my coworkers are engaged but one of them is cheating … with my boss

by Alison Green on August 7, 2024

A reader writes:

My question is regarding a rather sticky situation I am unwillingly involved in. In short, I think I am reliving an episode of The Office. I have two colleagues who are about to get married to each other, let us call them Joe and Kate. Unfortunately, I know for a fact that Kate is having sex with Peter, who is my direct manager.

It’s an open secret in the office that Peter and Kate often go on “work trips” together, and everyone knows it except Joe. This isn’t speculation … because about a month ago, Peter and Kate were “gone” but there was a deadline to meet. So Peter joined one of our meetings via video, and we SAW KATE try to sneak behind, undressed. Fortunately, Joe wasn’t in the meeting (different team).

I am wondering what exactly I should do here? Morally I am against cheating, but also, and I can’t stress this enough, I just don’t want to deal with the mess of it all. However, the wedding is approaching and I have received an invite. I can’t in good conscience go to this wedding when I know what I know. I feel a moral compulsion to tell Joe, but is it even my business? Should I even get involved?

Other than this mess, I generally like my office and my coworkers. I am paid well for my role, and other than his less than stellar attitude towards sexual fidelity, Peter is a good manager who has my back. My industry is quite niche, and my skill set is specialised, so finding another job won’t be an issue. But, I am comfortable here and really don’t want to switch.

But every time I see poor Joe around the office, the guilt consumes me. I am so anxious about this, that my appetite has reduced and my husband and I have seriously started looking for a therapist for me to help me deal.

Oh no.

Whenever a question involves whether to tell someone their partner is cheating, you’ll find arguments on both sides, with some people strongly on the side of “the partner deserves to know / their health could be at risk / it will make it worse if they realize people knew and didn’t tell them” and others who argue that it’s not your business, you risk the person shooting the messenger, if they stay with the person your relationship with them won’t recover, some people would prefer not to know, etc. As a general rule — to the extent there can be one, which is not a lot — I’d say to let your sense of what the person would want you to do to be your guide, although it’s not always clear, and it’s sticky in the best of circumstances.

But this case is additionally complicated by the fact that these are your coworkers and the affair partner is your boss.

For the record, Kate and Peter are particularly horrible people for not only treating Joe’s heart with such casual disregard, but also for treating his professional life that way — for humiliating him in front of his colleagues (as that’s so often how this will feel), for putting the rest of you in this position, and for apparently not caring what this will mean for Joe’s ability to comfortably remain in his job if he finds out. All of that would be true even if they were being as discreet as possible, but their complete brazenness adds even more insult.

Importantly: are Peter and Kate in each other’s chain of command? If so, that’s a whole additional layer of Not Okay, and it’s a legal liability for your company.

As for what to do … ugh.

Because these are coworkers and presumably not close friends, it would be defensible to leave it alone. This sucks for Joe, but you’re not the one to blame for what’s happening, and you’re not ethically obligated to risk blowing up your work life. In theory, if Peter weren’t your boss, I’d more comfortable advising you to discreetly talk with Joe … but Peter is your boss, and even if you ask Joe not to cite you as his source, people say things when they’re angry and upset and betrayed and there’s no guarantee you wouldn’t be named. You’d like to think that if that happened, Peter — who you describe as “a good manager who has my back” — wouldn’t hold it against you, but there’s so much potential for this to explode on you professionally that I can’t in good conscience recommend it.

Do you have HR? If Peter and Kate aren’t in each other’s chain of command, HR may not care (although it sounds like it’s causing enough drama and distraction in your workplace that they should), but if there’s any reporting relationship there, it’s very much their business and that might be the easiest route to know you’ve done something about it.

Read an update to this letter. 

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is liquor inappropriate at a work event that offers beer and wine, visitors want to use our employees-only bathroom, and more

by Alison Green on August 7, 2024

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

1. Is liquor inappropriate at a work event that offers beer and wine?

This is a silly, low-stakes question, but I’m curious. I work very closely with another coworker and we frequently plan events for a specific network of professionals. My coworker absolutely refuses to offer mixed drinks at any of our social events. These are reception-style events where we provide two drink tickets. She insists that the bar only provide beer and wine, no liquor-based drinks. At first I assumed this was related to price, but it’s not — even if mixed drinks are the same price, or included in an open bar type setting, she specifically insists that mixed drinks not be offered. (She even calls this out in planning documents — it’s something she is very deliberate about). She seems to think that beer and wine are appropriate for a work event, but that a gin and tonic is absolutely degenerate. This is particularly funny because the network we support is quite tame — I’ve never seen anyone have more than one drink at one of our receptions, and when we give out drink tickets, people frequently return them unused. So it’s not like she’s trying to stop our events from turning into ragers.

Again, this is low-stakes; I’m definitely not going to change my coworker’s mind, and I don’t think our group overly cares that we’re not providing mixed drinks. But I am curious to hear your opinion on whether her perception that beer and wine are work-appropriate and a mixed drink is inherently inappropriate has any legitimacy. (I will add for context that I am in my mid-30s and my coworker is in her mid-70s. I almost never think that work disagreements are based on generational differences, but maybe in this case it is, a bit?)

Mixed drinks aren’t inherently inappropriate. If your coworker believes they are, that’s … odd.

But are we sure that’s her reasoning? Only offering beer and wine is very common, but it’s not typically because mixed drinks are more debauched. It’s generally for the cost savings or other practical considerations (like that you need a bartender to mix drinks, caterers who offer liquor sometimes need a separate license for it, etc.). It’s also true that limiting guests to beer and wine can lower the potential for alcohol-related problems (although someone who’s determined to overindulge can easily do that with beer and wine too), but that doesn’t sound like a huge concern with this crowd. I wonder if your coworker is just so used to seeing only beer and wine offered at these types of events that her brain has translated that into anything else feeling inappropriate.

