updates: the ex-boss’s affair, the deadline blamer, and more

Here are three updates from past letter-writers.

1. I kept my ex-boss’s affair a secret … and now I work with her husband

The tension I felt was just because we both knew we knew. He did know that I knew about that affair. My ex-boss and I happened to be good friends before it all. So during (even though we were no longer good friends) she would use me as a cover for what she was actually doing. (I didn’t know this at the time, it came out in the end).

I do see him now during work meetings here and there, and I am just mutual with him as I am with everyone else. Smile and say hi, and keep it all work-based.

But I am friends with him on Facebook, and did see that he got engaged last month! So I am very happy he is moving forward and found happiness again! Not the best update, I guess. But I am also moving forward and don’t hold bad feelings towards my ex boss. Never friends or even acquaintances again, but I also need to move forward from what she did to me, even if I never got an apology.

2. New colleague keeps blaming a coworker for missed deadlines (#4 at the link)

I believe the advice worked. I spoke to our supervisor who spoke with our Point of Contact’s (POC) supervisor and by the next meeting our POC had made a very obvious change in behavior (even interrupting herself at one point to say something like “but I’m not supposed to talk about our capacity” with an eye roll). The bigger news is that a few weeks later we got an email that our POC was no longer with the company! I am not high enough on the org chart to have any idea what happened, but our “named” team member is now our POC and things seem to be going much better for everyone still here.

3. People tell me how my name is pronounced (wrong) (#2 at the link)

I’m the person who couldn’t figure out how to get my colleagues to pronounce my name correctly). Thanks to you AND Captain Awkward for your advice!

In retrospect, I was writing about two problems: how to gracefully head off unnecessary comments when introducing myself to new people, and how to deal with the coworkers who’d been saying my name incorrectly for years.

Much of the problem stemmed from the fact that when I started my first professional job at 22 I was too shy to correct my new boss on my first day, and then I stuck with that company for eight years. As far as I can tell, there is not a good way to fix this situation when you’re already in it! The longer you go, the more difficult it is to change course. By the time I wasn’t a shy rookie on the team it was far too late.

Eventually I solved this problem by getting a new job! Between “learning a lot from Ask a Manager over the years” and “not being 22 anymore” I’ve gotten much better at communicating assertively and directly, so it was easy for me to correct my new boss on my first day. She then proactively clarified for the team how to pronounce my name (both in writing and every time she introduced me to someone in the first couple of weeks), which was extremely helpful.

Coincidentally, shortly after I started another colleague with a commonly mispronounced name joined the team. When we meet with new clients we often correct mispronunciations on each other’s behalf, which works very well.

A few commenters noted that people respond with things like “Oh, I pronounced it that way because that’s how my friend/neighbor/great aunt says it” because they’re trying to explain themselves so you’re not offended. I understand this impulse, and I’ve been there, but I’m here today to tell you that the only necessary response to being corrected is “Oh ok, thank you!” Trust me: I know there are multiple ways to say my name. I’m not offended, just tired 🙂

My biggest takeaway is that ‘confirming how a new employee pronounces their name’ should be a standard part of onboarding. It’s easy, welcoming, saves time, and reduces potential awkwardness.

Thank you to the many commenters with similar experiences…we’re not alone!

how can I slowly roll out a different look at work?

It’s the Thursday “ask the readers” question. A reader writes:

I’m a 30-year-old engineer. For the first years of my career I was very focused on fitting in and establishing my competence. I’ve been at my current firm for five years now and I feel reasonably well established.

I’ve recently started experimenting more with my style outside of the office. I had always wanted to dress more goth / alternative, but felt too nervous to try. I’ve been shocked at how good it feels — I legitimately feel like a different, happier, more outgoing person when I’m dressed this way. Putting on black lipstick for the first time had me smiling so much my wife said she wasn’t sure she’d ever seen me so excited! I really feel more like myself in all black and big boots. I’ve noticed that when I’m walking around I’m smiling more, saying hello to people, and generally having more positive interactions.

I’d really like to start bringing this energy to work! I specifically chose this company because it doesn’t have a dress code and we have a flat organization, giving me more flexibility to seek out and work with project managers who aren’t bothered by a bit of a “different” look. (And yes, this was something I was thinking about five years ago — the alternative style rollout has been a long time coming!).

I’m struggling with how to transition from more general business casual to something a little more out there. I’m finding I feel a little hesitant to just show up rocking a totally different style one day.

Any tips on slowly rolling out a different look? I’d like to keep it from being something so jarring that it distracts from my work, and give myself time to test the waters a bit and make sure things will be okay before I show up with a shaved head and platform boots!

Readers, what’s your advice?

CEO is protecting a horrible employee, coworker on sick leave is playing tennis at work, and more

It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…

1. Our CEO is protecting a horrible employee no one can stand

I was hired as a senior director three years ago with direct reports in 10 office locations in the U.S. and other countries. One is a contractor, John, who I later discovered fabricated his background and experience. John cannot seem to handle the simplest of tasks without someone on the team providing him with exact step-by-step instructions, and he still doesn’t comprehend well. After multiple talks, meetings, illustrations, notes, presentations, and guidance, John still cannot manage his tasks without hand-holding.

