open thread – February 7, 2025

by Alison Green on February 7, 2025

It’s the Friday open thread!

The comment section on this post is open for discussion with other readers on any work-related questions that you want to talk about (that includes school). If you want an answer from me, emailing me is still your best bet*, but this is a chance to take your questions to other readers.

* If you submitted a question to me recently, please do not repost it here, as it may be in my queue to answer.

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{ 479 comments }

{ 479 comments… read them below or add one }

  1. Beancat*

    Happy Friday, all! I was wondering anyone has any experience with negotiating salary for an internal promotion? I have a range but don’t know the best way to respond if the offer comes through.

    Thank you in advance!

    Reply ↓
    1. LA*

      Yes, but this will vary a lot by industry! I have largely found that companies of a certain size are very concerned with ensuring that your new salary doesn’t come in above the average of the position for the current employees in that role (though in my experience this really neglects other important factors). Knowing what the numbers are internally is crucial. Knowing what the market is paying for the role can help particularly if you’re coming in markedly below that average and you can show that data, though you might only trigger a salary review for the role and nothing for yourself.

      So really, my best advice is to gather as much internal information as you possibly can.

      Reply ↓
    2. EngGirl*

      Is it feasible to speak with others in the role and get a feel for their range? You’d have to account for your own experience levels, but it might help you to know that Kyle who’s been in the role for 5 years makes 85k.

      Otherwise I would definitely ask the question during the interview process if that ship hasn’t sailed already. If it has then you can kind of do it the same way you would with any other job if the offer is low. “I was hoping more for X due to these factors. Is there any room for improvement?”

      Reply ↓
      1. blerghher*

        Piggybacking on this, I’ve phrased the question to prospective peers “do you know roughly what salary range someone in my situation might expect in this role?”. It’s kind of a softer way that bluntly asking, “How much do you make?”

        Reply ↓
      2. SansaStark*

        Jumping on that piggyback. This is how I found out that HR was low-balling me by over 15K. It turns out they had some incorrect number in their system and was able to correct it due to my concerns that it wasn’t matching others.

        As to how I would have responded if they left the offer where it was….honestly, even as I was walking down to HR to find out the result, I wasn’t sure. I figured I’d probably take it and use the new title to start looking for a new position.

        Reply ↓
    3. WantonSeedStitch*

      I didn’t end up having to negotiate, but when I was applying for an internal promotion, I found some salary surveys done by a professional organization that serves people in my industry, and looked at salaries for this level of position in my state, as well as at salaries of people at organizations the same size as mine and for people with as many years of experience as I had. Combined, these gave me a rough estimate of my market value. I used that to form my expectations, and stated them when asked. HR came back with a surprise: they actually offered me ABOVE that range. Apparently, the hiring manager and his manager both really liked me.

      Reply ↓
    4. Elspeth*

      I don’t want to discourage you, but I wanted to relay an anecdote. When my husband and I got internal promotions (different companies/industries) we both got firmly shut down when we tried to negotiate. These were promotions for which we applied and were interviewed (we weren’t just given the promotions). It was surprising to us. I would still always encourage you to negotiate though.

      Reply ↓
      1. Parenthesis Guy*

        Same thing happened to me. It’s hard to negotiate unless you’d actually refuse. And if you do, your current job might get pulled. It’s tough.

        Reply ↓
      2. Sneaky Squirrel*

        Yes, I’ve worked with companies that completely shut down negotiating for promotions with the logic being that you’re not experienced in the role yet so they expect you to start at the bottom of their pay scale.

        Reply ↓
    5. learnedthehardway*

      Do your homework on what the going range is in the market – preferably within your industry and geography as well. Glassdoor and some of the online job boards have relevant information – you sometimes have to provide your own information to get that data, but it’s worth it to find out what the salary ranges are in your area.

      Also, have a list of your accomplishments and where you have added value – you want to be able to demonstrate that you are already making a big difference and so should be paid more.

      Reply ↓
  2. Theon, Theon, it rhymes with neon*

    Federal workers: based on what you’re seeing, is it risky for a cisgender* person to send in their passport for renewal? I need to renew it sometime in the next year, and I’m not optimistic about the government becoming *less* chaotic and unpredictable as time goes on. And I may need that passport if I someday need to get out for my own safety.

    I was planning on mailing it today and requesting expedited service, to increase the chances my passport gets back to me ASAP, rather than disappearing into the void of the chaos or some new policy or executive order. But is there a good reason not to?

    * Cisgender as far as everything on public record is concerned, and the government never needs to know otherwise.

    Reply ↓
    1. Parcae*

      I’m a federal employee but have zero connection with or insight into passport services.

      If it were me in the same scenario, I’d renew right now. At my agency, things are more or less business as usual. People are nervous and unhappy, but we are more or less fully staffed and operating at normal efficiency. I expect that to deteriorate over time as the impact of the hiring freeze, voluntary resignations, and involuntary reductions in force hits.

      There’s uncertainty to everything right now, but it’s not as though that uncertainty is going to go away next month either.

      Reply ↓
      1. Theon, Theon, it rhymes with neon*

        That was my reasoning as well; I just don’t follow the news closely, so if there was something specific that made this a bad idea, I might not know about it. Thanks!

        Reply ↓
      2. WeirdChemist*

        Also a fed, not specifically working in passport services, and I agree. Most of our work is still business as usual. In approximately a month, there is likely to be a government shutdown (the current CR budget only goes through March 14, and you *know* they’ll be pulling some shenanigans…), which will cause significant delays, so get your request in asap!

        Reply ↓
    2. banjoist*

      If you apply online you don’t have to send the old one in! You do have to acknowledge that your old one ceases to be a legal document when you hit “submit,” but you’ll still have it in hand.

      Reply ↓
      1. Theon, Theon, it rhymes with neon*

        If I have it in hand but it’s not a legal document, does it benefit me? I was thinking of doing the renewal by mail and expediting it, because the shorter processing time seems more valuable to me than having an invalid passport in my hand.

        Reply ↓
        1. passports*

          I renewed my passport in December & experienced a very fast turnaround time, even with by mail, maybe 5-6 weeks altogether. I did expedite my passport. I believe there are limits on who can renew online (passport has to be expiring within a narrower window of time).

          Reply ↓
        2. LaminarFlow*

          I am not a federal worker. But, my neighbors just renewed their passports online in the beginning of January, and the new passports arrived last week.

          Reply ↓
        3. SprawledOut*

          FWIW, I have heard from reliable sources that there were a bunch of people in passport services who were really working hard to get folks’ passports renewed before the inauguration and inevitable policy changes. I don’t know if those people are still pushing hard, or even able to do their work the same, so YMMV on current wait times.

          However, I’d suggest filing online and keeping your current passport. Even if it’s not a legal document, there have been recent reports of the passport office refusing to return people’s documents if there is a “problem” with processing. Right now, most of those problems are restricted to trans folks or gender changes, but that could easily change in a short span of time. Keep your current passport and physical documentation if you can, just in case.

          Reply ↓
        4. JustCuz*

          My husband and I renewed our passports for expidition. He is a naturalized citizen, and literally got his back in less than two weeks. Mine on the other hand required an additional form so I am starting over in that process, but hope to receive it now in a couple weeks. So go ahead and do it. Just make sure you have everything ( I thought I had reported my passport missing 2 years ago, but they had something different to say about that lol.), because it seems business as usual.

          Reply ↓
        5. Wilbur*

          Renewed online in mid November, got my new passport in early December. Super easy, you’re eligible as long as you’re not changing anything, you had a standard 10 year passport, and it expired less than 5 years ago. You can also pay for expedited processing online if you’re concerned. Good luck, stay safe out there.

          Requirements for online passport renewal (USA):

          -The passport you are renewing is or was valid for 10 years, and you are age 25 or older. 
          -The passport you are renewing is either expiring within one year or has expired less than five years ago.
          -You are not changing your name, sex, date of birth, or place of birth.
          -You are not traveling for at least 6 weeks from the date you will submit your application. We will only offer routine service, and the time it takes to get a passport will be the same as renewing by mail.
          -You are applying for a regular (tourist) passport. You cannot renew a special issuance (diplomatic, official, service) passport online.
          -You live in the United States (either state or territory). You do not qualify to renew online if you live in a foreign country or have an Army Post Office (APO), Fleet Post Office (FPO), or Diplomatic Post Office (DPO) address.
          -You have your passport with you, and it is not damaged or mutilated, and you have not reported it as lost or stolen. Keep your most recent passport and do not mail it to us. 
          -You can pay for your passport using a credit or debit card.
          -You can upload a digital passport photo.
          -You are aware that we will cancel the passport you are renewing after you submit your application. You cannot use it for international travel.

          Reply ↓
    3. Jessica*

      I sent my passport in for processing on January 10, my check was cashed in late January, and the website says I should expect it to arrive in the mail on Feb 11. I did not pay for expedited service, and I had to submit my old paperwork (and a certified copy of my divorce decree!) because I’m going back to my maiden name. I wondered too if passport processing would be affected, but if anything it was completed faster than I expected.

      Reply ↓
      1. Theon, Theon, it rhymes with neon*

        Good to know! If there are any new traps like “Don’t change your gender!” or “Don’t mark X!” that I might not know about, somebody please tell me!

        Reply ↓
        2. Artemesia*

          They are firing people who attended work seminars on gender issues; absolutely don’t do anything related to gender besides marking whatever gender your old passport reflects. If trans and without an old passport in your gender, this is not the moment to make the change. If you need a passport you are going to have to go with the deadname. I know people struggling with this and it sucks but it is pretty clear the government is doing everything it can to crush you and your ability to travel is important.

          Reply ↓
          1. Rara Avis*

            What if the birth certificate and SSN have been changed to the new name, so the old passport reflects a person who no longer legally exists? Could you get in trouble for traveling under that name? (Not a hypothetical — my child is in this limbo.)

            Reply ↓
            1. LaminarFlow*

              All documents must match in terms of name, sex, gender, birthdate, etc., etc.

              So, if your child’s passport is in their previous name/gender, they need to renew it to reflect their new name, gender, etc., etc.

              Think of it like when someone gets married or divorced, and changes their name. Consuela Bananahammock needs a passport that states her name is Consuela Bananahammock, as opposed to her former name of Consuela Fruitbasket.

              Reply ↓
    4. I'm just here for the cats!!*

      Not a federal employee but giving my 2 cents. I would still renew now. I haven’t heard any problems for people except for trans/non binary folx. There’s some who they are ok with going back to putting their birth sex on the passport and they are still refused passports.
      I think the next group of people will be people of color. I can also see pushback for women (I’m thinking BS like “does your husband and/or father give you permission?”).

      I’m in a situation where unfortunately I would not be able to leave the country even if I did have a passport. I am the guardian of a family member with severe intellectual disabilities. I will not leave her behind and I wouldn’t be able to bring her with me. besides not knowing what care she could get in another country she would not do well with being taken from her home and from her carers. She is completely non-verbal and non-communitive (no ASL or devices that she can use to communicate)

      Also, I don’t WANT to leave. This is my country too

      Reply ↓
      1. Theon, Theon, it rhymes with neon*

        Oof, I hope things remain tolerable for you and your family member.

        Do you know if it’s a problem yet being a woman with no makeup and a buzzcut? I was looking at my passport photo yesterday with paranoid eyes, and wondering if I was going to get flagged even without marking X. I get called “sir” sometimes in public.

        Reply ↓
        1. Seamyst*

          I’m a nonbinary femme-presenting person with a buzzcut, and I didn’t have any problems (all my legal docs still say I’m female), although I did wear some makeup. It sucks to say this, but if you’re worried, maybe a little light makeup would help? Pick two of tinted moisturizer, lip gloss, and mascara or eyeliner (all fine with cheap drugstore brands, if you don’t own any), and tell yourself it’s another kind of mask.

          Reply ↓
          1. Seamyst*

            And also, I think it’s still universally understood that passport and driver’s license photos generally suck. If someone side-eyes your passport photo, you can always give a white lie like you were sick that day.

            Reply ↓
            1. Theon, Theon, it rhymes with neon*

              Oh, good thinking! Yeah, and I’m not allowed to smile in these, and I look way more identifiably female in the mirror if I smile.

              Thanks for the makeup suggestions; I think I could purchase and apply lip gloss and mascara without needing a tutorial, lol. I’m thinking about it.

              Reply ↓
        2. ShortHairCareSoMuch*

          Hi! I am a cis woman with no makeup and a buzz cut. I renewed my passport online within the last couple weeks, it processed very fast and I was notified yesterday that it had shipped. I won’t feel completely safe until I have it in my hot little hands, but I didn’t experience anything strange or even, like, normal amounts of delays. Do it now!! Best case even barring discriminatory shenanigans, passport processing may get hit with layoffs and disruption which will slow things down, so get it done asap would be my advice.

          Reply ↓
          1. ShortHairCareSoMuch*

            and HUGE LOVE for all the federal workers who are still making things happen despite (gestures broadly at everything.)

            Reply ↓
        3. Blarg*

          Ciswoman, have cancer, so unintentional buzz, and I never wear makeup . Also, chemo messed up my eyes, so now I wear glasses. I feel like I look nothing like old ID pics — no glasses, long hair, etc. (though, still no makeup) — but have had zero issues. Even the creepy facial recognition things at TSA still recognize me, though I don’t hardly recognize myself… (Also, my passport photo was taken in early 2021, pre vaccine, and my face looks exactly how I felt — terrified to be indoors without a mask on, looking like I hadn’t left my apartment in months). Not sure if that’s helpful but it seems like both humans and machines still recognize us as us — it is the paperwork that is causing people issues (which is asinine and horrific, and I’m sorry you’re dealing with anything more complicated than just a regular passport renewal hassle).

          Reply ↓
    5. Arthnold Manacatsaman*

      fwiw, I (cisgender with no special considerations or circumstances) successfully renewed mine online earlier this month. I was kicking myself for not doing it before the inauguration, but everything went smoothly. I didn’t pay for expediated service and received my new passport in, like, 3 weeks. I have immense gratitude for the federal employees who are still holding down their day-to-day duties under current circumstances.

      Reply ↓
      1. Theon, Theon, it rhymes with neon*

        Good to know, and ditto the gratitude! I am sort of kicking myself too, especially since I had a friend going, “Renew now! Renew now!” in November.

        My special consideration is the non-gender conforming aspect of my photo, which is now the main thing I have concerns about.

        Reply ↓
        1. Arthnold Manacatsaman*

          Ah. I gotcha – I can’t speak to that side of things, so I’m sorry I can’t offer more reassurance. Keeping my fingers crossed for you!

          Reply ↓
    6. CubeFarmer*

      Never say never, but I’ve always received my passport within about 4-5 weeks of submitting a renewal. I’ve never paid for expedited service.

      Reply ↓
      1. Theon, Theon, it rhymes with neon*

        Indeed, I’ve never had a problem in the past either; I’m asking specifically about what’s changed in the last 3 weeks since inauguration day or forecasted to change in the next 3 or so weeks. It’s already become a problem overnight to mark X or have a history of more than one gender.

        Reply ↓
    7. DataGirl*

      Hypothetically, if I was not cis I would be concerned about the government tracking name/gender changes on official documents like driver’s licenses and birth certificates, and using that to confiscate or deny passports. Honestly, I don’t have a good answer.

      Reply ↓
      1. Theon, Theon, it rhymes with neon*

        Yeah, fortunately I have and intend to maintain a consistent history of a single gender (F) on all my paperwork that’s ever existed. But my passport photos are reasonably non-gender conforming, if you define “women” as “wears makeup and long hair” (which certain decision-making people do).

        For people who don’t have that consistent history, or for whom it’s distressing to maintain one, I am SO sorry.

        Reply ↓
        1. Rusty Shackelford*

          I am not an expert in any of this. But if your paperwork all says F, and your photo looks non-gender conforming as you describe, and you look like your photo, I’d add a couple of stereotypically “feminine” items worn on or near your face (bright lipstick, hoop earrings, pink fitted ballcap with rhinestone design, statement necklace, etc.) so anyone who’s comparing you to your photo will say “obviously the same person, and female.” (Also? Consider a pink ribbon cap or pin. Anyone who squints at your passport photo can be told “yeah, I looked awful, chemo sucks.”)

          And I’m sorry this has to be a concern for you.

          Reply ↓
          1. Our Business Is Rejoicing*

            Note: Unless things have changed, you cannot wear a hat for a passport photo (I’m also pretty sure you can’t wear glasses.) Earrings/jewelry/makeup are the way. If you have piercings anywhere other than the ears, take those out for the photo.

            Reply ↓
    8. Bluebell Brenham*

      I just renewed online this week after asking myself the same question. Keeping my fingers crossed that I will get it back in a few weeks. It’s my understanding that you can’t travel with the old passport after you have applied, but that it can be used as ID.

      Reply ↓
    10. Slightly Less Evil Bunny*

      Not a fed, not an expert, and don’t do any work with passports. But… I think the only issue currently is if anyone wants to use the ‘X’ designation for gender.

      From your question, I’m not sure if that’s a concern for you. But I’m pretty sure I’ve seen on my socials someone posting that their renewal was denied on that basis.

      I agree with others that things are only going to get more ‘Charlie Foxtrot’-ty, so I’d probably submit sooner rather than later.

      Reply ↓
      1. Rara Avis*

        Not just the X, I think — to get a new passport for my child’s new name, I would have to send in documentation which would include the new birth certificate, which says it isn’t valid unless stapled to the original — so anyone can see that “Katie” became “David.”

        Reply ↓
      2. DataGirl*

        Unfortunately not only the X marker. Anyone who they can prove ever had documentation stating a different gender than what they are using now, is having their passports denied and application materials seized.

        Reply ↓
    11. anonymous worker ant*

      I renewed online in early December for similar reasons (it had actually just expired, but I was still well within the window for renewal instead of getting a new passport.) I got the new on in the mail in less than two weeks, non-expedited, which was way faster than I expected.

      Given stories I was hearing from December and early January, my impression is the passport people are being very realistic about how important it is to get as many passports to people while they can. If you’re a second-generation-or-more citizen and a cis person as far as the government knows, with no other reasons to worry about the administration, I’d do it now. I wouldn’t necessarily worry about expedited service; the online renewals seems to be going pretty smoothly and fast.

      If you aren’t, you have to make a personal judgement call about the risk of losing it entirely vs. the odds that you’ll want to leave the country really soon, and I don’t know what to say there. Except I would probably do the online renewal; if we get to the point where you need to flee the country quickly, having a valid-looking US passport to show the Canadian border guards is probably better than not having a passport at all, even if it’s ticked off in the computer system, because who knows what they would have done to the computer system by that point anyway.

      Reply ↓
    12. 3-Foot Tall Inflatable Rainbow Unicorn*

      Do it now and expedite EVERYTHING – sending the application in, sending the passport back, etc. You want that processed before anything is shut down and before most of the people in the office are offered a fork in the road or fired.

      And get the passport booklet AND THE PASSPORT CARD. The latter isn’t much good for travel, but you can keep it in your wallet to prove citizenship.

      Sorry for yelling, but I had to update mine in 2020, so you can imagine the fun.

      Reply ↓
      1. Theon, Theon, it rhymes with neon*

        Yeah, my plan is exactly to expedite everything: sending in, sending back, and the processing, and also getting the book and the card.

        Reply ↓
        1. 3-Foot Tall Inflatable Rainbow Unicorn*

          Good!

          Unfortunately, I just thought of another reason to push this through ASAP: the continuing resolution keeping the government running ends on March 15. With the *waves at everything* a shutdown seems inevitable.

          Reply ↓
    13. Elliotte*

      Mine expires in 2026, looks like I could mail it in now to renew or I could wait until May to renew it online. I’m worried about mailing it in and having nothing during a delay. Anyone have insight on pros and cons to mail it in now or wait and do it online in May?

      Reply ↓
      1. SprawledOut*

        So far, passport processing seems to be happening at a good clip, so that would be a point in favor of getting it done now. There have been some reports of passport offices not returning physical documentation if there is a perceived “problem” with renewal, though that seems to be mostly limited to gender markers at the moment. That might be a point in favor of doing it online later (so you don’t have to send anything in), but a lot can happen between now and May.

        Reply ↓
    14. Observer*

      I was planning on mailing it today and requesting expedited service, to increase the chances my passport gets back to me ASAP,

      I wouldn’t do that. Mostly because for your purposes the less anyone looks at your request the better. You want to be as boring, unremarkable and non-memorable as possible. Zero flags.

      Reply ↓
    15. cncx*

      Renew as soon as you can.
      We don’t know how far public service will break down.

      Also, regarding the current regime’s posturing about birthright citizenship, born us citizens whose parents or grandparents have an immigration background probably want to renew when they can as well. While the regime can’t just scrap the fourteenth amendment, the breakdown of public service and mixed messages will definitely create administrative confusion.

      Reply ↓
  3. C++Anon*

    Gotta get something off my chest!

    So I work in tech, specifically in software engineering. Layoffs are a fact of life here, and there’s a lot of them going on now. I don’t like it but it’s a reality of the industry and modern job market, so there’s a limit to how upset I can get over it.

    Something that never fails to get me mad, though, is how some friends and acquaintances speak about it. I have a number of friends who’ve tried to break into the industry, whether it’s by taking programming classes at a community college or doing a bootcamp, and generally. Those guys are the first to get real nasty when layoffs happen, whether I got laid off or there’s just a wave of layoffs happening in industry. Stuff about how I’m not going to be employable anymore because of AI, or some real nasty quips about how I’ll be replaced by foreigners and “DEI”. You can imagine.

    It’s gotten to the point where I mostly have blocked their numbers and socials and told our mutual friends I’m not hanging out if those guys are present. Sorry. I’m not getting younger and I don’t want that energy in my life.

    Reply ↓
    1. Qwerty*

      I avoid most online places for tech because of this. Even LinkedIn is becoming unbearable. I find it to be part of the online echo chamber on any topic where it just becomes a spiral into negativity.

      So, I feel you. If there are any meetups in your area or developer groups, I’ve found those to be much better environments. There’s still a small percentage of very vocal people like this, but as long as no one argues/engages someone will usually pivot the conversation to anything else. IRL groups are way more positive and “look at this cool thing”.

      Reply ↓
      1. C++Anon*

        Meetups are great. Conferences can be a little startup-bro-y, but they’ve become more welcoming over the years (I am in my late thirties). It’s crazy how “people are just meaner online” even applies with people you’ve known in person for years. I don’t get it.

        For the guys I’m cool with in these friend circles, the way I phrase it is: “listen, I know you and Wakeen go back like twenty years, but I really can’t stand being in the same room as him after I gave him a lot of advice on how to break into tech, he didn’t take it, and now he acts like a snippy little kid at every opportunity in the group text. Sorry for putting you in this situation, but he and I straight up cannot get along.” It hasn’t been a problem yet.

        Reply ↓
      1. C++Anon*

        Thank you! It’s annoying because I am indeed in the middle of the job hunt and a lot of companies are still waking up from the post-holiday slumber, but I have more than enough savings to keep me going until I find something even better than my last job. And every interview I’ve had so far has gone great, because again, no resentment on my side, plus I have solid skills, plus I view that knowledge as a way to multiply the rather than a way to flex or make people feel smaller than me.

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    3. WantonSeedStitch*

      Frankly, I don’t want the energy of ANYONE griping about foreigners and DEI in my life. Foreigners and DEI are not bad things. Don’t blame you at all for blocking them.

      Reply ↓
      1. C++Anon*

        As a white guy I can say that these guys are the literal epitome of mediocre white men. I’m in my thirties, as are most of my friends. A lot of these guys grew up in much more well-off families than I have, so to do a little bit of armchair psychology: they hit 30, realized they haven’t really built a career for themselves, and buy into the “learn to code” meme. Then they realize it’s not as simple as “read one Python book and every big tech company will be banging down your door with a $150K check,” and instead of buckling up, they just get racist and resentful.

        I have all the sympathy in the world for career changers or anyone trying to learn something hard. What I don’t have sympathy for is the “oh yeah ChatGPT is going to be able to do your job better than you by 2026” or “they’re only going to hire women and immigrants,” idiocy, because like – come on man.

        Meanwhile just about every immigrant or visa holder I’ve met in this industry is a class act. I don’t want to end up sounding like one of those “model minority” type guys, but I’ve never met an East Asian, South Asian, or woman in tech who radiates resentment like some of these friends of friends do. And if they did, they’d have justification!

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        1. dulcinea47*

          “model minorities” are such because there’s bias against them and if they went around with an attitude like those guys they’d quickly be driven out.

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          2. JustCuz*

            I have a theory on this: white men have by and large made themselves mediocre (or obsolete at best -just search articles about how much they are falling behind in society in general) simple BECAUSE they made the rest of us try so hard. I run literal circles around my white male counterparts simple because I *HAD* to. And in capitalism, at the end of the day, money talks – no matter how much you try to tear down “DEI”. You wanna make money, then hire the skill.

            Reply ↓
            1. Ellis Bell*

              The teacher speaks for this phenomenon is that if we have low expectations (boys will be boys etc) then we end up with young adults who are low curiosity, low resilience, low effort, and low work ethic. I don’t think teachers do have low expectations, but society does.

