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his comment section is open for any non-work-related discussion you’d like to have with other readers, by popular demand.
Here are the rules for the weekend posts.
Book recommendation of the week: Zero Stars, Do Not Recommend, by MJ Wassmer. A couple is trapped at an expensive resort after the sun explodes.
* I make a commission if you use that Amazon link.
It’s the Friday open thread!
The comment section on this post is open for discussion with other readers on any work-related questions that you want to talk about (that includes school). If you want an answer from me, emailing me is still your best bet*, but this is a chance to take your questions to other readers.
* If you submitted a question to me recently, please do not repost it here, as it may be in my queue to answer.
It’s four answers to four questions. Here we go…
1. Application asked, “If offered this job, will you accept?”
I am applying for jobs. One application asked the question, “If offered this job, will you accept?” Yes and no were the only options. Obviously, I clicked yes. I assume this is not legally binding. But is it a red flag? Another possible red flag is that this job has been posted for 10 months.
Ha, that’s a ridiculous question — as ridiculous as an applicant asking, “If I apply for this job, will you hire me?” Who knows, on both sides; that’s what the interview process is designed for both parties to figure out. You could discover the work is different than you’d envisioned, or you hate the manager or the culture, or the salary or benefits are too low. The question is absurd.
That said, is it a red flag? I’d say it’s a yellow one. It could have been stuck in there by some deranged HR person who’s sick of having offers turned down, whereas the actual manager would be fine to work for. But that in combination with the fact that they haven’t been able to fill the job for 10 months (if that’s what the long posting means; it doesn’t always) isn’t super promising.
Related:
when an interviewer asks, “If I offered you the job, would you say yes?”
2. A colleague we don’t want to work with is trying to muscle in on our volunteer project
I work in tertiary education, and we have an informal community of practice that unites some of us who feel kindred (people with a shared experience that puts them at a disadvantage in society and education and a desire to help people who have similar experiences). For the third time in four years a small group of us are organizing a symposium. The first was in 2021, when I partnered with a colleague, Summer, and we hosted 12 presenters over a half day. Summer was really keen but wasn’t particularly good at organizing and “lost” room bookings. They were not particularly good at the tech, managed to video all the presenters speaking from the waist down, and wasn’t particularly good at social stuff. I am autistic and even I noticed that. While it was good to have someone to bounce ideas off when we planned, it was hard work to run the event.
After the first event, Summer said that they didn’t want to organize another one. I was keen and another colleague, Zoe, wanted to work with me to organize a second event. A third colleague, Lisa, offered to help. Zoe and I worked really well together, but Lisa drifted off and stopped attending meetings a few months into the planning. Our second event had 350 attendees, had two big sponsors, flew in an international keynote and two national keynotes, we had 64 presenters, and afterwards we received a staff award at our institutional celebrations. Organizing all this was voluntary, with our managers’ and institutions’ blessing, rooms, and tech support but over and above our allocated workload. In the meantime, Summer presented a research paper about our community of practice and made some of us feel othered, and which really upset Zoe.
Now Zoe and I are planning a third event, with the blessing of our wider volunteer community. Lisa has decided to join us again, which we said was okay as we both thought she would drift away once the work began. But Lisa insists Summer be part of the team, because Summer wants to be. We have said we are working with a smaller team for now, and when we need help we will reach out and ask more people to join to team. But Lisa adds Summer into our meeting invites, and both send us emails offering their help and insisting we share our planning with them. All this has really upset Zoe, who avoid the meetings.
Lisa has accused us of not being professional because we don’t want to work with Summer and has suggested we need to learn to get along. This is a volunteer event, one we have put a lot of energy into. Are we being unreasonable to want to work with a team of our choosing? Do we have to accept everyone who wants to be part of the planning, no matter how much trouble they have caused in the past? Is there a polite way to say, “Actually, we did this last time, it was wildly successful, and it’s ours to do again this time”?
You do not need to agree to work with Summer. You and Zoe have put a ton of work into organizing these events, and you’re right to want to ensure they go well, which means paying attention to how you’re staffing them. Just because a project is a volunteer one doesn’t mean you have to allow anyone who wants to work on it to help in whatever capacity they want. You decide who to involve based on the needs of the project and your assessment of potential volunteers’ strengths and weaknesses (just like with paid work).
It’s entirely reasonable to say to Summer, “Thank you so much for offering, but we already have all the work covered.”
The bigger issue is Lisa. You and Zoe need to have a direct conversation with her where you explain that Summer was difficult to work with last time and struggled in the areas they were responsible for, and based on that experience you’re not going to be including Summer in the planning again. It doesn’t sound like Lisa has any sort of authority here; she can’t just decide on her own to involve Summer. You and Zoe are the ones who have been organizing these events and you have standing to tell Lisa no, it’s not happening, and that if she wants to help, she’ll need to understand that the two of you aren’t working with Summer again.
3. I proved my coworker wrong — did I handle this right?
I work for a small organization and very occasionally process refunds. If the person receiving the refund is to get a paper check. I hand off those requests to a teammate who has access to our bill paying software. Recently I did just that, and the person receiving the refund contacted me to complain that she had to fill out a bunch of stuff, including her Social Security number, in order to receive her refund. A legitimate complaint in my book.