The entire team is so frustrated after nearly a year of tolerating his inability to complete tasks. Along with that, he has a nasty attitude towards his colleagues who ask him to manage something simple or a project with an immediate deadline. My CEO, who is a very fair and nice guy, decided to have John report to him temporarily to defuse things. Was everyone thrilled? At first yes, because everyone felt he would finally perform and manage his tasks. But John dismissed requests from his colleagues and gaslights them at every turn, because he feels untouchable now that he’s reporting to the CEO. Going to HR proved useless, and employees are stressed out over the CEO’s failure to see John’s incompetence and nasty attitude. In addition, John is unprofessional and has divulged giving work to friends outside the company to assist him with tasks, which is a violation of policy. The CEO knows about John’s behavior, but says other colleagues thinks he’s doing fine and he and HR have no complaints. John had several crying bouts with our CEO and is a pathological liar. Somehow our CEO fell for this. When our CEO travels, which is often, John’s demeanor changes from acting angelic to a nasty tyrant.

This has truly frustrated the team, and John doesn’t care since he knows he’s liked by the CEO and our HR business partner. How can we get our CEO to see that John is a total slacker, pathological liar, and sucking the life out of his colleagues? We have proven and provided details to our CEO to no avail. Nothing on John’s resume about his experience is lining up. Our CEO doesn’t seem to want to get rid of him, even though his contract is coming up in June for renewal.

If you’ve already laid out the case in detail to your CEO, including John’s lies about his background, I don’t know that there’s more you can do. It’s possible that if you can catch him in violation of a very clear black-and-white policy that your CEO cares about personally, that could do it … or you can try presenting a steady drumbeat of every problem John causes … but if your CEO already knows everything in your letter and doesn’t care, you might be out of options. In some companies, key people on your team could simply refuse to work with John and that would bring the problem to a head, but in others that would backfire on them, not John. If people the CEO values start leaving over it, that might finally get some traction … but even that might not.

I will say that, like yesterday’s letter-writer, it sounds like you let the problems with John continue way too long. If he was reporting to you for almost a year before he transferred to the CEO, ideally you would have acted to let him go much, much earlier. At this point, the reality is that it might be out of your hands.

2. Coworker on extended sick leave comes in to use our sports facility

I have a question about colleagues who are out on sick leave who continue to come on-site to use our employer’s sports facilities.

I work on a site that has a sports center attached to it; staff have to pay a monthly fee to join, like any gym membership. Recently my colleague, Delilah, who has been out for several months on extended sick leave, has been spotted coming in to play tennis over the lunch hour. The colleagues are unimpressed, which I can understand because since some of them are covering her workload, and are complaining behind her back, including to management. This could make it harder for Delilah when she comes back to work and rejoins her team.

But I can also understand that for this colleague, coming in to get some exercise and contact with other people might be beneficial to her recovery and overall well-being. Should someone say something to Delilah, and if so, what?

First, it’s totally possible for someone to legitimately need an extended sick leave but still be able to play tennis. It could even be something suggested by her doctor, for all we know! But not everyone understands that, which is why the optics of doing at it her workplace are not great. It’s unsurprising that people are talking about it.

Just on a human level, it would be a kindness for someone to point that out to Delilah … but if I were her manager, that’s not a conversation I’d go anywhere near because it could easily end up sounding discriminatory. (I would, though, try to shut down the complaints from other employees.)

3. Can I ask for a higher salary because I’ll need to buy a car?

I live in Los Angeles and have never owned a car in the ten years I’ve been here. Previously I have just avoided interviewing for jobs that would be too difficult to commute to, and it’s never been easier than in my remote positions for the last few years. I’m actively job hunting now and everywhere I’ve interviewed has had a hybrid in-office model, if not totally mandatory in-office.

I’m not opposed to finally taking the plunge and buying a car, but is it reasonable to negotiate that when the salaries are already listed in job postings? Interviews have all asked if I have a problem working in office and I always say it won’t be a problem without getting into the specifics, but I don’t know it’s reasonable to make a point out of asking higher than the listed salary range if they’re expecting a commute from me. I don’t want to become a non-option by being a squeaky wheel about this in interviews too early. When should I bring it up and is it even a useful bargaining tool in a city where everyone is expected to already own a car?

Yeah, needing to buy a car isn’t something you can include in your salary negotiation. Salaries are supposed to be based on market rate and what the job is worth to the employer, not on applicants’ personal expenses. You can factor it into your own thinking about what salary you’d need to take a particular job, but it shouldn’t be a point you raise when negotiating.

4. I was promised a three-month salary review but no one’s brought it up

I started a new job in January. In the final interview, they asked what salary I was looking for and I said X amount, which was genuinely the number I was hoping for. A few hours later, I was offered the job over the phone with pay of X amount + a few thousand. Great! I was also told they expected I would do really well at this company, and after three months, they could bump me up to X amount + 6,000. This number is far beyond what I thought I would be making at this stage in my career, although it is in the general range I’ve seen other people in my position at other companies making. I also have this in writing. Specifically, “We will review you in about three months to see about a bump.”

The three-month mark was in April, and no one has brought up a performance review. I feel very well liked and successful in this position, although I don’t have anything concrete to show for my time (which is very common in this position in this industry for this time frame). I would love more money! I feel okay right now, but more is always better. At what point do I bring this up, and what do I say? Does it matter that although I’ve received a lot of praise, I haven’t necessarily made the company X amount of dollars yet? I’m feeling slight imposter syndrome when it comes to asking for this amount of money.

They promised they’d review your salary in three months, and it’s been longer than three months. It’s completely reasonable to bring this up — in fact, if I were your manager and this had somehow slipped my mind, I’d be dismayed if I realized months later that you had never brought it up with me! You can just say this: “When I was hired, my offer letter said that after three months we’d look at bumping my salary to $X. Is that a conversation we can have now?”

