LW has said “I need to be walking out the door at 5:00”.

    3. Irish Teacher.*

      I don’t think this is really bad behaviour (and I am an extremely punctual person). In normal conversation, “I’ll be leaving work at 5pm,” generally means “I’ll be switching off my computer at 5pm, then getting my coat, maybe using the bathroom and be out the door by 5 past or 10 past.”

      If the LW was going to work, I’d be more judgemental of the carpooling buddy because getting to work has a specific time but in most cases, a minute or two leaving doesn’t make any difference. And it’s even quite possible the LW and the coworker’s watches are slightly different so the coworker thinks it is say 4:57 and therefore, the working day isn’t over.

      That’s not to say the LW’s complaint is unreasonable. She has a very good reason for wanting to leave on the dot and if she has explained this to the coworker and the coworker has ignored it, then yeah, that isn’t OK, but I don’t think going to the bathroom before leaving work is disprespectful, even when somebody is driving you home.

      In most cases, “I need to leave work on time tonight” doesn’t mean on the dot of whatever time work ends. It means “I can’t be hanging around chatting for 10 minutes plus afterwards” and it is quite possible the LW softened the message (which again is very reasonable; I probably would) and the coworker misunderstood and took it as “I need us to go home straight from work/there isn’t time for sitting around chatting with our coworkers after work” and not as “there isn’t time for you to use the bathroom/you need to have your computer already switched off by 5.”

    1. NotAnotherManager!*

      Yes, and that it went unchecked for so long is horrifying. The update was at least satisfying – good on Sally for shutting that down immediately and removing the manager from the reporting line. You just do not talk to anyone like that in a professional environment. A lot of shitty things said at work have some ambiguity to them, and this one just did not at all.

  18. AthenaC*

    From the update for #2:

    “My coworker was a little upset that the manager chose not to address the issue with her because she felt embarrassed that the manager called her the name in front of the office. My coworker felt they both should have apologized to one another.”

    Play stupid games, win stupid prizes? I think that’s probably honestly the best outcome. Everyone in the office presumably knows that the whole incident wasn’t a good look for anyone involved so best to just focus on work going forward.

  19. Keymaster of Gozer (she/her)*

    1. I had a boss who liked to assign nicknames to people, whether they wanted one or not. Mine was related to my height (I’m the opposite issue – ludicrously tall for a woman) and he loved to trot it out along with really offensive comments about how gooood it was that a woman had ‘made it so far in this industry’.
    I’m sad to say I just grit my teeth and endured it. I was much younger and unlearned in the ways of Alison. IIn hindsight I wish I had told him to knock it the eff off.

    2. I’m someone with a very severe case of arachnophobia (I hate even seeing the S word) and would have reacted with severe terror and panic to anyone putting a plastic S word on me. I would probably hurl an extensive amount of swear words too.
    But what I wouldn’t do is try to rope others into this – let alone higher management – if I already have the authority to do something. Someone DID pull a similar prank on me way back when I wasn’t a manager and (when I regained conciousness) I DID go to management and HR because it was a very serious outcome.

    1. Resentful Oreos*

      Your first boss sounds like a real charmer all-around. He’d probably find any excuse to hang an insulting nickname on a woman he worked with.

    2. Hroethvitnir*

      Bloody hell, your ex-boss sounds so gross. It’s so hard to know how outspoken to be! I lean outspoken, and that’s largely served me, but not always. Sigh.

      People who have a problem with tall women are weird. I’m glad to see more young women these days enjoying it rather than feeling like there’s something wrong with them/they have to make themselves small.

  20. Tradd*

    Carpooling – I’ve had such bad experiences carpooling over the years as the driver that I refuse to do it anymore, unless it’s a good friend at work, I know they’re dependable, and it’s for a very short times, such as when a car is in the shop. I’ve had people incapable of being ready at pickup time, which made ME late for work. There have also been people who were told they had to be out the door at 5 on the dot, as that’s when I left. They liked to stand around chatting with other coworkers.

