updates: younger coworker thinks I don’t know about computers, people think coworker is having an affair, and more

by Alison Green on December 4, 2024

It’s “where are you now?” month at Ask a Manager, and all December I’m running updates from people who had their letters here answered in the past. Here are four updates from past letter-writers.

1. My younger coworker thinks I don’t know anything about computers (#2 at the link)

I followed your advice and sat down with her in private and discussed the whole issue. The rudeness, the condescension, the age discrimination. She seemed to have had no idea she was doing it and apologized. I then laid out my past experience with computers, starting in the dim dark ages of the 1970s up to now.

Things have improved. She occasionally starts off (to me), “To do that, you have to …” then she trails off and stops. I’ll call it a win. The boss did ask if I’d spoken to her and I said yes. He said, “Did you hurt her?” and I said no.

Someone in the comments mentioned younger users not really understanding file structures and organization and, given that she buries things 12 folders deep, I’d say she’s in that camp.

2. How do I tell my team member to be less uptight? (#4 at the link)

I took your advice and honed in on where Adam was not succeeding in his role professionally. I repeatedly gave him detailed feedback on where his work needed to improve. Unfortunately, the improvements were not forthcoming, clients began to complain and I ended up having to redo all his work, late into the night again and again.

I gave Adam a good heads-up that he would not pass his probation, which, in my mind, should have signalled alarm bells and to start the job hunt immediately. I wanted him to land on his feet and not be left stranded without a job.

With clients at risk of leaving us because of Adam’s poor work and other staff already guessing he would not last, I made the decision to end his employment and invited him to an in-person meeting. I explained to him a week beforehand the purpose of the meeting. Unfortunately, despite thinking I had made it clear what was happening, Adam was blindsided by the news that he was being let go. It was quite a sad departure, and I had hoped it could have gone better. I am very aware that things we say as managers can leave a mark and be remembered forever, and I was very careful to be as kind as I could be rather than to leave him crushed.

On reflection, I think Adam needed more 1-2-1 time in-person from me, but I work almost fully remote. I think he needed coaching in a way I would expect from a far more junior position. I also wonder if Adam was somewhere on the spectrum (and whether he knows or not), and if I needed to adapt my instructions and cues to resonate more. A big learning from me is to be more ruthless in interviews in really interrogating skillsets and any resume gaps.

I have discovered that Adam managed to find a job fairly quickly in a similar role but in a very different type of company. I really hope he has a manager and mentor who will oversee his writing and continue to make him perfect the craft. And, I hope he will be happy and find his professional strengths and really blossom. I really do wish him well.

3. How to explain an angry ex-employee is review-bombing us on Glassdoor (#3 at the link)

Having been at this place a bit longer, I think I see where the bad reviews are coming from. It’s not exactly what a lot of people in the comments thought!

When someone messes up big, leadership seems to believe in having boundary-violating “heart-to-hearts” that encourage said employee to blame everything on deep emotional issues that become the company’s business. Then, depending on how much they cry and “come clean,” they’re allowed to proceed as if nothing happened? For some reason? Even if they repeatedly do things that would merit an immediate firing someplace more functional? And then, eventually, months to years and many crying conversations about their trauma later, these people finally get let go.

The end result is that every person who should be out within their first week is allowed to stay an unbearably long time, most of which they spend totally convinced they were in the right about things like trying to get AI to do all their work, lying repeatedly that their work was done and ready to send to clients when it had never been started, harassing coworkers, turning out not to have the technical skills they claimed when hired, and so on. Upper management spends so much time and effort placating these weirdos, and engages them in such intimate conversations about their mental wellbeing, that they are always shocked and indignant when their bosses, who have been acting like close friends and/or bad therapists, finally give them the boot. The rightfully fired then invariably respond by writing at least one, but sometimes two or three, totally unglued Glassdoor reviews about it.

It’s such a weird situation. We have many more of those bad reviews now than we did when I first asked you about it, each one a distortion of reality from a person who should objectively have been gone sooner — and yet, they’re accidentally right about one thing: This place is toxic.

I have a ritual now where I microwave a little popcorn to eat while reading the latest reviews. Sometimes my better coworkers and I forward around the more delusional ones. Then I go back to covering the work of whoever lied about meeting their deadlines this week, fielding angry Teams messages from the conflict-prone people who haven’t cycled through our bizarre disciplinary process yet, and applying for work elsewhere.

Update to the update:

I got an offer for a new job with a 30% raise 48 hours after writing you my last email. My boss and other leadership keep saying how surprised they are, which I assume is because nobody usually leaves this place without having dozens of overly emotional meetings about it and they don’t know how to handle an employee who just calmly peaces out.

My HR person wrote an email this morning setting up a last-minute meeting to pressure me to sign some paperwork on the spot, so I emailed back to ask if I could receive and go over said paperwork ahead of time. Weirdly for people who are obsessed with having long, detailed discussions about their employees’ private lives, upper management seems to have forgotten I’m married to a lawyer.

4. Should I tell a colleague people think she’s having an affair with a coworker?

I took Alison’s advice and left it alone – and fortunately, they both made it easier for me by kind of freezing me out for my notice period. I’ve hardly spoken to them since I left, but the twist in the tale is that they have both now also left my old company to start a new business together!

I don’t imagine I’ll ever find out if they were or weren’t having an affair but as the commentariat pointed out, whether they were or not, the vibe their behavior created was super strange and uncomfortable to be around, and I’m glad to have moved on.

Thank you for your advice, both on this matter and in general!

