touchy-feely team-building, are job search gimmicks less popular now, and more

by Alison Green on January 28, 2025

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

1. Am I being a grouch about this touchy-feely group activity?

I work at a school. As the closing activity for today’s professional development session, Fergus (an administrator) split us into three groups, then asked two-thirds of us to stay seated with our eyes closed while the other third stood and moved around the room. Fergus read a series of prompts and invited those who were standing to “connect with” (that is, tap or pat on the shoulder) someone the prompt applied to (“connect with someone you admire,” “connect with someone whose work you’d like to learn more about,” etc.). Fergus read about 10 of these and then had a different third of the group stand and repeat the exercise, for a total of three rounds of affectionate shoulder-grasping.

In the moment, I found this admittedly touchy-feely activity affirming; it’s nice to get patted on the shoulder after a prompt like “connect with someone who makes this school a better place.” That said: isn’t it a bit dicey to ask a large group of people to sit with their eyes closed while others move around them and touch them? I can imagine someone feeling uncomfortable about that for any number of reasons. (For one: I don’t think this would apply to my group, but what if my ex / person-with-unrequited-crush were in that workplace and I didn’t particularly want them touching me? Eek.)

There wasn’t really a way to opt out of the activity without being quite obvious about it. Am I right that this is borderline inappropriate, and what should I have done in the moment?

Yeah, it’s not a great workplace activity. In any large group of people, there’s a decent chance that some of them won’t be comfortable with physical touching (for all sorts of possible reasons) and a non-zero chance that someone might actually be upset by it. (Imagine someone whose harasser is in the room and they have to sit there with their eyes closed wondering who’s touching them … or people with particular types of trauma history.) Will most people be fine with it? Probably. But not everyone will be, and there are all sorts of ways to achieve the same aims of this exercise without making people touch each other / be touched. It’s just so easy to avoid.

Updated to add: I apparently published this without addressing your question about what you could do in the moment! One option was to say when the activity was explained, “I think a lot of people might be uncomfortable being touched with their eyes closed. Is there a different exercise we could substitute?” It can be really hard to find the right words in the moment though (and it sounds like you felt positively about it at first anyway), and it’s always okay to give similar feedback to the organizer afterwards.

2. Have job search gimmicks become less popular?

I’ve noticed that nothing has been added to the topic “gimmicks won’t get you a job” for a few years now. It seems like it was never a massive topic, which makes sense as it’s pretty niche. But it had at least one a year until 2014 with only four posted since, the newest of which is from 2022. Do you think it’s a flavor of bananapants that’s become less common? Have we all been robbed of our gumption? Or are the purveyors of scented resumes and fruit baskets still out there, lurking, waiting until we let our guard down?

Interesting. I do think gimmick-based job-search advice is less common than it used to be; there was a while where it was everywhere. I suspect some of the change is due to generational change; those gimmicks tended to be (although weren’t always) the province of people who had entered the work world at an earlier point in history (where maybe things like showing up in a lobby and refusing to leave until you got an interview were looked on more kindly).

I think there’s more to it than that, though, and maybe the overall shift in work culture has left people more cynical about the job search process and thus less likely to bother with gimmicky stunts. People almost expect to be ghosted or ignored by employers … which in theory could make them more likely to try to “stand out” through gimmicks, but I think it instead has manifested in more exhaustion and less inclination to invest a ton in any one job opening. Less gimmicky advice is a good thing, but everyone being so drained is not.

(None of this is to say that gimmicks have disappeared. They definitely haven’t.)

3. Former coworker insists her job is harder now than when I was doing it

I have a lovely ex-colleague who has recently moved to a promoted post in health care, similar to the post that I recently retired from. We meet up for a coffee and chat from time to time, and some of our conversations (but not all, I’m glad to say) turn to work topics. I don’t mind this at all because I generally enjoyed my job even though it could be very stressful, and I like hearing her anecdotes.

However, whenever I mention any of my experiences, she always says, “It’s much worse now!” One example she gave, when I mentioned a patient who was very huffy with me, was that patients now shout at managers. Well, guess what? They always did! It’s just that this particular patient was huffy rather than shouty!

I do appreciate that I’m no longer in the workplace and my friend is still dealing with difficult situations every day, but it’s kind of annoying to me that she always assumes that I had it easier than her. I really didn’t! I realize that this is not the most important of issues, but could you please suggest a nice way that I could say, “I support you but please stop telling me that the job was easier for me”? I don’t want to come across as defensive or spoil our time together, but it’s really irritating!

One way to approach it is to be genuinely open to the idea that things are worse now! Who knows, maybe they are — but even if they aren’t, being curious about why she’s experiencing it that way might make it less frustrating. So for example, when she says patients now shout at managers when you were describing someone who was merely huffy, you could say, “I always found some patients shouted too, although this one didn’t. But it sounds like you think it’s increased — what changes have you been seeing?” And then if she describes absolutely nothing new, there’s no reason you can’t be straightforward about that and say, “Ugh, yes, that sounds like what I encountered all the time too. It’s really frustrating. How do you deal with it?” (Note that shift at the end from debating who had it worse to how she personally handles it.)

But if that doesn’t solve it, I think you’re better off letting it go at that point. It’s annoying to feel like she’s trying to one-up you, but the path of least resistance is to shrug it off. If it’s really getting to you, though, you could name that: “You often say that the job was easier for me, but based on what you’ve described I don’t think it was. Either way, though, I’ll admit it grates to keep hearing that. I support you and I don’t want to compete over who had it worse!”

If that doesn’t work, at that point you might simply need to stop talking about work!

4. Can I ignore my classmate’s LinkedIn request?

I have a former graduate school classmate with whom I used to be close friends. Among my reasons for ending our friendship was their hyper-competitive streak. They have sent me a LinkedIn invitation, which I find completely inappropriate given the boundaries I had previously expressed to them. I know their reason for doing this is (a) because they are doing well and want to gloat or (b) they are doing poorly and need to compare their Ws & Ls with mine. I struggle allowing them access into my life, as it took quite some effort to extricate myself in the first place.

On the other hand, I know LinkedIn etiquette suggests I should accept; as former classmates, we have many mutual connections. I would like for it to not look conspicuous that we are not connected. Graduate school is weird that way; it is an opportunity to build rich, deeply personal connections, but it’s inherently a professional network.

Are my reasons good enough to ignore their invitation? Or is the professional course of action to just accept the invitation, assume strictly professional networking intentions, and move on?

Ignore their invitation and don’t give it another thought. You don’t need to connect with anyone who you don’t feel like connecting with, and most people are unlikely to notice whether you accepted their request or not, especially if they’re sending requests to a bunch of people around the same time (which is common when leaving grad school). Plus, lots of people’s LinkedIn inboxes are such a mess or they check the site so infrequently that it’s really easy for requests to get lost or overlooked. It’s not a big deal!

5. How to explain an internal job search when I’ve struggled with my most recent role

About a year ago, I changed roles within my company as part of a push for “internal mobility.” I wasn’t opposed to trying something new, but it wasn’t really presented as an option. It has been an ongoing challenge trying to get up to speed and there has been some friction with my new manager.

I’m really not happy with the role, and one of the main drivers is that, frankly, I don’t think I’m very good at it. I can’t seem to grasp the fundamental concepts that underlie the function. I am well into my career, so I’m familiar with the learning curve that comes with a new job and a constant refrain of imposter syndrome. This is … not that. I really just don’t understand. I spend my days feeling like an idiot and a failure. My therapist assures me I’m not. (Yes, this job made me seek therapy)

I am obviously trying to move on and have applied for another open role within my same company. I know that my short tenure at this current position is going to be a question, so how do I diplomatically say that I’m leaving because I’m just not that good? No one so far seems to accept my answer that it is not the right fit, and I’m not sure how to elaborate with out going into why I’m bad at this job, but don’t worry I’ll be great at yours and you should hire me.

I suspect they’re not accepting “not the right fit” because it doesn’t tell them enough. They want to know why it’s not the right fit, so they can figure out if you’re likely to run into the same issues with the job they’re hiring for. (Which is in your interests too!)

So ideally you’d say something like, “I’ve always excelled at X and Y but have found in this new role that Z doesn’t come naturally to me” (where Z is something you’re struggling with that won’t be part of the next job). Alternately, you could make it about your preferences rather than your skills: “I’ve realized I really miss having X be a part of my daily work and want to get back to it.” (Obviously that only works if X is in fact part of the new job, but there are lots of ways to adapt that basic formulation.)

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{ 355 comments }

{ 355 comments… read them below }

  1. Daria grace*

    #2: I wonder if part of this is that employers make themselves harder to contact via anything other than their application platform? Last time I was job hunting for many advertised jobs there was no clear other way to contact them (email addresses, contact names ect) which would have made gimmicks like sending a pink resume and it actually getting to the right person harder. I saw a bunch of ads that didn’t even disclose who the employer was, if the role was of interest you had to submit an application through the job search site without even knowing who you were applying to.

    No doubt that job hunting has become even more of a bulk application game curtails people’s capacity for gimmicks too

    1. allathian*

      I suspect you’re right. Although not disclosing who the employer is seems really gimmicky from the employer’s side! Employers like that deny their applicants the chance to show why they want to work for them.

      That said, I’m in Finland and the only job ads like that I’ve seen have been for temp contract jobs through a placement agency. It’s obviously in the agency’s interest not to have candidates applying directly, and the main reason why an employer contracts with an agency is usually to avoid having to hire temps.

      1. Daria grace*

        In job searches where I haven’t been desperate I mostly haven’t applied for ones where they don’t list the company. It’s not just that the company could be shady, it means I can’t assess if there is logistical deal breakers. They mostly only list the broad area so saying that a job is inner suburbs could mean an easy 20 minute train commute or a nightmare 1.5 hour two trains, a bus and some walking commute for me

        1. A Simple Narwhal*

          Yea specific location is big deal – I’m located south of a major city, and plenty of jobs say they’re located “in” that city, only to actually be located in an outlet north of it, which would be a major hassle to get to from where I am.

          Even location within the city matters too – my husband and I both work within the same city, only 1.5 miles from each other. But the way the transportation system is built, that 1.5 miles adds an extra half hour to my commute over his.

          1. JustaTech*

            Very much this. I had a recruiter contact me, and before they even got to what the company or job was they asked if I would be willing to commute or relocate to [City I’d never heard of]. So I looked up this place, and to say it was in the middle of nowhere would be an understatement, so I get why the recruiter lead with that question!

          2. Freya*

            This – jobs posted as ‘in Canberra, Australia’ could be in Queanbeyan, or Belconnen, or in the CBD. It’s a 45 minute drive if you’re doing it at the wrong time from Queanbeyan to Belconnen. Or from either Queanbeyan or Belconnen to the CBD, even though that’s half the distance…

      2. londonedit*

        In my industry (publishing) there are only a couple of big(ish) recruitment agencies, but it’s usual for them to withhold the name of the company that’s advertising until you contact them to apply for the job. I guess it’s because they don’t want people trying to circumvent them and applying directly. So the advert will say something like ‘A vibrant and well-respected independent publisher of children’s books is looking for a Commissioning Editor to join their small and friendly team, based in central London’. And then you contact the recruitment agency, and they ask for some basic details and your CV, and if they’re happy to put you forward for the job then at that point they tell you which company it is, and ask you to put together a full application for the job. So you find out which company it is pretty early on in the process. Often you can tell which company it is from the start anyway, because it’s a small industry and there aren’t that many ‘vibrant independent children’s book publishers’, but I’ve definitely had times where I’ve enquired about a job advert and the agency has said it’s a company I’m not interested in working for, so at that point I’ve said ‘Ah, sorry but I don’t think this is one for me’. And there have been times where the agency has said thanks but we don’t think you’re right for this role so we won’t be putting you forward.

        1. amoeba*

          Yeah, this is how it works for us as well. It’s pretty uncommon for companies to use external recruiters, they tend to only do it for temporary roles and such, but when it is, it’s always like “a global pharmaceutical company based in/right outside of…” (which honestly gives it away in, like, 95% of cases, but whatever!)

          1. Weaponized Pumpkin*

            The descriptor does often give it away! And if it doesn’t, it’s usually findable with a little sleuthing — if there’s a description that sounds like it was copied out of the corporate brand messaging playbook, just googling that phrase will pop it right up.

        2. Ama*

          With publishing I always assume they also don’t want overzealous authors trying to use hiring contacts to get around the usual manuscript submission process.

      3. MigraineMonth*

        I assume the ads are placed by recruiters. I generally don’t apply to them, because I like to screen for a place I want to work (specific location, reputation, etc) first. They also make cover letters more challenging, because it’s difficult to honestly say something like, “I’ve always been interested in [product made by company]” when you don’t know what the company is.

    2. The Prettiest Curse*

      The fact that sending in printed resumes to apply has mostly died out also leaves less room for gimmicks of the “send in your resume on pink scented paper with lots of glitter” variety.

      1. Pastor Petty Labelle*

        Really hard to send a shoe to get your foot in the door through an electronic application portal.

      2. WantonSeedStitch*

        Yeah, these days sending in a printed resume full stop is kind of gimmicky for most jobs.

      3. Rex Libris*

        I remember hiring in those days. Scented paper was always my first cut in any resume stack, followed closely by Day-Glo colors. My reasoning being that the colors, at least, didn’t make me sneeze.

        1. JustaTech*

          I once had an undergraduate submit a resume for a student worker position in yellow text. I don’t remember if it was an attachment or if it was in the body of an email, but yellow text on a white background is essentially unreadable.
          I was willing to give this person a chance so printed it out again in black and white, so I could at least say that I had actually read it, but neither the lab manager or I could figure out the reasoning for yellow.

          1. Marion Ravenwood*

            I vaguely remember reading somewhere ages ago that black text on a yellow background is the most legible. Maybe they got that mixed up?

    3. Person from the Resume*

      This is sort of my suspicion … changing times and changing generational norms.

      Applying has gone full on online. Printed applications are barely/not needed now-a-days.

      But also applicants are casting a much wider geographic net where they can’t just show up. They are comfortable applying online and less comfortable calling or appearing in person. Personally they expect someone to text them a heads up before giving them a phone call or showing up, and they do the same for a business. If a business is not public, it’s a lot harder to get into the office than it used to be (increased security).

    5. Rage*

      Alison’s “generational” comment may be closer to the mark, as far as gimmicks go.

      My friend’s son was hired a month or so ago by a local franchise of a national oil change company. He was laid off just last week because they “had hired too many people.”

      Anyway, another mutual friend told me that the son’s instructor in his college/tech program told him to “application bomb” one specific chain as this would “guarantee” they would give him a job.

      I immediately said “Tell him to NOT do that! Under any circumstances!” Then I had to explain why.

      My guess is whoever this instructor is managed to get a job that way back in the 80s.

      Fortunately, he accepted my input over his instructor and will be doing a more broad application sweep this week.

      1. Resentful Oreos*

        Gimmicks, gumptioneering, and “be persistent” were HUGE in the 80’s and 90’s. I am not sure about before that because I wasn’t job hunting then. But I suspect that they weren’t so much a thing before the wave of downsizing and cost-cutting hit in the 80’s, and all of a sudden a job wasn’t 30 years and a gold watch.

        This was also when the market was crowded with the baby boom generation and I think they were competing with each other, plus older and younger generations, for jobs, so they felt they had to stand out somehow.

        And of course what everyone else is saying – job searching is done either online or through placement agencies now, and the actual “future boss person” does not give out their contact information. Fancy-schmancy resumes, bouquets, a shoe “for a foot in the door,” or just showing up and lying that you had an interview with Big Boss just does not happen anymore.

    6. fhqwhgads*

      I don’t think there’s been a particular slowdown in gimmick advice or gimmick-users. I think it’s moreso that the number of gimmicks has not increased. So there’s nothing really new on that front. It’s still silly and bad advice, but it’s a plateau.

    7. amoeba*

      I think it’s a combination of this and the fact that by now, it’s mostly not new and exciting anymore and quite a few people that might have been open to trying some gimmick 10 years ago have now read an article or two about why that’s actually a bad idea!