Read an update to this letter

5. Asking a laid-off coworker for a reference

I’ve been looking for a new job for several months now, after our billionth reorg. It was slow going for a while, but I recently tweaked my resume and am getting a lot of traction. Phone screens are coming in, and I have two in person interviews next week.

While this was happening, my company had yet another reorg, this time with layoffs. The person I work most closely with was laid off. I was not. I would really like to ask him to be a reference when things progress that far, but I’m worried that it would be indelicate or rude to reach out when I know he’s struggling. What’s the etiquette around asking for references from a coworker who was just laid off?

It’s normally fine to do! If anything, he’s likely to appreciate that you could be a reference for him as well (or that you could end up in a job where you could potentially help with leads or contacts or so forth).

my manager tracks us all with Google Alerts

A reader writes:

My team manager has set up Google Alerts for every one on her team, so that she receives notifications whenever our names appear in the news. She uses the alerts to then post messages on our team’s internal group chat, things like “Break a leg to Jorge, whose improv team has a show coming up in Milwaukee!” or “Congrats to Linda for being selected as a finalist in this local baking competition.”

There’s a complicating factor in that our team’s work is somewhat in the public eye in our industry, meaning there’s a high likelihood one of us is in the news at any given time for something we’ve worked on, driven by our company’s PR. So to some degree, it makes sense she’d want to keep track of your team’s professional, PR related accomplishments — we have whole channels and boards internally, dedicated to highlighting those kinds of items. That said, our PR team does a roundup of our news items, so she could keep track of those without needing to set up her own alerts. Or she could ask us to share them with her!

The announcement posts she’s doing about our personal lives are relatively benign, and I’m pretty sure she asks the individual if she can share, before posting. I suspect she’s thinking of this as a way of building rapport, and helping us bring our “whole selves” to work. But something about using Google to track our personal accomplishments feels…squicky to me. Artificial? Like its being used as a shortcut to building a warm relationship with us. I know she could just Google any of us at any time but what if I was in the news because I was in a terrible accident? What if I got a divorce, or a relative died, or what if I was, say, arrested for protesting in alignment with my political views? I’m not sure I want her to be notified of incidents that might not be things I’d choose to share.

I guess my question is: is this weird? Or is it something we should all just accept in today’s digital world? And if I wanted to ask her to remove the alert for my name, do you have suggestions for scripting I could use?

Yeah, it’s weird. Not necessarily that she has the alerts set up — that part could make sense given the type of work you do. (And she might prefer to be able to see your work-related coverage immediately rather than waiting for your PR team’s round-up, which might not be comprehensive or as fast.) But if she’s using those alerts to report on people’s non-work stuff without their permission, it does feel pretty invasive.

However, you said you think she does get each person’s permission to share the items. If that’s the case, then I think it’s more that it just feels weird rather than it being actionable in any concrete way. It feels weird because it’s odd to know that your manager gets an alert every time your name appears on the internet! That’s a level of keeping tabs that would cross most people’s boundaries, even though in this case there’s a work justification for it. And obviously, info about you on the internet is there for the taking for anyone who bothers to search for it … but that’s different than knowing that everything the internet records about you is delivered into your boss’s inbox within a day or so of it appearing.

It would feel less weird if she were ignoring the non-work items she sees. But she’s not; she’s publicizing them. And so that contributes to a feeling of being monitored, which is uncomfortable!

I don’t share your sense of it being a shortcut to building warm relationships (although there may more about how she operates that make you feel that way). But it does feel like a lot of monitoring.

As for whether you could ask her to stop, it depends on why she gets the alerts in the first place. If she gets them to track work coverage … no. But if you’re not sure that’s the reason, you could say, “Did you set up the Google Alerts on everyone to track coverage of our projects in case the PR round-up misses something?” My guess is that she’ll say yes. But if she says no, and she just likes knowing what you all are up to both inside and outside of work, it would be reasonable to say, “I know it’s all out there anyway, but I’d rather not have my non-work stuff tracked like that. Would you mind not doing one for me and just letting me tell you about any non-work accomplishments that I want to share?”

how do I tell my friend I don’t want to hire her?

A reader writes:

I manage a small tourist shop. It gets rather busy during the summer, and I’m planning on hiring two people to help cover shifts.

One of my friends wants me to hire her. She said that she needs more money to help pay bills. I’m reluctant to, because she rage-quit almost every job she’s had in the last three years. She’s not supposed to be driving, but does it anyway. She told me she’d only want 20 hours a week and that she doesn’t want to be scheduled before 3 pm because of another job. But that won’t work with the schedule.

How do I inform her that I don’t feel comfortable hiring her, especially with her track record? I like being friends with her, but I need to hire someone that won’t storm out or complain about the hours.

I answer this question — and three others — over at Inc. today, where I’m revisiting letters that have been buried in the archives here from years ago (and sometimes updating/expanding my answers to them). You can read it here.

Other questions I’m answering there today include:

  • Giving a presentation with a coworker who swears a lot
  • Letting people know I’ll be slower to respond while caring for my father
  • How important are the first 100 days?

I poured all my time into helping an employee … and I’m so discouraged by how it ended

A reader writes:

I’m new to managing people and am actually writing this email on the one-year work anniversary of my first job that had managerial duties. It was a learning curve of a year for certain, and I know there were times I made mistakes, but the feedback from my bosses and HR has been that I’ve overall done a good job with it. My confidence is growing and I feel I have excellent relationships with two of my reports.