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        3. Artemesia*

          I remember nearly 30 years ago a friend telling me how unfair it was that her husband didn’t get the job he was interviewing for ‘because they had to go with a woman.’ I knew the job in question; they had hired a white guy. I don’t know if her husband lied to her out of embarrassment or if the hiring manager told him that to make it easier for him to reject him without saying ‘we went with someone better than you.’

          My perennial anecdote on white guys can’t catch a break. My husband’s law class was 180 almost all white men and 20 women. Law review which is awarded at the end of year one to the top 10% of the class was 10 women and 10 men. 50% of women achieved it and about 5.5% of the men. Many white men don’t want to have to compete — and who can blame them when for all of history they got to go to the head of the line.

          Reply ↓
          1. Analystical Tree Hugger*

            ” Many white men don’t want to have to compete — and who can blame them when for all of history they got to go to the head of the line.”

            Yes and…I think the narrative can be refined a bit. This applies significantly more to RICH white men.

            Poor white men have significantly less power, influence, and success; lumping them all together makes enemies of people who could be allies for people who want an equitable society which could be a true meritocracy (versus the BS “meritocracy-which-ignores-history-and-reality” that’s floating around right now).

            Reply ↓
        4. Observer*

          I know that this is not the point of your comment, but you just perfectly illustrated why coddling your kids too much is *such* a bad idea.

          The guys you describe sound like they grew up almost never hearing no, nor having to work for anything and sometimes not succeeding in getting whatever it was they were trying for.

          Reply ↓
    4. Alex*

      Yeah I’d nope out of any “blame foreigners and DEI” energy as well. Because that’s just racism, which has no place in my life.

      Reply ↓
    5. I'm just here for the cats!!*

      I say good for you for setting boundaries over this. That really sucks and I’m sorry you have to see that. I hope that these people are not close friends or family members.

      Reply ↓
    6. DisneyChannelThis*

      It’s such an obvious trap from the outside, “your problems aren’t due to me your leader and your government, it’s due to those people, the ones who don’t look like you or have the same genitals as you” and yet tale as old as time, it’s radicalized people.

      Block the dudes, avoid them socially etc. It’s not your responsibility to try to un racist people, or to educate them. Spend that energy helping people who are affected by it, call your politicians etc.

      Reply ↓
      1. C++Anon*

        Yeah I can see a split in that friend group. The people I knew would be decent, empathetic, and respectful people are showing themselves to be that.

        Predictably, all the bigotry is coming from the failures to launch. For them, “DEI bad” and “ChatGPT is going to take your job” are ways to cope, because they can’t believe that anyone else would work harder or have more humility than them (not saying that life is fair and working harder fixes everything! Society is very unfair and we need to work to make it fairer!), and it must be because their intrinsic characteristics are hated by the world, when the reality is the exact opposite. Posted about that upthread.

        Reply ↓
        1. learnedthehardway*

          You know – I think some people need it to be pointed out to them that their bigotry is entirely “failure to launch” playing out as “blame anyone but myself”.

          Reply ↓
    7. Busy Middle Manager*

      You’re underestimating the impact constant outsourcing (300k jobs a year) is having on the job market and thus peoples’ life plans, trajectory, ability to pay off student loans. Average people with a degree SHOULD be able to get a job. This isn’t old-fashioned layoffs due to tough times, it’s layoffs to hire someone cheaper elsewhere

      I got cut from an adjacent field and it was a bit of relief. This job hunt has been especially horrible. So many places simply aren’t hiring in the US at the moment. I went throw five rounds and nailed it at one company, then they were forced to outsource the role and they even gutted some requirements from the role. It was very eye opening, just another example about how it’s purely about cost cutting.

      While I completely understand some of your gripes, you have to take this market for what it is, not how we want it to be

      Reply ↓
      1. C++Anon*

        Seems like you’re talking past me or replying to a different comment?

        The economy sucks and we’re seeing a lot of bad behavior from businesses, that’s correct and it is justified to be angry about it, but that’s not what I was griping about. My complaint was people I know who, as this snippy jerkish jab at me, go all “ChatGPT is about to replace you for good!” or “you’re going to have a hard time finding a new job, because companies only want to hire immigrants and women since DEI” when there’s tech layoffs. That bitterness probably comes through when they do get interviews for software roles, and I think that’s a genuine “the world isn’t fair, grow up” type situation. Nobody wants to work with people who are bitter and resentful all the time.

        Reply ↓
  4. Imperfect perfectionist*

    I hate to call this a struggle, but does anyone out there have advice for how to deal with a boss who’s a pretty major perfectionist? But also doesn’t seem to have an understanding of what’s reasonable to ask from employees. I generally really like my boss but sometimes it’s too much.

    For example during the middle of the month I have to prepare part of a presentation for our senior leadership. I will start prepping for this as early as possible and meet with my boss a couple of times for this prep. Inevitably we get interrupted by more urgent things and my prep gets pushed out. I completely understand this even though I don’t like it. Eventually we get to the point where I’m coming in early or staying an hour or two late to work on the presentation with her and she starts to nitpick on non-substantive issues. It would be one thing if it was “oh, those numbers aren’t right” or “you’ve misspelled the word magnetic” because those are things that matter. It’s usually more like “I think I like the word night is better than evening” or “hmmm, is there a better stock picture of penguins we could be using here for this filler image” (situations representative but very clearly made up).

    I too think of myself as a perfectionist, but at some point you’ve got to submit the report, and it’s very frustrating to be putting in extra unpaid hours (I’m salaried exempt) at the end of a long day for these types of edits, especially when I tried to get the ball rolling earlier.

    Reply ↓
    1. KitKat*

      One thing I might try is to see if she could just make those types of edits on her own time without you there (ideally do them as “suggestions” for tracking if you’re in something like Google Slides). Like, “Hey boss, would love you to do a review of wording and imagery in the next 2 days, then I can apply the changes”. I’m guessing this would be a lot less painful if you can just “accept changes” rather than sit there and handle the feedback in real time, especially since you don’t seem like you care that much about these details (not in a bad way, just like, you’re not going to fight her on which penguin picture to use). You could also try combining this with an artificial deadline (like “I want to get all copy edits/feedback by this friday so I have time for a final polish before presenting”)

      Reply ↓
      1. Ama*

        Yes, I had a boss like this and I would just either send her the file we were working on for her to input edits (this is how we usually handled slides), or if the formatting was going to be fussy, she’d send me edits in either track changes or on a paper print out of the file and I’d put them in. It’s really inefficient for you to be sitting there while she thinks over her edits.

        Reply ↓
        1. Ama*

          I should add — I have worked with a few coworkers who were under the impression that “we’ll sit here and edit the file together” was more efficient and it *really* isn’t for precisely the reason you point out, that she’s hemming and hawing and needs to actually think about it for a bit. Meanwhile you could be doing other work (or at home).

          Reply ↓
    2. WantonSeedStitch*

      How is your relationship with her? Could you maybe say “here’s my draft, can you please let me know the most important things I should fix first? There are X days until it’s due, and I want to make sure I focus on the biggest issues in order to get it done in time.”

      Reply ↓
    3. Qwerty*

      Can you have an out of the moment conversation about the amount of time these presentations are taking? Separate it into meaningful time vs minor edits (use better phrasing than me!)

      I had a boss like this and she was horrified to find out that our weekly slide deck was taking so many man hours. Our templates was a huge part – editing anything meant spending an hour getting it all to look correctly formated. We were having multiple pre-meetings before the pre-meeting with the boss. Her intent was someone would put 30min of prep work into the slide, have the pre-meeting with her, then spend 10-15min implementing the edits. It is really easy as a boss to have a disconnect on how long something sounds like it should take and how long it actually does take. Changing a word – easy. Replacing the stock image – long time, might not be worth it and might require some push back in the moment.

      Reply ↓
    4. Hlao-roo*

      A few ideas for you:

      – Can you work on the report separately from your boss? You put together a draft, then send it to her for review? That way she can stay late flagging things like “change the word evening to night” (and also important things like “these numbers aren’t right”) and you can quickly make the changes without getting drawn into a long discussion with her.

      – If you have to work on the report with her simultaneously, can you say something along the lines of “I’ll flag the word ‘night’ and we can come back and discuss later. For now I’d like to focus on reviewing the numbers to make sure those are all correct.” Would she be OK moving on from the inconsequential things (with the promise to return to them later, time-permitting) and focusing on the important parts of the presentations first?

      Reply ↓
    5. Recovering Perfectionist*

      I’ve been the boss in this case (sorry!) and there’s sometimes a range of factors going on. For example, there are definitely times where I’m wordsmithing something with my direct reports where I just know they think this is annoying nitpicky-ness (night vs evening in your example) but *I* know that X senior person is a freak about a particular word, or that using a particular phrase or image will just send some other senior person spiraling down a rabbit hole and completely derail us. Remember, she’s bringing different context to reviewing.

      On the other hand, she needs to know how much extra work this leads to (this is the kind of information that bosses do not have and need their direct reports to provide). If she’s open to it in general, I’d encourage you to (gently!) provide this information, such as “I could make these changes by X time, should we still apply them or are there some that are more important?” (use your normal working hours for the turn around, not coming in extra).

      (I’d also gently point out your extra hours aren’t unpaid – you’re salaried. Salaried work usually reflects that the work flexes and contracts at different times. Are there times where there’s less need to be in the office (such as when you’re not working on this report) that could help offset this? Sometimes that can make the coming in early or stay late sting less.)

      Reply ↓
    6. MSD*

      I feel your pain. I once worked with a manager that made reviewing draft business requirements absolutely torturous. It was always nitpicking word A versus word B or minor format that had no impact on substance. Multiple reviews taking multiple hours for very little substantive changes.

      Reply ↓
    7. Lemons*

      Eh, I think this is just sort of how working with upper leadership is a lot of the time, you have to roll with how they like to work. Literally never met a CEO who even looks at the deck until like 8pm the day before the presentation.

      Reply ↓
    8. CubeFarmer*

      Oh this was my old boss! I coped with it by just…making the changes she wanted.

      Now that I’m in charge (I assumed her old role when she retired,) I’m trying to be about empowering my team without being a perfectionist micromanager.

      Reply ↓
    9. HannahS*

      When I worked with a micromanager I (quietly) ensured that she could not give me feedback live, because that would drive me up the wall. What I found that was the more I tried to make her feel included in my work to try and help her see that I was competent, the more anxious and nitpicky she became. I actually found that the opposite was more effective.

      For context, I was in a role where I could have expected to meet with my manager twice a week for updates, and email as needed for questions. She was sending me multiple emails a day, counseling me to change this and that single word in this or that document.

      I started ignoring all non-urgent emails from her, and sending her an email about half-an-hour before the end of each day (we do task-based work) detailing what I’d done and what there was for her to review, in a LOT more detail than I would have needed for anyone else, but very factual and outcome-focused (e.g “Meeting with John Smith: he wanted XYZ and is amenable to trying ABC.”) Then, I’d look at her email the next morning, make whatever edits she wanted, then send another email half-an-hour before the end of day. I was always very nice and deferential (“Thanks for the edits, I’ve made those changes. Here’s a quick summary of today’s tasks; let me know your thoughts. (etc.)”) It wouldn’t work with everyone–my manager wasn’t on site, which helped–but I found that making her spin out her anxieties AWAY FROM ME ON HER OWN TIME was absolutely crucial to my being able to work with her.

      The end? She LOVED me. She wrote me an amazing reference letter. My advice to you is to release yourself from timeline pressure–that’s her lookout, not yours–and stop reviewing the documents together in person.

      Reply ↓
    10. But Of Course*

      I use two strategies. I am currently my boss’s scapegoat so getting more of this crap than usual.

      1. I make it her problem as early as possible. My boss doesn’t react well to even very minor surprises, and also doesn’t want me to have any autonomy whatsoever, so I’ve adopted a strategy of looping her in early even though I’ll get pushback and making it sound like I’m asking for her excellent judgement. This could mean in your case something like “hey, boss, I’m getting started on that report and I know we’ll need a picture of some penguins; do you think this one or that one will resonate more with the audience?” (Full disclosure: my boss actually hates this but if I’m getting snarled at either way, I’m picking my battles and I’d rather get it for being “too proactive” in discussing timing of something than for not doing something it made no sense to do at the current time.) And yes, I will call/text/stop by the office/follow up until I get an answer for very important things.

      2. Related to that, I’ve taken up asking her to explain everything I should be doing differently “for the future”, because (and this may not suit your situation) we will do something Way X for years but this year I’m in trouble for not magically knowing she wants it done Way Y, and she will INSIST we have always done Y even though I have documented evidence we didn’t. It can help to force her to explain why what I’m doing is wrong because she’ll abruptly realize what I did made sense or was correct and the other party was wrong, or whatever. (Not that I get an apology, she just abruptly stops badgering me about it.) But it helps a lot to use language suggested all over the site; I’m fond of “I used the word night because most of the time described the sky is dark, but I’m happy to switch to evening – so I know for the future, can you explain why you’d prefer evening here?” It doesn’t exactly help if it really is change-for-the-sake-of-change but I have noticed she tends to bring less nonsense to me with a history of “being open and receptive to her feedback.” (I’m not, because it’s usually crap, but I don’t like getting yelled at and I don’t want to look for a new job since she’s leaving later this year.)

      Reply ↓
    11. PerfectIsTheEnemyofDone*

      I think there are a couple of strategies to tackle this – it may take some trial and error, depending on how your manager reacts.

      1. Work in a shared document and allow your manager to make their own changes, or you can specially note their changes as you make them. When you start the next presentation, go back into the history of the last presentation and see what items your manager was consistently changing. Add those into a list, and when meeting with your manager, advise that you’ve got a list of noted preferences and style adjustments from previous presentations – could they take a look and confirm they felt these were important to note and adjust in every presentation moving forward? Your manager will likely either realize how nitpicky they are being, or give you some context as to why those things are important.

      2. Set a schedule of reviews and note the purpose of each:
      Review round 1: messaging/content outline only, no style, design or language edits;
      Review round 2: messaging/content outline as translated into presentation language only, no design or proofreading edits;
      Review round 3: presentation language as placed into design, no proofreading edits;
      Final review: proofreading and any final minor edits

      Facilitate this by not giving more than each round is meant to review, as this will save you hours of re-work. Don’t insert the picture of penguins for the messaging/content outline or the language review, just put a comment [insert picture of cute penguins here].

      3. When your prep sessions/review rounds get pushed, walk in to the next session with highlighted areas of “manager input needed” and use the time on those points – not a full end-t0-end review that can get derailed by penguin pictures. If you work in a shared document, your manager can review and give their input on the other sections when they find a spare moment in their day (they most likely won’t be able to), but use the time you have on the most important areas that can’t move forward without input.

      Reply ↓
    12. Ashley*

      Some of this is harder if you are salary, but I find it helps if I can help them focus on the parts I can’t do without them or really require both of us. So wordsmithing is definitely let’s flag and get to the other stuff because I need to leave by x tonight type language.
      Something else I have done with the perfectionist boss is ask about what is needed immediately after they are out of the presentation meeting. This way you can start stuff and have place holders earlier to help remind them we don’t want to be scrambling like last time.

      Reply ↓
  5. BurnOut*

    Realizing this issue will be of short duration, but I’m starting my new job in two weeks – in my final week of notice at my current job. My new job has literally emailed me Every. Day. Now, I realize I’m just grumpy and burned out, and I wanted a bigger break but didn’t feel able to push given the times. All the emails would be okay on their own; some are “one quick thing” or involving an upcoming event or “just FYI.” But, I would love to tell them I don’t work for them yet, am scrambling to wrap up my current job, and will deal with them when I start! Is this weird or am I weird?

    Reply ↓
    1. ThatGirl*

      Filter them all to a folder and read them later – you don’t work there yet, you don’t need to know any of that.

      Reply ↓
      1. BurnOut*

        They need responses!! I actually feel like I already look bad for not being more responsive since I’m not on my personal email during the workday!

        Reply ↓
        1. ThatGirl*

          Why do they need responses? I’m not being snarky, I’m curious. If they genuinely do – are they coming from one person? I would seriously write something like “Apologies for any delays but I am focused on wrapping up my current position, I will respond when I am able and I look forward to starting with you soon.”

          Reply ↓
            1. ThatGirl*

              they may feel urgent, but you truly do not need to reply to everyone within 30 minutes. Really. Checking everything once at the beginning and/or end of day is plenty, especially for “FYI” emails. I still recommend the filter.

              Reply ↓
        2. Sharon*

          Tell them you’re having some issues with your email and to call you if they need anything from you before your start date. When you ask people to call they tend to decide it’s not really that urgent.

          Reply ↓
    2. LA*

      I think you’re feeling pressure to respond because you’re getting the information, but you’re not (that I can tell) being asked to do anything with it. Practice just setting it aside – maybe set up a filter so it’s not in your inbox. They know you don’t work there.

      Reply ↓
      1. BurnOut*

        Well first it was signing the offer letter which – fine, totally get that, and it took a couple rounds of emails with HR and the hiring person. Then it was was T shirt size, mailing address confirmation, could I take a trip next month, what dates, and now what flight times. Each one individually would be nothing, but as a whole …

        Reply ↓
        1. BurnOut*

          Sprinkled in with first day info emails / login info etc that I don’t need yet that are “just FYI” but I still feel like I should reply with a timely “Got it – thanks!” at least.

          Reply ↓
          1. KitKat*

            I would just reach out to your new boss and name it – like “Hey I’ve been getting a ton of logistical stuff and want to mention I might not be able to keep up in real time while I’m also wrapping up my current position. I’ll try to keep an eye out for anything truly urgent, but otherwise might need a few days to respond [or, ‘might not be able to respond before my start date’ if you prefer that]. Thanks!”

            BTW you are NOT weird for feeling this, sounds super annoying to me too

            Reply ↓
    3. DisneyChannelThis*

      Silver lining, their really excited for you to start?

      Absolutely just set aside time each evening and reply to them all at once. They know you’re still working, within 24hrs is a reasonable response time. If you feel better about it, reply to each person one more time and let them know in that reply (tshirt size is M and just a heads up Im in meetings rest of today and won’t be able to reply until around 7pm tonight).

      Also make sure you have a good plan to reset the burnout before starting. Maybe that’s takeout and paper plates all week so no cooking/dishes. Maybe that’s adding a visit to your favorite animal shelter or museum. Maybe that’s stepping up time with hobbies or time with friends.

      Reply ↓
    4. Sparkles McFadden*

      You are not weird and neither are they. This is all totally normal! Here’s my take on what’s going on:
      – You want to wrap things up at your current job.
      – You also want to make a good impression at the new job, so you feel like you have to answer right away.
      – The emails are coming from people who have been asked to get things ready for your start date so they’re sending stuff now hoping to get and item off of their to-do list.

      That all leads to a lot of stress. That said, it is completely OK to send everything to a folder and only check that folder once or twice a day. It doesn’t *feel* OK but it is fine. The one thing you can do is to contact the hiring manager and say “I’m trying to wrap things up here to leave everything in a good place for my current boss and coworkers, so I’m only going to respond to the onboarding emails at 6:00pm (or whenever).”

      Good luck!

      Reply ↓
      1. BurnOut*

        Yeah I definitely think it’s just bad timing that this trip next month is in planning now and can’t wait, and the rest of it is just them trying to be efficient.

        Reply ↓
    5. Apex Mountain*

      This doesn’t seem that out of the norm. I am starting a new job in a couple of weeks also and same thing. I like getting things set up in advance though so I dont’ mind it

      Reply ↓
    6. HonorBox*

      This reminds me of a bit of advice I once gave my wife when we were not married and still in college. That long list of stuff to do looks like a really long list of stuff to do. But if you take each item and assign a time you expect it will take to complete, it may ultimately be 3 hours worth of stuff…not three days.

      That cascade of “one quick thing” probably does seem like a lot. But I’d guess that it is partially because you’re trying to wrap things up and show engagement in the new job and respond as quickly as possible.

      Take a moment. Send an email to your new boss. Let them know you want to provide answers as quickly as possible, but don’t/can’t have your personal email open throughout the day as you wrap stuff up. Let them know you’ll be responding to inquiries in the evening. With all of them in front of you and time specifically set aside to answer, it might take much less time all told, and will likely cause much less stress because you won’t be bouncing back and forth, dealing with interruptions, and can think through the answers you’re giving more effectively and efficiently.

      Reply ↓
      1. BurnOut*

        Yeah this is definitely part of it. Although someone else in HR did just request a 30 minute call that I maybe should have pushed back on …

        Reply ↓
        2. WellRed*

          HR call can probably wait. I’ve never worked anywhere HR stuff can’t be done on day 1. Did you ask what the call was for. I hope they are just excited and this isn’t indicative of a constantly “on” culture.

          Reply ↓
        3. Observer*

          Although someone else in HR did just request a 30 minute call that I maybe should have pushed back on

          Unless it was for something like making sure you’re properly in the Payroll and related benefits systems, setting up necessary accommodations or finding out important preferences on stuff that needs to be in place as close to start date as possible, this is a bit much. Pushing back on that would have been perfectly appropriate.

          Reply ↓
  6. Burnt Out*

    I’ve been dealing with burnout and am finding it is coming back, but I don’t have the option to take time off work or leave my job. I’m exhausted and my manager seems to switch between being supportive and being frustrated (understandable). Any advice on how to work through it would be amazing.

    Reply ↓
    1. EngGirl*

      Look at the actual causes of your burnout and how it’s compounding. For me it was work stuff on top of housework/chore stuff on top of family stuff leaving me no time for “me stuff” so I forced myself to carve out time.

      I put myself on a semi-strict schedule. Work stuff had to end when I left my car at my house. I wasn’t allowed to check emails/be contactable. Housework/chore stuff was relegated to Sunday mornings. I would prioritize what needed to be done in the time I allotted and that’s what would get done. Family stuff was harder because that comes up when it comes up. I did my damn best to carve out time on Saturdays for me. Some weekends that meant I went out and did things for fun some weekends that meant I was a potato binging a reality series. It took a while but it definitely helped.

      Reply ↓
    2. Hlao-roo*

      Check out this Captain Awkward post: #450: How to tighten up your game at work when you’re depressed. As the title says, it’s for dealing with depression, not burn out, but there’s probably some overlap on advice that’s usable in your situation.

      I’ll link directly to the post in a follow-up comment.

      Reply ↓
    3. BurnOut*

      Lol just want to flag this is a different commenter than me from the comment above. I think we’re all feeling the strain in these times …

      Reply ↓
    4. Lemons*

      I think it was Alison (I read a lot of advice blogs so maybe not) who said for her brain, burnout isn’t caused by volume, but by monotony, so ironically adding more to her plate, like hobbies or projects she likes, she begins to heal. I’m that way too and I had no clue until she mentioned that! Definitely worth examining.

      I also really recommend seeing what things you ‘have to do’ in your life that…maybe you don’t. Maybe you don’t have to keep up on housework so much, maybe you can make more frozen pizzas instead of cooking daily, maybe you can ask others in your life to do things for you. I’m sure your loved ones would love to help!

      Reply ↓
    5. HannahS*

      Optimize every other thing you possibly can. Here is what I would ask myself:

      Health: Can I find a way to get more sleep or more exercise? Can I eat better? Is there a way to throw money at this problem (grocery delivery, meal kit, frozen meals, healthy-ish takeout?) Is there anyone I can recruit to help me?

      Work: Is there any way that I can make my job easier? Are there any work obligations that are optional that I can drop? Are there ways to make the moments at work better (can I take a tea break, can I take a walk outside, I’m too cold all the time; can I find a way to not be.) Can I throw money at this problem (make my commute easier, buy food at work?)

      Life outside work: Is spending time on my phone compulsively reading the news helping or hurting? What can I do instead? How can I carve out the time I need to take care of myself? Can I throw money at this problem (hire a sitter so I can see a friend, buy tickets to something fun? invite a friend over and buy takeout, hire a cleaner?) Is there anyone I can recruit to help me (Can my husband watch our child Sunday morning so that I can have time alone?)

      It’s like Star Trek; the ship needs all power directed to life support. What are the things you absolutely need to keep the lights on? That doesn’t only mean food/shelter; that can also mean “I absolutely MUST see a friend once a week” or whatever.

      Reply ↓
    6. Sloanicota*

      I have to remind myself that sometimes in order to keep my salary, I’m going to have to spend some of it on things to make my life easier. If I can’t take a vacation maybe that’s getting meals or groceries delivered or hiring a cleaner or sending laundry out or signing up for a fun activity after work. It’s critical to carve out non-work low stress time for yourself.

      Reply ↓
  7. Sandra Dee*

    Are there any good resources for getting started as a freelancer? I’m in tech if that is relevant and it would more of a consultant / advisor for short term contracts or working on retainer for longer ones. Been getting a lot of people in the industry saying I’d be good at this and I kinda like the idea of being part-time for a while. But I have no idea where to start or what this even entails!