      (I still remember, when I graduated, cutesy graphs like a pie chart for showing your level of proficiency in a language or whatever, were all the rage – not quite the level of a cake with your resume on it, but still. They seem to have mostly disappeared and I’m quite happy about that!)

    8. Lisa Simpson*

      I see a lot of “use AI to game the system” gimmicks these days. It’s not Elle Woods’s resume, or photoshopping yourself into the company’s group photo, but it’s still a gimmick.

  2. Twinkleberry*

    For #3: working in healthcare for the past 10 years, I can sincerely tell you it has gotten worse over the past five. Healthcare workers have been attacked and killed multiple times in my city, I myself have been threatened to be shot twice in the past year, and my unit was on lockdown this weekend for a patient’s family member threatening to “come back and take care of” us. It’s real and it sucks. If your friend tells you things are worse now, she is probably not exaggerating. Give grace and kindness to healthcare workers everyone!

    1. allathian*

      Yeah, the people I know who work in healthcare are saying the same thing, that the threat of violence in the workplace has increased.

      1. AnonyER*

        It’s very much escalated. And it’s mostly never reported to keep the peace. Even violate threats are dismissed. I’ve been afraid to go out to my car late at night.

      2. Cathy*

        Yes and that is more important than my annoyance, MK put it very well below by pointing out that I feel invalidated, but that is a very small matter in the grand scheme of things!

        1. Nah*

          making a quick note for anyone coming in later when there’s a few hundred replies to ctrl-f through, op3 is posting responses under ‘Cathy’ ^^
          op* op3* lw* lw3*

      3. Hospital PT*

        Physical therapist here with 30 years experience… OP3, if you retired before 2020, then I have to validate your friend. The last 8 years have seen a big shift and the last 4 have been so much worse for all of us in healthcare. Most of us are just bracing for the pending fallout of insurance greed and anti-science rhetoric and, in my age group, looking for exit strategies.

        1. Elizabeth West*

          I was going to say, I know someone who worked in healthcare and now does not because the Covid pandemic and the lack of support during and after was traumatizing.

          And I hate that I was compelled to write “Covid” in front of “pandemic” to differentiate it from the next one. :'{

    2. HiddenT*

      The number of people I know who’ve left healthcare in the last five years due to how bad it’s gotten… There have been predictions that we’re only five to ten years out from a complete collapse of our healthcare system.

      1. Cathy*

        I realise that, and I know my irritation is a very minor issue compared to what my ex-colleague is going through every day.

        1. MigraineMonth*

          It sounds like you’re doing a lot of great self-reflection in these comments, and I think your friendship will only be stronger for it. I wanted to share something from a support group I attended that might be helpful for reframing: “Everyone feels pain at 100%.”

          You had a difficult, stressful, at times painful job. Your friend has a difficult, stressful, at times painful job. At times, I’m sure, yours was more difficult and at times hers is. You are also different people, bringing different strengths, resources, weak points and views to the job, so your experiences–even of the identical situation–will be different. Comparing whose pain is greater or whose suffering more valid is worse than pointless, it takes away your ability to support each other.

          A script when your friend says that the job is much worse now might be something like, “That patient getting huffy at me certainly isn’t the worst thing I dealt with, but at the time it was pretty frustrating, okay? Now it’s your turn. What’s been bothering you this week?”

    3. MK*

      Even if it is, it can feel very invalidating to be constantly told so. When people share their own difficult experiences, they are trying to empathize, and telling them they had it easier is a very dismissive response to that. My job is a lot more complicated than it was for previous generations of colleagues, but that’s not really what I focus on when they share their experiences.

      1. Cathy*

        Yes! Exactly this! You sound like a very understanding person MK. Invalidated is exactly how I feel, (even though I know that she doesn’t mean it because she is a very nice person, a long term colleague who has become a friend.)

        1. KitKat*

          I just want to say I really respect your comments here trying to figure this out! You might be able to try adapting Alison’s second suggestion if you really can’t let it go, like:

          “You often say that the job was easier for me, and based on what you’ve described I think it does sound like it’s gotten worse! That being said, the job was plenty difficult for me and it does grate a bit to hear that every time we catch up. I support you and I don’t want to compete over who had it worse!”

            1. JSPA*

              Perhaps the missing piece is that your examples come with the implication (intentional or purely situational) that “I got through it, you can too.”

              But it’s possible that your friend in fact… can’t. Or isn’t best-served by continuing to try. If they’re trying to tell you they’re burnt out, traumatized, a hair away from quitting or breaking down, they need the support that what they’re going through is FUNCTIONALLY very different. As someone no longer facing those issues day-to-day, you probably shouldn’t expect need, want, or receive as much retroactive support for past mysery as your friend does for raw, current experiences. Why not lean in on “how are you coping?” and “how do you see dealing with it if things continue to get worse?” rather than debating the degree to which they’ve gotten worse?

              IMO, you’ll feel more listened to and validated if your words and stories are set in that framework… and actually, you may be a better friend to your friend if, for the moment, you don’t look for validation of your past experiences, but let the focus be on the current horror show, and her plans to [whatever she’s dreaming of doing instead, or after].

              You can’t know if you’d be sticking it out in her shoes. And admitting that to her might be the core honest affirmation that you both need to reset the disconnect, and really listen to each other again.

      2. Totally Minnie*

        You’re not wrong, but it feels invalidating from the other side too. I used to work in public libraries and left when customer behavior became much more abusive than it had ever been in the past. I was explaining the decision to my former mentor, who retired right at the beginning of the pandemic, and she was saying a lot of the things the LW was saying. “There have always been angry customers,” “one time I had a customer who (insert incident that was truly wild at the time that it happened, but tame in comparison to the level of threats and abuse I had described),” and the like.

        And yeah, there have always been angry customers, but not like this. There has been an extreme uptick in angry and abusive behavior and violent threats to service providers from the people they’re trying to serve. I understand my former mentor was just trying to empathize with me, but it showed that she just truly did not understand the extent to which things have gotten worse for workers in service sectors, and it felt really crappy, like she was dismissing what I had been through.

        1. Cinnebonnet*

          LW#3 — Your colleague is expressing current, fresh stress, you are remembering past stress – and talking about past injuries is not a relief for current pain. You want to show sympathy/empathy but if the anecdotes are “yeah it was tough, and I have scars” that may not be the reassurance someone struggling may need.

          1. fhqwhgads*

            It’s still kinda weird for the colleague to open her expression of current, fresh stress by always comparing it to past stress though. Like, the colleague is the one who is setting this up as a Pain Olympics. If she weren’t opening with “Oh it’s so much worse”, but were instead just expressing whatever her current frustration is, I bet it’d grate less on OP. Of course, OP can’t control what the friend says, but I think it’s uncharitable to ignore that the friend’s framing is Not Helpful. Both people are humans, and words matter from both of them. Your response is basically saying OP has to support the friend who is struggling even when the friend is being actively rude to them.
            I think it’d be more productive, and actually actionable for OP, to try to ignore the part where the friend opens with the comparison. Pretend they’re starting a sentence later, and it’ll be less frustrating.

            1. Strive to Excel*

              I wonder if friend is actually trying to set up a Pain Olympics. It could be she just wants to share that “all those bad customers? They’ve gotten so much worse!” and the response she imagines is “No!!! How? We already had so many Moaning Mabels!” and then going forwards from there.

        2. Cathy*

          I think I have been speaking to my friend like your former mentor did to you, meaning to empathise but sounding out of touch or dismissive. And then feeling in turn that my past experiences are being dismissed. I’m going to do more listening!
          It’s funny, I didn’t think that this was the way the comments would go, I started out feeling quite annoyed by what I saw as my friend invalidating my experiences, but actually she is the one who needs support. Thanks to all.

          1. JSPA*

            To be clear, you’re not wrong that it is potentially useful to have the long view. But it depends on the goals of the conversation.

            I can imagine you writing an article for a trade publication or something like Public Source, where having input from “longer than any one worker’s career arc” is absolute gold. (If you could find someone two decades older than you and a decade younger than her, as well as pumping her for examples tied to a framework, I suspect it would be invaluable to compare
            a) what passed for 100% normal and polite
            b) 100% normal but felt rude
            c) not-scary but disconcerting
            d) scary but rare
            e) scary-but-unfortunately-normalized (first hand observation of it happening monthly or more often)
            f) actual damage, acknowledged as extreme
            g) actual damage normalized
            h) life-changing damage or attempt at murder by someone competent to carry it out
            i) other “once in a year extremes” and “once in a decade or career extremes,” that could help pin down the drift (especially if you were all in similar roles and location).

            (I’m probably not alone in distinguishing between “stream of extreme but disjointed threats by someone so incapacitated that they can’t see straight, don’t know where they are, are already marinating in their own pee, and almost certainly won’t remember any of it the next day” vs “someone with control of their limbs and not their emotions threw a roundhouse punch” vs “someone reasonably coherent has coldly explained how and why they’d be justified in exterminating me, and what means are at their disposal” vs “someone shot up a place they reasonably expected me and mine to be.”)

    4. maxouillenet*

      I also think that we always tend to imagine that our job is worse than before.

      for example, I always hear teachers say that ten years ago, students respected teachers and so did parents.

      except that my father, some of his friends, some of my mother’s friends (not my mother, she was a good student), and some of my aunt’s friends talk about how they behaved at school. My father regrets it now and is glad I didn’t behave like him, but he once went so far as to throw books at the face of his high school dean of students (the French equivalent) and his mother (my grandmother ) once hit a teacher who had torn my father’s blouse
      Similarly, among my aunt’s friends, about the same age as my father (in their sixties), an adult often tells us how he created a flood with his mates when he was at boarding school, reported the flood to the person supervising them at boarding school, and ended up on the honor roll for having reported the beginning of a flood.

      And even my mother (now also in her sixties) who was a good student, remembers seeing a parent slap a teacher.

      then yes, none of this behavior is justifiable, all are violence that should have been punished (only that of my father almost was, he left and found a job because he had been announced a disciplinary council).

      but when I hear teachers say that all students and parents used to respect their teachers, I find it hard to believe, I don’t think there were only 5 people before, parents or children who didn’t respect the teachers, and that by chance, my parents would have met them afterwards

      1. Cathy*

        Yes this is very much how I feel, and it’s a very low stakes issue but I have found it quite irritating. I have been threatened many times by patients and their families and occasionally pushed to the ground, punched and once head-butted! My colleague has only recently been promoted and she now has much more exposure to patients’ families who can be very stressed and angry. So when she starts explaining to me how hard her job is, I don’t know whether to just let it go (I know I should!) or insist that I had it just as hard (which sounds petty!) It has happened quite a few times which is why I wrote in. But I do realise that it isn’t a big deal and that I should just be grateful to be retired!

        1. Mutually supportive*

          Would it be appropriate to help her work on her coping strategies? If this level of public input is new to her, and your experience could be helpful, that sounds like a win:win (and along the way she’d see the experience that you really did have!)

          1. Cathy*

            Very good point, I will try this by asking more questions to find out more about what she is finding most difficult, rather than comparing my experiences to hers.

        2. Radioactive Cyborg Llama*

          It sounds like you’re negating her experience and I think her insistence that it is worse is her pushing back. She’s probably not trying to “explain” to you about the abuse people in X role face, she’s trying to share her experience and emotions with you. I think you may be coming across as saying that abuse is not a big deal because you faced it, also. I would suggest try listening to her from the perspective of her lived experience, not her professional experience.

          1. Cathy*

            This comment and others which are similar are very helpful, and also positive. I’m going to try to see things more from her perspective. I didn’t realise that she might be pushing back, I see that now. She was always a lovely colleague and I was a bit surprised by what I saw as her invalidating my experience.

        3. Paulina*

          She’s trying to vent to the person who might best understand the difficulties she’s facing. But if you follow up with your own story too quickly, then she may not feel like she’s being listened to at all. It’s a tricky line to walk, but so often what might be intended as commiseration can deteriorate into just taking turns at telling stories. And when someone has just talked about something that’s happened to them that’s very stressful and emotional, that’s a time to make them feel heard and supported before you segue into your own story.

          Your friend is in the thick of it. She’s stressed out and trying to vent. There needs to be space for your stories too — you don’t want to just be a dumping ground for her feelings — but if you move on to your story time too fast, then she’s likely to feel unheard and unsupported, like you don’t care about the stress she is currently facing. And where to strike that balance is difficult.

          1. Cathy*

            I think that’s exactly what I have been doing, thank you for your advice. Also, to me they are becoming anecdotes from a stressful time that is in the past whereas my friend has to go in and face this every day.

      2. Observer*

        I don’t think that anyone reasonable thinks that “back in the day” all students were respectful and well behaved and that all parents were reasonable. But it’s also not just people’s imagination that things are very different today.

        This is not just rose colored memory glasses. Because in some ways things are much better, too. For example, when I was in school, “The teacher is always right” was fairly common and “The default is the the teacher is right” was very much the norm, and “My kid is always right” was an outlier. Today “the Teacher is always right” is an outlier. And that’s good imo. What’s *not* good is that “My kid is always right” has become quite common. Even “My kid is ALWAYS right, and I don’t want to hear and excises or facts. It’s all the teacher’s fault!” is not an outlier anymore, either.

        1. Starbuck*

          Yeah I don’t know how you can bring up schools like that’s going to be a contrary example at all. Things have DEFINITELY changed for the worse, the amount of gun violence especially in schools was just not even a thing really before the 80s/90s and it’s wild how bad it’s gotten.

          1. Officially An Olde*

            Hell, I graduated high school in ’03 and the current public school system in America is downright unrecognizable to me. The Columbine shooting happened when I was in junior high and it was a hugely, deeply shocking national tragedy that was constantly in the news for months. Now mass shootings are so common they’re barely a blip, and the current class of high school seniors has spent practically their entire school careers having mass shooter drills. It’s appalling.

            1. LL*

              Yeah, I graduate high school in ’02 and between the huge increase in school shooting frequency and all the educational reforms put into place under Bush and Obama, school is a lot different now.

          2. Lenora Rose*

            I don’t think they said it’s all around better; they said it’s different. And it is. And that it’s better in SOME ways. Which it might be, though I think it’s actually more that it tilted past better and into “as bad or worse” just with a different target.

            For example, a teacher at my elementary school had a temper – enough that when he got annoyed, he’d throw chalk and chalkboard erasers. (Not at the kids, but across the room.) And one day THREW A CHAIR ACROSS THE ROOM. And let’s just say seeing someone behave like that, even if they’re patently not doing it in your direction (this time), does not mean you feel safe. And this was treated as a funny quirk. The Principals seemed to let the teachers do anything they wished so long as the students got taught, and parents would very often back their fellow adults against their kids in all but a few outright abusive examples. And even in a few of those. These days, that teacher would be in deep trouble, and gone if they did it ever again. Which they should be.

            That being said, as I noted, nowadays it seems we went too far the other way, and sometimes teachers are the targets of savage abuse by parents, or even by older students.

            (For the record, I’m in Canada, so school shootings rarely apply, though kids do the mild no-fake-guns version of emergency lockdown drills.)

            1. Starbuck*

              Oh I agree it’s better in some ways now, many ways actually (at least in my state) – but I thought we were talking about violence from people in the system being served. It’s true that corporal punishment of kids used to be very common and accepted in schools and now it’s rightly viewed as abusive and totally unacceptable (unless the child is disabled… that’s a whole other issue).

              Also comparing the Canadian and US systems in this way – I don’t know what conclusions you can really draw there. That’s two pretty separate conversations.

            2. Observer*

              This is pretty much what I’m getting at.

              I was talking pretty specifically about expectations about how teachers and parents handle misbehavior (outside of criminal violence).

          3. Observer*

            the amount of gun violence especially in schools was just not even a thing really before the 80s/90s and it’s wild how bad it’s gotten.