2. Random visitors ask to use our employees-only bathroom

I work for a small established manufacturer. The product is 100% sold to other businesses; there is no direct-to-consumer market, so there is no reason our workplace would be open to the public. We have a company policy of only seeing vendors and potential vendors by appointment.

Recently we’ve had an increase in unscheduled visitors, primarily people hawking stuff … like oddball shipping services, or wanting to put products in our break rooms so employees can browse and order sports memorabilia or footwear or wall art (today’s was laminated posters of Bob Ross-y/ painted-van style nature and religious art). It’s easy enough to say “no thanks.” But each of them then asked to use the restroom.

That leaves me conflicted, because “human being with basic human need, of course they can use the bathroom” comes flat up against:

  • We have no idea who this person is, their reason for being here is already shaky at best, and given where we are, on their way here they voluntarily passed up a relatively new Dunkin Donuts, a couple other fast food places, and two highly visible, normal stores with public bathrooms less than five minutes ago.
  • We don’t have a lobby/visitors’ restroom … there’s just the one out back in the middle of our workspace.
  • Some remaining “but Covid!”
  • General security guidelines, i.e., no random people wandering around the workplace (for employees’ safety, property security, industrial espionage security, etc.).

I’ve been going with, “We don’t have a public restroom, but XYZ public place is not far” with brief directions. But I wonder if I’m being mean, heartless, etc. turning away someone with a basic human need?

When you don’t serve the public and visitors show up uninvited, it’s reasonable to say that your bathrooms aren’t open to the public, for all the reasons you mentioned. I would make an exception for some who truly seemed in dire straits (although even then you’d need to assess that against security considerations), but as a general policy for non-emergencies, “We don’t have a public restroom” is a reasonable response.

3. Are candidates trying to undercut each other on salary?

Something happened to my sister today and I need to know if I’m completely out of touch or if this is the new normal.

She applied for a job which listed a salary range, and she used that range to determine the expected salary she listed on her application, a requirement to apply. She heard from the company today that two people applied and were willing to take the job for $15,000 less than the listed range so they were moving forward with them. That’s crazy, right?

Did the company tell her that to try to get her to say she’ll take less? Are people really lowballing salary expectations? Kind of the reverse of offering over list price on a house? I haven’t been in the job market for a while so I just don’t know what to make of this.

It’s not a new normal, just a thing that some crappy companies have always done. But yes, some people lowball themselves when naming salary expectations, because they didn’t remember there was a higher range listed in the ad or they think it will give them a leg up or they don’t have a good sense of the market and aren’t comfortable advocating for themselves. (If you’ve ever heard someone say they can’t believe the salary a new job offered them and that they would have asked for much less if they’d had to name a number first, some of these people are also lowballing themselves in initial applications.)

Did the company tell her that to try to get her to say she’d take less? Eh, maybe, but they also could have just been factually relaying their reason for going with other candidates. Either way, your sister shouldn’t take this as pressure to lower her own salary expectations in the future; companies that hire based on the cheapest possible candidate (cheaper even than what they’d budgeted for the role) aren’t usually companies you should feel sad about missing out on.

4. Asking, “Do you have any concerns about my candidacy?”

Many years ago, I read your interview guide and one of the suggested questions for the candidate to ask was, “Do you have any concerns about my candidacy that I can address now?” I loved this wording and have used this question a number of times.

However, a few weeks ago, when you were responding to the letter-writer who said that he didn’t get a job, but he didn’t think the new hire had started, you said this: “And yes, they told you their only concern was that someone else might hire you, but that can be a kind of throwaway remark in response to a question that put them on the spot (‘do you have any concerns about me?’) and to which they weren’t prepared to provide a thoughtful answer off the cuff.”

I’m just curious — have you changed your mind about the usefulness of this question? Thinking about it, I agree the question does put them on the spot. So do you think it’s not worth asking?

Those are two different questions! It might seem like a subtle difference, but asking “Do you have any concerns about my candidacy?” does put them on the spot if they have concerns they’re not prepared to share off the cuff and without preparation. “Do you have any concerns about my candidacy that I can address now?” is really saying, “Do you have any concerns that it would be useful to discuss or that you would be comfortable discussing right now?” An interviewer can respond, “No, we have everything we need right now” without implying something that might not be true.

Some people might say that’s splitting hairs, but it changes how it comes across.

To be clear, asking just “do you have any concerns about me?” isn’t a terrible interview-killer or anything like that. But it does put interviewers more on the spot in a way that will make some uncomfortable (and in the case of the letter you mentioned, the person got too invested in believing the interviewer’s “no”).

5. Does being fired show up in a background check?

Can you settle a debate I’m having with a friend who just got fired? Does this show up in your background check? Should you lie and say you were let go or tell the truth?

It depends on the background check. But it’s pretty common to ask former employers about the terms on which you left and whether you’d be eligible for rehire. If it comes out that you lied, that will generally torpedo your candidacy, whereas a firing on its own isn’t inherently prohibitive (depending on the reason for the firing, of course). I’ve got advice here about how you can talk about being fired in an interview:

how to explain you were fired, when interviewing

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my employee refuses to reveal her online status

by Alison Green on August 6, 2024

A reader writes:

I manage a small customer-facing portion of a broader team. The 10 of us are responsible for being on the frontlines, understanding our customer needs, and responding to questions and new requests.

