coworker is giving a colleague underwear in our Secret Santa, cooking a roast at work, and more

by Alison Green on December 16, 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 coworker is giving a colleague underwear in our Secret Santa

My office organizes a Secret Santa. The guy who has the desk next to mine told me today that he got the name of a colleague of ours with whom we eat often, and that as he heard her say once during lunch that it is a tradition in Spain (she is Spanish) to wear red underwear for the new year, he bought her red lingerie. He is quite friendly with her, but I still think it is a terrible idea. He is in his late 40 and married, and she is in her early 30 and single. They are at the same level and they don’t work together, so he really sees her as a peer and doesn’t agree with me when I tell him that this kind of present is entirely inappropriate. She will have to open it in front of the whole office. Even from a close friend I would not like it, so in a work context I believe it has the potential to become a huge problem. It could damage both of their reputations. I told him what I think and he disagrees with me. What else should I do ? I don’t really want to let my colleague get this kind of present at work.

Yeeesh. That’s really inappropriate. Even if they have the kind of friendship where she wouldn’t be bothered by the gift, she’s going to be opening in front of all her coworkers — and I doubt she wants that, or that they want that.

Since he’s not interested in hearing from you, tell the person organizing the Secret Santa and suggest they intervene. They’d probably be interested in clarifying the guidelines of a work gift exchange with him. (And warn your coworker, as well. She should know too.)

– 2019

Read an update to this letter here.

2. I fell for an email scam and cost my company money

I was recently the victim of a scam over company email and I wanted to write you for both advice and to warn your readers!

Recently a member of the executive team (but not my direct supervisor) emailed me in the morning to ask if I had any meetings or if I was available to do her a favor. There were very few people in the office and we’ve worked together for many years, so this wasn’t odd. My coworkers do these kinds of things for each other fairly often. I let her know that I was available and asked what I could do to help. She said that she was in a meeting and couldn’t talk, but needed me to run and grab a few Google Play gift cards for her for some clients. None of this raised any red flags for me, but you see where it’s going…

…It wasn’t her emailing me at all. Someone had spoofed her email address and I ended up sending over $1,000 worth of gift card information purchased with my company credit card over email to a stranger and criminal. It wasn’t until I had done everything that she asked and she requested more gift cards that it occurred to me that I was being scammed. By then the damage was done. The cards are worthless now.

The second that I realized what happened, I ran to fill in my supervisor and contacted IT and our accounting department to let them all know. Everyone was understanding to a fault, but I can’t get over it. It’s humiliating to have fallen for this. I have no experience with Google Play gift cards, but apparently they’re one of the few cards that you only need the code to redeem, not the gift card number itself.

To add insult to injury, I’m generally one of the most tech and digital-savvy people in our organization and I’ve never been so mad at myself. I’ve been trying to pay my company back the money I lost, but they won’t allow it. If you have any advice over how to move past such an idiotic, pointless, and pricey mistake, I would love to hear about it.

Your company is right not to let you pay back that money. Mistakes are a cost of doing business, and it’s in their best interests not to have employees worrying that they’ll have to personally foot the bill if they mess something up. So stop offering that! (And for what it’s worth, while I’m sure your company wasn’t thrilled to have lost $1,000, in the scheme of things that amount is not huge for most companies the way it would be to most individuals.)

This scam works because people fall for it. Chalk it up to experience, decide you now have a good story when the subject of email scammers comes up, and don’t stay mired in embarrassment about it. (Plus, you’ve done a good deed now by spreading word about it here.)

– 2019

3. Will I be tarred with the same brush as my unprofessional counterpart?

I just recently started my first post-grad job and I’m loving it. I have been working since I was 14, so while this is my first full-time job, I consider myself fairly well versed in professional behavior. I’m aware that I am very young, but I’m willing to learn and take cues from my colleagues, and I think I’m balancing the fact that I’m inexperienced and need advice, with my ability to read the room and abide by office norms.

I started alongside another brand-new employee doing my same role, also fresh out of college. She does not seem professionally aware and she’s very chatty, often talking over people to share her personal stories and not letting others talk, quick to loudly chat about personal stuff when we should be getting our heads down, and generally she seems young and focused on things that seriously don’t matter. I see older employees roll their eyes when she interrupts them to talk at length about sorority dramas and college deadline disasters. She’s incredibly nice, and competent too, but I’m worried we’ll both be seen as the same. I really don’t want to be tagged alongside her as “annoyingly young and unprofessional” by the rest of the office, which might mean I don’t get invited to sit in on and observe higher stakes meetings/decisions, etc. which would be really useful to learn from.

I wondered if you had any advice, other than just being as professional as possible, to make sure I’m not seen in this same light? I can’t really give her advice because we’re the same age. (And also, I’m not 100% sure what’s acceptable, so what would I even say!) We work closely together so we are always in the same conversations, and her behavior is never truly separate from me – conversations about her sorority pals always happen with me right there and I’m worried I’ll inadvertently get labelled as having the same attitude. Any advice?

You’re underestimating your coworkers! I promise you that they can separate the two of you and can tell that you’re not the one talking over people, interrupting them, talking about sorority drama, etc. The fact that you’re the same age isn’t going to make them think you must be like that too, since they can see that you aren’t. In fact, it’s likely to do the opposite and make you look better by comparison.

One thing I would watch out for, though, is to make sure that you don’t exclusively pair up with her for the social parts of work — like having lunch with her all the time, always grabbing coffee with her, or so forth. It’s fine to do that occasionally if you want to, but if you do, make sure that you’re forming relationships with other people too. If people see you socializing primarily or only with her, there’s a danger that they’ll associate you with her a bit more — not that they’ll think you’re overly chatty, etc. if you’re not, but just that they may see you as having less mature judgment just by association. That’s not really fair, but it’s also not always a conscious process — people just often assume when they see two people hanging out together that they have the same values and worldview. That’s not to say you can’t socialize with her — you definitely can! — just make sure that you’re spreading your time around to others as well.

– 2018

4. Cooking a roast at work

Last year, our common lunch area and kitchen (for about 120 people) was refurbished, with an oven put in. Nobody has really used the oven until this week when a group of staff from different teams, who are friends, decided to use it to cook a roast for lunch. (Walking into work at 7:30 am to find a staff member oiling up a raw piece of meat was NOT an expected start to the day.)

Well, the oven’s first ever workout was a bit gross. For the whole cooking time of a few hours, the common space smelled of raw meat and some other weird odor. Apparently a few people commented on the smell — nothing overly malicious, things like “eww” and “ooh, that doesn’t smell good!” Some people seemed not to notice, but a number of us found it a really awful smell, to the point that we had to avoid the space. The two or three chefs got defensive (“it smells nice to me!”), complained to our HR department about the way they were treated, and have been cold shouldering a few staff all week as a result.

What do you say? Given that this group probably couldn’t have foreseen the roast/oven smelling weird, is this an appropriate use of the common kitchen? Is this just fun for a group of work friends to do, or am I justified in thinking that cooking a roast at work for eight people is a little obnoxiously cliquey? For what it’s worth, a number of the group involved in the roast are middle managers.

I don’t think it’s a big deal that they decided to cook something together — there’s an oven and there are people who need lunch, so why not make something in it? But it’s true that making something that needs to cook for hours and will fill up the space with a noticeable smell (even a good one) isn’t a great move if they’re not offering it to others too. Not outrageous, but not ideal.

The weirder part is that they took such offense to people’s comments about the smell, to the point of complaining to HR. That’s a bizarre response, and I wonder if there’s some other context that would make that make more sense.

– 2019

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{ 211 comments }

{ 211 comments… read them below }

  1. yvve*

    I’ve just generally erred on the side of caution with ALL strong smells– some things that don’t bother me (like popcorn, microwave broccoli) really bug other people, while things that really bug me (bacon, for example) don’t bug other people. Even if they offered it to other people, I don’t think I’d want to smell a roast in the office all morning (and I like roast just fine!)

    1. Artemesia*

      Just because there is a kitchenette doesn’t. mean it is appropriate to fill a workplace with restaurant like smells. I saw that in an institute I worked in. Staff fried chicken and the place smelled like a KFC when important Foundation people came to interview the ED about a potential grant/sponsorship. The director was embarrassed and moderately furious about the whole thing and the rules laid down were that no extensive cooking would occur in the kitchen without authorization.

    2. StarTrek Nutcase*

      I would wonder if none of the roasters were aware the first time or two an oven is used it usually has an off smell. I know manufacturers claim they don’t but the four I’ve bought over last 15 yrs (long story) certainly have and the really high-end one my law office employer installed awhile back did also. No obvious off “taste” was noted but it was always meat or casserole.

      1. allathian*

        It’s usually recommended that new ovens are wiped with a damp cloth and heated empty with the top and bottom heaters for 30 minutes at medium heat before using them for the first time.

        1. Seeking Second Childhood*

          Yep… my installer told me about the “burn in” to get rid of factory smells and suggested I do it with open windows *and no food*. I hope the roast didn’t contain anything toxic.

          1. Seeking Second Childhood*

            This is even beyond the office probably expecting it to be used to keep catering dishes warm. I still wonder what their insurance policy says about food prep.