I sent an email to our team (only four of us, two of whom are on point for accounting responsibilities) to let them know of the complaint and to question why it was necessary for her to jump through that hoop. A more senior team member, Eric, told me that “everyone is set up in the system as a vendor and they need to supply a SSN or EIN in order to process all payments.” I pushed back because this was a simple paper-check-issuing request, and represented a refund, not a payment to a vendor. There was back and forth, with Eric insisting that there was no way around it and that our accounting department absolutely requires such information because every vendor needs to receive a W9.
I replied again stating that this person is not a vendor, does not need to report this as income, and therefore does not need a tax form, which negates the need to collect a SSN or EIN. Eric and I got on the phone to discuss it, and he was adamant that all of this was absolutely necessary.
I was confident that he was wrong, so I researched it further on my own. I contacted the help desk for the billing software system, as well as our internal accounting department. The billing help desk confirmed that to issue a simple paper check, the system only needs a name, email, and phone number. The accounting department assured me that they do not need a W9 for end-of-year reconciliations.
I hate to be an “I told you so” kind of person, but in this case I thought I owed it to our clients to get it right and not ask for unnecessary personal information. I took this information to our manager. I felt this was the better route than emailing the team or contacting Eric directly because the message hopefully wouldn’t glaringly look like I did an end-run around them, and my manager is obviously more authoritative in communicating these things. She stated that she would confirm it with our accounting department and then deliver the message.
Did I do this right? Should I have accepted Eric at his word? Should I have told him up-front that I was going to research this myself? And finally, should I have gone directly to my manager with the info, or addressed it with Eric first once I had the answer?
You handled it fine. Eric’s claim made no sense, and you were right to look into it further, particularly as a person who has to process refunds.
If Eric hadn’t been so adamant that he was right when you talked to him about it, you could have gone back to him and said, “I looked into this a little more and billing and accounting both confirmed that we don’t need SSNs or EINs for refunds.” You could have done that even after his bullheadedness, but it’s understandable that you didn’t want to at that point and instead handed it off to your manager to deal with. (After all, you could have done that and been met with continued insistence that you were wrong and he was right, regardless of what your research found.)
I’m guessing Eric will be well aware that you were involved anyway, but since he kept insisting on something wrong, it makes sense to have someone with more authority than you correct him.
(Also, it’s weird that Eric thought you’d need W9s to issue refunds. Unless he never deals with anything involving payments or taxes, it’s useful for your manager to be aware he may have some pretty surprising gaps in his knowledge.)
4. Is my new job just not for me?
I was internally recruited and promoted to a new role that began in June. My onboarding has been terrible and I have walked into a completely dysfunctional team dynamic. My new boss is universally hated and oblivious to her lack of skills. She actually brags about how much people like her and how effective she is, when the truth is almost everyone we work with internally and externally has gone out of their way to tell me privately how much they hate her. The team I took over is being obstinate and uncooperative and claim everything I ask them to do isn’t actually their job.
In theory I have the skills and track record to work through problems like this, but I am finding this level of dysfunction overwhelming and I feel surprisingly apathetic and struggle not to be short / negative with my team. Advice on recognizing the signs personally and systematically that this just isn’t for me?
In these seven short sentences, you’ve already got strong signs of that, particularly here: “I am finding this level of dysfunction overwhelming and I feel surprisingly apathetic and struggle not to be short / negative with my team.”
Feeling overwhelmed, becoming apathetic, and feeling short with people are all very bad signs — and it’s only your third month there. If you’d been there a few years and were feeling this, I’d have other suggestions, but when it’s that bad by month three? Listen to that.
A reader writes:
I’m in early stages of interviewing for a new position. This would be a change of sector for me, and at a much smaller organization, so I honestly can’t tell from the job description if I should think of this as a lateral move or more of a step-up. What kinds of questions would you ask interviewers to figure that out?
More details: it would be a moderate pay increase (15%). At my last organization, I felt I was operating at a senior director level but had been denied a promotion, so I was always wishing I was “in the room” for decisions I had a lot at stake in. Since the new organization is small, there doesn’t seem to be room for growth unless an executive leaves.
It’s definitely true that some types of positions, particularly management ones, can be vastly different from large organizations to smaller ones, even when they have the same title … and sometimes even when they have the same job description.
Some things things that can help you figure out whether to look at this as a lateral move or a step up:
If being in the room when decisions are made is important to you, you’re much more likely to get that in small organizations than in large ones. You’re also more likely to be able to have a larger impact on a larger portion of the organization’s work.
The flip side of that is that the scale of smaller organization can mean that even with a title at the same level or higher, you can end up with less access to resources, training, and development, as well as less visibility in your field.
You also mentioned having less room for growth in the smaller org. Keep in mind that that’s really only about internal room to move up; if the new job gives you achievements that you can parlay into a new job somewhere else in a few years, that’s a form of moving up too.
Also, while all of the above is important, make sure you’re considering the day-to-day experience of working in a large organization versus a small one. If you’re used to working in large orgs, moving to a small one can be a culture shock. (That said, there’s small and then there’s small. Very tiny orgs can be especially tricky, partly because any problems that exist there will loom much larger than they would somewhere else. There’s nothing to dilute them, and far fewer checks and balances.)