Since the pandemic, our company has switched to using Slack as our primary mode of communication. While the company is based in the midwest, my team is highly distributed over multiple geographic locations and most of our partners use Slack to ask questions and make new requests of the team.

One of my newest team members, who joined about six months ago, puts her Slack status as perpetually “away” so that you can never tell if she’s online or not. I waited a few weeks to see if this was temporary, and when it seemed clear it was not, I asked her if this was intentional. She said it was — that she didn’t want people to know if she was online because she didn’t want to feel pressure to respond right away. I told her that this being a client-facing role, it is important to signal when you are available / when you are not, and that perhaps she could do that by using status messages instead. She told me that was too much effort for her, and she will think about what she can do instead “that works best for her.” She also suggested I was not respecting individual work styles/preferences/autonomy and not assuming good intent.

I was super taken aback by all of that and quite upset since I’m actually quite a hands-off manager by nature and have to force myself to be more prescriptive at times (have been working on that with a coach!). I rarely message her during the day or send her time-sensitive requests, partially because I assume she’s not available or I won’t get a timely response. I’ve also received feedback that some of our customers don’t reach out to her because she never appears to be online. As a result, she is likely handling a smaller volume of work and requests than my other team members. When I mentioned that wasn’t fair to the rest of the team, she accused me of making “unnecessary comparisons” between her and other team members.

My HR rep has confirmed it is within my purview to make signaling online availability a requirement of the role and has suggested I schedule a time to set team-wide norms and expectations, which I plan to do next week. But in general, her response to me made me feel like a total jerk and a terrible manager. I’m also worried that if I let her keeping doing this, than there’s no reason I couldn’t let the rest of my team do so — and a client-facing team that appears perpetually offline would be a super bad look.

Your team member is messing with your head, and you’re letting her.

It’s completely reasonable and solidly within your purview to require that people not set themselves to perpetually unavailable on Slack — in any role, really, but particularly in ones where (a) customers use Slack to contact them and/or (b) the team uses Slack as a primary communication tool. You have both factors in play. There’s nothing remotely heavy-handed about your request.

What is ridiculous is your employee’s announcement that being available to colleagues and clients is “too much effort” for her, and her attempt to frame this as a you problem rather than a her problem. To be clear: it’s a her problem. (And believe me when I tell you that she’s going to be a problem in other ways too. If you haven’t seen those yet, brace yourself for them to emerge — in fact, assume they’re already happening and you just haven’t seen them yet. If you go digging into her dealings with coworkers and clients, you’re almost certainly going to find more problems. Take this as a sign to dig.)

There are of course times when it’s perfectly reasonable for someone to set their status to “away” or “unavailable,” like when they need deep-focus time and want to avoid interruptions. But it’s not reasonable to set it that way 24/7 in a job that relies on Slack to communicate.

Let her know what the requirements are for availability status on your team, and then hold her to that. If she wants to think about an alternative that works better for her, she’s welcome to propose one and you can consider whether it will work or not, but until then she needs to indicate her availability and meet whatever responsiveness standards your team requires. If that doesn’t work for her, then the job doesn’t work for her. Which would be perfectly fine for her to conclude! But she can’t expect to stay in the job and turn it into something it’s not.

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I’m pregnant! how do I announce it at work?

by Alison Green on August 6, 2024

A reader writes:

My husband and I just found out that I’m pregnant, after trying for several years! I’m extremely excited, but also realized that I have no idea how to announce this at work. I’ve only been at my company for about 18 months and, in that time, no one else on my team has had a baby so I’m not sure how this is normally done. I vaguely remember people doing it at previous jobs, but I never paid attention to how they announced it or even when in their pregnancy we were told.

Complicating matters (maybe), I’m a manager and so in addition to having to tell my own boss and my peers, at some point I need to tell my team too and they’ll probably have their own set of worries about what it means for them when I’m on leave: who will be filling in, how things will be handled while I’m out, etc.

I’m also a little worried that this isn’t great timing. One of my counterparts is out on a long-term medical leave, and I know my boss’s workload has been higher as a result. I know she’ll be happy for me, but I also wouldn’t be surprised if it’s not exactly welcome news from a workflow perspective.

Anyway, what’s the etiquette here? When do I announce, who do I tell first, and what else do I need to know?

Congratulations!

First, the short answer: wait until your second trimester (unless you can’t — more on that in a minute), tell your boss first and then your team, and don’t feel like you need to have your maternity-leave plans set in stone when you do.

Now let’s take these one at a time.

1. Wait until your second trimester, unless you can’t.

Because of the risk of early miscarriage, most people wait to announce their pregnancies at work (and in general) until they’re past the first trimester. There might be other reasons to wait, too. For example, if you’re in line for a raise or a promotion, it might be safer to wait for that to be finalized before you share the news. It would be illegal for your employer to consider your pregnancy in those sorts of decisions, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen, even unconsciously, and you might want to ensure there’s no chance it will get factored in.

In other cases, though, sharing the news earlier can make your life easier. If you’re struggling with morning sickness, for example, it might be simpler to tip off your boss and/or your team just so they understand what’s going on. (If you do that, you can ask whomever you tell to keep it to themselves for the time being.)

2. Tell your boss first.

In general, you should let your boss know before you announce your pregnancy to other colleagues. Because your maternity leave will affect your work and your team, your boss has a legitimate interest in hearing it from you first rather than through the grapevine. Plus, if you tell other people first and the news starts to spread, your boss may understandably feel awkward asking you about it, but just as uncomfortable about not being able to begin planning for your absence.

