how can I make our vacation policy as fair as possible? by Alison Green on April 17, 2025 A reader writes: I am the director of a small, public-facing unit. We have a full-time staff of 10 and several part-time workers. I am struggling with our leave system and how to make it as equitable as possible. Current policy (that I inherited) is that employees can put in all leave for the following […] Read the full article →
my company only lets parents work from home by Alison Green on April 15, 2025 A reader writes: I work at a company that is entirely in-office — they really push “office culture.” I knew that when I started a year and a half ago, but working from home isn’t a priority for me so it hasn’t been a big deal. It’s a fairly small organization, around 50 employees in […] Read the full article →
work trainers are pushing us to share race, religion, sexuality, and gender identity by Alison Green on April 15, 2025 A reader writes: I keep finding myself in this weird situation at work. I’m a medical resident in an academic hospital system in a big progressive city. I keep finding myself in mandatory educational events where the facilitator introduces the concept of privilege as if no one’s ever heard of it and invites/demands everyone to […] Read the full article →
my boss told me to stop having sex with my boyfriend or quit my job by Alison Green on April 9, 2025 A reader writes: I have a question about something that happened early in my career. Obviously there’s nothing I can do to change the past, but I’m curious about whether I had options I didn’t know about due to my inexperience. Immediately out of college, I was hired to work for a religious nonprofit organization. […] Read the full article →
employee won’t report his hours correctly by Alison Green on April 8, 2025 A reader writes: At my small company, employees have a small number of set hours each week but can set their own schedule to be as full or as empty as they’d like by scheduling sessions directly with the clients they are connected with. We give them a calendar where they input their hours worked, […] Read the full article →
the storage labyrinth, the tape terrorism, and other things you thought were normal early in your career but were actually very weird by Alison Green on April 7, 2025 Last week we talked about things that you thought were normal early in your career … but later learned were actually just weird things your old workplace did and which were not typical at all. Here are 15 of my favorite stories you shared. 1. The packed hotel rooms My very first internship was the […] Read the full article →
is it my responsibility to have a work-from-home set-up even if I don’t normally work from home? by Alison Green on March 27, 2025 A reader writes: I work for a company that has around 600 employees and several offices in a few different countries. Recently a different office was refurbished, and during the refurbishment all the employees who worked there had to work from home. It ended up taking longer than planned and they were all working from […] Read the full article →
my coworkers won’t answer their phones, ever by Alison Green on March 25, 2025 A reader writes: I feel bananas asking this, but could you give me a read on how/whether people still use phones in office/remote office work in 2025? I have a fully remote, customer-focused job for a tiny organization, and no one on my team will use phones. I have the most customer interactions and am […] Read the full article →
my coworker isn’t willing to tell a teenager helper that he’s accidentally killing all our fish by Alison Green on March 18, 2025 A reader writes: I work in the five-person office of a large pre-school. My colleague, Amy, keeps a five-gallon fish tank near her desk with between two and four fish in it. The tank is in full view of the office door and the lobby beyond. The fish are important to the school; when our […] Read the full article →
I rejected a student’s advances, but his parents are mad at me by Alison Green on March 10, 2025 A reader writes: I’m a volunteer for an after-school program for high schoolers interested in my profession (similar to, say, a robotics team). I’m a woman in my mid-20s, and one of the kids is a 16-year-old boy we’ll call Marvin. Marvin is a very bright and hardworking kid who excels academically (AP classes, honor […] Read the full article →