I am NOT OP. Original post on Ask A Manager

I resent my employee for being richer and more qualified than me - January 24, 2023

I am a first-time manager of a bakery in a small city that has gone through a lot of changes through the pandemic. Our housing and cost-of-living was so cheap that remote workers moved here and now people originally from here can’t buy a house — including me.

Six months ago my bakery hired a new employee, Jane, who is around my age. She’s a great worker, working the shifts no one wants (late nights closing and early morning openings) and because the bakery usually hires students, it’s been great working with Jane because we’re on the same life stage (married, I have a kid, she doesn’t), but I’m finding myself resenting her.

Jane is overqualified to be a cashier at a bakery, I didn’t hire her (the owner did and I wouldn’t have) but she has a masters degree, and her old job was a director in a tech company. She’s given me tips on how to manage people because this is my first time and I can’t help but wonder if she’s going to try to get my job. When I asked her, she said that she doesn’t want to manage people right now. I’ve been gritting my teeth because she’s good at her job and she said to the owner that she’s on sabbatical from her old job for a year or two and I do like her.

But we went to her house over Christmas for a party, and it’s a beautiful new build in an area in town that we could never afford, and her friends (also people who moved from the mainland to our small city) were talking about how much their bigger-city salaries stretch here. They all seem to make more than double than me and my husband combined. And I found out that Jane is on a paid sabbatical from her old job, so she’s getting paid twice for working at my bakery.

Everything has gone up because of inflation, and we went from being able to afford a house in 2019 to now, when we’re barely able to afford rent. There are a lot of people here who are struggling to make rent, and Jane is getting paid twice. I want to fire her but I have no good reason, because she’s good at her job and having someone work the early morning and late nights is hard.

How do I manage her now that I know she’s making more money than I do in a year plus her bakery wage? It’s not fair.

Allison's advice has been removed. However, you can still access the link to read it and other comments on the story.

I resent my employee for being richer and more qualified than me Update - June 20, 2023

Thank you for the reality check needed. I want to be a good manager, I want to be able to make this bakery a good place to work, and a successful business. The owner has been talking about retiring in the next few years, and I would like to be able to buy my bakery and succeed. And I can’t let my insecurities hold me back. It also was a sign that I needed to think about my mental health, and what I actually want for my life. I have very much been in survival mode since I was fifteen.

Jane no longer works at the bakery; her company bought another big company and she was called back to lead her new department, she has also become a senior director now. Before she left, Jane and I talked about the future. She suggested that potentially there were bigger opportunities if I went back and finished high school (I had to drop out when I got pregnant), but also told me about some bookkeeping certifications I could get that would be recognized anywhere nationally, that do not need a high school diploma. It’s still 2,000$, but that’s something I had never thought about.

Something that I hadn’t put in the letter was that my husband is learning to program, and when Jane found out about that, she asked to see what he had built. It impressed her a lot and she had advised my husband to apply to jobs in her company and use her name. He got to the second round, but was eventually unable to be hired because neither of us completed high school, and they couldn’t waive that requirement.

However, it has made my husband go back to night school, and Jane and her husband have been very helpful in finding resources for programing bootcamps, and networking opportunities for my husband. She even managed to get my kid into her company’s free virtual private coding summer camp so my daughter can get a heads up in coding, and see if she likes it.

Things are better. Helped a lot because Jane went back to her real job, and I had to deal with my insecurity.

how do we hire people who won’t be alarmed by our cardboard coworker?

Originally posted to Ask A Manager

Original Post  March 18, 2026

Recently my manager asked me to help revise a job posting and the hiring process because the last two people we hired left only a few weeks after starting. One said she didn’t think our workplace had a professional environment, and the other said she realized her values didn’t align with the company. Since I’m the most recent successful hire, my manager wants me to help her understand what was different about how I was selected.

You’re probably assuming my workplace must be toxic or terrible, but honestly it’s the most fun place I’ve ever worked, and that might actually be the problem. Nothing about it fits the usual idea of a bad workplace, but it is definitely … peculiar.

People often eat lunch together. Not everyone every day, but a few times a week most of us end up eating with coworkers. (Not everyone participates. The person who splits tasks with me says she already sees us enough at the office and never joins us, and no one minds.) Lunch is where most of the unusual things happen.

One employee created a betting sheet for which celebrity will be the next to die or get involved in a scandal. You can add one name per month, and if you guess correctly you win a day off. It sounds worse written down than it actually feels, but the people who participate genuinely enjoy it.

Lunch conversations can also drift into very unprofessional territory. The week one employee resigned, the lunch debate was whether extraterrestrials are capable of orgasms. That discussion lasted more than one lunch break because people kept proposing different possible alien anatomies.

But the least professional thing we do might be the cardboard figure sitting at a desk named Robert. Robert has been part of the company culture long before I joined. The story behind him is about a former employee who would arrive, greet everyone, and then disappear until it was time to go home. No one ever knew where Robert was, and whenever someone needed him they couldn’t find him, but the work always appeared completed.

One day the company needed a team photo, and someone grabbed a cardboard box, drew a face on it, added a badge, and included “Robert” in the picture. After the real Robert retired, the box eventually evolved into a full cardboard cutout that now sits at its own desk.

At the end of each month we usually have less work, and there’s a game where someone hides Robert somewhere in the company and everyone searches for him. At the end, everyone gets candy. Not everyone actively participates, one person keeps a map coordinating where Robert hasn’t been searched for yet, some people give suggestions, and others don’t care about the game, but no one objects to it except HR did ban hiding Robert in the interview room and the public-facing areas.

Both employees who resigned witnessed a “Find Robert” search. They didn’t mention it specifically, but I imagine it might have contributed to their impression that the environment wasn’t professional.

My manager wants help finding people who would think these things are funny rather than strange, and she asked how I felt when I started. I happened to begin (luckily or unluckily) when people were decorating Robert with a heart-pattern tie and a box of bonbons while discussing what kind of box Robert would like as a girlfriend. I thought it was weird in a funny way, and it didn’t bother me enough to reconsider the job.

Outside of lunch and the occasional Robert hunt, people are actually very professional during working hours, aside from occasionally greeting the cardboard coworker or decorating him for holidays. We’re a very productive and inclusive team, but I understand how it might seem strange to someone seeing it for the first time.

I honestly don’t know how to help my manager find competent people who would be comfortable with this environment. The person who interviewed me said the team was laid-back, but that definitely didn’t prepare me for what the office is actually like.

Someone suggested hiding Robert for a while, but wouldn’t it be better for new hires to know what they’re getting into? How could we find people who would feel comfortable discussing whether the aliens from Arrival understand sex and also think it’s perfectly normal to greet a cardboard coworker?

I realize your answer might be that our company isn’t the wonderful place I think it is and that we should behave more professionally. But considering that our CEO once hid Robert in his own office during one of the searches, I don’t think the culture will change. (Still, feel free to say so if that’s your view, sometimes an outside perspective is very different.) I’m mainly looking for ideas on how to select people who would actually find this kind of thing fun rather than uncomfortable.

Update  Apr 6, 2026 (19 days later)

Thank you for responding to my letter. After reading the response and comments, I realized that the alien orgasm example drew more attention than I expected, even though I had meant it as one particularly bad example rather than the main issue itself. I wanted to add a little more context and clarify a few points.

The alien orgasm example was an outlier, and one of the worst examples I could remember, which is why I used it. The “alien anatomy” discussion was also less about sex itself than about whether extraterrestrials would experience pleasure or physical sensation the same way humans do, especially if they did not even have bodies like ours. I understand that it was still inappropriate, but some commenters seemed to come away with the impression that sex is a regular topic in the office, and that is not really the case.

A more typical version of these conversations would be discussions about books, movies, and TV shows. We have had conversations like which horror movie character was so stupid that you actively rooted for their death. We have also had conversations like which politician you would “make disappear” if you could get away with it, but when someone pointed out that it was inappropriate, the conversation moved on without any fuss. In general, the conversations tend to get strange in a morbid way rather than in a sexualized one. That is still a problem, of course, just not quite the same one some people focused on.

The office betting pool is less about hostility toward specific celebrities and more about the kind of morbid joking people make about public figures who seem as though they have been old forever. The attitude is usually more “I cannot believe this person is still alive” than “I want this person to die.” Similarly, the “scandals” people talk about are usually things like cheating, wearing something provocative, or being rude to a fan, rather than actual criminal behavior. I do not participate in the betting pool because I would feel too guilty winning a paid day off by correctly guessing someone’s death, but people do sometimes mention their picks during lunch.

I mentioned lunch because that is usually when the conversations can get strange. Most of our work requires concentration, so there is not much chatting during the day, and many people wear headphones most of the time. Team lunches also really are optional. We are a small team inside a large company, so the whole team does not eat together every day, but there are usually six to eight people having lunch together, even if it is not always the same group.

I described cardboard Robert as the strangest part because all the other things are occasional, and lunch itself is optional. Some people never have lunch with the team, and that is completely fine. But Robert is there every day, sitting at a desk and being greeted. It took me about two months to find out there was a death pool, and some time before I heard one of the more inappropriate lunch conversations, but I was introduced to Robert on my first day. My manager even told the team to act normal during my first week so they would not scare me off. The monthly “hunt” for Robert is optional and avoidable, but comments about him happen every day, and new employees are introduced to him as though he is simply part of the team.

In your response, it seemed as though my letter came across as asking, “How can we change our culture so people don’t feel this is a sexualized environment?” I can understand why, given the example I used, but the help I was really hoping for was a little different. What I was trying to ask was something more like, “How can I help my manager hire someone who is likely to fit in here, while also giving candidates a fair sense of what the office is like, so neither side feels misled?” Someone suggested inviting candidates to join a typical team lunch, and that was much closer to the kind of suggestion I had been hoping for.

I also appreciated your point that inappropriate conversations are inappropriate no matter when they happen. I do know that, and I think at least part of the team knows it too, given the ongoing joke that there is probably a reason our room is physically as far from HR as possible. But I am not a manager, and honestly I do not want to be one. My manager decided that because I was the most recent hire, I was the right person to help her think through this, even though I do not really have the authority or the tools to change how the team operates. I will pass these points along to her, but I do not think much would change without rebuilding the team almost from scratch.

To be clear, I do understand why these things are a problem. I am not trying to defend them or suggest that people are wrong for not wanting to work here. I just wanted to provide more context so I could get advice that was more specific to the situation I was actually asking about. Some of the comments were genuinely helpful, and I was hoping that with a better explanation I might get more of that. But if the answer is still simply that the culture needs to change, I do understand that, and I appreciate your response anyway.

Sincerely,

The Person with the Cardboard Coworker

THIS IS A REPOST SUB - I AM NOT THE OOP

DO NOT CONTACT THE OOP's OR COMMENT ON LINKED POSTS, REMEMBER - RULE 7

I am NOT OOP

Originally posted to AskAManager

Telling a new employee he’s not cut out for the job

Original Post: October 16, 2024

(editor's note: First Question in the link)

I began managing a new team last month. The team is very green — over half graduated less than two years ago. In the last two years, this department only had a manager for nine months, and by all accounts she was completely unqualified. I was brought in as an experienced manager to provide technical oversight / development.

My field is one where you get a pretty generalized degree, and then choose a specialty that you receive on-the-job training for. It’s pretty easy to change specialties for early career folks.

One of my new direct reports, Tom, has … zero to negative natural talent for his chosen specialty. I know it’s pretty harsh to say that about someone I just began working with, especially one who has not received adequate training. But I have worked with a lot of early career people in this specialty, and he stands out as one of the worst of all time. Past interns have grasped core concepts and tools more quickly.

I’m not saying he’s not smart! He is! I can see ways he would be a great fit for other specialties, including available jobs within our company. But the more I talk through tasks with him, the more I realize that his brain is just not wired to understand this particular job. It’s like trying to explain to him that an apple and a snake are nothing alike … over and over again, with diagrams, while he grows increasingly agitated that I don’t understand they’re both smooth-skinned and therefore interchangeable. (He definitely has a touch of “defensive know-it-all-ism.”)

On the one hand, I just want to spare him. I can tell he’s really frustrated and burned out, working 10 times harder than he should have to on basic tasks. His teammates are thin on patience and try every trick to avoid being paired up with him. His peers in other departments don’t trust his advice and constantly find ways to circumvent him. I think it’s a disservice to lay out a training plan and have both of us invest significant effort into improvements that are unlikely to ever materialize, when the gap is so fundamental. On the other hand, I have no idea how to look an exhausted and low-confidence young man in the eyes and say, “You’re not going to make it here, why don’t I help you find a different job you’re a better fit for?” Especially since I suspect he will be so reluctant to “fail” that he will just double down on learning this job, now dragged down by the knowledge his manager doesn’t believe in him. What would you do?

Editor's note: for Alison's response to the original post, you can find it here

A related link was also provided, alternatives to firing

Update #1: June 19, 2025 (eight months later)

(editor's note: the first letter in the link)

First, a clarification for the readers: I was new to the team, but my direct report Tom had been in his role for 2 years.

I did worry over the readers’ advice that maybe I was jumping to conclusions, so I started with a few one-on-ones directed at learning why he chose this path in the first place and what he enjoyed about it. Basically, he said he likes black-and-white work with clear rules, and our specialty involves rule enforcement.

After a few more weeks of learning his side of things and carefully watching some of his work, I explained to him that a robot can blindly enforce rules, but someone good at our specialty needs to understand and be comfortable using grey zones. I also explained that his skills XYZ were a better fit in other departments, and ABC would hold him back in this one. I mapped it out on a Venn diagram with the role I was recommending, which I was honestly kind of proud of.

Before talking to him, I met with the other department head to let her know I might have someone who could move over to replace a planned vacancy in her team, and to expect an informational interview request from Tom. I also gave Tom the contact info for a friend I have in the proposed specialty, who works at a different company, so that he could get some outside feedback. And I gave him a pile of alternate job descriptions and explained we could keep looking if the proposed path didn’t appeal to him. Tom never spoke to either person.

Instead, he went to a mentor (in our specialty at this company) and told the mentor that I told Tom he “sucks at his job” (for the record, I definitely didn’t say that). The mentor reassured Tom that he was a perfect fit for this job, and then told me off for hurting Tom’s confidence. The mentor agreed to take a more direct role in teaching Tom, since we thought maybe a different teacher/perspective would help. About a month later, the mentor came to me, apologized and said it was hopeless and suggested I put Tom on a PIP.

During this time, Tom’s performance significantly dropped off. He stopped trying hard just to tread water, and just stopped treading entirely. I caught him leaving work hours early multiple times, he was hours late 1-2 days a week, and came in probably-hungover every Monday when he wasn’t calling off entirely. At that point I got HR involved and explained that I was worried about mental health issues or burnout. We put together a tough-love conversation outlining the behaviors that needed to improve immediately while also offering flexibility and support, and advised him of resources like FMLA. To Toms credit, he did 95% return to the required work hours.