A reader writes:
Recently I had the chance to put into practice so much of what I’d read on your site. I was offered a job, but was disappointed at the salary (even though it was a 25% upfront increase and title bump, I’d expected more). Were my expectations too high (I was operating on gut instinct at this point) or was the offer below market?
I’d never before negotiated my salary. When talking to various friends and family about pay, including my spouse, they all typically agree that “any raise is a good raise.” It’s taken me years to build the professional confidence I have now, and I only just recently felt confident enough to take on salary negotiations. It was an absolutely wild experience (wild in how easy it was) that turned out great.
By getting to know the market range for my position and experience level (including deep-dives into job boards, scouring the “Careers” webpages of my company’s competitors, and talking with folks in my industry who I trust), plus doing the literal math on the differences between benefits packages (it was crazy to see how wildly this affected my overall comp), I ultimately determined the initial offer was under market (and when factoring in differences in benefits, 10% less than the initial, upfront figure). Using my findings and your site’s advice, I negotiated a higher offer that put me smack dab in market range.
This whole process has absolutely blown my mind. I’d built it up in my head (and some parts of it were a little awkward on my end since it was my first time doing this), but it could not have been easier. In particular, this post of yours was so helpful; I actually used some of the same verbiage in my discussions with my new company’s HR team.
All in all, I’m so thankful for this process and how your site helped me get through it. Not only am I making market for my position (probably for the first time in my life, though I’d rather not fact check that since I don’t need to be depressed this weekend), but I feel so much more confident. It’s amazing what an effect this simple act of self-advocacy can have. It’s an amazing feeling to be paid what you’re worth.
Let’s discuss animals at work! We heard last week about someone who accidentally went to work with a bird on her head, and we’ve heard in the past about someone who couldn’t get to work because of aggressive nesting geese, we’ve fielded some drama about bears, and we’ve of course had myriad stories about dogs at work (peeing, barking, rampaging, attacking, being ridden, and exacting revenge).
So: What run-in’s have you had with animals at work? Please share in the comment section.
It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…
1. Husband has issues with my dedication to my job and 1-2 work trips a year
I am the manager at a small association, and I have the opportunity to fill the vacant CEO position soon. This promotion would significantly improve our financial situation, allowing us to afford more for our eight-year-old daughter and possibly retire by 55. We have been struggling financially a bit, which is a strain on our relationship.
My job requires travel, including one annual trade show abroad and now a potential second trip for an important convention. The first trip is 11 days long, and the second would be 4 days. However, my husband has mixed feelings about my work and travel. While he says he is proud of me, he also feels I spend too much time working. I do check my emails after hours and participate in board discussions on WhatsApp, but before that, I would just be doom scrolling or watching YouTube.
He is uncomfortable with me being away for what he calls “two weeks” and thinks it is bad for the family. He also worries about my safety in a foreign city. Recently, while he was watching videos with headphones on, I was designing a digital membership card on Canva. He later brought it up as an example of me not wanting to spend time with him, which I found confusing.
I take our daughter to school and pick her up every day. I make dinner 3-4 times a week and handle my share of household chores. We also have a cleaning lady who comes once a week. Despite these efforts, he often invites friends over on weekends when we could spend time together.
He is a great man—loving, hard-working, and a devoted dad who makes our daughter’s school breakfast and lunch every day. However, he recently lost his father and cut ties with the rest of his family, which has made him more clingy. He does not talk about it unless he is drunk, but the issue with my traveling started before this.
I am struggling to understand why my work and travel cause such tension between us. I love him, and I know he loves me, but I feel trapped and exhausted. I am starting to wonder if I would be better off divorced, even though the thought brings me to tears.
Marriage counseling, right away. You’re both coming at this from different perspectives and with different concerns but not understanding the other, and you’re at the point where you’re questioning the marriage. Marriage counseling was made for this. I wish it were a work problem because that would be easier to solve, but it’s a communication and relationship problem, and a pro will be able to help you navigate it.
Also, if the drunkenness is more than a rare occurrence, there’s an additional problem to tackle too — but marriage counseling could be a place where you look at that as well.
2. A C-suite exec recklessly exposed us to Covid
Yesterday, a C-suite leader in a people-facing role came to an in-person, hour-long meeting with me and a few others while visibly sick and coughing, claiming it was “just a summer cold.” She also mentioned that her Covid tests were negative but also that the tests she used were quite old and unreliable. This morning, of course, she tested positive for Covid.
I’ve been trying to be careful lately because I do not want to get Covid again and we are facing a summer surge. Also, when I have been infected in the past, Covid messes up my menstrual cycle for a while. This is particularly concerning because my partner and I are trying to conceive, which no one at my work knows, of course. I mask in crowded public places but I haven’t been masking in our office.
I realize now that I probably should have left the room right away, but I felt enormous pressure to stay, due to the nature of my professional relationship with this leader, her lack of suggesting those uncomfortable leave, and the fact that no one else did. I feel so stupid and cowardly now. I discussed my frustration with a more senior member of my team, but I’m still very upset.
What should I do now? How can I handle similar situations in the future without feeling pressured to stay in a potentially unsafe environment? Do we live in a world where I just need to get over this or I might jeopardize my professional relationships and career?