            I wasn’t talking about gun violence, but expectations on teachers and students outside of criminal stuff. Like how a typical parent would react when a kid comes home to complain about a teacher, or when a teacher acts in truly inappropriate ways.

            Having said that, I’ll point out that criminal violence is not a new thing in public school systems. It was just more concentrated and walled off, for lack of a better term. In the “better” schools (ie the ones where the parent body had money and status) the violent kids got tossed out or relegated to “special” schools where they could terrorize each other. In the other schools . . . violence was par for the course.

            I didn’t go to PS, but my elementary school was next door to a public HS in the 70’s (that was not of the “good” sort). It was BAD. To give you a sense of how bad I mean, here is a tidbit. There had been a rape of a student by a student. The principal was interviewed about it and he pretty much shrugged off the questions about the violence level in the school since this was “only” the 4th rape that school year, about halfway through the year. Can you imagine any school principal today taking that kind of tone today?!

    5. Cathy*

      I do see your point, and I respect that my friend is doing a difficult job. I also think that I’m probably being over-sensitive. I don’t miss my stressful job but I miss being useful so maybe there’s a tiny part of me that wishes I could be there helping!

      2. DJ Abbott*

        Maybe you would feel better if you found something useful to do? Maybe not in healthcare, but there are a lot of other useful things you could do!

          1. YetAnotherAnalyst*

            I think that’s a direct reply to Cathy saying she misses being useful – DJ Abbott is saying she might look for other things that give her that feeling, besides the job she retired from.

          3. Totally Minnie*

            The LW has said several times in the comments that part of the reason she’s reacting this way to her friend is because since she retired she doesn’t feel like she’s doing useful work. DJ Abbott’s question is a direct response to that sentiment expressed by the LW herself.

          4. Cathy*

            Thank you for your kind comment, however DJ Abbott was responding to something I said and was being helpful. This is such a supportive community.

        2. Cai*

          or even in healthcare. Long term care facilities are desperate for people to come and spend time with their residents. Thats definitely useful work! I keep meaning to do that when I find some time.

        3. Cathy*

          I had so many things that I wanted to do when I retired and my children left home, and I have been attending art history courses and language courses which has been great – however I do need to feel useful and I have started training as a volunteer children’s advocate, for children who have been referred to Children’s Hearings (I am in Scotland.) I’m hoping that this will be a positive way of giving back to the community – and feeling useful!

    6. umami*

      Yeah, I think the framing here for OP to consider is that the times/environment have gotten worse, not that the job itself was somehow easier for OP. She’s personalizing something that isn’t meant personally.

    7. Busy Middle Manager*

      Not in healthcare but I can imagine this. But I came to say, the ens—tification of many things, including jobs, is a common topic. I don’t think OP #3 should be pushing back at all!

      Many places pushed “efficiency” and automation a bit too far, or add in extra steps to processes to supposedly prevent lawsuits. Some industries (like the one I left recently) kept having layers of laws at various levels added, making most decisions way more cumbersome and less customer-centric than they needed to be. Inflation hit some costs very hard, while revenue hasn’t kept up to cover the costs. Skeleton crews and stagnant wages form a catch 22 at some places where new hires just don’t care that much. The list can go on, but the point is, “things are worse since you left” seems way more believable than the opposite scenario

      1. Cathy*

        Well, I didn’t mean to make it into a competition, I just felt a bit dismissed and invalidated. However thanks to the helpful comments I see better where my friend is coming from now.

    8. Dawn*

      Yeah, things absolutely, objectively are getting worse in healthcare across the board – both in and outside of the United States.

      Even if you’re not subject to some of the horrors of the US healthcare system (like app-based scheduling that makes nurses even more overworked and underpaid,) everyone is overworked anyway, everyone is underpaid anyway, and people have objectively been getting meaner across the board (something I attribute to the brain damage allegedly caused by COVID, but whatever the reason, it’s happening.)

      Healthcare is a hellscape since COVID and I’ve known multiple people who dropped out of healthcare-related education because they knew they couldn’t handle what it’s become in the last five years.

    9. Elizabeth*

      It truly has! Being a walk in during Covid saw people breaking our doors and windows and us having the local cops on standby. If we called they came within 5min. I switched to a family practice and it’s marginally better but even here we had someone threaten to shoot one of our doctors…the screaming doesn’t even phase me anymore but it’s a lot some days.

    10. Also-ADHD*

      I feel like healthcare and education are two fields where things have gotten worse with/after the pandemic and in the past 10 years generally.

      1. Cathy*

        Well, this has been interesting! Thanks to all of you for both empathising with my low-stakes issue but also for helping me to see things from my friend’s perspective. I do agree that things have deteriorated since I retired and that I’m very lucky to be out of it, and I will try to be supportive to my ex-colleague rather than (unintentionally) competing with her experiences! And continue with my volunteer training so that I don’t feel so sensitive about feeling invalidated; I know what I went through, both good and bad, and I shouldn’t need my friends to validate it.

    11. RPOhno*

      I see stats on patient-perpetrated workplace violence (verbal, threats, physical) in committees several times a year. The data agrees, even though some reporting periods dip, on average, incidents of patient-perpetrated workplace violence have been on the rise for a while now.

    12. Sarah*

      Agree.

      I’ve worked in healthcare for 25 years.

      In the last few years, nearly every aspect of my field has gotten progressively more difficult. More red tape. More frustrated patients (understandable, due to the red tape and increased costs), just more of everything negative.

      Those who have worked in the field before and after these shifts know exactly what I mean.

      I still love my job, I still love my field, but wow it is getting brutal.

      I can only hope that eventually there’s a breaking point and things start to improve for the better.

  3. Alz*

    LW1- Also, I could see being pretty devastated if no one tapped me. Particularly when I was early career and a little less secure. I mean, if I was a tapper I would be much more likely to want to know about people above me or with more experience so I would be able to logic my way out of it…but I am sure it would sting!

    3. Never the Twain*

      That leaped straight to my mind! Way to have all your insecurities confirmed in one session.

    4. Nah*

      This was definitely my very first thought too, honestly. I mean I don’t like random people touching me unexpectedly either, but I can’t imagine it would be any better to *not* get poked and prodded in this situation…

    5. o_gal*

      In general it’s a bad idea to do anything where there is a possibility that some people or groups could be left out. Could be anonymous sholder tapping, could be having groups stand up to get kudos in a mass meeting. Where every single group gets recognized except one. What, no, I’m not still bitter.

      1. Lauren*

        I was in the high school band, which had about 60 odd students in from all grades. At the end of my senior year, our band teachers decided the seniors would give funny awards to all underclassman about random things they did during the year. At the awards gathering, where every student was called up to get their award, it turns out the band teacher had awards for the seniors – all except 2 of us, me and one other student, the two lead flautists.

        So out of 60 odd kids, just us two didn’t get an award and just sat at that gathering doing nothing. Yeah, didn’t feel nice.

        When we pointed this out to the band teachers, they hemmed and hawed, and then a few days later we got awards along with a stupid looking stuffed flower. Yeah, that made up for it.

      2. Erin*

        Yeah, we do thank you notes at work every Thanksgiving, and me and the other organizers make sure that every person gets at least two thank yous, we would hate it if anyone felt excluded.

    6. Delta Delta*

      This was my first thought. I’d be pretty upset if nobody touched my shoulder. And if I was an eyes-open person id be upset to see someone else getting overlooked.

    7. Jennifer @unchartedworlds*

      Good point! I went to the weirdness of not knowing who’d be touching me, but this aspect really seems like the whole thing wasn’t well thought through.

      As to what to do about it in the moment: I could imagine saying “I’m not comfortable with this. I don’t want to not know who’s touching me.” and then wait and see what the facilitator said & what happened. If everyone else was like “no no it’s fine”, I’d maybe just let them get on with it. But sometimes as soon as one person’s made the first comment, it turns out other people felt weird about it too, and they’re relieved that you spoke.

    9. Charley*

      I’ve been an eyes-open facilitator at this exact activity in a different context (residential program, all of us very used to being in close contact with each other), and one of my jobs was to make sure everyone got tapped at least a couple of times. I expect most facilitators cheat in this same way, but idk.

      2. Mentally Spicy*

        Hello from the colourful world of the autistic spectrum! Can I just point out that I would hate this activity and would feel wildly uncomfortable.

        I hate being touched and I particularly hate it if the touching is a surprise – sitting there knowing you could be touched at any moment but not knowing when is just about my idea of hell.

        But it’s compounded by the eyes closed thing. I would absolutely refuse to do that. I hate having my eyes closed anyway but the thought of sitting with my eyes closed and hearing people moving around me? Again – hell!

        You may think this is a fun, affirming activity (and I don’t mean to call you out and criticise you unfairly, I promise) but it’s like someone designed an activity specifically to torture me!

    10. Tea Monk*

      Yea, I both wouldn’t want to be touched ( I startle easily) and would feel bad about being left out

    11. RVA Cat*

      I immediately flashed back to high school National Honor Society “tapping” except that was done at a school assembly and was all about popularity. IIRC several prominent members were busted in a cheating scandal right before graduation.

    12. Persephone Mulberry*

      Oof, this comment took me back to grade school where we would play one of those tapping games (Google tells me it was called “heads down, thumbs up” or “seven up”) and I briefly relived that desperate desire to be picked. (Introverted kid in a small, deeply cliquey classroom – I was not picked often.)

      1. Elizabeth West*

        Heads down seven up! I forgot all about that. I used to love it even when no one tapped me, but that was in grade school and I would not love this team activity.

      2. Marion Ravenwood*

        Yeah, as someone who was also the kid that never got picked, I can’t see any version of this exercise – eyes open or closed – where there isn’t the risk that someone ends up not being acknowledged for anything and ends up feeling a little flat as a result.

    13. LifeisaDream*

      Me too, I attended something similar. At the end of the day, everyone was given little notebooks and each person had to write something anonymous in everyone’s notebook. I was afraid to open mine because I feared something negative or worse nothing at all.

    14. Ella Bee*

      We used to do this at the summer camp I worked at. At least one counselor would be in every group and would make sure that every camper got at least one ‘pat’ per statement, and we worked out the statements so that there was at least one that really fit each camper and would ensure they got a whole flurry of pats. It was a well-loved activity, but definitely more tailored to that kind of setting than the workplace!

    15. Box of Rain*

      This was my FIRST thought once the activity was explained.

      When doing things like that, the trainer/presenter has an obligation to structure things in a way that EVERYONE gets chosen–or they should not do the activity.

      Example–We award peer-voted-on class superlatives in our new hire classes, and everyone gets a certificate and award. Even if Jerry was voted as the top person in three categories, he only gets one. We go with the second place person in the other two categories, and so on and so forth. Does that mean that the 5th ranked person can get Best Phone Voice or Class Clown? Yep, but everyone gets something.

    16. Weaponized Pumpkin*

      A few years back my team did a bonding exercise in which we put up sticky notes of what we appreciated about other team members. It was meant to be a light, easy feel-good exercise, but a few people were seriously under-praised or got only generic things like “he’s nice”. If I ever see an exercise like that again, I will make sure that managers are in charge of ensuring that no one is left out. If peers aren’t adding the notes, their managers need to.

  4. BigLawEx*

    LW4 – I’ve never looked on LinkedIn to see who was connected to whom from graduate school. That said I was talking to a friend from back then and she mentioned a third person I haven’t thought of in YEARS, years. After I got off the phone, I went to LinkedIn to be nosy about how she’d aged and her job history. I never thought of it past that bit of noseyness. Also, after I clicked on her, I realized I could not well remember the names of most of the people I went to graduate school with. (Well except for my ex, and I’d love to forget him).

    I really don’t think anyone would think twice or judge you for not being connected. But maybe I’m the outlier.

    1. TechWorker*

      I agree with you, I think the chance of someone carefully going through your connections (or the other persons) and being like ‘oh wow they’re not connected??’ is basically zero. It’s not middle school any more :)

      1. el l*

        Agree. While, yes, There Are People who care deeply about all things LinkedIn…they’re rare and literally nobody will think of why you’re not connected.

        It’s just a tool, not a means of social obligation and control.

    2. BW*

      Wait, you’re supposed to connect to people on Linked In? I’ve ignored every request, because I didn’t know that was a thing. I never even noticed it.

      I recently deleted my Linked In account because all I ever got was people bugging me to buy into their franchises, which had nothing to do with what I actually did for a living.

    3. Momma Bear*

      No, you’re not an outlier. I wouldn’t care, either. You can have criteria beyond “I know them somehow” for LinkedIn connections. I have people I do NOT want to be connected to and I ignore them when they’re suggested as a contact. Sometimes it’s personal but sometimes it is also professional – I don’t need to be associated with someone who tanked a contract or is known for being a workplace bully. LW4 has valid reasons to not accept. Just delete/ignore. This is not Pokémon. You do not need to “catch” them all.

    4. iglwif*

      I’m sure there are people who care about and notice this kind of thing, but they’re the outliers, not you! I can’t remember ever having checked up on whether someone I know is connected to someone else I know, and I also can’t imagine a situation where I would need or want to do that … other than, as you say, momentary nosiness.

      LW4 should simply ignore this request and move on with her life.

      (I do question her certainty about the ex-classmate’s motivations for reconnecting — seems equally likely to be “hey LinkedIn just suggested this person and I do indeed know them, might as well click the connect button” — but the only reason to even think about this is that not ascribing the request to nasty motives might help with the moving-on process. Because LW has zero obligation to ever think about this person again.)

      1. ferrina*

        Agree with all of this. I think most people put minimal thought into LinkedIn. There’s a brief moment of nosiness, then it passes. Or LinkedIn recommends a connection and you think “sure, whatever” then forget about it.

        Sure, a few people put more effort into it, and while it’s possible that LW’s classmate is one of these people, more likely they just saw LW as a way to pad the number of connections that they have.

        1. iglwif*

          Exactly.

          Now, there is some very weird LinkedIn advice out there! Last year I was laid off and my ex-employer signed me up for one of those “outplacement services” programs that are meant to help you find a new job, which included three (3) webinars on using LinkedIn for networking. Some of the material was “here’s how the platform works in case you’ve never used it” type of stuff, but some of it was genuinely unhinged — like, the instructor recommended messaging total strangers on LinkedIn to ask for information interviews or “connect” on the basis of both following the same celebrity account or whatever. So who knows what advice LW4 has been getting.

      2. An Opossum*

        While I agree that the people who spend the time looking at the outliers, I am reminded of a bizarre scenario I encountered on LinkedIn. Someone from my past who fancies themselves a LinkedInfluencer came across my feed (to be clear we connected on LinkedIn before they went this route, I’m just not on there enough to really see what they’re doing) and I noticed in hovering over their profile that the number of 1st degree connections we had looked too high considering the different directions our careers took in terms industry, function, etc. Like way too high. So I looked at our mutual connections, and it turns out that she appears to have just gone through my connections list and added pretty much everyone I was connect with from our city. It was so weird.

    5. JMC*

      Yup newsflash for you, you can ignore or block anyone you want. I’ve recently blocked at least 3 people I was connected with due to political differences. And I don’t think twice about it. It’s MY profile and I will do what I want, and you should do what you want with your profile.

    6. Rat Racer*

      The only teeny tiny reason that I can think of to accept the friend request is that the OP and the obnoxious grad school friend are likely in similar if not the same industry, and it could be a way to expand the OP’s network. With that said, there are dozens of fish in the sea, and ignoring one particularly obnoxious former grad school colleague shouldn’t make that much of a difference. Also, what are L’s and W’s?

        1. Rat Racer*

          Thank you – that makes sense (although I do love the idea of “lobsters and whelks”); but in either case, how would a LinkedIn profile show “losses”? Looking at a LinkedIn profile, you would never know the tally of someone’s job rejections, the promotions they didn’t receive, their lukewarm performance reviews… This has little to do with the OP’s current situation, I’m just idly wondering.

    7. MigraineMonth*

      I don’t think I’ve logged in to LinkedIn since my last job search years ago, or accepted any connections. All notifications go into my “technically not spam but not important enough to read” email folder.