    Reply ↓
    1. tab*

      If you’re in the US, I highly recommend the SBDC (Small Business Development Center) in your city. This free service is provided by the SBA and local universities. I’m an engineer, and used them when I started consulting. They were very helpful.

      Reply ↓
    2. Lemons*

      Contact those folks who say you’d be good at this (if they’re in the industry)! Ask their advice and let them know you’re open to work and would love any tips or connections.

      Reply ↓
    3. Ama*

      If there’s any way you can take on an initial client or two while still working full time for a bit that’s how I transitioned (although I went freelance in a very different type of work than I was doing full time). For me it was helpful to build up a small client base and get all of the things like setting up a website, my business accounts, business insurance, etc. set up while I still had that full time salary to help offset some of those startup expenses. And when I got to the point that I literally couldn’t take on more freelance work while still working full time, I knew I was ready.

      My other piece of advice is to check with every single jurisdiction you live in (state, county, and city if you’re in the US) to find out what, if any, registration/business licensing is required and if you are required to charge sales tax on the services you provide (in most states you don’t for non-material services but it’s always good to check). My city actually does require home-based freelancers to have a business license and I actually found that out completely by accident (I was researching sales tax).

      Reply ↓
      1. Sloanicota*

        Yes and … note that for me, working two jobs was the fast train to burnout city, so do keep an eye on your workload.

        Reply ↓
  8. *HigherEd Admin**

    I am currently working in higher ad as a department level admin role. How do you evaluate the workflow in a job outside of academia? Any advice on moving from higher ed to a more corporate role? I have about 7 weeks of vacation and significant sick time and I am worried the higher pay outside of higher ed will not make up for the loss of vacation time and increased work load.

    Reply ↓
    1. LA*

      7 WEEKS! AND sick time. So jealous.

      You have to weigh what’s important to you. Sometimes you can just turn that lost time into the money it would represent, but sometimes you can’t because you can’t put a price on having the PTO. Obviously every industry will be different, but I’m not real convinced you’re going to get a markedly higher salary – you’ll really have to check. Plus the benefits might take a dive in other ways because academia is often working with a larger body and the ability to really negotiate with insurance companies etc.

      Reply ↓
      1. NotRealAnonForThis*

        Its really going to depend though, based on what part of industry you leave university employment for.

        In my case, my current level of pay is a full 33% higher than what I could possibly be earning in an equivalent seniority level of university employment. (Verified in discussion with a former coworker who has remained there at said university department, we hired in at the same time) I would be at the top of the pay band in my old department, and we only ever received COLA. In private industry I receive great bonuses and merit raises. In order to progress any further in the university department, I’d have to obtain an additional degree…which is not the case in private industry.

        Taking health insurance out of the question (as the differences have become completely non comparable without a lot of adjustments), my PTO and sick are definitely lackluster by comparison, but again…33% more income solves a lot of issues for me. I’m not sure what I would do with roughly double the PTO/sick bucket, but I’m also at a place where, for private industry at least, my PTO is pretty generous.

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      2. cactus lady*

        The worked for 4 universities before moving to a private company and biggest change from me moving from higher ed to the corporate world was how much people make work their whole life/identity in a weird way. Some of it could just be company culture (this is the only non-university I have worked for) but it seems like friends in the corporate world have a similar experience. I get paid a lot more, and I have good benefits, but there’s a lot of false urgency about stuff and the expectation that you’re always working is definitely strong. It was hard for me to feel it out beforehand because I didn’t know what to ask. I wish I had asked about the expectation of being available after hours, because that was not a thing at any of the universities I had worked for and here it was just implied that if you’re awake you’re available to work. I’m not sure how I would have phrased that though.

        I would be happy to take a pay cut to have my university life back. unfortunately hiring at universities near me has stalled!

        Reply ↓
        1. *HigherEd Admin**

          Thank you! That is exactly what I was trying to get at with my question.
          There have been some instances of having to work after hours and weekends and I have been able to push back pretty effectively. I have an impression that corporate work world is AT LEAST 40 hours a week and I am definitely not looking to move in that direction no matter how much more I could make.

          Reply ↓
    2. YMMV*

      I work in higher ed and our vacation time is paid out when we leave. Sick leave is not, but they do apply unused sick leave towards retirement. If at any point, I leave and return (“break in service”) that sick leave won’t reappear in my sick leave balance but I can still use it towards my retirement. YMMV depending on your institution’s policies. I have left and returned several times. Mostly because the only way to get a raise was to leave. We hadn’t gotten a raise in years but newly open positions were often filled at a higher pay rate than currently occupied positions (don’t get me started on that). That doesn’t really answer your specific question about which is better, there are too many variables for that, but check your policies and see what they say. It might factor into your decision to know what you keep or lose if you leave and decide to return.

      Reply ↓
    3. Spacewoman Spiff*

      I left a start up to work in higher ed, struggled with the slow pace of the work, moved back to corporate, and now…am back in higher ed. I don’t know that I can give any generalized advice other than to think carefully about what your priorities are as far as pay, time off, etc. How do you feel about your current workload? How many hours do you work in a week and how would you feel if that changed, and what parts of your life would you have to pare back as a result of working longer hours? I was earning about $30K more in my last corporate role than I am now (and that’s not even accounting for inflation…) but the workload was MUCH higher and expectations for work-life balance MUCH lower. When I was last job hunting I debated whether to go corporate or higher ed, but the types of roles I had in the corporate space just didn’t feel sustainable to me over the long term. Though I’m sure there are many people who feel differently! The vacation time you get in higher ed is definitely not going to be met in the corporate world, and no free week off around the holidays—for me, I think that’s enough to keep me in higher ed the rest of my career.

      Reply ↓
    4. HR Exec Popping In*

      Pay and benefits will generally be better with a major corporation, but time off will be much less. Higher Ed and purpose are the attractive side of a career in that field. Only you can decide what is most important to you.

      Reply ↓
    5. Lucy Librarian*

      I’m in my 40s and have worked for 3 universities and 2 private companies. I complain about working in higher ed a lot and could possibly make more outside of it. BUT I have generous vacation and sick leave, tuition benefits for me and my dependents, a retirement match, and solid insurance. I’ve also decided I’m good with the sometimes slow pace because it also means I have nights and weekends for myself and family. It would take a lot for me to leave. I’ve only applied to 3 jobs in the last 4 years and 2 of them were also higher ed.

      I realized the above is not advice! My advice would be to evaluate what’s important to you. What’s a must have and what is flexible in terms of work, benefits, and time?

      Reply ↓
      1. *HigherEd Admin**

        I highly value my vacation, work/life balance, and benefits. I have been about 30/70 WFH in the past five years and that has been changed to FT on campus. It has been really affecting my job satisfaction and mental health, but it seems like I might not have luck finding better in the corporate world.

        Reply ↓
  9. Jessen*

    Where do people actually find jobs nowadays, especially if you don’t really have a personal network to rely on? I’m an IT worker looking to move away from government contracting; I’d prefer to stay in healthcare if I can but it’s not required. But I’m having trouble figuring out where to look exactly. I don’t have a lot in the way of contacts due to a combination of gender identity concerns and the fact that none of us were really expecting *waves hand at everything*.

    Trying to sort through where’s good to actually look that isn’t going to be a flood of resume farms, general scams, or low level jobs that are spammed at everyone. Honestly I’ve never really done a proper professional job search so I’m now in my mid-30’s and very lost.

    Reply ↓
    1. ThatGirl*

      I am in marketing, so YMMV, but LinkedIn and Indeed seem to be good for general job searches. LinkedIn can be very annoying but the jobs are usually real, as it learns your preferences it recommends better ones, and you can build a network there.

      There are likely IT-specific job boards out there too, but I’m not aware of them.

      Reply ↓
      1. Hlao-roo*

        I’m in engineering and I second this. I used Indeed for my last job search. Just plugged in my location and searched for a few common job titles for my field.

        I typically apply through the actual company website, where possible, because I have heard from a friend who works in hiring (different field) that most “easy apply” or “apply in 1 click” buttons makes a mess of resume formatting.

        Reply ↓
      2. Jessen*

        Good to know. I think LinkedIn might need a bit more training or something for me? It keeps ignoring my recent IT experience and degree and trying to shove me at retail or call center type work (I have some older customer service experience on my resume but have been in my current job for 5 years and will be finishing a cybersecurity program through our local community college in may). Trying to get it to understand that I’m an IT professional and don’t want to deliver food or work in a warehouse has been a headache so far.

        Reply ↓
        1. ThatGirl*

          the more your profile is filled out, and the more you look at the “right” kinds of jobs and use the settings to tell it what the “wrong” jobs are, the better it will get. But I do still occasionally get oddball recommendations, but overall it’s pretty good.

          Reply ↓
        3. cleo*

          I saved a couple job searches in LinkedIn for specific job titles and that has helped with their recommendations.

          I also want to recommend setting up alerts / saving job searches in industry specific job boards. Since you want to stay in healthcare, I’d look for healthcare job boards that list IT jobs.

          Reply ↓
        4. Thin Mints didn't make me thin*

          You may want to tell LinkedIn not to display older jobs that aren’t relevant to the career you want, or even remove them from your profile entirely.

          Reply ↓
      1. Jessen*

        Thanks a lot! I know people always say “look at industry specific job boards” but when you’re on your first job in an industry and have never been involved in hiring, it’s not always clear what those are.

        Reply ↓
    3. Decidedly Me*

      LinkedIn is where I found my last job (along with all the others I applied to). WeWorkRemotely I’ve used successfully in the past, as well.

      Reply ↓
    4. EngGirl*

      I just found what I wanted on indeed weirdly enough but I would say linked in is a good option especially if you can quietly mark yourself as open to work. That usually sparks some recruiters to reach out.

      Reply ↓
      1. Jessen*

        Honestly my job already knows. I’m an openly trans person working in federal government healthcare. I figured getting references from my current managers was worth the risk of telling them I’m job searching at a time when anyone with half a brain can figure out why I’d be job searching.

        Reply ↓
    5. Surrogate Tongue Pop*

      And Dice for Tech focused roles, it sometimes has stuff on there that I don’t see on LinkedIn or Indeed/ZipRecruiter.

      Good luck!

      Reply ↓
    6. Jules the 3rd*

      Indeed, Monster, industry-specific job boards, targeted company sites.

      Only start-ups and small companies hire by word of mouth, and the good ones will cast a wider net with job boards.

      Reply ↓
    7. Parenthesis Guy*

      LinkedIn is good. But also looking at companies career pages makes sense. If you have actual healthcare experience/knowledge, then looking at companies focusing in those areas make sense. If you’re system admin or something and not really doing healthcare work, just look for big companies.

      Reply ↓
      1. Jessen*

        See that’s where it gets confusing for me. I don’t actually know what companies are operating in my area, or how to find out that information for companies that aren’t open to the public. I’m wary of moving because a lot of places in the country really aren’t safe for me right now. I’d be happy to apply to companies in my area but I’m not sure who’s around and hiring or where to get that information. Since a lot of my focus is in cybersecurity I think many places don’t want to do fully remote, although I’m open to it.

        Reply ↓
        1. Global Cat Herder*

          There are national cybersecurity conferences – look at who the presenters are, what companies they work for, etc. Haunt the “careers” page of each of those companies. Many of those may have a “sign up for alerts” and will email you.

          This is what I’m currently doing for a very niche IT role where Indeed and LinkedIn results are basically “we don’t understand, here’s general work”. One company is hiring 6 of the very niche role, which I wouldn’t know if I hadn’t found through a conference that they used this niche, and then set up an alert on their careers page!

          Reply ↓
          1. Jessen*

            Thanks that is a good idea! I’ve had some issues with Indeed confusing “cybersecurity” for “security guard” so specialized ideas might help.

            Reply ↓
    8. RedinSC*

      If you are still OK working for government, your local government is probably always looking for IT people, and they all have health care and adjacent offices for those jobs, look directly through their sites, for example, google, County Name jobs and see what they have.

      You could look directly at your local hospitals and medical service providers too. I’d narrow down a few places and look directly for their jobs listings.

      Reply ↓
    9. Generic Name*

      I used a combo of contacting people in my network and applying to jobs on Indeed or LinkedIn. By the way, if you interact with literally ANYONE ELSE in your course of work, that is your network. Are there any vendors or clients you talk to? Former coworkers who have left your current company? Those people are all in your network. I reached out to colleagues at other companies and said that I was looking to move on, and did they know of any openings. It’s a totally normal thing to do, in addition to looking at job boards and company websites. :)

      Reply ↓
      1. Jessen*

        So the thing here is due to the way things work, my network is both rather small and very siloed in to people who either directly or indirectly work for the federal government. Which is currently making it extremely clear that they don’t want people like me working for them. But even that aside, my job works through a ticketing system with almost no direct contact. I don’t think I’ve had a conversation with someone outside of my immediate coworkers and management since 2019.

        Reply ↓
    10. Anon for This*

      My son has been looking for a job in healthcare as well, though in records. The hospitals near us have jobs advertised on their web sites, though some send you back to the larger corporation that owns them. More IT than anything else, though I have no way to judge whether the pay is competitive. Might want to start looking at the hospitals near you.

      Reply ↓
    11. Texan In Exile*

      I have gotten every single job I have ever had either through my grad school job posting board or, in the past 15 years, from job ads. I have never once gotten a job via networking.

      And Alison’s advice has been invaluable for all of it – how to write a resume, how to write a cover letter (I once got an interview for a job that didn’t exist because my cover letter was so good – I had written about how I was not qualified for the position they posted but I would be perfect to report to that person), how to interview.

      I promise you it can be done!

      Reply ↓
    12. Sled dog mama*

      I’m healthcare adjacent in a similar way as IT and I’ve found that going to the hospital’s own website and looking through their careers page is usually really useful.

      Reply ↓
  10. Anon777*

    I’m thinking I may need to look for a new job and I’m open to it being in a different industry than I’m in now. I haven’t had to apply for a job in 25 years and am not sure where my skills would translate. Anyone have suggestions for job coaching or ways to find out what jobs would work with my skills and interests? I’m in a rural-ish area in the US so am open to meeting someone on Zoom if they are good at helping people explore careers that would work with their skill set. thanks!

    Reply ↓
    1. DisneyChannelThis*

      There’s websites for helping find careers of interest but they’re usually segregated by general field, like https://myidp.sciencecareers.org/ helps narrow down values,skills,interest into careers for science fields.

      I’d think about and journal for yourself: What are skills you have now, what are fields that are interesting to you?, what degrees/certificates do you have and are you open to getting more if needed or looking for immediately transferable? Are you able to relocate or does it have to be a job that exists in your area, do you have physical limitations, do you want to be indoor at a desk or moving around, or outdoor etc.

      Reply ↓
    2. Lady Lessa*

      Are there any community colleges in your area? I know that mine has a very good career center and is open to anyone in the area, not just students.

      Reply ↓
  11. Sarashina*

    Happy Friday, everyone! Anyone have tips to very nicely and diplomatically take several steps back from a former job when you got an internal promotion? It’s been about a year and a half since I got promoted, and everyone – including my successor – is a bit too reliant on my ability to step back in and manage that position. I’ve been trying to steer things back to the right channels on a case by case basis, but I think a firmer message might be needed.

    Reply ↓
    1. LA*

      Stop being responsive, even when passing it off. Slow your responses entirely – stop getting back to them same day, and increased that over time. Limit your helpfulness increasingly to referencing the responsible person, and then eventually to just forwarding without comment. Even if there’s no one in your old role – perhaps especially if.

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    2. Petrichor*

      I would consider two approaches. First, with your successor, I would name the pattern you are seeing: “I have noticed that my old colleagues are continuing to utilize my knowledge of the role, and it is taking time away from my current projects. I was happy to do this as you got settled in, but that’s not possible anymore.” I might also try to build up your successor’s confidence if you think that’s appropriate, “I have seen you respond to these issues before, and know you are great at it so I am going to be redirecting folks back to you from here on out.”
      With your former colleagues, just make yourself a very slow and inefficient source of help. When asked for something, keep saying “Oh, I am really swamped right now and wont be able to assist with that until *some amount of time in the future* but my successor is fully capable of handling that”

      Reply ↓
    3. Goddess47*

      See if you’re new boss will let you throw them under the bus for a while. “Oh, I have to ask Fergus but he’s been grumpy lately and I’m going to guess he’s going to say I can’t do that.” Or variations on a theme… ‘my new boss won’t let me’ can be a helpful out.

      Or, go back to the ‘what have you tried?’ tricks that float around here for dealing with others who do not want to/cannot learn some skill. Push it back at them.

      Another option, make the declaration that your new job is busy enough that you can only devote one hour on Thursday morning for questions about your old job. “I’ll get to that on Thursday.” And if they ask on Friday, it’s always “I’ll get to that on Thursday.” Give them the hour a week and if you can’t answer all the questions in an hour, then it waits for the next Thursday. It lets you be helpful while setting a boundary.

      Good luck!

      Reply ↓
    4. HonorBox*

      Talk to your boss and outline what’s happening. Ask for their blessing to push back so that you can say something like, “It has been 18 months, I’m focusing on what I’m doing in my new role, and really may not be the right person to weigh in any longer. Going forward, check with Xena for more guidance.” Or maybe you do provide some information, but not in real time. Can you get approval to set aside 4:30-5:00 every Friday to answer some questions? Then point out to those asking that you have a very tight schedule and can only dedicate that window of time to providing information.

      Reply ↓
  12. Jonathan MacKay*

    What’s the responsible thing to do with misplaced product that doesn’t belong to you or your company? We received some skids of our product, but mixed in with it was some specialty shampoo, which upon closer inspection is easily worth $45 a bottle. 6 bottles a box, with 5 boxes having fallen into our stock. We have no way of knowing who it belonged to, or which skid it had fallen off of in the truck.

    Contacting the shipping company did not accomplish anything, as they could not help without being given information I did not have. Ethically speaking, I’m of the opinion that the ‘right thing’ (or at least the most morally correct thing) would be to just dispose of it after making a fair effort to determine where it ought to go.

    Were I more comfortable with grey areas, it probably would’ve occurred to me to sell it all off myself, but since it more or less literally ‘fell off a truck’ it feels way too close to stolen goods to me.

    Reply ↓
      2. Charlotte Lucas*

        Technically, if you get something you didn’t order, you aren’t responsible for “fixing” the problem or paying for the item, but I second donation as the most ethical solution.

        Reply ↓
    2. Pomegranates*

      If you’ve done everything you can to return it and cannot, then I don’t see why you would have to get rid of it. I wouldn’t sell it, but to give it away to friends and family feels totally reasonable to me.

      Reply ↓
    3. ThatGirl*

      It’s not stolen in the sense that someone took it for fun or profit, but it’s “shrink,” essentially. It may be $45 a bottle retail but it’s likely nothing to whoever lost it.

      That said, donating to a shelter or food pantry (they sometimes take personal care goods) is a solid idea.

      Reply ↓
    4. CherryBlossom*

      Any chance you can give it away to employees? Value of the shampoo aside, I don’t think just disposing of it is the most ethical thing, since it would all go to waste in a landfill.

      You made a good faith effort to get the lost product back to its rightful owner; for all intents and purposes, it’s yours now. You’re free to keep it all and sell it if you’d like! But if that feels icky to you, at least making sure they go to places they’d be appreciated would probably be better than chucking them.

      FWIW, I used to work as an office manager and I’d get free samples/gifts from vendors trying to court our business. I’d pick out what I’d like, and set out the rest of it as First Come, First Serve freebies. Not quite the same, but free is free.

      Reply ↓
      1. Artemesia*

        Donate it to the food bank, a domestic violence shelter or a homeless shelter. I’d probably go with the first two as homeless shelters usually manage with individual small toiletries rather than larger ones whereas the large bottles are useful for the home for a food bank patron or for someone living in a domestic violence shelter.

        Reply ↓
    5. Venus*

      At the least don’t throw it out. If a neighbor asked me to get rid of it then I’d donate it to a shelter that has shower facilities. That, or sell it to a salon and donate the funds to the food bank. There are options that require little effort on your part that would make the community really happy!

      Reply ↓
    6. Seashell*

      It might be more aggravation to the shipping company or wherever it came from to figure everything out and find a way to get it back to the right person than it’s worth.

      If by dispose of it, you meant throw it in the garbage, I don’t think that’s ethical. It’s a usable product, so don’t waste it. Find someone who can use it or donate it to a charity that gives toiletries to those who need them.

      Reply ↓
      1. A. Lab Rabbit*

        This is it, really. I worked with a lot of shipping companies at old job, and it was much easier for them to just deal with claims (because they had a uniform process for that) than it was to try to sort these things out individually.

        It’s yours now, so please find someone who could really use it to donate to. I second looking into food banks & homeless shelters.

        Reply ↓
      2. Socks*

        Yeah, I’d say throwing it out is probably the least moral option here. Another vote for giving it to employees and/or donating it

        Reply ↓
    9. ReginaG*

      If you don’t feel you can keep it, rather than dispose of it (by which I assume you mean throw it out), donate it to a woman’s shelter. At least that way it won’t be wasted, and will do some good.

      Reply ↓
    10. RetiredAcademicLibrarian*

      If the shampoo is from a small company, maybe notifying them and seeing if they can track the order on their end (maybe only one store made that specific order). I’d only send it on if the company paid for the shipping.

      Otherwise, I agree with the donate to a shelter suggestions.

      Reply ↓
    11. Hastily Blessed Fritos*

      Personal hygiene stuff? Donate it, don’t discard it. Shelters are always going to need shampoo. In general, yeah, selling it would be unethical, but if you’re going to literally throw it away donation is almost always going to be preferable.

      Reply ↓
    12. HonorBox*

      You’ve done what you can do to find the rightful owner. I think selling it would be problematic ethically. But if you let employees grab some, and then donated some to shelters, you’d be able to have a clear conscience.

      I knew a company that donated misplaced or “damaged” (like the box got torn, and the shipment was rejected) to various fundraisers in the community throughout the year. It wasn’t lots and lots of stuff, but a school or church could always count on a TV or a video game system or something like that.

      Reply ↓
  13. serenity now*

    Hello and welcome to Part 2 of the federal government email nonsense, the sequel that none of us wanted and yet received anyway. Elon Musk is nice like that. I know we had a thread about this earlier this week, but I figured I’d give an update.

    On Monday, your friendly local federal government employees logged into their computers to discover yet another email. For a re-enactment of the reaction, please allow your mind to drift to the Arrested Development dead dove “I don’t know what I was expecting” reaction image.

    Since I had actual work to do, I ignored that email and only glanced at it a few hours later. It purported to be a FAQ; folks on reddit noted, accurately, that it appeared to be trying to respond to critiques posted on reddit. It responded badly.

    I have mentioned these emails are unsigned, let me be even more specific. They claim to come from someone named “HR”, whose email is HR at OPM dot gov. There is no signature at the bottom of the email. There is no digital signature on the email.

    As far as the email itself is concerned, it may as well come from a 10 year old at the local elementary school who has figured out how to spoof email addresses. This is why we are getting incessant emails from leadership assuring us that the emails are “valid and lawful”.

    Sure.

    There is a large contingent dutifully marking these emails as phishing; they are both correct and also probably pissing off their local IT office.

    But were it not for the internet grapevine and fednews reddit, I would have no idea these emails are coming from Elon Musk & Associates. They seem to be coming out of nowhere and then we get several more emails from leadership that yes these emails are “lawful”, but I have noted several times that leadership never actually says who they come from, how, and why. We’re just supposed to assume this is “HR” at OPM.

    Not to belabor the point even more, but HR in the government is never called just “HR”. We might refer to it as “HR” but the organizational group that does HR in our agencies is not known by that two letter acronym.

    This week, trying to sleep, I indulge myself by getting philosophical. Why is Elon Musk doing this? What does he gain by attempting (illegally) to destroy the US federal government? I understand why privatization happens; people love to charge folks for what they used to get for free. But what does Musk gain by destroying the FAA? The FSA? The GSA of all places? I don’t understand. It must be an ego thing. Perhaps my lack of understanding is why I’m not a billionaire. I also wasn’t born to billionaires, which is probably the bigger reason I’m not a billionaire. Alas, I must settle for being a low productive federal employee, helping save lives every day.

    I do not get the Tuesday emails that some on reddit received; they describe that as a “contract”, aka a word document that was fully editable. The competence of the people sending this out has never been assumed, but at this point, any possible benefit of the doubt must be extinguished. Either that email wasn’t sent to my agency or it was only sent to those who took the offer. Through the week, I do keep hearing that you have to resign in order to see the contract you’re signing. That seems backwards.

    Wednesday dawns and with it another Fork In The Road email. This one is long. I skim it. It is trying so, so, so hard to sell us on this “deferred resignation”. At the end, it has a “deferred resignation letter”, which is approximately 8 paragraphs that they should have sent the first time around, where they attempt to explain what this is and what your quitting entails and how that’s going to work. The carrot in all of this is that if you do this, you don’t have to give up telework/remote work, but your resignation is effective at the end of the fiscal year (end of September). So… you’re quitting now and will work for several months anyway. This is a change from what we were previously told, which is you quit now, stop working, but still get paid.