However. My experience with one of my reports, Wanda, has really thrown me for a loop. When I started the role, there were clear issues that she brought up that rightfully needed to be addressed. Some of these included finding more support for her, rewriting the job description to accurately represent what she did, giving her training that she needed but hadn’t yet received, etc. I agree that these changes should have been addressed and I was happy to help make them, but even after these efforts she needed a LOT of hand-holding, encouraging, pep talks, and basic office task help. I would say easily 40% of my day to day work was just focusing on her and her needs of the day.

In the last few months, it became clear that she was unhappy to the point of job searching. She had at this point been in the role for almost 18 months and she is quite young, so I expected this and was very supportive of her efforts. I made accommodations when she had last minute “doctors appointments” and offered to be a reference. I did ask her to keep me updated on her search and consider ample notice so we could work to fill her job. In the meantime, on my end, I had her (now updated) job description ready to post.

Our office closed for spring break for one week, and she took the week before that as vacation so that she could “come back refreshed.” I had planned to post her job to start screening initial candidates when we returned, figuring it would be sooner rather than later that she departed. On Friday at noon, she emailed me, HR, and our big boss that she was resigning effective immediately and wouldn’t return on Monday. This was essentially half a day’s notice while our offices were closed, and while I was on vacation with my family. When I did return, I found her desk already cleaned out (meaning she likely knew before the break she wouldn’t be returning) and her email completely emptied (I needed access to see what projects she had left open since she left so abruptly after two weeks of vacation).

I know it’s her prerogative to “focus on her own happiness,” as she put it in her resignation letter, and it’s not like I didn’t see the writing on the wall. I’m not disappointed that she’s left, but I am feeling so jaded but the whole experience. The amount of time and energy I put into helping and finding solutions, coaching and training, being a listening ear for her, and trying to assist in her job search was not a small amount. I know this is a learning experience for me that I probably put too much emotional effort into something that I’ve known wouldn’t pay back, but I had hoped the end of our working relationship would be on good terms with her feeling supported. Instead, I feel like the amount of time and effort I spent on her was worthless; she didn’t use me as a reference or even give the courtesy of any notice. It’s making me want to just give up on pouring into people if this is the “reward” at the end. Do you have any advice for me to continue to be a hopefully empathetic and decent manager without getting or feeling burned when things like this happen?

I wish I didn’t have to say this because you sound so kind and well-intentioned … but I think the problem is the way you managed Wanda. When 40% of your day is routinely taken up by hand-holding an employee, that’s a problem — and it’s a sign that you need to be managing differently. That might have meant setting different limits on your availability to her, setting different expectations about what she needed to solve on her own, getting her more training, and/or reassessing whether she was right for the job.

To be clear, it’s good to be supportive as a manager — within reasonable limits. Each job you manage should have metrics the person needs to meet to be successful in it. If they’re not meeting those metrics, you need to be up-front about that and work with them to get them up to the bar they need to meet. If it becomes clear they’re not going to be able to do that — or to do it in the time you can reasonably invest — then you need move them out of the job (in a fair and respectful way). I’m not sure if you gave enough thought to the “in the time you can reasonably invest” piece of that! It sounds like you were prepared to endlessly invest your time and energy, and that’s where I think you went wrong.

There are a bunch of problems with managing that way. First and foremost, you’re not doing a fundamental piece of your job as a manager if you don’t step back and assess whether someone is really suited for the job they’re in and, if they’re not, what it would take to get them there and whether that’s something it makes sense for your organization to invest in providing. (I want to emphasize that it’s your organization that’s doing the investing. You’re the one choosing to spend your time that way, but they’re paying you for it and they’ll want your choices to be in service of their goals … which generally means your job is to build a high-performing team that gets results without needing you constantly involved at a micro level). Moreover, it can make your other employees resentful, especially if they’re being compensated at the same level as the lower performer, or if they wanted things from you that they didn’t get because so much of your time was taken up by Wanda. And it can prevent you from spending your time in places that will pay off more, from developing higher-potential employees to doing the sort of big-picture thinking that takes mental bandwidth Wanda was using up.

This is probably hard to hear because it felt like you were doing a good thing for Wanda! But I think your goal was the wrong one … and it also left you exhausted, burned out, and resentful.

That’s not to say there’s nothing wrong with the way Wanda left. A half-day’s notice is rude and unprofessional if there weren’t extenuating circumstances, and especially in light of how endlessly supportive you had been. But it’s also … not really that surprising, based on what else you’ve said about Wanda. And sometimes when you’re managing people, they’ll resign in weird ways or do other unprofessional things and that’s just the job. You can’t take it personally.

I think the lesson here is about looking at management in a fundamentally different way. Ultimately, you’re there to get things done through your team. That means hiring the right people, giving them good (but not endless) training and support, getting them the resources they need to do their jobs and removing roadblocks, setting clear expectations about what successful work looks like, and being honest when you need to see something different or when things aren’t working out. And because getting results is your core job and having the right people on your team will make an enormous impact on those results, just as you should put significant energy into hiring and keeping the right people on board, you’ve also got to be willing to move out the ones who don’t meet that bar.

It sounds like you saw yourself less as Wanda’s manager and more as her personal job coach — and good managers are coaches at times! But there are all the other pieces to the job that you’ve got to balance against that as well.