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{ 128 comments }

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  1. CubeFarmer*

    I feel like I’m the opposite of LW #1’s update. I’m in my late 40s and we just hired someone in her late 20s who can…actually figure out tech stuff on her own!

    I work with a bunch of people who are minimally competent with only very, very general stuff, so I’ve grown accustomed to talking people through, what should be, extremely basic tasks because otherwise they won’t get done. I quickly realized with my new colleague that I don’t have to do this and it’s been so amazing.

    1. Throwaway Account*

      I work with college age students – I teach in a library. I spend a good chunk of my limited time with classes giving very basic Word/Google Doc tips. I usually teach them how to google for the types of questions that come up often. Most of the time I find out they did not think to google their questions.

      1. Shellfish Constable*

        Oof, I feel this. My college students both don’t know how Microsoft/Google suite stuff works and think *I* don’t know, either. So they do stuff like submit a jpeg of the writing assignment they generated on AI or “update” a group doc with just their name after the whole team has finished the project without them (not in my classes but in my colleagues’) and then wonder why they got a 0.

        Trust me: 9 out of 10 of them are great, my assignments are mostly cheat proof, and they learn awesome stuff in our classes … but they’re not super savvy and they think no one else is, as well.

        1. Testing*

          My sister is a French teacher and had a student do a very basic exam. She had explicitly said that they were not allowed to use any aids, such as Google Translate. Somehow, towards the end of the test, the student had written not the (pretty bad) French they wrote earlier, but some German words. When asked, they fessed up to using Google Translate and not even having been able to notice that they had accidentally picked the wrong language..

          1. Richard Hershberger*

            I have a relative who is a professor. She told me about one term paper that included the ChatGPT prompts.

      2. Alternative Person*

        I was teaching a HS writing class recently and some of the questions I got.

        So many times I had to ask them ‘Did you google it?’ then ‘Well did you check in google scholar?’

        I spent a whole lesson on referencing and they seem to have retained nothing.

        Convincing them to use the sort by year buttons in Scholar was a near herculean task.

        I’m going through their essays now and I’m suspecting a lot of DeepL and ChatGPT went into it.

      3. I take tea*

        I recognise this. I am very irritated that my university doesn’t have basic Office courses anymore. They had when I studied, but not anymore. Many students work it out, but many would really benefit from a properly taught course, preferably live in a classroom.

        1. Serious Silly Putty*

          Ooh yes! And it should include excel, too.
          I was taught some basic excel data management in undergrad physics lab, but when I did grad school for education I found my humanities-leaning peers were manually entering numbers down a column because they didn’t know the highlight-and-drag trick.

          Even just a two-hour features demo on what’s possible would at least show people what they don’t know and should google when relevant.

          1. Inkognyto*

            When I was job hunting in 2018/2019 – I had a recruiter ask me if I knew MS Office suite, like word/excel.

            I said I’m very competent in the full suite and have been for a long while, and it’s such a basic skill set I removed it for other skills to list.

            I was told to put it back on there as it’s not very basic and knowing it past that can get you hired over others.

            I was floored. I thought as technology advanced some of these things like using word processing, and spreadsheets would become common knowledge. Nope, it’s the opposite.

      4. Admin of Sys*

        That’s kind of depressing from the college side too though – when I was in school, we had a semester freshman year that walked us through how to research things, whether it was using the computers, the library, jstor, whatever.

      5. Ant*

        My roommate is jobsearching at the moment and he commented on how they keep asking him to do Excel tests and he gets worried but then every time it’s just like “find the save button” – I have to keep reminding him just how low the bar is when it comes to Excel competency, lol

        1. catscatscats*

          Wow, I actually really needed to hear that!! I am in the process of attempting a long transition from blue to white collar work and every time I see these seemingly high bars for Excel or other Microsoft suite skills (“highly proficient”) I always assume they’re gonna be asking me to do like vlookup stuff or other really advanced things?!

        2. Jezza*

          Excel questions always stress me out, but then it’s the most basic of functions, not like, “Can you make Pivot tables?” Yes, I can create a math function in Excel. (And it seems like a lot of jobs actually use Google Sheets, which is even less time intensive).

    2. Bitte Meddler*

      At my last job, I became the SAP guru on our team.

      We had hired two interns 3 months after I started, and then hired them as FTEs at the end of Intern Summer. So we basically started at the same time. We also graduated only a year apart from the same school in the same degree program.

      After the 30th or 40th time they had to ask me for help in doing something — despite the How-To docs I had created with step-by-step screenshots — one of them said, “HOW did you learn all this stuff? Did [university] have an SAP class that I didn’t know about??”

      I told him that all I did was “click everything and see what happens,” which is truly how I learned SAP and all the other programs I use / have used.

      The interns were in their mid-20’s and I was in my mid-50’s. (I had gone back to school, which is how we’d graduated only a year apart).

      1. Bryce*

        My dad was very competent within systems he knew but anxious about “click it and see what happens” methods. Late in his life we realized it’s because he started working with computers as supercomputers with people’s custom software, where clicking the wrong thing could bring everything to a halt because some genius figured anyone hitting that would know to do XYZ first.

        1. Onomatopoetic*

          This used to be a thing, yes. Back in the 1989’s we had a computer class in high school – this was when personal computers practically didn’t exist and it was seen as Very Daring to have a computer class. The teacher told us to just try different things, “you won’t break it”. I forget what the commando was, but my friend managed to wipe the whole thing. She had had some access to computers via her dad and knew exactly enough to not understand what she didn’t know.

          Related to this an old, old computer joke:
          “Cannot find a:, formatting c: instead.”