    Over and over, the question has been, how “deferred resignation” different from quitting? Why not just quit when you want to quit? Elon Musk & Co keep changing their answers on this. The one bright side of that is their incompetence is one thing that is stopping some people from taking the offer, because the offer is just so bizarre.

    This week also features a lot of obfuscating emails from leadership trying to explain things. For instance, we get an email from on high saying that those who take deferred resignation could get VERA (early retirement). Then I attend a town hall where we’re told that VERA has not been approved. Logic would also suggest that since deferred resignation is, y’know, quitting, and quitting is a different thing than retiring, that you cannot quit and then take retirement.

    Sidenote on this because I ran into it when dealing with people IRL about this: quitting is different from retiring. When you retire from the federal government, you get benefits. When you quit, you do not. Therefore, saying you can retire after you’ve already quit is a very strange thing to say.

    I am lucky (?) in that I have a lot of different leadership types sending me emails so I can see the full gamut of reactions, from cowardice to greatness. The truly best responses have been from those who are doing their best to slow walk everything, making it clear that we’re going to do everything by the book and according to policy, and whoops, turns out they didn’t bother to make policy, so we’re going to wait until they do, because you have to do things properly and make sure we’re complying correctly with everything. These are the folks who have calls where when someone says “I know [specific thing] is not allowed, but what about [tangential thing]?” and they reply “we have not been told tangential thing is not allowed”, subtext: go ahead and do the tangential thing.

    And then there are the other emails, which don’t do that. Everyone who parroted the line that DEI is shameful and illegal: I saw that. We all saw that. Everyone who is jumping to pretend trans people don’t exist: I see you, and I am slow walking you.

    We are also hearing over and over again that some positions aren’t eligible for deferred resignation. What positions are they? We don’t know. That question comes up over and over again. But we don’t know. You can certainly email “resign” to HR at OPM dot gov, but who is the one making the decision on if you’re allowed to quit or not?

    Important to note: everyone is allowed to quit. You just have to quit to your supervisor. OPM, as discussed last week, ain’t your supervisor (unless it is, my continuing condolences to my federal siblings).

    But swirling around this “deferred resignation” push is the idea that these positions will not be filled. So if every single doctor at your local VA took the offer, whoops, they’re not going to be filled. In theory. In practice, well, those positions are probably exempt from the hiring freeze. But good luck getting applicants!

    They’re trying to destroy the federal government and, hand to god, I really don’t understand why.

    This brings us to Thursday, the final day to accept the wonderful offer that is quitting your job with nothing lined up! Because if you don’t quit from us forcing you to quit (forcing someone to quit is illegal), bad things are going to happen! So you must quit while you have the chance! Take our offer OR ELSE.

    Thursday’s email is exactly the same as Wednesday’s. Guess they ran out of ideas. Excitement came when I was on a meeting about it this afternoon and someone broke in to say a judge paused the program. Someone followed up “but it’s not extended?” “Guess we’ll find out.”

    So did we get an email on Friday, considering the program is paused? Of course we did. Since they are (mercifully) out of clever ideas to insult us, it’s just a retread of the other ones, this time letting us know the offer is extended until 11:59pm on Monday night. This after all the emails assured us the offer would not be extended. But I’m glad someone taught them professionalism. Now if someone could just teach them to move slower and not break things. If toddlers can learn it, so can they.

    Quick FAQs:

    Q: How is any of this legal?

    A: It’s not.

    Q: Is there a legal way they could have shrunk the federal government, if that was truly their goal?

    A: Yep, they could have just offered VERA from the start and a whole lot of people would have taken it. It has eligibility requirements, though, and it doesn’t let you be needlessly cruel to millions of people or close USAID. There are also Reduction In Force (RIF) but those have, drum roll please, an actual process that must be followed.

    Q: Is anyone taking this “deal”?

    A: We don’t know. Last week, I heard some fears from supervisors that 40-50% of GS-6 and below staff would take the deal, based on what they were hearing at their meetings. The logic is that GS-6 and below folks get paid so little, that if they could quit and stop working now and keep getting paid until September, and they were sure they could get another job in the meanwhile, that this would be a really good offer for those who wanted to take it. The changing of the “deal” this week to be “actually you quit now but you work until September, or we fire you tomorrow and you don’t get paid at all” might change things, it might not, but it’s unclear if you can take back that “resign” email you sent.

    There’s also the remote folks who truly cannot return to the office — and the offices also don’t have space for them. There’s talk of exemptions for remote work for folks they like or can be convinced to like (aka military spouses). But for many remote folks, this is a very scary situation: they took a remote job on purpose. The only way they are being allowed to see to not have to return to the office is to resign, either normally or through this process. And this process, in theory, might pay them (it won’t pay them).

    Q: Are people already being told that they can’t put a fork in this road?

    A: Yes, we’re starting to get some guidance from our leadership on the exempted professions, aka even if you told Elon Musk you’re quitting, you’re not actually quitting.

    Q: Do you, personally, believe anyone will get paid through this process?

    A: No.

    Reply ↓
    1. Watry*

      What does Musk get through this? Power, personal satisfaction, the ability to push his bigotry on everyone, money. I’ve seen speculation that targeting USAID in particular is about them having helped end apartheid in South Africa, so maybe also revenge.

      Reply ↓
      1. XX*

        He seems to me to be the kind of guy who wants to make an “impact”. He doesn’t particularly care if it’s a good or bad impact – actually I don’t think he’d define it on those terms. A good thing makes an impact, a bad thing doesn’t. Change is good, stasis is bad. (Unless of course it’s a stasis he likes, like apartheid.)

        Why work so much on electric cars? They’re different than all the other cars around them, and hey, the people buying them have high social value, so the change is extra-justified. But now everyone else is making electric cars, and he’s made the ultimate car (cybertruck) so there’s no more change to be made. So he lost interest in Tesla.

        Why go full-in on fake AI while also warning about the dire consequences of unrestrained AGI? Because it’s a change from the status quo, and it freaks a ton of people out so it’s doubly interesting, and he wants to be at the center of it all.

        Why go barreling into the federal government full-tilt? Because he doesn’t like it (they don’t let him Chanhe the World TM as much as he wants) and has to change it, because change is good. Pissing off a bunch of people who already hate him is a bonus.

        Hell, even the letter X. We use it as a stand-in, a “TBD”, and undefined variable. (Hence my name here.) “X” is the symbol of change, of opportunity yet to be defined. So he loves it.

        Reply ↓
      3. Slightly Less Evil Bunny*

        I’ve seen reports – have NO idea how credible they are, though – that USAID was investigating Starlink and Ukraine. ???

        As to the stated reason for all of this – the money saving – the math doesn’t seem to be mathing for me. They’re hoping to get 5-10 percent of the federal government (so, 230,000 to 300,000 max, depending on your starting count) to take this offer. They are claiming this would save fedgov $100 billion.

        That’s… one hell of a compensation package those 200,000+ folks must have. Or maybe I’m missing something in my ignorance. But it’s not like they’re showing their work on any of these calculations.

        Reply ↓
        1. Artemesia*

          USAID does things like assist in Ebola and Marburg outbreaks. By containing them, they don’t end up flying to and spreading in the US. Everything we do in ‘foreign aid’ is designed to be in our interest. Destroying this process just brings it closer to our door.

          The destruction of the FBI will predictably mean that terrorism will occur that could have been prevented. The Afghani who planned an election day terrorist attack including bombing was caught due to cooperation between FBI and other organizations; it takes a lot of effort to identify and deter this kind of madness. Crushing the FBI’s competence which is in full swing will almost certainly lead to more terrorist attacks and of course then oppression of people who had nothing to do with them.

          Reply ↓
      4. RedinSC*

        A former coworker’s daughter worked for Tesla, the battery division. She’s no longer there. BUT she said things worked great, until Musk would show up at the office. He was pure chaos. He’d just mess things up, create chaos and then lose interest and leave and things would get back on track.

        I can only hope that his attention span is small and he’ll wander away from messing the government up too much more.

        Reply ↓
    2. anonymous state employee*

      My guess (no better than anyone else’s though) is that there isn’t really a goal, per se.

      Elon Musk is that obnoxious kid who always breaks all his toys, and now he’s been handed the Federal government to play with.

      From his perspective,
      1) it’s all a game
      2) we’re all NPCs
      3) there aren’t any consequences for losing the game, so he might as well just mess around until he gets bored.

      My sad little sliver of hope through all this is that there are smarter members of the oligarch class who know they benefit from having a functioning, if not flourishing, working class, and are in a position to save the golden goose from immediate gutting? But I really don’t know.

      I’m in a red state, about 2 1/2 years from retirement eligibility, and I’m nervous AF. :( All this is so wildly infuriating to witness.

      Reply ↓
    3. Hlao-roo*

      There is a large contingent dutifully marking these emails as phishing; they are both correct and also probably pissing off their local IT office.

      I feel for the staff at the local IT offices but also the large contingent dutifully marking these emails as phishing warms my heart. If I were a fed, I would definitely be among them.

      Thank you for sharing this inside look at the madness.

      Reply ↓
    6. A federal employee*

      The emails are just so unprofessional.

      Up to this point, all official emails I got looked “official” and boring and lots look like a letter format in an email. And have official, professional subject lines.

      Also all previous official emails have never insulted my work and my role before. I’ve had to listen to leadership echo the DERP info, but they all start off gushing with how much we’re appreciated and how important our jobs are (which is the opposite of what every “fork in the road” email says).

      Reply ↓
    7. Head Sheep Counter*

      Visualize a greedy dirty racist toddler… and ta da… Elon Musk (that he has over 8 children boggles the mind).

      I’m fed-adjacent and I’m so terrified and upset for my colleagues and for our nation.

      Reply ↓
    8. Wellie*

      Fed here.
      I’ve actually never gotten any of these emails. My paranoia tells me that it’s bc I’m going to be fired as a DEI hire, anyway (female in a male dominated part of the gov’t). Oh wait, I just remembered, it’s not paranoia if they *are* out to get you.

      Reply ↓
    9. cleo*

      Anyone read Heather Cox Richardson’s substack? Her email on Feb 5 sent me down a partial rabbit hole reading about the apparent blueprint for Musk’s actions. It doesn’t address his motives, but it kind of, sort of explains his tactics.

      From Heather’s substack:
      ‘journalist Gil Duran of The Nerd Reich noted that a thinker popular with the technological elite in 2022 laid out a plan to gut the U.S. government and replace it with a dictatorship. This would be a “reboot” of the country, Curtis Yarvin wrote, and it would require a “full power start,” a reference to restarting a stalled starship by jumping to full power, which risks destroying the ship.’

      Reply ↓
    10. 3-Foot Tall Inflatable Rainbow Unicorn*

      Elon has plenty of motivation.

      1) He likes to smash things and get headlines.

      2) He stands to benefit from suppressing other companies angling for government contracts.

      3) He stands to benefit from Russia and China, both of whom he does business with and both of whom also benefit from a weakened America.

      4) He’s an accelerationist – he literally believes that if he breaks enough things there will be a new world order and that he will on top of it. That’s behind all the “there will be short term pain but everything will be better” assurances he keeps giving out.

      Reply ↓
    11. JustMyImagination*

      What else does Musk get through this? He has SpaceX and the Starlight satellites waiting in the wings for when the FAA and NASA get privatized. Then his companies can do what they want and he doesn’t need to abide by any pesky regulations. Because what future government makes him angry by enforcing regulations if he can turn around and shut down air travel or government communications?

      Reply ↓
    12. Jules the 3rd*

      Thank you very much for this, it’s fascinating, in a ‘watching the car crash’ way, and you and all the fed workers have my deepest sympathy.

      Reply ↓
    13. Another Fed reporting in*

      My federal department (maybe?) has been sending parallel emails to the OPM fork stuff from “Message from the Assistant Secretary for Administration” from the email address “MessagefromtheAssistantSecretaryforAdministration (at) do[x].gov” Now, this looks made up but it is, or was, a legit email. Up til Jan 22 it was used to communicate things like upcoming federal holidays, reminders about federal assistance programs, and normal stuff like that. AND, they were ALWAYS signed by the actual person in that role. Since then we’ve had four of these emails (regarding the new exec orders and the forking mess), all with zero header and no signature. Meanwhile we’ve had exactly one (1) broadcast email from the new Secretary of [Department] and it was as tone-deaf as you can imagine – even the words used were just parroting a recent prez press conference.

      I cannot stress enough how these emails are no longer signed by anyone, and there’s no identifying content of any kind that would indicate they are legitimate. There’s zero accountability – it is exactly like this email has been hacked or spoofed in support of the illegal actions being levied at federal employees. After so many phishing trainings and tests and actual phishing that occurs, it is completely reasonable to report any and all of these as phishing/spoofing.

      Reply ↓
    14. Rhymetime*

      Thank you so much for what is no doubt extensive time to share your updates on the mess that is federal government employment right now. I work for a nonprofit whose role is supporting national parks, and the details you’re sharing provide helpful insights for me to understand what my federal colleagues are going through right now. While my organization is doing our best to step up where we can, there’s nothing like just telling my NPS colleagues that I care about what they’re experiencing. I’m thinking of you and everyone you know, and this and future updates in the Friday open thread are very appreciated.

      Reply ↓
  14. Tea Monk*

    I have a problem- I’d like to interview for a new job, but I’m not great at my old one so it’s hard to think of things to put on my resume. I want to put a good spin like ” Oh I learned a lot, blah blah” in interviews, but it’s hard to get an interview when you were average. Not the worst employee by any means but not really a standout performer

    Reply ↓
    1. EngGirl*

      You put whatever you can as far as high points/metrics. I would put emphasis on things like being “reliable and solid”

      Also are you looking for a more lateral move or to move up? If you’re looking to move up right away it will probably be harder, but if you’re looking laterally you can explain some of this in a cover letter/personal statement and expand in the interview. Focus on the differences between the company you’re currently at and the new company and how you could see yourself performing well there. Like if you’re not a standout employee because you’re 1 of 15 people in a role and you’re rank is like 6/15, but the new company is smaller you can say that you’d like the opportunity to have more of an impact within your team. Also mentioning things like limited growth opportunities where you are.

      Reply ↓
      1. Tea Monk*

        Lateral. My biggest weakness at work is that people simply don’t do what I tell them to do. My strong points are things that no one thinks are important like ” helps out coworkers ” or ” helps train the newbies” or ” is professional to people all the time” or “does what my boss says” lol. People would scoff and say everyone does those things, but there’s actually a need for people who do those things.

        Reply ↓
        2. TheGirlintheAfternoon*

          It sounds like your current job doesn’t value your strong points, but I assure you, MANY places will. Good luck!

          Reply ↓
  15. Fraction or Whole*

    Does anyone have experience with fractional roles? Multiple people have suggested that I start being a Fractional CTO. I’m finding wildly different descriptions both from the people suggesting it and online, so I’d love to hear some real world experience with a fractional anything – either working with them or filling the role themselves.

    I’m very intruiged by this – I’ve been offered the role of startup CTO before and pushed to be a founder from several people because my background ocillates between being a developer and manager or director; I’ve been a founding engineer and worked at multiple startups; and I typically get stuck doing most of the product work because I wear so many hats. But I no idea what I’d be signing up for or what people are expecting or how to even get started!

    Reply ↓
  16. Amber Rose*

    I have tried over and over to get HR the information they need without compromising my own role, and every time they ignore the emails where I try to compromise and then send emails days later saying I’m not giving them what they need. This latest one said “managers are frustrated.”

    So I said in my email, I’m frustrated too because I’ve reached out multiple times with offers for compromise and offering data and got no response, and I’m at a loss for what I’m doing wrong here. But actually, I know what I’m doing “wrong.” Previous Manager did no program management because they freely used her as admin for HR 8 hours a day. That’s why this program is broken and has failed the last two audits.

    I resent that I was hired on to fix a broken system alone, and I’m also expected to be an admin assistant for HR which has a 4 person team. There’s no way I can win this. Either I do as I’m told, fail my own job, and get fired, or don’t do as I’m told, get constant emails attacking my failures in HR… and get fired.

    They want to have a meeting next week with all 4 HR people, me and my boss. How do I explain to him that this isn’t a meeting, it’s an ambush?

    Complicating factor: one of the HR people is my boss’s wife and the HR director is related to the CEO. This company is a disaster.

    Should I just quit? Should I ask my boss to just let me go so I can get EI? I don’t know wtf to do here but my stress levels are through the roof.

    Reply ↓
    1. MsM*

      If you can afford to quit and you think not doing so immediately will jeopardize your mental health, then quit. Otherwise, I would do your best to frame this as 100% their issue and make them pay to force you out if they’re convinced you’re incompetent. Use the meeting to the best of your ability to lay out for everyone at the same time why what they’re expecting is unreasonable and your efforts/suggestions to find a functional solution. If they try to berate you, be clear that you hear their frustration, but it doesn’t change what options are realistically available, and/or that they don’t get to talk to you like that. Either they’ll back down when they realize bullying won’t work, you’ll be out of there with severance and/or unemployment, or they’ll prove they need you more than you need them by keeping you around even though you’re supposedly the worst, and you can just do the bare minimum until you find something better.

      Reply ↓
      1. Amber Rose*

        I could quit, but I’ve only got enough savings to last an extremely frugal 10 months or so.

        I’m in this mess because I refuse to let them railroad me into work I have no business doing (HR work, which requires legal knowledge I don’t have), and have now made a solid enemy of the HR director. I haven’t even made it out of my first three months yet so it’s easier for them to get rid of me, but I don’t know if that’ll impact my ability to get unemployment benefits.

        My boss is nominally on my side, but I know he is sick of hearing about this and wishes I would just be quiet and not make a fuss.

        Reply ↓
    2. Stevie*

      It sounds like you and everyone else need to get on the same page on what your job description and expectations include. I don’t totally understand the dynamics here, but if it were me I would start by having an in-person conversation with my boss outlining my concerns and why I think they are happening, and proposing a potential solution (Perhaps HR needs to hire their own dedicated Admin or something). I would say don’t quite (yet) unless you truly are miserable and don’t see potential for improvement.

      Reply ↓
    3. DisneyChannelThis*

      Are you union, can you take a union rep to meeting with you?

      For the meeting itself, try to game it a little, its not you vs HR with boss as witness, it’s HR/you/boss together vs the problem. That mental shift can really help outcomes. “I’m so glad we’re able to meet all in person, I really want to get this resolved…”

      It’s unclear to me what your main issue is. If it’s not enough time to do repeated HR requests, make like a color coded breakdown of your day/week. These are main job tasks A B C D E, I do daily/weekly and they take this much time. HR request X, Y and Z would take this much time. Which should I prioritize, can we reduce HR request frequency, can someone else take on Y and Z, etc type questions.

      If your issue is they’re asking for data that’s not legal for you to pull, or possible to pull bring the documentation. We are unable to generate X and Y, here’s how the data looks on my end. We are not allowed by legal regulations to generate Z, here’s the reference to compliance documents.

      Reply ↓
      1. Amber Rose*

        Not union. I have made a solid enemy out of HR so it’s hard not to see this as a them problem.

        So, here’s the thing. I do most of the work regarding worker injuries and worker’s comp cases. I forward them what I work on, but HR wants me to go into every single case every single day, look for new documents, and then email them. All in separate emails according to case so they can file their emails properly. I’m also supposed to generate hard copies for physical filing. They also want me to advise them on who should be paid and for what days, which I solidly refuse to do because I have zero experience with anything payroll and I won’t be held accountable for being wrong.

        I’m a certified professional, not a friggin admin. They can pull their own damn reports, they have access. They have more access, since HR gets to see more private information than me. And there’s FOUR of them.

        Reply ↓
        1. Analystical Tree Hugger*

          “I have made a solid enemy out of HR so it’s hard not to see this as a them problem.”

          First, from what you’ve written, it seems like HR *is* the problem. Or maybe, HR plus the company leadership. So, can you let yourself recognize that in your own mind?

          Second, as Captain Awkward is known to say, reasons are for reasonable people. These are NOT reasonable people.

          Third, given the above, THIS IS NOT ON YOU TO FIX. Honestly, I think the outcome to aim for is that you mutually agree to separate and the company agrees in writing not to contest unemployment. Possibly talk with an lavor lawyer to see if there’s a way to make this legally binding.

          Reply ↓
          1. Amber Rose*

            Yeah. As of today I’ve been iced out of incident reports. HR seems to have instructed the managers and leads that only they get all the reports, and then I get them when they deign to forward them along.

            This isn’t the flex that they seem to think it is, but since my presence here is now harming workers, I’m going to see if we can part ways amicably.

            Reply ↓
    4. NaoNao*

      I doubt the boss is going to change or do anything if they “understand” it’s an ambush. You can’t get people to understand something that doesn’t benefit them. If HR is boss’s wife and besties with the CEO, etc, you are outnumbered and the attitude I’d take is “I need help understanding how best I can help you. Right now I’m struggling and I don’t want to be.”

      I’d actually go into that meeting with the attitude of “what’s the company’s priority and focus, and how can we use my limited time and specific skills/background/certs/whatever to best achieve that?” Focus on “given that giving X information to HR is going to cause [whatever issues], what’s the best work-around here?”

      But also…I hope this doesn’t come off harsh but didn’t you just get this job recently after your previous job also had a super-tangled and extremely stressful set up that caused tons of anguish and repeated no-win situations? Or am I mistaken? It seems like the job-picking radar is a little “off” there if this is the case, or maybe the role/industry itself isn’t the right match if the jobs keep wind up being these no-win Catch-22.

      Reply ↓
      1. Amber Rose*

        My last job was great for 8 years and became a problem in the last 2 when I picked up a bully and was fired for complaining about harassment. So yeah, it was tangled and stressful, but for a different reason. Thanks for the victim blaming though. Obviously I’m the problem.

        Reply ↓
    5. Ama*

      I’m so sorry, this sounds incredibly frustrating and stressful. If you don’t want to just quit (wouldn’t blame you), you could potentially treat this meeting with HR as a fact finding mission.

      Basically what you’re trying to get out of this conversation is for HR to either agree you can be left alone to do your actual job or admit, in front of your boss, that they’d rather you spend your time being their admin rather than keeping the program from failing the next audit. How your boss reacts to what they say will tell you a lot about whether it’s worth continuing to fight this battle or to cut your losses. You might want to bring print outs of emails if you want to make sure people can’t twist your words or misrepresent their own when recounting past conversations.

      Good luck, whatever you decide.

      Reply ↓
  17. RF*

    My team at work just launched a search to fill an open permanent position (the incumbent left last summer but upper administration is sloooooow here). This is very exciting, but puts me in a bit of a pickle. Two members of my team are in temporary positions (one is a contractor whose term is up soon, and the other is a graduate student who will be graduating this spring), and so they’re applying for the open position. I think both of them would be great in the role, and I expect that both of them will be asking me for help with their applications (cover letter feedback and that sort of thing) – I’m not on the search committee, so I’m not bound by any sort of restrictions to what I can tell them. If they do ask me for help, should I tell each one that the other has asked me for help? I don’t want to discourage either one or give the impression that I think one of them is a stronger candidate (they really are equally compelling candidates!), but I think that transparency in these kinds of things is essential. How would y’all proceed in this situation?

    Reply ↓
    1. WantonSeedStitch*

      I honestly DON’T think you’re honor-bound to transparency here. You don’t have to tell either one that you’re helping the other. What you SHOULD make sure you do is offer both of them the same kinds, and amount, of help. Spend the same amount of time reviewing stuff. Do the same services for both.

      Reply ↓
    2. Qwerty*

      Do not tell them that you are helping both of them, they need their conversations with you about their application to be confidential. Just make sure to be measured but supportive during the process.

      I would also check with the hiring team before helping either of them to verify what you can help with. There may be concerns about appearance of favoritism (example – what if only one person asks for your help?)

      Reply ↓
      1. Apex Mountain*

        In this case, if only one person asked for help imo that’s a pretty strong mark in favor of that candidate. Not taking advantage of an obvious resource is telling imo

        Reply ↓
  18. BOK*

    I’m being groomed for a project management position, and am leading projects as they come through as part of my training program for this position. I have been doing parts of this job for years due to understaffing and covered my boss’s job leading some high-profile projects for a couple weeks last year while he was on vacation. I’m supposed to be leading another project now, which is in the beginning stages. I feel fully capable to do this, but my boss can be so helpful as to be overbearing. He very much likes to be in control, and I’m already feeling some micromanagement from him as he sees emails come through, if I don’t respond exactly immediately. Does anyone have tips for this type of situation, on how to navigate a project I am capable of leading, while also making sure my boss is in the loop without just handing him the reins?

    Reply ↓
  19. CherryBlossom*

    How do I pass time at work when my options are very limited?

    For context, I’m a temp that was brought on for a specific project, the project wrapped, and yet I am still here. I’ve spoken to my manager about what else I can take on, but while she occasionally gives me small tasks, I’ve mostly been told to be “on standby”. For what, I don’t know, but frankly I don’t want to push it too hard. I still need the money and don’t want them to realize I’m no longer needed. So I’ve been keeping my head down and just trying to pass the time. That’s where my question comes in: how do I do that?