If you work in the same office, tell your boss face-to-face. (Otherwise a video or phone call is fine.) When you do, keep it brief! Say you have some happy news, make the announcement, and share your due date. It helps if you’re ready to discuss your preliminary thoughts on when you might start and end maternity leave and coverage while you’re gone, but you don’t need to address every detail at this stage — there’s still plenty of time to plan and it’s okay not to be certain of your plans yet.

If your boss says anything implying she’s not thrilled about the timing, be prepared with a response like, “It’s definitely a big change, but we’re very excited!” The idea there is to nudge her into remembering that this is good news and that the social contract requires her to respond accordingly. And keep in mind that your employer’s preferences and needs really, really don’t get a say in your reproductive choices, and it would be wildly inappropriate for your boss, or anyone else, to imply otherwise.

3. Tell your team next.

Do you have a weekly team meeting or any other regularly scheduled time when you gather with all your direct reports? If so, that’s the perfect occasion to announce your pregnancy. It could be as simple as saying, “I have some personal news to share. I’m pregnant, and due at the end of November. In the coming weeks, I’ll have more info to share about my maternity leave and the plan for coverage, but for now I just wanted to share the news.”

If you don’t have regular meetings with your whole team and there’s no obvious place to do this, you can put it in a team email (if that wouldn’t be weird in your company’s culture) or you can tell people individually. But if you tell them individually, just make sure to talk to all of them within a day or two, so you won’t have a situation where some people know and others don’t, rumors start circulating, and the people you haven’t told start wondering why you haven’t shared the news with them.

4. It’s okay if your plans aren’t set in stone yet.

If you’re not exactly sure yet what your plans are regarding maternity leave, it’s okay to say that you’re still figuring things out. Obviously you can’t keep saying that forever — you’ll want to have a plan in place at least two months before your due date. (And make sure to check with HR for any official deadlines related to setting up your parental leave.) But it’s absolutely fine to make your initial announcement without a detailed transition memo in hand.

Also, even if you’re considering not returning to work once your maternity leave is over, it’s smartest to proceed as if you are returning unless and until you become 100 percent sure that you won’t. Things change, and it’s much harder to announce that you’re staying home indefinitely and then change your mind than it is to change your mind in the other direction (planning to stay but then announcing near the end of your leave that you won’t be returning).

Originally published at New York Magazine.

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I yelled at my employees and they walked out

by Alison Green on August 6, 2024

A reader writes:

I lost my temper with several employees today. I yelled and cussed, but I did not say anything discriminatory. Before I lost it, multiple employees had done the opposite of what I instructed today. I reminded them of who they worked for. I yelled and used the “f” word. We all use it every day.

By the end of the day, with most employees having done something, I got really mad and slammed the door to my office. I slammed it so hard that some of the door facing flew off. Supposedly, it came close to hitting one of the ladies at her desk. After that, all of the employees in the office except one (the one who I yelled at this morning) walked out. I followed them outside and told them if they leave without permission, don’t come back tomorrow. They still left.

Two of the five who left, I did not have any problem with today. I did not yell at them, even though one of them did what she wanted today, not what I asked.

One of them was the husband of one of the two who I didn’t yell at. The wife in this couple has a text group with all the employees on it. She has been sending out text messages talking B.S.

I know that I shouldn’t get so angry and yell at them. I am sorry that the wood almost hit someone. She happens to be our newest employee.

Most of this started when our payroll clerk informed me that two employees wrote vacation on their timecards when they left early. Let me explain. They were on call the day before and got called out at 7pm. They did not complete the emergency until 11 am. Their supervisor told them they could go home if they wanted. Understandably, they did. They were given a choice. I have no problem paying them overtime for the time they worked. I do not believe that I owe them vacation for leaving and going home. Their supervisor did not approve the overtime.

I am still so angry that I don’t want any of them back, but I need them. The way everyone has been acting lately, doing what they want, I am considering closing the business.

I know I messed up, but I don’t think they all should have walked out without permission.

They absolutely should have walked out, with or without permission. They aren’t your indentured servants and you had lost control of yourself and were being abusive. Walking out was them setting a boundary and saying, “We won’t tolerate this.” They were right to do it.

Screaming at people is never okay. Screaming profanity at people is even less okay. Slamming your door so violently that a piece flew off and almost hit someone is so far over any line of what people should put up with at work that you’re lucky they didn’t all walk out.

I’d be surprised if they all come back.

Losing control like that is a sign that you don’t know how to manage your staff. So while your first priority needs to be apologizing to everyone who witnessed your explosion — whether it was directed at them or not — your second priority needs to be getting yourself some help managing. Classes, books, a coach, whatever will work. Good managers don’t yell.

Managers who do yell typically do it because they don’t know how else to get things done. They’re missing the core tools managers need to have –like how to assign work, give feedback, course-correct, set consequences, and hold people accountable — and so they get increasingly frustrated and desperate, and yelling feels like the only tool they have to make their point. But it’s not an acceptable tool to use— it’s an abuse of your power, and it’s also just flat-out abusive, as a human dealing with other humans. It will make good people not want to work for you, and the ones who stay will be increasingly demotivated, disengaged, and far less likely to take initiative or come up with creative ideas (who wants to take risks when there’s a yeller involved?) or generally be the kind of employee you probably want.

Ironically, yelling also diminishes your authority, by making you look weak and out of control. More on this here.

If you take this incident as a wake-up call that you need to learn how to manage employees, it will strengthen your business. If you don’t, you and the people who work for you in are in for a tough road.