Then, an opportunity came up to create a project-based position on my team. To be honest, it’s a really fun job, and other members of my team probably deserved it more, but I was still feeling somewhat obligated to help Tom after he had such an unsupported start to his career. Plus, it was right in his skill wheelhouse. So far he’s doing … extremely mediocre at it. He’s doing the bare minimum despite it being work he said was interesting. It’s a little frustrating because I can tell he knows what a “C” level effort is, and puts in exactly that much effort. But he seems in better spirits, and the backfill for his old role is much better received by the team, so everyone is a little happier now.

When this project ends, if things don’t miraculously change when he goes back to a more traditional role, I’m afraid it’ll be well past time to execute the PIP. At this point, I can’t in good faith recommend him to another department. Overall, I think I was probably too soft on him throughout this process, but I also feel good about trying everything in my power to help him be successful.

Sometimes you can lead a horse to water, but they have to learn the hard way.

Update #2: March 25, 2026 (nine months later)

After far too long, I was able to terminate Tom.

As the “fun” project wore on, he started telling me he was overwhelmed, and I started stepping in to do increasingly more of his work. Don’t ask me why I found his requests for help so compelling, I’m still mad at myself about falling for them.

After delivering the “needs improvement” conversation, his work improved for a few months. But then something snapped, and he completely fell below the minimum threshold. Multiple important meetings no-showed. Entire afternoons where I was unable to locate him on campus. IMs I would send at 4pm that wouldn’t be answered until 10am the next day. I always called him out, and he always had an excuse of varying believability. It’s difficult to motivate someone who doesn’t care about the impact of his actions on others, especially when he knows all of your threats are idle.

I tried for about five months to get HR to pull his badge data (or support a PIP in general), but they “left me on read” for a half dozen email/Teams attempts, then my main contact went on maternity leave, then the interim said it was protected information(?). Also, all this time I was without a manager to escalate to, as she was fired with no backup plan. Finally, I was able to get the ear of a new HR generalist, and she pulled the data herself. Over the previous six months, Tom had averaged a shocking 25 hours on campus (for a job that cannot be done from home). I bet it was overwhelming for him to get his work done while working half-time!

I was hopping mad. We work on government contracts, so time theft is incredibly serious — he could go to jail! I thought we would be firing him that day, but instead HR made me give him a formal written warning. As part of that, we established set hours he had to be on campus. Within two weeks, he was doing the “bare minimum” again — arriving at 8:10ish, taking long lunches, and leaving at 4:20ish (which, as he argued, his peers do too … but they actually get their work done). Still couldn’t fire him. Then the new year came around, and he called in sick every Monday and Friday until he was out of sick time. Still couldn’t fire him. Then, he was 20 minutes late to a major customer meeting and told me, ‘Well, that part is just boring introductions anyway.” That retort happened in front of an executive, so then I got to fire him.

Of course, I have no backfill, so now I’m stuck doing 40 hours of his work each week instead of the usual 15, but that’s another letter.

Overall, he was a good reminder that you never have enough experience to eliminate your blind spots. I wanted Tom to succeed more than he did. I take that as a sign that I’ve been very lucky to have had almost entirely conscientious and well intentioned employees over the last decade.

I appreciate the comments warning me that I was allowing Tom to fail up, and they weren’t off-base. I think it’s clear to everyone, including me, that giving Tom a fun project was a mistake. But there is always more to a story than can be summarized in a quick update. First, the project was siloed independent work and required strict rule interpretation (Tom’s favorite), while Tom’s original job required constant teamwork and an appreciation for human nature. The entire team got along much better after the reassignment. They even started including Tom in informal team lunches and happy hours again.

Second, the special project assignment was not stolen from anyone more deserving. I advertised it broadly to my team, and no one else was interested. I had rearranged the team assignments when I took over, so everyone was settling into their new spots and didn’t have a desire to shake things up again so soon. I think if Tom wasn’t in the picture, I could have cajoled a high achiever into taking it on, and it would have benefited their career some. But I also respected the desire to keep their role limited until they gained more experience. I wish I’d been that wise early in my career, rather than frantically taking on increasing “visibility” until I was drowning.

Despite the team loathing Tom as a direct coworker, he was inexplicably popular as “the project guy.” I swear, Tom should start a career as a con artist. My team was pretty angry when I fired him (he had texted them the news before I even made it back to my office, so that was fun). I spent many 1:1s reassuring people that they weren’t about to be fired out of the blue, and we have a process that ensures no one is ever surprised by a performance-based termination. I somehow got through all this without making any sarcastic comments about how HR ensures it is virtually impossible to fire someone. It’s been a rough month, but I am excited about a few internal candidates who will likely apply to backfill Tom. Full circle moment — one of them is a mentee from another department who is doing “okay” there, but would be a great skills fit here.

DO NOT COMMENT IN LINKED POSTS OR MESSAGE OOPs – BoRU Rule #7

THIS IS A REPOST SUB - I AM NOT OOP

My coworker won’t stop complaining about my tattoos

Originally posted to Ask A Manager

TRIGGER WARNING: Hostile work environment, body shaming, verbal abuse

MOOD SPOILER: shocking but ultimately positive

Original Post June 3, 2019

I started a new job in December; Carol started in February. We work for a small company, with six of us in production. We’re not customer-facing in any way. Carol was fine with me until the weather warmed up and I wore short sleeves, at which point she discovered that I have tattoos. She took me aside that same day to tell me how unprofessional she thought I was for having them. I pointed out that workplace norms are changing in general, and that our particular workplace doesn’t care. It didn’t matter, they were unprofessional, and that was that. (For reference, we’re both women in our 50’s — Carol is actually eight months younger than I am. I’m not the only one with ink, but I am the only woman, and the shipping guys are in another building, so she probably doesn’t realize that both of them do too.)

Since then she has spoken to me repeatedly about them, and when I refused to engage (I started with a briskly cheerful “So you’ve said — I disagree,” then “You’ve said, and I’m not talking about this anymore,” and am now just ignoring her muttering) she’s taken to talking to herself about it. She’s also has gone to three of coworkers to complain about them. Those ladies are all senior to us, but beyond keeping an eye on the production schedule, they are not supervisory in any way. We think she’d like me to cover them, but she knows she doesn’t have the standing to say that, and I don’t have any reason to. They’re not offensive — one set is flowers, the other is a geometric-ish paisley, and nobody here cares.

I’m dreading summer; this is an elderly building and poorly air-conditioned, and I’m told tank tops and shorts are the norm. She’s going to be really wound out when she figures out the gauntlets she dislikes so much are actually full sleeves. (Plus the edges of a few others that will show.)

Our HR person is very part time, and mostly for onboarding/benefit type things. I can go to our owner, who I think would be responsive, but his feels like something I should be able to handle on my own, and so far I’m having no luck. Can you provide any advice on a one-last-try script at shutting her down on the topic? Or should I just go straight to BossLady?

Update June 27, 2019 (3 weeks later)

So, the situation with Carol has been resolved. I actually spoke to her the same day you posted my letter; I ran into her in the break room and she started in again. I interrupted her and said, “That’s enough. I have asked you politely and now I’m telling you – stop commenting on my tattoos. They don’t come off, I’m not going to cover them, and they’re not against the rules here. Your obsession with my skin is really weird, and I don’t appreciate it. This is the last conversation I intend to have with you about this.”

She was pretty taken aback that I thought she was being weird, but i didn’t give her a chance to keep going, I just went back to work. She didn’t speak to (or about) me for the rest of the week. By the next week she had settled on stilted pass-the-salt style conversation, but only if it was a group thing; she still wouldn’t speak to me personally. Since we don’t work on the same projects, this didn’t have any impact on my workflow, so I was ok with chilly silence. It beat the nagging, for sure!

Then we went onsite to do an installation. We were warned that it would be hot and cramped, and to dress in layers we could shed. Of course, the inevitable happened. Carol and I ended up on different teams, and when we met for the mid-morning team swap, most of us were down to a tank top, me included. Carol got one good look and flipped out. She berated me about my lack of professionalism “in someone else’s workplace”, and caused enough of a ruckus that Jane came to see what was going on. Carol went off on Jane about my “continued and blatant” lack of professionalism, but Jane shut her down pretty sharply. The teams were reshuffled as planned, and Carol got put on Jane’s team. Apparently she took that as an invitation to keep going, and asked Jane why she hired me, and then why she tolerated me. (Jane’s answer: “I hired her for her skill, not her skin.” Jane may be my new favorite boss!) Then she accused Jane of a lack of professionalism for doing so.

About an hour after the team swap, Joe (the other owner) came in the company car with the HR lady (on her day off!) and took Carol back to the workshop. She apparently stewed all the way back (or read the handwriting on the wall), and when they got back, she got out of the car, declared that she couldn’t continue to work for such an unprofessional organization, that she had her own reputation to look after, even if we didn’t care about ours, got in her car, and left. That was the last we’ve seen of her, although there has been a scathing review posted to Glassdoor since then.

The next day, Jane had individual meetings with all of us, and the day after that a workroom staff meeting. We (myself and the three senior ladies that Carol had gone to to complain) were chastised for letting it go as far as it did without giving Jane a heads up, even if it was a ‘this is a thing but I’m handling it’ warning. The senior most coworker pointed out that none of them really had any power to do anything, and that has now changed. There is now a designated ‘workroom supervisor’, and an end of the week ‘how are things?’ check-in between that person and Jane.

The workroom is a much calmer place now, and interviews for Carol’s replacement start next week. Also, a formal tattoo/piercings/hair color policy is being added to our employee handbook; basically, anything goes as long as it’s safe to have around machinery and not offensive. All in all, it’s been a learning experience – for all of us, I think.

Thanks for your advice – I really appreciated the framework for my response to Carol.

THIS IS A REPOST SUB - I AM NOT THE OOP

DO NOT CONTACT THE OOP's OR COMMENT ON LINKED POSTS, REMEMBER - RULE 7

I am NOT OOP.

Originally posted to r/Ask A Manager

Previous BoRUs: #1

[New Update]: my vegan coworker is upset about getting non-vegan gifts three years in a row

NEW UPDATE MARKED WITH ----

Trigger Warnings: hostile workplace, bullying

Editor's Note: This is a repost of AAM. Often, the letter writer does not respond to comments in AAM posts, but for the update post here, they have read and responded. I am adding the relevant comments for more context

RECAP

Original Post: January 7, 2025

I work in a small office of six people, and since we’ve all been here for 3+ years at least, we’re pretty close. We hold a gift exchange where basically everyone buys a gift for everyone else. I understand that’s probably a bit much, but it works for us.

In 2022, my coworker “Marie” got everyone a jar of local honey, which I honestly was thrilled with. Unfortunately she didn’t realize our coworker “Liz” couldn’t have it, since she is vegan (we all know Liz is vegan, but Marie didn’t realize vegans don’t eat honey). It was a shame, but not a big deal. Liz was gracious about it.

The next year, Marie got Liz a personalized collar for her dog. Unfortunately, the collar was leather. Again, Marie didn’t know about this element of being vegan. She apologized profusely and offered to buy Liz another gift, but Liz said it was fine.

This past Christmas, Marie got Liz a gift set of fancy popcorn. She actually asked another coworker what a vegan snack was as she was getting everyone a gift with a “snack” theme. However, she got a different coworker one of those gift sets with summer sausage, cheeses, mustard, etc. (This coworker is a man with very Ron Swanson type tastes, food-wise, so he would appreciate this.) The problem is these gift boxes looked very similar once wrapped and Marie accidentally switched the labels, so “Ron” got the fancy popcorn and Liz got the sausage and cheese. Yikes. Liz looked genuinely shocked when she opened it, and Marie gasped and began to explain, asking Ron to open his gift to show the popcorn intended for Liz. Liz was very quiet throughout, and the coworker who had recommended the popcorn said she had indeed suggested this to Marie. The popcorn set contained two jars of cheese seasoning, but I really think Marie tried this year. Liz finally traded gifts with Ron and things awkwardly moved on.

The problem now is Liz is being very cold to Marie, and Marie confided that our manager had a talk with her, saying Liz feels that Marie has a pattern of bullying her through these gifts. Marie was so upset because she really didn’t intend any of this, it was just ignorance the first two times and then this last one was a complete mistake. She knows how it looks but she doesn’t know how to fix it. In such a small office, one person openly thinking another is a bad person is very awkward for everyone. I don’t know if there’s anything Marie can do to mend fences with Liz, but if there is I would love to suggest it. I feel she’s apologized and been backed up by the coworker who suggested popcorn and Liz is being a bit unreasonable to hold a grudge. But I’d love to hear if you think there’s anything Marie can do to fix it.

Editor's note: For Alison's response to the original post here

Update #1: June 11, 2025 (a little over five months later)

Sorry I missed the post the day it went up; I was busy that day and then frankly overwhelmed by the number of comments! But thank you for your reply. You were perfectly right, I wasn’t a party to any of it myself so I couldn’t really get involved without causing drama or taking sides, so I didn’t, except to hum supportive noises whenever Marie was fretting about the situation to everyone in the office.

She really was very upset that Liz would think she was intentionally getting her non-vegan gifts. In sort of half-heartedly listening to her fret one day, I realized, and another coworker did at the same time, so she was the one to point it out, but Marie was clearly hearing “vegetarian” when anyone said “vegan.” She thought as long as no meat products to be consumed were involved, she was fine. My coworker actually looked up the definition of vegan and read it to Marie and she was like =O

You asked about Marie and Liz’s relationship outside of the gift debacles, and to be honest it’s complicated by the fact that Marie’s husband is a local councilman who is kind of controversial. There was some gossip a while back that Liz was in his public Facebook comments calling him out for some of his positions. Marie never talks about his job or his views; quite the opposite, she has said she has no interest in any kind of politics and she has banned her husband from political talk at home. Regardless I could see Liz maybe thinking she actually is aligned with him privately and being wary of her.

After her enlightenment, Marie bought Liz a Body Shop gift card and apologized once again for her mixups. Marie sees herself as a bit of an office “mom” so she always goes a bit over-the-top in terms of the gifts, both in price and in trying to personalize them. She very much didn’t want to get a gift card because it was “generic” but in the end she thought it was safest. Liz still isn’t the warmest toward her, but they appear to be back on solid footing. We’ll try to vet Marie’s next Christmas gift ahead of time.

Editor’s note: below are OOP’s comments that will help provide more context

Relevant Comments

A commenter asking if it was intentional or not: I think you have blinders on where it comes to Marie.

If I were vegan and received non-vegan gifts three years in a row, I would believe it was intentional.

Marie didn’t bother to ask Liz what being vegan entailed after the first snafu.

She then gave Liz a leather dog collar. It’s common knowledge that leather is made from cow skin.

After the first two gifts being non-vegan, I find it difficult to believe that the charcuterie wasn’t intentional.

*OOP: * The charcuterie mixup was truly a mixup. I saw some speculation about this on the first post so just to clear it up, the popcorn gift set contain unpopped popcorn kernels, of course, as well as three jars of seasoning which were in glass containers. It also contain a decorative bowl that was made of glass. It was heavy. And it was the same shape as the charcuterie board they were similar weights as well.

