update: new hire is monitoring our calendars by Alison Green on September 5, 2023 Remember the letter-writer whose new hire was monitoring the whole team’s calendars and commenting on them? The first update was here, and here’s the conclusion. As predicted, Seniority Susan didn’t make it. I delivered a PIP with explicit expectations for behavior modification outlined. At the time, Susan did not give me much hope that change would occur. I was wrong … for about five months. She abided by the PIP goals and, I thought, had turned over a new leaf when things started going downhill again. She just couldn’t stay in her lane and do her work. She rebuilt spreadsheets I created to fulfill very specific needs, complicated every decision and conversation by insisting that she was an expert in X, Y, and Z (she isn’t), spent weeks laying claim to as many prospects as she could (but doing absolutely nothing with them) and did everything but her core job. She was busy … but not effective … and she was EXHAUSTING to deal with! So I started to address all that in our weekly 1:1 meetings. Defensiveness was her reaction, asserting that she is the authority on all things — in other words, Seniority Susan was back! As I held firm and put expectations on paper, she began to claim illness and infirmity. Now, I realize that this sounds monstrous, but I truly believe she was mimicking the experience of a colleague who contends with an autoimmune disorder to take advantage of us. She had the exact same symptoms but always worked it so we couldn’t get a doctor’s confirmation she needed accommodations. She would be out two days in a row, never three (policy is a doctor’s note at three days), come in late, leave early, I’ll be working from home (but not having any work product to show for it), the whole thing. After two months of this, HR sat her down and discussed FMLA. How can we accommodate your needs and get our work done? What can we do here to get you where we need you to be? Let’s get a plan on paper and figure this out. So we went in to accommodation mode, even though she never completed the FMLA paperwork. Still. No work being done. No progress made. Nada! So, as in every sales job on earth, you don’t make progress towards goal, folks start to ask questions. And the answers were not good. Her position was eliminated. Leadership felt that we didn’t really need that position anyway — the goals weren’t met and the budget couldn’t support it. Once she was gone, my team started sharing stories of the manipulation she was doing behind the scenes: lies she told, complaints she made about me to them, things she told them to do — saying that I asked her to tell them, even arranging for a colleague to be out of the room when she was to be introduced at an event! Really crazy stuff. I have never been so happy to have missed a sales goal in my career! Now that Susan is gone, our team’s productivity has increased and we are actually on track to meet goal by the end of the year — making up for the deficit she was in before she left AND meeting our own! Oh, and we can even share our calendars with the whole team and hear zero comments on what we have on them. Sayonara, Susan! You may also like:I don't like my super popular coworker ... and she complained to my boss about itcoworker refuses to talk to anyone because I asked him to stop calling us “young ladies," I'm afraid my friend might get…am I a bad manager? { 131 comments }
I’m getting stuck with extra work because I don’t have kids by Alison Green on September 5, 2023 A reader writes: I’m just a little over one year into my job. My manager is great, my coworkers are fine, and the benefits are outstanding. The work-life balance is healthy, and we are encouraged to take our PTO and to have fulfilling lives outside of work. I’m generally happy here, and I like it as much as one can like a job. The owners of the company take pride when employees get married, buy houses, and have kids. They say making big life changes like that means employees are happy, there’s a good life balance, and pay/benefits are good. I agree with all this, and I’m happy to be part of a company that cares about employees as people, not just what they accomplish during the workday. However, I’m the youngest person at my company. I also don’t plan on ever having children. A good portion of employees who have joined the “three kids club” and it’s kind of a running joke in the company. My team is only me, my manager, and a coworker, and this year both of them got pregnant and had back-to-back parental leaves. Out of the 15 months I’ve been here, six months have been holding down the fort during parental leaves. That’s not the problem, I’m glad we have a robust parental leave! My issue is that it feels like I’m now being asked to handle more out-of-work-hours events, when before they weren’t my responsibility. We have three office locations, in three nearby- but-far-enough-away cities. Each of us on my team is located in one of the three offices, so we each handle events in our respective cities. When my manager was on leave, myself and my teammate both