          1. Bryce*

            I once coded a simple “virus” to prove to show some classmates how easy it was to mess with a computer once you get in the door. Nothing intentionally malicious or replicating, just able to hide on the system and be annoying with popups and mouse movements and such. I was also able to get around the school’s anti-tamper system because once one kid finds a way around it the whole class knows. But the tamper system wouldn’t let me remove it after I’d had my chuckle and I’d put it into Startup.

            Fortunately the teacher thought the situation I’d gotten myself into was hilarious.

        2. Jay (no, the other one)*

          Yes. I started using a Mac in 1988 (not a typo) and never used MS/DOS. By the time Windows came along I was quite comfortable clicking on things to see what happened and figuring it out which immediately made me the computer guru in our office.

        3. amoeba*

          Oh yeah, my parents were SO SCARED of clicking anything they didn’t fully understand. They’d literally call me if they got some weird pop-up from some software or whatever. I will also forever remember that on our first PC, there was a second (physical) button next to the CD ROM eject button. I never found out what it did and I’m sure my mom didn’t either – but she made it very, very clear to me that pressing it would break the computer. Like, permanently, not just some software.

          Oh well. At least they never got any viruses…

      2. Mongrel*

        “I told him that all I did was “click everything and see what happens,” which is truly how I learned SAP and all the other programs I use / have used.”

        I don’t understand the people who don’t think like this and is why I always sob when I hear “We can train the computer stuff”. Our success rate at work is about 10% for that while the other 75% can follow along with the SOP, as long as nothing changes, and 15% can’t even do that.

        1. I Have RBF*

          I started with stuff like Lotus 123 and Word Perfect, on DOS. There was always the help. If I wanted to know what Y did, I would look it up in the help. Later, I started buying books on the subject – O’Reilly taught me a lot. Then most stuff moved online, and I became proficient in searches.

          I tried to teach someone how to use the help, an index in a book, and Google, and they could. not. learn. it. It was horrifying. This was before Google started to get enshitified.

          My grandmother was reference librarian, and we lived near her in the 60s, so I absorbed it by osmosis, I think.

    3. Crashing into Middle Age*

      This happened to me! For years I was basically office tech support for really basic things. In the last couple years, we’ve been able to bring in some younger folks and it has been amazing.* I went up to one of them right before she went on vacation and asked if she needed me to show her how to set her out of office message in Outlook. She told me she hadn’t known, so she just Google it. Tears in my eyes. You guys. She just Google it.

      *this is not ageism. We’ve got one new younger guy who constantly asks the same questions, is effusive in thanking you for your help, and never remembers a word of it.

      1. CubeFarmer*

        I finally realized that one of my colleagues was purposefully not doing stuff so that I would do it instead. I started ‘not having time.” I’d like to say that prompted some initiative to learn stuff independently but no, it just doesn’t get done. That’s not my program, so not my problem, but geeeez. Google is a thing. Do you know how I learned most of my computer stuff (most not all–I had to take a class to do basic ArcGIS stuff and use InDesign)?? I googled it!

    4. Jezza*

      Honestly being a Millennial is so weird. I got a lot of training on technology in school and growing up, but we didn’t have the modern smart phone/iPhone, so navigating via phone isn’t normal for me. So I’m still teaching both my dad and my niece how to properly navigate the internet and work with a PC system.

  2. T'Cael Zaanidor Kilyle*

    The comment about younger users being less likely to understand file structures is really interesting to me. Is this because the mobile devices they grew up with (and in some cases, may have learned to use before they used a more traditional OS) tend to mask file structures and be mainly chronological (like camera rolls or a phone browser that defaults to recent downloads) or oriented around searching for the desired item instead of navigating to it?

    1. Santiago*

      I used to be a High School teacher. In my experience, kids use phones a lot for things we used computers for.

      Also, a lot of programs now don’t make you interact with file structure: when you save in word, for example, you have to click several times to see the actual folder you are saving in, instead of some baloney recent locations window.

      1. Chas*

        I dislike the recent locations window in Microsoft Office, but have found out you can skip straight to the file structure by pressing F12 instead of using the save button. It has saved me a lot of minor aggravation since.

        3. Mongrel*

          I like the “Pin to Quick Access” option on the R-Click menu for work stuff.
          We save things to quite specific folders for consistency and being able to just click on the left hand column is a real time-saver, especially when I’m bounding between local and network drives

        4. Fran*

          I am so glad I just read your comment! I kept having to use the Save As to get it to go where I wanted!

    2. WFH4VR*

      It’s all Apple’s fault. When 99% of the world was Windows, you had to learn how to use the system if you wanted to customize it, or get programs to run on start up. The Fruit locked down the OS and now people who have only ever used Apples don’t even realize there is code underneath everything.

      1. M*

        And, as Santiago points out above, that approach has bled into plenty of non-Apple systems, including Windows. It’s not as bad as Apple – I can’t imagine ever willingly purchasing a computer that won’t let me even *uninstall* the bloatware – but these days it also buries things like folder structure and makes you open deeper options when saving files. Let alone the endless takes on in-built “personal/AI/whatever-today’s-hype-is assistant” as a replacement for putting something where you want it and going there when you need it.

      2. Peanut Hamper*

        I used Macs for 20 years and this was never an issue. OSX is actually based on Unix, and you really do need to understand file structures there. I don’t think it’s Apple’s fault, just the general trend to make things as simple as possible, which means that you never interact with the actual mchanism. Think starting a car by turning a key instead of sticking a crank in the front of the engine and cranking it by hand.