      2. CityMouse*

        You also have to be careful (any time but especially the first time) you use an oven just in case something is in the coils.

        There are also certain meats that have a period during early roasting where they just don’t smell great (pork especially in my experience).

        1. Cabbagepants*

          Agree! when you cook meat in the oven, there’s always going to be some time when it smells like warm raw meat — because that’s what it is!

      4. Princess Sparklepony*

        I was also wondering if that was the source of the smell – not the meat but the oven itself. Hopefully, it will have burned off the chemical smell after cooking the roast.

        I think I’d like the smell of the roast! But I’d want a taste. :)

    3. CityMouse*

      I also have some concerns about someone handling a large piece of raw near in a shared kitchen because of contamination concerns. It’s rare to have raw meat or eggs at work or it’s small and contained. Preparing a roast, especially opening packages, can be quite messy. So at least for the rest of the day you have to wonder if you can trust any surface in that place.

      1. Lizard the Second*

        Yes, this would be my main concern! I would be pretty grossed out by raw meat being prepared in an office kitchen, because of the contamination risk.

    4. toolegittoresign*

      I think it’s hard to stick to food with no noticeable smell, especially since some people are really sensitive to any smell. There’s also the issue that then some people feel culturally discriminated against because their food smells are deemed “weird” or “bad” but only because it’s unfamiliar to most. One of the things I like best about post-pandemic life is that air filtration seems to be better, and I can always pop on a mask if there’s a smell bothering me. I feel like there are better solutions to this besides everyone being doomed to bland, cold lunches.

      1. Kitry*

        Yeah, unfortunately, it’s real easy for complaints about food odors to get real racist, real fast. I’ve seen it happen more than once. Especially in the workplace, it’s just best to keep your opinions about other people’s food to yourself.

      2. Dahlia*

        Of the things my mom has taken to work and her coworkers have commented on the smell of (positively) when she warmed it up:

        – Breakfast pigs in a blanket with maple breakfast sausage
        – Samosa
        – Ramen in a cup
        – Chili mac and cheese

        I’m not sure how you get less smelly and still have warm edible food

        1. SemiAnon*

          I have seen someone get irate about the smell of microwaving of plain white rice, so there is no food so bland that it’s acceptable for everyone.

          I’m very happy to be working with people who, for the most part, grew up with the smell of stinky tofu. Complaints about smelly microwaved lunches are non existent; the main rule in the break room is no sauteeing or frying on the induction burners, due to smoke and splatter.

    5. LL*

      Yeah, I disagree that it’s okay to cook an entire roast in a work oven. Imo, companies shouldn’t have ovens in their kitchens. it’s weird.

      1. Na$ty Larry*

        I’m speculating based on nothing that cooking a roast started as a bit and then they actually realized it wasn’t the best idea and decided to double down on it instead of acknowledge it was foolish. I won’t lie that I laughed out loud at the idea of someone doing this at work but I don’t think it’s a good idea at all.

        Smell and contamination aside — and not to sound like a “You must work every minute you’re at work” person (Lord knows I’m not as I’m typing this very comment during company hours) — it also seems like a huge waste of work time!!! Making a roast takes a good amount of prep work and you have to return to it every now and then to baste or add other goodies depending. And you know these employees were probably also yapping all day long about it too. Doubt they got any work done!

  2. Archi-detect*

    Yeesh buying underwear should be reserved for spouses and children only- let alone lingerie. Even if it doesn’t cone across as hitting on her or announcing they are having an affair it would be super duper awkward.

    I am rather glad he switched to a hat

      1. Falling Diphthong*

        I can see it as something that in his head was OBVIOUSLY in the context of their platonic relationship, and showed he remembered her talking about traditions and so it was nicely personal in that sense. (Exactly the way that the hat was particularly good because he had paid attention and knew she needed a new one.)

        Sometimes you need to take a few steps back and look at the big picture, which OP and Angela engineered for him.

        1. KitKat*

          “I can see it as something that in his head was OBVIOUSLY in the context of their platonic relationship”

          I’m usually one to be more generous to people in this stories and look at things as empathetically as possible, but I think this one is a bit TOO generous. This is understandable if it was, say, pajamas that run a little racy (for example, perhaps a lacy camisole top). Or “joke” underwear (like silly boxers for men). Straight up lingerie has no non-sexy function, there simply is no platonic context for lingerie!

          1. Lab Boss*

            I’m also usually extremely over-generous, and I’m absolutely in agreement with you. A pair of non-sexy, red boxers with white Santa-Suit trim? Well, probably still not appropriate for most work places but I can see where someone might feel that was so obviously a joke it could slide by.

            1. SunriseRuby*

              I, too, must bear witness that underwear of any kind is never a good idea for a Secret Santa gift, regardless of the marital status of either the giver or receiver.

              In the late 90s, my then-husband’s Secret Santa gave him a pair of boxer shorts with a Christmas themed print: ribbons, holly, round ornaments and the words (ahem) “Jingle these”. Yeah.

              Ex-husband has spent his entire career in long-term care, and the nursing staff at the facility where he worked at that time thought the boxers were just a hoot. Ex-husband also thought the gift was all in good fun – and he was the HR director!! Even during the happy years of our marriage, he had some trouble with boundaries, and he’d tell me I was the one being insecure when I reacted negatively to any overstepping.

              1. Angstrom*

                Healthcare: the norms around discussing body parts and functions are a bit different from most professions….

          2. commensally*

            I think it’s possible there’s two different definitions of lingerie going on here – some people absolutely use it to mean “sexy stuff with no non-sexy function” but some people use it to mean “all women’s underwear” (like, for example, department stores!)

            It’s still wildly inappropriate to give at a work secret santa of course!!! But it may have been less the kind of things you buy at a sex shop and more the kind of things his wife buys for everyday use at Kohl’s, and in that case it’s a little more possible he really hadn’t thought and needed the kick in the pants (especially if he and his wife have the kind of relationship where he casually picks her up some new everyday stuff at Kohl’s.)

            1. Emily Byrd Starr*

              I’ve never seen department stores label all women’s underwear as “lingerie.” They usually label it as “intimate apparel.” Such a weird euphemism. It’s like when they label menstrual pads and tampons as “feminine products.” When I hear “feminine products,” I think of things like perfume, makeup, nail polish, and other products that are stereotypically feminine. It’s the 2020’s, why can’t we just say “menstrual products?”

              1. Lexi Vipond*

                I don’t know about the US, but Marks and Spencers does (and generally includes socks and pyjamas and things in the same section)

              2. Kit*

                As someone who worked in a JCPenney’s in college, I can confirm that we called it the lingerie department even though the stock included some quite boring pajamas and a lotttttt of very practical/unsexy undergarments. All technically lingerie according to the dictionary definition, but very much not meeting the spirit of the term.

                Which, now I think of it, is exactly the sort of marketing twaddle that it was adopted for in the first place.

        2. Fluffy Fish*

          I find it very hard to believe that a married man doesn’t know red lingerie isn’t something you gift to your single female coworker. I’m a woman and I wouldn’t gift my very close personal friends lingerie.

          He could have gone with any number of wearable red items that weren’t lingerie.

          He knew, he was trying to push a boundary and lying to himself it was all platonic. I’m glad he got a wake up call.

          1. Jackalope*

            I think his reaction afterward (in the update) indicates that maybe he did not in fact think of that. He could of course have been intending to be a creep! But I’m more willing to give the benefit of the doubt to someone who changed his mind after a pointed conversation, and then proceeded to avoid doing anything similar in the future.

            1. Fluffy Fish*

              I don’t think having a crush on a coworker and not being honest with yourself about it equates to being creepy necessarily. The gift would have been of course.

              I maintain that unless it is someone’s first day on earth they absolutely know lingerie is not an appropriate gift to a colleague. Nor is that a reasonable first thought when told people wear red as a tradition – a sweater? Sure. Underwear? No way. Underwear specifically intended for adult time? Absolutely not.

              Even him telling people is part of it – when you are trying to convince yourself of something it’s very common to recruit people – see it’s not weird if it was I wouldn’t be so open telling people about it. Think of all the letter writers here that are looking for validation, not advice.

              I think his behavior afterwards by pulling back hard indicates he was honest with himself and suitably embarrassed. He didn’t just nix the gift, his behavior to Angela entirely changed.

              1. LookAtMeI'mTheManagerNow*

                I completely agree with all of this. Oblivious and little-head-thinking as he was at first, at least he realized he was being an idiot.

              2. MigraineMonth*

                I like to use “creepy” to describe behavior, not intentions. Regardless of the intentions someone has for giving me sexualized items at a work gift exchange or following me to my car, as the recipient of those behaviors, I get to say it’s creepy.

              3. Lexi Vipond*

                Except that if the tradition is to wear red underwear – as stated in the letter – a sweater would have nothing to do with it.

            2. Observer*

              I think his reaction afterward (in the update) indicates that maybe he did not in fact think of that

              Not likely, given that the LW actually did point out to him how it looks.

              I think that his reaction was to being forced to realize that he would not have the kind of plausible deniability he wanted, and that there might actually be some repercussions to him if he did what he planned.