Read an update to this letter

coworkers who don’t say “please” or “thank you,” a racy tattoo, and more

It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…

1. Coworkers who don’t say “please” or “thank you”

Over the course of my career I’ve encountered colleagues who seem to have never learned the words “please” and “thank you.”

On one hand, I get it — I’m doing my job. But, seriously? I’m currently working with two people who expect me to drop everything and work on their request because it’s a quick turnaround. When I send and don’t hear anything, I’m wondering if they even received the information they requested or if it’s what they are looking for. Even a follow-up IM is ignored. (And no, they aren’t exec level folks — they tend to be the most polite. These people are peers-ish.)

I know I’m being too sensitive, but is there a non-confrontational way to bring it up?

It would be tricky to bring up without sounding like you’re scolding them about their manners or being a bit high-maintenance. And really, a lot of people don’t say “please” with every work request; as long as the requests themselves are reasonably polite in tone, that’s what matters.

However! If there’s a larger issue with them seeming generally rude inconsiderate of your time, that larger issue is one you could raise with them/their managers. Or you could address it from the “I don’t know if you even received what I sent” angle — as in, “Could you close the loop with me when I send you something you’ve asked me to work on? I just need confirmation that you received it and it’s what you needed so I can close the request — even a quick ’thanks’ will let me know.”

All that said … if I were advising them, I’d tell them to be more polite and to say “please” and “thank you.” But on your end, it’s worth trying to care about it less; you’ll be happier.

2. Will a tattoo with visible genitalia be OK at my office?

I have plans to get a tattoo of a specific work of art. However, that artwork is of a figure with visible, though not prominent, genitalia. I work in a customer-facing role and wear short sleeves for half the year; my office is not super restrictive about dress code, and my current tattoos (which do not have genitals) are not a problem. Do I need to worry that, if I get this tattoo on my upper arm, the potentially-visible dick & balls will be inappropriate for my office? Should I ask my manager? Do people look that closely in the first place?

Yeah, it is very possible that having a visible dick and balls tattooed on your arm (even as part of a larger artwork) will be an issue at your job and that you’ll be asked to wear long sleeves, especially while working with customers. If you don’t want to deal with that, you could run it by your manager to find out for sure … although even if they tell you it’s fine, it could be Not Fine with other managers in your future and you may be looking at a lot of long sleeves in coming years.

3. One of our managers is secretly dating an employee

I’m a manager for a small local business with about 10 employees who all work closely together. There are two types of positions leading to a power imbalance (think pharmacist and assistant). All pharmacists naturally have a supervisory role over the assistants due to nature of the work.

Jake (pharmacist) is secretly dating Sally (assistant). It is a very poor secret as at least four people have guessed about the relationship on their own. Jake does not really see himself as a manager and I don’t believe he sees it as a problem — they are both just very private people. Sally would definitely be the more assertive person in the relationship but is in the vulnerable position workwise. I have seen no issues with them at work, but it would be very uncomfortable for all of us of they broke up. And honestly, it would be Sally who pays the price if something happened.

Is this a problem? Can I point-blank ask if they are dating? It is getting weirder as Jake now seems to be misleading or perhaps even lying to deflect speculation, i.e. he blamed being late on construction traffic recently but his truck was at Sally’s house. (She lives close to our work and people naturally pass her house on the way in.) I am a co-manager of the store with direct authority over Sally and rules and procedures over all. But I have less direct authority over Jake as he is a regulated licensed professional.

If Jake has any authority over Sally, it’s absolutely a problem and you should raise it with him. Most employers have policies against managers dating people in their chain of command because of the legal liability, potential for bias, and potential for the appearance of bias. So yes, you can indeed ask Jake if he’s dating Sally; explain why you’re asking so he knows it’s work-related and not just curiosity. If you have a policy against managers dating within their chain of command, you should raise that. If you don’t have that policy, you need one — and you’ll need to figure out what to do with this situation that’s already happening (which could mean building firewalls so Jake doesn’t have any influence over Sally’s job or things like her salary, evaluations, schedule, etc.).

I don’t know exactly what you mean when you say Sally is the one who would pay the price if they break up, but that’s worrisome! If you mean Jake would make things uncomfortable for her, you’re legally obligated (by sexual harassment laws) to make sure that doesn’t happen.

4. I plan on quitting my job when I have children — should I tell my boss when she discusses long-term plans?

I love my job. I am passionate about my field and I love doing a job that changes and saves lives. I have a great relationship with my boss and a coworker, and we speak every day to ask questions and bounce ideas off of each other. Due to some changes higher up in our institution and my boss’s career goals, she has mentioned the possibility of moving to a new institution and bringing my coworker and I along. If that does not happen, she has been discussing my coworker and I taking on more of a leadership role, which is leading to more mentorship from her.

I am unbelievably grateful for my incredible boss and her vision for our team and my career. However, my husband and I have decided that I will be a stay-at-home parent if and when we have children, which we’re hoping will happen in the next year or so. I’d be giving up a dream job for an even bigger dream job, but it’s already weighing on me how to make this transition gracefully. I don’t want to miss out on career opportunities as getting pregnant is no guarantee, but I would hate to waste resources and my boss’s time.

Do I tell my boss I plan on eventually leaving? As uncertainty and instability grows, my coworker frequently reassures us that we will stick together even if that means going to a new institution — should I say anything? Both my coworker and boss are working moms who will likely not relate to the desire to stay home, but I consider them good friends.