    Here’s the list of things I can’t do that I would normally lean on: read a book/magazine, work on puzzles/crosswords/sudoku, job hunt, general web-browsing, listen to audiobooks or music, watch youtube/netflix, decorate/organize my workspace, or anything that involves me being away from my desk for too long.

    Some of this is because any non-work website is blocked (I’m shocked AAM is allowed), and some of this is because my desk is in a highly visible area to internal and external clients so I can’t look at anything beside my computer. And while I adore AAM, there’s only so much diving into the archives I can do. Help!

    Reply ↓
    1. Tradd*

      Can you dig into your word processing/spreadsheet/email software and learn more about how they work/expand your knowledge? If you use MS Office, is the MS support website allowed so you can look things up?

      Reply ↓
    2. Recovering Perfectionist*

      Can you take an online class? There’s plenty of free ones out there and pretty reputable too, and you could even do something related to your work area to keep it work appropriate.

      Reply ↓
    3. DisneyChannelThis*

      Read the help manuals for all the software on your computer, this is a skill set you can learn and take with you to the future. Ask if they can unblock a site for a course or training you’d like to learn. Write up documentation for the project you just completed.

      Reply ↓
      1. RedinSC*

        This, and also, are there process documents for the things in your office, even if they’re small things that you did.

        Processing incoming mail
        1. do x
        2. do y
        3. you know what comes next

        Create those process documents. They’re super helpful and are things that often fall by the wayside when people don’t have the time to do them

        Reply ↓
      2. Agnes Grey*

        Can you get to your library system’s website? You may be able to access LinkedIn Learning or something similar through them (or language lessons or at least ebooks).

        Reply ↓
      3. CherryBlossom*

        I would love to, but all those sites are blocked. They wouldn’t unlock google for me to video-call with outside vendors, so I highly doubt they’d unlock something less work-related for me.

        As for the project I did, it was a one-off thing that I actually wasn’t very involved in. I was essentially an extra set of hands to very basic things like make PowerPoints or call vendors to ask a pre-approved list of questions. There’s really nothing for me to document, since a lot of steps didn’t involve me.

        Reply ↓
      1. CherryBlossom*

        Thumb-drives aren’t allowed. I’m not too-tech savvy so I don’t know what they have to block it, but a little pop-up loads and logs that you attempted to connect a thumb-drive. It’s really locked down tight in this office.

        Reply ↓
    5. Jaunty Banana Hat I*

      Can you write in a notebook, or read from something that looks like a notebook? Or send yourself something to read on your computer/from your email that looks like something for work?

      Reply ↓
      1. CherryBlossom*

        Thank you for suggesting the notebook! I do have a little company branded notebook that I can write in. It might not kill 8 hours, but it will definitely help.

        Reply ↓
    6. Charlotte Lucas*

      Are there any online trainings you can take? If the company has an intranet, that could be an interesting read (especially if you might want to pursue a permanent position there).

      Reply ↓
      1. CherryBlossom*

        There is an intranet, but as a temp, I’m locked down into only a handful of pages; only those related to the project I was brought on for. Also, they’ve made it clear upfront that I’m only here for this project and there is no permanent role.

        They just haven’t gotten around to cutting me loose yet, and I’m hoping to stay and fly under the radar for as long as possible.

        Reply ↓
  20. Elsewise*

    I started a new job about two years ago. A year ago, my boss told me that she really wanted me to take a promotion (think Level 1 to Level 2). I applied, didn’t get it. It was pretty disheartening because leadership (not me, just my boss) had been talking like I was definitely going to be in that position, and it had spread throughout the department. The person who got the job ahead of me is lovely, but I was fending off “wait, I thought you were going to be the new Level 2” messages for weeks.

    Well, eventually my boss managed to push through creating a new Level 2 position for me, and I moved up. I’ve been in that role for just under four months now. Last month, a position a step above (Assistant Manager) opened up. I didn’t apply because I was so new, but the hiring manager reached out to me after the job was closed and said that she hadn’t seen my application, if I wasn’t interested it was fine, but if I was interested I should definitely apply. I talked to my boss, who had been the one to turn down my original promotion, and she said I should definitely go for it. So I did.

    I have a final interview today. Absolutely baffling that in less than half a year I’ve gone from not getting a promotion I was really counting on to being asked to apply for a promotion I’d never considered.

    Since it’s so unexpected I haven’t told my friends or family, just my partner and one coworker. So no real question, I just needed to talk to someone about it, I guess. Wish me luck!

    Reply ↓
    2. JustMyImagination*

      Best of luck! Similar happened to me last year. I applied for a promotion that had felt like a sure thing from my manager and they went with an external hire. The external person didn’t work out and I ended up with it anyways. I’ve also been tapped for special training and development as I was tagged a “high potential employee”. It definitely makes your head spin! I like to think that handling the rejection well made people see me more professionally and capable of handling higher stress situations.

      Reply ↓
  21. Tradd*

    Customs broker here. How are my fellow brokers/supply chain/trade compliance folks in the US doing after tariff whiplash this week? I spent all Saturday closely watching the news. Saw it went into effect at midnight Tuesday so we would have ONE business day to prepare. Logged on Sunday afternoon and worked 5 hours cranking out customs clearances. That helped so much for Monday. We would have ordinarily done these clearances later in the week, but they had to get done by end of business Monday so they wouldn’t get hit with new 10% on goods from China.

    I had lots of customers asking for lists of HS codes affected. It took them a bit to understand this was a blanket tariff, unlike the 2018 tariffs when a number of products, such as toys, were not hit with the 25% extra.

    Things have now largely calmed down. If you have access to the Wall Street Journal, they did an excellent article on the role of customs brokers. Good explanation of what we do.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/tariff-turmoil-elevates-customs-brokers-to-star-role-in-supply-chains-eb8ab1a8?st=iZHzuz&reflink=article_copyURL_share

    Reply ↓
    1. Busy Middle Manager*

      Not in that industry but my side hustle has been stock options and swing trading and I did well in past years, but since November, keep having my gains wiped out every time you know who tweets

      I’m so disgusted today, I lose $3K in two minutes today because more tariff talk. Worse timing for me since I am now unemployed so it would be nice to have my usual side income for food

      My stance is, either do it or not. Is it just constant rumors and changes on your end? I can’t imagine.

      I was disgusted last week at the henny-penny sky is falling rhetoric then them swooping in to save the day on Monday. But all they did was postpone whatever tariff chat that was going to happen.

      Reply ↓
      1. Tradd*

        Yeah, I’m not happy with how my 401K is doing either.

        Currently I don’t have any stuff with Mexico and Canadian stuff is limited to a few occasional truck border clearances. I had one Tuesday from Canada that the importer got hit with the extra 10% China duty on (35% total) but that’s because the stuff he was importing from Canada was made in China.

        We were keeping an ear on the news (I usually have a local very mainstream AM talk radio station on) and the changes with the Canada/Mexico tariffs being delayed a month at the last minute was just wild. We were trying to get clearances done on all the shipments from China we could, while dealing with many emails about the increases.

        Reply ↓
  22. MissGirl*

    I know I’m overthinking this and there is no one answer for everyone, but I’m curious what other people have done when communicating health issues at work.

    I was recently diagnosed with Stage 0 Breast Cancer, meaning it’s highly treatable and very early. With treatment, I have the same chances of dying of this as the average woman who’s never been diagnosed. As of right now, only my managers know of my diagnosis since I was out for testing and surgery. I did my recovery over Christmas so no one else needed to know and we’re all remote.

    However, I’m about to start radiation for the next four weeks. There’s a strong chance I’ll have some exhaustion, and I’ll also have daily appointments. I may need to dip out here and there without much notice. Again, managers are well aware and we’re all remote.

    I think I need to communicate something to the stakeholders I support and to the two coworkers who may be picking up the slack if I’m out. I’m more of an open person and it feels weird to me to be cagey by saying generic health appointments. It also feels weird to share I have cancer when it’s so minor, like I’m fishing for attention. I’m not even comfortable saying that to myself, honestly. I want to be matter-of-fact about it all and tell people what’s going on, but I don’t know if that’s TMI or if I just say, “I’m undergoing medical treatment for the next month and may be out occasionally.”

    Reply ↓
    1. londonedit*

      It’s totally up to you, but I think your ‘I’m undergoing medical treatment for the next month and may be out occasionally’ is absolutely fine if that’s what you want to say. If anyone asks any follow-up questions, or even says ‘Oh dear, are you OK?’, you can always just say ‘Yes, thanks – I’ve just got a few appointments coming up to get it all sorted’. If you do decide to mention cancer, you could frame it as ‘Yes, I’m fine – unfortunately I’ve been diagnosed with cancer but it’s all very early and very treatable so I just need a bit of time out over the next month to get the treatment sorted and then I’ll be fine’. But don’t feel pressure to do that if you don’t want to – so much about cancer can end up being managing other people’s reactions to it, and it’s fine not to want to do that when you’re trying to deal with it yourself!

      Reply ↓
      1. MsM*

        Agreed, but if you do want to disclose, don’t feel like you need to minimize what’s going on. It’s cancer! The fact it’s easily treatable and the prognosis is good doesn’t make that any less scary.

        Reply ↓
    2. WantonSeedStitch*

      You could say something like, “I’m dealing with some health issues right now. I should be just fine, but I’ll need to undergo medical treatments for the next month.” That way you don’t get people speculating about, say, IVF treatments because you’re stating it’s for health issues. But you avoid talking about cancer specifically, and you assure them you’re pretty much OK.

      Best wishes for all the treatments to go well and for long-term health!

      Reply ↓
    3. CherryBlossom*

      “I’m undergoing medical treatment for the next month and may be out occasionally.” is perfectly acceptable! Don’t think of it as being cagey, more like you’re sparing people the details. Especially if it’s easily treatable, it’ll be better for everyone’s peace of mind.

      Another factor to consider is that people will treat you differently once the hear the Big C-Word, no matter how much you downplay it. Science communicator Hank Green, who also had an easily treatable cancer, mentioned that some colleagues and friends learned he had Cancer, and essentially started treating him like he was terminal, even though he was expected to make a full recovery (and thankfully since has!). Just another angle to consider when deciding how much to tell people.

      Reply ↓
    4. SunnyShine*

      I left for weekly appointments for allergy shots. I was open with my boss. For everyone else, I just did my regular out of office message. “I’m out at 2pm and will return tomorrow at 8am”.

      You don’t need to go into detail with stakeholders. Co-workers you aren’t obligated either. If they are going to cover for you, you could give them a heads up if you want. “Hey, I’ll be dipping in and out over the next four weeks for medical appointments. Just a heads up.” or you can say “Hey, our boss knows. I just wanted to give you a heads up that I’ll be dipping in and out due to personal reasons.”

      Generally, if you seem more tired, your coworkers probably will be able to understand it’s related to your appointments.

      I hope everything goes well. :)

      Reply ↓
  23. I need a reality check - is this weird?*

    My company’s slack has several “casual” channels (like casual-pets, casual-lounge, casual-podcasts, etc.). But earlier this week, someone posted that he created a new channel for “[company] babies”, for “little ones, and not-so-little ones” called “casual mini-mites”.

    I don’t have any kids, and I’m a dog mom so I’ve posted in the casual-pets channel many times, but something about it is off-putting that I can’t articulate.

    Is this actually a thing at other companies? Am I overreacting?

    Reply ↓
    1. Qwerty*

      There’s usually a casual channel for parents. I could see people being open to one about just cute kid pictures like the pet channel. As a non-parent I’d probably even join that for the same reason I’m in the pet channel – sometimes you just want to look at something happy and wholesome that makes you smile.

      It feels like a more appropriate place for people to post pictures of their kids trick-or-treating than the team’s work channel.

      It sounds like the channel is not for you so you can safely ignore it.

      Reply ↓
    2. CTT*

      I don’t know if it’s a thing at other companies since we don’t do Slack at mine, but as someone who doesn’t have kids or pets and doesn’t find a lot of interest in looking at pictures of either category, I would not opt-in to either and so it’s wouldn’t bug me. The names of these new channels are deeply annoying, but there’s nothing you can do about that.

      Reply ↓
    3. WantonSeedStitch*

      Heck, we have one for Great British Bakeoff, one for Halloween/spooky stuff, I think there’s one for other TV shows too. My office is mostly remote, and having multiple casual channels for chatter helps us stay connected. I feel like “mini-mites” is a little twee, but I feel like having a channel for parents of kids around the same age to share thoughts is a nice thing. As a parent who works full time, even though I do so mostly at home, I feel like it’s hard for me to really get to know other parents of kids the same age as mine. Comparing notes with coworkers who are in the same position is actually really helpful.

      Reply ↓
    4. I'm just here for the cats!!*

      I’ve never heard of having so many slack channels for these things. any place i’ve worked we’ve had just one slack channel of fun stuff.
      I wouldn’t want to share any pics of my kids. Who knows who is going to do what with it.

      Reply ↓
    5. Bunny Watson*

      We have a parents channel on our work slack. I don’t think it’s that unusual. They talk of events in town for little ones and child care things, so maybe this just isn’t a channel for you.

      Reply ↓
    6. Bonkers*

      If it’s cool for you to post about your fur-babies, why in the world would it not be cool for me to have a similar outlet for my actual babies? I’m honestly trying to understand your concern here, and coming up empty.

      Reply ↓
    7. Strive to Excel*

      Having a casual parents channel in theory doesn’t seem odd to me – but I don’t love children’s pictures being distributed online, even in a limited chat, to what is functionally a large group of at best casual acquaintances. A cat doesn’t give two darns if there’s a picture of them covered in flour after creating a kitchen disaster circulating the internet. A person might.

      That has more to do with my feelings about posting pictures of underage children online rather than the specific method.

      Reply ↓
      1. CTT*

        Based on all the age delineations, I wonder if it’s less pictures and more can someone recommend a pediatrician/where can I get X very specific thing for a school project/etc.

        Reply ↓
    8. HR Friend*

      What is off putting about it? We have the same kind of social channels at work – pets, kids, book talk, sports talk, etc. I can’t imagine caring what’s going on in any of them that I don’t subscribe to. Like I’m not into video games, but I don’t find the very existence of a game chat off putting. You’re overreacting and, without knowing more, come off as disdainful of parents.

      Reply ↓
    9. Caramel & Cheddar*

      I think it’s weird to be upset about a channel for kids but not a channel for pets, to be honest! Though I think calling it “mini-mites” is also weird.

      I wouldn’t personally share photos of my kinds in Slack, Teams, or anywhere else that companies might be using your data as a training set for their AIs or similar, but that’s just me and I know many people don’t share that concern.

      Reply ↓
  24. boof*

    I’m curious, does anyone work at a place where all salaries are shared (I think this is already done in some government places?), and how do you like it? I’m particularly curious if anyone in a private business in USA does this, and if so, how did you get there and do you think it’s working well?

    … I’m sure we’re a long way off from it but tempted to start proposing more salary sharing and wondering how to go about it. Ideally employer would be on board, I work for a place that I think is reasonable but risk averse.

    Reply ↓
    1. Head Sheep Counter*

      Its a double edged sword. Useful when negotiating to improve your outcome (eg you were hired at a time when salaries were low but that’s changed and raises haven’t put you in the market range) but needlessly cluttering to know that your colleague makes X and your boss makes Y. At least personally, I find it hard to not go down the path of judgement and taking offense. But the reality is we don’t know why the salaries are different and we don’t know the fullness of each persons compensation. So I would look when I wanted to know the practical range for internal job that I was interested in but really tried not to look at specifics.

      Reply ↓
    2. DisneyChannelThis*

      I’ve worked at state school in academia and they have a salary website with everyone listed. I think it’s a requirement in our state? It’s a little weird. It’s bleakly hilarious to see that like the 12hr day worker person is making half the salary of the shows up late and goes home early person. It does help a lot with asking for raises to be able to see what other matching job titles make.

      Reply ↓
    3. anonymous worker ant*

      I work in a government place where salaries are public, but also, everybody makes the same thing – your salary is based on grade and years in position; we sometimes get small merit raises but it takes a lot to not get one, so your salary isn’t going to vary more than, say, 5-10% from other people with your job title and your experience. It’s nice to know what other job titles are making (both when considering applying for promotions/transfers and when wanting to advocate for underpaid staff generally) but it’s not going to be at all the same situation as at a job where people negotiate salaries and raises and might have much more individual variations in pay.

      Reply ↓
    4. RedinSC*

      We talked about doing this at my last job.

      The closest we got was listing salary bands. So, position X could earn from $$21 – 25/hour or something like that.

      I’ve worked at a public university before and was really happy to have transparent salaries because I learned that I was being paid $35,000 less than a man doing my same job.

      Reply ↓
    5. Another Fed reporting in*

      At my previous industry job, our union provided salary transparency in the form of annual reports on what everyone in each skill code made. It was broken down by years of service, age, and position level (but not gender, too few data points I suppose), and showed how they did market benchmarking. It was so, so helpful and I wish all places did this. It was anonymized but I could always identify my individual data point and how it compared to others. It went a long way to making me feel confident I was fairly compensated compared to others and to the market. I recognize that I’d probably feel a lot differently if instead it showed how much lower my salary was than someone else in my same demographic, though, but that’s information I’d ultimately rather have than not.

      Reply ↓
  25. DataGirl*

    Healthcare workers: if you were trying to leave your job because decisions and policies by your employer are causing you moral injury, how would you express that to the places you are interviewing. Would you go into details or make up something benign? If you found a new job, would you tell the place you are leaving why?

    Reply ↓
    1. MissGirl*

      I wouldn’t go into it as the reason you’re leaving. I’d focus on the opportunities at the new job. But I would ask questions about new company’s culture. This would be a good opportunity to leverage any network you may have to gain insight into their culture. Some companies are good at paying lip service in interviews.

      I’m not sure what the moral problems you’re facing are but I’m also a data girl. I’ve found working in healthcare to not have the same problems that other tech jobs face. I also find the teams much more diverse. Plus there’s a ton of data.

      Reply ↓
      1. MissGirl*

        I totally missed you already in healthcare. I’m sorry. That’s hard because those are bigger dilemmas. I’m not sure what to advise there. If it’s being asked to do something that would negatively affect patient care that might be worth mentioning.

        If you’ve been at your company a few years then I don’t think anyone will be too concerned with you’re leaving and more curious on why you’re interviewing at their company. I’d still say focus on that.

        Reply ↓
        1. DataGirl*

          I have a very unusual, niche job that involves education, compliance, and IT. Due to my background I don’t really have options outside of this field, so I am interviewing at similar institutions. I know to a certain extent all hospitals have the same problem with profits of patients and employees, but the one I am at now is for-profit and especially egregious- we’ve had multiple r@pes and murd3rs of both patients and employees and the executive leadership have responded in extremely shady, even criminal ways.

          I know these things happen at non-profit institutions as well, I’m just hoping I find somewhere less evil than where I am now.

          Reply ↓
          2. anonymous worker ant*

            I don’t think you need to avoid mentioning that the handling of recurring violence against staff and patients at your previous place made you feel like the leadership didn’t value your safety (especially if the incidents are high-profile enough that they’re likely to have heard of them.) That’s a universally understandable reason to leave, and if they would reject you for that reason, you probably don’t want to work there anyway.

            You don’t want to go into more detail than needed about your wider economic and ethical philosophies, but mentioning specific, egregious, recurring things is an important way to see if the new place will be an improvement.

            Reply ↓
          3. dontstealmydata*

            As I’ve been advised by compliance officers: err on the side of caution and share what is needed, but not more. Something along the lines of “while I have great respect for the organization and what I learned during my time there, the expectations of my role and the values of the company were often in conflict” then pivot to what you know about the values of the new company and how they are supported by what you do, not conflict (patient care & safety, etc.).

            Reply ↓
        2. pally*

          Agree with this! Focus on what you are moving towards (i.e. what attracted you to the position) and not what you are trying to get away from.

          Reply ↓
    2. DisneyChannelThis*

      Applying for new jobs: Never be anything but polite about old jobs. They don’t have context to know if your objections are reasonable or if you are a wild card mad at old boss, they might not take that risk.

      Exit interview with current job: Will you need this job for reference in the future? If not, then go ahead and burn that bridge. If maybe, then be matter of fact and polite about it “I disagree with the decisions management made about ABC and that led me to start job hunting”. If yes, then just lie, “couldn’t say no to this opportunity with new company, appreciate all the years here with you at old company!”

      Reply ↓
      1. DataGirl*

        The things I object to have been in the news, so I imagine most moral people would find them reasonable, but we know that executives are neither moral, nor reasonable. That being said, I don’t want to be branded as the radical leftist/ socialist.

        Reply ↓
    3. NotRealAnonForThis*

      Not healthcare, but I let it be known in my second interview that one of the two main reasons that I was leaving OldJob was that my morals, integrity, and character were not for sale. (I’d been asked by the local VP to do something that might leave a third party, who wasn’t involved in the conversation, in danger of losing a professional license. I….think not.) And I stated why. Standing on business there is part of what got me my current position, as integrity is of utmost importance to it.

      Reply ↓
  26. Toxic Waste*

    I work with “Cheryl” who is a busybody and gossip, but she sucks up to the bosses and managers so they like her.

    She also likes to pick “targets” and goes after people. My coworker and I joke about this.
    For whatever reason yesterday I was her target. She accused me of taking a roll of labels. She kept insisting that she gave them to me. I kept saying, no, I don’t have them. Eventually she found them by another coworker.

    Then I was waiting for my lunch to be delivered and she made a comment about how she was wondering why I was standing by the door and didn’t see the delivery person- I just ignored her and continued working.

    She makes comments about how I wasn’t talking-she kept saying it so I pushed back and said that I was busy working.

    Towards the end of the day, my manager was looking for me and Cheryl goes “When I walked by she wasn’t by her desk.” (I was in the bathroom.)

    Ignoring her doesn’t work, but I’m sick of trying to defend myself. Any other suggestions on how to deal with peoeple like this? She’s close with the higher ups, so going to them isn’t an option.

    Reply ↓
    1. DisneyChannelThis*

      Kill them with kindness. It’ll annoy them more than actually getting a rise out of you and won’t get you in trouble.

      Reply ↓
  27. Diatryma*

    I can’t check back during work, but I have a bit of time.

    My supervisors are in the habit of ‘general announcements’ vs ‘targeted individual feedback’ for corrections. Is there a way to point them toward the resources here about that without being horribly passive-aggressive?

    Reply ↓
    1. Generic Name*

      Instead of indirectly telling your supervisors they need to brush up on their management skills, could you ask them for clarification every time there is a general announcement? Say that you saw the email/heard the announcement about not doing X, and you want to make sure you aren’t doing X inadvertently/by mistake/whatever. Ask every time. Maybe they’ll get the hint, maybe not. Generally, it’s not really your job to improve the skills of folks you report to.

      Reply ↓
  28. I NEED A Tea!*

    I wonder if Alison would be interested in doing a post on mansplaining (if it hasn’t been done already).

    I’ve been working in administration for decades and I know Word, yet today someone felt the need to tell me how to adjust the spacing and resize a pic within a document. Someone who has nothing to do with admin. Doesn’t even work in the office.

    I told him thank you but I know what to do.

    Do not cite the spell to me, I was there when it was written.

    Reply ↓
    1. Zona the Great*

      You look at them like they’re the stupidest person on earth and ask, “do you truly, honestly believe that that is something you’d ever need to tell me or any other professional for that matter?”

      Reply ↓
    2. Strive to Excel*

      I suspect that would rapidly devolve into a comments disaster but I’d be curious about hearing the stories too. I had someone (not a coworker, thank God) unironically bring up “vocal fry” as something they really dislike in women. The only thing I could think to say was “it’s really weird that you’re criticizing something that is a natural way that someone’s voice sounds like it’s a professional failing” and then walk away before I got into a really public fight. I’m still angry.

      Reply ↓
  29. General Izable*

    My colleague and I are working on presenting some feedback from participants in a social services program, and one comment was about the lack of ‘aftercare’ for participants who finished the program. This is a good insight that we want to include in our report, but I’m concerned that the term ‘aftercare’ has some *cough cough* NSFW connotations. My colleague hasn’t seemed to notice this at all, and is continuing to use this term in our report draft. Is my mind too far in the gutter to accurately assess if this term is inappropriate or not? If not, how do I delicately suggest an alternative term?

    Reply ↓
    1. CherryBlossom*

      I wouldn’t call the phrase itself inappropriate, but the connotation is enough that it would throw some people off. I’d more likely think it was named by an older person who’s not aware of the phrase’s most spicy meaning. Still, if you can get that changed, I recommend doing so, just for peace of mind.

      I’d phrase it as wanting to be more specific or purpose driven, because aftercare can come across as very vague. Something like a “debrief” or a “post-program wrap-up” might work better, though of course you know your industry better. Good luck!

      Reply ↓
        2. CherryBlossom*

          Oh, bless your heart, I don’t disagree. But the terminology does tend to change for every generation or so. I wouldn’t expect an 80-year-old to know “Do The Mountain Dew” anymore than I’d expect a 17-year-old to know “Making Whoopie”. Time marches on and all that.