        3. Observer*

          I can see it as something that in his head was OBVIOUSLY in the context of their platonic relationship

          Except that he refused to back down when the LW explicitly told him it was a bad idea. It took Angela basically telling him that it would be a BIG DEAL if he tried that *and* a ~~guy~~ threatening to “have a conversation” with anyone who pulled shenanigans.

          So, no I don’t see any way to give him the benefit of that doubt.

        4. boof*

          Honestly it’s probably more likely he realized he was actually going astray and wanted to reign himself in. The situation reads to me almost like he pulled back because he realized it was getting inappropriate and didn’t want to be that way.
          Protip: gifting red longjohns might have been funny, lingerie, not a good idea and why is it a bad idea? Because it’s so obviously a bad idea!

        5. Starbuck*

          This is very generous of you but I doubt he would have ever considered such a gift for a male colleague, even as a bit or whatever. There’s no way you don’t realize what you’re doing when you are shopping in the underwear store/section looking at all that stuff.

      2. Resentful Oreos*

        I know – it’s hard to believe that Mr. Married Santa didn’t think “hmmm, maybe underwear is too personal a gift for a coworker, not to mention has all sorts of implications coming from a man to a woman.” But some people really are that lacking in common sense or perception or what have you.

        If he wants to give her something red for good luck, perhaps dish towels, a mug with a red design, even a book that has red in its cover art. Or a poinsettia! Not underwear. Yikes on bikes. Imagine opening that up in front of your coworkers!

    2. Observer*

      I’m glad he switched to a hat. I also am glad, although I was actually (pleasantly) surprised that he decided to get a handle on his overall behavior.

      I hope that lesson stuck.

      1. learnedthehardway*

        Agreed. I got the sense that he’s socially awkward, and that he swung back a bit far the other way after the Secret Santa thing, but it’s probably for the best until he finds his footing socially.

        Good on the OP for taking steps to head off what would have been a very embarrassing situation for Angela, and for educating the guy about professional norms.

    3. yvve*

      i could understand the thinking if they were friends and he gave her like, oversized goofy print underwear as a gag gift. (tho i probably still wouldn’t recommend it) But lingerie??

    5. ElliottRook*

      Sure, for your children while they’re still actual children. Parents buying underwear for their adult offspring is also weird and gross. I had to talk my mom out of buying something like that for my sister-in-law, and let her know that it would come across as pressuring her for another grandchild.

      3. Lab Boss*

        I have to disagree. Explicitly sexy underwear (like the lingerie in OP’s story), sure- but my Godmother got me novelty boxers for every birthday and Christmas until she had to go into a care home. It was a fun tradition, nothing gross about it.

      4. Fíriel*

        Sexy underwear could be weird sure, and sil maybe too distant a relationship, but one year I mentioned to my mother I’d been thinking of trying period underwear and was delighted to get a couple pairs at Christmas.

      6. Seashell*

        I would be fine with my mother buying me underwear if I put it on a wish list. My mother-in-law giving it out of nowhere would be different.

      7. Broadway Duchess*

        Your experience/opinion is not universal.

        The best bra I ever got was from my mom. She knew my struggles with containing the girls and bought one for me to try and a gift card to cover three more if I liked the first one.

        1. varied*

          Huh, so that’s why I occasionally get odd looks when I mention that me and “my girls,” which are my cats, are headed home for the holidays.

          Now I want say it all the time and in other contexts (“Well, gotta get home to feed my girls!”).

          1. boof*

            Wow, girls sure are shedding a lot lately! Girls kept me up all night, they’re so needy and nocturnal, you know how it is!

          2. Broadway Duchess*

            I am imagining all sorts of ways you could gave some fun with this phrasing! My best friend says that when she hits 45, she’s going to call them The Dames, as they will have apparently reached the point where an honorific is appropriate.

        2. The gourmet cupcake*

          True, but I think in this case it is the relationship of the giver to the recipient. I went bra shopping with my mother as a teen, and I’d be okay with underwear as a gift from her. I’d even be ok getting it from my dad or a *close* friend, as long as it was not sexualized or if it was a really funny joke we both would immediately understand. I would be uncomfortable getting it from a male coworker because there is a more formal relationship between him and I.

          1. Broadway Duchess*

            I was pushing back on ElliottRook’s declaration of weirdness to buy underwear for one’s adult children. The relationship with my mother is precisely the reason it wasn’t weird and was actually quite a thoughtful gift.

            Not knowing the OP’s coworker, I can’t speak to whether the intention was “kind but misplaced” or “knowingly creepy,” but I do know I wouldn’t want to be anywhere on that gift-giving spectrum.

      8. Dahlia*

        My mother is giving me a pack of Hanes for Christmas. I’m broke. She’s not. I’m not exactly going to model them for her. Though she has helped me change my underwear as an adult when I was too severely injured to do it myself. Because she’s my mother.

        Why is that weird and gross?

        1. JustaTech*

          My husband and his roommate joked once that men don’t buy their own underwear – their mom buys it for them, then their partner buys it for them, but they never buy it for themselves.

          This was a joke, but at the same time my mother in law kept sending my husband (boring) underwear and socks for years after he’d moved out. It was just on her shopping list.

      9. SimonTheGreyWarden*

        My MIL gave me a gift card for Torrid expressly for new bras after I had my son and, ehm, my body had changed. It wasn’t awkward for us.

      10. Kit*

        As someone whose last group shopping venture with my mum and younger sister included underwear (for me) and hangers (for my sister), on mum’s dime, I think it’s honestly so contextual and relationship-dependent you can’t broadly generalize. We all knew we were just out shopping and needed some household necessities, and in my case that included another six-pack of underwear, no grossness or weirdness involved. (In fact, we mostly joked that we’ve clearly gotten old when this is the extent of our splurging!)

        The fact that it was your sister-in-law is where I would agree that it gets weird, generally speaking, because your mother’s relationship to her is strictly legal rather than having raised her as one of her offspring (I dearly hope so, anyhow).

    6. Turingtested*

      I’m having flashbacks to my 7th grade teacher saying “If you’re asking if it’s appropriate it probably isn’t.”

      I’m not the most socially adept person but even I know that underwear is a bad idea for a coworker.

    7. Keymaster of Gozer (She/Her)*

      I can top that. One very new helpdesk person participated in secret Santa one year and got the boss a joke apron with a stuffed willy on it. Pretty realistic too. Had fluff.

      I’m not saying the roof came off the building when our boss opened it but we did have to have structural engineers in..

    9. Heffalump*

      If Angela does wear red underwear for New Year’s per Spanish custom, presumably she bought it herself or received it from an intimate partner.

    10. RVA Cat*

      Lingerie in particular is so sexualized that it’s harassing *everybody* when she has to open it in front of coworkers.

    1. Merry and Bright*

      Lol, yes. Scam training every six months, a monthly installment of a scam soap opera/heist flick, monthly phishing email tests, and an extra reminder in December to be careful with holiday greetings in multiple languages to make it seem more festive.

      1. StarTrek Nutcase*

        Gawd, I don’t miss all that. Unfortunately, like most non-work product training, the employees most likely to need repetitive training (i.e., fall prey to scams) are the least likely to give attention to the training. Yet management makes all employees go through trainings although most training should be focused on offenders.

        It’s comparable to having to attend meetings about a topic (timekeeping, password restrictions, etc) where only 3 out of 50 are offenders. And the 3 are usually oblivious during the meeting and the rest just want to go back to work. But management doesn’t have the balls to just directly & privately address the problem with the 3.

        1. Roland*

          I think these trainings are actually not much like “just talk to those 3 in particular” situations. This type of scam is really common and anyone can fall for it, even me or you. Thinking that we would obviously never do this and thus the trainings are obviously for Jim in sales is how people end up falling for scams.

          1. Varthema*

            The scams have been getting much more sophisticated lately for sure. still, trainings have to be good and up to date to be effective, and they can’t have even a whiff of condescension in them otherwise everyone just switches off.

            1. Learn ALL the things*

              IT where I work is adding a new annual training where they give us updates about the new scam techniques that are becoming popular so we can be on the lookout for them. They’ve only done one so far, but it was pretty helpful.

            2. anonprofit*

              One of the smartest people I know almost fell for a similar scam recently and only realized right at the last second. The scammer just caught them at a bad time and that was all that was needed.

              1. Margaret Cavendish*

                I know so many people who got caught by scams this summer! Even people who are normally cautious and generally on top of these things – the scams are getting more sophisticated for sure.

              2. MigraineMonth*

                Yeah, while there are definitely people who are more vulnerable to scams, a sufficiently lucky or sophisticated scam absolutely can get anyone.

                I’ve managed to never send money to a Nigerian prince, but there was one morning I was busy and stressed and nearly fell for an “unpaid taxes” scam because they called at a time I was actually having a tax issue with that state. (Apparently the State of Minnesota will come after you for not filing state taxes ten years earlier, even if your unpaid tax bill was -$40.) Fortunately, even as panicked as the call made me (they started with “We’ve dispatched police officers to [my home address] to arrest you if you don’t pay immediately”), I realized that no police or state tax agency would only accept payment in the form of Walmart money transfers.