One thing that became clear early on in the pandemic was that you couldn’t rely on other people to take measures to protect you — you’d have to do it yourself. That remains true. If it’s important to to you to avoid Covid, the only real way to do it is to be willing to assert yourself, even when it feels a little awkward and even where there’s built-in pressure to defer (like meetings with C-suite leaders). What that means in practice: carry masks, put them on in situations like this one, and be willing to say things like:
Say these things cheerfully and matter-of-factly, and then do what you need to do. If you’re working with reasonable people and you put effort into maintaining warm relationships generally, it shouldn’t be a big deal.
Also: I wrote this column at a different point in Covid, but the principles still apply about asserting yourself in ways that feel a little uncomfortable in service of a larger good.
3. Which employee is lying?
I manage a customer-facing team that answers questions and provides supplies to clients. Two team members (Taylor and Blake) are not excited about their jobs and are not invested in ensuring clients receive the best service possible. They have both participated in training and discussions about expectations. Taylor has a written warning that the next poor customer service interaction will result in termination. Blake would most likely receive a written warning.
Last week a customer complained about the service they received. The customer refused to identify the staff member since they did not want to get them into trouble. Taylor and Blake were the only two working at the desk during the incident. They both said the other one was who interacted with the customer. I don’t think either will admit to the interaction, so how do I address the poor service the client received? And is there a way to escalate discipline for Taylor or Blake?
If you don’t know who was responsible and have no way of finding out, you can’t hold one of them accountable for it — although you can certainly address it generally with both of them by revisiting how you want similar situations handled and asking them to confirm their understanding of that.
But also, given that one of them is lying about what happened, take it as impetus to supervise both of them more closely: find opportunities to observe more often, spot-check work, check in with clients about whether they’re getting what they need and to take their temperature generally, and ask their colleagues for feedback.
After all the retraining and expectation-setting you’ve already done, if you’re not seeing a significant and sustained change you should move things toward a resolution with both as swiftly as you can. And it sounds like the sort of situation where the closer you look, the more problems you’re likely to find, so significantly increasing how much attention you’re paying should speed it all along.
Also, if you can avoid scheduling them together, do that too.
4. “Strong personality”
Years ago, when I was in lower management, a coworker who was entry-level and I clashed. It was a mutual clash of styles and personalities. She complained to our boss, and during a meeting with the three of us, she defended herself by saying, “I have a strong personality.” I didn’t respond to this, but it felt like a cheap excuse to behave like an ass. Is this something people can say to avoid accountability? Or is this a non-excuse?
In contexts like this, it’s often something people say to try to avoid looking more deeply at how they might be contributing to the problem. Without more details about exactly what the issues were with your colleague, I can’t say for sure — but often it’s part of the “that’s just who I am!” school of excusing one’s own behavior.
I’ve always liked this article by Marshall Goldmith called “An Excessive Need to Be Me,” where he points out that a rigid allegiance to “being yourself” can sometimes be pointless vanity, and at odds with actually improving your dynamics with other people.
Related:
my employee identifies proudly as a grump
5. Who can know about discipline meetings?
When an employee is undergoing discipline or a performance improvement plan, what can an employer tell other employees? If the employer has a “need-to-know-only” policy, does the EA scheduling the meetings “need to know” that those meetings are related to discipline?
It’s really up to the employer’s own internal policies. No law prevents them from sharing info with other employees. If their policy restricts the info on a “need to know” basis, it’s still possible the EA scheduling the meetings would fall in that category; depending on how that particular EA manages people’s calendars, they might have access to agendas, or know basic topic in order to prioritize the meeting relative to others, etc.
Last week we talked about people who found themselves in a hole and just kept digging. Here are 15 of the funniest stories you shared.
1. The lunch
Early in my career I was interviewing for a position after having just left a bad company (I had to play games to get my paycheck, and then they bounced said check and got mad at me for mentioning it, and I wasn’t allowed to take lunch ever). When talking to the interviewer, she asked me something about what I was looking for in a company and I said, “At my last job, I wasn’t allowed to take lunch, so really, just lunch.” I meant it as a joke, but the interviewer didn’t get my sense of humor and just calmly assured me I’d get to take lunch. I could have just let it go, but I didn’t. I constantly kept bringing up that I wanted lunch as if all of a sudden she would understand that I was being funny – she did not. She even brought me over to the kitchen area to show me that this was where lunches happened and that there was no ban on lunching.
I did not get that job. I cringe every time I think about it. I have gotten to have lunch at all my jobs since though.
2. The bluff
In my very early 20s, I applied for a job which involved looking after a website, mainly front end work – creating content, uploading it, and doing some light editing, which was totally in my comfort zone. I realized I may have been out of my depth when the interview confirmation two days before reminded me to bring screenshots of my website with me (this was not mentioned before). Rather than accept that this job was possibly expecting more tech knowledge than I could provide, I panicked and flung together a WordPress in about an hour.