          Reply ↓
    2. WantonSeedStitch*

      I think “aftercare” has medical connotations to FAR more people than it does NSFW connotations, to be honest (and I say that as someone familiar with the context you’re thinking of). No one is going to bat an eyelash.

      Reply ↓
    3. Friday Express*

      I’ve never heard the NSFW meaning. Having said that, if it’s risky to use it, suggesting a phrasing change like “follow-up care” or “post-program follow up” or whatever might just sidestep the issue.

      Reply ↓
    4. I'm just here for the cats!!*

      I have never heard aftercare being used for a NSFW reason. I think you are over thinking it. Especially since it is a term used in medical settings.

      Reply ↓
      1. WorkerDrone*

        This is so funny, I have ONLY heard it used for a NSFW reason and never heard it used in medical settings; I had no idea it was also use in medical care. I love learning new stuff like that.

        Reply ↓
    5. Binky*

      I understand the innuendo, but as a parent my first though of “aftercare” is childcare that extends the school day.

      But maybe “follow-up” would be better in this context?

      Reply ↓
    6. Wellie*

      Pegging has NSFW connotations, and so does unicorn. Sometimes you just have to suppress your inner 12 year old and be an adult.
      If it bothers you that much, suggest “follow up” as an alternative to avoid confusion with the well know medical usage of the term.

      Reply ↓
      1. 3-Foot Tall Inflatable Rainbow Unicorn*

        I wouldn’t be too fast to head to the NSFW meaning of unicorn in a work context when it’s the commonly used term for “private business valued over $1 billion.”

        And in my case, a child’s toy marking a row in an anonymous cube farm.

        Reply ↓
    8. dude, who moved my cheese?*

      there are multiple meanings and the meaning will be very, very clear in this context. I know what you’re referencing but think you should just leave it alone.

      Reply ↓
    9. Strive to Excel*

      I think it’s fine – it’s one of those things where you’ll only notice it if you’re already familiar with the scene. Like the more ‘adult’ jokes Pixar used to have.

      I’d find it a weird phrase for a social program because I associate it more with either medical or childcare, as other folks have mentioned below. Is that what your participants want? Or are they looking for continuing followups/support even after they’ve completed the program?

      Reply ↓
  30. hypoglycemic rage (she/her)*

    I have a work situation that’s been bugging me – it is not about my boss this time! I work as a clerk in a law firm. This is a relatively low-stakes question compared to what I’ve been asking the past few weeks.

    Part of my job involves messenger runs, including dropping off large checks when they exceed the mobile deposit limit (which is a 20 minute walk one way to the bank). I could have Ubered but I probably wouldn’t have gotten reimbursed and I didn’t want to pay for it out of my own pocket.

    Out of curiosity, I asked my friend in accounting about the mobile deposit limit. She didn’t know, so she asked her boss (the head of accounting), who also didn’t know and said that was a question for the controller.

    When I picked up the check from the controller the next day (which was an amount I wasn’t comfortable carrying), I asked about the limit. She explained it was more about her comfort level than the bank’s limit and gave me a ballpark number of where she would be comfortable using mobile deposit. She also said I was welcome to ask questions and that she wanted me to have context rather than just being told to do a task. I like and appreciate context, so this was great.

    A few days later, my boss asked why I needed to know the limit (I don’t know how she found out, if someone actually mentioned it to her or if they brought it up more casually). I said I was just curious, but she basically told me not to bother people with questions like this and claimed I had interrupted a meeting (which I later found out wasn’t true). I felt terrible and apologized to the head of accounting, who was not surprised by my apology, and reassured me it wasn’t a big deal but mentioned the controller had questioned why I needed to know (“yeah, (controller) was just like, ‘we just need (my real name) to drop off the check, why does she need to know?'”).

    I guess I’m just confused (and peeved) because the controller said one thing but really meant another. I also do think that if I – as a lowly clerk – am being asked to carry a well over six-figure check, I don’t think my curiosity/question was unreasonable.

    But did I really do something wrong in asking? I didn’t think I was asking for, like, state secrets.

    Reply ↓
    1. Scriveaaa*

      I don’t think you were doing anything wrong, but I do think this is a good learning about how your boss operates. She doesn’t want you to ask questions. She just wants you to do the work.

      You’ll have to decide from there on if you feel like it’s a good fit for you longterm. I know I personally would find those expectations frustrating.

      Reply ↓
      1. hypoglycemic rage (she/her)*

        yeah. apparently asking questions is a no-no in this law firm….. because even though the controller said that I was welcome to ask questions, she took issue with my asking (which was the main point of this post, not really about my boss this time).

        this role is not a good fit for me longterm and I am looking for other positions. the expectations are A Lot – other people in other departments agree, for the limited amount they work with her.

        Reply ↓
    2. NaoNao*

      Bleh, I had that kind of two-faced stuff. And I also don’t love “you’re a peon, you can’t ask questions” vibes.

      But I would have been honest “because I was hoping to avoid a 20 minute walk to the bank if it was possible, frankly”. I’m not sure if that would have gotten a better response, but the ‘just curious’ might have come off weirdly in some way. The reality is, from reading this, it does seem like “is there a way I can just deposit this?” was the motivator, and I also raise an eyebrow at the comptroller being uncomfortable using digital deposit over a certain level but being okay with having a lower-level employee walk a check to the bank some distance away, it seems backwards to me.

      Reply ↓
    3. Pocket Mouse*

      People are sometimes weird about giving context! Now you know. If you find yourself curious about similar things, maybe finding a delicate way to frame the question will smooth the way.

      I do think this gives you ammunition to ask for an Uber to get to the bank, though. Like: “I’m finding that I’m uncomfortable walking to the bank with this large of a check; I’m concerned that I could become a target for mugging. Especially since we could use mobile deposit for some of these checks, and Employer/Controller is asking me to make the trip in person anyway, let’s talk about how I can arrange to take a car there. Is someone able to order me an Uber with a company card? Or if I get a car myself, can I get assurance that I’ll be reimbursed from petty cash the same day? I’m happy to walk back once it’s deposited.”

      Reply ↓
    4. Can't think of a funny name*

      Wow, I don’t see anything wrong with what you asked. If they didn’t want to answer, they could have just said, “That’s not something I’m allowed to share.”

      Reply ↓
      1. hypoglycemic rage (she/her)*

        that’s what I was thinking too!!

        but I take major issue with the fact that the controller said one thing to my face – that questions are welcome and she doesn’t want me to feel like people are like “do it!” when handed a task – and then turns around and complains that I asked about the limit.

        Reply ↓
    5. Hyena*

      Hi, I’m ND and have run into reactions like this towards idle curiosity that really confused me.

      What I have learned is that often, if you are asked to do a task, and you ask a “why” question related to the task, people will take that as you implying you don’t want to do it, and apply varying levels of bad faith to this thought. Whereas to you (and to me!), you’re just asking because you are curious and like learning about the world around you, they hear “I don’t like doing this and I’m asking so I can push back on being assigned this task.”

      In a more relaxed or forgiving type of workplace, or when people know you well and/or you’ve made it clear you really are just asking because you like to learn, curiosity questions are taken better. But I imagine in a law office, people are busy and answering tons of work-critical questions all day, so your innocent one is added stress they’d rather you just not bother them with.

      Reply ↓
  31. wendelenn*

    I was just wondering, whatever happened to AAM Good News Fridays? It seems like we could use a dose of good news right about now. :)

    Reply ↓
    1. hypoglycemic rage (she/her)*

      I believe Alison stopped those as they weren’t getting as much traffic as other posts? Some please correct me if I am wrong!

      Reply ↓
    2. Hlao-roo*

      It went on hiatus at the end of 2023. Might be permanently gone now. I’ll post a link to some discussion that happened about it in an open thread in January 2024 in a reply to this comment.

      Reply ↓
        1. wendelenn*

          Thank you. I see the points on both sides and understand the decision. It’s just the past 19 days have been such an awful ride I could use a smile. (no, I am not a fed but am a govt employee, but even that is beside the point :) )

          Reply ↓
          1. Hlao-roo*

            Very understandable! In lieu of an official good news post, here are some of my favorite past posts:

            https://www.askamanager.org/2022/02/changing-pronouns-at-work-a-success-story.html

            Question #3 here…
            https://www.askamanager.org/2022/09/my-boss-changes-her-mind-after-ive-already-started-a-project-how-common-is-swearing-at-work-and-more.html

            …and heart-warming update here:
            https://www.askamanager.org/2023/02/update-how-to-tell-a-former-employee-he-cant-visit-us-weekly.html

            The question + update combo:
            https://www.askamanager.org/2020/01/my-needy-boss-wants-me-to-adopt-her.html

            https://www.askamanager.org/2020/05/update-my-needy-boss-wants-me-to-adopt-her.html

            Some positive car-pooling stories from yesterday’s post:
            https://www.askamanager.org/2025/02/lets-talk-about-carpooling-for-work-and-how-it-can-go-wrong.html#comment-5003370

            https://www.askamanager.org/2025/02/lets-talk-about-carpooling-for-work-and-how-it-can-go-wrong.html#comment-5003666

            And if looking at cute animal photos makes you smile, check out these posts:
            https://www.askamanager.org/2020/03/here-are-your-animal-coworkers.html

            https://www.askamanager.org/2020/04/animal-coworkers-part-2.html

            Reply ↓
    3. badnewsbear*

      iirc it stopped because there wasn’t the interest. I never read it after the first few, tbh, it felt very repetitive. “I had trouble getting a job, but then I got a job”.
      You could start a Good News Thread maybe? Because I know some people liked it and I am just a grouch.

      Reply ↓
      1. Tea Monk*

        Yea in the weekend thread they have joys so the work thread could have the ” thanks to ask the manager I got a job that pays $200k ” or something

        Reply ↓
      2. Thin Mints didn't make me thin*

        I sent in a post for it about my new job, only to realize it wasn’t happening any more!

        The only reason I got a new job was that I was passed over for promotion at my old job (which I expected) in a way that was mildly insulting (which I hadn’t), and got mad enough to spend a few minutes applying for things on LinkedIn. Result: More than double the salary, great health insurance, and an awesome opportunity to do something I love.

        Reply ↓
  32. bleh*

    requesting a sanity check-
    Current PhD student. I have an officemate I have a somewhat difficult relationship with. He’s struggling in the program and I’m doing well. He is more senior to me by several years. I sometimes feel that he makes borderline sexist comments (“you’re very overconfident”, “we can’t all be as confident as you”, implying my advisor did all the work for me…even though I’m here 50 hours a week every week…working. I don’t think I’m too confident! I ask for help and get things wrong all the time. He slowed down and stopped making those comments for the most part after my first successful committee meeting).

    This morning I came in early so it was just him and I in the office. We said hello, and then he said “you seem less stressed than you were in November and December”, I said something along the lines of “I’m probably about the same, since [big exam] is coming up” and he responded “you were very mean to me in November and December”. I asked what he meant and he just repeated that I was mean.

    I had to leave for a meeting pretty much at that moment, so we didn’t hash it out. I’ve never insulted him or anything, but I don’t make the extra effort to go out of my way to get to know him like I have with other grad students. I say hello when I come in. I really don’t know how to approach this. I don’t want to be a mean person. I know the answer is “just talk to him about it”, but honestly I’m still a little put out over his past comments. I feel like he went out of his way to intimidate me before my first committee meeting, and the negging about confidence. I honestly just want to brush this morning off- why should I have to go out of my way to be nice(r) when he made my first year so difficult. At the same time, I don’t want to be mean and if there’s something I did, I want to know and apologize for it. What’s the right move here??????????

    Reply ↓
    1. SunnyShine*

      I don’t know what it is like to work in a PhD program. You can try going to the advisor.

      But also, handling in the moment is best. It doesn’t warrant a long conversation. You aren’t being mean by setting boundaries. Some people won’t like you and you need to find a way to be okay with that without letting it zap your energy. I’m a people pleaser and I used to drive myself nuts worrying about people like him. It’s not worth it. He has no say over your work and you’re successful.

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

      I don’t think you were mean, otherwise he would have pointed something out. I think he maybe sees that you aren’t as friendly/close as you are with others in the program. But that’s really on him and how he treated you before. You don’t owe your friendship to anyone.
      If he says something again I would ask how am I being mean? I say good morning, goodbye, etc. I don’t criticize you or call you over confident. etc. This is all on him. and I bet he’s just trying to make you uncomfortable.

      Reply ↓
    3. DisneyChannelThis*

      See if you can swap desks/offices with someone. Then you won’t have to deal with him.

      If you do have to clear the air with him, I’d go with something like “I’m sorry you feel that I was mean, that was not my intent. I am just very focused when I am here working, unfortunately I don’t have time for much chit chat”. It’s just a bunch of BS. You weren’t mean to him. He was mean to you.

      Reply ↓
    4. RJK*

      My honest opinion: This guy sounds like a jerk. Personally, I think even if you did something to annoy him, that doesn’t give him the right to go out of his way to intimidate you, make sexist comments, or be mean without explanation. I think it would be reasonable to go to your professor and ask to move to a different office, or at least mention that this dude’s treatment of you is creating an uncomfortable environment and getting in the way of your work to see what can be done.

      Reply ↓
    5. Rusty Shackelford*

      “Actually I’m appropriately confident. Maybe *you’re* the one with a confidence problem.”

      No, probably not.

      Reply ↓
    6. hello!*

      Are you female (presenting) and him male? Because this sounds like another way to intimidate/manipulate you. Having been a PhD student, I’d definitely keep your advisor out of it. And, from personal experience, try not to leave anything around that he can sabotage. Forget this morning. If he accuses you of meanness again, ask him for specifics, if he can’t provide any, too bad. After all, he’s not apologizing to you for meanness, don’t apologize to him.
      And know that academics are the pettiest of people, with no social skills. (not all, obviously).
      And, good for you for rocking your PhD! Continued good academic success!

      Reply ↓
      1. Nesprin*

        Having been a PhD student, and now a PI, clue your PI in unless you expect them to side with that guy. Managing personnel and especially protecting graduate students is part of the gig.

        Reply ↓
      2. Tomi*

        Not sure whether this pertains to your advisor specifically, but creating a safe environment for the PhD students is 100% one of the responsibilities of the chair or coordinator and you should feel free to make this guy their problem if you would like

        Reply ↓
    7. Zona the Great*

      Nope. Don’t play that game. If this is being mean, then continue being mean. He sounds like a child and especially when he tells another adult they were mean to him 4 months ago. Mean? Does he mean short, brusque, rude, something else that actually means something? I would just guess that you doing your job well is being mean to him. Oh well.

      Reply ↓
    8. Happily Retired*

      Sounds like you work with a Fragile Male™.

      Perhaps when he makes this kind of remark, you can just stare at him in mild confusion and move on. Trying to answer or reason or reassure is just playing his game.

      Reply ↓
    9. Nesprin*

      Changing offices, giving your PI a heads up, and possibly talking your dean or to the title 9 office, depending on if this goes any further.

      He’s a sexist jerk- those show up some times in academia. The best solution is to excel, without worrying about being nice to someone who has never worried about being nice, or even fair to you.

      Reply ↓
  33. hypoglycemic rage (she/her)*

    I already tried to post something, plus I left a comment on someone else’s post. are things taking awhile to load for anyone else? I don’t see my original post nor the comment I made showing up yet.

    Reply ↓
    1. ThatGirl*

      Looks like all your posts have shown up now (or at least, I see this one, your other question and a duplicate of it).

      Reply ↓
      1. hypoglycemic rage (she/her)*

        thank you! i see both my posts and the first comment on the other post. some of my replies on my first post aren’t showing up yet so hopefully they will soon. :)

        Reply ↓
    2. Amber Rose*

      Sometimes posts get caught by the filter for bizarre and esoteric reasons. They usually get released pretty fast, especially on Fridays.

      Reply ↓
  34. Moon Muffin*

    Does anyone have advice for feeling more motivated/challenged at work? I work for an awesome company that I want to stay at, but the job itself is kind of boring and I struggle to stay motivated or do anything practical during downtime. I feel stagnant having done this type of work for several years and I recently got a promotion but so far my job is exactly the same. I like the idea of being more challenged but I can bring myself to get started on anything and I’m not sure how to tell my boss I want to do something different without knowing what that is.

    Reply ↓
    1. Chrissy*

      Have you tried just asking your manager if there’s anything else they happen to need another pair of hands on? And make them aware of how much downtime you have and let them know you’d like to put that to good use — maybe you see that the team seems to be understaffed in X area, or Fergus is always complaining that he has too many files to stack, and could you contribute there?

      Reply ↓
    2. EJ*

      Networking! Set a goal to invite 3 people to coffee or lunch every week. Virtual works too. Schedule them out in advance. They could be internal coworkers, or outside contacts if you feel that wouldn’t raise eyebrows with your manager. Pick people who do things you might be interested in, people who do different things from you, all different types of and levels of roles. Learn about their jobs and how they got to be where they are today. Come with lots of questions and curiosity. Thank them for their time. Keep track of who you met with on LinkedIn or your own personal spreadsheet.

      You never know when this network could be valuable to you someday. But in the meantime, people love meeting with someone who genuinely just wants to make a connection and learn, and doesn’t NEED anything from them at this moment.

      Reply ↓
  35. CJ*

    I’m a morning person, and I’m having trouble adjusting from my previous schedule of 8-4 in-person, to my new job schedule of 9-5 remote. I used to roll out of bed and hop on the train, gradually waking up during my commute, then eating breakfast at the office. Now I’m waking up with 2+ hours of morning time that somehow doesn’t feel “usable” like evening time does. Theoretically I have MORE time in my day but it doesn’t feel that way! Anyone dealt with this before, and any creative ideas for how to utilize morning time, or tasks to shift from evening to morning? 

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

      Could you do smaller chores in the morning. Like put away clean dishes? etc. is there any hobbies or anything that you could do earlier. Like maybe journaling or exercising. Could you use the time to prepare lunch for the day? Read?

      Reply ↓
    2. DisneyChannelThis*

      Go do errands outside the home in those 2 hours, pick up dry cleaning, get groceries, go to the gym, post office, walk out to get the mail. If your brain associates home = relax/sleep in the morning, that’s hard to beat into wash dishes, start laundry. Getting in a new setting can help with the wake up.

      Reply ↓
    3. WellRed*

      When I went remote, I enjoyed having coffee and reading the paper before work. You can also eat your breakfast first instead of after you get to work. If you are a morning person can’t you…exercise, throw in a load of laundry , make your grocery list, pay bills or any of a thousand other tasks. Embrace it!

      Reply ↓
    4. WantonSeedStitch*

      1. Dinner prep. Chop veggies, thaw meat, make things that can be easily reheated. I often make rice or other grain dishes on my lunch break and pop them in the fridge so I can just microwave them for dinner and not have to do the whole cooking process when I’m done working.
      2. Household chores like sweeping, vacuuming, laundry etc.
      3. Exercise.
      4. Grocery shopping. It’ll be much less crowded.

      Reply ↓
    5. Alton Brown's Evil Twin*

      Move your gym time to the morning? Or do household chores like laundry, dishes, vacuuming, since you’re at home.

      Reply ↓
    6. hello!*

      Go for a long-ish walk or workout in the morning. It gets you out of your house, gets your body moving, blood pumping etc. I do this on work from home days. I go out for a short (30 min) walk on days it’s colder than -10′, longer walks other days.

      Reply ↓
    7. Miss Dove*

      I’m a morning person too. I love having extra time in the morning because I hate to rush to work. Eat your leisurely breakfast, then do some prep for lunch or dinner. I use the morning time to exercise and do the NYT puzzles.

      Reply ↓
    8. Nicki Name*

      When I moved to WFH, I replaced my commute with a walk around the neighborhood. In addition to the exercise, it really helps with maintaining the transition from home mode to work mode.

      Other things I do sometimes before work: small chores, start the laundry, or watch a TV episode.

      Reply ↓
    9. Thin Mints didn't make me thin*

      Walk to a train stop closer to work, thus getting in some exercise and reducing your train time?

      Reply ↓
    10. ReeCeeRob*

      I haven’t had this happen specifically (I’m not a morning person) but I get the same sense whenever I have work, an appt, etc. at a certain time that the time before it isn’t “usable.” On reflection, I think it’s because it doesn’t feel relaxing, it feels like waiting.

      I’ve started trying to use that time to do life admin or chores. Load/empty the dishwasher, open the mail, call to schedule my dentist appointment, order more paper towel and toothpaste, take the dog for a walk. Things I’d have to do some other time anyway. As long as I can’t relax now, I can do things so I can relax more later.

      Reply ↓
  36. anotherfan*

    What are everybody’s coping strategies for dealing with annoying coworkers? I’ve been using “I’m retiring soon, none of this matters” but I’m interested in other people’s workarounds.

    Reply ↓
    1. DisneyChannelThis*

      This is so mean but I used to play bingo. Square per annoying habit, getting bingo means I got dessert or takeout on the way home, or skipped a chore to do something fun. Made it entertaining instead of annoying when Steve would start his muttering and angry typing. “Audible cursing! that’s a square” , “keyboard is sounding like it was break any min! that’s a square”, now if someone just starts hiccupping I’m not doing dishes tonight

      Reply ↓
    2. Amber Rose*

      Once I had a cubicle next to a coworker who wanted to chat all the time. One day, I was on the phone. And I heard him call my name. But I was on the phone so I ignored him. Figured he’d hear me talking. Only to hear, “Amber? Amber! Amber!! AMBER!! AMBER!!!”

      So I finally said, “What! I’m on the phone!”

      And he said, “Oh I thought so.”

      He just wanted to know if I was on the phone.

      Literally nobody could be more annoying than that. I use him as my benchmark for all things annoying, and if it’s not worse than that guy then it doesn’t deserve to be noticed.

      Obviously that’s a very me strategy. :D

      Reply ↓
  37. NMitford*

    I’m currently in the process of planning my retirement by working with a retirement investment advisor. It turns out that I’m in better shape financially than I thought I was, and I can retire as soon as I consolidate and reinvest my various 401k accounts with more than 80% of my pre-retirement income (80% is the goal we’re all advised to work towards) when Social Security is factored in. I just have to get everything together and get it to where it’s generating an income stream for me. I’m 68, so it’s not like I’ll be retiring super early. Hopefully, everything will be in place in a few months.

    The issue for me is that I’m extremely unhappy with my current job (hence reaching out to the advisor). I’m a proposal manager, and I’m tired of constantly feeling like I’m a firefighter waiting for the alarm to go off in the sense of waiting for RFPs to come out so we can work two or three weeks of really long days before the deadline for submission. It often means late nights, cancelling plans with friends, and letting the housework pile up while I’m chained to my laptop.

    We also just got a new boss who is, um, extremely energetic and wants to shake things up, and I just don’t have the energy for dealing with her. She’s now a layer of management between me and my old boss, who rejected most attempts I made to inject some actual process into our process, and her atttitude is, “OMG, this is the biggest mess I’ve ever walked into, and I must fix it ASAP.” Trust me, I would have fixed the process by now if I’d been allowed to, and I’m starting to get annoyed at the constant implications that I don’t know how to do my job. It’s one thing to say, “Let’s work together to make improvements” and another to throw me under the bus.

    I’m also probably dealing with some depression right now (seeing a counselor), and I also have some minor but nagging health issues that get neglected when work becomes crazy. I know I should let some of this stuff get to me when the end is in sight, but it’s really, really hard right now.

    So, my question is how do I hang on for another couple of months without losing my shit and tell people off? Because, really, there’s a couple of people I’d love to tell off right now.

    Reply ↓
    1. DisneyChannelThis*

      Mentally check out. Withdraw your emotional investment at work. Be a “yes man” to new boss. Who cares if they’re implying you don’t know how to do your job, you’re 6 months from freedom! Just get through it. You won’t need them as a reference ever, you won’t collaborate with them ever, you’ll never have to deal with this crap again. Work your wage.

      I’d also really challenge the need to work the last few months. Will 6 months income really make that much difference to your overall retirement?

      Reply ↓
    2. Goddess47*

      Go back to your investment person and ask what changes if you retire right now. Since you’re in good retirement shape, I’m assuming you’ll have some savings. You can start collecting your Social Security now. Again, the little difference a few months may make in your monthly check isn’t worth the hassle you’re going through at work.

      Get out while the getting out is better for you. And enjoy that retirement.

      Reply ↓
    3. anonymous worker ant*

      Number one is start prioritizing the health issues over the work! You’re not gunning for a promotion or anything, set a boundary of what you need for your health issues (and therapist) and keep it, even if it means less work gets done.

      Is there a reason that when the new boss talks about what a mess things are you can’t just give a theatrical sigh of relief and say, “I agree, I’m so happy to be able to work on improvements with you”? You don’t have to openly throw old boss under the bus in order to make it super clear that you have been trying and hoping to fix the mess for years.

      Reply ↓
    4. Cheap ass rolling with it*

      If you can mentally check out or have time waiting until the next fire, what about planning what you’d like to do for your retirement? Start thinking about the things you’d like to do, and then work out on details on how you could do them. It’ll give you something to look forward to.