          2. Lucifer*

            I’ve had to sit thru these phishing scam trainings and been annoyed by them…and then I clicked on a phishing email that I thought was from my boss. I was annoying about having to go thru the training but that’s why it exists.

            1. Jackalope*

              Yup. I’m super careful about what I click on, and haven’t been fooled by scams, and pay close attention… But once I got caught. It was one of those phishing attempts that happened to be relevant to me, think something like one of the bank scams where they send out an email from a specific bank to try to catch people who use said bank and I did (wasn’t that but same idea). Thankfully it was a test phish email from my employer (they do this on the regular for training), so nothing happened other than that I was embarrassed and had to do a 5-10 min extra training. But the reason these trainings happen on the regular is that phishing scams (and other kinds of scams) WORK, and are designed to catch you.

              (It’s also not a situation where you can just say, “Oh, here are the three employees we need to train on this.” If it were a punctuality issue or a sloppy work issue or what have you then you’d know who was at fault, but with something like this you don’t know who is going to be susceptible until after it happens. Different scams target different kinds of people, so the other employees might be savvy or they might just have not been caught by the kind of scam that would be effective on them.)

              1. Falling Diphthong*

                Crafting automated messages that are clearly NOT phishing has become an art in itself. I recently got a notification from my credit card company that there was a new document to view and I should go to my account to view it… and it pointedly did not include any link. Which was how I knew it was legit.

                1. Beth**

                  These are known as “spear phishing” according to the training I’ve been on.

                  I nearly got caught by a scam text recently — allegedly from a delivery company about an undelivered package. My first clue was that I wasn’t expecting any packages, but I also googled the delivery company’s name and “scam” and got a page on their official website that had tips for identifying spoof emails purporting to be from them. I was able to confirm that it was definitely a scam/spoof/smishing attempt.

                2. Irish Teacher.*

                  Yes, I think I’ve more often thought real e-mails and texts were scams than the other way around, but that still shows how difficult it is to tell.

                3. JustaTech*

                  Our IT and HR teams have had to work together on crafting emails because several times we’ve had our annual phishing training and then soon after everyone got an email about a gift card (in lieu of a holiday party during COVID) and poor IT was inundated with people being like “I’m forwarding this scam to you!”.
                  In one case HR did even have an actual email about the card, but it got sent about an hour after the automated gift card email from Visa or whoever. (The first time it happened our CEO was pissed and took it very personally that people didn’t think that he would give such a generous gift. Uh, no dude, it was that we had just done our phishing training the week before and most people were still very sensitive about the last time we’d been ransom-ware’d.)
                  So now we get several “this is real and legit!” emails before anything that’s going to be a link from a third party.

          3. Falling Diphthong*

            They seem to come in waves, with the phishing messages I get (currently they all want to hire me) being different from the categories targeting other people I know.

            My son checked with me about one from the post office, which I could confidently tell him was fake because there were a few months where I got a bunch of them. There were other signs it was fake, but it’s easy to miss those when something feels plausible.

            And spouse’s work got hit by one of those “Hello, we need the payment to go to the new account” going out under their faked email address.

          4. metadata minion*

            Yes! And the problem is often that people click on things/reply to things/whatever without paying attention. I know what I’m supposed to watch out for, but if I’m busy, yeah, I might not notice that an email isn’t actually from the place it says it’s from. It’s really hard to maintain that kind of alertness in an environment where the vast majority of messages you receive are legitimate.

            1. I am Emily's failing memory*

              Yep. I also don’t think it’s by accident that the email was received in the morning.

              I had someone attempt the same scam on me many years go. Spoofed the email address of the president of my large nonprofit organization and sent me an email around 7:30a ET that he was running to donor meetings and needed me to do a favor if I was available.

              Because it was so early, I saw this email on my phone not long after I’d woken up (and before I’d had my coffee). It was unusual for the president to be emailing me, but I do work in the fundraising department, and honestly, when the president makes a request you’re not inclined to critically evaluate whether he should be making it as so much as you’ve been taught to just do what he needs done. He’s based in our New York office, so if he needed something done in DC for an in-person meeting maybe for whatever reason I seemed like the best person to ask.

              The message was also poorly written, with little to no capitalization or punctuation. But frankly, I’ve worked with a lot of senior leaders who write emails like that – like they’re too busy to write complete sentences or punctuation and believe they’re important enough to not have to care about such things when emailing lowly rank and file staff. So that didn’t really raise a flag either.

              So I write back saying yes, I was available. It was in the next message that the request to buy Google Play cards and send him pictures of the barcodes on the back came. That raised actual flags, only because we are a legitimate nonprofit organization who has no reason to be schmoozing donors with gift cards (which honestly sounds like a good way to commit tax fraud as a tax-exempt entity) and the kind of donors who take 1:1 meetings with our president are very wealthy people who typically donate 6-figure+ gifts, so it would be extremely bizarre for them to need a $250 Google Play gift card to motivate their $100,000+ donation. (Asking for me to email photos instead of deliver a physical good to him somewhere in DC also undermined the plausible reason why he wouldn’t have asked his own EA in NY to do this.)

              At that point I forwarded the email to the president’s EA with a note that this obviously didn’t seem to be legitimate, figuring on the off chance I was wrong the EA would know if it was actually a legitimate request. In hindsight I should have also sent it to our IT department, but this was years before we’d started getting the kind of training that would have drilled that into my head.

              You’ll notice from my story that from beginning to end, there was a lot of fairly clever social engineering going on:

              1) The email was sent early in the morning, when there was the greatest chance of me reading it before I was fully awake. It also meant that I read the email on a phone, via a very no-frills mail app specifically designed for securing corporate email, which was bare bones enough not to display much detail from email headers or provide an easy way to examine the header. Once I got to the office and looked at the same email again from desktop Outlook, it was immediately obvious from the header that it had been spoofed, but that info wasn’t visible at all from the crappy phone app.

              2) The early hour also meant that before any of my coworkers would be in the office or online, so there was a low chance of me talking to anyone else about it, even just in passing. After 9a there’s a good chance I’d have already been in the office and might have told coworkers to explain why I needed to leave the office for 15 minutes, but before 9a was early enough to ask me to do it on my way into the office instead of having to leave.

              3) The scammer spoofed the highest-ranking person in the organization, and sent the email to mid-level managers – people low enough to probably not work directly with the president enough to have a real rapport with him/know his email style/feel comfortable pushing back on a weird request, but high enough for it to seem like an obvious mistake that he would contact us.

              4) The scammer started off asking for an unspecified favor if I was available and waited for me to reply before making the Google Play cards request. This follows a tactic used in marketing to warm people up to bigger asks by getting them to say yes to smaller asks first, so they become more comfortable and more primed to say yes to a bigger ask next.

              These scams are full of this kind of engineering designed to make even a savvy person get tripped up.

        2. Magpie*

          Repetitive training helps everyone, not just the few people you think are most susceptible to these types of scams. If you’re reminded of this type of thing every few months, you’re much more likely to clock it as a scam when you actually encounter it in the wild.

          1. Observer*

            If you’re reminded of this type of thing every few months, you’re much more likely to clock it as a scam when you actually encounter it in the wild

            Exactly.

            There is a ton of research on this. That’s why the best training programs are short but frequent.

        3. Katie*

          Preventive training is more successful than reactive training. As much as I hate these trainings and the emails, it at least keeps reminding me of the ways I could get scammed.

          While most people make not be scammed, it’s way more than those 3 that could be. It’s also because it’s was pounded into me I was cringing for OP and wondering how she could possibly fall for it.

          1. Reb*

            By not knowing about it, being tired, stressed, overwhelmed with work, having had a previous boss who actually would ask for such things, or any number of other things.

            I got a text with a weather warning and giving me a link to apply for extra heating benefit. I’d just woken up and the week before my boiler had stopped working, so I almost fell for it. The thing that tipped me off it was fake was saying I only had 6-12 hours to apply.

        4. Nonsense*

          My work adapted its phishing and scam trainings to include random emails that get sent out every so often. They’re not sent on any kind of schedule and IT will sometimes specifically spoof client or consultant emails to make sure we’re paying attention. Anyone who falls for 3 or more attempts in a 6 month period gets remedial training and a sit down with their supervisor to determine why they keep falling for it.

          It’s not a perfect system, but it works pretty well for us. There’s only been a handful on repeat failures in the 5 years we’ve been using this system.

          1. Insert Clever Name Here*

            We do something similar, but the emails are monthly — my entire job is dealing with external folks over email and it really does keep me more on my toes. Our remedial training and sit down with leadership happens any time someone clicks the link in one of the training emails, but we’re a utility so the consequences of a hacker getting access could be quite bad.

          2. Merry and Bright*

            My company also sends out test phishing emails every month. If you correctly identify it and report it as phishing you get entered into the monthly drawing for a $50 gift card. And they always email you the next month to tell you if you correctly reported it, clicked on it, or didn’t report it.