Nope, don’t mention it until you are pregnant and have concrete plans to leave — and even then, I might hold off on announcing it until your baby is born and you’re sure you don’t want to return, because sometimes plans change in ways you don’t anticipate. (Some people who think they won’t want to return after maternity leave end up changing their minds, and vice versa. Or your husband’s job could become less secure, or your family’s financial situation could change in a way you can’t predict now, and so forth.) Your boss is aware that you could leave your job at some point because that’s true of everyone — and whatever benefit she’d get from knowing that you’re currently thinking you’ll leave in a year or two is outweighed by the risk to you of limiting your professional options in ways you could end up not wanting later on.

I suspect you’re feeling awkward about not telling her now — like that maybe it’s somehow dishonest not to let her know your plans, especially because the relationship is such a strong one — but you’ll let her know your plans once you have a timeline that you’re confident of. Until then, you really don’t need to!

5. How to encourage an employee to move on to get the job they want

I am the manager of a small department. I manage two full-time and two part-time employees. One of my part-time employees has been very vocal about wanting a full-time position in our organization and specifically in my department. There is no full-time position on the horizon and we (my boss and I) were very direct about this when we hired them. It feels like this goal underpins a lot of their interpersonal behavior which vacillates between claiming to be overused (too many projects) and underused (needs more challenges). Their work is fine! It wouldn’t be impossible to replace them but it wouldn’t be easy either. I’ve had to bite my fingers to keep from forwarding full-time job opportunities. Is there anything I can do to encourage them to take the next step?

Have you been very direct with them about the situation — as in, “I want to be really up-front with you that I don’t expect us to be able to hire you full-time in the foreseeable future. I know you want full-time work and I don’t want to mislead you about the likelihood of it happening here; realistically, if that’s your goal, you need to be looking outside the organization for that.”

One caveat: If one of your full-time people leaves, would you consider hiring your part-time person into that opening? If not (whether because of skill set or something else), you should  say that too, because they might be assuming you would and figuring that they’ll wait for that.

what can I do during a client’s bigoted rant?

A reader writes:

I work as a manager in specialized retail establishment and had a client come in today to review and complete her order. We were chatting while I finalized her paperwork, and she mentioned her children. I said something to the effect of, “Oh, I love teenagers — I used to teach high school” and that was when the floodgates OPENED. Apparently, there is a scandal at the private religious school her children attend and they fired almost an entire department due to their stance on LGBTQ issues, and I was subjected to a long rant about trans people and how offensive they are.

My spouse is trans.

I did not know what to say or how to respond. I have the opposite of a poker face (my partner and I call it “the everything face”) so I feel pretty confident that she knew I was horrified but she just. Kept. Talking … until I was finally able to say “HERE’S YOUR PAPERWORK BYE NOW” and yeet her out the door.

Do you — or your readers — have any ideas or suggestions regarding what to do in this kind of situation? Where we are sales based, I felt powerless in this situation — but now I feel terrible because I feel like I should have said something and didn’t.

Sometimes open bigotry can be so shocking that you’re just sitting there stunned, and by the time you regain your power of speech the person is gone. In my experience, the absolute best way to combat that is to prepare ahead of time — to come up with lines that you’ll be able to say, and even to practice saying them out loud so they’re readily accessible when you need them. Unfortunately, it’s a safe assumption that you will need them at some point, and this way your brain won’t be scrambling to come up with something on the spot.

Realistically, it definitely can feel harder when the bigot is a client, but you can still speak up. There’s a spectrum of exactly how blunt you can be with a client — some employers would be totally fine with you being extremely blunt even if that means losing the person’s business over it, and others would want you to be somewhat more diplomatic, but no decent employer would insist you to listen smilingly to hate speech.

Exactly what to say depends on you and the dynamic you have with the person, but some options you could use with clients include:

* “I really disagree.”

* “You must be assuming I agree with you. I don’t.”

* “You probably don’t realize how many people you meet have loved ones who are trans.”

* “My spouse is trans.” (Then stop talking and just look at her.)

Somewhat softer options:

* “That’s something you and I disagree on.”

* “I don’t think you can mean that how it sounds.”

* “I don’t agree at all, but this isn’t something we need to talk about.”

* “This sounds like a conversation you and I shouldn’t have.”

I don’t love the idea of softer options at all — as a Jew, I wouldn’t be thrilled to hear a “soft” response to anti-semitism, and this is no different — but if you’re in a work situation where you really need to avoid alienating the person, they’re better than saying nothing! Really, though, I think you can use the other options in a lot of work situations even if they feel blunt — the person you’re talking to clearly hasn’t worried too much about whether they might be alienating you.

If you want, you could also talk with your employer about what happened — because maybe you’ll find out that you can be even blunter than what’s above. Who knows, maybe your manager would be fine with losing the business of someone who’s going to spew bigotry all over your workplace, and you could just directly say “that’s really offensive” or tell the client the business strongly supports trans rights or otherwise make it clear that her comments aren’t welcome there.

But otherwise the options above are reasonable ways to speak up, even with a customer.

my boss is handling my resignation badly

A reader writes:

I’ve been working for a consulting company for three years. I am the most senior person on my team after my boss, who founded the company. Over the last three years, I have lost count of the number of people who have been hired and left in less than a year. Expectations are high and the deadlines are nigh impossible — which leads to most people working lots of (unpaid) overtime on nights and weekends and high degrees of burnout. Last year, one person who quit sent an email to the entire company (60+ people) airing her grievances about lower salaries and internal ethics. Two months ago, two people quit on the same day. This is only a small fraction of the drama — which comes primarily from the directors — that we experience on a daily basis. Needless to say, it’s been a very draining atmosphere to work in and it has significantly impacted my mental and physical health. I was trying to make it through the end of my current contract, but after I was not paid by my company for over three months and witnessed a new coworker be bullied to the point of quitting, I decided that I needed to seriously look for new work.