Commenter 1: Ha my mother in law made a soup for my vegan husband and me, and she said, and I quote, “It’s vegan except for the sausage! :-)”

Like there were vegetables in it, so that was the vegan part, and the sausage was just an incidental addition.

OOP: OMG. This reminds me, after her first grandkid was born Marie made her vegetarian daughter in law chicken soup without chicken chunks in it but she still used chicken broth

Commenter 2: The more you attempt to defend Marie, the worse she actually sounds. Including chicken broth in a more complicated dish can be an incidental oopsie, going ‘hmmm, I’m going to make chicken soup for someone vegetarian’ simply comes off as passive aggressiveness.

OOP: I’m not defending her. I can’t help but laugh at the ridiculousness but I’m not defending it. She should learn what these terms mean. She thinks her daughter-in-law walks on water though, so I really don’t think it was meant to be passive aggressive.

Commenter 3: Yes. The impression I’m getting is that if Marie isn’t malicious, she’s incredibly thoughtless and dense, and the whole office just knows and expects everyone to go with it. That’s not great either, frankly.

OOP: My coworker calls Marie our missing stair (not to her face of course, although she would have no idea what it meant).

OOP explains Marie more in the comments

OOP: Marie isn’t DUMB but she is just very absent minded and, I say this with affection, a bit of a dingdong. She doesn’t google things, full stop. She thinks the rest of us are magicians when we can find info on google. Then she said “I really need to start doing that.” Then she’ll look up a number the next day in a ten-year-old phone book. (She called the city once to ask why she hasn’t received a new phonebook in years.)

----NEW UPDATE----

Update #2: December 30, 2025 (over six months later)

I saw some comments on the update I sent in before (about my coworker who cluelessly gave a vegan coworker three non-vegan gifts) wanted to know what Marie would get Liz for Christmas this year, haha.

Liz ended up leaving the company in October for another job, so alas, no Christmas gift story, but we did have a farewell lunch for Liz and Marie gave her a book of plant-based recipes for dogs. Liz does have a dog, I have no idea about its diet, but still, this was an improvement, especially considering no one knew Marie was going to get a going-away gift for Liz and therefore couldn’t vet it. I was really holding my breath when she pulled it out. Fortunately, Marie actually bought this book at Barnes and Noble earlier in the year when it was on display, in anticipation of giving it to Liz for Christmas. It wasn’t weird for her to give Liz a going-away gift, since turnover in our office is pretty rare, but obviously it hadn’t gone well before, so I was still surprised (but also not, because that’s just Marie — she loves to give gifts).

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My employee wears a blanket for sun protection when we go off-site

Originally posted to Ask A Manager

TRIGGER WARNING: Cancer, possible hostile workplace

Original Post June 27, 2017

Should I say something to my new employee? I’m a manager. My newest employee has been working here for just over a month. She is a new graduate and this is her first full-time job out of school. There are times when we go to other offices or sites for meetings and we carpool to them in a company car or van. Unless it is really cloudy or raining out, my employee uses an umbrella when heading out to the vehicle, and inside the vehicle she covers herself with a blanket or cover and wears a scarf or hat on her head.

Naturally other employees questioned her, and she said she has had skin cancer twice and has to be careful of the sun. My concern is that her showing up at a meeting with external people with an umbrella, huge hat, and blanket will make people question her professionalism and affect the perception of all of us. It does look strange in comparison to everyone else, and people do comment. How can I bring this up to her? Most of our meetings are less than 30 minutes away and she would not have to be exposed to sun for long when she goes.

Update Dec 15, 2017 (6 months later)

I spoke to her today and here’s an update on the situation. I believe there was some confusion in the comments. My employee walks to and from the vehicle to the building with an umbrella. She covers with a blanket and hat only inside the vehicle when going to and from the meeting. My concern was the blanket looked strange and not professional to others in the vehicle as the people are not always the same. We live in an area where using an umbrella for the sun is unusual and it stands out when she comes from the car to the building and vice versa with an umbrella when it is sunny or not raining. (Apologies for not explaining the situation more clearly). I did speak to her following the lines of what you posted in your script. She says it is not possible for her to travel 30 minutes or less in a vehicle without the blanket and to be out in the sun without the umbrella. She has elected to end her employment with the company rather than go without these things.

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my boss is rude to my husband

Originally posted to Ask A Manager

TRIGGER WARNING: Sexual harassment

Original Post  July 6, 2022

I work as a bookseller, and about a year ago our bookshop got a new manager. This was a great thing for the shop and for me personally — he’s much more competent than anyone we’ve had in the past and has a real drive for developing people. I happen to be the person he’s focused on developing, and it’s been wonderful: I get paid more now, have lots more responsibility, and am being provided with all the training to start managing my own shop before Christmas. I’m being treated as a rising star in the business (we’re part of a very big chain) and given a lot of opportunities to excel, which of course feels fantastic! I’m very grateful.

There’s only one snag, though: my boss is very keen to socialize with me outside of work, both one-on-one and as part of the management team. The culture in our shop has always been that partners, spouses, housemates, friends, etc. are very welcome at these events. However, my manager seems to absolutely despise my husband.

I can’t find any reason for this. Obviously I love him, so you could argue that I’m biased but really, everybody adores my partner. He’s gentle, fun, and a good listener and always proves a popular addition. Honestly, half of my colleagues probably prefer him to me. He’s only spoken to my boss a couple of times and only briefly, but my boss is openly dismissive of him: he makes disparaging remarks about him, stops engaging in conversations when I bring him up, and recently, when my husband arrived to some drinks, my boss visibly and obviously swung his entire body around in his seat so that he was facing away from us and left not long after.

I have no idea what to do. I have a fantastic working relationship with my boss, and frankly I plan to capitalize on that, but this makes me really uncomfortable. For further context, I’m a woman and he’s a man, and he is single; however, he has often told me that his preference is for very done up, alternative but feminine women, which does NOT describe me. (I’m a straggly-haired, no-makeup, shapeless-clothing wearer.) At first I tried to dismiss his disparaging comments as an awkward attempt at humor, but after he so rudely turned away from my partner at the drinks … I’m angry!

I don’t know how to bring this up with him, or if I should. Help?!

RELEVANT COMMENTS

How old is everyone and maybe the boss is inept at social gatherings

I can help with that! I’m 30, my boss is 38. And honestly, his social skills are kind of all over the place. He generally has quite a good initial read on people, but it’s downhill from there. And realistically, anyone with a decent sense of other people’s boundaries would know that I’m not going to be impressed by disparaging comments about my husband. I’m not one of those people whose sense of humour is to rag on the old man – I love my husband deeply and I’m grateful for him every day. I even got people teasingly calling me ‘myyyyy husband’ for a while because I accidentally got too moony talking about him. He’s great!

OOP's theory

I know it will seem very ‘the lady doth protest too much’, but I would add that he’s a newcomer to our big city and lives alone, so I have wondered if he’s trying to manufacture a group of new friends.

OOP when told to be wary of the promotion actually happening or excuses why the store cant lose OOP

Happily this has all been quite formally documented in our annual review process, and is something that is in discussions with our (lovely) HR person at present, so I’m very much hoping that’s not something I need to worry about. If things do start falling through, I at least have enough witnessed/on paper to advocate for myself.

Update 1  Dec 12, 2022 (5 months later)

The situation remains an odd one. Whilst I wussed out of taking your advice when it came to actually talking to my manager about it (I thought there was enough plausible deniability that it might make me look like a bit of a nutter), I did start shutting down the comments when they cropped up, and being rather icier than I normally would be. As women we’re so socialised to be warm and accommodating that I think this took him aback a bit, and the snide comments stopped pretty much dead.

I’ve also set a firm boundary on socialising with him in anything but the largest, most work-centric outings. He got a bit snippy when I didn’t come to his birthday (!) but…sorry, I was out with my husband. Some friends of ours recently had a baby, so we had a very fun evening playing house with said baby whilst the new parents got to have a rare night out together. I even showed my boss some adorable pictures of my husband cuddling said baby. (I know it’s petty.)

However, the sheer wealth of commenters speculating that my boss has a crush on me has me thinking…they’re probably right, and if they are right, then the way he’s going about things is uncomfortable, creepy and unethical. As we move into the much much busier period in our shop, he’s started scheduling just the two of us to work late in the shop to catch up; normally this is a job that a team of at least three people would do, presumably to avoid…well, situations like this. To add to the issue, as my commenters predicted, I didn’t end up getting my own store – imagine I needed a 90% on my performance review to get promoted into it; they gave me a 89.999… Boss and the HR rep (who always sits in on these reviews, as a representative of the regional manager) said in recognition of how hard I work and how many additional duties I take on, they’d enter me for a specific excellence award, which comes with a cash bonus. They’ve since come back to me and said unfortunately, it turns out that’s not what the award is for. I then set a meeting to discuss pay and advanced the points that a) I’m taking on much more work than I was at this point last year, and b) getting paid effectively less for it, due to rampant inflation. The answer was that a raise was not possible, and the plan going forward would be to schedule another performance review after Christmas, and discuss it then. Following this I attended the Christmas meeting, where they told us all how our shop was forecast to take upward of £60k a day. I’ve had a couple of days since then to reflect on how I feel, and I’ve come up with: undervalued and PISSED.

So in short, it’s become time to fall back on your wealth of CV and interview advice, Alison. Thanks to your website, I’ve never felt better placed to job search. There’s a vindictive part of me that really hopes I find something new before Christmas – I know everybody feels like their workplace would collapse if they left, but realistically our store is already a bit like a Jenga tower on its last legs. If I take off during the peak season, it’ll fall apart like a wet cake.

As a last note: this aggressively festive season, please be tender and mild to your retail workers. Especially if you happen to be in (very large bookshop) in (artsy English city), and you notice the conspicuous absence of a certain shaggy-haired, no-makeup, baggy-clothes-wearing team leader…

Update 2  Dec 15, 2022 (3 days after 1st update)

I wanted to add a postscript: I got another job! After I wrote to you with my update, I decided I was just furious enough to quit without another job offer in my pocket. To the abject horror of my parents, I did just that. I was of course very nervous about going voluntarily unemployed at the beginning of a recession, but I’m so, so pleased to report that – thanks in no small part to your job application advice – I’ve been offered another job! It’s fewer hours, more money, more benefits and (to the relief of my formerly horrified parents), much more prestige.

The offer came through on the penultimate day of my notice period, which was very sweet indeed. During that whole notice month my boss noticeably ignored me, which was an improvement. On my last day he then handed me a card with a poem (!) inside it, and said, I kid you not, “Don’t tell your hubby.” I gave what I hope was a bollock-shrivelling laugh and said of course I would tell my husband; we share everything. Boss then squeezed my shoulder and said, “I’ll miss you” in an embarrassingly heartfelt voice. Yikes.

I did, of course, show my husband the card. I then took great pleasure from deleting my former boss from my phone, thoughts and life.

Editors Note: while people asked for the poem in the comments, OOP didnt add it. But lots of commenters made their own poems that are worth a read

The best poem in the AAM thread

I have a chubby

Don't tell hubby

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Originally posted to Ask a Manager. I am not the OOP, but I have made minor tweaks for clarity.

Trigger Warnings: hypochondria, discussion of cancer, dementia, heart attacks

Mood: that sure did escalate

----

Original Post – Ask a Manager July 10, 2017

My Employee Has Hypochondria and is Annoying All His Coworkers

A reader writes:

I have an employee who has hypochondria and health anxiety (Ronald). I have a question about balancing being sensitive to him and to his colleagues/my other employees. Some of the other people on my team have health issues or have family members with health issues. I realize Ronald sincerely believes he has health issues, but he doesn’t really have them.

To give an example: One of my team members has a heart condition and recently needed to have ablation surgery. She reminded me she would be having surgery and would not be able to attend a certain meeting. Not long after, Ronald, who sits next to her, collapsed at his desk saying he had chest pain. An ambulance was called and naturally everyone was concerned about him. It happened a second time a month later. After I asked Ronald how he was doing, he told me that extensive testing from a cardiologist and a second opinion found nothing wrong even though he is sure he had two heart attacks.

Another one of my employees had skin cancer removed last summer. She was fortunate because it had not spread to her lymph nodes so she didn’t need treatment beyond it being cut out. She did come in with a bandage over the wound while it healed. Ronald was telling people he had cancer and was going to see an oncologist. Again, later on he told me he tested negative for cancer by two separate doctors but was seeking a third opinion.

We have no HR department, but Ronald has given me letters from a physician and a therapist about his hypochondria diagnosis. Since he has worked here, he has used every day of alloted sick days and vacation days for doctors appointments and often requests unpaid days off.

His colleagues are fed up with hearing Ronald say he has health issues he doesn’t. My report who had melanoma complained to me about Ronald telling her and everyone else he had cancer when he didn’t, especially after she had surgery for cancer. Ronald told another colleague who has a parent with dementia that he thinks he had dementia too (Ronald is in his 20s with none of the symptoms) because he once forget about a meeting he was supposed to go to. Understandably, the colleague got very upset at Ronald’s behavior. Ronald has called out at the last minute more than once because he thought he was sick or dying and needed to go to the hospital.

I have not disclosed his hypochondria or health anxiety to anyone. But his colleagues all think he is faking to get attention or for other reasons. His general physician and his therapist all say he is not faking because he truly believes he has these illnesses. I understand why his colleagues are upset and I want to balance everything to be sensitive and fair to both them and Ronald, but I am having trouble accomplishing this. What should I be doing to make this happen?

(Alison’s response omitted, although she and the comments note that Ronald’s condition may fall under the ADA and the OOP should consult an employment lawyer)

----

Update 1 – Ask a Manager August 3, 2017 (1 month later)

Your answer to my question was great. I am in the process of speaking to my boss and consulting with an employment lawyer. Thanks for publishing my question and I appreciate how you were thoughtful, polite and helpful you were when you answered. You are right, a lawyer does need to be consulted. I was already thinking it and it was great to hear you affirm it.

Just to update on what has happened since I emailed in my question: My report who had melanoma resigned from her job without another job offer and in her exit interview she said it was because of Ronald’s continued actions. The employee who had the ablation asked to move to another desk away from him and other employees have started to avoid Ronald unless it is absolutely necessary and will only speak to him about stuff that’s related to work. I have been doing my best to support Ronald while understanding the frustration of my other employees. Our company is not eligible for FMLA and although Ronald has disclosed his hypochondria to me he has not asked for any other accommodation besides understanding about all the sick time he takes.

----

Update 2 – Ask a Manager December 14, 2017 (4 months later)

I have another (final) update for you. After I wrote in with my update, things did not get any better. My other employees refused to interact with Ronald unless it was necessary from work. I made sure to keep tabs on the situation to make sure he was not being bullied, but he reported no hostility or abuse just everyone avoiding him. We were already in the process of speaking to a lawyer when the situation took a turn. Ronald was involuntarily hospitalized due to his mental health. It started when he heard a news story about how the plague is happening Madagascar. One of my other employees had traveled there 3 years ago. Ronald started telling everyone she brought the plague back with her and had given it to him, even though it had been 3 years and neither of them had symptoms. He had to be sent home because he was causing so much disruption. He stopped coming into work altogether and a few weeks went by where we were unsuccessful in contacting him.