        5. ScruffyInternHerder*

          I’m not upset that our KnowB4 is a little more tailored. Quarterly training. Beyond that, unless you miss a fake-fish email (and they’re glaringly obvious), you’re good. If you can’t be arsed to do the quarterly on time, they lock you out of the system and you have to go to the IT department conference room to do the training, and its not like they give us a month’s head’s up when its due or anything.

          And since the only debacle of late has been directly due to the IT department and skirting the rules for expediency…well.

          1. ScruffyInternHerder*

            Side note: glaringly obvious if you’re not using your work email address for things like Amazon, etc.

    2. Czhorat*

      We’ve had KnowBe4 for years now, since we got a data breach, and we get at least monthly test emails trying to tricks us. It’s really good practice for your paranoia.

      1. fhqwhgads*

        We get regular test-phish emails at random intervals. They’re really bad though. And I don’t mean in a “I think I’m too slick to fall for it” way. They just don’t make sense for my company and/or role, like, ever. Things like stuff about the break room – there isn’t one. Or fake emails from people thousands of miles away talking about meeting in the conference room later today. Board meetings – not something I’d ever have anything to do with.
        In theory I appreciate the idea of fake-phish to make people a little more paranoid before they click, but it’d be more effective if we were able to remove certain template types from the pool.

    3. learnedthehardway*

      One of my clients includes me on all of their anti-scam training, and it has been incredibly helpful. Of course, now I ask about things that are probably okay to click on, but you can’t be too careful.

      1. Observer*

        Of course, now I ask about things that are probably okay to click on, but you can’t be too careful.

        As the person who is responsible for cybersecurity at my org, I say THANK YOU. I would MUCH rather that people ask about something safe rather than click on something dangerous.

  4. RCB*

    I think the kitchen one is much ado about nothing. Lots of times something different (not good, not bad, just different) happens and people feel they just HAVE to react, so they do, and it’s mayhem. Cooking a roast at work IS different, and most people have never seen that before (any cooking at work, let alone a roast) and felt they had to react in some way, and people really love to default to being overly dramatic about things. It sounds like the ovens may have not been used before, and if not then the first few times you use a new oven there is definitely an unpleasant smell as factory odors burn off, so that is very likely some/most/all of the issue, which means it will probably not be an issue or at least not as big of an issue going forward. The meat smells I just can’t imagine were so offensive as to cause this much drama unless someone just really wanted to be dramatic, and there’s nothing you can do to fix that.

    I say all of this as someone who grew up in a “I need to be DRAMATIC about smells” household. My mother is…..difficult. One particular example is that we had this really small oil fryer where you could fry a few chicken strips or whatnot. I always found that if I fried something and left the fryer out (where mom could see it when she came home and knew it had been used) then she would throw an absolute fit about how the house reeked of fried food. If I fried something and put the fryer in the cupboard before she got home then she didn’t know it had been used and never complained about smell. It was never about the smell, it just gave her an excuse to complain about SOMETHING.

    I suspect that is what is happening here, because something is very outside the norm from what one usually experiences in the office and people just lose their mind when something like that happens.

    1. Wendy Darling*

      I’m also sort of baffled because raw meat doesn’t really smell like anything unless there’s a genuinely startling quantity of it (like, several hundred pounds) or it’s gone off. If I walk into a house and someone is preparing a roast in the kitchen I won’t be able to tell without looking, and I have an unusually acute sense of smell.

      Cooking a roast definitely does smell, but it smells like meat cooking.

      I wonder if what people were smelling was cooking meat + some kind of weird new-oven smell. A lot of times the first time or two you use an appliance that heats up, it smells kind of gross because there’s residue from manufacturing that’s burning off.

        1. Mongrel*

          Another reason it may be to do with the oven is if it’s a convection one.

          In a normal oven by the time you can smell the roast it’s normally well past the ‘funky’ stage, the convection is blasting every smell that’s available form the moment you switch it on.

      2. Quoth the Raven*

        As someone who only eats meat occasionally, I do find that meat has a certain smell to it, both raw and when it’s cooking. I think I catch it more often when the meat is stored in a container and then it’s opened. It doesn’t bother me per se (unless it’s in large quantities as you said) but maybe it’s because I’m not exposed to it as often that I can catch it.

        1. WS*

          Same, and for some reason pork smells particularly strong to me. And some people really hate the smell of lamb, though I love it!

      3. Nina*

        I think it’s unlikely that this is the explanation, but I’ve been vegetarian long enough that 1) raw meat and meat cooking do very much have a smell, and to me they don’t smell like food anymore and 2) I would genuinely struggle to immediately identify that ‘non-food’ smell as being ‘meat cooking’ in a workplace where I don’t usually expect to find food cooking.

      4. Turquoisecow*

        Yeah raw meat doesn’t have a smell? Wondering if there were a lot of vegetarians/vegans/people opposed to meat eating as sometimes they can be upset by the presence or smell of meat. I definitely believe the new oven had an odd smell but I very much doubt it was really horrible unless the meat was bad.

      5. Dek*

        Same here. If folks are commenting “ew” and “that doesn’t smell good” while a roast is cooking in a new oven, I’d think it was less about the roast itself and more that something in the new oven is burning off or something.

        If they’d cooked it in an oven that had been there for a while, I wonder if it still would’ve gotten the negative comments.

        It IS weird that they got so defensive about it, though, since surely they would’ve smelled it too.

        1. Random Bystander*

          That was my thought because “ew” and “that doesn’t smell good” together with the fact that this was apparently the inaugural use of the oven suggests something other than that many people not liking the smell of a roast cooking.

      6. LaurCha*

        The smell of meat cooking is actually disgusting to some people. Just saying. I once had to leave my parents’ house early because my mom was cooking corned beef. I was truly, literally, nauseated by it.

        Heating something up might result in 15 or 20 minutes of yuck smell, but hours? Oh god no. It’s just not appropriate to subject your coworkers to kitchen smells all day.

      7. Starbuck*

        Yeah this threw me off too, I’ve been in plenty of homes where meat was being cooked and I don’t ever remember noticing a raw meat smell unless I stuck my face in it for some reason. Even so, it doesn’t really smell bad? Once in the oven though all I’ve ever noticed was the delicious roasting smells, which I’d have assumed would pretty quickly overpower anything else.

    2. Lily Potter*

      RCB, you and I are of one mind. My first thought was “new office toy – must have drama!”, followed by “everyone should have been invited to participate in the meal”.

    3. Annika Hansen*

      For me, the issue would be the amount of time that I subjected to the smell. A roast may take 4 hours to cook. That is a long time. I am also on medication that can cause nausea…especially in the morning. I am not sensitive to a roast, but I would have a lot of trouble if it were a turkey cooking. I have no idea why, but I cannot stand the smell of turkey roasting in the oven. Also, perimenopause has given me the gift of super smeller.

      1. SpaceySteph*

        I would not have been able to sit around the smell of cooking meat while dealing with pregnancy nausea either. I puked once in a grocery store trash can after walking past the rotisserie chicken.

    4. L*

      Glad I’m not crazy, first I only saw commenters saying how terrible it was to cook the roast.

      Cooking a roast is kind of weird at work but most workplaces don’t have ovens. If they’re putting an oven in the kitchen then I don’t see the problem with using it, and cooking most things in an oven will have some sort of smell.

    5. Kitry*

      I completely agree. I’m blessed to work with a lot of good cooks, and although we unfortunately don’t have an oven, it’s common for people to bring in a crockpot air fryer, etc and cook food to share at work. If we did have an oven, people would absolutely use it regularly, and it would be great!

      Also, there’s just no way that saying Eww or “that doesn’t smell good” about food someone else is cooking, is anything other than incredibly rude. It’s always best to keep one’s thoughts and feelings about the odor, appearance, nutritional value, or ethics of other people’s food to oneself.

    1. coffee*

      Yes, probably even more common now! The thing as well is that the scammer has plenty of practice at scamming people – and I believe they’re often actually a team of scammers. So they’re resourced up, and they keep evolving their scams to make them more and more successful.

      1. Classically Ambigous English Prepositional Phrase*

        We recently had a new executive director start- within an hour of their first day, staff got scam messages purportedly from the new executive. No one fell for it, but it was creepy to feel like we were that closely monitored.

    2. Jackalope*

      Related question for this: I know someone who sort of got sucked into this one. They bought the gift cards and then realized that it was a scam and didn’t send them, but they were lamenting to me that they don’t use Google Play and don’t have anyone to give them to (o don’t use it either or I would have offered to buy them). Is there any way to get rid of them that’s not a total loss?

      Also, yes, be compassionate to yourself, LW. Scams are lousy and make you feel bad about yourself, but they happen because people are good at manipulating others and taking advantage of trust and assumed good will. Next time you’ll be more aware and less likely to fall for this.

      1. Katie Impact*

        There are gift card resale websites that will buy gift cards for slightly less than face value; just make sure to look into the resale website you choose to make sure the site itself isn’t another scam.

      2. Roland*

        I would offer them at work at near face value. Don’t mention the origin obviously. I would do work over random strangers since people are less likely to try to cheat people who know where they work.

    3. CityMouse*

      At most places that sell gift cards, there are warning signs now.

