Ask a Manager

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

1. My coworkers are feuding over a text, a lack of condolences, and some coffee

We have two colleagues in our office, Pam and Sarah, who do not get along. Sarah’s mom passed away recently, and she sent a text message to our people in the office letting them know. It should be noted that she left Pam off the text. I did not respond to the text message because I am older and find texting and social media to be impersonal, so I was going to call her the next day. Pam also did not send a text to Sarah that day (again, Sarah left her off the text sharing what happened).

The next day, both Pam and I woke up to a text message from Sarah that read, “Thanks for the condolences” and had a picture of her dead mother in her hospice bed attached. Knowing Sarah, I know she was drunk and emotional when she sent the text, so I didn’t think anything of it and called Sarah that evening. I told her I was sorry about her mom, and she apologized for the picture and that was that. We are fine. However, Pam has taken the picture as a personal affront, and she and Sarah no longer speak to each other.

Two weeks have passed, and this morning Sarah comes down to my desk asking where the key to the supply closet is. She said she was looking for the Green Mountain coffee but thinks we are out of it because Pam, who orders supplies, will not order it anymore because she is mad at Sarah and knows Sarah likes it. Since I have a company credit card, she asked if I could order it. I said I could try but I don’t order supplies. Next thing I know, Sarah is going into our manager’s office, and I hear her say, “Bob, can you order more of this coffee? Pam won’t order it because I was mad that she did not send me condolences, so I sent her a picture of my dead mother and now we only have Folgers.” I had to put my head under my desk and hide, I was laughing so hard. How is that sentence even possible in a sane world? Anyway, any advice on how to handle this situation?

The question is what Bob is going to do! He’s the one with the authority and obligation to deal with it. What he should do is talk to them and tell them they need to be civil to each other at work and it’s not okay to ignore one another or make supply-ordering decisions based on personal feuds. He also needs to tell Sarah that angrily sending a photo of her dead mom was inappropriate and upsetting and she needs to keep her communications to colleagues professional.

But that’s the tip of the iceberg! The fact that this happened at all, that it got to this point, that Sarah’s history is such that you knew she was drunk-texting — something’s going on in your office beyond this, and I strongly suspect part of it is that Bob isn’t actively managing the situation.

Luckily, it’s not anything you need to fix yourself; it’s not your job and you’re not the one with the authority to address it.

2. Is saying “my calendar is up to date” rude?

I work in a quality function at a large company, so we need to sign off on a lot of things that the various groups under our purview are doing. That usually results in a lot of quick meetings so the groups requesting our sign off can give us a quick rundown of the situation and allow us to ask questions. Oftentimes, these sign-offs need to happen relatively quickly.

Recently, someone was requesting my sign-off on a change and sent me a Teams message asking if I had time to meet that day. I responded, “Sure, my Outlook calendar is up to date” and expected the person to send me a planner.

This person, for some reason, flipped out when I said this, saying that I should have scheduled the meeting. I had no idea how long the meeting needed to be, who else to invite, etc., which is why I told them to schedule it.

I have to ask. Is it rude to say “my outlook calendar is up to date” and expect someone requesting a meeting to go ahead and schedule it?

No, it is not. It is very normal.

Moreover, even if it were a little rude — which it isn’t — your coworker’s reaction would have been wildly over the top. They could have simply replied, “Would you mind taking the lead on scheduling because of (reasons)?”

3. Customer is telling me too much about her family’s tragedy

I work at a bookstore. Recently I had a customer come in with a terrible situation; her son who plays football experienced a bad tackle and was seriously injured as a result. She was asking for medical books about the specific condition, as well as self-help books. I guided her to the appropriate section and expressed genuine sympathy and a hope that things get better. We didn’t have much that applied to the exact situation, so I ordered some for her as well.

The problem is, she’s a very frequent customer and she’s now giving me regular updates on the situation, some medical (he has a catheter) and some emotional (he’s told her he wants to die). I frankly didn’t ask and don’t want to know. I sympathize, truly, and I’m sorry this young man’s life has been so tragically altered but I’m here to do my job, not provide free therapy. I have my own background with losing someone young to suicide and hearing that this young man is considering taking his own life is genuinely triggering for me. How do I gently extricate myself from this situation? Should I talk to my manager about it? If so, what should I say?