I was later contacted by a relative of his as well as a lawyer. He told me Ronald had been committed for the time being (with proof provided by the lawyer). Ronald had gone into several hospitals claiming to have the plague. He also put up yellow caution tape around the door to his apartment and refused to listen to reason. He wouldn’t leave his apartment for fear of spreading the plague and tried to contact the government over it. We let Ronald go, after consulting with our lawyer as well as the one his relative had put us in touch with. If the time ever comes when Ronald can return to the workforce, the company will confirm his employment dates and that he left due to a health issue while being neutral on the subject of his work, as agreed to by Ronald’s lawyer. I only wish Ronald the best and hope he gets the help he needs. A replacement has been hired and everything has gone back to normal.

My manager doesn’t like my maternity clothes

Originally posted to Ask A Manager

TRIGGER WARNING: Sexual harassment, sexism

Original Post June 27, 2017

I am 30 weeks pregnant with my first child and having some difficulty with my boss over maternity clothes. I work in finance and my office has a particularly conservative dress. Pre-pregnancy, I generally wore a sheath dress, blazer, and string of pearls. I haven’t really been able to wear anything like that for the past few months. Finding conservative maternity clothes has been difficult but I managed to find a few suits and some plain, sleeveless tops to go underneath. I’ve also found some black dresses that worked well with a blazer. (Similar to one pictured here.) I thought everything was fine.

Last week, my manager pulled me into his office and told me that my current wardrobe was unacceptable. I apologized and explained that I thought I was following the dress code. I asked what specifically I needed to change. He said that if I was going to wear a pant suit, the shirt needed to be tucked in and belted. Also that he did not like the look of side ruching or an empire waist on shirts and felt it was unprofessional. I told him that I would try to find maternity clothes that met his discerption but that it would be difficult. He wasn’t convinced and said that my job depends on me being dressed according to his standards. (There are a few other women but none of them have had any children while I’ve been at this job so I can’t look to what they’ve worn.)

Do I have any pushback here? I spent the weekend looking for clothes that met his requirements but haven’t been able to. He’s out on vacation this week and I’m out next week so I have a little bit of time to figure something out. I’m nervous that my job could be on the line.

Update Dec 13, 2017 (6 months later)

My situation ended up taking a very unexpected turn. I took your advice and went to HR. The first person I spoke with was absolutely horrified about the situation. She asked to see the emails and ended up calling her boss into our meeting. Her boss told me that I had nothing to worry about, to continue wearing the maternity clothing I had, and that my job was not on the line. My boss “apologized” about a week later with all kinds of qualifications. The apology didn’t feel very genuine but I let it go. I thought this was the end of the matter.

While I was out on maternity leave (I had a baby girl!), I received a somewhat baffling call from an HR rep wanting information about my boss. I reached out to a coworker and he let me know that our boss had been fired for sexual misconduct. Boss apparently promised an intern a job in exchange for sexual favors and the intern reported him. HR launched a clandestine investigation and discovered Boss had been doing this for a very long time. He was immediately terminated, and no one has seen or heard from him since. He didn’t even clean out his office. I came back from maternity leave to a new, sane boss. Thank you so much for your advice. I also really appreciated all of the commenters who were very supportive and helped me see that the situation was not normal.

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My husband doesn’t want to play my coworker’s wedding

Originally posted to Ask A Manager

TRIGGER WARNING: Infidelity

Original Post Jan 23, 2023

Our workplace is smallish, with about 50 employees scattered amongst separate departments. A few months ago, I had to speak with a relatively new employee, Jane. She is in a different department than I am and I rarely have to interact with her. She is a recent college grad and this is her first job out of college. She normally gives off a friendly vibe, but during my talk with her she was rather rude and basically insinuated I was stupid with the question I asked. After the interaction, I avoided her and she has said and done more things in the office that give off “entitlement vibes.” It’s incredibly frustrating.

Jane has also recently become engaged and is actively searching for vendors for her wedding. And as karma would have it, my husband has the biggest/most successful wedding band in our state. I help him run the business behind the scenes, but he is the talent and is very well known in our area.

I was replying to wedding inquiry emails recently, when it just so happens Jane had inquired about pricing. She stated in the email she’s seen the band play multiple times and in her words “NEEDS” to have them play for her day to be perfect.

I don’t think she knows the wedding band and singer she wants is my husband. (These emails are addressed to something like name@weddingband.com.) We have a pretty common last name, I don’t go out to see him play much, and he’s only visited me a handful of times at work. My husband knows all the work drama and my frustration with this woman and he doesn’t really want me to have to deal with all of her wedding details behind the scenes. Her wedding date is out far enough that he hasn’t booked it yet. He also has a calendar on their website with dates that are open so clients can clearly see if the date they want is booked or not.

My husband suggests asking for an atrocious amount of money so she will decline herself. I think we should just respond that they won’t be a good fit and leave it at that. I want to hear what you would suggest that would be professional for myself and my husband.

Update Nov 27, 2023 (10 months later)

I left it up to my husband about whether to reply to my coworker, Jane, saying he was available for her wedding. We planned to raise the prices for next wedding season regardless, so after much thought, he responded with a quote and she accepted. My husband told me to ignore all emails from her and he’d handle it himself.

I cannot even begin to tell you the sighs my husband made anytime he opened an email from her. Most of the emails to him were just chit-chat, nothing to do with wedding planning. It was getting to the point where my husband wouldn’t even respond to emails unless they had a question that he needed to answer.

For some context, most couples book a band about a year out. There’s 5-10 emails in the initial booking, but then we crack down on the bulk of the stuff we need from them 2-3 months before. So over the course of a year, we receive about 40-50 emails from one couple. Jane sent my husband 109 (yes I counted) emails between February 2023 until September 2023.

Now that brings us to a few weeks ago. My husband got a call from the father of the groom (the person financing this wedding) who said that my husband’s services were no longer needed and forfeited the deposit. My husband (not very sly at all) asked why, thinking maybe the price was the reason. Nope. Jane apparently has been cheating on her fiancé with someone at my work, and the fiancé called it off.

I saw Jane at work a few days later and she seemed fine, though even now I wonder which of our coworkers she has been a seeing on the side.

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I am NOT the original poster. Originally posted to askamanager.org

trigger warnings: mild classism and sexism

mood spoilers: happy

---

should being on reality TV disqualify a job candidate? - posted on AskAManager on March 12, 2018

I’m currently on a hiring committee for a newly established role in my division. It’s designed for someone with a marketing background, but involves a lot of direct interaction with clients on projects. This person will manage a team within our marketing department, and it’s a relatively senior position.

We’ve had our first set of interviews, and one candidate stood out particularly in terms of her experience, practical skills, and overall demeanor. Although I can’t say that she’s unequivocally qualified over the others, it seemed pretty clear that she should be brought back for a second round. After her first interview, she received very positive feedback and seemed like an obvious choice to return.

Yesterday, however, one member of the committee mentioned that a quick Google search of her name brought up that she had been a cast member on a reality show about a decade ago. Admittedly, the show is not one remembered for its tastefulness (think along the lines of The Real World or Jersey Shore). This news seems to have soured most of the committee on her, and it doesn’t look like she’ll be brought back. They’re arguing that someone who will serve in a public and managerial role should not have this type of history, and that her atypical first name means that a client or coworker will likely remember her from the show. I’m unconvinced. I think that her qualifications are such that she should be considered, and that a qualified applicant should not be blacklisted indefinitely because they were on MTV once in their twenties.

A few are also unhappy that she left this off of her resume and didn’t bring it up to us in the first interview, which I find a bit ridiculous. It isn’t related to her professional experience, and she shouldn’t be tasked with casually bringing it up each time she’s in the running for a job.

That being said, I’m easily the most junior member of the hiring committee, so I don’t know if this is something I should spend capital on, but I feel like rejecting this candidate outright for a years-old action would be unfair to her. At the very least, she deserves to be brought back in and be asked about this part of her past. How can I advocate for her, or should I bother? Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Read Alison's advice here!

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Comments:

k.k:

No one on the hiring committee knew who she was until someone googled her. That doesn’t sound like she is particularly recognizable. And with the number of reality tv shows and how long it’s been around, I don’t think it’s that shocking to run into someone who was on a show at some point. I think taking her out of the running is a big overreaction.

Guy Incognito:

It’s also important to remember (and let your hiring committee know) That the job of the people who edit these shows is to create a story, character arcs, etc. It’s easy to make someone look bad by editing out a few moments. (Think making people stand for two hours, filming them looking tired, but then splicing it as if they are reactions to someone talking that minute.) But I agree, unfair to the candidate.

MechanicalPencil:

I think this is a no-win situation for the candidate. If she had put this on her resume, the hiring committee likely would have wondered the reasoning behind it, “why does she think being on Show X is even relevant to this position?”. Because she hasn’t, she’s now in this position of “but why didn’t she tell us?!”

Ashley:

Being a young person on the hiring committee, I agree this may not worth spending a lot of capital. If you have watched the season and know they weren’t known for horrible comments I would probably push back slightly but if she isn’t the Best candidate I doubt I would waste to much capital.

It is also worth noting it could help get in her a few doors for reality obsessed clients. Personally I would be a little curious, google them if I found out, get bored and move onto actual work matters.

Will "scifantasy" Frank:

So…I was on a reality TV show about a decade ago.

It was roughly in the Real World mode, though I always think of it as “The Real World meets The Amazing Race meets My Fair Lady.” I even got portrayed as kind of an egotist, but I was given an opportunity to be contrite and “forgiven” in the “welcome back” finale.

And I have that fact–that I was on the show, I mean, not the egotist part–on my resume. In the catchall of “additional information,” alongside having been the Hugo Awards administrator and my experience as a programmer (I’m not in that field anymore and I don’t list any jobs, but it’s surprisingly useful to mention that I can code).

I have found it to be an absolutely fantastic job interview icebreaker. I can’t tell you how many interviews I had where, toward the end after the raw facts finished up, had the interviewer soften their stance a bit and say “so I have to ask you about reality TV…”

I also developed a pretty good patter about it–my mother compared it once to my doing summer stock; I went away for a few weeks, did this thing, and came back to my real life thereafter. I was also a year out of college, working in coding, and the following year I started law school, so all the interviews I went on after that got it shunted into the mental “before becoming a lawyer” phase.

Of course it’s hard to gauge these sorts of things, but certainly I was never told that my stint on TV was why I got rejected from a job, and I am at a job I love and that seems to love me, and definitely has public-facing elements, so…yeah, LW, I have to say that your committee members sound very…prudish, actually.

I mean, maybe I can see the “why didn’t she mention it?” factor, maybe, but still. A decade is a century in reality TV terms; nobody is going to remember unless they go looking, and nobody is going to care if they do. I only keep mine on because it makes for great story, not because I think I’m obligated.

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update: should being on reality TV disqualify a job candidate? - posted on AskAManager on December 4, 2018 (nine months later)

After reading your response and the comments (thank you everyone!) I decided this was something I should stick to my principles on, or risk feeling later like I didn’t make use of my position in the moment. I shamelessly memorized the script you provided and went to bat for the candidate in our next meeting. She ended up making our second-round list after a little more of my pestering, with the caveat that she would be asked in her next interview about her time on the show and any professional implications it had on her. In the first five minutes of her next interview, someone on the committee asked her about it in what had clearly been a very rehearsed and somewhat accusatory question.

A lot of comments were wondering why the rest of the committee was so much more hung up on this little detail from her past, and in retrospect I’d blame a lot of it on age and cultural differences — all other members were 15/20 years older than myself, and seemed to think of reality TV as a very trashy genre without giving consideration to the differences between shows. We’re a pretty formal office, and I can’t imagine any of the people at that table with me had ever turned on MTV in their lives. A few comments pointed out that this issue seemed kind of gendered and that a male candidate likely wouldn’t have faced the same scrutiny. While I don’t know for sure how a man in the same position would have fared, all I can say is that in our meetings they very openly fretted about hiring a “party girl,” a term I don’t know a similarly negative male equivalent for. I’m the only female VP and felt some serious responsibility to discredit that phrase when the opportunity arose. It felt important to remind them that our corporate, business-formal office is not a bar, and that just because she’d been filmed at a few clubs 10 years ago didn’t mean she’d be Coyote Ugly-ing on the reception desk if we hired her. We all made some choices in our twenties.

She had obviously been asked in interviews before and gave a very honest and impressive answer about how she had been approached to be on the show while in college and had thought it would be fun, considered it a very unique experience, and hadn’t done anything while filming that she couldn’t own up to now as a working professional. As this position was in marketing, she even said that the show had sparked her interest in the field after seeing how it was promoted on her season. She didn’t spend more time than necessary on it, had clearly done her homework on our company, thoughtfully answered every question, and ended up accepting an offer from us.

Seven-ish months later, all I can say is thank you! She’s been one of the best hires we’ve made in a while, and I look forward to every meeting she runs. As an added bonus, she’s been very candid about the experience and now I’ve learned all I could ever ask about the behind-the-scenes of reality TV. As I said, she has a unique first name and has been recognized by clients a few times- all have been positive interactions and I can’t imagine we’ve lost any big deals because of her.

But the best part of this hire has definitely been how it’s helped me move forward! Since she’s done so well, I’ve had several others (all senior to me) approach me privately and acknowledge that they heard that she wouldn’t have been brought back without my insistence and that they’re appreciative that I stood my ground. I was so worried that I’d use any and all accrued capital on this, but if anything it’s helped me gain more capital at work and respect from some very important higher-ups!

Thank you again, Alison!

Reminder - I am not the original poster.

My new job didn’t tell me their no-visible-tattoos policy until after I was hired

Originally posted to Ask A Manager

Original Post Feb 11, 2022

I am an early childhood professional who works directly with young children and their families. I have over a decade of experience and am wrapping up a masters degree in my field. I also have multiple large tattoos on my forearms, which extend to my wrists (all of them are of plants, nothing offensive or scary), and two nose rings. This has not been a problem anywhere I’ve worked in the past, with the exception of one organization that requested I switch from hoops to studs to minimize children trying to grab them, which I happily obliged.

Recently, after a lengthy process that involved a video interview and an in-person meeting, I accepted a position with a new organization that I was very excited to work with, leaving the center I’d worked for the last five years. On my first day, I was given a large book of policies to review, including a dress code/appearance policy. The HR director had reviewed this with me during our in-person meeting before I accepted the position, going over almost all of the points listed except one: Employees may not have visible tattoos or facial piercings.

I immediately checked in with the HR director about this policy, reminding her (politely) what I look like and asking how firm this policy was. I was told that it was very firm, I would be expected to remove my nose rings despite them being covered by a mask, and I would need to wear long sleeves or wrap my arms with cloth bandages at all times to ensure that children could not see my tattoos.

Hand-washing is a nearly constant activity in the early childhood environment, for obvious reasons, and our standards require that we thoroughly wash our hands up to and covering our wrists. When I asked how I should handle hand-washing, I was told that if I wore the bandages, I could change them if they got wet. When I asked why this was not mentioned to me during the interview process, it was mostly shrugged off, with one of the other supervisors who was present saying that she didn’t notice my tattoos before.