covered her city so that it would be equal and fair. However, I am closer to my manager’s city than my teammate is. Now that my manager is back, I’m being asked to cover the events in her city because she can’t find childcare. It feels like her lack of childcare is being made my problem. I have a robust social life and have plans most days of the week, whether it’s a weekly obligation, or loose plans to grab dinner with a friend, or maybe I’m caring for a sick relative. It shouldn’t matter what I’m doing; my time outside of work is no less important than anyone else’s just because I don’t have children. Before my manager had a child, this was not an issue. But it becoming the new norm is not sustainable for me. I like my job and this is not enough for me to leave over. However, I do want to make it clear to my manager that I don’t want to continue to have things pushed off onto me simply because I don’t have kids. But it’s also tough to say, “Hey, I know you can’t get childcare but I have a kickball league that needs me.” In the decade and a half that I’ve written a workplace-advice column, I’ve received a steady flow of letters from people frustrated that they’re expected to pick up additional work for their co-workers simply because they don’t have kids. They’re assumed to be available in the evenings or on the weekends, or they’re never given first dibs on desirable vacation dates because colleagues with kids are always allowed to claim them first. Like you, most of these people are unsure about how to speak up because they feel weird about suggesting their kickball game should trump a co-worker’s child-care responsibilities. And yes, in a vacuum, if an emergency situation comes up that requires work coverage, it makes sense to consider the relative needs and constraints of everyone involved, and the kickball game might be what gets sacrificed. But when this becomes a pattern and employees without kids are consistently expected to do more than their colleagues who are parents, that’s not okay. A single kickball game might not be a big deal, but getting the same amount of time off work as your co-workers — and having your own life choices and commitments given the same amount of respect — definitely is. It made sense that you pitched in to cover when your co-workers were on parental leave. That’s a normal thing to happen, just like you might also need to cover when a colleague is on a lengthy medical leave or when someone’s resignation leaves a vacancy that hasn’t been filled. Everyone fills in during those situations over the course of their careers. But now that your co-workers are back and it looks like you’re being expected to pick up some of their responsibilities permanently, that’s not fair and it’s worth raising with your boss. Sit down with your boss and say something like this: “I was able to cover events in City X when you were on leave, but it’s not something I can do long-term. Starting at the end of this month, my commitments outside of work mean I won’t be available to fill in for those, so I wanted to give you a heads-up so you can make other plans.” Now, in theory, your boss could tell you that events in her city are part of your job now, take it or leave it, so you’d want to be prepared for that. Jobs do change and sometimes they change in ways that don’t align with what you want. If that happens, you can decide whether you want the job under these new terms or not. But it’s a reasonable thing for you to raise, and there’s a good chance that it will be the nudge that compels your boss to realize she needs a different plan to get that work covered. And if she’s not willing to let you out of those events, you’re better off getting clarity about that reality sooner. Also, to be clear, it might be perfectly reasonable that your boss and co-worker don’t want to work evening hours now that they have babies! A lot of people wouldn’t. But the burden of accommodating that shouldn’t fall on you; it should fall on your employer. And that’s the crux of how the current situation arose: Your colleagues’ flexibility is coming at your expense rather than the company’s expense. Moreover, if employees with kids have the ability to opt out of difficult scheduling commitments, that option should be available to anyone who needs it, not just parents. People with all kinds of circumstances need flexibility — to take a class, to care for aging relatives, to pursue hobbies, to recharge on their own. You’re as deserving of time for those things as your colleagues are for their own commitments. Policies and practices that only consider the needs of parents while leaving everyone else behind only serve to pit parents and nonparents against each other, which conveniently shifts attention away from employers’ responsibility to make jobs sustainable and compatible with people’s real lives (as well as from a government that ignores its populace’s need for affordable child care and paid sick leave, but that’s another conversation altogether). For now, though, talking to your boss is your best option. Originally published at New York Magazine. You may also like:parents in my office are sticking non-parents with all the holiday coveragemy constantly available coworkers keep commenting on my healthier work-life balanceshould I write a letter telling my old boss what a jerk she is? { 370 comments }