        1. Jamoche*

          Yep. Back in the days that were desktop only, you could find plenty of examples of users on either major OS who had no clue about file systems or all sorts of things that power users thought were basic.

          1. Disappointed Australien*

            the cliche was users who had the OS “desktop” covered in random files, often with names like “Document1(1) (14).doc” because they didn’t change any of the defaults.

            Meanwhile grumpy old folk like me get annoyed whenever some new crudware decides it absolutely must have a shortcut on the desktop, often restoring it every time it updates. Mind you, phones also do this and often without regard for user settings. Putting a non-default address book or clock app on an android phone can be a very bad experience (after every update your chosen clock app may not show notifications or make sounds until you manually start it up and reset the permissions. Missed alarm? You should revert to the branded_AdvertisementsAndClock app)

            1. Mockingjay*

              Hubby is one of those who has his desktop covered in files, folders, and shortcuts. His screen looks like those bars in which patrons bring in stickers from other bars around the world to paper the walls.

              Me: part of my work role is document management, so I use cloud storage, file trees, SharePoint (O365 and server) and design everything for easy retrieval without exceeding 256 character limitations in the file string.

              (Yes, I know that constraint no longer applies, but it’s a very useful framework to assist organization. If a file needs to be buried in six subfolders or has an extremely long name, then your file tree needs to be redesigned or you need a different storage solution. I got a lot of pushback some years ago when I set up file storage for a new project that didn’t follow the business rules the org had been using (outdated and not searchable). Now they use my libraries as the model to clean up and remap other projects. Makes me happy to see tidy files and sites. :) )

        2. Archi-detect*

          can confirm, deleted my documents folder on my macbook in highschool because I thought it was a shortcut

      3. Annie*

        I agree. I used Apple Macs way back in the old days, but been an Office user for the past 30 years, and when I have to help my Mom on her Mac, it’s just a mess to find anything because file systems are locked up/hidden away (especially photos) and there is no organization (partially Mom’s fault). It’s annoying.
        Same with anything in my iPhone.

    3. Caramel & Cheddar*

      I thought it was odd that the LW attributed to burying things 12 folders deep as not knowing how to use folders! Anyone I know who does that does it specifically because they’re incredibly detailed about how they parse their files (Budgets > 2024 > Department Name > Project Code > Itemized Charges > Receipts), vs those who care less just do things like save a million files to their desktop computer so that they’re “easier” to find.

      1. Kaden Lee*

        Same here – I use folders to organize visually, not to make it easier to pull up in a command prompt.

      2. Florence Reece*

        Yeah, same. Some of my older coworkers do dump every file into one big ole folder and they can’t find anything without searching for 5 minutes, but weirdly I just let them do their own thing without judging them.

        I can imagine the outrage if the ages in LW1 and the update were reversed though lol. Especially with the added detail that LW1’s boss apparently *expects* her to be a bully (and/or openly shares his disdain about LW1’s coworkers with her for some reason). Sounds like a really healthy environment over there!

        1. Frieda*

          I have a colleague who saves everything – and I mean *everything* – in his downloads folder. Just unsorted madness.

          Unsurprisingly he also has totally random naming conventions and can never find anything.

      3. Moose*

        Yeah, I have everything very organized so I can find it, but know some people that just leave all sorts of stuff in downloads and such!

      4. Archi-detect*

        my desktop is only temporary working stuff that is not important, as I feel it should be. if it matters, put it away

      5. Deck cat*

        Yeah I thought that comment was pretty weird. I grew up learning how to navigate file structures (“elder millennial” so I’m in my early 40s now) so I tend to organize my hard drive (or cloud storage) with various sub-folders. As opposed to having them in one big folder and constantly searching.

        He said, “Did you hurt her?” and I said no.

        IDK, this seems a little weird, to me, to be honest. In a “that escalated quickly” way. Like yeah, the coworker sounds kind of annoying and yes, the boss is joking* but uhh, still seems like kind of overkill??

        *hopefully!

        2. londonedit*

          I totally assumed it was a joke, and I’m surprised anyone wouldn’t! It came across to me as one of those ‘I spoke to Jane’ ‘…and does she still have her eyebrows, or did you flame them off?’ things. You know, ‘I’m amazed you haven’t punched her in the face already, most people would have resorted to violence by now’. It’s hyperbole but it’s a joke between the OP and their boss.

      6. carrot cake*

        And don’t get me started on useless or in-the-moment naming conventions for folders. Just another layer of wasted time. (That’s not toward you, Caramel and Cheddar; your example is quite logical).

        1. Admin of Sys*

          ‘draft’, ‘draft 2’, ‘final draft’, ‘okay this one is actually final’,’draft the last’ :)

        2. I Have RBF*

          Uuuuuggghhhh

          I work with Linux. I absolutely hate spaces in filenames, it makes it harder to manage them. Sure, you can put spaces in Linux file names, but retrieving them without a GUI then becomes a nightmare.

          Also, I am very annoyed with software apps that do not have a command line interface. I hate having to click through ten menus to do one small thing. Especially when I have to change one small setting for 50 separate items – 50 items x 6 clicks per item = RSI.

      7. Lions and Tigers*

        Yeah. Like. Part of my day job is to teach computer programming? And my folder structures are often Highly Detailed, in that way? Especially when you add in all the nonsense that my employer adds (it’s like five layers before you get to something I have organisational privilege to edit).

        As opposed to my students, who stick everything in their downloads folder and call it a day.