First, are you able to quickly excuse yourself for work reasons — “good to see you, I’ve got to grab something for another customer” or so forth? If that’s not practical (or not practical every time), would you be comfortable saying something like, “I’m so sorry he’s dealing with this. It’s hard for me to talk about because of a situation in my own family — I hope you understand”?

But it’s also okay to talk to your manager about it; this is the kind of thing that you can ask someone above your pay grade to handle.

4. My boss is mad that I communicate better than she does

I’ve been with my company for 15 years, in my current position for nine. I’m one of the team leads. There are similar leads for other teams in our group. We each are responsible for supervising and mentoring the members of our teams, as well as facilitating conversations with other groups and setting/enforcing policies and procedures. As the longest-tenured lead, I have a few additional responsibilities which extend to our full group. My current manager is the third since I’ve been a lead. They were an internal hire who was familiar with me, my work, responsibilities, and how I interacted with the team and my previous managers.

Recently we had our company-wide employee survey, and my manager scored low on communication and team engagement. A couple of weeks later, I got a call from them telling me that I talked too much in meetings, it was inappropriate that my team came to me for group-related issues instead of just ones solely focused on our assignments, I should not be making policy and procedure decisions, and I needed to quiet down and let them handle anything that wasn’t specific to a particular assignment. Through the course of the conversation, I gleaned that they had just had a meeting with their manager, and the issues with their communication came up. Apparently I was used as an example of good communication and what my grand-boss would like to see out of my manager. But instead of using that to improve their style, I’m being told to curtail my work and behaviors.

Fine, I can mostly deal with this (although it does have me brushing up my resume). My question is how to explain to my team why suddenly I’m referring questions to our manager. And how do I tell people sending me requests from outside teams that instead of getting a prompt response from me, they’ll have to contact my manager and wait weeks for an answer? I’m afraid that they’ll interpret this change as if I’ve done something wrong and it will affect my reputation. I know my not speaking up during discussions in meetings has been noticed already and I’m not sure how to address that, either. So far I’ve just been saying “Manager wants to be more involved in X” but that doesn’t feel quite right either.

Wow, your manager is an insecure ass.

How’s your relationship with your manager’s manager? Any chance you could talk to her about these new directives? If she held you up as an example of the sort of communication your boss should be modeling, she’s probably going to be pretty unhappy to hear how your boss handled it. Make sure to say that you’re concerned about retaliation from your boss if they find out you went to your grandboss with this; your grandboss should be able to finesse that if she’s reasonably skilled, but it’ll help to flag it as a specific concern.

Beyond that, just be straightforward with other people: “Jane has asked to be more involved with stuff like this” … “Jane wants to be the point of contact for this” … etc. It sounds like you have an excellent reputation and Jane does not; it’s highly likely that people will know that the problem is Jane, not you.

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

1. Is my employee’s conference presentation taking credit for my work?

My question is one part reaction check, one part management advice. I run a small marketing team that didn’t exist at this company before I created it five years ago. I had some adjacent experience and figured everything else out as I went. Last year, we had an internal transfer to my team; she also didn’t have any marketing experience, but was eager to learn. She was brought on to expand upon and lead some social media marketing projects that I had done some work on, but had been stretched too thin to dedicate the time needed for it.

Fast forward 18 months, and she reached out for financial support to attend an industry conference. She wanted to learn more about social media strategy and develop her skills. This is great! I love continuous education opportunities for my team! I approved the request.

The next week I found out via a LinkedIn post she made that she applied and was accepted as a speaker at the conference, with the topic of how to create a social media function at a small company. In this post, she shared that she was able to build this function on her own, and she was excited to share her expertise with others at this conference. She has not mentioned to me directly that she will be a speaker.

So going back to my two-part question: First, the way she describes her role and her projects in the post effectively cuts my work and guidance out of the picture. I know I’m taking this too personally, but how “too personally?” I want to be a supportive manager and I want her to feel empowered, but frankly, this makes me less excited to be a cheerleader for her because it feels like she just took the credit.