  5. Anonychick*

    LW #1: I’m physically hypersensitive (meaning my body parts jerk uncontrollably when touched unexpectedly) as a result of neurological issues, and have a negative history of having my should grabbed as a result of…well, presenting as female until my mid-30s. :-/ Neither of those things (the neuro issues or my history of the kind of casual sexual assault most women experience) are something I would ever disclose to an employer, because they’re not things that I can imagine having accommodations for. But if someone I couldn’t see patted my shoulder unexpectedly? I can’t begin to guess what my body would involuntarily do…and while I know I’m in the minority, I would be willing to bet there are many others whose reactions would be the same (unforseeable and involuntary). This seems like an adverse event just waiting to happen.

    1. Anonychick*

      To clarify: yes, my physical hypersensitivity is probably related to my autism, and that is something I might choose to disclose to an employer so I could ask for reasonable accommodations. But I can’t imagine ever specifying that one of the myriad things my autism causes is physical hypersensitivity (because, again, it wouldn’t be relevant re: accommodations), so my point about not disclosing it stands.

    2. Matt*

      That’s me. Maybe not as bad as you, but every time some touches me unexpectedly (mostly tapping on my shoulder or back from behind, this seems to be very common) I startle visibly. Even if expected, for example if the doctor puts the stethoscope on my back or “knocks” my back for signs of spinal pain (at every exam I have to explain that I don’t feel pain, I’m just that easily startled to touch). This game would be pure horror to me.

      We did one “touchy” activity at team building once, it was about strategically shifting places with coworkers on small patches. The coach explained that it would be “touchy” beforehand and participation was voluntary, I didn’t object to it because there was no eye closing / blindfolding and the action was in front of everyone, not behind their backs.

      1. Chas*

        Yes, I think the “Not being able to see it coming” part of this would be my main objection as well. I have a terribly over-sensitive startle reflex, (as in, I’ll let out a loud “BWAAAAAAHHH!?” if you come up close behind me without me noticing and say “hi”.) so I can also imagine myself derailing the whole thing by yelping every time someone touched me.

      2. metadata minion*

        I have an overactive startle reflex, too. And I actually don’t particularly mind being startled most of the time; it’s just kind of a thing that happens. But inevitably whoever startled me feels terrible about it, and I have to reassure them that no, my body just does that, it’s fine, believe it or not it’s a much milder reaction than I used to have…and it’s just awkward for everyone.

      1. Anax*

        Yeah, PTSD partially related to stalking here, and it would be… bad.

        As soon as this activity was announced, I would leave the meeting; better that than to start crying and hyperventilating in front of my coworkers.

        I think those of us who are touch-averse do get used to fending off the touch-loving coworkers – most are perfectly nice about “haha, I don’t do hugs, sorry” – but this sounds like a particular flavor of awful. Particularly because it was sprung on folks in the moment – if I had an agenda in advance, I could be “sick” that day, but there’s no graceful way to ditch right after an activity is announced!

    4. Fruitbird*

      I’m on the autism spectrum and I react…poorly to physical contact I haven’t instigated. I basically contact into myself like a human black hole. There’s no intent behind it, the hind brain just takes over and does its best to get me away from the touch as swiftly as possible. All my huggy co-workers have learned that I mean no offence if I recoil from a friendly hand on the arm like I’ve been stung.
      If I was stuck playing this game I would have bitten someone ten minutes in.

  6. I forget my handle*

    #1 I have told coworkers that if their arms are around me it better be because they are performing the Heimlech maneuver. I say it loud and haha-ing but they know I mean it.
    In my case we have a coworker who likes to do the sweety sweety act with hugs and compliments, over the top. But they will stab you in the back for their own benefit.

    1. Not Your Sweetheart*

      I used to have a coworker who liked hugging. I could tolerate it if I knew it was happening. But, she liked to come up behind me and hug me that way. I always startled, and always told her not to do that because I didn’t like to be touched. She thought it was funny. Until one day she did it and I elbowed her in the gut (accidentally, but I’m not sorry about it). She actually went to HR. Thankfully, she got written up for harassment once I told them why I hit her.

      1. MigraineMonth*

        You didn’t hit her; you had an involuntary defensive reaction to her surprise assault.

        I’m a touchy-feely hugger type person. I cuddle with friends and give them backrubs. I also strongly feel that grabbing people without their consent, outside of an emergency, is never okay.

  7. Jenesis*

    LW1- I don’t like being touched at the best of times, but having everyone close their eyes just adds an extra layer of creepy. What are they trying to achieve by doing this? e.g. If I’m tapped during the “connect with someone whose work you’d like to learn more about” question am I supposed to… guess which coworker wants more face-time with me based on the feel of their hand? (alternatively, is this like a Reverse Werewolf game, where people who get tapped the least are secretly on the shortlist for getting laid off?)

    LW2- Absolutely I expect to be ghosted by employers these days. I’m honestly more annoyed when I get a canned “sorry we rejected your application” email weeks after the fact because it just feels like a waste of both their and my time.

    LW4- You describe your former classmate as a braggart, hyper-competitive, and a boundary-stomper. Do you see yourself ever actually wanting to professionally network with her (ask her for a reference, refer her to someone you know, share educational resources) outside of e.g. being forced to collaborate on a joint project by your employers? I don’t think so. So don’t add her. Let her connect with people who actually like her and have good things to say about her.

    1. Rusty Shackelford*

      I’m equally confused. I guess you’re supposed to… feel good about the fact that someone wants to connect with you? Even if it never happens?

  8. Peter*

    LW1, I wouldn’t be traumatised by the group activity. But I’d be stressed by all the hour or so’s unpaid overtime I would have to do to meet existing deadlines because I had to join this shoulder -touching/blindfold activity. I find working anti-social hours much more frustrating when my time isn’t respected during the working day – gimmicky activities like this, mostly pointless Teams calls etc. If the idea is to improve morale it would have the opposite effect on me.

    1. Metal Gru*

      This sort of thing is really frustrating. I’ve been drawn into those type of group activities and they were at inconvenient times (month end etc when I had a role in financial reporting) so I tried to get out of them on “not the best use of company time” grounds: But it’s important! Wash! – More important than closing month end? Well no, *obviously* month end still needs to be done on the first day, duh!

    2. Ellis Bell*

      Particularly in schools, where teachers are probably already being pumped dry of free work. I’m doing a UK course right now regarding leadership in schools, and one of the most heartening things I’ve seen in a while is the frequency with which the course leaders are saying to value the time of teachers; training of staff must be integral to the work, based on research, and linked to clear and tangible goals. The implementation should also be similar to how you teach students. Too often I’ve been in a situation where it seemed like we were being (not very) entertained like party guests by someone simply showing off with novelty because they had no idea what to do with the time. I’d guess if you asked the organiser of this activity they couldn’t tell you what the goals were, or whether research backed up this style of implementation.

      1. Irish Teacher.*

        I wonder if they are required to have a certain number of meetings/teacher training. In Ireland, we have “Croke Park hours” which are basically a set number of hours a year we have to work unpaid. It’s a public service thing from the recession, an agreement made between the government and the unions that the government would not cut jobs but people would work a set number of unpaid hours. I guess it made sense for people like the police where there were hiring freezes, but for teaching, where we are only paid for the hours we are in front of a class and obviously have to do planning, correcting, etc outside our paid…it just means additional meetings or stuff like parent-teacher meetings, open nights, etc that we were doing anyway.

        This means it’s not unusual for a school to “need to fill an hour,” during which they have nothing that needs to be done and…to come up with something ridiculous. The most ridiculous we had to sit through was a talk on work-life balance that took place after school hours. So we have to stay late to get lectured about…why we shouldn’t work late.

        And yeah, this is unique to the Irish-context, but “ensuring teachers are working”/”making it fair to people who don’t get summers off by making teachers work a few more hours to stop people getting jealous” seems to be an international thing. So it could be something just to fill a requirement.

          1. Rusty Shackelford*

            Man, that’s what I’d do. If necessary, call it an interactive training session where we’re going to share best practices about planning and grading as we, um, plan and grade.

          2. Irish Teacher.*

            Our school actually had the discussion last year about using some of the Croke Park hours for department planning. Which yeah, does make sense and certainly more than…talks on work-life balance.

        2. Ellis Bell*

          That’s exactly what I was thinking; they’re required to have a set amount of training sessions, but they have no idea how to deliver valuable ones. @Zarniwoop, where I am it’s specifically prohibited for mandatory training sessions in schools to be skipped for things that make up the daily workload. Don’t know about other countries, but in the UK, inspectors will want to see the signatures and slides for the particularly important training sessions, like child safeguarding and they’ll want to know the details of other training sessions too. You can definitely collaborate on marking (grading) and planning, in fact that’s seen as best practice, but that’s considered department work time, not training.

  9. Miss Chanandler Bong*

    As a neurodivergent woman, that touchy feely activity sounds like my worst nightmare. I

    1. Irish Teacher.*

      I have sensory issues with touch so, while I could tolerate it, it would not be pleasant for me.

    2. learnedthehardway*

      That’s a really good point – I can think of more than one person on the spectrum who I know, who would – at best – shy away from this kind of physical contact.

      1. Miss Chanandler Bong*

        Not just autism. I have ADHD, not autism*, but sometimes the traits can overlap. I absolutely hate being tapped. People who know me have known this long before I was diagnosed. You tap me, you will get the rage monster, lol.

        *Side note that I’m a big advocate for all ND people, but I myself have been evaluated and definitely just have ADHD. I have some of the overlapping traits, but not enough to be in the AuADHD category.

  10. Reasons for bad performance*

    LW5 – I am not sure why you don’t want to go into details why you are not good at this job. This is important information for both sides. This is not only “reason”, but also “requirement”. Only absence of those things will make you perform better and this is our interest to both of you.

    1. Reasons for bad performance*

      Just as an example:
      “My current rule includes a large amount of documentation. But I thrive with human interaction and this role hasn’t enough of that” or
      “I am required to communicate on thing X. I have very specific knowledge on this and I am not good in simplyfying those concepts. Therefore I would prefer audience 2 of this role over current audience 1.”

    2. Allonge*

      Because it can be difficult to say stuff like ‘I really don’t GET-get statistics [or whatever]’, especially after you have been working on statistics [whatever] for a year?

      It’s not necessarily a skill issue, it’s that some fields and some topics don’t click the same way as others. You can learn the processes and the manuals but it does not seem to get to the instinctive level you can achieve in other fields. This gets worse as one grows older. It’s not an easy thing to admit!

      1. Reasons for bad performance*

        I think it is also a question of wording. I have a similar thing at work – I am lost work topic X, while strong with topic Z. I always said in interviews I want to work on topic Z, because of reason A, B, C, and that topic X should only come up occasionally.
        You can clearly communicate strength or preference and that this is not given in your current position. There is no need to focus on your weaknesses.

      2. I am #5*

        Yes, you have been able to describe my dilemma better than I could!
        I listen to explanations from my boss and can parrot them back, but I don’t understand them on a fundamental level. It all seems like mumbo jumbo to me. I want to be able to understand my job, not just follow a script.

        1. GreySuit (they/them)*

          Your letter made me feel so seen, and this is exactly how it is. I love following direct, clear, unambiguous instructions, because certain topics my brain just refuses to grasp and I don’t know how to even begin to fix it. Thank you for writing in- hopefully we can both benefit from Alison’s advice.

        2. My Useless Two Cents*

          This was in school, not work, but…I had to take a required math class in college. The first half was probabilities, the second half was matrices. For some reason, my brain will not wrap around probabilities. I could understand the theories and do the math but I just couldn’t grasp if the question was asking for formula X or formula Y (which will give different answers). I swear to this day, some questions were word for word the same but different answers were expected. It was so frustrating not to be able to fully grasp it. Thank goodness for matrices, it saved me from having to take the class again :)

          OP, I would probably try something like
          “I have learned “probabilities” just aren’t my cup of tea. While I can do the work, I don’t feel like I’m at my best. I think I could excel better over in “matrices” as I’ve really enjoyed doing that kind of work in the past.”

          1. JustaTech*

            Oh my goodness, yes! Between undergrad and grad school and independent learning I have taken like 5 probability courses and it *still* just does not click for me at all. I finally gave up on understanding it and went with memorizing just to finish the courses.
            Statistics was always fine, that makes sense, but probability? Let’s just say I learned enough not to play the lotto.

            1. NoIWontFixYourComputer*

              Three undergraduate stat courses, and I still don’t know which test to use when.

        3. MigraineMonth*

          I spent a year at a lovely company with lovely colleagues, great pay, great benefits, doing a job I loathed because even after six months of training I just could not get it.

          So bravo on you for recognizing it now and transferring. Good luck!

    3. Varthema*

      It really depends upon whom you’re talking to. If I’m talking to my direct manager, I feel at liberty to be fairly explicit and unguarded about my weaknesses, because she has been party to all of my work for the last 3.5 years and has a rich and complete picture of me, so discussing weaknesses IS productive and she also knows my strengths.
      If I’m talking to the CEO, or another member of the leadership team, it would be unwise to be as explicit and frank about my weaknesses, purely because they have very little interaction with me and only have a sketch of my abilities. So that makes that discussion of my weaknesses a much more prominent data point about me in his head, and that’s not great!

      1. I am #5*

        And as I am trying to sell myself to a new manager I am hesitant to dwell to much on my shortcomings.
        I will take the advice to focus much more on where the potential role aligns with my strengths.

        1. Eldritch Office Worker*

          “I was moved as part of an internal reorganization, and where I ended up didn’t really play to my strengths. That’s why this role really appeals to me, because of [the way it plays to my strengths].”

          That’s it! You’re almost certainly overthinking it (which I get, I do the same).

          1. Rusty Shackelford*

            Yes, this. Really emphasize that you were moved into this position. It’s not like you’ve never been good at your job. You were good at your previous job, and then you were given this one that doesn’t align with your strengths.

      2. Hannah Lee*

        That’s a great point!

        I have many skills, but doing math in my head is not one of them.
        My brain can hold “order of magnitude” or “significant” numerical info, but anything involving holding numbers in my brain and doing things with them one after another takes a LOT of concentration and often the internal La La La La derails it even when I do put a lot of effort in. Early in my career, my boss at the time (a very techy math wiz) noticed and started randomly and gleefully announcing it to co-workers. “Thanks boss, I’m SO glad that one key data point the company president and CFO know about me after our first meeting with them is that I’m bad at mental math. That’s REALLY going to help me advance in my analyst career”

        So I can see LW’s hesitation to spell out their weaknesses. Coming at it from I “I prefer and thrive with work that focuses on X and Y and realize my current position doesn’t”

        Also, as an aside, this:

        “About a year ago, I changed roles within my company as part of a push for “internal mobility.” I wasn’t opposed to trying something new, but it wasn’t really presented as an option.”
        and LW’s experience reminds me why I’ve always disliked arbitrary mobility initiatives. Sometimes, people just like the job they already have and are good at it and there’s no need to force them to do something different for no good reason.

  11. Decidedly Me*

    LW3 – I’m not in healthcare, but I once had to take a serious look at the job I was training people in vs. how it was when I had started in it. I used to think it was the same, but it really wasn’t! The bones of it were the same, but the product we were supporting had changed over time, which meant there was more to learn at the start. I had run into the same issues and problems that newer people expressed, but that didn’t mean the job wasn’t still harder.

      1. Falling Diphthong*

        I think it’s the disinformation age. We were not able to meet it, and trust is breaking down.

        1. Crooked Bird*

          Oh geez, I have not heard this phrase before. It strikes me as completely right & intuitive & now I’m sad.

        2. MigraineMonth*

          One of my parents is involved with an organization called Braver Angels, which has the ambitious goal of getting Democrats and Republicans to talk to each other, acknowledge each other as human beings, and “disagree better”. (I’m too hurt and defensive to participate at this time, but I think it’s valuable work.)