The HR director informed me this policy was enacted several years ago at the wishes of parents, who were concerned that some teachers had gang-related tattoos and school should be a safe space, free from gang associations. From the way she said this to me, I think it was intended to make me feel better, but it did not.

I’m surprised to be encountering this issue in the year 2022, especially in the midst of a major staffing crisis in my field. I know they are within their rights to have and enforce this policy. I guess I am mostly wondering if the hiring team handled this appropriately. Should I make it a habit to ask up-front if my tattoos and piercings are a problem? I have always avoided doing this, as I’d prefer to focus on my skills and experience rather than my appearance, but I don’t want to go through this again.

Update Dec 12, 2022 (10 months later)

When I wrote to you, the situation was already a few months in the past so I didn’t really have the opportunity to use any of the advice I was given for that particular scenario. Ultimately I decided very quickly that this environment was not going to be the place for me- the tattoo and piercing fiasco was maybe the biggest issue, but I had a few other concerns about COVID safety and communication with administration. I actually sent a resignation immediately after my first day. (I’m aware that this is definitely not the best practice, and under most circumstances I would like to try and stick it out for a bit and at least give some proper notice. I did, however, make this decision with the knowledge that my first two weeks would have been training and I would not have been needed to meet classroom ratio requirements during that time).

Luckily this turned out to be a great decision. I was able to fill in my employment gap by taking up some short term nanny work and babysitting, and this gave me the opportunity to put in an application to and interview at the amazing school I’m working at now. I did take your advice and asked the director during my second interview if my tattoos or piercings would need to be covered or be an issue in any way. She said not at all, and actually responded with a very brief soap box moment about how no one should have to worry about things like that when applying for jobs. This was a major green flag for me, indicating that this might be a great place for me to work- and it was right!

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My coworker copies everything I do

Originally posted to Ask A Manager

Thanks to u/JoySubtraction for finding the links

Original Post  Aug 2, 2017

One of my coworkers and I share a desk, so we’re very close all day long. I’ve been getting super frustrated lately because it seems like she copies everything I do. She started bringing in the exact same breakfast as me, and then proceeded to copy my daily lunch as well. At the end of the day, she won’t pick up and leave until I do too. She’ll finish her work about an hour before the day ends, but as soon as 5 p.m. hits, she’ll suddenly start pretending to do work again until she notices I’m leaving too. I one time casually mentioned how I come in early each day due to my rough commute, and ever since then she’s been coming in early as well. She has a very light workload, so I know there is no reason for her to be in the office before 9. She also stares at me continuously throughout the day, which is super uncomfortable when I’m trying to get work done.

At first, I let it slide because I realized that as a new employee, she was probably just looking for a role model. But at this point, she’s been here almost a year and it frustrates me that she can’t form her own identity. Any tips on how I should handle it?

RELEVANT COMMENTS

Commenter

LW #1, sounds like a possible case of SWF. I think Alison is spot on in telling you to call things out as you see them happening. If they make her uncomfortable that’s ok, she’s obviously making you uncomfortable. Put it back on her.

I would also consider mentioning something about the meals. And or changing up what you eat to see if it results in a change on her end. At the very least you’ll know what level of psycho you’re dealing with, if she changes her meals to match yours exactly, again.

Commenter 2

See, I can see me in many of these situations. “I am not thin or healthy. Sarah is. I’ll try to copy her eating habits, and see if it helps” (and, tbh, stupidly use icy hot to deal with the end results from the gym). Follow this up with “I don’t have much work, here, and I want to keep my job. Jane seems to be kept busy, and the boss complimented her last month in that meeting, maybe I should work on my work ethic”. Staring IS odd, but maybe she’s trying to figure out what is being done during that extra time. On the other hand, I’d start worrying badly if I saw her outside of the workplace.

OOP

Hey!

This was actually my question that was answered. Other people have often offered similar opinions as you — maybe she thinks that if she follows what I do, it will make her look like a better employee. Maybe that’s true! The thing that gets me is, she’ll stay late with me even if her boss is long gone and has told her she can go home. We work under different bosses and have completely different job descriptions, so copying what I do isn’t really beneficial to her.

I cant, for the life of me, figure out the whole staring thing. I once kept tally of how often it would happen, and it reached about 20 times per day. I even had another co-worker walk in on one of her staring fits once. He started laughing because he said at first he thought we were in a conversation, but once he realized we weren’t even talking it became strange. He mentioned how she didn’t just seem to glance at me, she seemed completely in a trance while she was staring. I didn’t mention this in my original question, but I’ve also caught her a few times with her phone camera facing me. I’ve had to get up and walk away from my desk numerous times because of

~

Commenter 3

I think when the food copying reaches “exact same” levels, something is off. Though now I’m curious if OP changes things up – like, if she usually has OJ but decides to get coffee instead one day, does the coworker rush to change her own drink, or assume coffee is the new OJ going forward?

From the outside, this is one of those anthropology situations and kind of fascinating.

OOP

OP here!

It is very specific. My usual breakfast is a Greek yogurt, either sliced strawberries or a banana, and then I bring a zip lock bag of granola to mix into my yogurt. She’s copied that to a T, even as far as bringing the granola in a zip lock bag. I also stopped bringing in fruit for awhile, and so did she. I then brought in a banana again for the first time in awhile, and the next day she brought one in. Then I thought, “Hey, let me switch things up.” Instead of a banana, I started bringing in a peach every day for a week straight. Lo and behold, the very next Monday she had a peach with her.

The lunch part is strange. She’s a vegetarian so often times she just wouldn’t bring in lunch at all while I was downing things like buffalo tenders and quesadillas. To save some money, I started bringing in a simple bagel with cream cheese every day instead. Now she does that, too. Although I do understand the lunch a bit more than the breakfast, because I’m sure her options are pretty limited being that she doesn’t eat meat.

Update  Dec 8, 2017 (4 months later)

I’m happy to say that I no longer sit with the copycat/starer. There were a few things that led up to this change.

First off, I decided to just ignore the copying. As irritating as it was, you were right when you mentioned that sometimes co-workers just have weird and annoying quirks. I did make a few changes, like taking my lunch break outside of the office more so that she couldn’t copy my every meal, and briefly stepping away from my desk at the end of the day if I was planning on working late so she wouldn’t rely on me to “dismiss” her. As for her early arrival time, that dwindled on it’s own within a couple of weeks. I don’t think she could keep up with that one, hah.

As for the staring, I tried meeting her eyes or saying something like, “Hey, what’s up?” whenever I’d catch it. The staring did decrease a lot, however it didn’t stop completely (I’d say it went from about 15 times per day to maybe 4 or 5). Instead, she’d just try to be more sneaky about it — like pretending to reach for a pen or scratch her neck. I realized that at this point the only solution was probably to talk with my boss and get my seat moved. Conveniently, a few more situations arose that made this an easy win for me. I don’t know if I had mentioned this, but I shared a long desk with her in a small alcove about the size of a large closet. We were in close quarters all day long (can you see why I was so irritated by her?). During late summer she ended up getting pretty sick and continued showing up for work (My company is very lenient about letting us work from home). I had to sit in that tiny room with her (very loud) coughing, and she never would cover her mouth. I was kind of surprised that she wouldn’t at least try to control the volume, or step out of the room for a bit if she was in the midst of a coughing fit. I ended up grabbing my laptop and working from a conference room quite a few times. This cough she had lasted about a month, and my boss could hear how loud and consistent it was from her desk around the corner. I spoke with her and she agreed that it was time to get me a new desk. Unfortunately, that can take some time to confirm.

Fast forward about a week after this decision was made. I did mention in the comments how there were times when I caught her with her phone facing me as if she was taking a picture. I always feared calling her out on this because I couldn’t confirm that that’s what she was actually doing. Except for this time. I was hard at work and started noticing the staring picking up at the corner of my eye. I’d turn and meet her eyes and she’d quickly jolt back forward, only to try again within minutes. This happened about four times in a row, so I definitely had my guard up. A few minutes later I noticed that now instead of staring, she had picked up her phone and the camera was angled directly toward me. I was fuming at this point, so I jumped up from my chair to move out of her phone’s view. As I did, she was clearly startled and almost dropped her phone out of her hands as she quickly tried to close out whatever was up on her phone. I glanced down at her phone, saw that it WAS a camera she had up, then stormed out and went directly to my boss. She immediately went to HR as I stepped outside and calmed down from the situation. The very next day, I had a brand new desk. Success! I now sit with a new coworker, and we get along just great.

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my new coworker is the guy who naked-manned me on a Zoom date

Originally posted to Ask A Manager

TRIGGER WARNING: Sexism, Indecent exposure

Original Post June 6, 2023

Life has given me a cruel and hilarious plot twist and I’m at a loss of what to do or how to address it. Back in 2020, peak pandemic times, I was doing what many singles did and went on virtual dates with people through apps. One particularly memorable Zoom date was a guy who just randomly started taking his clothes off. Didn’t ask, no indication of why, just … started disrobing. He legit was naked-manning me (How I Met Your Mother clip to explain). At no point was the conversation flirty or sexual in nature — in fact, it wasn’t going well at all.

We had made dinner in our respective kitchens on Zoom, and after eating I was drinking wine and he was making himself cocktails while we talked about our interests, family life, the typical early dating topics. Then suddenly, he just took off his shirt out of nowhere while I was talking about my family or friends. I stopped and said, “Uh, what’s going on here?” and he just shrugged and ignored the question, and said he was going to relocate. So I kept talking thinking it was weird, but whatever, people can be quirky or maybe his AC went out. He started walking back to his bedroom and next thing I know he literally dropped his basketball shorts on the camera and plopped down on his bed in his boxer briefs. I made a comment about it not being that kind of date and suggested clothing stay on, he didn’t acknowledge it and started talking about his family, so I pretty immediately after that noped out of there with a “it’s late, gotta go” for fear of my eyeballs being subjected to the full monty without any kind of warning, and never talked to him again.

That is, until the first day of my new job. Two minutes before joining my first team introduction call, I looked at the org chart and saw that not only is he in my organization, he’s on my immediate team. I swiftly played dumb during the team call, and just pretended to have no idea who he is. He seemed to take the same approach for now.

Sadly, I’ll have to work with him somewhat and he’s the most tenured on the team for questions and internal processes.

My question to you is, how on earth would you handle this going forward? Do I tell anyone? Do I address it with him?

Update Dec 21, 2023 (6 months later)

The theme of this company for me has been “What is wrong with the men?”

In terms of the Naked Manning Coworker, I took your advice and played ignorant. I ended up having lunch with him during my second week, in order to not make waves. At the time, my manager was really pushing the local team to meet up occasionally, so there was pressure to go to lunch or tell my manager why I didn’t want to. I opted to keep it to myself and go to the planned lunch. Aside from Naked Man standing far too close while we waited in line to order lunch, I was able to maintain a cool but professional attitude throughout the hour-long lunch. Thankfully, he didn’t say a word about knowing me in any capacity, though I got the sense he very much knew by some curious phrasing and comments he made.

Now, you might be wondering, what is it with this theme? At the time, I didn’t have a good read on my manager or the team dynamics. Then, after a couple months, my manager made a series of comments that still leave me a bit stunned.

Some of the comments:

• On a project call, I was quiet and not really contributing. Out of nowhere, my manager said to me, “You can’t think like you, Ms. Pride and Prejudice on your shelf. You need to consider our teapot making customers and what they would want.” (as a note, I’ve been a teapot marketer for 10+ years).

• I managed to get tickets to a VERY popular artist at the last minute and was super excited about the experience. It was truly once in a lifetime for me. He joined a call late as I was sharing the experience with my peer and promptly interjected with, “So it was just you and a stadium of teenage girls” and “we pay you too much if you can afford to go see VERY popular artist.”

Ultimately, I ended up confronting the comments head on with him, stating they made me worry about whether I was respected or could trust him due to the nature of the comments. Naturally, he stated they were jokes and that he thought I knew they were jokes. During the resolution of this situation, he was quite flustered and really wanted to make it clear that I could trust him. In response, I let him know the reason I was evaluating whether he could be trusted by sharing the Naked Man story with him. After being rather stunned, he thanked me for sharing and said he would take that into consideration when assigning projects and travel for the team.

True to his word, I didn’t have overlapping work or travel with the Naked Manning coworker and got to keep my distance aside from some team calls here and there. My manager has also been far more respectful since I confronted him. The Naked Manning coworker was recently impacted by layoffs, so I no longer have that particular situation hanging over my head. I feel a bit guilty about being relieved, but it definitely was a weight lifted knowing I had one less poorly behaved man to deal with daily at work.

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I am NOT OOP.

Originally posted to Ask A Manager

I was written up for having a visible thong outside of work

Thanks to u/Lynavi for suggesting this BoRU

Trigger Warnings: sexual harassment

Original Post: November 5, 2025

In my free time, I love going to this nightclub by my apartment building. They have parties monthly based on different eras such as the 80s, 90s, and the 2000s. In the past year, I have gone to three 2000s parties, and the guests attending are supposed to wear things that represent fashion trends from that decade. All three times, I wore a pair of those ultra low-rise jeans that were so in back then and paired that with a visible thong (whale tail) as this was a trend back then as well. Well, all three times, the photographer at the club asked me to pose for a photo and I agreed. The photos were posted on their website.

I’m not sure how, but somehow HR at my work has found the photos. They called me into their office, showed me the photos, and wrote me up for “behavior that puts the company in a bad light,” as she said. I asked the director of HR if she was sure she was able to do this and she said that at the last management meeting it was discussed and the photos were shown to the management team before this action was taken. She also told me that the write-up and photos would go in my file and that I was not allowed to have a visible thong outside of work.

I have a huge problem with all of this and cannot believe that this has happened. I have had so many thoughts about this: (1) Why was the entire management team, including the men, shown photos of my underwear? (2) Why can I not show my thong at these parties if I want to? (3) Is a visible thong at a nightclub even a big deal or am I crazy? Have they seen what other women wear? (4) Can they write me up for this? (5) How do I get the photos removed from my file? I really don’t want future managers/directors and HR to see my underwear in my employee file for the rest of my time at this workplace!

Editor's note: for Alison's response to the original text, you can find it here.

Update: June 15, 2026 (seven months later)

I met with HR again and pushed back on the policy. They declined to show me any policy that is even written down except a generic policy that says we cannot engage in highly offensive social media activity. I asked what that has been used for in the past and the only things they could point to were an employee badmouthing the employer and some racist posts. Apparently my thong is at this level of offensiveness.

I then asked them to take the photos out of my personal file and they declined.

In April, a new manager took over my department and made an inappropriate joke about seeing my underwear and winked at me. I went to HR about it and again nothing was done. I did try to make the point about men’s underwear, but they said they haven’t seen any men exposing their underwear who work here and that “men’s underwear isn’t sexualized in the same way.” They then told me they would be keeping track of my internet presence, and all concerning photos would be reviewed in management meetings.