      My aunt didn’t fall for it, but there was.an extremely savvy one that somehow knew my other aunt would travel to Tunisia for work (not a terribly common thing where I’m from) and tried to scam claiming my aunt had been arrested there. Thankfully it’s now a lot easier to reach someone who’s traveling and a quick call cleared that up.

    4. Lucifer*

      One of my prior jobs got hit by this scam (they were pretending to be the CEO) and it turned out to be disgruntled ex-employees.

    5. slr*

      Yep, same thing happened to me this year. Scammers managed to send an email “from” my CEO to my personal email (!!). I replied initially but once they mentioned the gift cards I figured out it was a scam. But they fooled me initially, it took me a minute to figure it out. They’re getting sneaker!

      1. Elsa*

        Yes, this gift card scam was sent to someone on my team this month! The email supposedly came from a client she had been working with. We only figured out it was a scam because it was really not part of her role to buy gift cards for clients, so we looked into it more closely and figured it out.

    6. DriveToWork*

      Suggestion: AAM to write about known workplace scams.

      Related: HR from one of my past employers almost felt for another type of scam.

      The scammer created an email address that sounds like one of the employee’s. Then the scammer emailed the HR to update the direct deposit information for the paycheck. HR believed the message was real and almost finished up the change. When finishing off the change, HR reached out to the particular employee to confirm. The employee flipped and said that they did not initiate the change. HR then realized that the email address was not the employee’s personal email address.

      1. LizB*

        Yikes!!! I’m so glad it was caught at the last minute. This is why, as much as filling out boring paperwork is no fun, I’ll always be in favor of needing a procedure with checks and balances if you’re going to have HR make changes to direct deposits. (Doing it yourself from your employee portal is fine as long as that login is secure.)

        1. Observer*

          Yes!

          The last time there was a training on this people were kind of grumbling, so I jumped and said “Do you want to take a chance that someone might pretend to be you and have your pay check sent to their account instead of yours?” And then I told a couple of stories….

          That definitely changed people’s reactions.

      2. Water Everywhere*

        Ohhhh, I had one of these as well! Fortunately the employee they picked to impersonate had left us a few months earlier so I knew right off it was a scam.

      3. Observer*

        The scammer created an email address that sounds like one of the employee’s. Then the scammer emailed the HR to update the direct deposit information for the paycheck.

        This is why our HR no longer allows personal email addresses to be used for change requests to payroll information. At this point all requests have to go through our HR portal. Before we got that, you had to email a specific form from you *work* email and use a specific form. And we can generally tell if an email is from our internal email because everything else has a header. The idea is to alert people to spoofed addresses. This way if an email fro CEOName@organizationName.com shows up but it’s really from somewhere else, staff will know it. And one rule we keep on pounding on people is that if it’s pretending, then you KNOW it’s a scam.

    7. Loredena*

      First time I saw it several years ago it was an email from the president of our small neighborhood board asking me, the treasurer, if I had some time When I responded the request was to wire money to a specific account! That’s when I looked again and realized the email address was almost but not quite right.

      The next time it was a text from someone in my management chain, sent to my spouse (our phone numbers are 1 digit diff so looked like a typo) When I texted I got a request to buy gift cards. That was an obvious fake for multiple reasons but I could see it looking real in other circumstances.

      Toll road texts are the newest things, and the first one coincidentally was in a state we’d just been in so I went to the real page to check. The rest since then are more obvious just because I’m not driving there.

    8. Parakeet*

      Yep, I got one of these earlier this year, from the then-CEO, claiming the gift cards were for a client (this is a social-services-adjacent field where a “client” generally means a services recipient and it wouldn’t be implausible to send them gift cards – it was totally normal at my previous job that had a larger direct services component). I had never heard of this scam before and I work for a smallish (well under 100 staff) org that contracts out for IT and doesn’t have any kind of regular scam training. It wasn’t her usual number, but some people in this field, including me, keep alternate numbers for privacy reasons.

      I think I’d exchanged three or four messages with the scammer before becoming extremely suspicious. Why me and not her assistant? Why would she push me about it after I told her I was out that day and that it would be difficult for me to get to both the relevant store and my medical appointment? That would be pretty out of character for her. So I contacted my boss, who contacted the CEO, and we confirmed that it was a scam and that I and another person had both received these texts. And we put out an announcement warning the rest of the org.

      I got partially scammed – gave them my Social Security number and some other info but figured out what was going on before I sent them any money – a few years back by a “someone who identity info indicates was you was involved in major crimes and if you can’t prove it was you you’re about to be arrested” scam. I tend to have a strong fear response to angry tone, and because I’ve had bad experiences with law enforcement it was easy for me to believe at first that they would do something that seemed procedurally sketchy.

      I’m also autistic and tend to be a little susceptible to people lying to me, which might be relevant here.

  6. Riley*

    things like “eww”

    Are the coworkers 12? No wonder the chefs got defensive. Adults should know better ways to express dislike of somebody’s food odors than “eww.”

    2. Irish Teacher.*

      I still think it’s over the top to go to HR about it and cold-shoulder people afterwards. I could understand snapping, “oh, it can’t be that bad” or something but unless people were going on for days or weeks about, “I hope you’re not going to cook anything else smelly in that oven,” or “yuck. I think that smell is still lingering of that awful meal you cooked,” going to HR seems a bit of an overreaction.

    3. Ellis Bell*

      I didn’t read that to mean they were making exaggerated noises, or commenting on food (since it was mostly new oven smell) more that it was the most low key way of asking what was happening. “Eww what is that?” is comparatively more subtle than going into a description of disgust. Especially when you have no idea it’s even food.

  7. EllenD*

    I think #3 was a combination of a new oven that needed to get rid of the factory smells, and also the fact that some people don’t like the smell of meat roasting, especially if they don’t eat meat. I personally don’t like 90% of meat and dislike the smell of it cooking, so wouldn’t be impressed with colleagues cooking a roast. I can cope with colleagues heating meals in microwave, that takes less than 10 minutes – although I wish they wouldn’t do it for fish dishes – but meat roasting for a couple of hours would be hard to bear. If the meal had been partially cooked and then finished in the oven it might have worked, but I wonder about how they were managing vegetables, etc.

    1. bamcheeks*

      I wonder about how they were managing vegetables

      This is the baffling part for me. Were they literally just roasting a joint and then eating it with bread or something? Because cooking a full roast dinner with roast potatoes, vegetables, gravy etc is like a three to four hour job!

    2. Seamyst*

      Yes, exactly. And what about people who were pregnant, or had an illness or condition where they’re unusually sensitive to smells? Let alone a vegetarian or vegan, as you and others have pointed out.

      1. Keymaster of Gozer (She/Her)*

        I’m incredibly sensitive to onion smells, but I’m also aware that cultures differ and that to some people that’s a key part of their diet. The most I’ll ask is to sit elsewhere or open a window.

        But also I come from a workplace where it’s not too unusual to have engineers making bacon butties in the kitchen and now that’s a pervasive smell!

        1. Parakeet*

          Right, the smell of cooked broccoli makes my stomach turn, but I’m not going to tell people they can’t have broccoli dishes around me. Same for kimchi. I think going to HR was way over the top (and breaking in the oven with something as involved as a roast may not have been the world’s best idea). I also think it’s a little over the top – less so, but still a little – for people to “ewww” audibly about their coworkers cooking a roast. Nobody exactly comes out looking great.

  8. DJ Abbott*

    It doesn’t make sense to me to put an oven in an office, unless the company is a restaurant or food company where they would normally be cooking things.
    Since they did put an oven in it was inevitable that at some point people would try to use it, appropriately or not.

    1. Poison I.V. drip*

      I think people are missing the point of this letter. It’s not the smell, or the sanitation….it’s more like: why are people cooking in the office? Actual cooking – not just heating up lunch – takes real attention. It’s not something you can just do at work between work tasks. If you’re paying attention to the cooking, then by definition your other work isn’t getting done. And maybe there’s health/fire department regs as well, for a non-food prep facility, like an office, to be used for cooking. It also just sends a weird message. Why do you want to do home stuff at work? Some workplaces have showers but that doesn’t mean you just hop in the shower like you’re at home.

      1. Dek*

        I dunno, a roast can be sort of a set-it-and-forget-it kind of thing. You get it prepped, put it in the oven, check it on breaks.

        But yeah, it is a little odd.

      2. metadata minion*

        Something as long and involved as a roast is very unusual, but I think this really depends on your office. Our staff room has an oven and stovetop and people make grilled cheese or scrambled eggs or things like that fairly regularly.

        1. AMH*

          Yup, I echo this. I work and live in a tourist heavy place; in-season most of my coworkers don’t want to go out and deal with the traffic and crowds and out-of-season a lot of food places close. It’s really common for people to cook eggs or a sandwich or soup and occasionally heat up a full meal. And as we have an hour’s lunch that we have to take, people are comfortable using some of that time to cook.

      3. Sneaky Squirrel*

        I thought it likely that they came in early (since they were already prepping roast at 7:30) and a roast doesn’t need much attention after it’s in oven. And I wouldn’t be an expert in health/fire dept regs but I would expect that by having a kitchenette with an oven in it, the office is already required to follow certain food & safety regs (such as having a fire extinguisher nearby). It doesn’t seem likely that they get to choose which regs to follow depending on whether or not they witness anyone actually using the kitchen and raw meat is hardly the only food that would come into an office kitchen that could contain contaminants.