        1. Fran*

          I hate file name length- especially when they tell me something older is too long and then I can’t rename it to open it…

      10. Insert Clever Name Here*

        FWIW, I read that as 12 folders deep when it doesn’t need to be 12 folders deep. I worked on a project recently where the file structure was deep but made zero sense because many of the names repeated like:
        Project Llama — Project Files — Documents — Llama Project — Files — Llama — Rates — Project Llama Rates — Rates.xls

        And most of the folders contained only the next folder. It was infuriating.

        1. Admin of Sys*

          ooh, yeah, back in the day we’d have to do some really creative fixing when folks would copy paste into an even deeper structure and then overwhelm the character limit on path.

      11. Over Analyst*

        Yeah, I was going to comment that too. The “younger people don’t understand file structure” typically refers to younger people not understanding where they’re saving things or just saving things to desktop rather than having a detailed place to store files with other like files.
        I’m also interested to see someone in their 30s falling in that younger group. People in their 30s and 40s grew up with computers, did the basic programming for myspace and stuff, and took computer classes in school. It was people younger than that who didn’t have computer class because “young people know how to use computers” and had chromebooks and tablets instead of more robust systems.

      12. Kit*

        Yeah, I got flak from my coworkers for spending time setting up a nested series of folders and systematized document names… until they realized it meant I could always pull up the quote a customer was referring to, because I’d set my folders up to be alphabetized by company name and then started with YYYYMMDD for the doc name, so the customer’s folder was always sorted chronologically. And honestly, as far as file strings go, ~Kit/C/Company/20241205… is pretty manageable! (It also matched our hardcopy filing system, so bonus.)

        Not that they started using my system, but at least they understood it.

    4. Strive to Excel*

      I would park it firmly in the “we all assume this is a basic skill so no one’s actually teaching people how to do this” category. There was a relatively short period where basic computer skills were being formally taught, then we all just…moved to using computers. It’s like teaching english language skills; a lot of places just start kids on reading rather than going through phonics and building blocks, with negative results.

      1. Bird names*

        Definitely plays a role, yeah. I still had a proper class on basic computer skills and am very comfortable figuring most stuff out by myself. Without that foundation I suspect I wouldn’t have experimented quite as readily.
        Every new generation needs the basics taught to them in fact and the “digital native” narrative just puts the responsibility on kids to somehow figure it out all by themself and then blames them if they can’t.

    5. Throwaway Account*

      I work with college students at a uni where the entire school is apple/iPad based. They all get one. Everything is auto-saved and the students have no idea how to find a document or where it goes. If it is not in the “recent” folder, they cannot find it at all.

      And I have trouble sometimes figuring out how to tell the damn iPad where to put things or where to look for them if the student does not know the doc name.

    6. nanani*

      Yes, and also a lot of places scrapped computer classes from the curriculum on the grounds that kids are “digital natives” and don’t need to be taught.
      Obviously, everyone needs to learn, and once the primary device for school aged people became a smartphone instead of a PC, that “digital native” nonsense was exposed but the computer classes didnt come back.

    7. Happily Retired*

      I’m a bit mystified at all the Apple/Mac bashing. I bought my first computer in the early 90’s, an Apple clone of some sort, and have lived in the Apple ecosystem at home ever since. And I organize THE HELL out of my files, with 8 main folders for different topics on the desktop, and then subfolder after subfolder after subfolder within each, using “save as” each time and kicking myself if I save to whatever generic downloads or whatever location might pop up. Most of my files are at least 4 folders deep. I can find anything in minutes.

      Doesn’t everyone do this?

      But I’m 70, so maybe not.

      1. Happily Retired*

        I read a few more posts. Apparently, the whole subfoldering thing is considered complicated by many, with obscure naming logic. But anyone can make the logic perfectly clear, as in Caramel and Cheese’s example.

        I’m retired now, so I can’t give a work example, but here’s one from my home laptop. I’ve gone back to school to get my BS in Ecology, and I have to obsessively organize to keep up with the coursework.
        If I ever have to dig up a lecture slide or paper or reference from a class taken in the past, I can go there in seconds because of the way I structure my files. So this example goes:

        Desktop > UNCA > 0 UNCA 2024 fall – Helene > ENVS 358 Agriculture > ENVS projects > ENVS 358 3 nutrient budget activity > envr358_nutrientbudget.pdf

        (The final pdf file contains the instructions for a project tracing and quantifying nitrogen moving from the air, water, and any fertilizer through the soil and plants and then released to the air and water, which is what I should actually be working on right now, instead of reading updates on AAM.)

        2. Annie*

          Why include the ENVS so many times and UNCA. I guess I’m more conservative in my naming habits, so it’d be more UNCA > Fall 2024 > ENVS 358 Agriculture > Projects > Budget Activity > envr358_nutrientbudget.pdf.

    8. Irish Teacher.*

      I think it’s partly that and partly that schools often seem to feel they don’t need to teach the basics anymore because, “they’re digital natives. They’ve been using computers and laptops and mobile phones since toddlerhood. They probably know more than we do,” but in a lot of cases what teens and preteens use digital devices for is watching videos and playing games and those are very different skills from creating powerpoints or doing research online or even writing business e-mails.

      Things like saving files falls into the category of “basics we assume all kids have been doing since toddlerhood,” but I’m not entirely sure they all have. I’m sure by the time they get to college, they have to save essays and stuff, but before that or at least before high school, it really might not be something they do much. For a lot of my students, digital devices are primarily for watching videos on and maybe taking photos and playing Fortnite. They don’t know how to type more than short messages, don’t know how to write an e-mail or often even how to access e-mail, how to open a word document…

      Now, I am talking 12-14 year olds here. We do usually manage to teach them the basics before they get older than that, but it can be difficult to do so formally as there are other students who are as computer savvy as Gen Z and Gen Alpha are expected to be and it can be hard to teach computer skills to a group whose skills vary from “can’t switch a computer on or open a file on the desktop because to them, computers are just about Youtube” to “codes for fun and is thoroughly au fait with virtually everything related to computers.”