    I used to live in the suburbs of a big city with fairly decent public transit. I was in a hobby group and the people who lived in the city and didn’t have cars expected the suburbanites to come into the city, fighting very bad traffic, to pick them up, and then go to a different area in the suburbs were hobby events were. This would have added at least two hours to my drive and they never offered gas money when they asked people for rides. We suggested they ask city dwellers with cars for rides, but for some reason, they only wanted rides from suburbanites. I never agreed to drive anyone. When I attempted to explain how far they were expecting the suburbanites to go out of their way, the city dwellers didn’t get it.

  21. Queen Anon*

    I’m surprised at the number of commenter’s who seem to think it’s OK to leave work early enough to be in the car by 5:00 (unless y’all are assuming OP is actually done at 4:30 or 4:45). Are you all salaried with totally flexible hours? Do you all work on the first floor next to the door and park near the door as well?My workplace is flexible and if someone needs to slip out 10-15 minutes early occasionally it’s no big deal but if they did it every single day, no doubt they’d be spoken to about it. Maybe OP starts work 10-15 minutes early every day but does her passenger? I think she needs to stop car pooling. She really doesn’t have any standing to demand her passenger slip out earlier every day to save 15 minutes in traffic.

    3. Hlao-roo*

      It wasn’t in the letter, but the OP did respond in the comments of the original post. Twice under the name “OP” and once as “OP1”

      Copy/paste of OP’s clarification about start and end times in that particular office:

      To clarify, it’s an office job with no set hours (we choose our own hours), so getting out of the office on our exact finish time would not be seen as an issue. Also, we always arrive 5-15 minutes early in the morning (depending on traffic), so there’s a bit of leeway time there.

    4. Ccbac*

      She can demand whatever she wants of her passenger…. the passenger simply doesn’t have to comply and can find an alternative mode of transportation.

      FWIW, I’ve never worked a job where someone tracked what time I started/ended down to the minute and lots of companies do indeed offer flexible hours to make commuting easier.

    5. Learn ALL the things*

      On paper, my daily schedule is 7-3:30. In practice, it’s 6:50-3:20, so I can be on the road by 3:30. I work in a big, busy metro area and live on the opposite side of the city center, so if I get on the main highway any later than 3:40 or so, my commute will take an hour and a half. Since this is an office job with no coverage issues, my bosses are totally fine with that.

    6. My Day*

      For sure there are jobs where this wouldn’t be acceptable. I happen to have a job where a coworker leaves at 4pm to pick up his kids, I leave at 4:20 to catch the train, another coworker leaves at 4:30 just because. We arrive early and there’s no problem with our hours per our manager. I would suppose the letter writer has a similar situation.

    7. RussianInTexas*

      She can set the departure time, and the passenger takes her up on it or not. If the passenger cannot do it, she can take public transit or find some other way.

  22. Tesuji*

    LW#2:

    I’m okay with the manager’s response. Go out of your way to poke someone to get a response, and you don’t get to complain if it’s not the response you want.

    Calling the prankster a f*cking b*itch might have been impolite, but it wasn’t inaccurate.

    Pranking is usually just a dominance play, especially when the person you’re pranking isn’t on your power level. Pranking downward is bullying; pranking upward is a way of rejecting the idea that the person has power over you. It *can* be an expression of friendship and a shared sense of humor… but it usually isn’t; it’s usually just a way to be an AH under the guise of “can’t you take a joke?”.

    Like… you know a common suggestion for dealing with AHs pulling dominance plays under the guise of humor is to ask them to explain the joke?

    Unpack this prank. What’s the best case scenario for humor here? The boss shows everyone how they react when panicked in a situation where panic isn’t actually called for? Where’s the humor there, other than in a mean mocking sense?

    Yeah, I know there’s some commenters who love pranks. If you’re going to defend pranking in any circumstance other than in a mutual sort of thing where there’s a pre-existing relationship of people who share a similar sense of humor and prank each other, you’re probably an AH (or an abuse victim who’s still making excuses for their abusers) and should probably do some self-reflection.

    It would have been completely reasonable for the boss to just fire the prankster, so I think they should have considered any consequence less than that to be a gift, rather than getting butthurt over the reaction they provoked.