Secondly, I think there is some genuine feedback to give here, but I’m struggling to parse it out from my personal feelings. She misrepresented her goals for the conference in her proposal and she’s misrepresenting her expertise to conference attendees (who are paying thousands of dollars!). However, it’s not affecting her work at our company, so is it even something I should be addressing? If so, how? If not, advice on letting this go?

Is she misrepresenting her expertise to conference attendees? It’s pretty normal for speaker bios to present the speaker in the best possible light, and usually they don’t include things like “under the tutelage of ManagerName” (unless the manager is so well-known that their name would be a draw). Granted, I don’t have all the facts that you do, but it doesn’t sound that outrageous for her to frame her work as building out your social media function; it sounds like she was hired to lead those projects. That doesn’t negate the work you did before she came on board or undermine you as her manager. If there’s something specific about the way she’s framing things that feels truly fraudulent, you’d of course want to address that — but otherwise this sounds like pretty standard conference speaker stuff.

It’s not clear to me whether she knew she was speaking at the conference when she asked you to fund her attendance. If she did, it’s a little surprising that she didn’t mention it, but not necessarily nefarious. You could just raise it with her and see what she says! For example: “I saw you’re leading a session on X! That’s great. You didn’t mention it when you asked for funding, so I wanted to make sure you know that’s something we love to see and would always appreciate knowing about.” (And if there are details that make this weirder that weren’t in the letter, you could change that to, “I was surprised you didn’t mention it when we talked about funding to attend — any reason for that?”)

2. Our manager favors our rumor-spreading, two-faced coworker

I work in a small team within a big organization. The team has been fairly close, but that all changed recently when we found out that one of our coworkers, Sam, has been spreading malicious rumors about another coworker who had to take time off for personal and family issues (miscarriage/sickness/vacation), saying things to the management team like how they’re always out or calling out sick whenever. They also spread rumors about people “taking advantage” of the hybrid schedule whenever we were not on-site. We confronted Sam privately (and separately) and they said there was no malicious intent. We later found out multiple other teammates had asked them to stop spreading negative rumors about their own teammates.

Then we realized our direct supervisor was privately emailing Sam for assignments and projects, and none of the rest of us would ever be included in the communication. So whenever Sam would call out for a broken fridge or car troubles, we would suddenly be asked to do double work because there had been no communication previously about the work. As time went on, we found out that Sam had also been stealing credit for the team’s work, which we also asked them to stop — but they believed they were right to do so, based on “last person to touch” logic.

We spoke with management about the lack of communication and respect from Sam, but also the lack of transparency from our supervisor funneling all communication to Sam. The resolution was that the supervisor would speak directly with Sam.

A few months after their conversation (which no one else was present for) the supervisor continues to privately message Sam, who now informs the team that they’re working on “something else” for the supervisor, but never shares the information with the us, likely out of spite. Sam also gets super passive-aggressive whenever the team decides to work on projects and not include them. I’ve tried pushing for collaboration and open communication, but so far nothing has improved. What can I do? Should I just look to transfer/promote to another team?

Yes, or even look outside the company altogether. Your managers know about the issue and, for whatever reason, aren’t acting on it. There’s too much drama around Sam and your supervisor, and you don’t have the power to fix it. Your best move is to just get out.

3. How did I make this terrible hire?

I’m an in-house recruiter in a medical start-up. About three weeks ago, I made a job offer to someone I felt was an excellent fit for a sales role. They happily accepted. Well, the hiring manager informed me two weeks ago that I might have to find a replacement because the new hire had been rude to her and to the trainer her first week. Very odd as these are both friendly and professional people. I don’t know the specifics but was told that the hire was very rude and mean during training, which is done over video (we’re a fully remote company), and in several emails to the manager. This rather shocked me as the candidate was perfectly lovely to me, behaved professionally, and was very well qualified for the role.

Last week, this hire resigned suddenly, claiming they hadn’t been paid. We pay bi-weekly and the deposit had not yet hit their bank account. I always go over the specifics of pay during the screening so they were fully aware of this.