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creepy coworker is following my wife, interviewers want to talk about my feelings after rejecting me, and more

by Alison Green on August 6, 2024

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

1. Can my wife report her creepy coworker to HR?

My wife is in a concerning situation at work. A coworker who started out as a friend began crossing the line, making it clear he was looking for more. The comments he made were more “creepy” than outright harassment. When she politely turned him down, he continued to ask her to meet her outside of work. She ended up texting him saying she was uncomfortable with their interactions and wanted to confirm they were just friends, nothing more. He said she was acting crazy and of course they were just friends. He then followed it up the next day with another creepy invite to meet outside of work.

Last night, a couple days after telling him they were just friends, my wife had plans to go out to dinner with her friends and had mentioned in passing to him that she was going to a specific restaurant and asked if he had ever been there. He said he was not a fan, yet while she was sitting at the bar, he showed up and sat a few seats away. They did not interact and my wife left a few minutes after she saw him.

She now feels unsafe at her workplace and is at a loss on whether this is something she can approach HR about. It is obviously a public restaurant that anyone can go to, but it seems a bit to coincidental that he showed up there. She’s also a bit concerned that this can be turned back on her because she did not immediately shut down his creepy comments but would generally just ignore them at first. What is the right thing to do in this situation?

She should absolutely talk to HR. Of course anyone could just show up at a public restaurant, but her complaint isn’t “I was at a restaurant and he showed up.” It’s “he has repeatedly asked me out, despite my saying no, and I am concerned that he has now escalated to showing up to at least one place outside of work where he knew I would be, at the time he knew I would be there.” It’s the pattern that paints the troubling picture. She’s being harassed by a colleague, and her company has a legal obligation to put a stop to it. Any halfway decent HR will spot that immediately.

Please don’t let your wife worry that she’ll be seen as less credible or at fault for not immediately shutting down her coworker more firmly. Her response — to be polite, to try to soften the message to preserve the relationship, to hope he’d get the hint and stop on his own — is an incredibly common and understandable one, particularly at work where she had strong motivation to let him save face and preserve their working relationship (and particularly in a culture where rejected men not infrequently lash out … and his accusation that she was being “crazy” is just the softest version of what that can look like). Her attempt to tread lightly doesn’t make her responsible for his choices.

2. Interviewers want to talk about my feelings after rejecting me

I’ve been applying for jobs in a specialized field of human services. Of course, not every applicant is a good fit for every job and rejections are inevitable. But a weird and unexpected thing has happened to me twice recently — the hiring manager who calls to let me know I’ve not been successful in my application then wants to see if I’m okay? How am I feeling about this? Tries to reassure me the candidate pool was strong, etc. In one case I flubbed a question in the interview. The hiring manager asked if it would make me feel better if I knew that that was not the reason I didn’t get the job. Kind of? I don’t know.

If a manager takes the time to let me know by phone that I haven’t been successful — which is fairly common in our field, since the hiring experience can be extensive — all I want is to pick up on any feedback on things I can improve in future, then thank them for considering me and wish them the best. If I’m feeling sorry for myself over not getting the job, that’s something I’ll work out talking to a friend or in my journal, not talking to someone I met once and may want to consider me in future. Is there a way I can cut this short, without saying “yes, I’m fine, really” in a way that could be construed as brusque?

What?! This is weird. I have a feeling it stems from hearing that applicants hate impersonal rejections and then trying to counter that — but trying to probe into and manage your feelings about their decision is a step too far.

The best thing you can do is to be a cheerful wall — by which I mean you stay upbeat but refuse to entertain attempts to probe into your feelings. So (abbreviated to remove any discussion of substantive feedback):

Hiring manager: “I’m calling to let you know we went with another candidate.”
You: “I appreciate you calling to let me know.”
Manager: “I know that’s rough news to hear.”
You: “It’s never the answer anyone wants, but I understand the process was competitive!”
Manager: “Are you feeling okay about this?”
You: “I appreciate being considered, and it was great to get to know your team a bit. I’d love to stay in touch. Well, thank you again for letting me know, and good luck with the work you’re doing!”

Cheerful wall.

3. My boss got upset that I tried to keep her email after she retires

My boss will retire in two months. She has worked for this company for 24 years and, as far as I understand, her job is a big part of her emotional support system.

When they hired me, we discussed mailbox privacy policy. I expressed a doubt that I should check a mailbox of another employee when they are on their day off and was told, “Work mailboxes are not personal, you don’t need even ask.” I still ask though.

A couple of weeks ago, my boss and I were discussing that her mailbox and email address should stay in our department after her retirement. And, as far as I understood, she wanted me to contact our IT department to say that. It was her idea; we even discussed in which terms exactly I would ask for that.

I wrote the letter. Basically: my boss will retire on this date, please keep her email in use in our department because Reasons. I send it to my boss first, because I didn’t feel good doing it without her approval. She didn’t reply. So after a week, I sent it to IT with our boss copied. They opened a ticket to fulfill my request.

My boss called me, expressing extreme anger and being terribly hurt. I have never seen her like that. She said, “I’m still alive, I am not dead, I should handle that.” I apologized immediately and tried to speak with her, but she said that she would cry and no. She wrote to the IT department to stop the ticket processing.

We haven’t spoken about the situation since then. My boss is speaking with me very sparsely and only about job tasks. I would like to apologize for my mistake. I am very sorry that I did it and still don’t quite understand why my boss’s reaction is this extreme. What I can do? Why did this situation even happen?

Two possibilities: either you somehow misunderstood her initial direction, or she’s having an emotional response to retiring that has nothing to do with you. It doesn’t sound like the first is true (the conversation was clear and explicit, she asked you to contact IT, and then she had a week to review your message, during which time she said nothing) but even if it were a misunderstanding, her reaction would still be over-the-top. It’s much more likely that she’s having mixed feeling about retiring, doesn’t like feeling pushed out even though she’s leaving by her own choice, and maybe is having an visceral but irrational reaction to seeing clear plans made for The Time When She Will Be Gone.