I arrived, did a committed if weak presentation on the four blog pages I had cobbled together, and then the questions began. it swiftly became apparent they were looking for a combination web developer, filmmaker, editor, and communications officer. Rather than acknowledge this and leave gracefully, I simply lied. Professional video editing software which wasn’t mentioned in the job description? Well, I’ve seen someone using it and had a 90-minute tutorial on it one time so sure, I would say I am very confident and experienced with it please don’t ask follow-up questions (they asked follow-up questions). Have I worked with international students? Yeah, loads! (in the sense that there was an Italian person in one of my undergraduate presentation groups.) I distinctly remember getting confrontational with one of the interviewers who challenged one of my mostly fictional answers. I kept seeing outs and just refusing to take them. I don’t why; by this point I didnt even want the job, I was just gripped by a mad desire to “win.”
The interview ended quickly and I didn’t get the job, but I do feel a little better that they re-advertised the post with a much amended job description.
3. The bluff, part 2
Two jobs ago, I somehow missed a very important email. I said I didn’t get it, but when I went back and double checked, I HAD gotten it, I just overlooked it. But I didn’t admit that, and kept saying I didn’t get it.
So my boss said, “If you didn’t get the email, maybe you should contact IT, because we don’t want a widespread issue.”
Rather than saying, “Oh look! I found it!” I went ahead and reported the issue to IT.
They worked on figuring out the issue, and I said nothing. They had me send and receive emails to others and all seemed fine so they didn’t know the issue and it kept getting escalated. I said nothing.
Finally one of the techs decided to check my inbox (I guess they gave me the benefit of the doubt, or else they could have done that first, I suppose) and found the email. Also they pointed out it was clearly marked that it had been read.
I pled complete innocence and denied that I had ever seen it before.
My boss never said anything but I’m sure she must have known I was just elaborately refusing to take responsibility.
Ugh. I still cringe.
4. The novel
My very first job interview was for a fast food restaurant in a mall. The manager interviewed me at a table in the food court, which, combined with my inexperience, must have made the situation feel more casual than it was, because at one point he asked what I did in my spare time and I launched into a longwinded description of a novel idea that I was brainstorming at the time. He tried to move on to other questions, but I’d assumed that the hobby question meant we’d proceeded from the interview into small talk and really wanted to talk more about my novel, so I kept going.
I didn’t get the job, and only ever wrote like one scene of that novel.
5. The driver
Many years ago, a coworker and I were driving to a somewhat remote construction site. We’d both been there before and he was driving. About halfway there I realized he’d just missed a turn and let him know, suggesting we turn around.
“No. I don’t turn around.”
“…excuse me?”
“I don’t turn around! We’ll get there this way!”
The big problem was the turn he missed was over a bridge, we were now on the wrong side of a river. Since we had to wait for another bridge, we got there over an hour late and he peeled into the parking lot at 30 mph, which was a big deal because it was a construction site with an incredibly strict speed limit of 15 mph. The project manager who we were meeting had been in the parking lot waiting for us and saw us arrive in a cloud of dust. He was kicked off the project.
6. The unicorn
For years, I worked in a landmark building in a major American city with very strict security protocols. We all had a badge with our photo and name on it that was verified by security every time we entered the building.
One Halloween, one of my colleagues came to work dressed up as a unicorn. He walked into the building with a full-on unicorn mask that completely covered not just his face, but his entire head. Security stopped him in the lobby and told him he needed to take the mask off before he went any further. My colleague refused to remove the mask, and instead showed security his badge with his name and photo. Security said, “That’s not enough. You need to remove the mask so that we can be sure that you are the same person in the photo.” My colleague continued to refuse.
This went on … for a while. Eventually building security called our office to explain the situation and asked for our help in resolving it. But it was no use. My colleague refused to remove his mask and refused to leave the building. At one point, he suggested taking a new security photo with the mask on so that his physical presence would match his security badge.
He never made it up to the office, not just on that day, but any day thereafter. He was fired for being a dick to the building security staff and showing terrible judgement for a simple request. He had always been a little weird, but I never expected him to die on the hill of wearing a unicorn mask into the building.
7. The oversharing
In college I applied for a part-time job at a slightly higher-end retail shop. The store manager interviewed me. She asked about my goals and for some reason I was honest about not wanting to work in retail forever. (I barely avoided using the word stuck!) It was like I had lost control of my body and mouth but my brain was still in there trying and failing to slam on the brakes. She politely asked for clarification and I stomped on the accelerator and said that I had an exciting career in front of me using my degree, and that I didn’t want to “just” do retail. She was gracious about my poorly hidden (and long since corrected) judgment of retail careers.
Somehow I was offered the job, but I was so embarrassed I made up a fake internship and declined the offer. I ended up getting a way worse part-time job and never shopping at that store again.
8. The “professional”
I had a new hire who didn’t make it to his third week. The role was entry-level office job — we’d show you the practices of the industry, but candidates had to come in with a familiarity with the MS Office Suite. This requirement is stated in the job posting and in the interviews, but it’s an basic requirement in my industry. This is important.
My new hire, let’s call him Fergus, is struggling by the end of his first week. He can’t complete the basic training tasks. Finally I assign him the most basic task I can think of — update data in a few PowerPoint slides with pre-made charts. This should have taken five minutes. After an hour, I go check on him. I am stunned — he is typing in updates into data labels, not editing the actual data, and he’s confused why the chart isn’t updating. He’s been doing this for an hour and never sought assistance.