      4. MigraineMonth*

        I worked at a company that provided microwaveable popcorn as snacks. Except for a couple of weeks around the professional conference we hosted, because no one wanted the burnt popcorn/fire alarm/fire engines/building evacuations during the conference.

        Again.

      5. JustaTech*

        The only time I’ve seen people really cooking and not just re-heating at work was when we’d had a major wind storm and people were on their 3rd or 4th day of no power in the winter and brought in rice cookers just to be able to take a hot meal home.

    2. North Bay Teky*

      Stove tops aren’t as common as they used to be and the installation of them is different than a stove top with oven. It didn’t sound odd to me at all. My last employer had a stove with oven, a microwave and full size refrigerator in a breakroom for less than 50 people.

    3. DE*

      I bet the company didn’t take proactive steps to install the oven. It probably was just already there when they either bought or began to rent the building.

      1. I should really pick a name*

        The letter pretty clearly stated that the oven was a new addition.

        Last year, our common lunch area and kitchen (for about 120 people) was refurbished, with an oven put in

    4. fhqwhgads*

      There can be a business case for an oven needed for specific events, or for reheating-type activity. It’s not a matter of having it and saying never use it, but a matter of “don’t use it for four hours” or “don’t use it unless for EVENT”, etc.
      For me the bigger thing that it being there, or the smell, is that one small group decided, “hey why not” use what was pretty clearly a shared thing in a shared space for HOURS. Like, at no point did they think “well what if someone else wanted to use this at some point today”.

    6. Starbuck*

      It does seem a little extravagant when something like a toaster oven would probably work just as well for most office lunch needs, but when I worked in a place with a oven in the office kitchen it was really nice to be able to do things like bake cookies for staff parties, heat up some of those big frozen costco appetizers, etc.

  9. WhyOven?*

    My issue would be contaminating counters, etc. in a space that folks expect to be uncontaminated and where there’s little or no expectation that it could be contaminated and there’s little or no expectation and/orability to adequately clean it. Just a bad situation overall. That said, why install an oven if you don’t expect it to be used – having the oven in a work kitchen at all is really the root of the problem.

    1. SS*

      My workplace has a full kitchen & that includes the supplies needed to properly clean and sanitize after one is finished!

    2. Whale I Never*

      I’m curious as to why multiple people in the comments seem to think that an office kitchen would be somehow more dangerous about raw meat contamination than any other kitchen.

      My office contains about five times the amount of cleaning products as my apartment does! The counters are barer, so it’s easier and quicker to wipe down than my kitchen at home!

      1. Insert Clever Name Here*

        For me, it’s because unless there is someone whose job it is to regularly disinfect the office kitchen counters, I don’t actually know that it’s happened. Also, I know some of those people don’t wash their hands after going to the bathroom, they sneeze into their hands and then grab a cup of coffee, leave crumbs on the counter, etc… I just do not have any reason to assume those people will also be conscientious about cleaning up raw meat juice.

        On the other hand, I can know for certain that my kitchen counter is free of raw meat juice because I am the one who cleans up the raw meat juice with appropriate cleaner.

        1. Jackalope*

          Would a sanitizing wipe be sufficient for you if you were on this situation? Since you could just grab it, do a quick wipe-down of the counter, and then know that it was clean? I haven’t ever worried about that because I’ve never done any cooking in a work kitchen that could involve food touching the counter (mostly just dumping my lunch on a plate and putting it in the microwave), but I feel like this is the route I would go down if the wipes were there and I was wanting to make something that could end up touching the counter.

          1. fhqwhgads*

            A quick wipe won’t actually help in this case. If we’re talking about the types of bacteria from raw meat, you’re talking wipe it down with a sanitizing wipe and let it set for 10 minutes until completely dry.
            If all that happens is a quick wipe – such that it’s not wet enough to stay that way for minutes – or it gets used again before the stuff dries, it’s not actually been sanitized. Per the instructions on the packaging, I’m sure most people use those things wrong. Which is most cases is not that big a deal. But if we’re talking raw meat, it matters a lot more.

        2. Starbuck*

          “Also, I know some of those people don’t wash their hands after going to the bathroom, they sneeze into their hands and then grab a cup of coffee, leave crumbs on the counter, etc”

          So are you currently using any office kitchen then? Because it does not sound like it

          1. Insert Clever Name Here*

            Yup, I heat my lunch in the microwave and refill my water from the touch-free water & ice machine. Just because I’m aware that office kitchens are less clean than my personal kitchen doesn’t mean I avoid them, just that I’m aware and modulate my usage accordingly. And also I don’t eat at potlucks :)

            1. Starbuck*

              Then it doesn’t sound like someone prepping raw meat in there would affect your usage? I was just confused on the point of, the kitchen already being gross so what’s the difference with other normal kitchen things happening in there. Like what makes raw meat juice worse than someone’s unwashed bathroom hands

      2. WorkerDrone*

        You must work somewhere much better than I if you trust all your colleagues to properly sanitize and clean up after themselves when using the kitchen – LOL.

        Based on where I sit, I know for a fact that several of my coworkers don’t wash their hands after using the restroom. I have no doubts they would happily leave droplets of raw meat juice everywhere in our kitchen.

        I think those of us thinking the kitchen will be more dangerous about raw meat contamination are thinking that because we know darn well our colleagues are not diligently cleaning up after themselves, something that could be enforced and overseen at home but can’t be at the office.

        1. I Have RBF*

          You’re right, I don’t trust coworkers to clean. That’s why, if I needed to cook something in a work kitchen, I cleaned it before and after. Before because I had no way to know how clean it was, and after because I’m not a slob.

    3. Turquoisecow*

      It’s a roast, not radioactive material or a dead body, it’s not that hard to clean up after, even if (I doubt) they were just drizzling raw meat juice all over the place.

      1. Turquoisecow*

        And if you’re really worried about cross contamination due to allergens or whatever you probably wouldn’t be preparing food on work countertops anyway.

    4. metadata minion*

      I don’t expect the counters to be contaminated with raw meat, but I pretty much assume that they’re going to be kind of gross and if I’m doing actual meal prep of any kind I wash the counter before I use it. If nothing else, several dozen people are putting their grimy little hands all over it every day, and that’s going to introduce way more pathogens than raw meat.

  10. Captain dddd-cccc-ddWdd*

    OP3 (not the same as unprofessional team-mate) – I do think there’s a bit of a risk of getting seen as part of a “pair” or “unit” especially if you often work on the same projects. I’ve seen it numerous times where two people get recruited around the same time to the same role, especially in junior/graduate level roles, and they are treated as a single unit: “Amy-and-Soo are working on this project”, “We need to invite Amy-and-Soo to that client call”, etc.

    You know how often, until you know them better a lot of people assume couples are sort of personality clones of each other, and it isn’t until you know them better that their individual traits come out. It’s the same sort of phenomenon.

    1. Candy*

      I agree. It’s optimistic advice but not necessarily realistic.

      I also worked alongside a similar coworker and we were often referred to as one unit simply because we did the same job and were around the same age. Even now, years after leaving that department, I’ll run into people who ask “where’s your counterpart?”

      And on the flipside, my department has students who come in and work for a term and because every semester there’s a new batch of them, we frequently refer to them simply as “the students.” Their direct manager has individual relationships with each of them and can speak to their individual achievements/work ethic, but fair or not the rest of us will just ask her “can you have one of the students do…” “can you ask the students to not…” etc

  11. Keymaster of Gozer (She/Her)*

    2. A word of reassurance. I’ve worked in IT for decades, alongside many a skilled techie in the art of network security and we ALL have a story of when we were scammed somehow.

    Heck I’ve had my bank account drained twice.

    It’s a good thing to spread knowledge of new scams because anyone can fall prey to them. There’s no such thing as ‘I’m too smart to fall for that’ because some can be very very clever and quite often they get emotions involved.

    Additionally, sure you could be perpetually paranoid and avoid anything but take it from experience that’s not a good thing either.

    1. JustaTech*

      Yes! The CFO of my husband’s last tech company very nearly sent several large wire transfers before he happened to bump into the CEO who he thought had been asking for the transfers. “Hey Chris, why are we wiring that money?” “Wiring what money?” “Oh crap.”
      If the CFO had been working from home like normal, or if the CEO hadn’t happened to have stepped out of his office at just that moment they could have been out tens of thousands.

  12. Alan*

    Yeah. I was hired out of college with a bunch of other people and there were multiple times when an older worker got us confused. It got confusing when they wanted to know how I was progressing on a task that someone else had been assigned. It can take a while for people to become distinct.

  13. Alan*

    #3 brings up good memories of when I was on a small 3-day boat trip as a very introverted 20-something. There was a group of other young people on the same boat, pretty much just them and me and a lot of older people. The 20-something group was doing mushrooms and enjoying private adult activities in the boat’s hallways at night and generally being a small nuisance. An older woman confronted me on deck at one point and said “You’re not with them, are you?” I said no and she said “Good!” and walked away :-).