    2. Cathy*

      I see your point and that may well be true in this case! It’s just that I found my job very stressful and navigated many difficult (and sometimes violent!) situations, and I think that I feel a bit dismissed by my colleague, perhaps because I have a little bit of survivors’ guilt? And I don’t feel as useful as I used to be – not that I would go back!

  12. AnonyER*

    Twenty four years practicing medicine. Front line. Patients are the rudest and most entitled they’ve ever been, even with good care and polite staff. Some think nothing of yelling, name calling, threatening, and stomping around. Why? The wait. Or being counseled on using the emergency department to refill non urgent prescriptions. Or a nurse didn’t return fast enough. Most are non urgent non medical issues. It started during Covid and has not stopped. It’s very disheartening. IMO it’s worse.

    1. Cathy*

      I see your point, and I do think that society has changed in many ways since Covid, and patients seem to become more angry more quickly about quite small issues. I retired during Covid so I did see this, but my position leading a department was always very challenging so I feel (unintentionally) dismissed / invalidated by my friend! I know that I need to just let it go and listen / empathise with her.

      1. Red Reader the Adulting Fairy*

        Hang on, you’ve retired? So this is going like
        Friend: “I had a rough day today, thus-and-such happened.”
        You: “Well, when I was in there (five years ago) that happened too.”
        And you feel like you’re the one being invalidated? You got out. Let your friend vent or don’t, but they’re the one still in the crossfire. Your experience really is outdated.

        1. I can see you*

          LW (posting as Cathy) could have retired like last year or last month though so that’s a bit harsh. She’s posted elsewhere with more info including context for her reaction. But also that she definitely gets where her friend is coming from and is learning from this experience and other responses. And that given the nature of this role, now her friend is exposed to more of the public’s bad behavior more often in a way said friend maybe wasn’t before (much like Cathy was while working that role).

          TLDR—let’s all stop acting like open axe wounds to healthcare workers

        2. Cathy*

          Well it’s more like we are chatting about experiences and I empathise with my friend and am very interested in what she has to say, but when I mention a similar experience she invariably tells me that it’s much worse now. However she was not in management at the same time as me so she doesn’t really know that from a management point of view. (She did know about it of course, but in this workplace there are a whole lot of different challenges when you move into management) She will also tell me things like “Having more staff doesn’t necessarily solve a problem if they are not good at their jobs.” and I think to myself, “Well I know that, that hasn’t changed!” but am too polite to say anything, but feel irritated.
          HOWEVER having said all that, yes, I got out, and I need to let her vent and not take it personally. I don;’t even know why it feels personal!

          1. learnedthehardway*

            Perhaps look at it as a statistical issue. Eg. there were rude patients when you were in the role, but the number of rude patients has increased by X% over the past 5 years. Or maybe the situation is that the number of incidents per week has not increased, but the aggressiveness / rudeness has increased by Y%. Or perhaps it’s a combination of increases of X and Y variables, combined with lack of trained staff, or whatever.

            Your friend is reporting the statistical increase (maybe not in actual numbers, but in her experience of more frequent and more severe issues. You are reacting to the specific events / conditions in which you worked – which individually were just as bad.

            Both of you are probably frustrated with the communication and feel the other person is invalidating you.

            1. Cathy*

              Yes I think that is true, someone else said that she is probably pushing back at what I’m saying, which I hadn’t even thought of.

          2. Ginger Baker*

            I think it feels personal because for better or for worse, we take on our jobs as part of our identities in big ways! And even though you have retired, you may not have finished processing that (or, maybe you have with Current Stuff – but this is someone who Knew You Then and it was your job for a very long time…so it can kind of feel like you’re being told “well, you’re not a real runner because you only did sprints and never ran a marathon”). Anyway point being, untangling You from Your [Previous] Work may be a separate project to dig into a bit, if you want.

          3. Shirley Keeldar*

            Hi, Cathy! You sound like a kind and conscientious friend. I think you can sympathize with your friend and ask for a little sympathy yourself too. “Hey, let’s not compete, let’s both feel sorry for each other!” I do hear what people are saying about client and patient interaction getting worse lately, and it’s clear you do to. At the same time it’s okay to ask your friend for a bit of sympathy if that’s what you need.

            1. Cathy*

              Thank you! We both need to do that, and I need to remember that she is the one who is still going through it.

          4. Nancy*

            I work in healthcare and those I know on the clinical side say it has definitely gotten worse since 2020. She is venting about her current experience and if it were me, I’d probably not want to hear about how someone who hasn’t worked in the field in several years also had it hard. It’s not a competition.

          5. Hannah Lee*

            ” … my position leading a department was always very challenging so I feel (unintentionally) dismissed / invalidated by my friend”

            Cathy, I’m so glad you’re willing to open up about what’s going on and why these conversations are difficult for you.

            One option could be to try to reframe your conversations with this friend eg, when you’re going to be with her, know that your time together is not going to provide you with that kind of professional acknowledgement/validation. Your conversations can meet some other need for you (connection, care and tending to a valuable relationship, sense of shared perspective), just not that one. And then think about whether there are other relationships, situation that *could* give you that validation (because it’s perfectly normal to want it)

            I’ve got a couple of friends/family members where I was getting frustrated/we’d have friction when we got together and I realized that certain topics/support were just a no-go with them. ie this person isn’t going reinforce my joy, enthusiasm for creative projects, so I should just not bring them up with her, that person tends to dig into details of past work struggles, so I should enjoy the soap opera ride with her and not try to do mutual-sharing or forward planning during our time together. That kind of thing. They are all still some of my favorite people, just “not the audience for this” or “not the person to meet that particular need”

          6. Ellis Bell*

            I think I see the disconnect. When she says “It’s harder now” it sounds like she’s saying “It was never challenging before”. However I think she’s trying to say “Yes, it was always immensely challenging, but recently it’s gotten to be impossible”. It can be really hard to quantify how more incidents of the same type of examples can be worse. Also, sometimes it isn’t actually all that different but a present crisis always feels much clearer and sharper, while the past dulls to something that was manageable (because for better or worse it was managed!). This doesn’t mean it has to be an enjoyable subject for you to hear about, far from it.

            1. Cathy*

              You are absolutely right, there has been a disconnect, and I couldn’t understand why my friend’s responses felt jarring to me, but I understand better now.

          7. Double A*

            You know, I think you could be open with your friend with this feeling! You could say, “I feel a bit sillying saying this, but when you tell me X, I feel a bit invalidated. I am trying to figure out why this is!”

            I kind of suspect it’s because you want to be a support to her because you also remember the hard things, and when you feel like she’s dismissing your experience she’s dismissing the possibility that you could help her, and you want to help her? (You mentioned in another comment that you’ve been feeling a bit adrift not being in a helping role now).

            1. Cathy*

              Yes thank you, I do know her well enough to say that, although thanks to the responses here I think I can handle it by being more empathetic and supportive.

    2. anon4this*

      This will be an unpopular opinion, but this is not a one-way street. Healthcare workers themselves have become ruder, more short-tempered, impolite, and imperial. By and large, they avoid eye-contact, display annoyance at questions, and general come off as “these people just need to do what we say and stop bothering us.” In my experience, I would say ER healthcare providers are the notable exception. I can’t think of a time we had a negative ER experience, even when the wait was long.

      I have had more than a passing acquaintance with healthcare over the last 8 or 10 years. I have been responsible for a chronically ill parent and a chronically ill disabled sister (now both deceased), and currently a spouse diagnosed with bone cancer. Whether attributable to Covid or not, people (patients and providers) are less tolerant, less accomodating, less caring. Healthcare is an assembly line. That’s the reality. I seriously doubt people go into healthcare because they are any more are caring than the general populace. It’s simply an industry that presumably has a lot of jobs, some of those lucrative.

    3. Observer*

      Patients are the rudest and most entitled they’ve ever been, even with good care and polite staff.

      I believe you. But I think that it is also true that accessing healthcare has in many ways gotten worse for a lot of people, as well.

      Have you thought about *why* people are coming to the ED to refill prescriptions? Why do you dismiss “the wait” as something non-consequential?

      I’m *not* defending people being jerks, threatening staff, etc. And I don’t know if understanding where some of the misbehavior is helpful in the moment.

      But for anyone who has any ability to affect the process and the provision of healthcare, it’s worth thinking about what kinds of stresses are being put on patients.

      People often come to the ER / ED for non-emergencies because they don’t have a GP and they may not have an urgent care in their area. Why don’t they have a GP? Not enough doctors in their area, no doctors on their plan accepting new patients, the one doctor who is accepting their insurance is terrible in one way or another are among the common reasons.

      People are often on a short fuse with the perfectly polite and professional nurse because they were treated poorly by prior staff, they are worried and stressed about both whatever is bringing them and the potential costs, and / or had to wait for a really long time.

      Like I said in another comment, in some ways things are better and in some ways things are worse. I remember a time where disagreeing with your doctor was just Not Done. Where getting a second opinion was a solecism that could cause a doctor to refuse to treat you any further. Where, even after *laws were passed* to require it, it could be a massive effort to get hold of your medical records. (I remember having to get a lawyer involved so my father could get his medical records for a consult with a different treatment center.) There are a number of things like that, that no longer are so common.

      On the other hand, the level of second guessing by insurance companies seems to have gone up. A lot. And what makes it worse is that doctors seem to use insurance as an excuse more than they used to. What I mean is a doctor not even *submitting* a request for authorization because the insurance supposedly won’t cover it – but when pushed to submit, the insurance *did* cover it. And I see a lot more dismissing of people’s legitimate concerns and judgement of patients. Including blaming patients for the problems caused by their own practice, in some cases!

      It spills over. And no one benefits by this.

      1. I Have RBF*

        It used to be that you could get through in ER in under four hours. Now the fastest we’ve gotten out is six hours, and my wife has had it take twelve or more. There aren’t enough beds, or staff, to handle the inflow, yet the waiting room seems less crowded than it used to be.

        Some of it is parsimony on the part of hospital management, plus outright stinginess on the part of health insurers. When health care is for profit, actual treatment is a cost center, and profits require less treatment, less staff, and more waits.

        The American system is especially broken because of this.

  14. Allonge*

    LW1 – on the what to do in the moment part. It should be on the trainer/facilitator to check in with everyone beforehand, but you can suggest it (if you are only mildly uncomfortable, it may be easier to speak up than for someone really freaking out). So I would say, whoa, I love you all but I am not that keen on touching and being touched, especially with eyes closed – can we do this in a different format? I cannot be the only one (and then hopefully others speak up also).

    Failing that, you can also let the facilitator know after the fact, for the future. Justa s everyone else, they need feedback to do better.

    As the exercise is somewhat anonymous anyway, it could e.g. be a written thing – put names on a paper, for yourself. I am not tha wild about these exercisese but it can help to take five minutes to think about who I appreciate! Maybe invite people to consider telling the other person about it later, in private, if they want to. Eyes open, even.

  15. HiddenT*

    #1: There are all kinds of ways to make people feel appreciated without touching them. Having people put tokens in a jar, for example (like poker chips, and the jars would have people’s names on them), or even ask the questions and have people write the names on a slip of paper and put them into a bucket for the facilitator to read aloud or something. Or, y’know, send out an anonymous survey that people could fill out at their leisure and not force them to all do a team building activity together…

    1. Thinking*

      Oh, even in adulthood, it hurts to see the popular kids jars full of tokens while my jar is empty, or nearly so. This method is meant to fix that. Facilitators need to keep thinking to find a better way.

      1. londonedit*

        Yeah, I can see the thinking behind the exercise – as a tapper you can tap people anonymously, which might make people more likely to express themselves, and as a tappee you don’t see who else is getting a tap and in which categories, etc. In an ideal world you’d sit there and just feel good about yourself as you feel lots of people tapping you on the shoulder. But that doesn’t take into account the person who sits there wondering when they’re going to get a tap, or the person who’s uncomfortable about sitting in the middle of a room with their eyes closed, or the person who doesn’t like suddenly being tapped on the shoulder even if it is meant to be a ‘nice’ thing.

    2. Hastily Blessed Fritos*

      Nooooo nothing where everyone can see who won the popularity contest, that is just as bad just in different ways.

    3. iglwif*

      While I also would be uncomfortable with the eyes-closed shoulder-squeezing activity, the problem with your suggestions is exactly where that activity probably came from: it removes the “popularity contest” aspect that inevitably makes people feel terrible when they clearly have fewer tokens or slips of paper than others do.

      1. Jenesis*

        One jar, everyone writes their kudos to specific people on slips of paper and drops them in. At the end of the session the facilitator sorts through the slips and finds something nice to say about each person (or less than half the people, if not everyone got picked at least once). Removes the blatant popularity contest, still anonymous, and no weird physical contact.

  16. Adam*

    LW4, it’s possible things are different among your cohort, but nobody I’ve ever worked with has cared whether you connect on LinkedIn. You’re not committing some faux pas by ignoring a LinkedIn invitation, you’re being a totally normal person.

    1. Lacey*

      Yeah, I’ve never, ever checked to see who is connected to who on linked-in, even though I went to a small, close knit university.

  17. Anon1234*

    #3 – I work in healthcare and paused for nearly 10 years to be with my kids full time. I came back last April and I can absolutely tell you that something has shifted and the job is way worse than before.
    The patients are more demanding, more shouty at reception staff, intolerant of any reception errors. The kids used to say ‘hi’ to you as they came into the room – now they come in in a sullen manner (teens), openly eye-roll when I ask them to put their phones down (I can’t do my job if phones are out), and the younger kids don’t seem to understand having an indoor voice. I’ve had kids kicking the crap out of my equipment and the parents just standing by texting and ignoring them.
    The rudeness is off the chart sometimes – just day to day stuff like not saying thank you, dirty tissues just dropped in the waiting room, etc. Staff are burning out at an alarming rate.
    I don’t think it’s necessarily covid, I think it might be down to phones or main-character energy, but the feeling that we are now servants rather than health providers and any bad behaviour should be acceptable due to whatever issues the patients have.
    We try so hard to give a good service, to be sympathetic, to allay fears, but all of us are feeling tapped out at our healthcare practice. I’d love to see a return to good, basic manners (hello! goodbye! Thank you! Not shrieking in an enclosed space!) and recognising that staff are doing their best.
    So yeah… I think your friend definitely has a point.

    1. Cathy*

      I did see a shift in attitude (rather than actual behaviour) in the last couple of years before I retired, maybe it was Covid, social media, I don’t know. I think that I just feel a bit invalidated (as MK mentioned above.) My job was really challenging and I have been punched, thrown to the ground, head-butted (only head-butted once), shouted at, I have had a tray full of folders thrown at my head, and much more, and this all while doing my very best to support patients and their families. However I’m retired now and I need to let it go, as the song says!

      1. Anon1234*

        It sounds like you did a good job for sure. But it also sounds like now you are out of it that perhaps your insistence that it was equally hard is invalidating your friend’s experience.
        I hear the same ‘in my day things were harder’ battle with my husband and his dad who are both hospital doctors.
        Dad: “In my day we were on call every other night. I barely saw my kids when they were young. You young doctors think you know stress.”
        Husband: “In your day you were given 3 hot meals a day in the lovely Doctor’s Mess, all the nursing support you needed, job security with a named overseeing doctor, minimal violent threats, non-glitching computers, a wage you could buy a house with and bring up a family with, and a clean bed to sleep in when you were on call. We have a vending machine, and none of the other stuff.”
        It’s almost funny. It’s the Monty Python Four Yorkshiremen sketch on a monthly basis! We all had it worse, we all have it better.

        1. Cathy*

          You are absolutely right! I have become the older generation! I used to hear from older colleagues how much worse they had it too, and I don’t want to be that person! I don’t really know why I feel so irritated when I am lucky enough to be retired! The only thing I would say to current managers (in any area) is that retirement is a strange thing. At first you feel so excited and think of all the things that you can do with your new found freedom, but once that wears off a bit (and it does) you can feel a bit useless especially if you had a very demanding job where you were very needed!