      Reply ↓
    5. Parenthesis Guy*

      Don’t let them drive you crazy. Make sure to work 40 hours a week. If they fire you, you’ll get severance.

      Reply ↓
  38. RJK*

    Hey folks, kinda weird situation here that I’m wondering if anyone has experience with or tips.

    I work for a startup at which almost all of the employees are quite inexperienced and were hired right out of college — but they are eager and driven, most with STEM degrees from big-name schools. I really love and believe in the work, but there is really only one issue and that’s that I’m not sure how to meet the expectations of my role.

    Our founder and CEO, Steve, is a very highly respected veteran in our field, and our company is his passion project. He is its public face and oversees many of its operations. I am on a team of workers similar to in-house consultants who were brought in by Steve because he felt the very young group needed some experienced guidance to make sure their output was following industry best practices and generally competitive in the field. Unlike the other employees, our team largely does not have fancy degrees (some of us did not even finish college), but we all have at least a decade of experience working at multiple established companies in this field and deep knowledge of the relevant subject matter. All teams, under the policy Steve implemented, are required to have one of us check over and sign off on any projects they complete before sending them off. Steve is the one who recruited, interviewed, and onboarded me, and he told me throughout the process that he expected me to rigorously review and rework these projects to bring them to a high standard. That was basically my final one-on-one interaction with Steve, however; he spends the majority of his time out meeting clients and investors, is not really involved our day-to-day, and is usually very hard to get hold of. Elizabeth, a VP a few levels down from Steve, is our direct manager.

    When I got started, however, I quickly learned that a whole bunch the company despises our team. When we make significant changes to their projects, we overhear engineers and PMs complaining that we are old representatives of the establishment stuck in our old ways who just aren’t ready for their new ideas. (To be clear, the generational gap here is not massive: Most of these employees are in their early-mid 20s, my team is mostly mid-30s.) There is a widespread belief that it’s unfair that these employees have to have overseers — especially overseers perceived to lack prestigious “credentials — sign off on their projects when that’s not the setup at XYZ Competitor Company (despite the fact that the engineers at XYZ Competitor Company have decades more experience). Engineers will go out of their way to have their projects checked by members of our team who are perceived to be less critical.

    The problem is that Elizabeth, who has also never worked anywhere except this startup, appears to me to be more on the engineers’ side than she is on Steve’s side when it comes to her thoughts on our team. She doesn’t seem to want anything to do with us and never speaks to us unless we’re in trouble; she doesn’t do team meetings, 1-on-1s, or performance reviews. A few months ago, after I’d had to spend a lot of time fixing a project that was littered with problems, I heard she’d gone around complaining to multiple employees that I’d “held up” the process. The consultant she clearly considers to be her star performer, Ron, is one who quickly glances at projects, signs them off without changing anything, and otherwise watches YouTube all day; the engineers sing his praises to her because he “doesn’t get in their way,” and Elizabeth now has him training all the new hires and tutoring her nephew on weekends.

    While Elizabeth is my direct manager, my understanding is that Steve, as the CEO, does also have a say in all hiring and firing decisions. So, should I do what Steve said he wanted and rigorously edit these projects, or should I do what Elizabeth seems to want and just sign them off without getting in the engineers’ way?

    Reply ↓
    1. WellRed*

      To be honest this sounds strange. If he needed managers to manage the team, he should have hired you as managers. I’m not surprised if people don’t like this. If these inexperienced workers are so inept, Steve shouldn’t have hired them.

      Reply ↓
      1. RJK*

        It’s largely a money thing — seasoned engineers in our field are wildly expensive and Steve can’t afford a staff full of them on a startup budget. The hires here are quite smart, and certainly not inept, but they are very new

        Reply ↓
    2. MsM*

      I think unless you’re willing and able to get in front of Steve (ideally alongside as many of your colleagues as you can round up) and convince him that leadership needs to throw more weight behind establishing a company culture where standards and best practices matter as much as innovation, you need to assume Elizabeth’s approach is the one that holds sway in practice. There’s a chance that at some point Steve will decide to pop his head in and you’ll get thrown under the bus if he’s annoyed things aren’t being done his way. But given how hands-off he’s been, I think it’s less likely than the possibility that if he is weighing in on your continued employment, it’ll be based on whatever gets reported to him via Elizabeth and he won’t bother to investigate more thoroughly. And you should probably keep your eye out for other opportunities regardless, because it’s not great being in a situation where you’ve been asked to make changes but aren’t being given the tools or institutional backing to do so.

      Reply ↓
    3. Strive to Excel*

      It seems to be a truth that no one likes QA, no matter the industry or size of the company. The solution to that is having a manager back you up when you say “please make X, Y, and Z changes”. You do not have that – you have a manager who things QA is unnecessary.

      Is there any way you can document what changes you believe should be made to the projects without delaying the process?

      Reply ↓
  39. Three Cats in a Trenchcoat*

    Good news-
    My husband (laid off in November) accepted a job offer this week!

    It had been really demoralizing for him that there was basically nothing happening in November or December, just sending in a million applications for radio silence. Understandable that it was due to holidays, but still hard to handle. But then things picked up in January, and he actually had to choose between two good offers so that felt much better.

    Reply ↓
  40. Dovima*

    I posted a couple times about my situation taking over a position from Pat, who moved on to a new, more strategic position. I posted an update or two–just to briefly refresh, Pat was not letting go of the position, and my boss, my boss’s boss, and Pat’s boss were basically doing nothing.

    The final update is not good. I won’t get into all the details of what I did and what happened next. I will say that for the person who gave me the useful idea of asking about metrics and how my progress would be measured, well, I never even got to bring up that talking point. Someone on my first post used some wording that they probably didn’t really think that deeply about saying “nobody can upset Pat.” Well, whoever that was, that really summed up the situation. Pat is not just holding on to what should have been my position, but in their new role, they are way overstepping into departmental issues that should not be their purview. Again, my boss, my boss’s boss, and Pat’s boss are doing nothing. Pat is our Elon Musk. Pat has no positional authority, no supervisory authority, and does not secure our funding, but Pat controls our funding and can cut it off if we displease them. So. Everybody tiptoes around Pat. Yes, it’s bad.
    Pat’s former position went to someone else, two people who are way junior to me and don’t have the project management background that I have. Pat picked them out (remember how Pat has no positional authority and is overstepping into departmental issues that should not be their purview?).
    So I told my boss’s boss that I will creating an exit strategy from the department, and it’s not just that Pat is a huge problem, it’s that my boss and boss’s boss and the next boss up are a problem for allowing Pat to be Elon Musk.
    Bummer. I wish I could say that I advocated for myself and got somewhere, but that was not the outcome.

    Reply ↓
    1. Thin Mints didn't make me thin*

      At least you recognized that the dynamic was messed up instead of feeling like you had to take responsibility for it. Best of luck in your next chapter.

      Reply ↓
  41. Potatohead*

    How persistent should I be about pursuing a promised raise? I was hired at my current job roughly 5 months ago – when I was signing the paperwork, I was told that after my 90-day probationary period passed I would get a small ($1.00) raise. 90 days came and went, I got my performance evaluation, but no sign of the expected pay adjustment.

    Fast forward to 2 weeks ago, when I emailed Payroll inquiring as to the status. Payroll told me to talk to my department manager, who said Payroll had passed the request to the CFO to sign off on, with no response. I asked my coworker who was hired the same say I was and they got their raise at the end of December, 6 weeks ago.

    How long should I wait before talking to my manager again? The money isn’t life or death but I’m running a very tiny surplus most months so more would be helpful.

    Reply ↓
    1. DisneyChannelThis*

      Email Payroll and your boss at same time, paper trail and loops them in together.

      Hi Payroll person name, per our conversation on date I asked boss about the raise. Boss says it was passed on to you already. What do we need to do to get this resolved? It should have been in affect on date.

      Reply ↓
    2. Jackie Daytona, Regular Human Bartender*

      I would bring it up now. Ask what the timeline is. I’d also be pushing for it to be reroactive to the promised date.

      Reply ↓
      1. Potatohead*

        Should I ask my manager to reach out to Payroll and CC me instead?

        I had nothing in writing about this until I sent the follow-up inquiry email – when I spoke to my manager 2 weeks ago he said that an email he was CCed on went from Payroll to the CFO asking about the status but hadn’t seen a response.

        Reply ↓
        1. WellRed*

          To what purpose? Just email boss and payroll together. If you leave it up to your boss, it might drag on even longer.

          Reply ↓
    3. Yes And*

      Follow up with every paycheck in which you don’t get the raise. Do it politely, do it kindly, do it assuming the best intentions on their part, but do it. The squeaky wheel gets the grease. And when they do put the raise through, it should be retroactive. You shouldn’t be out money you were promised because their bureaucracy is slow.

      Reply ↓
  42. Trying not to panic, largely failing*

    Longtime reader, first-time commenter!! My partner is a federal employee, so… it’s been a week.

    My partner has a PhD and two decades of experience in academia and government research. They’d like to explore job openings in think tanks. How long should a cover letter be for a research job at a senior/leadership level? My partner thinks that because they’d be applying for fairly senior jobs that ask for a research background, the typical academic cover letter of 2 full pages talking about all your most important papers is what they’re looking for. But a few months ago they got rejected from a think tank job that seemed like a great fit and I can’t help wondering if one reason was the cover letter. (I used to work at a nonprofit that hired a lot of career-changing academics, and long academic-style cover letters were definitely not seen as a plus for applicants. But maybe that’s unusual?)

    Reply ↓
    1. Wellie*

      Your partner is going to get rejected from a whole slew of jobs that seem like a great fit. Do not over think this. Yes, put work into a good resume and cover letter, but you *cannot* obsess over every job they get rejected from. Let it go.

      But also, put the papers in the CV and give a highlights reel that covers the general topic area, eg, cover some highlights of compound semiconductor research but for the love of god, do not list the chemical formulation of every damn material they worked on. Just say III-V and II-VI or whatever.

      Reply ↓
      1. Trying not to panic, largely failing*

        Oh, for sure!! I think it’s going to be a long road to the right fit and I know it’s important to apply and then mentally let it go unless/until you get an interview call. I guess my question was really about the appropriate cover letter length for future job applications.

        Reply ↓
  43. Alton Brown's Evil Twin*

    I got laid off this week, along with almost everybody else in the company.

    Good news: I am amazed at how quickly my network popped into existence after posting about this on LinkedIn. Literally people from 10 years ago. Plus all of us who were laid off have been sharing leads.

    My question for recent job seekers/getters – what is working for you with resumes for any positions that I apply to cold. Especially for engineers/developers/technical PMs. Should I be sprinkling lots of languages and technologies into my resume for each project & position, or just have a single skills section?

    Thanks!

    Reply ↓
    1. Wellie*

      I toss the lingo into the project description, eg:
      * Created computational fluid dynamics (CFD) models in MATLAB
      * Managed workflow for team of four using JIRA
      etc

      Reply ↓
    2. Generic Name*

      I’m in a technical/scientific field and I got a new job in the last 2 years. I also review resumes and conduct interviews for my department. I suggest doing both. For each position, list what you did in that role and what software/language/whatever technical thingy applies and also have a summary “skills” section at the bottom where you gather together the skills that you think sell you best/that you want to keep working in. The skills section doesn’t need to be just technical skills. If you have technical writing or project management skills, you can include those in that section as well. Also note that the “2 page limit” for resumes seems to not be a thing anymore. I used a 2 page resume, and I think it actually hurt me because I chopped off like half of my experience and was therefore hired in a lower level role than I should have been. (Luckily, my company quickly realized what I can do and promoted me within a year.) For the current position I’m helping hire for, I’m seeing plenty of 3 and 4 and even 5 page resumes.

      Reply ↓
  44. dude, who moved my cheese?*

    Alison, after learning about the job “menopause champion” in this week’s menopause-at-work letter, I would LOVE if to see an interview with one. The EAP interview was so interesting and useful.

    Reply ↓
  45. notproudofthis*

    A coworker of mine got an insanely rude email from a customer. I’m not proud of this, but I left them a rude review in return about their poor manners (nothing linking me to my business). I know this wasn’t a good idea; how do I let go of people being rude?

    Reply ↓
    2. Amber Rose*

      Deep breath.

      Remember that they have chosen to be rude and you can’t make them choose not to be.

      But you can choose to not let them live rent-free in your head, raising your blood pressure and ruining your day. That’s giving way more power than they deserve to have.

      I don’t think what you did was all that bad, but paying like with like doesn’t really solve anything and clearly doesn’t seem to have made you feel better.

      Reply ↓
  46. Landry*

    This is more of a rant, but it’s so frustrating to see a woman in the workplace dumb herself down. I work with but don’t report to a manager who’s probably in her mid-50s. I’ve come to realize through my own observations and talking to others that she relishes playing the “dumb blonde” role. When she has to get involved in a certain type of project, she LOVES to giggle and say, “Oh, I don’t know how to do that” and then refuse to learn. I would understand if she needed to be reminded of a few things, but this is a complete voluntary ignorance of our processes. It makes her a less effective manager than she would otherwise be, especially since she supervises a very young team, almost all of whom are female. Plus, I’m getting the growing sense that other managers have finally started to notice and are annoyed by it.

    On the flip side, it makes me more grateful that I had such smart, strong female role models both in my personal and professional lives when I was younger.

    Reply ↓
  47. Chrissy*

    Okay, I’m kind of embarrassed to be posting this question but here goes lol

    I have a role similar to that of a copy editor. Our company publishes reports written by a number of different writers across various teams. Before each report is published, I review and make changes to it for things like structure, grammar, flow, formatting, factual accuracy, and adherence to style guidelines. However, I am not these writers’ manager; I am either lateral to or junior to all of them (common arrangement in our field). So if a writer disagrees with a change I make, I don’t actually have the authority to override them; the two of us are expected to work it out between ourselves (which can occasionally get quite heated) and a higher-up is occasionally called in if we really can’t reach an agreement.

    One of these writers, Jane, has also become a good friend friend. We’re two of very few female, non-white employees in an office that is almost all older white men. I’m also fairly new to our city, so I have no family and only a few friends here right now. She has been an incredible support system for me, and I probably wouldn’t still be in this job or city if it weren’t for her; I’ve helped her through periods of work-related stress as well.

    But I do worry that this could make me less objective towards Jane’s reports. Recently I made a structural change to a project of hers that she strongly disagreed with. In the moment, I decided to just revert the change because I feared getting into a contentious argument that could impact our friendship. But I started stressing after that my change was correct and that had it been another writer, I might’ve held my ground.

    Part of me thinks this this is evidence that I shouldn’t be working on Jane’s reports since we’re friends. But I’m also not in any kind of actual position of power over her and we’re not even on the same team, just in two roles that occasionally interact. Is it an ethical problem for any two coworkers in roles with the potential to butt heads to be friends? Or do I just need to do a better job of separating my work relationship with Jane from our personal friendship? IDK, I’m stressing about this up and down. Any thoughts appreciated.

    Reply ↓
    1. MsM*

      Yeah, I think you need to just remind yourself that if all it takes to shatter your friendship is a disagreement over copy, it isn’t really strong enough to be risking your job or integrity over. But maybe it’s also an opportunity to step back and ask yourself what really does warrant standing your ground: factual inaccuracies are one thing, but if it’s something more subjective like flow, maybe it’s best to just let that go and focus on making sure the piece is up to basic standards.

      Reply ↓
    2. Thin Mints didn't make me thin*

      What is the impact if the reports aren’t right? Are these reports important to the company’s revenue? Or are they a nice-to-have, something the client might or might not read? It may be worth taking a step back and getting to a place in your own head where you can stay calm and realize that nobody really cares if section III isn’t indented three spaces or whatever. You can make your case ONCE — “I thought it was interesting that you structured it that way, but I’m pretty sure our audience prefers to see the methodology before the results” — and then, as one writer of my acquaintance used to say, “let the Wookiee win.”

      Reply ↓
  48. pope suburban*

    I had to ask about my salary for my new job because there was a significant difference between what was advertised and what they tried to pay me, despite my exceeding all their requirements. I wasn’t rude or upset, I framed it as a check-in to see what was going on and I let my experience speak for itself. But the HR person, who is also part owner of the company, was really upset about it. I can’t control that and I’m happy they honored what they’d put in the posting, but her increasing criticism of and poor attitude toward me is frustrating and concerning. It’s a small business and will be the last one I work for, because I’m concerned that no matter how much I try to manage her feelings, she’s going to take exception. No one else has had any problem as far as I can tell, but she has expressed resentment over my pay explicitly once this week, and has gone from cordial to critical and condescending, even over tasks she has openly told many people she does not know about. I’m not sure it’s at the level of retaliation just yet, but I don’t like the direction this is going, especially since I was prepared to accept that they could continue lowballing me (I was incredibly noncommittal in the discussion and really conscious about framing it as I’m interested in the work and not leaving, but wanted to touch base on this).

    Reply ↓
    1. WellRed*

      Can you reactivate your job search? This doesn’t bode well, it never is good when a company tries to pay less than promised and stay bit toxic when they complain about your salary.

      Reply ↓
      1. WellRed*

        Sorry I missed where you said you don’t plan to leave. But if she’s an owner is there another owner you can talk to, if needed?

        Reply ↓
        1. pope suburban*

          Oh no, I am still following up on jobs that I had leads on before I accepted this, because you’re right. When I talked to her at first, I was disappointed but trying to keep an open mind because clerical errors do happen and she’s not a HR professional with a full team, she’s one person who learned this to grow the business. The work is interesting enough to me and I could foresee enough avenues for development that I was willing to stay even struggling to afford food. But based on this outsize reaction, I think it’s prudent to keep a weather eye out for other work. It’s just baffling that she’s taking it so personally when I framed it as, hey, here’s this number, here’s this resume of mine, here’s what was budgeted – did anything change with that? I’m not even sure how conscious she is of it, but that’s also not great. I’m working on scheduling a video interview with a big company’s local office next week. The pay is perhaps not as good, but the location is better and they offer hybrid work, so…we’ll see. I appreciate the confirmation that my gut is not wrong and that this may not be a long-term position even if I’d hoped otherwise.

          Reply ↓
          1. pope suburban*

            Also yes, there is another owner, and he doesn’t seem to have any of the problems she does. They’re a married couple, he does the technical stuff and she runs the admin side. As far as I can tell, he has no problem with me or my work, or the fact that I asked for clarification (Though God knows how she framed it to him, but I try not to think about that because it’s out of my hands). He’s still giving me assignments and providing direct feedback; he’s been really helpful in the getting-oriented process. As far as I can tell, he approached the situation from the same brass-tacks perspective as I did, which would fit with his technical background and direct communication style. I’ve been focusing on maintaining a good attitude and positive relationships with everyone else, but having the part owner and HR person so personally upset with me and weirdly hostile is unsettling.

            Reply ↓
          2. WellRed*

            Yeah some business owners take it real personally when employees want to work for money. And how did I know you were going to tell me it was a husband and wife team. There is other interesting work out there somewhere for you.

            Reply ↓
            1. pope suburban*

              That’s where I ended up too, unfortunately. Everyone else here is great and they’ve been very welcoming, but if there was going to be one person irrationally upset with me, it being the owner/HR person is a bit of a deal breaker. My plan at this point is to keep my head down, still do my best work, stay copacetic with everyone else, and get out as soon as I have something that will offer me actual stability. I don’t want to be premature but I also don’t want to be the frog in the boiling pot again; I did that for three years once and it damn near killed me. Not again.

              Reply ↓
  49. DisneyChannelThis*

    Anyone have good phrasing for like the sentiment ‘ your project is not as important as you think it is’ ? Ouch. Obviously avoiding that. But I’m getting push back when telling people their request is going to take longer than normal, as we have some urgent deadline projects ahead of them.

    I work in data science, I do analysis. My boss approved the order I’m doing stuff in, but telling people “sure I can run that for you, just a heads up it will be done next week, this week we’re all hands on deck for paper re-submission” doesn’t seem to be working.

    “Well I have a meeting with my boss tomorrow and it’d be nice to show this data”,
    ” Sure I’ll tell my own bosses you’re the hold up on this” (tone was vaguely threatening?),
    “But we submitted this a month ago to other department” (who didn’t get their portion done and to my department until today so really not my problem)

    The person who was really polite about it and said “no rush!” has immediately jumped to the top of the queue for projects of that level urgency :D

    Reply ↓
    1. Alex*

      I think just not responding to passive-aggressive comments like these is best–you aren’t going to convince people like that that they should be patient. Give them a realistic time you can get it done and then stop responding, since comments like these aren’t really questions that need a response.

      Reply ↓
    2. Amber Rose*

      “I’m sorry but the priority list for requests has been authorized by our manager and can’t be changed at this time.”

      Something like that?

      Reply ↓
    3. HR Exec Popping In*

      Just nicely tell them that unfortunately you have other higher priority requests that you are working on. If you can, let them know when you can reasonably get to their project.

      Reply ↓
    4. Trying not to panic, largely failing*

      Would your boss be OK with you invoking their name, since they approved your work order? “Just a heads up, we won’t get to this until next week, Boss’s Name wants us to finish paper re-submission before starting new projects.” The subtext is that it’s out of your hands to start anything earlier.

      Reply ↓
      1. DisneyChannelThis*

        My boss doesn’t like interruptions from other people haha but yeah if they continue that’s the best plan I have.

        Reply ↓
      2. Charlotte Lucas*

        This. I do comms work and closer, unmissable deadlines or a Higher Authority will always win out over someone’s “it would be nice to have this because X.”

        Just be as matter-of-fact as possible. Reasonable people will understand. Unreasonable people will have to learn a valuable lesson in delaying gratification.

        Reply ↓
    5. MsM*

      “If you need to copy me on any messages explaining the timeline, or have your bosses talk to my boss, do what you gotta do. But keep in mind, the more time I have to spend on those conversations, the longer it’s going to take before I can get started on this.”

      Reply ↓
    6. Nesprin*

      “sure I can run that for you, just a heads up it will be done next week, this week we’re all hands on deck for paper re-submission”
      “Well I have a meeting with my boss tomorrow and it’d be nice to show this data”

      “Yep, understood. Unfortunately, we’re swamped till next week. If you really need this done sooner, our rush fees are X, and we’d have to run it by my boss to authorize rush work.”

      Reply ↓
    7. cmdrspacebabe*

      Do you have an official service standard you can point to? I’d usually fall back on that rather than citing a specific other priority – sometimes that just gets people defensive about how their project is high-priority too, or ‘it’ll only take a minute’, or whatever. If you don’t give them anything that specific, they can’t use it as an ‘in’ to argue with you.

      “We received it on [date] and our process does take [timeframe], so with our service standard, the soonest we can provide it is [date]. If that date will cause serious operational issues (or whatever phrasing fits), you can reach out to [boss] to request a priority change.” (It wouldn’t hurt to have a pre-drafted list of criteria to fall back on either.)

      I try to avoid over-explanation or placation – the former leaves room for discussion; the latter signals that you’re receptive to their complaining and perhaps even agree that they should be annoyed. Fluff it up enough that you don’t seem dismissive, but beyond that, all they’re owed is a neutral statement of ‘here’s what I can do; here’s what you can do about it (contact someone who is Not Me)’.

      Reply ↓
  50. noncommitally anonymous*

    My former boss’s position is finally about to be posted. I’ve been doing her job along with mine for about the past 8 months. After much consideration, I’ve decided to go ahead and apply once it’s really posted.

    I’d like to approach my former boss as a reference. I think she’d be willing, but I’m feeling insecure about it. I approached her recently for her new institution to participate in an event that I’m trying to put together and get funding for, and she said no. Admittedly, the new institution is Federal and part of NIH, so there’s all kinds of reasons for them to be hesitant to agree to participate that have nothing whatever to do with her personal feelings about me, but, for some reason, I’m kinda taking this personally. She would be a very valuable reference, since it’s her former job I would be taking, so I need to psych myself up to go ahead and ask.

    I guess I’m just looking for reassurance that it’s OK to request a reference from someone I used to work for. I’m not quite sure who else to ask.

    Reply ↓
    1. Tomi*

      There’s no harm in asking! Especially if she’s a valuable reference. If she says no, or doesn’t have the time, at least you’ll know you gave it a shot.

      Reply ↓
    2. Blarg*

      If you asked her to participate in something in the last two weeks, you’re lucky she said no vs saying nothing at all. All the different components of federal agencies are handling the “no external comms” dictate a bit differently. Plus, assuming you’re in the private sector and she’s now in the public sector, even a month ago, there may have been conflict of interest issues, waiting periods, etc. I wouldn’t take it personally BUT might be mindful of the additional challenges federal employees may have even in normal times to maintain objectivity, fairness, etc.