Any apology you make would be about smoothing over the situation, not because you actually owe her one. But it would be fine to say, “I’m sorry I misunderstood our conversation. I thought you had directed me to send that email to IT. I would never do that on my own.” Frankly, that’s more responsibility than you need to take (it would be reasonable to just say, “Did I misunderstand our conversation? I thought you’d explicitly told me to send that email to IT”) but if you’re looking to smooth things over with someone who’s clearly struggling about her upcoming departure, it might help.

4. People are pressing me to attend the staff Christmas party (it’s August)

I currently work in a convenience shop that belongs to a big supermarket chain in the UK. We’re a close-knit team, and I genuinely enjoy working with the majority of my colleagues. I’m leaving at the end of this month so that I can pursue the career that I actually want to be in, and everyone has been genuinely supportive of me, except for one small detail: they all want me to still go to the staff Christmas party.

Yes, I know it is only August.

For the record, I have only attended one Christmas party, which was my first year working for the shop. I decided that it was not my scene, and volunteered to cover other staff shifts so they could attend the party the following years (we normally got outside cover). So even if I was staying, I likely wouldn’t attend anyway. However, while my colleagues are lovely people, they seem to struggle with taking my “no” as a full answer. They even joked about making it my unofficial leaving do, which I very quickly shut down.

There are other reasons I don’t want to attend as well. For one, it would just be awkward? Yes, these people are my friends outside of work but … it’s a quarter of the year away. Secondly, it is £60! That’s not a small sum to me, even if they have set up an unofficial pay-in-3 system (I should note it is other colleagues who chose the venue, not management). Third … it’s just a bad menu. Limited choices, and they can’t even promise the vegan option will be free from non-vegan contaminants.

I just don’t know how to stop them from asking me to go! Should I just leave it until I actually go? Any advice or a script you can give me would be greatly appreciated.

I’m assuming you don’t actually have to buy your ticket this month, right? So: “Sounds like fun! I don’t have any idea at this point what December will look like, but I’d love to attend if I can!”

Or: “I can’t even plan for September at this point, but I’d love to come back and see everyone.”

Is this is a lie when you know you don’t plan to go? Yes! But it’s the sort of white lie that gets used in these situations all the time, where people are pressing you and you don’t feel comfortable saying, essentially, “Nah, when I’m out, I’m out, and by the way, that sounds like a crap time.”

I wouldn’t advise this approach if the stakes were higher — like if they were asking if you’d be available to do a work project as a freelancer and might plan around your answer. But for the question of whether you’ll return to attend the Christmas party, it’s fine.

5. I want a job without much variety

I’m hoping to harness the power of the AAM commentariat with my question. I think it’s pretty common to have job listings that tout how “no two days are the same!” For some people I know, this is ideal! But not me. I don’t actually want a job that’s always different. I’ve thrived the most in jobs with a fairly scheduled process flow to them. I used to be a payroll specialist, and I loved the bi-weekly cycle of things. Sure, we had special projects and unusual situations pop up from time to time. But overall the flow of the job duties was pretty consistent. I knew what to expect on a general level, which I now understand is very important to me. I don’t function at my best when the unexpected is the rule.

I’m currently in an analyst job where I’m always working on several different projects at once. And at any moment, something completely out of left field can be added to my plate with urgency behind it. I haven’t had this role for long, but I do not think it’s right for me. I’d love to get more examples of jobs that are more consistent. I’m talking the type of jobs that people who love excitement avoid like the plague. Can I please get some input from the readers?

Let’s throw it out to readers for ideas.

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my coworker keeps messaging me about my face during meetings

by Alison Green on August 5, 2024

A reader writes:

I am a full-time, mid-level female manager at a large consultancy, and I sometimes work with a senior strategist (a contractor). He has an off-putting habit of utilizing Zoom DMs to make comments that make it clear he is scrutinizing me instead of paying attention to the meeting. Things like, “Something must be funny!” or “You look vexed! LOL”

While I am sometimes guilty of sending an email or responding to someone on Slack during a meeting if I’m not actively presenting or leading, I don’t think my face is doing anything out of the ordinary. Another colleague of mine has said she has gotten similar messages from the strategist. I checked with one of our male colleagues, and he says he has never gotten a message from the strategist about his facial expression.

The last time I got one of these messages, I responded, “I think it is just my face. :D”

Is there anything else you suggest to push back on these weird messages? We don’t work in the same city, so will never have a chance to casually chat in person. It feels very much like he only does this to female colleagues.

Yeah, it’s super common — and super annoying — for men to feel free to comment on women’s faces when they’d never make the same comment to another man. Ask any man how often he’s been ordered to smile by another man.

Sometimes it stems from the underlying, though often unconscious, belief that women should always be pleasant, decorative objects … plus, women’s faces and bodies seem to be up for assessment and feedback all the time and in every context.

If you try to shut down the men who do this, they’re generally shocked, even insulted; they’re just being friendly, they claim! But the fact that they only do it to women gives the game away.

To be clear, there are plenty of times where friendly coworkers might trade messages during meetings like “I can see you’re barely holding it together over what Roger just said” or so forth — where it’s just friendly camaraderie. But this doesn’t sound like that, even if he thinks it is.

Anyway. Some options:

You can just ignore your colleague’s messages if you want. Just because he wants to send them doesn’t mean you owe him a response. And it’s possible that being ignored every time might make him feel weird about continuing. This is probably the best option.