  14. phira*

    It’s actually a very common thing for a new oven to smell bad the first time you use it. There are factory coatings that burn off during the first use. This happened to us several years ago when we got a new range. So that’s probably what happened and everyone overreacted.

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

      yeah that was my thought too. Maybe someone should have turned it on before hand and made sure it was working properly. You never want to do something big (like a roast) for the first time in the oven. You do something like frozen pizza

      1. KateM*

        Maybe the persons who were responsible for it to be installed should also have been the ones to make sure that it is working properly.

        1. fhqwhgads*

          If the issue was off-gassing, it’s not really a “working properly” question. It’s more like, you’re supposed to turn the oven on to a certain temp and leave it empty for X amount of time before anyone uses it for cooking.
          It reads like that step got skipped so these folks were doing the first run heat up and first cooking at the same time. Which would smell bad.

    2. LL*

      And I can see people not knowing this if they’ve never had to deal with a new oven before. (or if it’s been a while since they have)

  15. Madre del becchino*

    Scam email at work: I got one of these recently and two things stood out to me that this was a scam. Number 1, the email address it was sent from was not my boss’ email address. Number 2, the style of writing was definitely not the same as my boss’ style. I immediately let the whole office (10 people) know in case any of them got it as well.

  16. DE*

    Maybe it’s just because it was years ago, but number 2 seems like such an obvious scam to me. Has anyone ever legitimately been tasked with buying a bunch of gift cards at work? I’ve literally only ever heard of that happening in scams.

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

      It sounds like this was not an unusual task. Some companies do purchase gift cards for their clients.

    2. Lexi Vipond*

      Yes – they’re occasionally used as prizes in competitions run for our students. But I’d have to sort out getting a purchase order and so on.

    3. Margaret Cavendish*

      I would imagine it happens just often enough, that makes it plausible enough, that a few people would fall for it. Scamming is as much a numbers game as anything else – these people send thousands of emails in the hopes of attracting just a couple of responses.

      Like any scam, it works because it works. All we can do is be aware of this kind of thing, and be very diligent about how we respond!

    4. fhqwhgads*

      Not buying them, but getting them. Small amount gift cards were used for prizes at the all-staff retreat. But I’m 98% sure the person tasked with getting them was told to redeem points from company credit cards to get said gift cards. And it also wasn’t just “buy x gift cards”. It was “here are the things that need prizes, and here are the amounts for each prize” and the names of the stuff were very inside-joke-ey and not something a scammer could/would come up with. And it was always that person’s job to do that annually.

    5. Parakeet*

      In the direct services part of the field that I work in, gift cards (e.g. for Target) are how many orgs provide certain benefits to service users, since grants usually don’t allow giving the service users actual cash but sometimes do allow gift cards. At my previous job, gift card mailings, gift card inventory, urgent gift card needs, etc, were a whole thing. An Apple Store or Google Play card would have been a little unusual, but I definitely wouldn’t have considered it out of the question, especially since some of our service users got help with educational/career training expenses from us. If I’d been hit with this scam while I was working that job, and it was done competently by the scammers, it’s reasonably likely that I would have fallen for it.

  17. Ask a Manager* Post author

    A reminder: Please do not respond to trolls. It keeps them coming back. You can flag the comment for me by including a link that goes to moderation and I’ll remove it. If you want, you can respond “reported” so people know it’s been dealt with and isn’t just being allowed to stand. But please do not engage.

  18. Seashell*

    Did we ever get an update from “my office Secret Santa gave me a gift from a pornstar”? Saw it in the You May Also Like links and wished I had the answer to whether it was a mistake or not.

  19. MausTrappe*

    The Secret Santa underwear reminds me a lot of my own Secret Santa debacle. As with the gift I got, I really feel that people need to have guidelines about what is and is not OK. I also feel that Andy and my secret Santa were both giving “gifts” to make themselves feel good. They were more concerned with how they would feel about giving something than how the other person would feel. As an HR professional, I think it is time to get rid of office organized employee gift giving. Just buy the team a meal if you can afford a bonus.

    Also- the complaints about the roasting meat- This is why we need work from home people. So we don’t have to deal with each other and can get our work done as we want. People should be allowed to eat dress and exist as they need to and still be able to get work done.

      1. MausTrappe*

        this one was a secret santa where I was in a giant call center and knew no one. We were all supposed to fill out the little cards about our likes etc. I was gifted a usb powered air purifier (think those cheap useless electronic things) I audibly expressed my confusion / disappointment and the unhinged woman next to me started yelling and screaming about how ungrateful I was and made a huge scene on the call center floor. HR was called in and I was berated for being ungrateful. Hence, I do not participate in any gift exchanges and as a nuerodivergent working professional i think these are all strong arguments for WFH.

        1. JustaTech*

          I’m very sorry someone was so incredibly rude to you! There was nothing wrong with your reaction (maybe not the *most* polite thing ever, but not unreasonable at all), and yelling and screaming are far more wrong.
          This was clearly not a *you* thing it was something up with the other person (and HR was wrong too).

  20. Lurker*

    LW 2-don’t feel too bad, I nearly fell for the same thing at a previous job. I got an email from a higher up asking me to go buy giftcards for him and email them-thank goodness I had enough sense to call and ask him if he really wanted gift cards and sure enough it wasn’t him. Lesson learned!

  21. Emily Byrd Starr*

    #3 reminds me of the co-worker who was fresh out of college, and put up a Quote Board in her office. For those of you who don’t know, a Quote Board is a large sheet of paper that is hung on the wall, and whenever someone says something particularly funny, clueless, unintentionally sexual, etc., someone writes it down on the paper. They are very popular with college students (or at least they were in the late 1990’s/early 2000’s. Perhaps social media and smartphones have made them obsolete).
    This was the first time I had ever seen a Quote Board outside of a college dormitory or a house where all the residents were college students or fresh out of college. It wasn’t exactly unprofessional (to my knowledge, all of the quotes were G-rated) but it did serve as a reminder that she was fresh out of college and not fully aware of the difference between dorm culture and office culture.

  22. The CEO’s assistant*

    Remember the common variables of a scam.
    Urgency
    Asks for money/creds
    Plays on emotions

    Back in fast food days, my coworker almost fell for a scam. Names changed. “Jade” once answered the phone at work, and the scammer greeted her and asked if she was the manager. She said yes. (She was not). He told her that someone had withdrawn money out of the Heliodorian bank account, and she would lose her job if money was not put back in. She was told to gather 1000 dollars and put it at [cash drop off site]. At some point she transferred the call to her phone.
    Hendrik, the other employee, was busy with clients, but confused about what she wanted and why she urgently needed cash. Hendrik noticed her putting cash in an envelope, got the story out of Jade, and told her to wait for Carnelian, the real manager, before giving away any cash.
    When Carnelian arrived, he got the story out of Jade, told her to hang up, and return the cash to him.
    Carnelian was upset with Jade, because if Jade had left with the money, Carnelian and Hendrik likely would have lost their jobs. Jade is not known for thinking clearly, and this scam is obvious in hindsight because of some other details. But sometimes scams are very sophisticated, so the best thing to do is to spread awareness, so that nobody else will fall for it.

    1. Starbuck*

      This is partly on the fast food business management; if Jade is not a manager and known for having bad judgement she should not have had any way to access $1000 in cash. At least when I worked at a place like that, even if I could operate the register and theoretically take cash out of there, I could not get into the safe and there was not nearly that amount kept in the till.

  23. Remgen*

    I’m a little surprised that “tarred” is being used nonchalantly here. Isn’t using that word passé at best and honestly a bit offensive? I don’t know for sure, but I just don’t imagine that this phrase is in common parlance anymore, probably with good reason.

    1. Starbuck*

      It definitely sounds like an excessively dramatic turn of phrase to my ears when most people use it for mild social situations (it is a form of torture that was sometimes deadly after all) but I hadn’t noticed any conversation on its use being considered offensive. Do you find it offensive personally?

      1. JustaTech*

        Doing a quick search around the internet (dictionary dot com) it doesn’t seem that this phrase has the same root as “tarred and feathered” but rather comes from treating the wounds of sheep with tar to keep out infection. (Also not obviously racist.)

        And the phrase specifically means “to have the same undesirable behavior(s) ascribed to an entire group based on the behavior of one member of the group.”
        So now I’ve learned a thing!

        1. Starbuck*

          Oh interesting, so it’s nothing to do with what I was imagining might be objectionable. I’m curious if that was the connection they were implying, or if there’s something else to it that we still don’t know.

  24. Thegs*

    Ah, man, I feel extra bad for LW 2 because if a phisher was able to spoof their company’s email domain that means that IT didn’t set it up correctly. SPF, DMARC, and DKIM records should be configured in your public DNS and would have prevented this. IT hopefully realized how badly they messed up from that and corrected the undoubtedly missing records. $1k is a small price to pay, it’s cheaper than the whole LAN getting randomwared.

    1. Thegs*

      This is, of course, assuming that IT isn’t doing something completely unhinged like permitting anonymous SMTP from the internet. Oh man I hope they aren’t doing that.

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