my manager told a coworker to write an apology letter to a higher-up by Alison Green on September 5, 2023 A reader writes: I’m semi-close with a coworker, Jasper, outside of work (friend of a friend), but I keep my distance at work because he has a pretty bad attitude problem that has gone relatively unchecked by management for a long time. We are not on the same team but work in the same area and our separate teams’ supervisors report to the same manager, Fergus, who is brand new to the organization. Our organization has been getting a lot of new senior leadership in, and the newest C-suite member who’s responsible for our area showed up to our latest department meeting. Jasper has been upset about compensation models at our organization for a long time, and decided to confront this new C-suite executive about it in the department meeting. It was quite aggressive and Jasper even interrupted the executive while he was trying to respond to Jasper’s questions. This behavior, of course, was not well received by the executive, and shortly thereafter Jasper was called into a meeting with Fergus and Jasper’s direct supervisor. According to Jasper, Fergus is asking them to write an apology letter to the executive in question. Assuming this is true, is this a common thing that managers do to address unprofessional behavior? I feel like it would do nothing to actually get Jasper to correct their behavior, and combined with some other decisions that Fergus has made lately, I’m starting to feel uneasy about his management style. What are your thoughts on this situation? No, a forced apology letter is weird and infantilizing — and the optics are particularly bad in this case. If Fergus has concerns about Jasper — and it sounds like he has good reason to — he should address those concerns, seriously and forthrightly. If Jasper’s behavior is serious enough to warrant consequences, Fergus should be forthright about those too, which could be anything from “this is affecting how you’re perceived and is harming your relationships across the organization” to “this will prevent you from being considered for the promotion you want” to “you will lose your job if this continues.” Those things are natural consequences of some behavior at work, and it’s Fergus’s job to be up-front about that. But ordering someone to write an apology letter is … not the kind of thing you do with other adults. It might be reasonable to say, “I think you owe Cecil an apology” or “I don’t think you’ll be able to progress here in the ways you want unless you apologize to Cecil” or “in your shoes, I’d send him an apology because XYZ” or even “you need to figure out how you’ll repair your relationship with Cecil and share that plan with me.” And hell, I can imagine situations so egregious that if an employee didn’t decide to apologize on their own, I might conclude things were unsalvageable (although this doesn’t sound like one of them). But you don’t order other adults to write apology letters, particularly to higher-ups and particularly not for raising salary issues. And yes, the apology here isn’t really for raising salary issues — it’s for being belligerent about it and interrupting and generally being rude. (I’m filling in some blanks based on your description of Jasper … if I’m wrong and he wasn’t belligerent or rude and just interrupted once or something like that, then a forced apology is even more off-base.) But the takeaway in some parts of your organization is still going to be, “Fergus made Jasper write an apology letter for asking management about salaries,” and that’s a really, really bad look for Fergus and the company in general. If I were the executive who received the apology and found out later that he’d been forced to write it, I’d be pretty horrified about what signals we were sending — as well as concerned about why Fergus wasn’t able to take a more nuanced approach as a manager. There are clearly some issues with Jasper. Fergus needs to address those. This isn’t the way to do it. You may also like:when should you expect your boss to apologize?my employer wants me to apologize for job-searching, how far back should your resume go, and moremy boss told me to write the same sentence 500 times as punishment for a mistake { 168 comments }