    1. Ccbac*

      I agree– I am rather perplexed by the number of comments who think the manager saying “fucking bitch” is some extreme slur or something so unimaginably horrible. If you are going to “prank” someone, you are at least partially responsible for the outcome and don’t really have any standing to complain. Pranks in the workplace also often demonstrate a lack of professionalism and it’s not unreasonable for there to be repercussions for that (including HR involvement).

      I can imagine how this would have played out somewhere I used to work: the manager would have calmly flickered the spider off their shoulder, given a polite tight smile, walked silently to their office, closed the door without slamming it, and then within 30 minutes the prankster would have been fired and escorted off the property. So a slammed door and a swear feels pretty mild….

      1. tabloidtained*

        Bitch *is* a sexist slur. I’d rather you call me a “fucker” than a “bitch.” But–ideally–you’d always apologize for swearing at an employee in anger, even if your reaction was justified by, for example, a phobia.

      2. Lizard the Second*

        I’m perplexed that people don’t think “fucking bitch” is a misogynist slur! It’s absolutely a sexist thing to call someone and I feel bad that for some people it’s apparently normalised.

    2. Despachito*

      I wholeheartedly agree.

      Pranking is a bit like calling someone “son-of-a-b*”. There may be people you can afford it with, who will take it from you as a friendly banter, but they are few and far between, if any at all. It requires a very special camaraderie where it is a secret code between you and the given person, and both of you must be absolutely certain you do not want to humiliate/hurt them.

      The same with pranks – I can imagine doing it to a friend who 1) I am positive has the same sense of humor as me, 2) I know them long enough to know that I will not trigger any phobia in them, 3) if their reaction was so extreme as the boss’s in OP’s story, I would probably apologise so profusely that I would melt into the floor.

  23. The Rafters*

    I had a relative who refused to leave early b/c he didn’t want to get to work early. I had to return home after bringing him to work, and race to get ready for my own job. I finally told him that in the future if he wasn’t ready, I would leave without him. He tried his nonsense one last time. I drove off and he raced out the door, leaped over snowbanks, etc. to get to me. He never pulled that stunt again.

    1. Resentful Oreos*

      That sounds like a plot in a comedy! Leaping over snowbanks after the retreating car! Glad that it taught your relative the needed lesson.

  24. Sunflower*

    #3 The passenger is probably on time going to work because they don’t need to finish up “one last email” or “perfecting one last sentence on the report.”

    I also wonder if they feel they have some control of the situation because they contribute to the gas.

    But if it’s not working out for drivers, they should speak up (the OP’s wording is fine) or stop the arrangement. The driver can give notice (maybe 1 or 2 weeks) so the passenger can arrange something else.

    I also wonder how it worked out in the years since. Are they both still at the same company? Did they work from home since 2020? Are they back in the office?

  25. Mostly Managing*

    OP says they don’t mind driving their coworker in the mornings, but the afternoons are a problem.
    So have the “this timing is really important to me, and if you aren’t able to be in the car at 5 I’ll be leaving without you” conversation – but consider still driving them in the morning since that’s not causing issues (unless the conversation goes badly, but most people would rather have one ride than no rides!)

    I live with someone (full disclosure, it’s one of my kids) who I give a ride to every morning and nearly never on the way home. He knows what time we need to leave in the morning, and he’s ready. In the afternoon/evening, sometimes he’s ready when I am and often he’s not – which is fine because he has a bus pass and he’s not afraid to use it!

  26. RussianInTexas*

    Carpool:
    Tell Susan that the car leaves at 5. And then the car leaves at 5. Your bus will leave at 5, and so will your Uber if you are not on time.
    I know exactly what kind of ever-expanding traffic the LW is talking about, and if my coworker was making me 20 minutes late every single day, I would give her one warning, and if that did not help, would stop with this favor.

    1. Random Bystander*

      Yeah, I am also familiar with the situation where a few minutes (less than five) can make all the difference. There’s one intersection here that really should have the 4-way stop replaced by a smart light that has the east-west street on continuous green unless there is a car lined up on the north-south street or in the (already existing) turn lanes for east-west onto north-south.