I regain my composure before he notices and calmly ask him how much experience he has with PowerPoint. He admits that he’s never used it before. I ask why it was listed on his resume if he’d never used it (yes, it had been listed on his resume), and he says, “I knew I could figure it out” (spoiler alert: he could not). I explain that this is a basic requirement for the job. I tell him that I can do an intensive remedial course for him and that he is required to be in the office on Friday for the training (it’s a hybrid role; everyone is local, but wfh is offered at manager discretion).
He decides not to come into the office on Friday because he’s “too stressed out” and wants to work from home. When I call him, I get a full rant about how my expectations are “too high” and he is a “professional who knows what to do” and who am I to be “policing his work and giving him orders and assignments.” Y’all, I’m his manager and my job is to give assignments.
I immediately relay this conversation to my director, who goes to HR to talk about the best way to terminate this guy. No need — within an hour, he sends a long email to the director and HR complaining about how self-righteous and bossy I am, and how he simply can’t work under these conditions. He complains that I provided inadequate training because I expected him to know common Powerpoint functions without showing him. He proposes that he no longer have a manager and that I put together a six-month training program to teach him how to use Powerpoint.
My director fired him on the spot.
9. The software
I used to work for a nonprofit where cutting corners was very typical. We used a terrible proprietary software that our CEO’s kid made in coding class in high school. Our tech guy, Mark, was basically responsible for keeping it functioning by running out new patches and recoding it whenever it crashed. The guy’s life was hell but he did the best he could.
We got a new staff member, “John,” and he really hated the software and assumed most of the issues were Mark’s fault. Mark was in an office on the other side of campus so he never met Mark in person.
We had a vendor coming in to look at our tech. John mistook Mark for the vendor and gave him a full tour of the software, calling it dog crap and saying that he spent most of his day “wanting to punch Mark in the face” and that Mark was a “F*cking idiot.” Mark just smiled the whole time, despite most of us trying to interrupt John.
Just then, the vendor comes in and goes, “Hey, Mark!” I’ve never seen someone wilt the way John did.
10. The battle of wills
I’ve got kind of a double-digger story, because there are two people determined to get their way at any cost: we announced a managers meeting to roll out a new program that is being implemented. Nothing super difficult, but our owner, Brenda, wanted to have all the managers together to discuss it. One manager, Steve, hated everything about the idea. He didn’t want to go to a meeting, he didn’t want to learn a new system, and he would just continue managing his area the same way he had been, thank you very much. I empathized but said it was mandatory. He said he refused, and nothing would change his mind. I went to Brenda with his concerns and she said if he did not go to the meeting and start using this method, she would consider that to be his notice that he no longer wanted to be a manager and his title and pay would reflect that choice. He begrudgingly agreed to go.
The meeting was being held off-site at a very high-end restaurant with meeting space. We had been very clear about the dress code, but Steve showed up to the meeting in ratty jeans and a hoodie, with the hood up. He looked so bad that a staff member of the restaurant literally thought he was a prowler. I suggested we just send him home then, but at that point I think it became a matter of principle for Brenda, who said he was going to stay and complete the training no matter what. He did stay for the day, but was completely obnoxious. Some of his tactics:
– He refused to watch videos – making a point to deliberately look away from the A/V equipment if a video was playing. When Brenda called him out on it, he faced the TV but covered his eyes.
– Everyone was emailed a handout that they were supposed to complete over the course of the meeting with their division goals and other things. They were supposed to complete it and email it to Brenda, who shared it with the group via the A/V setup. She opens Steve’s handout without looking at it first, and there on the enormous screen was his form, where he filled in every single open field with “This is stupid and a waste of my valuable time.”
– In a brainstorming session, he would make outlandish suggestions like “go to space and sell to aliens” or “discover a previously unknown species of underground earth dwellers and use them as cheap labor”, and when our boss called him on it he would very sanctimoniously say, “Remember, there are no bad ideas in brainstorming, Brenda.” This was hilarious, but not helpful.
– He would derail discussion by belaboring every single point. Almost anything anyone said, he would pick it to pieces. I was trying to keep things moving by saying “we’ll come back to that later, Steve” or “we’re not getting quite that granular right now, Steve” or “if you have questions, write them down and we’ll come back to them,” but it was happening so much that I was exhausted and resentful.
Everyone was irritable and nothing was getting accomplished and everything was taking forever. The entire meeting just turned into a strange battle of wills between Brenda and Steve. And yes, it was ridiculous, and yes, multiple people tried to speak up about it and nothing changed, and no, it was not reasonable, but that is just how some dysfunctional workplaces are, and all you can do it just deal with it. Or leave – which was what Steve chose to do. He quit the next day, and enough time has passed that the story is kind of funny now. And every now and then someone will very deliberately use “go to space and sell to aliens” or some other little bon mot from that meeting. That is Steve’s legacy.
11. The ground beef
My team once found some signs that a product my company made could struggle to work well on very fatty foods. At a meeting to discuss this, the product’s lead designer (who was constantly bragging about what a perfect product he’d designed) kept denying it could be a problem with the product. Page after page of data supporting our claim and he just kept making up less and less plausible explanations: we mislabeled our samples, we didn’t do the testing correctly, we were trying to make him look bad. Finally he claimed, “Well, I can PROVE it works with high-fat foods because we tested it with 50% fat ground beef!”