    9. Chas*

      I’ve noticed some of the students I’ve supervised recently have a tendency to just save their files wherever the program defaults to when they hit the Save As button, and then can’t find their files later if it’s a communal machine (because they’re usually in a folder that belongs to whoever used the machine just before them), so I suspect that is at least part of it. They’re not used to having to take a moment to think about WHERE they’re putting their stuff. Thank goodness the machines we have all have computers with a file search function on them!

    10. KatCardigans*

      Yes, I think so. I work with high schoolers. A lot of the time they don’t have to save stuff at all in high school, because Google Docs and such autosaves it for them, and to find it later they always use the search function or look in the recents folder. When a teacher asks them to use a different software that does require saving, they do not know what to do. In general, they get very stuck on particular softwares. Which I get—don’t we all? But I think it’s generally a bit easier for people who grew up learning computer usage basics to figure out new programs. I watched a group of sophomores absolutely melt down yesterday when they were asked to use Powerpoint to make a presentation. They wanted to use Canva’s AI designer, and bumbled around the Powerpoint interface like they had never seen a slide or a menu before. And I work at a fancypants high school with privileged students who have all taken at least one technology class.

      My experience is that young people who are interested in tech know A LOT about tech. They can do some incredible things. That is facilitated by the easy tech access from childhood and the gazillion resources available for coding and such on the web. But the majority of teenagers have a very narrow knowledge base, do not know how to use their tech tools efficiently, and have often developed convoluted workarounds to do the things they need to do. Many of them have not been taught touch typing. However, almost all of them think they are very good at technology, perhaps because they have been told so by family members/society at large! They also think that having a good understanding of their preferred social media is the same thing as being good with technology, when I would say those are different skillsets.

      1. Annie*

        I agree with all of this. Most of my younger colleagues are tech savvy because they are usually going through college and are in engineering classes, but a lot of them hunt and peck when typing. They are very adept at it but obviously were never taught touch typing. Thankfully a lot of our file folders are already laid out pretty well before these employees come into the company and so they don’t have to start from scratch when it comes to filing systems for the projects we are working on.

    11. Wilbur*

      The problem I always come across is that no one at work puts files in a folder that makes sense. Why couldn’t I find the project schedule spreadsheet? Oh, well I was looking in the projects folder, the critical updates folder, and the general folder when I should’ve been looking in…”2009 Cash Projects”. Nothing to do with young people at all.

  3. TeenieBopper*

    Why… Why are you continuously reading your company reviews on Glassdoor? Like, enough times to have a ritual?

    1. Heart*

      Yes, yes, yes. As an empath, it would crush my heart to absorb such negative vibrations… especially over something as delightful as popcorn

      1. Tea Monk*

        I’m not an empath, but even though I work in a cult etc I don’t read the glass door reviews because I don’t care that much

      2. Irish Teacher.*

        Honestly, I think a lot of people don’t experience it as “absorbing negative vibrations” but just as “laughing at amusing posts.”

    2. Silver Robin*

      because it is entertaining and folks like drama that is close enough for them to understand but not actually directly related to them.

    3. Generic Name*

      I agree. If I had to guess, it’s what kept them sane in a toxic workplace. I’m totally unsurprised that their new job is such a massive pay bump. Same thing happened to me when I left a not-great workplace.

    4. OP3*

      Hard not to read the reviews when both everybody you try to hire and the CEO of the company won’t stop talking about them, LOL.

    5. Hobbling Up A Hill*

      Because it can be fun?

      There is a 188 page Canadian law case from 2012 which I have read repeatedly because it’s very funny to me. Despite not being Canadian or a lawyer.

        1. Hobbling Up A Hill*

          It’s Meads vs Meads and involves a judge basically laying out all the various ways that sovereign citizens and their ilk try when involved in the legal system.

  4. Soul Sister*

    I find number 3 so real. It’s so easy to feel my employees emotions as my own, and I didn’t realize how badly I was enabling some problem employees, until one stole several thousand dollars worth of merchandise. I weep to think of what my other employees went through!

    Eventually, my company’s group therapist suggested we bring on a less empathetic business partner to round things out. Now I think we found the balance between seeing with our heart and seeing with our mind

    2. Sara without an H*

      Ummm…Soul Sister, I, too, was a little nonplused to see your reference to a “company group therapist.” Admittedly, I’m a Vulcan and would probably not last long at your organization.

      But at least the therapist is helping you and your company find a more sustainable balance, and I congratulate you on that.

    3. Nonsense*

      I am honestly amazed you were allowed to stay on as a business partner with that kind of management. But then again, since you have a group work therapist I’m guessing your company’s dysfunction comes from the top.

  5. H.Regalis*

    He said, “Did you hurt her?” and I said no.

    You handled this very deftly, but if you had torn her a new USB port, I wouldn’t have blamed you.

      1. H.Regalis*

        Ok, for the painfully literal among us:

        I am not saying LW1 should have literally or metaphorically torn her coworker a new asshole.

        I am saying that if she had let her coworker see even slightly how much what her coworker was doing bothered her, that would have been okay. Her coworker was being a jerk and you do not owe everyone perfect calmness 24/7/365.