      If you get ahead of the traffic, you’re fine. If you are five minutes late, the factory down the road has let out and you’re better off driving five miles out of the way to go around to the alternate east-west road because you will be stop-and-go for five+ minutes just to get to where you can enter the turn lane.

      1. RussianInTexas*

        I work from home now, but my office is located in an extremely busy area. 7 miles and 40 minutes away. The first 25 minutes every evening would be the first two miles, just to get out of the business district.
        If I left at 5, I would be home in roughly 40 minutes. If I left at 5:10, my arrival would get pushed for after 6pm, and the drive could be over an hour.

  27. Resentful Oreos*

    LW2: the prankster played a stupid game and was surprised Pikachu when they won the stupid prize. What kind of person thinks it’s funny to prank their boss – you know, the person who supervises them, has some control over their career, etc. That seems like a very odd workplace: either one that hires a lot of younger people in batches and has fast turnover (I’ve worked at places like that and things can get a bit, shall we say, high spirited) or else food service (I haven’t worked in that industry since high school, but have heard many, many stories).

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

    I wish we had an update on #3. I’m betting that the coworker didn’t know there was a problem. Also, I wonder if she has a job, or a manager, that would not allow her to get ready to go before 5pm. I’ve worked places where we were expected to be answering calls and emails up to the dot. She may not be able to take a break at the end of her shift to use the bathroom and get her stuff together.

    1. Resentful Oreos*

      I’ve worked at those places. At one, the boss would treat us like children, asking if the “big hand” was precisely at 12 (these were the days of analog clocks on the wall) and that 4:59 was still work time and we “were not excused.” Hopefully, if this is the case, Coworker’s boss isn’t this condescending as well as micro-managering, but, I know there are workplaces that are real sticklers both for punctuality and for working up until the last minute.

    2. Rainy*

      One of my early f/t jobs was a bagel shop where we were not supposed to do our assigned sidework for the day while we were doing our main work, and I was reliant on a ride for part of the time I was working there, so I was VERY motivated to be wrapped up and out front for my ride by 5 after the hour, since my ride was my roommate before she went to work. I caught SO MUCH FLAK from my horrible manager for sliding sidework in during my shift so that I was clocking out precisely at 2 (I started at 6am) and waiting to hop in my roommate’s car–the manager first accused me of shirking my sidework, and then when I showed her it all done, she said that sidework was for after your shift, which is patently absurd.

      Our local shop was bought out by a national chain about 2 weeks before I gave notice to go to another job, and they locked out the time clock so that clocking out more than 3 minutes after your shift required the manager to enter an auth code, which annoyed the manager, and suddenly the same co-irkers who’d been whispering about how I was lazy for [checks notes] doing my job during my assigned shifts were trying to figure out how I got all my sidework done without clocking out late.

  29. tabloidtained*

    #1: I’d probably short-circuit if my boss talked to me like that. Good for the grandboss for nipping that in the bud as soon as she heard it!

  30. CommanderBanana*

    Just a general reminder that 99.9% of office pranks do not go the way the prankster intended, and in general, it is a Very Stupid Idea to prank someone with something that many people have phobias about (spiders, bugs, rats, clowns, scary dolls, whatever). It is an Even More Stupid Idea to do that to your boss. But really, don’t do it to anyone.

    1. Statler von Waldorf*

      Amen.

      I still regret that time I punched my co-worker out cold when they jumped out at me to try and scare me while wearing a scary mask. It was maybe two seconds between “boo” and “thud” and it was about five seconds before my brain caught up with what just happened.

      This is only one of the reasons why I hate workplace pranks. Most of the others come from more rougher workplaces where the pranks were just cover for bullying.

  31. Literally a Cat*

    #2
    I have severe arachnophobia, and moderate fluctuating cynophobia. If I were pranked this way, it’s entirely possible that in a moment of panic my flailing will end with broken bones, if I’m lucky it would be mine only.

    Whatever the “pranks” are, stay away from common phobias.

    I also think the general population have no understanding of how specific phobias work. Wikipedia’s choice of pictures are always made to trigger my.

Comments are closed.