my ex-boss threatened to contact my husband, his coworkers, and my father-in-law if I don’t return $48 of office supplies by Alison Green on January 18, 2023 A reader writes: I received an email today from my prior boss (I left in November) requiring that I return equipment. However, there was no loaned equipment or return equipment clause that even existed for me to sign. They never provided me with anything outside of a $48 office supplies order from Amazon that included […] Read the full article →
can bad employees and bad managers change? by Alison Green on January 16, 2023 I’m off for the holiday, so here’s an older post from the archives. This was originally published in 2015. A reader writes: I am a passionate fan of AAM and often try to guess what you would advise for my own dysfunctional job. Boiled down, my boss needs to stop avoiding confrontation and rein in […] Read the full article →
my boss and coworkers are constantly at my house by Alison Green on January 3, 2023 A reader writes: I need your help in reclaiming my home. I am an employee at a small consulting company (my boss plus three employees). We all live in the same small town and I often see my boss and coworkers at social functions around town. We each work from our homes and there is […] Read the full article →
my new boss scolded us about our private chat messages by Alison Green on November 14, 2022 A reader writes: I’m wondering how to address a doozy of an email my new boss sent yesterday, which has left my coworkers and me uncomfortable and a bit panicky. In this email to my whole department, she stated HR and senior leadership had informed her about a private chat group connected to our team […] Read the full article →
I work at Twitter … what do I do? by Alison Green on November 14, 2022 A reader writes: I work at Twitter and have been there for many years. As I’m sure you’ve seen, Twitter was just bought by Elon Musk and ever since the deal closed two weeks ago, the company has been literally falling apart. I was fortunate enough to survive the round of layoffs in his first […] Read the full article →
my boss wants to know what the private appointments on my calendar are by Alison Green on November 9, 2022 A reader writes: The norm at my org, like many, is to keep your calendar updated so that meetings can be scheduled without doing the “Are you available at X time?” dance. Because of this, I include non-work appointments on my calendar, and I typically mark them as “private.” In the past month, I’ve done […] Read the full article →
our boss gave a lecture about self-care to our very overworked team by Alison Green on November 2, 2022 A reader writes: I work on a small, fully remote team that’s currently in a hiring freeze and understaffed. We are all covering multiple people’s jobs and heavily overworked. We are regularly working late and through weekends, and in the past month alone we have had three employees resign with nothing lined up because they […] Read the full article →
my manager insists on unreasonable deadlines for my projects by Alison Green on November 1, 2022 A reader writes: My manager regularly hands me projects that have unreasonable deadlines. I’ve tried to push back or offer alternatives, but the conversations usually go like this: Manager: “We need to do an updated training for the Blue team. Can you do an overhaul of the materials and present it?” Me: “Sure. It will […] Read the full article →
my boss keeps commenting on my acne by Alison Green on October 27, 2022 A reader writes: I (30F) got a new supervisor in the last six months, who is also part of the C-suite. She is very talented, knowledgeable, and friendly. She has done a lot in terms of supporting and mentoring me, and I am really appreciative of her efforts. However, one issue with her is that […] Read the full article →
can I tell my boss I’m a bad fit for my job? by Alison Green on October 26, 2022 A reader writes: Since early 2021, I have been working as an administrative assistant in a fairly specific field (think a specialized field within a larger industry). I changed jobs in June of this year, as my previous role was only part-time and that wasn’t working out for me. There were some other culture issues […] Read the full article →