        However, it sounds like while LW1 did explain to her coworker how Coworker was being a jerk, she, LW1, chose not to be visibly angry or annoyed. That is also okay.

  6. All het up about it*

    Number 1’s statement of “She seemed to have no idea she was doing it” is wild. In the original post, OP said that several people had talked to the younger co-worker about her behavior. Why was she still unaware? People are just… a lot these days.

    1. Annie*

      It might have been meant in the “she unconsciously does this” sense, or she needed it explained a specific way in order to “get” it, or she was putting on a show of willful ignorance.

  7. Kricket523*

    #3 that is the BEST update. I wish you every success in your new position… and though you probably can’t tell us, I’d love to hear what was in those last-minute documents. “They seem to forget I’m married to a lawyer” gave me such a set of giggles!

      1. I Have RBF*

        I’ve seen stuff like that, and refused to sign it. Sure, it cost me money, but I couldn’t sign a lie that also gave away any right to even an EEOC action, and wanted you to not even talk about the agreement itself. Hard no. I keep meaning to post a scan of it somewhere, with company name redacted… as an example of something you don’t sign.

    4. Sara without an H*

      Yes, OP#3, I found your whole post very satisfying. I once worked in a similar organization and I truly envy your aplomb.

      Congratulations on the new job!

  8. voices carry*

    Ooh, I’m mid-50’s woman, been using computers forever. This comment got to me: Someone in the comments mentioned younger users not reallly understanding file structures and organization and, given that she buries things 12 folders deep.
    I do that! Well, not quite 12, but 5 or 6 easily. But the linux find command is my friend! Isn’t that the logical (tree-like) structure you want for organization?

    1. Archi-detect*

      as long as it is logical. it is super easy to over-folder to the point of not being able to find something unless you remember exactly what it is called in my experience, or accidentally split up things that should be together. If it’s working for you, it’s working for you

      1. tes vitrines infinies, tes horizons dorees, je veux m'en passer*

        Yeah, I had to revise my folder system because I ran into that sometimes. For example: auto insurance documents. Should they be in Documents > Vehicles > [the car itself] > Insurance? Or Documents > Financial > Insurance (where life/AD&D is?). Documents from American Express, they would go in Credit > Amex (for the CC accounts), or Bank > Amex (for the HYSA)? Too many places.

        1. I Have RBF*

          One thing I do is name all my tax and financial documents starting with the ISO 8601 date format, without hyphens. For example, a bank notice issued today for account 12345 would be 20241205_BankName_FeeNotice12345.pdf, and a statement from earlier this month would be 20241201_BankName_Statement12345.pdf This tells me, at a glance, when it was issued, where it was from, and what it is. I can search these files by date, by company, or by type of doc, or account number or nickname.

          The default directory list is sorted alphanumerically, so everything is by year, month and day. I then archive older stuff by year in its own directory, then eventually zip it all up and put it in an archive directory. My basic directory structure is like /home/RBF/private/ and then dated files under that. Sometimes I put the bank statements in their own subdirectories. But I also use find if I’ve forgotten where stuff goes.

    2. I own one tenacious plant*

      I love me some sub folders, but my interpretation was that OP was referring to the length of the file path name. I think that can cause issues in some programs.

    3. Disappointed Australien*

      Logical to one person is random to another. Search tools are essential, and that makes good file names essential because searching inside file contents is hard.

      I have a folder with about 20 shortcuts to my company’s network drives because (for example) photos of teapots are in company-promotions-images-final-photos-hires-current-photos-teapots (the -‘s are back or forward slashes), but the copywritten text describing those images is in documents-fiona-products-output-descriptions and the filename is the product code, which if you’re unsure is helpfully listed in a spreadsheet stored in company-products-stock-production-master-products-NNN.xml and you want the highest number NNN, remembering that 22 is bigger than 2 but also smaller than 100.

      Newcomers take a while to learn how to navigate it.

      1. Annie*

        yes, I’m the same way. Anything that anyone else stores I just have a link in a “Links” folder so I can find them again.
        My own file structure is typically by customer/project, and then I’ll break it down more by specific type of file (drawings/presentations/planning docs) as necessary.

  9. Tradd*

    I’m mid 50s and learned how to do things like Outlook, Word, and Excel on the job in the early 90s. Years ago I had a coworker who was in her late 50s. She was generally decent with using a computer and the industry software, except for two things. She was terribly afraid of right clicking. She thought she was going to break everything. She also had no concept of email folders. EVERYTHING was in her inbox. She was on vacation once and our manager told me to organize her email (I did one folder for each customer which kept it simple plus a miscellaneous folder). She did keep the organization up once she was back. The search function was a huge revelation to her!

    1. allathian*

      Odd about the right clicking fear. I use it so much that I’m completely lost with my laptop’s touchpad, I need a mouse to work comfortably.

    2. londonedit*

      My mum is in her mid-70s now and, despite having had a computer at home since the late 1990s, she’s never, ever been comfortable with using one. She’s happy using her iPhone and iPad now, but she’s never been comfortable with the Windows setup and was always absolutely terrified that she’d break something, or wipe the computer, or do something awful, no matter how many times we explained that it was pretty much impossible for her to do that. She just can’t keep the various steps in her brain, and never has been able to – when she first started using email we literally had to print out a step-by-step guide and pin it to the wall next to the computer desk because otherwise she’d panic about clicking the wrong thing. Conversely my dad is the same age, and he started using computers in the 90s for work and has never looked back.