If you pay any attention to food regulations, in most states (including ours) that’s well above the fat percentage you can sell in ground beef. We called him out on it and he said that he had got a special deal from a small local butcher (note: still not legal) and that HE knew how to talk people into doing what he wanted, and he wouldn’t tell us where he bought it because it was a secret. That’s right, he made up an imaginary butcher who sold him imaginary beef.
We eventually came up with a solution for the issue, which was obviously caused by fatty foods. He’s no longer with the company but for a long time we’d joke about, “Oh, I can get that from my butcher. You wouldn’t have met him, he goes to a different school, but he really exists.”
12. The mistake
My coworker was fired from a very-hard-to-get-fired-from job because he just could not admit he was wrong. Call him Wakeen.
Wakeen did a slightly dodgy thing. I’m going to have to change the situation a bit for anonymity but let’s say he submitted some work expenses that were in violation of the expense policy. Not a crime, but objectively something he shouldn’t have done or at least should have checked up on. Someone noticed and called him on it.
At this point Wakeen could have said “oops, sorry, I misunderstood the policy/mixed up my receipts” and no one would have thought twice about it. Instead, he claimed that someone could have broken into his computer and submitted those expenses under his name. He attempted to get the IT department to wipe the logs so no one could check. I don’t think he went as far as blaming a specific person, but he did try to claim that it could have been any of a number of people that he worked with, and they couldn’t prove it was he himself who submitted those expenses.
As is often the case, the cover-up was much worse than the crime. The fact that he was trying to get other people to alter logs, and also throwing his colleagues under the bus, meant the whole situation spiralled up the hierarchy and eventually he was fired.
To reinforce the “I am never wrong” attitude, he asked at least one of his now-ex colleagues for a reference.
13. The refusal
During Covid, my company cut our pay and hours to 75% across the board. My area of work wasn’t impacted by Covid, and it was during our busy season, so I ended up working up to 65 hours while only getting paid for 30 to meet client deadlines. I was pissed, and decided my act of resistance was to refuse to sign the letter acknowledging my pay was cut.
The deadline passed, I ignored a few reminder emails and then HR began reaching out. Unfortunately, the way they reached out was to just slack message me “Hi MyName” and not provide any context. This is still my biggest work pet peeve, so I dug in even more and decided I wouldn’t answer until they sent me a message saying what they wanted. They never did and just messaged me “Hi MyName” every day for at least a month, and I ignored every single one.
Finally, after six weeks, I got an “action required” email from HR, cc’ing my boss and our regional manager from HR, saying that I needed to sign ASAP or else. By that point, said boss and regional manager had gotten me moved back to full pay, so I didn’t even have anything to be mad about anymore. Fortunately, they were both entertained by my antics, and also told me to cut the crap and sign it, which I did finally.
14. The betrayal
A while back, my husband received a message on LinkedIn from someone he went to law school with, “Draco.” The message was calling for everyone he was vaguely connected with to boycott the law firm he was currently working for because they were sneaky, underhanded, untrustworthy, and betrayed him. Naturally we went to his profile to see what was going on and he had made several long posts. To sum up, Draco had gotten engaged to a fellow law student while they were at school. After they both graduated, they got received jobs at her father’s law firm. Within the first six months, he got in trouble for trying to throw his weight around (“do you know who my father-in-law is”) and got shut down. Then Draco went to his father-in-law-to-be who, instead of protecting him, “betrayed” him and after he “stood up for himself” fired him. So he sent around the LinkedIn message telling people to boycott the place.
Draco made a post a few days later claiming he went to his fiance and told her they had to make a stand. She needed to quit her job at the firm and go no-contact with her father until he apologized and gave Draco a job again. She refused, which showed she was just as untrustworthy as her father. Over the next two weeks, Draco made several long rambling posts about how you can’t trust anyone, he wasn’t going to take it or be silenced, and bashing people for not helping him review bomb his former job on Glassdoor and Yahoo despite the messages he was sending people. Again, all of this was on his professional linkedin profile.
Draco’s last post was that he had flown back to his hometown and was going to live with his father since his fiance broke things off with him (also a betrayal) and the apartment was in her name. Someone, presumably his father, then deleted all the posts and closed his LinkedIn profile.
15. The cover-up
I worked on a team of four, where I was the techy gal on the team, whereas others, especially Fergus … just … couldn’t. Since he was also the most senior, he was constantly frustrated and angry when the tech stuff didn’t go his way and left him looking like a moron.
Anyway, one day he claimed that some information was wrong in a system. This system was cloud-based. I knew how to access the source of this information and also how to access all activity that occurred — along with usernames. I told him I would look into it for him, and found that the information was actually correct. I said, “Fergus, it looks to me like there are 10 llamas there, just like there is supposed to be. Could you have looked at the wrong column?”
NO. He WAS NOT looking at the wrong column, he claimed. IT WAS WRONG!
Okay, so I went in to look at the history, and in between the time when I said, “Okay, all looks good” and his claiming that he was absolutely right in the first place, he had gone in and made a change to make it look like he was right all the time! However, he didn’t realize that this history button existed and that he could be found out.