fired for having alcohol in my car, my boss argues with my answer to “how are you?” and more by Alison Green on September 5, 2023 It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go… 1. My boss argues with my answer to “how are you?” When my team is in the office, my boss does a round saying hello to everyone on our team. A couple of times now, she’s come over and started the conversation with me with, “How are you?” And I’ll usually respond, “Good.” The problem is, I am apparently not peppy enough because she has replied that I “don’t sound very good” more than once, which is absurd to me! I’m usually having a perfectly pleasant work morning. The last time this happened, I told her in a joking manner that maybe I’m just not very enthusiastic in the mornings because she’s said this a couple times to me, and I promised that I was actually doing well. She seemed surprised that I pushed back and told me it was okay to not be good and that she was here to listen. More firmly, I told her that I was fine. She agreed that I was “just fine” and walked away satisfied that I had downgraded my feelings from good to fine, which left me with a bad taste in my mouth because it felt like I had to acquiesce to her assessment of my own feelings before she would leave me alone to do my work. I am a private person at work. I am not hiding anything major from her that’s impacting my mood, and even if I was I don’t think it’s her business. She’s my boss, not my mom or my spouse or my therapist. I think I just have a different personality and affect from what she expects. I just want to be able to drink my coffee and answer morning emails without a critical examination of my emotions. Oh my goodness. Unless you are putting out very different signals than you’ve reported here when you say you’re “good” — like unless you’re obviously holding back tears or, I don’t know, are partly on fire — replying with “It’s okay not to be and I’m here to listen” is pretty obnoxious. I would be tempted to start responding “unbelievably well” or “genuinely magnificent” or “luxuriating in the company’s abundance,” but those probably won’t serve you well. You could simply reply, “Fine, how are you?” and if she pushes with “Just fine?” you could cheerfully say, “Yep, just fine.” You might have to go through that exchange daily, but it might be the easiest response. If that doesn’t solve it and it’s still happening a few weeks from now … well, sometimes you can get people like this to stop the annoying behavior by taking it very seriously. In this case, that could mean going to her and saying, “Have I done something to make you concerned about my overall satisfaction here? You’ve seemed concerned lately that my response to ‘how are you?’ hasn’t been cheery enough. It’s making me feel really scrutinized, so I wanted to ask if you have any concerns with me or my work that we should talk about.” That might be making a bigger deal of it than you want to … but she is making a big deal of a routine exchange and it’s not unreasonable to push back a bit. Related: an overly cheerful executive keeps ordering me to feel great 2. Can I be fired for having alcohol in my car at work? Can I be fired for having — not drinking — an alcoholic beverage in my car at work, on company property? And it wasn’t easily seen from the outside, you had to get very close because of the tint on my windows. So someone was looking very close to even see it. It was only in my car. I had not consumed any, it was for an after-work event I was going to. Firing someone because they have a bottle of wine or a six-pack in their car for an event after work (or hell, a shoulder of Smirnoff or whatever you had) is ridiculous. People use their cars to transport items outside of work; this shouldn’t be a big deal. You can indeed be fired for it, though. I’m guessing your company has a policy about no alcohol on company grounds and you were in violation of that. If you haven’t already apologized and explained it was an after-work event and was an oversight on your part, you should do that ASAP. But they might not budge (especially if they’ve fired other people for it in the past, which could make it harder to be flexible now even if they wanted to). 3. How do I fire a client who isn’t terrible but isn’t good either? I run my own business doing dog grooming. I have a healthy client base, and am not suffering for business. I have a client who isn’t necessarily bad, but a) never come pick up their dog on time, b) take hours after their appointment to pay me and c) never, ever tip me. They also have two dogs, one of which I’ve already had to refuse because it’s a mammoth-sized dog and I’m an average-sized human. They didn’t take it well and pushed back repeatedly. At this point, I’m starting to feel like they’re more trouble than their business is worth but I don’t really have a reason to “fire” them. How do I let them down easy and avoid drama? One of the easiest ways — especially if you don’t have a website with your rates listed publicly — is to raise what you’re charging them significantly, figuring that they’ll either decline to book further appointments or will at least be paying you a whole lot more if they do. (Of course, this only works if the increased rate is high enough that you’d be okay with doing more work for them under those terms. It should also be a rate that accounts for their lack of tipping.) Otherwise, though, you could tell them you’re cutting back on hours and clients and are now booked out months ahead of time / don’t have any availability for the foreseeable future (“I’ve gotten so booked that I’m not taking new appointments at all right now”). Or tell them you can’t book more appointments for