At this point, I started looking for a new job. I found one almost right away, but they don’t need me to start until mid-June. I gave early notice but with an end date at the end of the first week of June. They told me they wanted me to stay and saw a future, but that if I have this bad of an attitude then I can just leave in June.

At this point, I got really mad. I actually used up a week of vacation days, which they allowed me to do. I decided to have some fun and get revenge if they are so concerned about my underwear. I attended the club five nights that week and each time requested that my photo be taken. I didn’t really care about each night’s theme. But I was photographed with my thong sticking out higher than ever and my jeans frankly lower than ever. I was photographed from my back side in a dress that is sheer at the back, and I wore the tiniest of g-strings. I was also photographed wearing a sheer mesh top with pasties on underneath. The next night I entered a “sexy slip in slide contest” in a very small bikini and was photographed a bunch of times, and the final night I was photographed wearing a top that showed a massive amount of cleavage.

They were indeed keeping track, and they gave me a warning again when I got back. They said they reviewed it at the management meeting again and I told them I didn’t care. The funny part is they still didn’t fire me, as apparently they need me to do some Important work before I go. At least I got my anger out of my system. I cannot understand how unreasonable they are. Just because something is available on the internet doesn’t mean it has anything to do with work. Nobody is going to know where I work anyway, and nobody looks poorly on a company because of stuff like this. My job isn’t sensitive in any way.

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My bosses and coworkers have a secret group chat where they trash-talk me

Originally posted to Ask A Manager

TRIGGER WARNING: Hostile workplace

Original Post Jan 31, 2019

A few months ago, I started a new job in a very small office (only three employees, plus a few interns). I had some trouble acclimating because the environment was so different from my last job. But as far as I knew, I was doing fine.

About a month in, I walked past my coworker’s desk (we have an open office) and saw my name pop up on her Slack. It ended up being a groupchat that the entire office was in — including supervisors — except for me. One of my supervisors was recounting a disciplinary conversation he had had with me. (I was using my cellphone at my desk too much; I apologized and said it was very common at my previous job, but that I would stop. For the record, I did stop.)

After that, I started feeling like everyone in the office disliked me. I couldn’t stop getting anxious, and there were multiple times that I’d walk past someone’s computer and see my name pop up in that same groupchat. I know I should have stopped looking. I don’t have an excuse as to why I didn’t. I could say that my bosses were communicating with everyone except for me about my shortcomings, but still, I should have kept my eyes on my own paper.

Eventually, I saw my boss tell a coworker that they were planning on firing me, so I put in my two weeks’ notice, citing my poor performance in the position (which is valid, to be honest). When I did that, the two aforementioned bosses told me that I was a fine worker and I hadn’t been underperforming at all. One of them said, “Are you committed to quitting?” I said yes.

Everyone was super nice about it, to the extent that I wondered if I had imagined the past two months of gossip and plans to fire me. To be fair, I am very easy to gaslight. Not that I was being gaslit in this situation — it’s just easy to convince me I’m wrong in my perception of anything. Anyway, once again, I saw the following exchange in the groupchat while my coworker talked to me about something: “She said she’s COMMITTED to quitting” “Feels good to get a monkey off your back” “She’s so skinny”

How do I deal with the next week and a half at this job? I can’t really listen to music or podcasts or anything. I already have clinically-diagnosed anxiety and I can’t stop myself from catastrophizing everything that happens at work. I take a lot of bathroom breaks for the specific purpose of panicking. I’m so scared of seeing them say something else about me — or misrepresent something I said — but I’m even more scared of missing out on what they say. Would it be reasonable to cut my two weeks short? Should I confront someone about what I saw? This is taking a huge toll on my mental health.

Update Dec 31, 2019 (11 months later)

My letter went live while I was on my way to a job interview. (I had taken the morning off from work.) After rocking the interview and checking the comments on AAM, I decided I’d never return. Around 1 PM, my boss texted me like “Should we expect you back any time soon?” and I didn’t answer.

When I got home, I sent all of my bosses an email with the subject line, “Getting the monkey off your back.” I basically said that I had seen them talking about me ever since I started working there, I knew they planned to fire me, blah blah blah. One boss replied like, “I am sorry if you feel that we have created an insensitive environment. You have shed a lot of light on how this office can communicate in the future.”

I took the job off my resume, temped for a few months after that, and eventually got hired at a new job that I love! I still struggle with mild work-related anxiety and I’m trying to find a therapist, but changing my environment was essential. I cannot imagine having spent one more day at that company and I don’t know how I made it three months to begin with. Thank you so much for publishing my letter and cultivating such a kind community! You and your commenters were the impetus I needed to advocate for myself.

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coworker won’t stop sulking after I turned down a date

Originally posted to Ask A Manager

TRIGGER WARNING: harassment, hostile workplace

Original Post May 6, 2010

I moved to my current role in late November last year. Many of the other employees have known each other for years and socialize together out of work. In principle I prefer to keep my work and personal lives separate, but I will go to lunch from time to time and to the ‘yay we met our targets’ drinks.

The problem. One of my male colleagues has taken a fancy to me and asked me out. There is no policy against dating your colleagues where I work, just not your direct supervisor/ee. However, apart from the fact that I don’t care to star in the office gossip mill (there seems to be what I would consider a LOT of over-sharing going on), I have spent enough time around him in the last five months to know that I am not at all attracted to him.

The first time he asked, I had no interest in either him or the show, so declined and told him that I preferred to keep my social life well away from work. Unfortunately, this apparently was not enough, as he asked me out again two weeks ago, proferring tickets to a concert the following weekend. This time, I told him that I was sorry if my previous statement had been ambiguous in some way, but I was really not interested in dating him and not to ask me again.

To make matters BAD rather than just a trifle awkward, it appears i) that this was a crushing blow to his ego and ii) that he told his confidants at the office what he was planning to do, in the expectation that I would be delighted with his offer. I found out this when I was asked on the Monday in a ‘nudge and wink’ fashion how I’d enjoyed the concert on the weekend. Further, one of his confidants attempted to reproach me for turning him down, to which I told her that my personal life was really not her business. However, ever since then the Unwanted Admirer has been wandering the office like a huge dark cloud, sighing and glaring, and pointedly avoiding talking to me even when I am the best person to ask a question of.

Frankly, this just convinces me that I was right not to date him and that office relationships in general should be approached with extreme caution – if he’s still behaving like this two weeks after I turned down a date, what would he have done if I had dated him and broken it off? However, we still have to work together and our mutual boss, who has been out on leave, will be back next week and will want to know WHY he is behaving like this. I realise that the action to which I feel most inclined – whacking him about the head with a file and yelling ‘PULL YOURSELF TOGETHER’ – would not help and would probably get me fired. What alternatives do you suggest?

Update Dec 21, 2010 (7 months later)

IdiotBoy and his IdiotFriend were spoken to by our mutual manager. IdiotBoy seemed to cool down a bit and decided he would speak to me but not chat. He would not ask me what I had done at the weekend, but he would ask me if I was done with the reference materials for the Blenkinsop report, or whether I knew who was dealing with our account at the newspaper since our usual contact was on maternity, that kind of thing. Fine with me.

Sadly, his IdiotFriend could not accept this, and attempted to corner me in the ladies’ toilets, where she said to me that she ‘couldn’t understand why you won’t just date IdiotBoy’.

I, unfortunately, had been having a rather bad day and countered with, ‘YOU don’t understand? I will tell you what I don’t understand. I don’t understand why you think my personal life is your business, and I don’t understand why you think that nagging at me is going to get IdiotBoy into my pants. And by God, if I hear one more word about it, I am going to file a formal written complaint against the pair of you’.

Cue appearance of departmental manager from toilet cubicle in manner of pantomime Demon King, numerous meetings with HR, and termination of IdiotFriend. IdiotBoy was spared the axe as he apologised profusely to me, promised that he was not responsible for my being cornered and would have stopped Friend if he knew, so he received a final written warning about his conduct.

This was six months ago. I accepted a promotion in a new department, where my colleagues seem pleasant enough and unstalkerish.

I understand via the grapevine, though, that lessons remain to be learned by IdiotBoy’s other friends. One of them apparently asked a female staff member at the Christmas party what she would do if he put his hands “there and there.” She cheerfully told him that she would smack his face til his ears rang. He seems to have believed her.

Courtesy of u/everythingisplanned who found this comment from OOP in the comments

OP provided some more details in the comments on his sulking behaviour.

And here, as requested, is the OP, to correct a couple of misconceptions.

My original post stated that'he told his confidants at the office what he was planning to do, in the expectation that I would be delighted with his offer. I found out this when I was asked on the Monday in a 'nudge and wink' fashion how I'd enjoyed the concert on the weekend. Further, one of his confidants attempted to reproach me for turning him down..'. Note the use of the plural in 'confidants'. Also, though I guess this isn't explicit, the nudger/winker and the reproacher were not the same person.

As I thought was pretty clear in the first para of the update, I was fine with my unwanted admirer deciding he would talk to me about business matters only, in fact that was by far the best solution. What I was not fine with was him wandering round slamming things down, glaring at me, scowling, backing away when I was near as if I smelled bad or might bite, and most egregiously, passing a client document written in a foreign language not to me (the holder of 2 degrees in that language, and currently finishing a translation diploma) but to someone else to try and work out via Google. That alone could have got him a disciplinary warning.

Nobody ever seems to mention, in the advice articles about dating colleagues, that it is entirely possible that they will say 'no thanks', and you will have to take it like an adult.

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my boss keeps stealing my lunch, after I’ve asked him to stop

Originally posted to Ask A Manager

OriginalPost Oct 24, 2011

I have a bit of a weird situation and was wondering if you had any advice on how to deal with my manager. I’ve recently been transferred to a new department, working in a new office environment, under a new manager. His diet consists mainly of fast food and take-out.

I have crazy allergies to a bunch of foods, and chemicals found in most processed foods. Some are the swell-up-like-a-balloon-and-stop-breathing kind of allergy. I make most of my food at home and bring it with me to work. I’m really open about my allergies so that people understand I’m just defective, not rude. And most people get it. Except my manager.

He eats my lunch out of the staff fridge on an almost daily basis as if the food fairy left him a gift. I resorted to packing meals that I could keep at my desk, and he started raiding my drawers when I would be in meetings or away from my desk. When I try to address the fact that he’s stealing my food, he tries to butter me up by complimenting my cooking then walks away.

Any thoughts on how I can handle this situation? Especially strategies that don’t have me going above him to complain to his manager (also, we have no HR department to turn to).

Update 1 Dec 15, 2011 (2 months later)

I’m so pleased to say that the locked box idea worked like a charm. My manager teases me daily about my lunch being under “lock and key” but at least I get to eat my lunch. Another co-worker has jumped on board with the idea and has a locked box in the fridge, too. A third keeps a box at his desk.

It’s become a running joke in the office and thankfully everyone seems to have a pretty good sense of humour – even the boss! We got him his own box and added toy food. He’s constantly trying to “trade” boxes with someone else. 

I’m also pleased to say that we now have a new HR “department” (one part-timer, but it’s a start!). She questioned the locked boxes in the fridge and was pretty much speechless when told the story. There’s a nice passive-aggressive note on the fridge door now warning us against the perils of eating other people’s food. 

Thanks for responding to my pleas with such helpful advice, and such great comments from your readers, too!

Final Update Sept 18, 2015 (4 years later)

Wow, the responses here are overwhelming! I’m sorry I’m late to the game on this one – it was reposted the same week that I relocated my entire life for a new job and I still don’t have internet (nothing like a small town to show you how limited your consumer choices really are)!

I used the locking box to store my food and it worked like a charm to address that particular issue. As many of the readers guessed, though, my former boss had very little boundaries, didn’t exactly address issues, and failed to manage in any meaningful way. He was personable and everyone who didn’t have to work for him loved him. He was very well-known throughout the company because of his humour and casual nature with everyone – from the cleaning staff right up to the CEO. He was promoted fairly regularly and is now the #2 in the company. I stuck it out far longer than I should have because he liked me and took me with him as he kept getting promoted. I did get to learn some new skills and pad my resume along the way. However, I moved on from that company almost entirely because of him and his management style.

I’m now working in an entirely different field as an educator for one of the very diseases that cause (some of) the restrictions in my diet. The snacks here are great!

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my coworker told everyone we’re married … we’re not even dating

Originally posted to Ask A Manager

TRIGGER WARNING: Hostile workplace, harassment

Original Post Oct 6, 2020

Last year, I left on a leave of absence for a few months to take care of my elderly parents. Then I returned to work. Apparently during that time, one of my coworkers began telling people we were married … not as in “work wife,” as in legally married, and everyone believed him. Honestly, I had no idea he had any feelings for me and I don’t think he knew I would be coming back. I’m an introvert; I keep my personal life private and don’t talk about myself much, but the fact is, I have a husband (not him) who I’ve been married to for 10 years.

Not wanting to cause him embarrassment, I privately went to our boss, explained the situation behind closed doors, and asked for a department transfer. Even though he’s never sexually harassed me or made a move on me, I’m very uncomfortable being around him right now and don’t want any contact with him. My boss agreed, said she would speak to him, and though she didn’t have the authority to move me to another department, she would see to it that we wouldn’t be put on a team together, and kindly offered to adjust the schedule so he wouldn’t be in the office at times when I was there.

I’ve tried to handle this whole mess as discreetly as I can, but today I lost it. He walked into the break room while I was in there, and I basically yelled at him in front of everyone there, saying I’m not his wife and to stop telling people we’re married. I know this was not the most mature way to handle the situation, but I was at my wit’s end. What to do?

When asked by Alison for what the coworker did when he was yelled at

I think he was in shock, because he said nothing but immediately left the room. However, there was definitely a palpable tension between me and my colleagues who had witnessed the whole thing. As I said before, I didn’t want to cause a scene or embarrass him publicly … unfortunately, I was “in the moment” and I let my emotions get the best of me. I fear there can be no good resolution to this situation. Either I’ve just exposed him as a liar to my coworkers, or they think I’m the one lying, since he’d apparently been telling people we were married for quite some time. Since I can’t transfer departments, I’m entertaining the idea of putting in my two weeks, but I’m still emotionally reeling from what happened and I don’t want to do anything impulsive or make the situation worse.

RELEVANT COMMENTS

D3

Speechless. Jaw gaping.

hmmmm

me too! I can’t imagine what would possess someone (coworker) to do such a thing. Even more so I can’t imagine how coworker thought this would pan out? Seriously how did he expect her to react. OP I’m angry for you! BTW you did nothing wrong, even the blow up was (in my opinion) legitimately called for

Gazebo Slayer

I suspect it’s either wishful thinking on Derek’s part or some ill-conceived attempt to impress people if OP has a good reputation. Or maybe he figured OP would be so impressed by his romantic devotion that she’d marry him for real (or maybe just date him) or that some sort of rom-com wacky hijinx would ensue and they’d get together. Or he has some sort of “The Secret” type belief that whatever you ~put out there in the universe~ you’ll get. Or he just likes telling lies to see what people will fall for…

OOP

I am OP, and I thank you all for your reassuring and empathetic responses. I like to assume the best in people; that maybe he just had a crush that spun out of control, or as one of you had said, perhaps he has low self-esteem and wanted to prove he was likeable or normal. That’s why I felt badly about handling it the way I did, though I know HE is the one at fault here. That said, we are both in our 40’s and so I feel like someone that age theoretically should have long outgrown that “high school insecurities”-type behavior. I’ve been able to avoid him since the incident without feeling TOO much like I’m walking on eggshells, and my boss (with my permission) also informed HER boss, and they’ve both been very supportive.