Nothing like this has ever happened to me before and I’ve made hundreds of hires over the years. I’ve been in HR for many years and thought I had developed a thick skin, but I can’t shake the idea that I’m partly to blame for not seeing something during the interview. I can’t recall a single red flag either during the screening, formal interview, or afterwards in our emails. And no, we didn’t contact references. My company doesn’t do reference checks. Maybe we should start?

Sometimes you are going to make bad hires because it’s not a perfect science! If this is your first hiring mistake after hundreds of hires, you’ve been very lucky … although I suspect previous bad hires might have been more along the lines of “can’t do the job the way we need it done,” whereas this person just seems like a jerk and so you feel like you should have spotted that earlier.

Except it’s not always something you can spot in a hiring process! Some people interview very well and can hold it together for a few meetings or when the stakes feel particularly high but are horrible to work with. It sounds like this person was one. (Alternately, any chance there’s something else going on, like that you and the candidate were both male and the manager and trainer were both women? It’s worth thinking about — but sometimes people are just jerks and there’s nothing deeper happening.)

However, yes, you should do reference checks. They can significantly decrease the chances of surprises like this.

4. My housekeeper’s daughter doesn’t have any books

I employ a housekeeper, Maria. I am very happy with her work. Maria is a recent immigrant who speaks only Spanish. I used to speak Spanish well; I now have a medical condition that makes it hard for me to remember words in any language, but I still do my best.

Recently, Maria had a childcare issue and brought her first-grade daughter, Katie, to my home while she worked. That is not a problem. I gave Katie the basket of age-appropriate toys I keep on hand; Katie entertained herself for a while, then went out of her way to talk to me. Katie also only speaks Spanish. Katie told me that she had a book that was teaching her to read and write before she immigrated with her family, but she had to leave it behind, and now she does not have any books at home. I pulled out my collection of age-appropriate books and Katie spent the rest of her mom’s work time reading and describing pictures to me, I think very happily. I confirmed with Katie that she goes to school; she gave me several relevant details that make me completely sure she is in school.

I know Maria is a good mother who cares deeply about her children. Also, there’s a child in my community who obviously loves reading and says she has no books at home. If Katie were any other child in my life, I would know exactly what to do: make sure the family has access to the library (which has a great Spanish section), get Katie a couple books of her own, and let Maria know I would be happy any time to help make sure Katie always has access to books.

However, Katie is my employee’s daughter. Maria is great at taking feedback about her work, but she is less open to feedback in other areas. (Once, I forgot the word for “light” when she told me something was light, so I asked if she would like help carrying it; she gave me a speech about how she is an independent woman and I should let her work.) I think I have a generally positive relationship with Maria, but I know my impression is complicated by her having to be nice to me for her job, as well as cultural barriers. I also do not think Maria working for me means she has to hear my thoughts on her parenting.

However, I would love to help Katie have access to books at home if there is a reasonable and respectful way for me to do this. (For example, my niece has outgrown several books that are bilingual in English and Spanish and her parents want to give them away – could I offer them to Maria? I would also be happy to buy Katie new books.) If there is a good script for this situation, there are fluent Spanish speakers in my life I could contact for help getting it exactly right in Spanish.

I think you might be overthinking it! Buy Katie a few Spanish-language books or get the ones your niece has outgrown and ask Maria if Katie would like them. You could say, “I saw how much she loved looking at books when she was here so I wanted to give her some as a gift.”

I suspect you’re worried there’s some inherent criticism of Maria for not supplying Katie with books herself, but that doesn’t need to be the subtext at all. After all, you could offer Katie some books even if she had her own extensive stash at home — and you can approach this just like you would then.

5. How do I correct people who call me the wrong name via email?

You recently published a letter where the writer asked how to get people to spell their name correctly, and it reminded me of a similar (and kind of bizarre) issue I’ve been having.

Our email addresses are all in the format [first initial][last name]@company.com, and we have a standard Outlook signature that contains our full name, company website, etc. Surprisingly often, clients will respond to an email from me with some form of “Thanks, [my email alias]!” instead of “Thanks, [my actual name as shown in my signature]!” Weirder still, they don’t even spell the alias correctly as it appears in my email address.