After a few months of searching, I landed a new job and am very excited! I gave my notice two weeks ago. We have a very long notice period (two months) so I gave my boss — let’s call her Sally — nine weeks of notice. She has had a rocky relationship with most other staff members, but for some reason we have cultivated a good working relationship (although I would say she is still abusive). I was honestly expecting the worst when I quit, as I know she has tried to refuse other colleagues’ resignations, but my resignation was received well. We have already hired my replacement and I’ve been working on training her, wrapping things up, and continuing to manage certain projects until my departure.

However, this week, there has been a noticeable shift in Sally’s behavior towards me. She has started piling additional work onto my plate, outside of what we agreed upon in my handover note (in which I outlined key tasks I would complete). Today, she admonished me for the quality of my work, saying that she had felt a dip in recent months and now understood why (i.e., because I was job hunting / wanted to leave) and that she expected I would continue to give 100% and think about my legacy at the company. I will admit that I have started to withdraw from internal conversations on team-building and morale, so perhaps that is where this comment came from. However, I also think my priority should be training my replacement and wrapping things up as much as possible in the next few weeks.

I did not engage with her comment. Later she sent another very long message about how she understands it’s normal to switch off to some extent once you land a new job, but my attitude was impacting team spirit and her own workload (I guess it’s not her recent demands that all staff work unpaid overtime or witch hunts punishing staff members for not doing a task correctly). She then went on a lengthy rant calling me and other coworkers robots. I did not engage and answered very noncommittally that we would finish our collaboration “strong.” But if these sorts of comments continue, I am unsure about how to respond to them, as they are quite emotional and very draining to receive. I would like to finish up my time at my current position well and on a positive note, but how do I navigate my last few weeks (if this is even possible) with these sort of comments?

Given how you’ve described the management in your organization — and your boss specifically — it’s no surprise that Sally is handling your resignation in a ridiculous fashion. It’s almost a hallmark of poorly run companies that people are mistreated during their notice periods, and yours is no exception.

But first let’s talk about the length of your notice period, because nine weeks is a really long time! In most jobs, two weeks notice is typical. There are jobs and fields where the convention is to give more, and perhaps you’re in one … though I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that this is just one more weird thing your dysfunctional company demands for no real reason. And to be clear, nearly all employers would like lengthy notice periods, but it’s not generally a practice expected in the U.S. outside of some very specific circumstances, like if you have a contract that requires it. (And if you do have a contract that requires it … well, I’m pretty sure your employer already violated that contract when they stopped paying you for three months. You would have been entirely justified in leaving with no notice when that happened.)

So my first piece of advice is to revisit whether you really need to stick to the nine weeks you’ve offered. You might feel like you’re locked in now that you’ve offered it, but you’re not. At any point you can say, “Unfortunately my circumstances have changed and I will need my last day to be [earlier date].” You can also tie that directly to how your manager is treating you, if you’d like to: “I’m happy to spend my remaining time training my replacement and wrapping up projects, but I’m not willing to [insert whatever you’re not willing to tolerate here]. If that doesn’t work on your end, let’s plan to make my last day this Friday.”

But if you’d strongly prefer to work out the full nine weeks you’ve offered, you can still do that on your own terms. You can set limits on how much work you’re willing to do during your remaining time and say, “I only have time to complete X or Y before I go. Which would you prefer I do?” If your boss keeps piling work on you and tells you to get it all done, you can (and should) decline to work unpaid overtime to finish it all and can simply say, “This is more than I’ll be able to finish during my remaining time. I’ll do what I can in my normal work hours, but I want to make sure you know I won’t have enough time for all of it.” If your boss demands you stay late or work over the weekends, you should calmly say, “I’m not able to do that. I’ll keep you posted on how much I’m able to do during my normal hours, though.” After all, you’re leaving! They don’t have much leverage over you at this point (and if you find yourself losing sight of that, remind yourself that you could leave tomorrow if you chose to; whatever time you give them at this point is optional).

You should also decline to answer any accusations about your commitment or other emotional missives from your manager. If Sally tells you she thinks you’re not giving 100 percent, you can ignore that … or if you must respond, you can blandly say, “Hmmm, I don’t see it that way. I’m committed to wrapping up what I can in my remaining time,” and then pivot to a work question. If she sends you lengthy messages about team spirit or her own workload, you can ignore those.

Right now I think you’re getting too emotionally engaged in the things Sally is saying to you. That’s understandable, because this is someone who has played a major role in your professional misery for the last few years. But you’re leaving! Her power over you is ending. You no longer need to be invested in how she feels or what she thinks or says. If anything, you should see her hectoring as validation of your decision to leave; every time she approaches you with this stuff, tell yourself, “Yep, here’s the reason I’m getting out.” I think that will help you disconnect from caring — because you really don’t need to anymore.

Read an update to this letter

Originally published at New York Magazine.

is there a reasonable amount of yelling at work, or is any yelling too much?