But if you want to address it more explicitly, you could say, “It’s really distracting when you comment on my face during meetings.” If you want to soften it, throw in a “I know you don’t mean anything by it but” at the beginning of that. (Technically you don’t need to soften it, but the message is going to get delivered either way and work dynamics might mean you benefit from cushioning it a bit.)

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my employee doesn’t have what it takes to do the job he wants

by Alison Green on August 5, 2024

A reader writes:

I’m in a tricky spot with a long-time employee, “Bob,” and I need advice on how to deliver a potentially devastating piece of feedback: “You just don’t have what it takes to succeed in this role.”

Bob is interested in growing from his current position into a more senior role. He has studied the field for about two years, including taking a few training courses paid for by the company. He’s been provided with mentors through a network of industry contacts.

As part of his learning process, we have given Bob oversight of several small projects. He works hard, but there are a few problems we keep coming back to, including a lack of communication skills – he frequently mishears or misunderstands initial requirements, which means that he spreads misinformation and leaves the rest of the team playing catch-up – and difficulty understanding how to prioritize.

Bob also struggles to receive feedback, even mild course corrections. Each coaching session, no matter how focused on concrete requests, leads him to a spiral of anxiety and irritability, which ends up impacting the team. Bob has damaged relationships to the point that a few coworkers refuse to work with him.

Bottom-line: as eager as Bob is to learn this role and develop his skills, he’s bad at this stuff. He lacks many of the innate skills that the requires, hasn’t shown any improvement, and I spend many hours per week clarifying his messages and dealing with conflicts he’s created. That, plus the inability to respond professionally to feedback, makes me think that he’s fundamentally unsuited for this role. We can’t spend more resources trying to train him.

How do I tell Bob that this is not a role he can excel at, at least in our company? How do I say, kindly but truthfully, “I’ve stuck my neck out for you as far as I’m willing and unfortunately, you just don’t measure up. Find another goal”?

I answer this question 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.

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I was falsely accused of using ChatGPT for my work

by Alison Green on August 5, 2024

A reader writes:

I’ve recently taken on a new role that’s a professional downshift so that I can ultimately pivot toward more fulfilling work. It’s fun, varied work that I love, but it does mean that I am earning significantly less, and I have been taking on freelance copywriting jobs to help make up the difference. I have a strong reputation in my field and my clients have been universally pleased with my work.

However, despite personally writing every word of my most recent assignment, the final work was run through an AI detector and was determined to have been generated by ChatGPT. This stung — it was an accusation of dishonesty, discounted my years of skill, and feels like the first of what may become many such instances in the future.

I know that AI scanners are unreliable and have been widely discredited — hell, even OpenAI has pulled the plug on their own detector, citing a low rate of accuracy — but I still wonder how I can protect myself against this kind of thing happening with future projects. I worry that I’ll put in hours and hours of work, only for clients to lose trust in the integrity of my work and/or skip out on invoices, having been convinced by a faulty program that they’re getting ripped off.

Any suggestions for reassuring clients and proving my work is, in fact, human-generated?

That’s infuriating.

Anyone who’s using an AI detector needs to be aware that they’re notoriously inaccurate. You can run pieces of writing through them that were created decades ago, long before AI existed, and get told AI wrote them. One “detector” even claimed the U.S. Constitution was written by AI. And as you point out, OpenAI, the company that created ChatGPT, shut down its own AI detector because of low accuracy. They’re ridiculously problematic.

So, you could start by asking your client which AI detector they used and explaining their well-documented inaccuracies. (Here are some links you could use: 1, 2, 3) You could say firmly that as a professional writer whose reputation is your livelihood, you take allegations of using AI very seriously and you hope they’ll give you the opportunity to show how baseless the assertion is.

Then offer to show them your version history. Google Docs, Microsoft Word, and many other writing programs keep a version history that tracks every change you made and when you made it, which will make it clear that you wrote through a normal, messy, human process with revisions and that whole chunks of fully formed text weren’t simply pasted in.

If they don’t backtrack once you calmly educate them, is this even a client you want?

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I was told to do less work, two of my employees hold private “accountability” meetings, and more

by Alison Green on August 5, 2024

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

1. My team was told to do less work

I’ve had an interesting three months at work. During this period, my team of three was pulled aside while one service desk team member was out. We were asked in that meeting to work LESS diligently so that the third person had a chance to grab tickets. My sentiment was essentially too damn bad … he needs to catch up and stop watching YouTube all day. When I brought this up to management and HR, they said that I’m not privy to everything going on in the background, plus my current manager has only been in her position for the past three months and she hasn’t had adequate time to address all the problems.

Am I going crazy or is this favoritism from management, allowing this coworker to be on YouTube all day while the rest of us pick up the slack? What recourse do I have in a situation like this?

In some situations, asking you to take fewer tickets could be reasonable — like if someone is being trained and needs those tickets to learn from, or if your manager is trying to give your coworker enough rope to hang himself with (by ensuring there are clearly tickets available that he could be taking but isn’t). It’s also possible that he’s claiming his numbers are low because there’s no work available and they truly believe that … but based on the “you don’t know everything going on in the background” comment, I’m guessing it’s not that.

As for recourse … you don’t really have any. If they’re asking you to take fewer tickets, you’re not being asked to pick up your coworker’s slack; you’re being asked to leave his slack right there where everyone can see it. If that causes other problems (like if he doesn’t do the tickets you leave for him and you end up having to stay late or rush to get them done at the last minute), you can and should raise those issues. But otherwise, take fewer tickets like they’ve asked and see what happens.