Let me try to illustrate what I mean. Say my name was Katherine Eavon. My company email address would be keavon@teapotsinc.com, right? And all of my emails are signed, in bold letters, “Best regards, Katherine Eavon.” But I have clients responding with “Thanks Kevin!” and even calling my office — having presumably gotten the phone number from the signature with my actual name — and asking for Kevin.

It’s such a small issue but I just can’t wrap my head around the logic. I could maybe understand the occasional “thanks Keavon,” but like … do they think my email alias is my first name spelled incorrectly? Are there that many people using software that purposely hides email signatures? Is my name really Kevin and no one told me?

It happens so often that it’s become a bit of a running joke in our office. One of my coworkers gave me a Hello, My Name Is Kevin name tag as a gag gift. It’s all in good fun around the water cooler, but how do I reply to clients and say, “Hey jackass, check my signature, that’s not my name” without sounding rude?

I think it’s the same basic reason as why people address their emails to Allison when my email address with Alison is right in front of them. In your case, their eyes are glancing on what they process as a version of the name “Kevin” and their brains go “noted, Kevin,” and then their brains convert it to the spelling they’re most familiar with when they type it out. They’re not thinking about any more than that (definitely not to the point of wondering why your email address spelled it differently).

I’d just include “My name is Katherine, not Kevin!” when you reply … but, similar to the letter from earlier this week, the more you can not care, the better.

Also, though, any chance your company would change your email address to katherine@? Big companies are often wed to standardized email address formats, but if you’re at a smaller company they might be willing to just change it.

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

1. I manage someone who’s bored and grumpy at work

I work on a small team and manage one person, A. The nature of A’s work can often be quite monotonous and she knew this might be the case when she joined.

A is the type of person who wears her heart on her sleeve. We’ve gotten used to adapting to her moods, but it does mean she can be quite negative during a particularly monotonous period. For example, during team meetings, she will be grumpy or moody. She will agree to do certain tasks, but then complain about them. Of course we’ve all been known to make comments like this, but her tone can be quite negative or brusque. My manager and I usually try to comment about the other valuable things she does, or lighten the mood by sharing our boring tasks too, but I’m not sure if it works and to me it feels glaringly obvious that we are trying to pacify her and she knows it.

We’ve also tried to encourage her to let off steam by messaging in Teams if there’s a particularly annoying/repetitive set of emails to respond to, and by offering to take on some of them. She has started venting a little over Teams, but usually brushes off offers of support. At times like this or when she’s having a difficult time personally, she has also seemed disengaged or demotivated in wider staff meetings or on one-to-one calls.

Though it’s not the best working environment to have a grumpy colleague, I’m glad that she is making her feelings known. However, we wonder if there is more we could do to support her. Unfortunately monotonous work will always need to be done! Do you have any advice on coping strategies for this type of work, and how I can best support her? I am not very good at being direct!

It’s true that everyone vents about their job occasionally, but most people manage to do it in a way that doesn’t regularly bring down the mood of their entire team. That’s the issue here — not that A occasionally lets off steam, but that her routine negativity is affecting the work environment for everyone else.

It also sounds like you might have inadvertently encouraged some of this — in an effort to be supportive, you’ve encouraged her to vent more. I think that’s counterproductive. If A is unhappy with her job, the solution isn’t to make everyone engage in extra emotional labor to help her manage those feelings. As her manager, the solution is to have a straightforward conversation with her along the lines of: “You’ve seemed really unhappy with your work. I want to be up-front with you that XYZ isn’t going to change; that’s the nature of the job. If you decide the job isn’t for you anymore, I’ll support you in figuring out what you want to do next. But I do need you to be realistic that as long as you’re in this position, this is the work.” That’s ultimately more supportive because it’s more realistic. Your role isn’t to coax her into liking work that she doesn’t like; it’s to be clear with her about what the job is, and what can and can’t change about it, so that she can decide for herself if it’s something she’s up for or not. You can do that kindly, but you do need to do it.