    3. Annie*

      I confess I don’t usually organize my email. I used to for awhile but found it’s just easier to do a quick search.
      My other files for Word, Excel, Powerpoint are all well organized though, and I’m from the same basic timeline as you, learned all of that in the early 90s.

  10. Dawn*

    LW3, I hate to tell you this, but it sounds like those negative Glassdoor reviews were substantially accurate.

    Glad you’re getting out of there and I hope you land somewhere that you can get your perspective back quickly.

    1. Dawn*

      Side note: I refused to sign my “severance agreement” when I was being laid off (because the company wasn’t giving me anything I wasn’t entitled to anyway.) They – a major corporation – were absolutely shocked by this. Apparently nobody ever refuses.

      They also told me to have my lawyer send them a letter if I wanted to negotiate. When I said that we didn’t need to make it a legal issue, they informed me that the company does not negotiate with former employees and cut contact.

      1. Chauncy Gardener*

        They asked if you wanted to negotiate and then told you they don’t negotiate? So, so weird. I’m glad you’re out of there!

        1. Dawn*

          It was more like they asked if I wanted to sue them and when I said no then did a slightly more polite version of “screw off then”

    2. OP3*

      I understand some people really want to believe this. But look, I’ve been in the new job a while already, and the only difference I’m seeing is that my new place doesn’t constantly hire and indulge people who are both bad at the work and deeply unpleasant. The copywriters posting that they shouldn’t have been let go for plagiarism were *not* “substantially right.”

  11. 2cents*

    “He said, “Did you hurt her?” and I said no.”

    This is extremely odd. Was it a sarcastic comment? I’m baffled that this question was even asked.

    1. Irish Teacher.*

      My first thought was that they meant “did it hurt her feelings?” then I thought they probably meant it as a joke like “I hope you didn’t punch her! Lol.”

    2. Juicebox Hero*

      The boss knew how aggravated LW was by the situation, and was just joking with her. I’m sure he wasn’t seriously thinking she’d actually harmed the coworker.

  12. Irish Teacher.*

    LW3, your workplace reminds me a little of a school I once worked in, though the school just applied it to students and not staff. Every behavioural issue was supposed to be addressed with a conversation to find out why the student had acted out and deal with the underlying issue, which was great with the students who had genuine behavioural and/or emotional issues and the school did good work with those students, but with the students who just didn’t do their homework because there was a TV show they wanted to watch on the night before, it became a farce. They learnt that not doing your work would, at worst, lead to a teacher kindly asking about why you didn’t do it or maybe a lunchtime detention that you could skip and at worst, the teacher might come and find you and make you do part of it. (Seriously, I had a kid skip a lunchtime detention and I went to the year head to report that because in most of the other schools I’ve worked in that would likely result in a suspension or at least some form of formal consequence – put on report, parents called in, that level of consequence – and the year head just said, “oh, I think he’s down in the canteen. Go down and see if you can find him.”)

    It’s even more farcical in the workplace where managers do not have the same obligation as teachers to deal with underlying issues even if they do exist but the whole, “we need to focus on the reasons rather than enacting consequences” and ignoring the fact that while some people do have genuine reasons that cause them to underperform or act out, sometimes the reason is simply “because I’ve learnt there are no real consequences and if I give a plausible excuse, I can do what I like.”

    1. Sara without an H*

      It’s even more farcical in the workplace where managers do not have the same obligation as teachers to deal with underlying issues

      +1. One of the smartest HR persons I ever worked with once told me, “Don’t focus on their feelings. Focus on their behavior.” This was when I was a young, naive manager who had been given a department full of staff who had been, shall we say, indulged, far too long.

  13. Notasecurityguard*

    lw#1 struck me as funny because I’m like the opposite. A lot of my coworkers see a younger millennial guy (who also is admittedly kind of overweight and wears glasses) and assume that I’m a computer and tech wizard. And while I can use the basic office suite, if something breaks and “idk, reboot it?” doesn’t work I’m like “yeah it’s broken, my next guess is cry and ask it to work?”

    age tech discrimination i guess goes both ways

  14. TheDinoBabe*

    I feel like LW #2 speculating about their ex-employee being on the spectrum is not helpful and I wish I saw much less of this kind of thinking. Someone not taking feedback, being awkward in conversations, or being inflexible doesn’t mean they’re autistic (neurotypical people can also be bad at listening, awkward, and inflexible, and many autistic people are very capable of the opposite). Regardless of whether the ex-employee was on the spectrum, LW should have been providing clear, actionable feedback and confirming that the employee understood what was going on.

    If the employee wasn’t understanding or improving their work, it would have been more helpful to ask, “I’m not seeing the change I need for you to stay in this role; how can I help you get there?” that assuming he was autistic and deciding how to best help him.

    As someone who is neurodivergent myself, it’s not helpful for me for people to assume, based on whatever they may or may not know about my condition (which presents differently in everyone), what they should do to “help” me. What’s most helpful is people being clear about what they need and letting me decide how to accomplish that and whether I need to ask for help or accommodations.

    I’m not trying to rag on the LW, but just, I think this overeagerness to pathologize/diagnose behavior outside of what we expect is not helpful to most neurodivergent people and just creates an atmosphere where any “bad” behavior is associated with neurodivergent people, and neurotypical people are really let off the hook.

    1. deesse877*

      I agree that when we use diagnostic language that isn’t tied to a real-world ethical relationship, we end up pathologizing.

      When I want to get across that I was just at a loss for how to deal with someone who might also be vulnerable, I sometimes use wording like this: “I think Person X needed more help than I could give them, or a different kind of help. I was at a loss to respond effectively when I observed Behaviors A, B, and C.”

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