them because they’ve been late for pick-up so many times. Or, if you’re feeling generous and are willing to give them one more shot, you could give them a warning and let them know that if there are any more late pick-ups, you won’t be able to give them appointments in the future, and also that they’ll need to pay in advance from now on. 4. The ethics of lying about a Glassdoor review I wrote a Glassdoor review about my current employer, and it mostly focused on the problems I have with their health insurance plan (I stuck with factual statements about it and I feel it is a fair assessment of the plan). I also have communicated a lot with HR about our health care plan (mostly to get issues escalated where I was being ghosted by the the plan administrators; to be fair, the escalation always worked). My employer can probably figure out I’m one of the people most likely to have written the Glassdoor review. If they ask me if I wrote it, can I ethically lie and say I did not write it? I don’t think I’ll get fired over it, but I imagine I’ll be asked to take it down and all things considered I would rather not. I think you can say you didn’t write it, given the power disparity and because that’s not a question they should be asking you in the first place. It’s similar to how you can ethically answer “no” if your employer asks if you’re job-searching and you are; they shouldn’t be asking, and the power disparity affects what’s ethically required of you. Read an update to this letter. 5. How to reply to positive feedback Is there a best response when receiving positive feedback from a manager other than “thank you”? I will sometimes use it as an opportunity for the manager to point out where they think I can keep improving, but maybe they think I am missing the point. Just stick with “thank you” or “thank you, I appreciate that.” That’s polite, it’s all that’s necessary, and it doesn’t negate the praise the way you risk doing if you turn it into a request for criticism. That said, if you genuinely had concerns or questions about the work you’re being praised for, it’s fine to say something like, “I appreciate that! I actually wasn’t sure about how I handled the X piece of that — was there a different way I could have come at that?” But only say that if you’re genuinely wondering, not just as a way to seem humble when you’re praised. Related: I don’t know how to accept compliments graciously You may also like:my employee gets stressed and frustrated and snaps at meI think my coworker is an alcoholicmy employee argues when he's wrong, I threw up on my interviewer's floor, and more { 883 comments }
Labor Day open thread by Alison Green on September 4, 2023 It’s Labor Day! The comment section on this post is open for discussion with other readers on anything (work-related or not) that you want to talk about. If you want an answer from me, emailing me is still your best bet*, but this is a chance to talk 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. You may also like:how do I balance my labor shortage sympathy with annoyance at the inconvenience it causes?how should you decide which battles to pick at work?Mortification Week: the spooky question, the breakfast burritos, and more { 895 comments }
weekend open thread – September 2-3, 2023 by Alison Green on September 1, 2023 This comment section is open for any non-work-related discussion you’d like to have with other readers, by popular demand. Here are the rules for the weekend posts. Book recommendation of the week: The Connellys of County Down, by Tracey Lange. After being released from prison, a woman moves back in with her sister, brother, and nephew and tries to rebuild her life. * I make a commission if you use that Amazon link. You may also like:all of my 2021 and 2022 book recommendationsall of my 2019 and 2020 book recommendationsall of my book recommendations from 2015-2018 { 1,039 comments }
it’s your Friday good news by Alison Green on September 1, 2023 It’s your Friday good news! 1. “I wrote you a letter in early 2021 that you didn’t print because it didn’t really contain a question, so much as it was my attempt to figure out how to survive what I feared was a terrible and permanent vibe-shift at my job. (Unfortunately, I was right.) I worked at the same place as this letter-writer (who, by the way, is thriving) in very different capacities, but as lower-paid, highly competent problem-solvers we were dealing with some similar issues. Shortly before the pandemic, leadership shifted in several areas, and as people were brought in and the director became more comfortable with her new role, the atmosphere became increasingly tense and paranoid. For the sake of brevity, I will only say that THINGS GOT BAD. Despite all the talk of the ‘great resignation,’ what I found in my job search was that a lot of places were still consolidating administrative positions within their organizations rather than hiring from the outside (which is how I had ended up with four jobs and one salary in an organization that loved to talk about equity and faculty parity, but rarely gave staff raises that were