You also need to let her know that being openly grumpy on anything more than a very occasional basis isn’t okay because it makes everyone’s else’s work environment harder. That’s going to be a shift in tone from what you’ve been doing so you’ll need to think about how to navigate that in a way that doesn’t give her whiplash — but you really do need to more actively manage what’s going on.

2. My company let me buy a house, then laid me off — then pulled the rug out from under me again

I’ve had a bit of a whirlwind month at work and am feeling extremely demotivated from the fallout. I was previously a remote worker, but management encouraged me to relocate to be more competitive for promotions. I discussed this at length with both my direct manager, Sara, and others in management, who all suggested this move. I had some reservations because we are undergoing a large restructuring and the worst case scenario would be to commit to purchasing a house and then be laid off. I was reassured that there were no layoff plans for my team and ultimately purchased the house and started relocating.

Less than a full workday after I closed, Sara brought me into a meeting with some higher-ups and let me know the entire team is being offshored and all employees will be laid off at the end of the year. Internally, I was furious. It felt like management had misled me for months as I considered whether to relocate. I did not express this at the time, wanting to stay professional. In later meetings, Sara and her supervisor indicated the restructuring had created a new position that they wanted me to take. I had been doing my due diligence and applying elsewhere, including some internal transfers, but I kept in close communication with Sara about my status. I was waiting to hear from one internal position and let Sara know I expected a response on Monday and could decide then which offer I was more interested in. She seemed supportive and relayed it to the others involved, all of whom said that would be fine and they would contact me if anything changed before then.

On Monday, I was blindsided again. The other position decided to go with the other finalist. When I reached out to Sara to update, she said they had decided to offer the position to someone else because “we couldn’t wait another day.” It felt like a huge insult — they couldn’t have let me know they needed an answer sooner? Why did they tell me they would make a decision Monday and then go back on that?

I’m now stuck on what to do next. I know another position on the other team is coming open soon, and that since I was in the final two candidates before I would be a likely choice for this round. But can I really trust my workplace at all after they’ve pulled the rug out twice? Should I chalk this up to an issue with my direct manager, or should this be a red flag to get out now?

Well, we know you can’t trust Sara, who has behaved abominably. It’s true that companies usually can’t tip people off about layoffs ahead of time, but when you know someone who’s being considered for a layoff is buying a house — specifically because you have encouraged them to move — and they’ve discussed their worries about that with you at length, you can find ways to subtly hint. And then not bothering to tell you she needed your answer on the other position a day earlier, after assuring you she didn’t? There’s no excuse for that.

That’s all about Sara. I can’t say from the outside whether you should get out of your company altogether. To answer that, I’d say to look at what else you know about them: have you seen other managers treat people well and with transparency? Does this feel like an aberration for the broader company culture or is it on some level unsurprising?

You could always take the other position if it’s offered without calling off the rest of your search, and if an external offer comes along after that, your company has forfeited any expectation that you wouldn’t take it.

3. I saw an anti-union training on our CEO’s credit card bill

I work in accounting for a nonprofit. My workplace is not unionized, and I am not aware of any current efforts to unionize. Our CEO’s credit card expenses recently included a union prevention training. As I said, I’m not aware of any current efforts to unionize, but am I allowed to share this information with fellow staff who I know are pro-union and would be interested to learn this? I’m not asking about our internal policies, but rather what regulations exist regarding what kinds of information people in certain positions can share. Does the answer change if it’s just me talking with interested staff versus actual organizers for a current unionization effort? If a unionization campaign were to happen at my organization, is there anything else I should know as a pro-union person with access to all the financial data?

There are no laws that protect your right to share confidential information that you’re given access to as part of doing your job (with the exception of whistleblower laws, which this wouldn’t fall under). Your employer almost certainly expects you to not to shit-stir on the basis of what you see on the CEO’s credit card bill, and could legally fire you for abusing that access. That is true regardless of whether or not there’s an active unionization effort going on; in both scenarios, employers can require people in positions that require confidentiality and discretion to maintain that confidentiality.