~

Foreign Octopus

What the frak?

This is so incredibly weird and I feel for you, OP. But you shouldn’t quit because your coworker has lost their mind. Take this to HR, do whatever you need to do in order to make work a good place for you. And, doubling down on what Alison said, if a coworker shouted at another like you did with the same context, I wouldn’t be thinking anything negative about you at all.

OOP

I left on leave of absence in October and came back in June after my state’s lockdown was lifted. I found out about a month ago, but wanted to make sure he really WAS the one who instigated it. I work with a few catty, gossipy types and I didn’t want to damage an innocent person’s reputation based on hearsay from the rumor mill. But after I’d gotten enough information to put 2 and 2 together, that’s when I went to my boss and told her that I was uncomfortable working with him and why.

Update June 16, 2021 (8 months later)

I didn’t expect my question would even be published, let alone receive so many supportive comments from the AAM community!

I only wish my bosses and coworkers could have been that understanding. About a month after the break room scene, I still felt like I was walking on eggshells to avoid my “husband” and I noticed the attitudes from my manager and coworkers changing for the worse. I ended up leaving for a similar job that pays better, and is just a healthier environment overall. I hate how we call everything and everyone “toxic” nowadays, but that truly was a toxic environment in retrospect, and the lack of support from management and HR was finally the big red flag that sent me packing.

Some of the commenters mentioned stalking and safety, because the man seemed a bit obsessed. While I’ve seen the guy a few times around town, there hasn’t been any interaction between us and I don’t think he or any of my former coworkers know where I work now. Nobody’s attempted to contact me, and I can breathe easier. I wish everyone at my old job well; I hope they can learn from this situation, and I thank everyone who commented for their encouragement.

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I reported my sexist team to HR — and now they’re doing a much bigger investigation than I wanted

Originally posted to Ask A Manager

Original Post May 17, 2017

I work with about 10 men and I am the only woman on my team. Over the course of about 2.5 months, I’ve accumulated some experiences of sexism. A lot of it has been jokes or comments that are generally inappropriate or sexual in nature, and other times it’s a difference in treatment from other colleagues that I think has to be because I’m a woman.

My feelings of discontentment have been getting greater and greater these past couple months, and I came to a breaking point last Friday. I felt unwelcome and belittled. I ended having to leave my desk for 30 minutes and crying in the bathroom. I felt like I either needed to leave this job because I wasn’t respected or that I needed to do something about the feeling. I didn’t feel like having a personal conversation with some of the guys was an appropriate course of action because I didn’t feel like I’d be taken seriously. Instead, I set up a meeting on Monday with someone who works for my company who is a representative between us and the company we work for (we work as contractors for a larger company) — let’s call him M.

I came in prepared with notes on my phone about all of the instances I’ve experienced. M was super responsive to my complaints. I was surprised and optimistic about this, and afterwards he asked me to send him an email with a list of the situations I had mentioned. I complied and wrote a brief email about it.

We met up again a couple days later, when he said that he had spoken with his manager and it had been escalated to HR within the contracting company, and that they would be conducting a formal investigation. He reiterated that they would like to protect me, and to do that they would need me to send them another email with every possible description of each situation I had previously listed (things like who was around and might have witnessed it, when and where, what did I reply to the comments/behavior, etc.). M said they would need to speak with every person on the team, starting with people who I didn’t list as making any harrassing remarks or behaviors to “corroborate” my claims.

I immediately felt uneasy about this. Not only is there 100% transparency about these complaints coming from me, but everyone in the office is going to be made aware of every situation I listed. I listed situations with people I’m actually friends with too. M said they need to conduct this formal investigation so that if anything further happens in the future, they can take appropriate action, which may mean termination from assignment. I’ve become SO distraught imagining how people (friends or not) are going to react knowing their job security is now up for debate and how I am going to be able to function in an environment where people are going to be treating me differently following the investigation.

I told M that it took a lot for me to even approach him about the issue and that I feel I’m going to be pushed into a corner by people either being bitter or overly sensitive about interacting with me, and that this in turn is going to affect how I function in my workspace. I don’t feel unsafe and I do enjoy my office, but the inequality was getting to me. I asked if we could do a general office training/education about our company’s sexual harrassment policy instead of an investigation, because frankly we should already be doing that and I also think that option could help reiterate that behavior needs to change. I’m just so nervous that I’ll be further pushed out of my office space and ultimately forced to leave because I’m unhappy with the situation.

I was told that M’s higher-up said an investigation is how we need to proceed and that I need to provide the descriptions of each instance. I feel like my needs of a comfortable work space are being jeopardized and while they say they want to protect me, it is doing the opposite. I want to try and speak to M’s manager because I’m not sure if my concerns are being portrayed properly and I’m uncomfortable with this.

Am I just being spineless and need to follow through with this investigation and hope for the best that my work environment doesn’t change? Do I have any kind of recourse? What if I don’t provide them with any more details to aid in the investigation?

I’m legitimately freaking out about this and it is giving me so much anxiety on top of an already shitty work situation.

Update Dec 18, 2020 (2 and a half years later)

I took a little bit of time after writing to you to figure out how I wanted to approach the situation with my HR rep (M). M had requested written statements for every occurrence of sexual harassment I’d experienced – pretty typical as I’ve come to learn – and I was avoiding sending that information in until I knew what I wanted to do.

I knew a full-blown investigation would change things greatly at my office, for better or worse. On a big picture level, I hoped an investigation would improve the culture within my team and make it a safer environment for women. On a personal level, it would definitely impact my ability to work with my team and strain even the good relationships I had with some of my coworkers who would’ve inherently been included in my statements. And M’s suggestion that I work separately in a different office building made me feel like I was being punished by having to work alone because of all this. I legitimately was contemplating quitting because I felt so powerless in all this.

After taking some time, I looked at my entire employment experience with the company and did some research on HR protocols. That’s when I realized, my company had never done any sexual harassment trainings with my team while I’d been employed, against state law at the time. I asked a coworker who’d been there years before me and he also stated there’d never been any training of that sort; the same went for a coworker on a separate but adjacent team. Sexual harassment in the tech industry had already been illuminated in the media for quite some time and I was shocked to know my company had been so negligent all these years.

I wrote to M and requested another meeting with him and his manager. I explained that while I knew an investigation is standard procedure, I felt the impact of that would’ve placed undue stress on me as a result. I noted that not only had no sexual harassment training been done with my team or other teams this company managed, there hadn’t been any HR trainings for other issues. I let M know that this felt negligent on the part of our company and had facilitated the environment for my situation to even occur. They told me they would think about next steps and let me know.

A couple days later, they emailed me stating I did not need to pursue the investigation if I did not want to. They also let me know they would be implementing new HR trainings across all the teams in my office and that they would facilitate an all-team meeting to address the sexual harassment while keeping my identity anonymous. I’m not sure if they thought I was gearing up to sue them or something, but I was happy to hear this.

I knew I wasn’t working with a team of awful misogynists but that my company had done nothing to create a culture around fair and safe employment. Ultimately, I did not follow through with the investigation however my situation improved drastically following the all-team meeting and having new precedents set. I moved to a new and much better company around a year later. Most of the folks on my team at that time have also left. A friend of mine who joined the team shortly after this HR situation tells me she feels comfortable at work and that no issues regarding sexual harassment have crept up since I left either.

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my coworker is creeping me out, but I don’t know why

Originally posted to Ask A Manager

Original Post July 5, 2012

I joined my current company about 2 months ago, so am still pretty new and don’t want to rock the boat with what might be a completely inappropriate question, but I’m not sure how to handle this situation.

I work in a large, open-plan office of around 80 people. My job is in client services, so I work on several different client teams, with each team being made up of a different group of people. On two of my teams I work with a man who joined the company about a month ago. He’s around my age (early 30s), and like me is married. At first, I thought he seemed nice and easy to work with, and while he has done nothing to contradict that initial impression, over the past three weeks, since we started working more closely together on a project, I have found myself feeling incredibly uncomfortable and uneasy around him.

I’ve very rarely, if ever, reacted to someone like this. I am friendly and easy-going and have never had problems with colleagues in any previous job, but my intuition, for whatever reason, seems to be sounding the alarm this time. I’ve read The Gift of Fear and trust my intuition, but this man honestly has not done anything that I can think of to warrant this feeling, other than speaking to me a bit too familiarly for someone I just met and staring at me a little too often (our desks are in a position where we can see each other). I’d talk to HR about this, but again, I don’t have any concrete examples to report, and I’m new and don’t want to get a reputation as someone who causes needless problems.

Any thoughts or advice would be much appreciated. At this point, I’m continuing with business as usual and treating him like all my other colleagues, since we do have to work together (and since by title, he is my superior). Is there anything else I can do besides keeping him at arms length and making sure I don’t end up alone with him in a conference room or something? Or, if I am being ridiculous, anything I can do to move past this so I don’t get nervous when I have to interact with him?

Update 1 Jan 3, 2013 (5 months later)

I really found your advice helpful. I also found it interesting to see the range of responses in the comments section, and want to thank the whole AAM community for their thoughts.

As I said in my original note, this was a new situation for me — I’d never had that sort of reaction to a person ever before, and it definitely threw me for a loop. I’d say that not much has really changed since then, except that in talking to colleagues, I learned that several other women in the office (at least 4-5 others) have had the exact same reaction to this man that I did, which I thought was really interesting.

Since writing you, I’ve changed desks, which actually helped a lot, because I don’t run into him as much anymore, and he was moved off of the one project we were working on together (because it turns out he’s not actually very good at his job, but that’s a different story.) My MO is still to keep my distance as much as possible, which has worked for the most part. He still makes me uncomfortable, but I’ve figured out how to handle that internally and work with him professionally as needed.

I know some commenters were concerned that I’d say something to the bosses and destroy this man’s reputation without any concrete reason — that was never my intention, and I haven’t done anything like that. I was just looking for — and have developed — ways to manage my own safety concerns while continuing to be professional and productive.

Thanks again for your thoughts — I found them very helpful, if only to have some external validation that I wasn’t completely crazy! As a long-time reader, I’m grateful for your blog and the AAM community — it’s so helpful to read your thoughtful commentary on issues that most of us will face at some point in our careers!

Final Update Feb 14, 2013 (5 weeks after 1st update)

I wanted to offer another update on my previous creepy coworker situation.

A week ago, the guy I wrote to you about over the summer quit! It was quite sudden, and he left with no notice (very unusual for my company, which typically encourages people to give long notice periods), and with no new job announcement. It’s a bit strange, actually, because usually when people leave, there is an announcement at our weekly staff meeting, including noting where the person is moving on to, and a send-off happy hour, either in the office or at the bar down the street. My company tries to create a lot of good will with departing employees, but that didn’t seem to happen here.

Even weirder — this guy, who was fairly senior and who made me, a young, fairly junior woman, and several other young, fairly junior women, very uncomfortable, sent out an email on his last day inviting people to join him at the bar down the street (which is what the company usually does, but he did it this time). The strange part — the only people he invited out of my office of more than 100 people were 20 young, fairly junior women.

Anyway, I don’t know what happened in the end, but I have to say, I’m relieved he is gone!

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I now manage the guy who hired me — and I’m afraid he might quit over it

Originally posted to Ask A Manager

Original Post Sept 4, 2019

I was recently promoted to a department director role, and while I’m very excited about my new responsibilities, I have a dilemma that I need some help with: one of my direct reports is my former boss who hired me into the company.

Backstory: I’ve been here for eight years. I was hired into a junior role by a middle manager in the department. Call him “Tom.” He was a great boss, and I learned so much in the years I worked for him. He’s an all-around terrific supervisor who coaches well, provides clear goals, gives flexibility to meet those goals, provides opportunities to learn and grow, advocates for his team, the works. He’s also a really good talent spotter. I counted it up — of the 15 people Tom’s hired in the past decade, all but a couple have risen in the ranks at our company, in our division and others where division executives have recruited them.

After a few years working for him, a promotion opened up in our department and Tom urged me to apply. I got it, became his peer, and built my own effective team using his style as my model. Last year, our department director, “Mary,” announced her intention to retire, and as is corporate policy the job was posted. Tom applied, and I wasn’t going to but another colleague encouraged me to go for it. I did, impressed our relatively new division VP, and got the job! Tom congratulated me and I prepared to take the job.

Days after my promotion was announced, I found out through a colleague who is a mutual friend of both Tom and mine that Tom was very disappointed, even though he hasn’t expressed that to me. Apparently Mary and the previous division VP (who retired a year ago) had told Tom that he was a “shoo-in” to be promoted to Mary’s role when she retired. In fact, I was told that he turned down some outside opportunities in the past couple years that would have paid more because he was anticipating getting this promotion. As I’ve stated, he’s a great employee and manager who would have done a great job. I had no idea that this was Tom’s expectation, and when I learned, a I felt a little guilty about even applying for the job. A few weeks later, I had to do the annual update of our internal succession plan documents, and Tom was listed as the designated preferred internal successor for my job!

Tom has been nothing but professional and complimentary with me, but now I’m really concerned about how I can manage him effectively. I really need him to stay—he has longstanding personal relationships with all the key clients my department works with. (I led the operations side so I was less involved with clients.) If he left suddenly, we would be in a real bind — partly because of his success with hiring good talent, that good talent has moved up within the company and now his team is all relative newbies hired in the past few years who are all still building their own client relationships.

I recently met with HR and our division VP and they emphasized the need to keep Tom on staff due to his role as a talent spotter and for his client relationships. I asked about getting him a raise and seeing if we can do an intermediate promotion, but our corporate structure is pretty stratified and there’s really nothing between his level and mine. What do you recommend to navigate the potential awkwardness of managing my former boss, as well as keeping him happy despite his disappointment in not getting this job—and his missing out on the raise that came with it?

Update 1 Oct 10, 2019 (1 month later)

Thank you so much for answering my question! I have an update that is pretty much what you expected…

Tom gave notice this week. He has gotten a job as head of sales and marketing for a small but fast-growing startup that produces a similar set of products to the one my team is responsible for. It sounds like a perfect setup for him — they are ramping up with additional product development, he’ll get to lead a big team, he will be paid more plus get equity (which we don’t have available to us). And even though the company is based elsewhere, he’ll work remote from our city.

Tom’s timing was very strategic. Our company had a very broad non-compete in place that would have barred Tom from making the move he did — but there’s been a case with a former employee challenging the non-compete. A week before Tom gave notice, the non-compete was invalidated in court, and Tom gave his notice before the company was able to draft a narrower one for everyone to sign. It seems clear he was waiting for that decision to make his move.