not in response to another job offer), so despite getting a lot of help from the site with revamping my resume and cover letter, it took me over a year to find another job so that I could finally leave. I started a new job at the end of October 2022, and it’s been a breath of fresh air! I have thoughtful colleagues, a supportive boss, and I no longer need to remind myself to unclench my jaw thirty times a day. I just had my mid-year review, and it was glowing. As for my last employer, as far as I’ve heard, they hired three people to cover the work I was doing, and they’re still struggling to cover it all. Thank you for providing me with a consistent voice of reason when I otherwise had none!” 2. “I saved a promotion for a coworker using your advice and I wanted to write to say: thank you. I left my very toxic employer about a year ago and feel I can now share. I was on a hiring committee and in the interviews, our top candidate, let’s call him Josh, mentioned he was told that he did not get the other internal role he interviewed for because he could not work Saturdays due to his religion (a branch of Judaism). We scored all the candidates (our system uses numbers to avoid bias) and made our recommendation to the hiring manager that Josh was our top choice. Because I learned from your site that not working Saturdays was probably a reasonable accommodation for us to make, I mentioned this to my supervisor. She is the hiring manager who did not hire Josh for the other internal role. I told her what Josh said, that I did not think she said those exact words, but that I did not want “us” to get in trouble for suggesting we would not make a reasonable accommodation. And it was a good thing we were hiring him now because otherwise it could look like a pattern of discrimination since we already did not promote him once and we did not hire other candidates from the same religion. Honestly, I said those things to protect my manager, whom I liked, and because it was the right thing to do. I did not know Josh other than to say hello to in the staff room; we worked in different departments. I had no idea what I had just set in motion! The hiring manager for the current role Josh had applied for asked to meet with me. She said that because I made those comments to my manager, she wanted to give me a heads up that she had changed some of our numbers to make another candidate the top candidate! She did this because Sally, another person on the hiring committee, told her something about the interview, and you know, wink wink, we don’t want to have someone on our team who does not listen to managers. It was BS. Not only was Sally completely wrong about what she said, this was all just to avoid hiring someone who would make scheduling a bit harder! It was one of those rare times that you think quickly, but only because I’ve read so many of your posts. I was reeling inside (illegal! anti-semitism! poor Josh! WTF!) but I made myself go all casual, adopted a disinterested tone, and said thanks for letting me know, I have no skin in this, I was just concerned that “we” might be accused of a pattern of discrimination. I also said, “It is your call, you are in charge, etc.” … like “you are the one discriminating and who will get in trouble for this.” And I left, not a care in the world! But really so angry and sad. As I was debating what to do, write to you, go to HR (who I did not trust), I heard that Josh got the promotion! I like to think I scared her into doing the right thing. And maybe I should have trusted HR; after I left, I heard that HR was going to attend all interviews. I also learned later what a great guy Josh is and how much the full-time position meant to him and his family.” 3. “Having just finished up a contract where I felt thoroughly out of my depth, I decided to be a lot choosier about what roles I’d apply for in future. I was approached about one that seemed a nice mixture of hands-on and management. I was honest about not having a ton of management experience but, given hypothetical situations, I applied what I’ve learned from reading Ask a Manager. They must have liked my answers, because I’m just finishing up my first week! Armed with my AAM knowledge, I’m already making a contribution and getting things done. After sticking it out at a role that was a bad fit, it was a real confidence boost to be offered the first job I applied for.” You may also like:I wrote a Glassdoor review and the employer is losing their mindsmy boss won't stop posting fake news and false memes on our company Facebookmost popular posts of 2021 { 30 comments }
open thread – September 1-2, 2023 by Alison Green on September 1, 2023 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. You may also like:our boss told us to camp in tents when we travel for businessMortification Week: the wizened coworker, the hot cheetos, and morehere's a bunch of help finding a new job { 838 comments }