      Reply ↓
  51. J*

    asking jobs for an update:

    Hello. I’ve recently completed several final rounds interviews and am patiently awaiting responses. One job has selected me and sent a tentative offer, and I am waiting on responses from two others. I would like to know if I am still being considered and what the offers are before fully committing. Is it acceptable to call and ask? How would you recommend doing this?

    for context, the job that selected me is a federal position (which will include lots of waiting and uncertainty given current events); one job has seemingly ghosted me and it’s been about three weeks with no response; the third job said in the final interview to expect a decision this week / today. I want to be respectful and patient to everyone, and I have been- but I’d like to consider all the options before default accepting the one offer.

    thank you for your help in all of this.

    Reply ↓
    1. HR Exec Popping In*

      Let them know that you are currently in the process of evaluating offers. If they are serious about you as a candidate that will get you a response.

      Reply ↓
    2. Wellie*

      Yes, it is perfectly acceptable to contact them and say you have received an offer and would like to know if they have made any decisions before you accept it. Since it is a tentative fed offer and it will take a couple weeks to get the final offer, you have some options regarding waiting a little bit longer vs contacting them right away. They typically want to know when you need to respond to the offer, and if you say it’s still a month off, they might not act with alacrity.

      Reply ↓
    3. dude, who moved my cheese?*

      I recommend emailing, not calling, but it’s definitely acceptable to reach out to the other two jobs and say you have an offer from another job that you need to respond to by (date) but remain very interested in this role, and were wondering if they could give you any updates on the process/timeline so you can make an informed decision.

      Reply ↓
  52. Rara Avis*

    Tomorrow I have to attend a full-day professional development event that starts with a 2-hour presentation on a topic I have zero interest in — at 8 a.m. I had a flu 10 days ago that left me with a lingering cough that is wearing me out — I am so exhausted that I tend to fall asleep when I sit still. What can I do to stay awake and attentive while sitting in very close quarters theater-style seating (no desk, very little elbow room, no food or drink allowed, so no coffee)? Share your favorite tricks, please! (Staying home isn’t really an option; I missed the event two years running, and my boss knows I’m not sick, just stuck in this allergic rhinitis cough cycle.)

    Reply ↓
    1. WellRed*

      Doodle? I’d also probably bring water and let them take it away. Jokes on them when you can’t soothe a coughing fit.

      Reply ↓
    2. HR Exec Popping In*

      When I struggle, I elect to stand in the back of the room. If someone asks you can say you back is bothering you – nobody is going to force someone with a bad back sit for hours. Good luck.

      Reply ↓
    3. WorkerDrone*

      Make a point of getting there early enough to get a seat near the back, on the aisle. If you start getting drowsy, quietly excuse yourself to the restroom and stretch, splash water on your face, or just skip the restroom and take a quick 2 minute walk to get the blood flowing.

      Also, I suggest you hide a red bull in the bathroom like you’re a government spy hiding a weapon. Duct-taped to the back of a mirror or something LOL.

      Reply ↓
    4. Pocket Mouse*

      Couch drops, one after the other. Unwrap them ahead of time.

      Or… is it plausible for you to have car trouble and get there, oh, let’s say an hour and forty minutes late? Text whoever needs to know at the time you’d usually leave your home, and gosh, glad to be able to catch the end of the morning presentation, at least!

      Reply ↓
    5. My Brain is Exploding*

      Hard candies. If you can’t bring food, then just take something like Ricola, which read as “cough drops.” You can also bring some hard candies in your pocket, but unwrap them first! Nothing like the noise of a crinkly wrapper to draw attention to yourself. And yes, standing in the back. Or sitting by a colleague who will nudge you if you start to drool or fall over. Ask to sit on the aisle “in case I have a coughing fit.” Then if you are super tired, have that coughing fit and get up to leave so as not to disturb others, and then get a drink and walk around

      Reply ↓
  53. Nila*

    I moved to France after living in the US for 12 years. I am originally from middle east and I got my masters and PhD (microbiology) in the US, and did a postdoc. Basically, all of my professional network is in the US and in academia. I am trying to switch to jobs in industry in France, and I have been applying online. I just feel so lost here. The few people in my field that I know here are all academics, and I have 0 friends or family. We just hang out with my husband’s friends (all academics in a different field). It’s been 3 months and my morales are super low. I feel trapped and I think I can never find a job here. Most job postings are either for technicians or for people with years of experience in industry. At this point I am open to anything (jobs in biotech, pharma, food, startups, consulting, etc). Any tips? I really appreciate it.

    Reply ↓
    1. Sterling*

      Do any professional organizations or networks you were previously part of (or even just familiar with) have chapters in France? I’d start there.

      I was in a very similar situation when I first moved to my current country. I ended up landing my current job after reaching out to the president of the local chapter of the American Association of Teapot Painters (ex.) asking if any of their members would be willing to chat with me about how they’d gotten started working here. They put me in touch with someone who happened to know someone who was looking to hire an English-speaking teapot painter, and things fell into place from there.

      Reply ↓
  54. Tradd*

    I hope Alison will let me post a second time today. As a customs broker I am licensed by US Customs (CBP). I’ve had this license for more than a decade and it is essential to higher earning power. However, I am increasingly nervous with the new administration and their many minions online. I post on my own FB page about the challenges of the job with the tariff whiplash, explanations about the de minimus thing affecting ecommerce from China, etc. It’s informational. People whose political leanings I was not aware of have suddenly been making comments that make me very concerned. Basically, any comments even slightly against the new administration are not to be tolerated. I’m single and don’t have a partner to lean on. I scrubbed FB of any mention of the recent tariff stuff and I won’t be talking about work at all.

    Is anyone else going through something like this? If I shut down my social media I would be very isolated. I have blocked the troublesome people.

    Reply ↓
    1. Tradd*

      Forgot to add: I shut my LinkedIn page down a while back due to the site being a mess now. I don’t list my employer’s name anywhere online.

      Reply ↓
    2. DisneyChannelThis*

      “Don’t comply in advance” is a phrase getting passed around at my work. Continue to share and have opinions.

      But I would lock down your named social media to people you know and continue blocking anyone giving you crap. You don’t need internet trolls being able to trace you back to your workplace and home address.

      Make a second social media not under your real name (instagram or reddit etc might be a better platform than Facebook which tends to use real names). Socialize with the wider internet that way. Also don’t use the same name on several platforms, because then if you get doxxed on one platform it can follow you quickly.

      Reply ↓
      1. Tradd*

        My named social media is both FB/IG. They’re locked down. Just went through friends list and pared out a few more people. I have a Reddit account I never use so downloaded the app and logged on. Name is totally anonymous so I’m good there. Thanks for the suggestions! My workplace name is not posted anywhere online by me, so that’s already taken care of.

        Reply ↓
  55. Zurg*

    The IT company I’ve worked at for 30+ years was recently acquired by an advertising company. The parent company just announced an extra week off in the summer for all employees. Awesome! Except our IT clients already thought we had too many days off. Now we have 25 paid company holidays in the US each year.

    I’m thankful for the time off, but it’s embarrassing to tell our mostly Fortune 500 clients that we have twice the vacation days they do.

    This is banana pants, right?

    Reply ↓
    1. hello!*

      This is weird to me. My partner works as a dev, and has at least 21 vacation days at each company he’s worked at. (some you’ve probably heard of). My previous company was a tech start up, and we had 23 days. So, 25 is nice, but not super special. At least, in tech start-up world.

      Reply ↓
    2. Blarg*

      25 paid HOLIDAYS, like in addition to vacation/sick leave? That is … more than normal. But I would not be embarrassed about it. I’d be proud to work for a place that valued time off. If it is creating business issues, because your company is now closed on Halloween while all your clients continue to work, I might address it with your company from that perspective — like getting a floating holiday or something for those that need to maintain services on non-federal holidays you are observing.

      Reply ↓
  56. LightJobHunt*

    What’s the best way to ask about the salary of internal positions?

    I reached out to a recruiter at my current company to ask if they could provide the salary range for a job I was interested in as I wanted to make sure it didn’t pay less than my current job. (When job hunting, I only agree to schedule HR screenings or interviews if they’ll tell me the salary range first. I got the salary range for my current job early on and I didn’t think it’d be a problem to get it before applying to a job.)

    The recruiter said they were unable to share the salary range, but that they thought the salary might be about what I make now, but I would lose money because my year-end bonus would be smaller.

    I’m just wondering why they wouldn’t want to share the salary range for internal applicants, and is there a better way to ask? Or should I apply (I’m not sure if my manager is auto-notified) and wait to ask if they want to schedule a screening?

    (My company does have a list of “salary bands,” but they’re so big they’re useless. Like the admin level is $27k to $127k, coordinators are $34k to $134k, etc.)

    Reply ↓
    1. Trevor*

      It’s frustrating that they won’t share the salary, but I can’t say that it’s surprising either from a company with salary bands of 27-127k lol. It’s also possible they don’t have an exact budget for it yet. I would probably try to reach out to someone who currently holds this position or has held it in the past (this should be easier than it usually would be since you’re an internal candidate) to get at least a rough idea of what the salary would be.

      Reply ↓
  57. Trevor*

    I work on a writing-based team whose workflow is quite laissez-faire. We’re given a stack of case files at the beginning of every day. We each grab one, write up a report on it, send it through, take another and repeat. The reports are all printed at the end of the day, and we all quickly glance over all of them to make sure there aren’t any errors before publishing them. We have a strict deadline for this. Our VP and manager, Mike, can see who is writing the initial draft of which report, but they are all officially attributed to our entire team and we all get in trouble if an error is discovered in the published version.

    Our newest team member, Will, is blowing through reports much faster than the rest of us. I will complete my first one and see that he has already done four. Problem is, this is not speeding up our process as a team at all and is actually leading to more close calls with our deadline than we were having before. Because his reports, when we check them at the end of the day, are FULL of errors. Spelling, grammar, math mistakes, really blatant stuff. It’s adding quite a bit of time to what was previously a very quick process. It’s gotten to the point where some team members have started going into Will’s files to “rewrite” them before they’re printed, which is putting even more work on people’s plates.

    To top it off, Mike has clearly noticed that Will is filing more reports than everyone else, and he LOVES him for it. (Mike has a business background and is not a writer.) We’ve heard from other executives that Mike has been singing Will’s praises to them at every opportunity, emphasizing how fast of a writer he is and the huge workload he’s taking on. Every opportunity for an additional project or responsibility, Mike has been giving to Will, despite others expressing interest who are (in my view) much more qualified. Last month, he nominated Will to give a speech at a company dinner.

    I’m tired of this guy getting so much praise while doing a bad job that creates more work for the rest of us. But I’m worried that criticizing Will directly to Mike — or about getting on Will’s bad side — could backfire given the amount of favor he has with him. There’s part of me that’s tempted to just start performing like Will and churning out careless and error-filled writing myself, and there are days when I’ve tried to do it, but I guess I’m just not sure I’m wired that way. I feel guilty when putting out a bad product that I know I could’ve done better. I also really believe in the mission of our organization, and I feel guilty when I feel like I’m intentionally not serving that.

    Any advice?

    Reply ↓
    1. I'm A Little Teapot*

      Let Will fail. Right now, you guys are covering for him. Stop. Miss deadlines, let errors go out, etc. Yes, it’ll be painful but its also the only way Mike is going to listen.

      Reply ↓
    2. ferrina*

      There’s a few ways to address this. I’m not sure which to recommend, because it really depends on the details of your situations. But here’s the options I thought of (in no particular order):

      1. Get a new job. Yes, I know, the commentors love to say this. But there are some situations that you just can’t fix, and the only way to win the game is not play. You don’t need to run away right now, but mentally start accepting that as an option. Maybe update your resume to remove that mental barrier- that way if you have a particularly bad day, you are ready to rage-apply.
      2. Tell Mike directly what’s going on. This can work if you have really strong rapport with your manager, or if the manager is open to experts and solution oriented. But it can also backfire pretty badly, especially if the manager is ego-driven and you need to raise a concern about their Golden Child.
      3. Talk to Mike about the editing concerns and pretend like you don’t know Will is the culprit. “hey, I’ve noticed that the team is needing to do a lot more editing. It’s not impacting the beginning of the process where we write the report, but it’s adding a lot more time on the end of the workflow because we are spending more time fixing typos, grammar, details, etc. Here’s a few of the reports that needed the most time last week (are they 90% Will’s? How strange!)”.
      4. Pretend to buy in to Mike’s Golden Will Theory, and express faux concern for Will. “Hi Mike! Is Will going to be speaking at the thing next month? That’s so cool- he’s such a quick writer, and I’ve been so impressed! But I’m a little worried for him- his reports aren’t quite up to the same quality as others and need a lot more editing, which is costing him a lot more time at the end of the day*. I’d love to work with him on getting his accuracy and grammar up-leveled** so he can really capitalize on his potential**!)
      *If Mike cares more about Will than the rest of the team, appealing to his love of Will can be more efficient than pointing out what it costs the team as a whole.
      **If Mike uses business jargon, use the business jargon, even if it makes you soul hurt.
      5. Let Will fail. Everyone stops correcting his things until the end of the day. Everyone corrects their own reports first. Make it obvious how much editing Will’s reports need.
      6. Change your workflow to account for Will’s terrible writing. Allocate more time at the end of the day for editing. Or allocate one or two team members to be Early Editors, where they write for a couple hours in the morning, then switch to editing so that there isn’t the last minute rush.

      Again, which strategy(s) you go for just depend on your particular situation. If you are bad actor or suck at politics, don’t use 3 or 4. No matter what you choose, I recommend Option 1. When I’ve had managers start to play favorites without understanding what the job really is, it’s always led to bigger problems. You don’t need to leave right away, but it’s better to start looking before you are incandescent with rage (rage incandescence isn’t a good look on a job candidate). And if the issue resolves, it’s very easy to stop a job search.

      Reply ↓
  58. Pinche Coca*

    I’m wanting to go back to work after 18 months of unemployment (applying/interviewing and it’s tough out there!) and am looking for some help in explaining/accounting for the gap in my resumé and also why I left my last role with nothing to go to. Prior to this stint of unemployment my last job I held for over 5 years and I left because of a serious injury I had outside of work that’s had a long recovery period. My work history has a couple of other big gaps, both when I took time out to care for my parents who were terminally ill, and any job before then I’ve held for a couple of years. I usually have no issue explaining the gaps when I was caring for my parents (and interviewers have been really positive about them to be honest!) but for this most recent one I’m stumped. My injury will likely cause some ongoing issues here and there so it’s not something I’m keen to bring to the table if I don’t have to because it would raise questions about my capability and reliability.

    Because of my line of work I could say I’d been freelancing for the period (assuming they wouldn’t look to a ‘client’ for a reference) or I could say that I’d been seeing the world etc. but I’m in my early 40s so not sure the latter would fly and also it doesn’t really explain why I left my last job. I have been taking some college classes to gain additional credentials and keep busy but none that would line up directly with the timeline of quitting my job and being unemployed for the last 1.5 years. I’ve tried being honest-ish about it on a couple of occasions and it’s gone down like a lead balloon so I’d be really appreciative of any creative input at this stage!

    Reply ↓
    1. hello!*

      You took a gap year where you focused on college classes, art and travelling (you went out for coffee, right?). Don’t make it negative, make it positive. I’m in my 50’s and just had a 14 month gap, and that’s what I used. (I didn’t actually sell any art, but I did have one offer for a piece. I’d already promised it to my kid. And I knit two sweaters, that’s textile art).

      Reply ↓
      1. hello!*

        I had no pushback on the art, but did get into a detailed discussion about the niche art I was totally into. (gyotaku)

        Reply ↓
    2. ferrina*

      I wouldn’t see an issue with saying something like “after leaving my last role to care for an injury which is now healed*, I’ve been taking time to build on my education and travel.”
      *Can also say “handle a medical issue that is now resolved”. It doesn’t matter that you may have occasional flare-ups. Lots of people have random medical flare-ups from a wide array of health conditions. Even if it’s something that needs accommodations, you don’t need to disclose that up-front, especially not before you’ve even been offered an interview.

      Reply ↓
  59. Tomi*

    Had an interview last year where I didn’t get the job but the hiring manager emailed me after and said she’d been impressed with me and would be happy to “stay in touch.” I’m now interested in another position at that company, though it’s not on her team. Should I reach out to her about it, and what should I say if so?

    Reply ↓
    1. WantonSeedStitch*

      Sure. You can ask her what she knows about it, and if, given what she knows about your experience, she has an idea of whether it might be a good fit. If she does think so, she might talk to the hiring manager and put in a good word.

      Reply ↓
  60. Yes And*

    Can anyone recommend resources for someone who is experienced at the mechanics of payroll, but wants to understand the why’s and wherefores of taxes, deductions, overtime, vacation payouts, etc.?

    I posted recently about an employee who I wanted to see take more initiative about this sort of thing, so he can be a more active participant in problem solving and exception handling. I’m thrilled that he is doing so, and I want to encourage him as much as possible. But I learned all this stuff by doing it (and to be honest, I’m perplexed that he hasn’t picked up on any of this stuff after years of executing it), so I don’t have any resources to suggest for him. Thanks!

    Reply ↓
  61. Lady Lessa*

    Spew incoming.
    IT type hell (sorry to you good ones) all off site, both corporate and local. Corporate was trying to install a new program onto my desk top and we had major password problems. Partly because of the way I mentally connect them to the program and the way IT does. Managed to get completely locked out of my desktop (which uses a different password that did not change).

    Finally, the local IT person got me logged into my computer and it turns out that the installed program won’t let me log in even with the correct domain and password. When we (there’s 3 of us who need this new program) get new laptops, I wonder how easy it will be to log in.

    Minor spew. Fonts where lower case “l” and upper case “I” look a like. It may even have number “1” looks the same as well.

    Spew over.

    Reply ↓
  62. Kangaroo for Two*

    In the ongoing chronicles of “People Lose Their Minds Over Free Food”

    We have a monthly breakfast for clients and team leads, usually on the first Friday of the month, from 9 – 10 am. The breakfast catering is excellent, and we typically have plenty left over after the meeting to offer to other staff in our office suite.

    This morning, there was a fire alarm in the building complex early in the morning, and this caused some delays in getting everyone back into the building and the meeting ended up started around 9:30 am, so would likely end around 10:30 am.

    At 10 am, other staff headed to the conference room for breakfast and were SHOCKED to learn that the meeting was going to continue another half hour. Someone even asked our receptionist if she could let the people in the meeting know to take a break so that staff could get their breakfast at the usual time of 10 am. (Obviously that did not happen).

    Reply ↓
  63. Sterling*

    Okay kinda out-there question incoming. I’m a part-timer, and part-timers at my company don’t get performance reviews. However, we were still required to fill out the same self-assessment the full-timers had to (explaining our goals for the upcoming year, what we’d achieved last year, etc.) with sections for our manager and then our skip-level manager to leave feedback and then give us scores in various categories. The full-timers all got to see the scores and feedback they’d been given in their end-of-year performance reviews and then had to sign a form acknowledging that they’d seen it. We part-timers, however, have not been shown our results and, as far as we can tell, there are no plans to show them to us. The scores are also used to determine things like raises, promotions, and bonuses for the full-timers, which aren’t relevant to us part-timers at all.

    One of my coworkers is theorizing that management hasn’t even filled out their half of our evaluations, and that the company is just holding onto them in case they need to whip them out with terrible scores as justification to fire us at any time. (We’re in a country where it’s very hard to fire people and legally you need a strong justification, at minimum.) It sounds like a bit of a conspiracy theory but…is there any other reason why our managers would’ve made us fill this out?

    And, follow-up question: Should I just ask my manager for a performance review? Would that be weird? She barely pays any attention to our team and never talks to us. But if I have no idea if I’m doing my job well or not well and would kind of like to know, even though it’s part time.

    Reply ↓
    1. ferrina*

      It could be simple lack of interest.
      The managers know that part-timers don’t really have anything riding on the scores, so they aren’t going to put any effort into getting the reviews done. Or if it did get done, the manager isn’t putting in the time to share it with you. You could try asking, but this likely isn’t on the manager’s priority list.

      Reply ↓
  64. Looking out for colleagues*

    I’ve always admired how Alison emphasizes the unique ability that you have as a manager to make someone’s life easier during a crisis (flexibility, leave time, etc.) in a way that no one else in their life will be able to do. Does anyone have any similar recommendations for providing work-specific support for people given the new administration? (International nonprofit that doesn’t receive US federal funding and isn’t existentially impacted by the current executive orders, but that works in an area that is highly politicized and is highly associated with one ‘side’– think environmental justice, abortion rights, gun safety, etc.) Flexibility and grace seems like an obvious one, as is adjusting the travel policy, but is there anything else to think about? Both things we can do as individual managers/colleagues (help each other out with workloads if it’s been a bad day) or on a org-wide level (explicitly allow using sick time for mental health days?)

    Reply ↓
  65. fallingleavesofnovember*

    Curious about anyone who has ever worked doing door-to-door sales/charity solicitation – does anyone ever say yes? I can’t understand how it makes sense to pay people to walk around and door knock (even assuming they aren’t paid well) when loads of people won’t be home, and most won’t say yes, and many will be annoyed at being disturbed. (This is specifically prompted by two guys trying to sell me internet service yesterday, interrupting my work day and expecting to me to stand there with the door open in sub-zero (Celsius) weather. We’re getting more and more of these in my neighbourhood, and I just don’t get it as a strategy!

    Reply ↓
    1. commensally*

      They’re often working on commission, at least the sales people, so sending them around costs the company nothing unless they make sales.

      I did paid door-to-door knocking for a petition once, though, and it was kind of surprising how often you could pretty easily talk people into signing if they did answer the door; it was definitely a higher rate than trying to get passers-by in busy public spaces to do it, and I’m no salesperson. (You got fewer signatures overall, though, because getting that answered door was only a couple times an hour.)

      Reply ↓
    2. WorkerDrone*

      Almost 20 years ago now, I got roped into selling Kirby vacuums door-to-door. Of the two and a half weeks that I gave it a shot, only 2 people said yes (and, at the time, I was a wholesome looking young woman).

      One was a wife whose husband was VERY unhappy we were in his house and made it clear. I cleaned like 1 square inch of their carpet and fled without making a sales pitch.

      The other was an elderly woman, living in poverty, obviously very lonely. I cleaned the hell out of her carpets and fled without making a sales pitch.

      I have to imagine this type of thing makes even less sense now than when I was out there doing it.

      Reply ↓
  66. FuzzyFuzz*

    I have a direct report rather new to me and am struggling with the issue of work ‘ownership.’ To start off, I am a huge supporter/upholder of ‘work life balance’ and fully disconnecting when you’re out on PTO and resting when you are out sick. I don’t want or expect my direct reports to handle work when they’re off.

    We work in a white collar environment where each person handles pieces of projects rather independently. One of my employees will write or text to say that they sick on days when they have project deliverables due, and not…say anything about them. For example, I asked them to pull a list to present to a meeting on Tuesday, and to send it to be by Monday at noon. Monday AM, they call in sick but don’t say anything about how far they got with the assignment, where it is saved, if they think it’s in good shape and I’ll likely be able to effectively review on Tuesday AM, nothing.

    It feels weird and heartless to write back to someone who says they’re sick immediately to ask them about work product. But, it feels like a lack of self awareness when they don’t address it themselves.

    Any advice on how I should handle this kind of thing?

    Reply ↓
    1. mreasy*

      I would just assume the deadline has to be extended until they are back. If I’m sick enough to call out, I’m not thinking about a work deliverable.

      Reply ↓
    2. WorkerDrone*

      When they are back in the office, can you ask them to start doing that?

      Something like, “I want you to take your sick days as true sick days, so this isn’t a request for you to do any work on your deliverables. But, if you’re going to be out sick on a day a deliverable is due, going forward can you please include in the email how far along you got, where it’s saved, and when you will have it ready for review? I just need a sentence or two, nothing detailed.”

      Reply ↓
    3. ferrina*

      Do you have a shared drive for your team? Do you have a place where you list all deadlines?

      I work in an industry where we have tight unmoveable deadlines, and we always store everything in a well-organized shared drive for exactly this reason. If someone is unexpectedly out, you can quickly access what they were working on. (and if you don’t store critical docs on the shared drive, that is considered a major performance problem).

      You should also talk to this person and let them know what you need from them when they call out sick.
      “I need you to include what project deadlines are that day if you are sick, so I can reassign them. If the documents are not in the shared drive, you also need to include those in your message.”
      This is standard practice, even among work-life balance advocates (usually especially among those folks- they want the info so that they can take care of the work part of the work-life balance so they don’t need to interrupt the person who is dealing with the life part.)

      Reply ↓
  67. Pigpig*

    I recruit for mostly entry level customer service roles. When I advertise a vacancy I normally get around 100ish applications.

    In the last couple of months we have received literally thousands of applications. I’ve had to turn off notifications because I keep getting an alert every few mins with another resume. When I meet people for interviews the general tone is “I’ve been rejected countless times, please give me any hours for any pay and I’ll gladly work”. Yesterday I interviewed someone with a masters degree who likely used to earn several tens of thousands of dollars above the pay rate we are offering.

    This whole situation has been bewildering and sad. I’ve been recruiting my whole career and I’ve never seen anything like this. I don’t know if this is just my part of the world (New Zealand) or is anyone else experiencing something similar?

    Reply ↓

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