          1. Totally Minnie*

            Have you considered looking for volunteer opportunities? You might feel less defensive in these types of situations if you can find a way to feel like you’re helping people now, rather than it being a thing you used to do in the past.

          2. bamcheeks*

            This is just an option to think about, but what if you re-framed it to “listening and not judging / comparing is the useful thing I can do”? This is 100% not something you have to do, but if you want to still feel like you are providing support, and your colleague needs someone to vent to, then there is a match there! Lean in to being the person who isn’t directly engaged any more and doesn’t have to make a judgment on whether it’s better, worse, the same, or what the “correct” strategies to deal with it are — and it’s also possible that if you’re less defensive in the earlier parts of the conversation, you’ll get to the part where she actually does want advice or strategies on how you dealt with similar situations and can share your knowledge.

            Like I say, this isn’t something you should obliged or required to do, but I do truly think it’s an important and valuable role you could choose if you wanted to!

    2. Just say no to rude patients*

      It likely won’t change until health care practices start banning awful patients. Both my mother and sister (both have narcissistic traits) have been “fired” by different medical specialists in Canada.

    3. Morning Reader*

      I’m not in health care but I’ve been using it quite a bit lately, between my stuff and visiting/supporting friends. I’m all too familiar with the local ER and the post-op recovery areas. I notice that everywhere there are signs asking people to treat the staff with courtesy and respect. (don’t recall the exact phrasing) This seems like something obvious that should go without saying. But apparently it is not. I agree it has gotten dangerously worse.

    4. Falling Diphthong*

      For phones vs static media like a magazine, I have a theory that the phone hits the “is that something new?” dopamine button. If you’re reading a magazine and might need to put it down to go deal with something else, you are confident that the entire article will be there, unchanged, 5 minutes or 5 weeks later, whenever you get back to it. Whereas the phone is always offering up a little new dopamine hit, which you might miss if you put it down–when you pick it back up, things will have changed and you missed it.

    5. anon4this*

      This is a really good comment. I think it speaks to a change in societal behaviors independent of the specific industry. Add in the stressors of healthcare in particular and it’s easy to see why the experience is so fraught.

    6. Starbuck*

      “we are now servants rather than health providers ”

      I think a lot of this attitude comes from the truly exorbitant prices people are having to pay, first before getting any care at all (premiums) and then later when the bills do come. It’s the most expensive thing most people will ever pay for, so expectations are high – this should be a luxury experience since it costs so much! At least that’s true in other areas, right? The more you pay for a restaurant or hotel, the better quality and attentive the service should be. (and also in those settings, the meaner you are about an issue the more likely you are to get comped or whatever by the manager. Corporations have in part trained customers to act like this.) But for healthcare this doesn’t follow. We all know why, and that out of everyone involved in the system providers are usually the least to blame for how it’s set up. But from the customer (ahem, patient’s side) that’s who they have access to.

      1. Arrietty*

        The situation is the same in the UK though, and people don’t pay at the point of access here.

        1. Starbuck*

          I’m curious – is it the same? By what measures? I’ve never met someone who’s worked in both systems to be able to compare them and some (quick) googling isn’t giving me anything to illustrate the similarities in recent worse patient behavior there. All I know of the UK system is a sense that it’s been dealing with a reduction in funding & staffing due to austerity over the recent years.

  18. TechTrainer*

    #4 About LinkedIn, not on Topic but I use it as an example on my Cyber Security course. It’s had at least 3 major security breaches with all the information available on the Dark Web over the past few years (I use some screenshots on the course).
    Personally, I use LinkedIn as little as possible, don’t put any more details than necessary and if people who you want to talk with do reach out, then give them your “personal” email – as in the Gmail or similar account that you have set up specifically for Linkedin communications.

  19. Sparrow*

    By my observation, I think that Job Search Gimmicks have largely been replaced with Job Search Hacks. The main differences, as I see them:

    1) “Gimmicks” tend to view employers a bit more favorably (“Your application might just get lost among all the other qualified candidates, but if you stand out and impress the employer they’ll realize you’re the best one to hire!”) and come from a place of assuming that the applicant is a good and hardworking employee who just needs a leg up to stand out among a sea of applicants who are all equally qualified. “Hacks” tend to view employers much less favorably (“Hiring managers are lazy and just let their computers review candidates for them, so you need to trick their system into moving you forward!”) and come from a place of assuming that the applicant is exhausted, distrustful, and is desperate for anything to help them get a semi-decent job amidst a sea of employers who are uncaring at best and actively exploitative at worst.

    2) Gimmicks tend to focus on doing something big, flashy, and so impossible to miss that it’s bound to catch a hiring manager’s attention. Hacks tend to focus on doing something small and subtle enough that the hiring manager won’t even realize you’re doing it.

    In my opinion, I’d posit that the trend towards hacks is partially linked to an increasing cynicism towards the way that work is structured (and to the way our society is structured as a whole), and partially linked to the fact that hacks make really, really good social media content that drives up your engagement substantially, so a lot of people have a lot of incentive to come up with hacks and then make viral videos promoting them. Technically, the same could be said of gimmicks… but to be honest, I think if someone made a TikTok video that suggested something like “send the hiring manager a cake with your resume on it” or “send the company a framed photo and a box of chocolates”, their comments would be overwhelmed with people calling them cringe, lol. But in contrast, hacks tend to stay largely in line with how a lot of people on social media today already view the hiring process: an opaque and inane process riddled with bigotry where rich and powerful bosses try to find any way they can to sucker workers, and workers need to resort to any kind of trickery they can just to get the playing field a little more level.

    1. Sparrow*

      Also, sorry, one more thought: I think Alison’s mention of how burnt out everyone is is also spot on. I’ve been applying to jobs regularly since 2022. I have not kept track of how many jobs I’ve applied to, but the number is certainly well into the hundreds by now.

      Out of hundreds of applications over the course of several years, I have received exactly two interviews.

      The first interview I got was in 2022 or so, and I ended up withdrawing from the process because I realized in the first interview that they greatly misrepresented the position in the job listing and it would actually be a very poor fit for me. The second interview was about a year ago; I made it to the final round of interviews before being rejected in favor of someone with more experience in one key area. Despite regularly sending out applications, I haven’t gotten any interviews since the one a year ago.

      I personalize my cover letters, I tailor my resumes to the position I’m applying to, I’ve made sure that my resume focuses on accomplishments and not just job duties. Still, the majority of jobs I apply to just ghost me. When an employer does get back to me, it’s to reject me without an interview. At this point, I barely have the energy to continue sending out applications when I know that more likely than not I’ll just get rejected immediately. I’m not really itching to do anything big and extravagant to “stand out”.

    3. Daria grace*

      This is a good observation. I think you’re right on here. Job hunting is treated less about how to creatively standout and more how to outwit an unfair system these days. There’s so many versions going around of how to optimise your keywords to get past automated screening (even if it involves sorta misrepresenting yourself) or of putting ChatGPT prompts in white text on the assumption they’re using ChatGPT to filter resumes and that the application system won’t show it as plain text to a human

      1. Sola Lingua Bona Lingua Mortua Est*

        Job hunting is treated less about how to creatively standout and more how to outwit an unfair system these days.

        These days? It’s not what you know/do, it’s who you know is as old as the hills; it just goes by the name of Networking now.

      2. bamcheeks*

        All of the “keywords in white text” advice was also around 10-15 years ago, except then it was supposed to beat ATS algorithms. A lot of the Gen-AI job scare info is exactly the same urban myths repackaged!

    4. bamcheeks*

      I think this is a good analysis, BUT aaargh, the internal inconsistency of “rich and powerful bosses are trying to sucker workers” -> “the solution is to hack the system to try and get ahead of other workers” frustrates the hell out of me. That is the OPPOSITE of trying to level the playing field!

      (Not aimed at you, Sparrow, I think this is exactly the inconsistency a lot of influencers are peddling.)

      1. M313*

        I can see why you dislike it but I don’t think “This whole process is messed up and unfair so I need to hack the system to improve my odds a bit (especially if I am a woman or my name makes it obvious I’m a POC),” is inconsistent exactly. Certainly it seems to take for granted that it’s not going to get better and there’s nothing applicants can do about it, and it ignores that improving your odds makes those of others worse though

      2. Apex Mountain*

        I don’t really think it’s inconsistent, or if it is that’s a secondary factor when someone who’s not rich and powerful needs a job

        1. Totally Minnie*

          Right. The people who are trying these job search hacks aren’t trying to level the playing field or fix society, they just need a job.

          1. bamcheeks*

            Oh I’m not mad at the audience, but there are a people making money off peddling this stuff. I get served a lot of “here’s my story of how hard it was working as a new mother — sign up for my workshop and become a digital marketer!” which is the same tactic of identifying real structural problem in order to sell a “solution” and it just pisses me off.

    5. Falling Diphthong*

      I remember when “hacks” started to be a thing and I was like “Wait, this is just a Hint from Heloise! All you did was give a new name to removing the coffee stain.” (Hints from Heloise was a newspaper column with answers to how to clean or repair various things, the sort of questions often posed in the Saturday thread.)

      I do think this is a cogent parsing of both the shift from gimmicks to hacks, and the underlying reason.

      2. Sweet Fancy Pancakes*

        I’ve also seen things described as “hacks” and they are really just the actual instructions for how to use the object being “hacked”.

  20. Drive by commenter*

    LW #4: I’m not sure it’s due to inelegant phrasing. But in case it’s not.

    A boundary is something YOU DO. It’s “I don’t like behaviour X. So if you do [X], I will do [Y].”

    So in your case this person is not violating your boundaries by asking you to connect on LinkedIn. YOU are ENFORCING your boundaries by deleting their request and maybe blocking them.

  21. Irish Teacher.*

    LW3, I’m not sure if this is much help, but some people are really committed to the idea that everything is getting worse, that people are so much ruder now and nobody ever behaved as badly in the past as they do now. Tell them that people have been saying that since at least the days of the Roman Empire and they’ll insist that that means that moral standards are constantly decreasing.

    As a teacher, I hear from older people – both retired teachers and others – that it must be so hard to be a teacher nowadays with the decline in young people’s behaviour. I don’t see any difference in rates of misbehaviour now versus when I was at school in the 1990s. I mean, yeah, we tended not to have some of the extremes – the behaviour you see from one kid in a couple of hundred – but that was because those kids dropped out of school at 12 or were placed in special schools back then. It’s not that there are more of those kids now; it’s that they are being educated rather than written off. And they are a small minority anyway; like you could probably count the number in a school on your fingers.

    I think a lot of it is that what you are dealing with now always seems like a bigger deal than what has been resolved.

    Not sure any of that really helps though, because it’s still pretty irritating if she keeps telling you you had it easier.

    LW5, I think “it wasn’t the right fit” really only repeats the question back to them. It’s basically just saying “I want a new job because the role I have isn’t the one I want.” They want to know why that is, what it is about the job that isn’t a good fit for you. I like the idea of something like “it has a lot of x whereas I tend to excel more at y.”

    1. Cathy*

      Thank you Irish Teacher! It is irritating and I’m sure that my friend has no idea! She is dealing with it now and was not in a promoted post when I was dealing with it. And for all I know things really have deteriorated further! But it was very challenging for me, not that long ago, and nobody likes to have their experiences dismissed!

      1. JustKnope*

        I think you may need to take a break from talking to this friend about work (or at all). I understand why you feel this way but it isn’t fair to her – to your point, she DOESNT know, and while it would be great for her to be more curious about your experience, she’s just not. You’re not going to change this friend. I don’t think either of you are getting what you need out of these conversations.

      2. Cathy*

        As you may see from my other responses I have been reflecting and I think that my irritation is quite trivial compared to what my friend is going through. I’m going to do more listening and supporting.

      3. Cathy*

        As you may see from my other responses I have been reflecting and I think that my irritation is quite trivial compared to what my friend is going through. I’m going to do more listening and supporting.

    2. londonedit*

      I totally agree! Of course, I can fully appreciate that being a teacher is hard, and I do think issues around funding etc probably have made it more difficult in the last maybe 20 years or so. But I also think you’re completely right that children’s behaviour has always been an issue. I remember when I was at school (I went to a very rural school in an area where there wasn’t much choice in where you went, so parents didn’t have the city luxury of choosing a ‘better’ school for their kids unless they went private and as a result my school had a fair number of ‘difficult’ students) there were so many instances of bad behaviour. Knives weren’t so much of a thing as they are now, but drugs were the main issue, as well as fighting and anti-social behaviour and threats of violence towards teachers. But the thing was that in those days the ‘problem’ kids were just written off, and if they stopped coming to school no one really cared, or they were sent to languish in the bottom set with no support, or they were simply expelled from the school. Because the school didn’t have the resources or the support staff or the money to help them. So I don’t think there are more unruly kids these days, or that behaviour is necessarily worse – it’s more that children are kept in school and educated whereas 25-30 years ago the attitude was more ‘if you don’t want to learn, we can’t help you’.

    3. perstreperous*

      Your point about special schools is a very good one. I remember the change for the worse in a disciplinary sense (as a student!) when the switch was made from educating special needs students in dedicated schools to educating them in mainstream schools (late 1970s in Scotland).

      Before that, disruptive students would suddenly vanish over the weekend and “we won’t talk any more about so-and-so” was the response to questions on Monday as to where they were. The dedicated school, as a result, was the target of a mass of rumours.

      There was also other trickery which would not fly nowadays, such as disruptive students being allowed to leave school sometimes a year or more before the legal age (16), clearly with the connivance of the authorities. Unfortunately, it was generally the students who had previously been switched to the mainstream school who were ditched in that manner.

      1. bamcheeks*

        Was that not allowed in Scotland? In England it was allowed based on some super complicated rule about when your 16th birthday fell, as long as you were going to an accredited apprenticeship.. I remember one of the lads in my year coming back to do his GCSEs wearing his work trousers and branded sweatshirt from the plumbing company where he’d started his apprenticeship, and swaggering like anything!

        1. perstreperous*

          There was a rule where one could leave at the start of the term including your 16th birthday, or the start of the term before that one, which sounds very much like the one you quote (and was equally complicated) but without the constraint that you had to have an apprenticeship to go to.

          But there was a handful of cases in my experience where the student was clearly “let go” well before either of those dates and might even have been 14 when they left …

        2. perstreperous*

          We had a similar rule where students could leave at the start of the term when they turned 16, or the start of the previous term. There was no stipulation that they had to have a job or apprenticeship to go to. (There were four terms a year where I was, with the breaks between them two or three weeks).

          But there was a handful of students who left before that, sometimes well before that (when they were 14). That was clearly illegal and “the authorities” must have turned a lot of blind eyes whenever it happened.

          1. londonedit*

            Yeah, we had a couple of girls in my year who left at 14/15 because they were pregnant, and realistically I don’t think the local authority could really do much about that. There was also another girl in my year who turned up to do her GCSEs with a visible bump, having not attended school for the previous few months – I guess she must have been told she had to sit them, whether that was by her family or the local authority or whoever.

    4. Emmy Noether*

      I completely agree, to the point that the word “nowadays” makes me automatically roll my eyes. I’m very suspicious of any kind of nostalgia, because that’s nearly always (1) seen through rose-tinted glasses and (2) by people in priviledged positions*.

      And yes, there absolutely ARE things that are worse [in location] than they were [at specific point in the past]. We don’t even have to look very far. And I don’t even necessarily believe that the arc of history naturally bends towards anything good (without our actively making it so).

      But most of the things people are complaining about are just BS. I frequently hear people complain about increased violence, some going so far as to say they are afraid walking in the street alone (as a cis-het able bodied white man!! Please.). We are in western Europe. That’s just ridiculous (and most often racist). Statistics clearly show violence decreases. Significantly. Which doesn’t help any one individual that is experiencing violence right now, but neither does claiming things that are factually wrong for some kind of narrative that spins their experience into a universal.

      *as in your example, problems becoming more visible to the priviledged classes, to the rich and white and male and conforming and abled and neurotypical doesn’t mean the problems weren’t there before. If it looks like an increase to you, is it because of an increase or because of you looking?