I have $10,000 in unsubmitted business expenses, salad dressing conundrum, and more by Alison Green on September 1, 2023 It’s four answers to four questions. Here we go… 1. I have $10,000 in unsubmitted business expenses from my old job At my previous employer (employed September 2022 – April 2023), I incurred expenses on my personal credit card and did not submit them for reimbursement. I was battling a handful of personal and mental and legal challenges at that time. My irresponsibility in hindsight is just baffling to me now but … I was in a really dark place. Fast forward to today, I still have these receipts and have not submitted any of them. They go as far back as October 2022 and total roughly $10,000. Do have the option to submit these because they were on a personal card vs. a company business card? I’m trying work on paying down some debt, but I’m assuming my window of opportunity has long since closed. Is reimbursement on a company card vs. a personal handled differently or does everything need to be submitted in a timely manner (30-60 days) regardless? Oh my goodness, $10,000! Ethically, they absolutely should reimburse you — those are their business expenses and you shouldn’t have to pay for them, regardless of how much time has gone by. And shouldn’t matter that they’re on your personal card as long as you have receipts and can prove they were approved work expenses. That said, I don’t know if they will. They might balk because it’s so long after the fact, particularly with the ones from last year. You’d have a better shot if you were still working there, but with so much money at stake, you should try regardless. If they say no, you’re no worse off than you are now. Approach your old manager there first, since that’s someone who knows you and might be invested in trying to get this fixed. Don’t wait another day! 2. What do I do about ear-splittingly loud conferences? I have some physical issues that require me to be very careful of my hearing. I deliberately took a position where noise is minimal, and according to my manager I’m doing well in it. Recently, my team went to an industry conference. The industry is not especially loud-sound-related — it’s not in entertainment or munitions or anything like that. So I did not expect to run into any problems. However, at the first keynote, there was bass music so loud that the floor shook, with people shouting into mics to be heard over that. Several other people and I had to leave. That night there was a networking mixer with a DJ that was so loud I couldn’t stay for more than a few minutes, and I couldn’t have heard anyone I might have wanted to network with if I’d stayed. The following night there was another networking event with the same DJ, and, even with the earplugs that I’d brought, I couldn’t manage more than five minutes. When I got back to my hotel room after the last event, I saw that the sound stress had burst a blood vessel in my eye. A big part of going to conferences is networking, so I feel I didn’t get my department’s money’s worth out of the event. I’ve been to other conferences in this industry that didn’t include aural assault, so it’s not like it’s standard. But my department spent thousands of dollars on my participation (what with conference registration, flights, and the hotel) and that seems like an expensive way to learn that a conference is not for me. Is there a way to determine in advance if conferences will be rock conference wanna-bes? If not, how should I handle any future events if they prove to be similarly untenable? I’m resigned to being Susie No-Fun, but I don’t think my department should be out of pocket for that. I went 16 years with no letters on this topic and in the last two months have had two. Conference organizers, get your sound levels under control! I can only think of two ways to suss this out ahead of time. One is to contact the organizers beforehand and ask. The other is to ask people in your field who have attended in previous years. Neither of these is foolproof since one person’s “blood-vessel-popping loud” is another person’s “not too bad” … and even if someone attests that it was safe in past years, it could change the next year. But you should definitely give feedback to the organizers of this conference, and do the same thing if it happens at another event in the future. You might also talk to your manager about the problem and ask if there’s another way she wants you to handle it — but it’s pretty likely she’s going to tell you to do exactly what you did (leave if you can’t comfortably stay). The chances of running into this wouldn’t warrant never attending a conference again as a precautionary measure, but it’s smart to give her a heads-up about the issue so it’s on her radar too. 3. How can I turn down endless gifts of salad dressing? I live in a country where food gifts are a common way to express appreciation to coworkers (think, a little treat from a bakery, etc). I have a colleague who I regularly help with a task outside of my usual job duties but within my unique skill set. This task happens twice a year, and every time, she gives me a bottle of a certain type of salad dressing as a thank you. It’s a delicious dressing, but honestly, salad isn’t part of my regular home cooking rotation. The unopened