2. Two of my employees hold their own “accountability” meetings

I manage a team of five executive assistants at a fairly big company. Two of them meet weekly for almost 1-1/2 hours for an “accountability” call. One of them has this call marked as private on her calendar and the other does not. Here are the questions they have on the meeting invite for discussion:

• What was your biggest priority this week?
• Did you accomplish it, and if not, why not?
• What did you learn this week?
• What was your biggest business highlight this week?
• What is/was your biggest obstacle?
• What do you need to solve it, or how did you solve it?
• What was your biggest personal highlight last week?
• Rate last week on a scale of 1-10 (10 being amazing).
• What needs to happen to make next week a success?
• What do you need help with (and who do you need to contact)?

Another on the team (who is no longer with the company) suggested that these two teammates are manipulating behind the team’s back. I also get the feeling these two may talk about the other team members and also plan on their own to push items forward. I haven’t heard from the other current teammates yet, but I think knowing these two have a regular meeting could make some of them feel like these two are conniving together and, frankly, it makes me feel that way as their manager as well.

I do think it is important to have mentoring discussions and our company fully supports personal development but this just bothers me a bit and I don’t want it to become a bigger issue. Am I just being paranoid?

It sounds great to me! They’re supporting each other and holding each other accountable; those are good things!

If you see signs that they’re plotting together to push agendas you don’t want them pushing, or if work isn’t getting done because they’re prioritizing these meetings when they should be prioritizing other things, you’d address those issues specifically — but that would be about those specific problems, not the meetings themselves. Assuming you’re not seeing anything like that, it sounds like your discomfort is all coming from the former employee (who doesn’t seem to have offered any real reason to be concerned) and maybe your own uneasiness at feeling cut out of the loop. The meetings themselves, as presented here, seem great. And if other team members ever indicate that they feel excluded by not being part of it, you could suggest other people form their own small groups to do the same. (Hell, if there’s interest, you could even suggest that these two share their process with the team as a whole in case other people want to learn how to do something similar.)

3. Will my job chances go up if I color my gray hair?

Recently, I had a conversation with my father, who is a sales manager, about my job search situation, and he said that I would be more likely to get promoted or hired if I dyed my hair. I am 42 and I have salt and pepper hair (mostly dark brown/black and a good amount of gray in front). I like this color contrast and I get a lot of compliments from peers and young people, but I do care about my career. Do you think I should get my hair dyed so that I am more likely to be promoted at my current company or hired at another company, or is this not usually a factor for hiring managers?

I’d love to tell you it doesn’t matter at all because it certainly shouldn’t, but in reality some hiring managers are biased, unconsciously or otherwise, against candidates who they perceive as older. That’s obviously BS, but it happens. Does it mean you’ll never get promoted or hired anyone if they see, gasp, gray hair? It definitely does not. Might it narrow your options in ways we can’t anticipate? It’s possible. Is that more the exception than the rule? Probably. Might you decide you’d rather screen those managers out anyway? Yes!

Personally I think you should do whatever you want with your hair, and if you’re moving along in your career in a way you’re happy with, you should feel free to ignore your father. If at some point you’re struggling for the sort of advancement you want, it could be one thing to consider, but it’s hardly a definitive one.

(You might also consider whether your father works in contexts similar to your own or not, and whether he might be sort of telling on himself with this particular opinion.)

4. My friend asks me to help them professionally but won’t return the favor

Am I being petty because my friend won’t engage with my work or share their connections?

I have a friend who works in social media at a renowned company, and every now and then they send me company Instagram and Tiktoks to engage with such as with likes and comments. This helps them gain traction for their videos and posts, which shows the company that people are engaging with their content.

My issue is, before they got this role, I was doing a similar role at a different company and I would send them videos to like and comment on. However they would never engage on any of the videos I was putting out there. Recently, I worked at another company and sent them videos to do with my work. But again they ignored me when I asked them to engage with my content.

I find it unfair that I engage with their work but they never do the same. I have also noticed that when it comes to networking and connections, they also don’t share their connections (which is fine).

Is it petty of me to stop engaging with their videos? I am also hesitant to now and in the future to mix my networking connections with them because they never do the same. I understand people have to start from somewhere and that they struggled at one point, but sometimes it feels unfair. I sometimes see them engaging with old friends when it comes to the creative field working on projects, but I am excluded despite having a creative background.

You’re under no obligation to do them a favor that they repeatedly declined to do for you. (In fact, it would be better if you all stopped doing and requesting these favors because it’s skewing the data on how the content is really doing.) You could see that as petty, or you could see it as “they showed me that’s not a friendship action they put value on.”

You also don’t need to keep helping them with connections if they don’t share their own. Networking is supposed to be mutually beneficial.

If you otherwise like this friend, I’d just engage with them on completely non-work-related levels. For whatever reason, the work stuff only goes one way with them.

5. Should companies check references for internal transfers?

You’ve spoken often about how important it is to check references, but I’m wondering about in the case of internal hires. For the last two roles I’ve been offered, no one asked to check my references because I was an internal transfer and the bosses had worked with me previously. In one case it made sense to me, but in the other I hadn’t worked with that person in over five years. Theoretically I could have changed and become a less useful employee. I’m curious about what’s normal and what you think they should do in these types of situations.

It’s super normal not to check references for internal transfers, because you’re already a known quantity. The manager hiring for the new position might talk informally with your current manager (they definitely should), but it’s pretty uncommon for formal reference checks to happen in those situations.

Reference checks are for when you don’t know the candidate and their work, and can’t simply take their word for what they say about themselves. When you’re already working there, they know you and your work, and their firsthand experience with you will be more recent, more unfiltered, and more nuanced than anything they’d get from a reference call.

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