      1. Irish Teacher.*

        Talking about the “increased violence,” an Irish tabloid recently had a story about how women aren’t safe in Ireland today; 26 women have been murdered in the last 3 years!! Now, obviously, even one murder is too many, but…26 murders nationally in three years hardly strikes me as reason to be afraid to leave one’s house.

        Like you say, it is horrible for those 26 women and their families and violence against women is a legitimate concern and yes, murder overall has increased in Ireland…certainly in my lifetime, but I don’t think this is indicative that violence is out of control in today’s world. And it’s not like women didn’t experience violence in the past.

    5. Falling Diphthong*

      I’ve noticed that the true golden age for such people is whatever decade they were around 10 years old. Things were simpler then; we didn’t have the weighty problems we do now; things weren’t so confusing.

      1. Eldritch Office Worker*

        Yep, this is the key. Genuinely, even people my parents age who had parents grow up in the great depression would complain about how much simpler things were back then and how everyone was grateful for what they had, understood the value of a dollar and hard work, now everything was so complicated and they thought about things too much (generally social issues) etc.

        The tune may change but the song stays the same.

    6. Binky*

      I 100% agree with you that there’s an oddly persistent belief that everything is always getting worse, in a way that’s not logical.

    7. ubotie*

      As far as the schooling (and this is only coming from a US perspective) is it maybe that the *parents* are worse? Because that tends to factor into a lot of the complaints that I hear from teacher friends and relatives–it’s not so much that the kids are worse “these days” but that dealing with the parents is what makes a teacher decide, “hmm you know what? This is my last year.” Threats from parents, arguments from parents because their kid received an appropriate grade (aka a poor grade based on the work they submitted–or didn’t even hand in), negligent parents on the opposite spectrum, etc.

  22. bamcheeks*

    LW3, I am not sure whether you “recently retired” in the last few months or the last few years. If it’s the last few months, then I doubt that things have significantly changed! But if it’s more like 3-4 years ago, then I would seriously consider the possibility that the healthcare system (and consequently healthcare staff) is under much greater stress and pressure now. Covid did a number on most systems: huge numbers of HCPs left through burnout, stress, disability and death; there is some evidence that people are getting sicker more often; and that’s without looking at all the other factors like rising cost of living and healthcare costs in particular which inevitably impact people’s stress and health. In the UK, it has got considerably harder to get basic appointments, which has a knock-on effect on how sick and stressed people are when they do seek care. I am generally very, “blah blah blah” about talk about how everything was better in ye olden days, but healthcare is one where I think it’s very much worth giving credence to the idea that a lot of real external factors are contributing to the the stresses and unmanageability of the job getting considerably worse in the last few years.

    You don’t have to do this, but if you are up for it, you could listen to your colleague seriously and just be a sounding board for her. It doesn’t actually matter whether it’s objectively worse or not, now that you’re not in it– you can be that space for her where she can unload a bit and hopefully go back feeling a bit refreshed. But you’re not at all obliged to do that, and it’s perfectly OK to say that you want your meet-ups to be cheerful and positive rather than draining!

  23. Media Monkey*

    OMG the Hardship Olympics LW3! one of my pet hates. blessed with an otherwise lovely MIL who is an expert competitor – if you are tired, she is exhausted, if you have a cold, she has flu. it just makes you not want to tell that person anything

    1. Rusty Shackelford*

      I have a certain person in my life who cannot discuss their own unpleasant experiences without dismissing yours. “Oh, my back hurts so much! You can’t imagine!” Well, yes, I can. You’re not going to the ER or pursuing physical therapy, so mine might have been worse. “I’ve been up for hours! You don’t know what it’s like to function on so little sleep!” Yeah, I’ve gone to work after sleeping for approximately two hours, so I probably do know. That kind of thing. It’s exasperating.

  24. Apex Mountain*

    I think the fact that #3 is retired is more reason to just let it go. You are done there, your friend is still in the thick of it dealing with all this stuff right now. Let her vent and then you can immediately forget about it, she still has to go back the next day!

  25. OhThePain*

    OP1, I would be screaming in pain if someone did this to me with a very light touch. If they caused by body to twist even slightly I would not only be screaming, I’d likely be unable to stand up afterward. At an absolute minimum they need to warn people and let them opt out or be selected in some less intrusive manner.

    1. EA*

      With this extreme of a reaction, I imagine you’d speak up before the activity and say you physically couldn’t do it, and I think the instructions of how to do the activity would be a fair warning.

    2. Nancy*

      If this is truly your reaction, you wouldn’t be participating in the activity. The explanation of the activity would be the cue to ask to opt out.

    3. Apex Mountain*

      Why would a very light touch cause such an extreme reaction (screaming and unable to stand)? That sounds difficult for daily life..

      1. Hastily Blessed Fritos*

        It probably is difficult for daily life, and you aren’t owed details of anyone’s medical situation.

      2. Lisa Simpson*

        We had someone at work (a customer) who had EDS who could not be touched without landing in the hospital. If she was going to use certain parts of our facility, we had to clear them out for her and prevent anyone from going in them.

  26. Kelly*

    #3 The co-worker could actually have it worse. I work in education and in just the last few years or so, students and parents are significantly worse. I read about similar issues in healthcare.

    1. Falling Diphthong*

      Anecdotally here, often when people change careers, it’s not “I gradually realized all the things that had always been wrong” and more “In the last few years things changed, the difficult parts got a lot bigger and more frequent, and the things I loved about the job shrunk.”

  27. Hastily Blessed Fritos*

    LW #1, when I read the “am I being a grouch” headline, my immediate thought was “who cares, you’re allowed to be a grouch.” Then I read that the activity was LITERALLY touch-feely – not talking about feelings but actually physically touching people – and was immediately horrified. Not for the reasons you give, though (which are totally valid) – because the nature of the activity, and probably the school context bringing up my own memories of being in high school – made me think of being the person who NOBODY touched, who nobody appreciates or admires. So there’s that aspect too.

  28. L-squared*

    #3. Why does this bother you? It’s very possible it IS harder. I’m not sure when you left, but many jobs have gotten worse in the last 5 years. I used to be a teacher. Thankfully I stopped pre covid. But just about everyone I know still in the industry says its harder now. My mom was a nurse who retired when covid started. She hears the same things from people still doing it. Now is it objectively possible to measure? Probably not. But you seem to want to hold on to the idea that it didn’t get worse because you aren’t seeing it.

  29. I should really pick a name*

    #4
    LinkedIn is a tool. Not a social obligation.

    If you don’t see a benefit in adding someone, there’s no obligation to do it.

  30. Falling Diphthong*

    #4: I know their reason for doing this is (a) because they are doing well and want to gloat or (b) they are doing poorly and need to compare their Ws & Ls with mine.

    Consider (c) they sent a Linked-In request to everyone they could think of.

    1. bamcheeks*

      Yeah, I feel like LW is significantly over-estimating the amount of actual interaction most people have with their LinkedIn connection. “LinkedIn threw up your name bc we have other people in common and I clicked Connect without a second thought” is way more likely than the amount of deliberate intent LW seems to be imagining.

    4. Eldritch Office Worker*

      Yeah LinkedIn suggests people to me and I am often just like “oh yeah okay sure” and never think about it again. I think that’s common.

    5. Lisa Simpson*

      LinkedIn also harasses you to import your address book and then sends all of them notifications. It’s very likely that they clicked through an automatic process and simply didn’t realize who was getting a notification.

      I have gotten some very odd invites on LinkedIn over the years.

  32. Account*

    #3–
    Some people are just like this.
    “I know you adore your boyfriend, but just wait until you’re married, you’ll come to resent him.”
    “Congratulations on the pregnancy! Just wait until you have a baby though, it’s the worst, you’ll never sleep again.”
    “Congratulations on your retirement! I know you loved your job, but you’re lucky to be gone now— you’d never succeed at it THESE days.”

    It’s annoying. Some people just love to one-up (one-down?). Roll your eyes and ignore it, or just try to talk about something else.

    2. londonedit*

      Yes, very true. I have a friend who is lovely in most respects, but she does have a habit of doing this. I can’t complain about work because her work is always more stressful and anyway she works far longer hours than I do, etc etc. I can’t complain about feeling under the weather because she’ll respond with her litany of health issues. I can’t complain about being short of money because she has a mortgage to pay (apparently my rent doesn’t count…) and a loft extension to save for and the back fence blew down in the storm last week…

      It’s tiring! But some people are like that. The result is I’ve given up on telling her anything meaningful about my life, which is a shame, but you’re absolutely right, the only way to deal with it is to not give them any ammunition and to just inwardly roll your eyes and try to change the subject.

      1. Slumber party fiasco*

        Same, I have a relative like that. And in addition to all of that, it’s also “you don’t have kids so you can’t possibly know what it’s like to be tired/broke/stressed out/juggling work with non-work obligations” etc. Barf me to death, to paraphrase Kelly Kapoor.

    3. Irish Teacher.*

      Yeah, when I worked retail, we had a customer like this. You got a new job? She knew somebody who worked for that company and they hated it; that company completely exploits its workers. You were accepted into the college course of your dreams? There are no jobs in that field. Her nephew studied that and couldn’t get a job.

      When she entered the shop, everybody was suddenly extremely busy.

  33. Tuckerman*

    #2 Gimmicks. I believe some of this came out of the absurdity of job searching 2008-2012, when the economy tanked and people who had otherwise been strong candidates for entry-mid level professional work suddenly had to compete with swaths of unemployed and underemployed people for low wage jobs. We were all just trying to figure out a way to differentiate ourselves.

  34. I'm great at doing stuff*

    Ugh, the cake resume! After reading Allison’s response I commented on that LinkedIn post saying how it’s a gimmick that really doesn’t show anything, it’s better to highlight your skills and accomplishments on a regular piece of paper, etc. I didn’t personally attack the person who did it at all.

    I got absolutely panned by other commenters, and some got really nasty and personal. It’s part of the reason I never comment on LinkedIn anymore (also it’s just pointless).

  35. cosmicgorilla*

    Linked In LW

    “innappropriate due to the boundary I expressed to her”

    No. That’s not how boundaries work. You don’t express a boundary and expect people to honor it.

    You decide your boundary, then YOU honor it. In this case, by not accepting/ignoring the invitation.

    If classmate attempts to connect in another way, you ignore/delete/block.

  36. Apex Mountain*

    I agree that most people would be fine with #1, it seems pretty mild to me. But yeah there must be other alternatives for those who really don’t want to be touched

  37. Lacey*

    LW3: I keep in touch with a former coworker & mostly when she tells me things are worse than when I was there, I just accept that they are and say, “Oh man, I’m glad I left when I did!”

    And I think my general acceptance of it also means it doesn’t feel combative when I occasionally say, “Oh no, that totally was a problem when I was there too”

    Sometimes I share a related wild story to illustrate or we just joke that she was still wearing her rose colored glasses back then (she started some time after I did).

    But, I don’t know, I don’t mind if her work experience there is crazier than mine was?
    Maybe because part of my leaving was that it started off as a decent work place and became more dysfunctional as time went on and I don’t have a problem imagining that trend continued.

    1. Jaunty Banana Hat I*

      Yeah, this. If anything, friends telling me the field I left that they’re still in is worse now is actually extremely validating. It makes me glad I left when I did.

  38. Robin*

    #2 This brought to mind a cringe-y memory of my very first resume I sent out. I had almost finished a drafting class, and I sent out a *hand-lettered* resume. We’re talking 40+ years ago, when drafting was still done on a drafting table and good lettering was a great asset. I got an interview! The cringe-y part was that he sort of laughed at my green-ness at resumes and interviewing but thought he would give me a shot. So my unintended “gimmick” got me the job! I worked for this “entrepreneur” for a year, with one of the perks being it was contract work from his house. Lunchtime was spent in the swimming pool! I learned a lot from him.

  39. EA*

    OP1, when I read you work in a school, honestly the activity seemed pretty mild. When I was a teacher, I did a LOT more touchy feely activities like that than when I moved to an office. Not to make excuses, but I do think this type of activity fits with the culture of many schools.

    I think you could definitely speak up and say you don’t want to do it though.

    1. Yoli*

      Agree, as someone who also works in schools. I’ve been part of this a few times–one time someone asked people to give consent to participate or opt out w/no penalty, another time we used pool noodles.

      Outside of this specific question, I’d say many of the most prolific commenters here love to “what if” situations to death, which I would not recommend as a way to endure yourself in a school-based position. Speak for yourself/maintain your own boundaries, but “what if someone is allergic to hands?” is going to get you massive side-eye, to say the least.

  40. el l*

    Gimmicks are a shortcut to a personal relationship with someone who can get you a job.

    That’s why there are less of them. Few people have the discretion (or the time for low level hires) to just hire someone whose jib they like. And personal relationships just don’t matter as much anymore, certainly if we’re talking entry level hiring.

    It’s all about process these days. And that’s rather difference with the modern “hacks.” The hacks tend to be about dodging artificial barriers (put these keywords in your resume so the algorithms don’t filter you out!) rather than a positive appeal to one guy.

  41. Lalitah*

    LW4: The block feature is a blessing. Use it judiciously. You have no moral or ethical obligation to this former friend and classmate. You would not be harming them; they, on the other hand, have harmed you. You have the right to protect yourself and your peace.

  42. Working under my down comforter*

    OP #4: It’s definitely okay to ignore the request. There’s also a blocking feature. And you can adjust your privacy settings to only show certain things or for users to or not to link to you in various ways. I’ve blocked some people from my past.

  43. Alton Brown's Evil Twin*

    OP 1: Since this is a school, this might be a good opportunity to flag this thing as problematic for student interactions too – both the physical stuff and the exclusion issues.

  44. ZK*

    Not really a gimmick but I still see people on a regular basis show up in person at my company to “follow up on their application.” Stop. The hiring team isn’t even located in my building! My manager didn’t get your application because she’s not part of the hiring team! (Problematic in my eyes, but true).

  45. It's Marie - Not Maria*

    Job Search Gimmicks are still around, they just now come in the form of really bad advice provided via Social Media Platforms such as Tik Tok. “Use your own name as a referral!” “Keep calling and following up on your application, even though you have already been rejected!” “Cold call people at the company you want to work for to discuss working there, even if you don’t know them!”

    So much bad job-hunting advice on Social Media. Just because it might have worked once for one person (usually questionable at best), doesn’t mean it is good advice. Most of the dimfluencers out there dispensing this advice have never hired staff for anything higher than a fast food position, if they have ever hired anyone at all. It is more likely they have never been a recruiter or a hiring manager.

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

    #1 besides everything that is mentioned this exercise could be physically painful for some people. As someone who has back and shoulder issues I’ve encountered some people, especially men, whose pat on the back or poke was very sharp and left me in pain. There are other ways to complete similar exercises without touching or having your eyes closed
    #3 There are a lot of challenges in health care that wasn’t there before. Covid did a lot. From the nurses and others I know they say it has changed and it can be worse. I think your friend is just trying to vent and not one up you.

    1. Eldritch Office Worker*

      YES to #1 – some people just poke/pat like unnecessarily hard? I have no idea why. But no thank you.

    2. Rusty Shackelford*

      They could give each “shoulder grabber” one of those giant novelty foam hands and have them tap people with that. No direct contact, difficult to poke anyone hard enough to be uncomfortable. I mean, if they insist on doing this exercise at all, of course, which is not the best case scenario.

    3. Freya*

      I don’t have EDS (that I know of) but people can and have unintentionally caused me to sublux a joint trying to be helpful.

      That guiding hand on my back? It’s going faster than my feet can, so either I let the attempted-helper push me over or I arch around it and hurt. The people who’ve tried to lift my bag off my back to put it in an overhead locker on a plane for me? Caused my back to spasm as the weight shifted in an uncontrolled manner (also, I like to keep my bag with my meds in near me and use my bag under the seat in front of me as a footrest for feet that don’t reach the supplied footrest).