bottles of dressing are building up in my cabinet. I have a friendly relationship with this colleague, and I don’t want to hurt her feelings. Do I have any way to escape the endless dressing? “This is so nice of you! I haven’t been eating much salad lately so I shouldn’t take any more, but it’s so kind of you to think of me.” 4. Company doesn’t use titles externally I am a young professional in my last year of school. I recently started work at a new industrial company. One of the women I eat lunch with says that the company does not use any titles externally — our titles are only internal. For example, our titles do not appear in our email signatures (which we are not allowed to set ourselves — this is governed by IT) and to my knowledge they do not refer to anyone as “project manager” or “engineer” outside of internal communication, even with vendors and clients. Is this normal? Is there a good reason for this? It’s not the norm, and it seems like something that’s going to breed confusion in situations where you want clarity. In many external communications, a title quickly communicates what your role is and a general idea of what authority and expertise you might have. Those are usually useful concepts to be able to convey to clients in particular. 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my coworker keeps asking me to find and re-send him emails by Alison Green on August 31, 2023 A reader writes: I have a coworker, Louis, who I’ve been fed up with since he’s joined our team. Situation: Sometimes, not terribly often, Louis asks me questions that I know he’s already gotten the answer to via email. We’re part of a larger team, but mostly it’s just us on a joint client project. His usual process seems to be, “If I try something once and it doesn’t work, ask Jane (me), because she’ll find it more quickly.” If I mention it’s in an email somewhere, he’ll ask me what my problem is and would it really be that terrible to just quickly send it to him again/walk him through the process for a few minutes? And no, it wouldn’t, but the reason he’s asking me instead of looking it up himself is because it’s just easier on him (I’ve seen him do this to others and don’t believe it’s because of sexism). Context: When Louis joined our team, he refused most of our attempts to teach him the ropes. He would cancel meetings that we’d set up, mostly because he’d rather start a bit later or didn’t see the need (his words), and told everybody in our company how easy our team has it (because others were shouldering the work — and yes, in hindsight, I should’ve told my manager that in no uncertain terms, but she’s very hands-off anyway). He learned most of the important stuff when he was alone at the project for a few weeks, with me at another location, and he absolutely had to. He still has questions sometimes, and I usually answer those, even if it’s been covered before. I have many more grievances that may absolutely cloud my judgment (i.e., he doesn’t care much about keeping our main client happy, he didn’t take me seriously at ALL during his first six months here, his actual work is … not good, he’s noticed that he doesn’t know all he should and keeps mentioning how little he was taught when he first joined the company(!)). Question: How do I deal with his questions when he could find answers elsewhere (process documentation, emails)? I know there are more issues to address, and I need to push for him to take on more of our “shared” tasks, but I’m unsure how to reply to “why can’t you do this small thing, it would really help me” (said in a rather fascinated tone, like what possesses me to deny a simple request made by a fellow human?). The words you want: “Sorry, I’m swamped right now.” Obviously that shouldn’t be necessary; you shouldn’t need to defend your choice not to do his work for him. But since he pushes you on it and implies you’re a belligerent wastrel for not helping, just start responding to his requests with variations of, “Sorry, I’m swamped, but it’s definitely in an email somewhere.” And then if he asks what your problem is (!) or otherwise pushes back on that, you can simply ignore him. Or, if you want, say, “Like I said, I’m swamped and can’t stop what I’m doing.” Or if you have an expressive face and are willing to use it, feel free to give him a look that conveys, “Why are you asking me to stop in the middle of a busy day and do your work for you?” Alternately, you could address it more head-on! As in, “It’s really weird that you act like I’m wronging you when I don’t take extra time to dig up old emails and resend them to you. You should assume you’re in charge of tracking those yourself and I’m not going to hunt them down for you.” But Louis sounds like such a jackwagon that I’m not sure it’s worth bothering, when you can instead just flatly decline in the moment. You may also like:is it rude to send emails late at night, should I tell my boss I'm job hunting, and moremy coworkers come by my desk to check on emails right after sending themmy coworker has a permanent auto-reply implying she's away -- but she's not { 415 comments }