So I said, “Hmm, it looks like you made this change a minute ago. It shows your change at 9:32am, with your username.”
He insisted he did no such thing.
I was going to shrug it off and just correct the problem, but he then started to really double down on his being right and his NOT MAKING THE CHANGE.
The interaction ended with him saying that my internet was different from his internet.
A reader writes:
I supervise a manager who is in most respects a great manager. She does an excellent job of coaching her team, but she has difficulty getting to all her emails in a timely manner. We’ve talked several times about the need to delegate and to review all emails within 24 hours, and strategies for working quickly through emails to get to the important stuff, and she’s getting better, but I still have to prompt her on hot items that come in because she hasn’t seen them.
I recently heard her mention working on weekends in order to go through her inbox. I understand that she receives a lot of emails. We all do. But I don’t understand why it takes so much extra time on her part. I’m a huge proponent of work-life balance and I worry that she’s going to burn out if this keeps up. To add to this problem, she is a subject matter expert in one area that I have little experience in, so I often can’t respond to questions without consulting her. I want to be respectful of her time, but sometimes I need an answer now.
I’ve always been really good at setting boundaries at work and delegating work, and I find it odd when other people don’t. I also tend to read and process information more quickly than most people, but I can’t tell if it’s that, or if she’s just disorganized. I’m definitely guilty of delaying a stronger conversation on the issue because she’s great at everything else, but I want to address it before she gets too deep in the weeds. How do I understand what the root of the problem is and address it before it’s too late?
I answer this question — and two others — over at Inc. today, where I’m revisiting letters that have been buried in the archives here from years ago (and sometimes updating/expanding my answers to them). You can read it here.
Other questions I’m answering there today include:
A reader writes:
My question is regarding a rather sticky situation I am unwillingly involved in. In short, I think I am reliving an episode of The Office. I have two colleagues who are about to get married to each other, let us call them Joe and Kate. Unfortunately, I know for a fact that Kate is having sex with Peter, who is my direct manager.
It’s an open secret in the office that Peter and Kate often go on “work trips” together, and everyone knows it except Joe. This isn’t speculation … because about a month ago, Peter and Kate were “gone” but there was a deadline to meet. So Peter joined one of our meetings via video, and we SAW KATE try to sneak behind, undressed. Fortunately, Joe wasn’t in the meeting (different team).
I am wondering what exactly I should do here? Morally I am against cheating, but also, and I can’t stress this enough, I just don’t want to deal with the mess of it all. However, the wedding is approaching and I have received an invite. I can’t in good conscience go to this wedding when I know what I know. I feel a moral compulsion to tell Joe, but is it even my business? Should I even get involved?
Other than this mess, I generally like my office and my coworkers. I am paid well for my role, and other than his less than stellar attitude towards sexual fidelity, Peter is a good manager who has my back. My industry is quite niche, and my skill set is specialised, so finding another job won’t be an issue. But, I am comfortable here and really don’t want to switch.
But every time I see poor Joe around the office, the guilt consumes me. I am so anxious about this, that my appetite has reduced and my husband and I have seriously started looking for a therapist for me to help me deal.
Oh no.
Whenever a question involves whether to tell someone their partner is cheating, you’ll find arguments on both sides, with some people strongly on the side of “the partner deserves to know / their health could be at risk / it will make it worse if they realize people knew and didn’t tell them” and others who argue that it’s not your business, you risk the person shooting the messenger, if they stay with the person your relationship with them won’t recover, some people would prefer not to know, etc. As a general rule — to the extent there can be one, which is not a lot — I’d say to let your sense of what the person would want you to do to be your guide, although it’s not always clear, and it’s sticky in the best of circumstances.
But this case is additionally complicated by the fact that these are your coworkers and the affair partner is your boss.
For the record, Kate and Peter are particularly horrible people for not only treating Joe’s heart with such casual disregard, but also for treating his professional life that way — for humiliating him in front of his colleagues (as that’s so often how this will feel), for putting the rest of you in this position, and for apparently not caring what this will mean for Joe’s ability to comfortably remain in his job if he finds out. All of that would be true even if they were being as discreet as possible, but their complete brazenness adds even more insult.
Importantly: are Peter and Kate in each other’s chain of command? If so, that’s a whole additional layer of Not Okay, and it’s a legal liability for your company.
As for what to do … ugh.
Because these are coworkers and presumably not close friends, it would be defensible to leave it alone. This sucks for Joe, but you’re not the one to blame for what’s happening, and you’re not ethically obligated to risk blowing up your work life. In theory, if Peter weren’t your boss, I’d more comfortable advising you to discreetly talk with Joe … but Peter is your boss, and even if you ask Joe not to cite you as his source, people say things when they’re angry and upset and betrayed and there’s no guarantee you wouldn’t be named. You’d like to think that if that happened, Peter — who you describe as “a good manager who has my back” — wouldn’t hold it against you, but there’s so much potential for this to explode on you professionally that I can’t in good conscience recommend it.
Do you have HR? If Peter and Kate aren’t in each other’s chain of command, HR may not care (although it sounds like it’s causing enough drama and distraction in your workplace that they should), but if there’s any reporting relationship there, it’s very much their business and that might be the easiest route to know you’ve done something about it.
