Ask a Manager

It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go… 1. My manager wants to dumb down my writing After a long stint in academia, I took a position with a state workforce agency two years ago. While I still teach adjunct at the university and maintain a “collegiate vocabulary,” I am far from inaccessible when […]

It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go… 1. My job made me a shocking counteroffer I just had a bizarre experience. I’m an IT analyst at a global org, and we’ve been going through a painful and poorly executed agile implementation for the past 14 months. I could write a book about all […]

It’s four answers to four questions. Here we go… 1. Should I avoid rolling my eyes while giving feedback to a coworker? My workplace rarely fires people for performance issues, and it’s led to us retaining a few people who everyone agrees have performance issues but where no action is taken. I have a few […]

It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go… 1. Can you be fired for making a pass at your boss’s spouse? I am a longtime watcher of the CBS soap The Bold and the Beautiful and recently a plot line came up that I thought would be fun to run by you! On the […]

It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go… 1. I manage a manager who dislikes his new, qualified employee I run a small nonprofit. I’m less than six months into the position and have inherited some HR challenges. One of the directors I manage, Dave, is, frankly, a terrible manager. He only manages three […]

It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go… 1. Is it unprofessional to ask to change desks because you don’t like someone? Two years ago I started a job as an engineer at my current company and was assigned a mentor, “Rob.” My cubicle is directly adjacent to his. For various reasons related to […]

It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go… 1. My coworker constantly derails meetings I have a coworker, Mary, who does not know how to stay on topic or when to stop talking. It’s like she thinks a meeting is a time to discuss everything and anything tangentially related to a person’s position in […]

It’s four answers to four questions. Here we go… 1. How to tell an employee his pants are too revealing I need some guidance! We have a new high school teacher who wears pants that show the imprint of his penis. Several students have gone to the principal to share this information. We recently had […]

It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go… 1. My boss wants to ask interviewees how to transport an elephant I have recently moved teams into a slightly more senior management role. We have just received approval to recruit two new staff and I am responsible for all leading the recruitment process. This is […]

It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go… 1. Manager is always scratching his chest inside his shirt I am a recent transfer to my current office, 10 years with my company, and I have an issue with a manager. “Mark” wears his shirt with the top three buttons undone and he is rarely […]