      I’ve done a lot of physio in the last few years trying to stabilise my shoulder joints (amongst other joints, like the hip I subluxed last year), but yeah, I’d expect at least one tap to be unintentionally poorly placed or poorly judged and cause me pain (and possibly more physio). They wouldn’t mean to, and anyone I wanted to work with would be horrified that they’d caused me pain, but that doesn’t mean I want to put either of us in that position.

      Or make my workplace do the workplace injury paperwork. Because this activity is being carried out on work premises, as part of a workplace exercise.

  47. Anon21*

    ” They have sent me a LinkedIn invitation, which I find completely inappropriate given the boundaries I had previously expressed to them.”

    Boundaries are something you do for yourself (often in response to someone else’s actions), not something you impose on others. Sounds like ignoring this invitation is a good way to set a boundary through your own actions!

    1. TheBunny*

      Thank you for saying this. And apologies if this is deleted for being off topic slightly.

      It’s not related to this, or even to this column, but I recently had someone I consider a friend become very upset with me because she asked me to do something in a situation that I didn’t feel I was able to do. I told her I respected her and her opinion, but she and I see the resolution very differently. She told me she was disappointed in me and told me I was only refusing to do what she wanted because I need to be right (yes I see the irony) and I can’t tell you how much your comment hit home for me.

      I wasn’t wrong in setting boundaries (and frankly neither is LW) and my friend also wasn’t wrong in setting hers. It’s ok to have different boundaries.

  48. Nancy*

    LW4: she sent you a request because Linkedin suggested you. She most likely won’t notice if you accept and no one else will notice or care if the two of you are connected.

  49. PropJoe*

    #1 – I don’t like being touched except by family. I certainly don’t like being touched by surprise. I can handle a handshake, fist bump, or high five when I know to expect one.

    Other than that, within the workplace don’t touch me unless there’s a bona fide safety issue. Please do the heimlich on me if I’m choking. Please grab my arm to stop me if I’m about to walk in front of a moving forklift.

  50. The Body Is Round*

    LW1 my workplace has a “kudos” system where if you want to send someone a nice message anonymously you can write it on an official kudos card and put it in an official mailbox. I don’t know how often it’s used, I haven’t used it because I like to tell people to their faces if they did something I appreciate.

    I am not sure what keeps it from being used inappropriately. I think the messages that are handwritten get transcribed and emailed to their recipients, so someone would catch if it was being used for nefarious purposes.

    1. Rusty Shackelford*

      I don’t know how often it’s used, I haven’t used it because I like to tell people to their faces if they did something I appreciate.

      It would be kind to do both. Sometimes people like having a visible sign of appreciation to stick up on their cubicle wall. And sometimes others are keeping track of who gets kudos.

  51. CatDude*

    LW1 – Not a grouch at all. This activity is encouraging people to touch others without consent. That’s not remotely appropriate.

    LW2 – I have a dim view on gimmicks in general but I think Alison is right that job-seekers are exhausted and demoralized by being constantly ghosted by employers. It’s hard to try to go to the extra effort of a gimmick when it’s so likely you won’t even the courtesy of a response.

    LW3 – I do think healthcare has gotten harder in some ways, thanks to efforts from some politicians to demonize healthcare workers. Regardless, though, I don’t think they are trying to one-up you – they are just in the middle of all the frustration and exhaustion and it can feel invalidating for someone to then bring up how hard it was for them. I don’t think you were *intending* to invalidate them, but it might feel that way – just like they probably aren’t intended to invalidate you, but you still feel that way. I don’t think either of you are wrong, really, but I think Alison gave good advice on how to respond.

  52. H.Regalis*

    LW2 – I think trends in that sort of thing, or bad advice/spammy/scammy stuff in any vein, come and go. For a while, the “one weird trick” thing was everywhere. Now that’s less common, but I see tons of ads with goofy AI art parceling out workouts by age group. Things go in and out of fashion.

  53. DramaQ*

    On LW#3 it’s worse out there WAY worse. I haven’t been a server for years but I pay attention when I am out. People are freaking crazy we seem to have lost all sense of decorum and social norms after COVID. I’ve seen people threaten fast food workers over BBQ sauce. He had that poor 16 year old in tears over a packet of freaking sauce. If I had recorded it I could have got it on Customer Wars on A&E.

    I’ve read stories about servers being shot/stabbed/beaten for enforcing mask mandates.

    I’ve dealt with my share of insane customers but it is at an entirely different level. I never feared for my life when dealing with Karens when I waited tables. There isn’t enough money in the world now to get me to ever wait tables again. Nuh huh. I’ll deal with corporate Karens because at least I don’t have to worry about them stabbing me (yet).

    I can only imagine how much worse it is for health care workers. I know that shortage they were always going on about since I was in high school is finally happening as people are burnt out and tired of being treated like garbage.

    She wants someone to commiserate with her. You have to be careful what you say at work about clients/customers/patients so she might not feel comfortable talking to other coworkers. She feels you are a safe space to vent that to.

    Doesn’t mean you have to listen to it you can say that you wish not to talk about work related stuff but I think it is unfair to turn it into a competition about who had it worse and dismiss her feelings. Things have changed dramatically since 2020. If you are willing to be an ear be a little more flexible and consider that your perspective is probably different.

  54. RagingADHD*

    #4, part of Linkedin etiquette is that you don’t want to recommend jerks to your good connections. You say you cut ties with this classmate because they were hypercompetitive and you suspect they would want to gloat if they are doing well.

    That sounds like a jerk. Nobody wants to work with a jerk.

  55. SunnyShine*

    LW3 – Since the pandemic, I have seen a lot more public outburst. With saying that, I have also learned to set firm boundaries. I have a coworker who complains about how hard it is. It is hard, but I also have realized that she makes it much harder on herself because she doesn’t know how to diffuse situations or set boundaries. Some people are like that, and they won’t always change. I suggest either setting boundaries with her invalidating comments or learn to be indifferent to her comments. She’s really telling on herself, and it has nothing to do with you.

  57. Amber Rose*

    #1 – I hate being touched but also I hate touching people. If you ask me to voluntarily just touch someone for the sake of touching, there’s a non-zero chance of me going straight into a panic attack.

    It used to happen in school when they made us play Thumbs Up Seven Up and has occasionally resurfaced in the decades since. I’m a flight risk when I panic, and the idea of having my coworkers witness me hyperventilate and then run into the sunset is basically the worst.

    Maybe you could suggest they replace the touching with like, tapping something in front of them? Star stickers? IOUs for coffee?

  58. Orange Cat Energy*

    LW #4

    You are free to ignore any LinkedIn requests.

    I was in your situation once. I had a grad school classmate actually try to send me LinkedIn and Facebook connection requests even after she took a teacher’s side over mine (my teacher was definitely in the wrong). At the time, I ignored the requests. In retrospect, sometimes, I wonder what would have happened if I had responded to my classmate and messaged her, “Hey, what you did was hurtful and wrong…” But sometimes the best thing to do is to just ignore it and walk away.

  59. Fotze*

    #1 I definitely am not a fan of being touched, save for a few people in my life… but I think I’d be equally repulsed at the idea of cutesy lip-service to what I contribute to my work/how people feel about me compared to actually telling people they make your workplace better.
    It’s all fun and sweet to tap someone’s shoulder, but when I need to bring attention to an issue, or challenge the way something is being done…where are those people who said I work hard or make my workplace better???

    1. Zona the Great*

      I have done this exact bonding thing as a teacher and the only thing I could muster by way of lip-service was, “you have nice handwriting”.

  60. Zona the Great*

    I wonder what the correlation is between the dwindling of Liz Ryan’s content and the lack of gimmicks. Her advice was horrible and people really followed it.

  61. Sneaky Squirrel*

    #3 – I have a friend like this too. No matter what I say about my job, their job is always harder. Sometimes it helps me to call it out by saying “This isn’t a competition”.

    But also, consider that maybe things have worsened for her in some ways! One of the biggest irks about my friend who is always saying their job is harder is that they presume to know what my job is when they havent been around in a few years now. The longer you are away from that job, the less you should presume to know about her day. She might have different expectations in her role now than was expected in your time.

  62. Apex Mountain*

    Gimmicks may not work, but I don’t fault anyone for trying them since regular job searching doesn’t really work so well either

  63. Lisa Frank*

    3- It’s bad out here in these streets. Any public facing and/or helping and/or service job comes with threats and no support. Not saying your job was easy, but you have to see that it’s not better or the same.

    4 – It’s just LinkedIn. No one cares. You are thinking way too hard about this. You are giving this person too much mind space.

  64. FuzzBunny*

    Years ago I was in a professional development workshop for college faculty. The facilitator had us do an activity that he recommended we use with our students to help them…I don’t know, be more motivated or something. It was similar to what OP described, except instead of tapping people on the shoulder, the people standing up would put their hands on the seated person’s shoulders, lean in real close, and whisper encouragement into their ears (suggestions included “you are special” and “you are amazing”). He seemed utterly taken aback when I pointed out that many people, for many, many reasons, would not be comfortable with this. I’m not sure if I was more ticked off by knowing that my school had paid a lot of money for this guy to come, or creeped out by the knowledge that there are definitely faculty out there who blindly implemented this in their classes.

    2. RamonaThePest*

      Education in general seems to be fraught with awful “team building”or PD activities. During remote learning it was very obvious that our admins missed faculty meetings far more than we did. The “Now it’s time for the fun! We’ll have a remote scavenger hunt in your homes!” It’s 4:3o p.m. and our day started officially at 7 a.m.

  65. Slumber party fiasco*

    I get having an exaggerated startle response even if you don’t have a trauma history (I tend to startle really easily for no real reason). But for all the people saying they’d like, throw a punch if someone tapped them on the shoulder from behind, how do you handle crowds? Or the fact that this is a school? Do you never take public transit or go on a plane? Or just go out anywhere that you might get jostled by accident? I’m genuinely curious because this type of “OMG if anyone brushes up against me ever I will FREAK OUT LIKE GAYLE ON BOB’S BURGERS” thing has come up before on here.

    1. Nightengale*

      I can’t speak for anyone else, but being grabbed or tapped on purpose and being brushed up against in public “feel” very different to me and probably send very different messages to my brain. Being grabbed or tapped on purpose at work or in a social setting does set off a startle response that I don’t experience in crowds. And I do take public transit daily.

      I don’t love crowds or being touched ever but, I dunno maybe I’m already on high alert there whereas when someone at work grabs me or taps me on the shoulder I am usually busy thinking or doing something else. Also they tend to be different body parts. People on the bus may brush past me but they usually aren’t going for my arm or shoulder the way coworkers might.

      1. Jenesis*

        I’m not a strong startle-er, but something I notice is that for the most part, a quick brush past or nudge against someone in a crowded place generally doesn’t distract from what I was already doing, and the other person probably feels as awkward as I do and is trying to ignore it/move away. Whereas a grab/tap/poke is generally a calculated move designed to get the target’s attention, especially from someone who is lingering right behind you. So they do feel different because they are different.

        Also, depending on where you live and what you do for work, it’s possible to structure your life around avoiding crowded places. I have a car (and public transit sucks here), so I drive or walk everywhere. I don’t ever need to get on a plane unless I’m taking an overseas vacation, which happens… once every few years, optimistically? I don’t go to venues (like Disney or Comic-Con) that are notorious for overstuffed capacity and long lines. I keep a wide berth from people I might pass by on the street. I avoid shopping at times I know the mall will be packed, like Black Friday, or I do online shopping. If the elevator is a squeeze I can hike it up the stairs instead (it’s good exercise), etc.

    2. Dasein9 (he/him)*

      In a crowd, one doesn’t generally have strong social cues pressuring one to keep one’s eyes shut and wait to be deliberately touched by someone who does not have their eyes shut, either.

    3. Plate of Wings*

      I think it’s just that people with those responses are likelier to comment here about them. I don’t respond that way so I have no advice for LW1 (though I understand their discomfort!).

      That said, I think a lot of people can and do arrange their life in ways that don’t involve crowds more than very occasionally. I’m in a big city and spend time in public transport, bars, parties, and restaurants, but if I was uncomfortable with human contact I could have a very fulfilling life with none of those things. I know two separate people with much greater means than me that never fly because of reasons I don’t know.

  66. H3llifIknow*

    For the touchy feely. I think I’d go back to your manager and indicate that the exercise has been weighing on your mind, not only because some people may not want to be touched by colleagues with their eyes closed, there are also going to be some people who sit thru multiple rounds of this and NEVER get “touched”. Imagine being THAT person as 66 percent of their colleagues pass by, and thinking to themself: “Nobody here admires me?” “Not one person thinks I make a difference here?” etc… This is just such a bad exercise for so many reasons.

    1. RamonaThePest*

      Excellent point about some people never getting touched, beyond the point that some people are not going to want to be touched, with their eyes closed. I agree with going back to your manager and raising these concerns. This activity is like the “affirmations” of the 200-2015 years; where in faculty meetings people would stand up and “affirm” other staff members. Many people who worked hard never got an affirmation. One staff member made it a point to say every time : “I teach INCLUSION, so I want to affirm SPED.” Translation: She had special education students, so she was given more in class support with aides and she did have more paperwork and meetings. She did not, however, have the high maintenance parents that myself and other teachers had. The whole affirmations thing was just awful as we never “affirmed” the cafeteria workers or the bus drivers, etc.

  67. EA*

    LW3 – I think whether or not it’s harder now is irrelevant, to be honest! The fact is, even if it’s harder for her now, it’s annoying for you to hear her griping about it and comparing your experiences. I think your issue is one that I’ve had after moving on from a job and trying to stay friends with coworkers. Probably a LOT of your time before was spent talking about work (and, let’s face it, complaining about work) but now you want to move on to other topics. I had to stop hanging out with a group of former coworkers because every. single. conversation. would eventually turn to complaining about management or gossiping about work stuff.

    I’d focus on thinking about what other topics you’d like to talk about, and even though you don’t mind the work talk, just try to keep it to a minimum in general. Try not to engage too much with the complaints. It’s much harder to control what someone says about a topic, compared with steering the conversation toward other, more interesting topics.

  68. RamonaThePest*

    For the complaining co-worker in the competition for how it’s worse: One, if you’re not working, there is a natural jealousy from people still in the rat race. I do have two dear friends who still work in education part time, and sometimes I just want to talk about other things, not the current school gossip. I agree with the advice to listen, ask how she can cope, and yeah, everything is hella lot worse for people in these fields. I have a colleague who went this year from “I’m not ready to retire” when I did, to “I’m seriously considering it because this is the worst year ever.” She had classes with some students that made The Shining look like Mary Poppins 15 years ago.

  69. Lizard Lady*

    #5- Is there any chance no one is accepting your assertion this job isn’t for you because they would have a hard time finding anyone who would want to do it? I freely admit this may be nowhere near the reality, and maybe I’m jaded, but consider it for a moment just in case.

  70. TheBunny*

    #3

    Alison aluded to it…but it absolutely might be worse. Young adults who had their lives disrupted by COVID are entering the workforce and while some of them are lovely, there’s a not 0 number of them who…aren’t.

    And manners are worse. I’ve definitely noticed that people are no longer respectful of position. I have people who are not my boss order me around regarding how meetings will be scheduled all the time. COVID…broke a lot of people. I wouldn’t be surprised if her job IS harder than yours was. Instead of being resentful, be glad you escaped!

  71. Sarah*

    Re: the cake resume

    Anyone else notice that the person apparently never did get a job at Nike? At least, not according to the LinkedIn profile associated with the cake thread.

  72. Emily Byrd Starr*

    Re: the first letter:
    I wouldn’t be okay with that activity AT ALL because I have an extremely high startle reflex

  73. LollyPip*

    Story 3 – As someone who has worked in healthcare in some capacity or another for several decades… it IS worse these last few years. Since the pandemic (and certain political figures encouraging “honesty”), people feel more entitled than ever, and freer than they’ve ever felt before,to be abusive to healthcare workers. I know many people who did it for ages and ages, only to retire early or find new careers in the last 5 years. It’s much, MUCH worse.

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