For what it’s worth, you sent me the name of the training and the organization hosting it, and I don’t think it’s particularly egregious — it’s pitched as how to maintain positive employee relations so employees don’t feel they need to organize. (And yes, lots of anti-union stuff uses that framing, but I don’t think it’s the sort of thing that warrants risking your job, or that it’s a sign your CEO is actively looking to bust up unions — at least not any more than most CEOs are, which is a non-zero amount.)

4. Asking to work from home more often after a traumatic workplace event

Warning for gun violence

I got my dream job recently (thanks for your cover letter help!) and I’ve been here for five months now. This job has a really, really great hybrid policy — basically, you need to come in at least one day a week, but you can choose when that day is. It really attracted me to this job. However, employees have to work there at least a year before they can go hybrid. And I was fine with that, until recently.

I work in an office building, but the first floor is connected to a food court/mall/train station area that’s open to the public. The first floor isn’t owned by the company that employs me, so it’s not technically a part of our company, but most every employee uses it, whether it’s for the train station or for getting lunch at the food court.

There was an incident a few weeks ago where someone came in to the food court and started shooting. Thankfully, no one was killed, and the injured people will all recover. I wasn’t present (I missed it by 30 minutes) but we did have a shelter in place order for a few hours while the police arrested the guy. The shooter never came anywhere near our offices. Even if he wanted to, he would have had to get past a locked gate, two security desks, and an elevator that needs a key card (and each key card can only go to a specific floor).

I feel silly for it since it really didn’t affect me, but I kind of want to ask if I can start the hybrid work early. But at the same time, I worry that I’ll come across as trying to flout the rules or like I’m taking advantage of what happened. After all, it’s not like it’s likely to happen again. My experience with my boss and HR has been good so far, but I don’t want to push it. Would it be okay to at least try and ask? I do have a diagnosed anxiety disorder, but should I disclose that? Or would it be best to wait out the remaining seven months?

It’s okay to ask. They might say no, but any compassionate person would understand why you’re raising it, in light of what happened. You don’t need to mention the anxiety disorder; this is a reasonable thing one might want to ask about regardless.

However, you could also try the formal accommodations route, given the anxiety. There are reasons to be cautious about doing that, but it’s another avenue if you want it.

5. Firefighters aren’t being fed enough food

I work as a contract paramedic on wildfires. I’ve been doing this for three seasons now. Each year, I go out there and it feels like the food quality from our contractors gets worse and worse for everyone in fire camp. I’m genuinely concerned about the nutrition of the firefighters I serve. Firefighters work so hard — they need ~4,000+ calories a day to compensate for the work they’re doing — and I’m appalled at the state of the food they’re served.

To explain, catering in camp is contracted out by the federal government to the lowest-bidding private companies. In theory, this is fine. In practice, it means bidders cutting every corner they can to pocket an extra penny. 60-70% of the time, food is not great but fine. But the rest of the time, I’ve seen full-grown firefighters forced to sustain themselves on prepackaged snacks (e.g., goldfish crackers, cheap protein bars, etc.) and/or receive raw/moldy/otherwise inedible foods for breakfast/lunch/dinner in often remote locations where there are no other food options. Us medical staff get ~6-8 GI complaints per fire, and those are just the ones being reported.

How do I change this?? I’ve complained every year to my medical bosses, who all agree with me and complain up the chain as well. But barring a few specific fires that get viral attention (a Tweet about raw chicken or moldy bread getting a caterer fired, for example), I have not seen structural change. Even though there are guidelines as to what caterers have to cook, I’ve seen them violate it time and again without experiencing any consequences. Beyond my bosses, who do I contact to address the issue? It affects both me and the firefighters and I can’t figure out how to improve the situation.

I know this isn’t your typical workplace and it’s fine if you don’t have any answers, I’m just not sure where to turn for advice at this point.

I’m not sure but I bet some reader knows, so I’m printing this in the hopes that you get useful suggestions in the comment section. The inspector general for the federal agency that oversees the program? Members of Congress on the appropriate subcommittee? Someone out there knows. (And if nothing else, I suspect some reporter might be really interested in writing about it.)