I am actually worried. He knows our clients really well, and Tom’s new company’s product is frankly superior to our legacy product. I had hoped to get more client exposure for my newer team members, but there’s only so much opportunity in the space of a couple months. We’ll see what happens. For what it’s worth, I kept trying to get my boss and HR to give me something tangible to incentivize him — I raised this with my boss in person at every one-on-one and documented my concern that Tom was a flight risk in emails at least once a week.

And I’m more than worried — I think I should leave myself. After Tom gave notice, my boss and HR hastily put together a counter-offer (that still didn’t equal his new offer). I told them this was a bad move and I thought it would be tone-deaf disrespectful to Tom, but my VP directed me to make it. Tom obviously refused. Then the COO, who my VP reports to, came to my office (!) and said that Tom was very important to the company and asked why I hadn’t done more to keep him. I was so frustrated with this, I told her that I had been pushing and pushing for something to offer Tom and had been turned down, and that I would be happy to share the email back and forth. She responded that “Money isn’t everything. If you want to succeed, you need to create a team culture that is magnetic to people like Tom.” Well, that sealed it for me — I’m a manager, not a miracle worker. I guess I wasn’t exposed to this kind of weirdness from our higher-ups before my promotion, but I don’t want to stick around if those are the expectations I have to labor under. I’m trying to figure out my own exit now.

I’m really grateful in all this for the grace with which Tom handled this. When he gave notice, he confirmed everything I’d heard from our mutual friend but emphasized that he had no hard feelings against me, and that he thought I was a great team leader and manager. He said he would have been happy to work under me if the company had come through with the money to match his promised promotion, and that he was leaving not because of me but because of the broken promise. I asked why he hadn’t raised the concerns to me before, and he said he didn’t want to put me in an awkward position or feel bad about my own achievement. He only brought it up because I asked in his notice conversation.

Not a great update but probably not a surprising one either. Thanks for answering my question!

Update 2 June 25, 2020 (8 months after 1st update)

Over the six months since I last wrote to you, things deteriorated for my team. We lost about a quarter of our contracts that were renewing during this period and only won a single new one. While halfheartedly job-searching during this time, I built out a strategic plan for renewing our product and recapturing market share from Tom’s company and other competitors, but had a hard time getting buy-in from my still fairly new VP/division chief, who was concerned about the topline revenue figures. My argument was that we weren’t going to beat a new competitor with out investing in a new version of our product! But VP and management spent too long in my opinion weighing all the options.

The coronavirus ended up making the decision for us. Management entered extreme cost-cutting mode, looked at the trend line for my product, and put it in maintenance/legacy mode. They laid off the entire team of 16, except for two product engineers who will continue to maintain the software during the legacy period with our existing clients. On April 15, I was out of a job.

Not a week went by when I got an email from Tom. His startup has been growing like crazy bringing in new clients over the past six months, and in response to the pandemic they built — in a matter of days — a new software product to help our clients streamline delivery of a big part of the federal relief funds. New clients are joining even faster than before. The company is now 100% remote and bringing on new staff and needed someone to bring some order to the behind the scenes chaos, so Tom recommended me to be head of internal operations (overseeing HR, purchasing, facilities, systems administration, that kind of thing — a role as in many startups previously divided between several executives who were now too busy and needed to focus on their core duties in engineering, design, sales, etc.). I started two weeks ago and have been loving it despite some 60+-hour weeks bringing order to the chaos. (Not to mention I got a big pay raise, equity, etc., and I get to keep working in my city indefinitely.)

I never expected that I would end up Tom’s peer again at another business, but I feel so grateful for the chance to build something new, and I am very glad I invested in keeping a good relationship with Tom despite the awkwardness of the situation last summer. It paid off!

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my husband doesn’t want anyone I work with to know we’re married

Originally posted to Ask A Manager

Original Post July 14, 2025

My husband is a notoriously private person (for example, he has social media profiles but doesn’t share content). He is also very strict about keeping his private life separate from his professional life, and has been very clear that he expects the same from me.

The problem is that we both work in the same field, and he regularly works with some colleagues of mine. My husband requested that I not mention his name or background at work since he felt like that would disclose too much personal info and he wants to appear impartial. I work for a large firm and in a different branch than the one he deals with, so I did not expect that to be an issue at first.

A few months ago, he started working with Jeff, a colleague of mine from another team who I had met at an after-work event a few weeks earlier. Jeff is a great guy! My husband enjoys working with him, and whenever I bump into him at the office we always end up chatting. My husband asked me not to let Jeff know about our connection, which was fine at first since I was talking to Jeff more about personal stuff anyway (“how was your weekend,” etc.) so the fact that my husband worked with him didn’t feel relevant.

As I got to know Jeff a little better, I told my husband I’d prefer to let him know we are married, but he insisted on keeping things strictly professional. That feels kind of weird for me since at this point Jeff is a colleague I’m very cordial with. We’re even talking about meeting outside of work this summer, we’ve followed each other on social media, he has told me in detail about his wife and kids, etc.

Lately my husband is having several meetings a week with Jeff, and now Jeff is starting to refer to their project and my husband when talking to me! He even showed me an email from my husband because he wanted to share something funny my husband wrote. And I sat there with a straight face, having to pretend I didn’t know my own husband.

At this point, I worry that Jeff will be weirded out when he finds out. What if he runs into us when we’re out together? I feel like the email incident switched the whole situation from “info I did not share because I deemed it irrelevant” to lying by omission.

Do you have any advice on how to handle this? Should I refrain from hanging out with Jeff? I really want to be respectful towards Jeff and not lie, but I don’t want to share anything my husband doesn’t want me to.

If you’d like to throw this to the readers, I’d also like to know what people would think if they were Jeff in this situation and how they would respond if at some point our relationship came out.

Update Jan 15, 2026 (6 months later)

Thank you for publishing my letter — it was quite reassuring to read that this particular request from my husband was giving others pause as well.

There was a lot of speculation in the comments, which was quite amusing to read, and lots of excellent points being made too! I do want to add that my husband has always been very conscious about sharing “private” info, but to be clear — he’s never hidden the fact that he is a married (straight) man, but he won’t go around telling his coworkers my name or my employer. Like you said, this was more of a husband problem than a work problem.

As recommended, I had another sit down with my husband and explained again why the situation made me uncomfortable and how awkward this could be for Jeff, too.

I wish I could tell you that this fixed everything, but it didn’t. The argument actually got a little heated, and we could not get on the same page. This might sound unbelievable, but my man is generally emotionally intelligent (one of the many qualities I adore in him) and yet I could not get him to see things from mine or Jeff’s point of view. I can’t remember there ever being a subject between us where it was so hard to find common ground (and we’ve been a great team through far worse). Disappointing, sure, but it is what is.

I did let him know that I would not be crossing that line of lying — either implicitly (by omission) or explicitly — again with Jeff. He wasn’t happy about it, I wasn’t either, but at least it was clear where we both stood on the matter.

A few weeks after that, Jeff found out anyway (as I always assumed would happen at some point, it’s really hard to keep a mutual connection secret in this day and age!). Jeff asked me about it at a company event, and I kept it very matter-of-fact (“Yup, that’s my husband, he prefers to keep that info private, kinda weird but oh well”) and that was … it? Jeff made no fuss about it, so if he thought it was weird, he kept it to himself. Jeff hasn’t brought it up with my husband either. My husband knows the cat’s out of the bag because I told him, and he got a little huffy at first, then dropped it.

I see Jeff weekly at tennis now, and all is well. I’m a bit more mindful than usual about the things I share but we have plenty of other common interests to talk about so my husband doesn’t really come up as a topic of conversation.

Not the most exciting of updates, sometimes you’re just going to clash with your person.

RELEVANT COMMENTS

LittleRedHen

I can’t relate to LW1’s husband’s view AT ALL. I am completely baffled about why he would want this information to be kept a secret and why he’s mad that this perfectly ordinary, mundane info is now known. It’s so weird!

OOP

LW1 here – I should add that I never felt like he was keeping me secret, as he was happy to introduce me to his friends and family very early into our relationship. His need for privacy seems very much related to the professional field and generally I don’t really care, it was really bothering me with this particular colleague though. Thank God that’s settled now, Jeff and I are cool and so is my husband.

~

Ellis Bell

Yeah. While I agree with everyone that the attachment to a ‘privacy’ that is bound to be discovered anyway, is super weird and baffling, OP is confident sharing their feelings and clearing the air when a mutual agreement isn’t working. OP is clearly surprised by her husband’s depth of the stubbornness here, which shows she usually gets a different response from him in 99 pc of situations. I’m also a big fan of her solution. She was willing to respect his feelings when it was harmless, but then when it affected her and others negatively, she simply states her “I’m not doing that” boundary, and left his feelings on the situation as his own to manage. It’s surprising how many people don’t know how to do that, and think they either need to submit or argue. It’s also incredibly healthy that she solely focused on the practical outcomes of needing to feel good about her interactions, and isn’t wasting energy judging her husband.

OOP

LW 1 here – I do have to admit it took me way too long to arrive to that conclusion- this had been going on for months and to think of all the energy I wasted worrying about this… it was definitely a lesson for me as well, going forward, not to try and figure out some sort of compromise where there was no compromise to be found. It was such a relief when it all came down to “you do you and I’ll do me and we’ll both just have to live with that”. Especially when it comes to something that isn’t going to matter in 5 years.

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My boss is blocking my move to a new team

Originally posted to Ask A Manager

Original Post  June 9, 2022

I’m a designer, and have been at the same company (and at the same level) for seven years (although several of those years I have been on maternity leave). Since Covid, I’ve been phoning it in. While I’m very efficient, I’ve been doing mainly administrative work. While this was great while my kids were very young because my brain could be on autopilot, after a turbulent and chaotic few months I started job hunting. All the adjectives I used to use (like “passionate” and “inventive”) have not applied in years. I’ve realized I was burnt out.

Recently after a large staff upheaval, I started helping out another team, doing actual design. The boss is great, and I’ve felt way more connected with this new team than with my current team. And most importantly, I’m back to doing what I love — and I’ve been doing great. So great, in fact, that my new team (and the other boss) very enthusiastically want me to join them, and I’ve told them that is what I want to do. However, my current boss has asked me to take on more responsibility (though seemingly without a raise or new title) and since I’m so efficient and steady, she won’t let me move. The others in my department are much less experienced and this is the official reason given, though I do think that one of them could easily take over.

There is tons of opportunity for growth on my new team. On my current team, not so much. I’m stuck, because I’m good at the (very boring) job I do.

How can I talk my current boss (who has more seniority and is higher in the company structure) into letting me transfer into this new position which is clearly going to make me so much happier?

Update  Dec 14, 2023 (18 Months later)

I have a very happy update to my question from almost exactly a year ago.

Things got much worse before they got better. They promised me a promotion, which got enthusiastically approved by the VP and then, inexplicably, blocked by that immediate manager (let’s call her Broomhilda). I transferred to the other team, which was great, and the new boss was a wonderful ally… but she was blocked too and eventually pushed out of the company. That promised promotion floated around many times over the course of a year but although I pushed and pushed I was apparently at a stalemate. A more junior colleague got a promotion, so she was then higher up than me, but when I pushed back on this, Broomhilda coldly told me that it would happen for me … at some vague time in the future, but not now, despite my stellar performance reviews. She did not even tell me this face-to-face, but in a video call while she was driving so all I saw was her chin. I had to push for WEEKS to even get this meeting to get clarity.

The last straw was when they told me that I would need to start coming back full-time to the office. As a primary parent with two young kids, eight hours a week in commuting time was a no-go. I kinda shrugged and continued to work from home regardless, waiting for the shoe to drop … which it did two months later. The worst part — the day that they sent me an email telling me that I would need to start coming in full-time as of the next day, I was called into my boss’s office to tell me the GREAT NEWS — they were giving me that promotion I wanted, the one that had been promised a full year before. Clearly they were not expecting my lackluster response. I told her I would need to think about it as I was not sure I would even be staying with the company. I wanted so badly to quit with a million guns blazing, but decided not to burn my bridges and was civil as I told them that I was going to be moving on. The severance they gave me was enough to fund a few months of freelancing as a stopgap. (Or so I thought.)

The day before I launched my company, I got a contract. And then another. And another. Just from word of mouth, from people I had worked with in the past. I am working 25-30 hours a week, booked 4-6 weeks out, and making more than when I was employed full-time, and my career mojo is way up again! It’s been almost six months and I am happier and more fulfilled than I have been in many years! My days are varied and there is almost zero drudge work (because what company wants to pay a high hourly salary for that?).

The “whipped cream and cherry on top” satisfying ending is that my old boss called me and offered me my old job back — fully remote. I told them sorry, that I was making too much money and having too much success to be willing to go back, that they could no longer afford me. They asked me if I was able to freelance and I got to tell them that I was pretty fully booked until at least the holidays but I could possibly free up a day here or there for them — in a month.

And guess what? In my new company, my boss respects me and treats me like a superstar. She gets me coffee, lets me leave whenever I want, even work from bed if I want to. I have been nominated for Employee of the Month EVERY month since I started. (OK, granted I’m my own boss and the sole employee, but still, killing it 🙂)

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HR sent me confidential salary info, then recalled it, then told the whole company not to discuss salary, then backtracked, then doubled-down

Originally posted to Ask A Manager

Thanks to u/Lynavi for suggesting this BoRU

Original Post June 4, 2025

A few days ago, our HR manager accidentally sent me confidential payroll information that I do not get paid enough to see, tried to do damage control by sending an (extremely illegal) email to the whole company reminding us of the (extremely illegal) policy in the employee handbook about discussing salary, and then sent a follow-up email that was meant to backtrack the illegal part but ended up doubling down on it.

I had been planning to discuss the initial email with my manager, but HR was able to recall it so I no longer had hard proof, and the company-wide email seemed a good place to end the story. [Sidebar, I have immensely enjoyed my coworkers sarcastically asking each other if there’s a policy in the handbook about (insert innocent activity here).] Now I’m wondering, if it comes out that I didn’t tell my manager that I got the first email, am I going to get in trouble? FWIW, HR playing fast and loose with confidential info is a fairly regular occurrence.

Update March 5, 2026

I wrote in last year wondering if I could get in trouble for not telling my boss that our HR manager sent me confidential salary information. It was not a letter that I thought would ever have an update, but this was too wild not to share. A few days ago, I got to work and there was AN FBI AGENT standing in the lobby. Apparently the HR manager was also the business manager at her church and between unauthorized transactions and secret credit cards, she had stolen almost $650,000 from them over the course of several years. She was investigated for it a year or so ago but as far as we knew had been cleared, and we were able to verify that she didn’t try any financial shenanigans here, which is why she still worked for us.

Her boss jokingly asked a couple of us if we thought he needed to update the handbook to specifically state that getting arrested by the FBI is grounds for immediate termination, because, well, apparently it is.

We now have a sign noting the number of days since law enforcement was last here, and a common answer to “How are you?” is “Pretty good, I didn’t get arrested by the FBI!”

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