A reader writes:

On a video meeting yesterday, my coworker (Orion) yelled at me. Orion was acting as our coach in this meeting — he’s not a member of our team. For the sake of anonymity, let’s say we’re llama groomers (we’re not). We were discussing how difficult it was that our llamas weren’t fully groomed this week, and he said that it’s impossible to fully groom them. We are quite familiar with the issue, but need to work with the groomers on a procedure to catch the missed spots and fix them. The groomers have all the brushes, so anytime we found a missed spot we’d have to message them to fix it — not ideal.

Orion was warming up to give us another lecture on how it’s impossible to have the full grooming we need, and I tried to cut in and table the discussion. He raised his voice, angrily insisted on talking first, and continued to llamasplain. Ten minutes later, I could get a word in and said, “Orion, please don’t raise your voice with me again.” He apologized. My team lead, Andromeda, immediately sent me a chat message with her support. An hour later, Orion sent me an apology on chat too.

I’m quite sensitive to yelling. The interaction barely qualified as yelling, but I was shaking during the rest of that meeting. As soon as it was over, I stress-cried for several minutes, then took a long walk to calm down. Processing that interaction and my feelings around it also triggered my insomnia. My strong sensitivity here may be linked to my autism, I’m not sure. I don’t think it’s something that’s likely to change, and I typically avoid people who need to yell.

I was in the office today (Orion was not) and a few people who heard what happened said, “That is so awesome that you stood up to him! We support you! He’s always been like this and we’ve just gotten used to it but it’s definitely not okay.” Andromeda said she’s had to hang up on him and wait for him to calm down, and Cassiopeia (from a different team entirely) has refused to work with Orion.

So now I’m worried. I don’t have the emotional capacity to deal with that often. I’ve been at this company for three months and this is the first incident, but he frequently derails meetings by re-explaining things we understand and telling us we’re wrong, so I can’t imagine a productive relationship without being able to set boundaries.

This is a 25-person startup, and the CEO is HR. I will mention it to him (we have a feedback-type meeting in a few days anyway), but I’m at a loss for what I can expect in the future. Will I be enforcing my own boundaries, or can the CEO do something? Is there some amount of yelling I need to tolerate in a neurotypical workplace? Is there something explicit I should be asking from all these people who support me and are a bit tired of this side of Orion? I don’t want to fight, but work is draining enough without getting yelled at or mansplained to.

And I’ve just gotten through this email and realized that if they’re the llama groomer team, our job would be to dress the llamas in little outfits. That thought has cheered me immensely, and is also a reasonable metaphor for how much I like the work I’m doing.

Whether you answer this or not, thanks for all the advice! As an autistic ex-academic, your archives read like a crash course in how to human in the workplace, which is immensely helpful.

There’s no amount of yelling you should be expected to tolerate in a workplace, unless someone is yelling to alert you that your shirt is on fire.

That’s not a guarantee that you’ll never encounter yelling in a workplace, because it does happen. It’s abusive and it shouldn’t happen, but there are offices where it does. There are far more where it doesn’t — and where it would be considered a shocking event if it did — but there indeed some companies that tolerate it.

But it’s completely reasonable to decide that you’re not willing to be yelled at (I’m not either), and that you won’t work somewhere that accepts it as a normal thing.

The good news here is that you’ve already done an awesome job of setting that boundary (telling Orion not to raise his voice to you, and getting two apologies from him). And it’s possible that now that you’ve stood up to him, Orion won’t raise his voice around you again — he’s seen you won’t stand for it, his apologies indicate he probably feels sheepish about it, and he might feel ridiculous putting himself in that situation again. Sometimes — even often — with office yellers, calmly and firmly saying the behavior needs to stop really does get them to stop doing it around you. (I suspect that’s because it highlights how out-of-control and foolish they seem, and that makes them look weak … which they don’t like.)

It’s also a good sign that your colleagues have been so supportive — as opposed to a reaction more like, “Yeah, that’s just how he is and you have to deal with it.” And Cassiopeia has gotten away with refusing to work with Orion altogether, so I think there’s a lot of room for you to be assertive about setting boundaries again if you need to.

You don’t need to just wait and see what happens though. You could talk to Andromeda (or your manager, or the CEO in that upcoming feedback meeting) about it now and say, “I’m not willing to be yelled at, and I want to make sure that I have your support in refusing to let Orion do it if that happens again.” Hell, for that matter, you could say, “It sounds like this is a systemic issue with Orion and people have been putting up with it but are really unhappy about it. Can this be addressed with him so no one has to worry it will happen again?”

As for what could or should be happening: someone with authority over Orion should have shut this down the first time they became aware of it. Orion’s manager should have told him extremely clearly that he can’t yell at colleagues, period. And it sounds like there’s more problematic behavior from him they need to be addressing too. But instead, he’s become your office’s missing stair — everyone is working around him, knowing what he’s doing isn’t acceptable but putting up with it anyway. At a minimum that indicates Orion has an overly passive manager … but sometimes passive managers, while not spurred to action on their own, will act if they get enough pushing from others to.

Obviously it’s not a great sign that this has been allowed to continue up until now. But sometimes a new person coming in and saying, “Whoa, this isn’t okay” instead of just reluctantly accepting it does get offices to finally address situations like this. Not always, but sometimes.

So from here, I think you’ll need to watch and see what happens. If nothing else, there’s a decent chance that Orion will treat you more respectfully in the future, just because you called him on the behavior and said you wouldn’t tolerate it.

In general, though, you absolutely can decline to accept being yelled at — and to explicitly say, “I’m not willing to be yelled at” — and if a job doesn’t support you in that, it’s a reasonable thing to leave over.

Read an update to this letter.