the storage labyrinth, the tape terrorism, and other things you thought were normal early in your career but were actually very weird

by Alison Green on April 7, 2025

Last week we talked about things that you thought were normal early in your career … but later learned were actually just weird things your old workplace did and which were not typical at all. Here are 15 of my favorite stories you shared.

1. The packed hotel rooms

My very first internship was the most bizarre work experience I’ve ever had, but I didn’t know it then.

My boss was personally wealthy, as in 1% wealthy. But she was super cheap at work. When we organized the nonprofit’s annual conference, we got X many rooms free for staff for however many attendees booked rooms. My boss told us that we were going to be bunking together because there weren’t enough rooms. She had her own penthouse suite though! Only unpaid interns roomed together. (The paid staff had their own. Unpaid interns made up about 70% of the organization’s entire staff.) I learned later that we got a discount for every hotel room we didn’t fill for staff.

I stayed in a large suite with 11 women. Three of us shared a bed. Three were on the pullout. I vaguely recall some people on cots and the floor. All of us broke fire code. But think of a medium-size hotel suite with 11 people staying in it. It was normal to me because I thought it was like dorm living on a Friday night.

At my next job, we were planning an annual conference, and I asked the VP of events, a very scary, fierce woman, if we could pick who we’d be rooming with or would she do it? She blinked twice and said, “No one ever shares hotel rooms. I’ve never heard of that! Hotel rooms for staff are the cheapest expense so cutting it makes no difference in the event budget.”

I was mortified for the remainder of my time there.

2. The phone answerer

The first “real” job I had in a small office, everyone answered each other’s phones when they weren’t in. It was encouraged by our boss so no customer or client “never left a message and felt unheard” during office hours. So, if I was in my office and Sally was out for the day, if her phone rang, I had to go into her office and answer it. I would say, “I’m sorry, Sally is not here for the day but can I take a message and have her get back to you?” This was office wide, no matter your position (so yes, we even had to answer our bosses phone). I didn’t know any better and I thought that’s just how things went when you worked in an office setting.

Fast forward to my next job. My first week there, my office neighbor was out for the day and her phone rang so I got up out of my new office and went and answered it. This was a bigger office, and the amount of “what the hell is this guy doing?” looks I got from everyone was astronomical. After I explained how it was in my old office, everyone laughed it off and explained that definitely is not how offices work and is why answering machines were invented!

3. The gang bang

I worked in TV news production in the late 80s through the mid 90s. First station I worked for called press conferences provided by an outside organization for all networks a “gang bang.”

First week at my second TV station as we were going through the newscast rundown prior to the show I asked if the live shot was a gang bang. And thus I discovered that it is not, as I assumed, an industry standard term.

4. The misplaced enthusiasm

At my first job, company IT support, we were not supposed to respond to manager messages in the Teams-equivalent with “Okay,” because it wasn’t showing enough enthusiasm. We had to respond with “Party!” Didn’t matter if it was something like a mandatory overtime announcement – “Party!” It ended up being a Thing a lot of us used mockingly outside of work, and I still sometimes do it. Definitely had to train myself out of it at my next more normal communicating job though.

5. The tic tacs

In my first job, which was at a call center, my team was all on the same anti-anxiety medication to the point that we called them “tic tacs” when we needed to ask a coworker for a pill.

6. The storage labyrinth

One university department I worked for right out of undergrad grossly misinterpreted the rules on retention of student records, both the types of records that need to be kept and the length of time required to keep them, such that they believed anything even remotely related to the student’s time at the university must be kept far longer than was truly necessary. This resulted in the entire basement of the building I worked in consisting of a labyrinth of locked storage areas full of boxes upon boxes of student “records” that should have been recycled a decade ago. It looked like that scene from the end of Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark except there was nothing cool hidden in the boxes, just lengthy descriptions of academic advising sessions from 15 years ago. I’m pretty sure nothing was ever cleaned out because the task was too daunting by that point.

Upon changing jobs, I realized that the laws surrounding student retention required far, far less stringent application and the only thing that most of the storage facility in the basement was good for was probably mouse housing.

7. The sleeping

My first job made me think that I’d have to deal with sleep-related topics in the office on a regular basis. This ranged through some … unfortunate … variations.

Conflicts from people sleeping in shared office spaces while others were trying to do their job at their desks. People falling asleep while on duty. People sleeping in their direct manager’s office! Being told to share a hotel room with a complete stranger (from a different, completely unaffiliated business) to save on travel costs. Being told to share a bed (yes, bed – not just a room) with coworkers (yes, PLURAL) to save on travel costs.

I was relieved to discover this is not at all normal after I changed jobs.

8. The glorious cornucopia of pens

In my first job after graduation, we had to ask a senior executive’s assistant for any new office supplies, although almost nothing was actually available anyway. My main request was for a new pen — the cheapest kind they could buy in bulk — which I could only get one of at a time. And you had to show that your existing pen was clearly out of ink. If I had lost it, the assistant would quiz me about what happened to my old one and where it was. When I moved to my next job, there was a whole closet of office supplies and I still remember the amazing moment when I was just casually told I could take what I needed. I was so nervous that for a long time I’d only take one pen at a time in case anyone saw me taking — god forbid — two.

9. The emails

At my dysfunctional office job after I finished college, it took three people and upwards of half an hour to send even a short internal email. You’d write the email, recruit a coworker to read over your shoulder and critique/wordsmith while you wrote, and then have your supervisor do the same.

This was not the kind of office that did life or death work, it wasn’t a field where that level of word choice mattered, and to this day I have not heard a better explanation than “someone in upper management was afraid of our department looking bad with an insufficiently perfect word choice.” I don’t even think the other departments did this! I was a recent college grad and had no idea this wasn’t normal for corporate jobs until I mentioned it to a friend, who looked at me like I’d grown a second head.

10. The mailing labels

We had to type the mailing labels … on intra-office envelopes.

11. The elevator access

An old employer that was notoriously cheap kept some costs down by not allowing employees to use the elevator without a doctor’s note. At first I didn’t realize quite how bonkers that was because I was fresh out of school and (at least way back then) plenty of high schools and below didn’t allow all students to use elevators, so I guess I read it as an extension of that? I realized how thoroughly bizarre it was when a colleague broke her ankle and had to crutch up and down three flights of stairs in a cast for the few days it took her to get a doctor’s note certifying that she did indeed need elevator access.

12. The permissions

I had one manager who found it “disrespectful and suspicious” for staff not to ask permission before leaving our department’s office. Like, to drop off a paper. Or to return a piece of IT equipment. Or pick up materials. If you were leaving your immediate desk vicinity, you had to find Ms. Boss, ask her if you could go take care of whatever business you had down the hall, and then finish it quickly once permission was granted. This boss did not last long (shocking, right?), but I was very young and so on-edge from her outbursts and micromanaging that I went to my next job with the habit of asking every single time I needed to leave my desk. Finally, after a couple weeks, my (wonderful) new manager explained that he really, really didn’t care if I needed to go give Jane a paper … I could just do it.

13. The letters

I work in a hospital. When we needed to send a letter to the patient, we would print it, fold it and put it into an envelope. Twice a day, someone from the internal post team would collect the letters and their team posted them. I did this from 2018-2024.

In August 2024, I moved departments. When I printed a letter, everyone looked at me like I was crazy and told me it goes electronically to an off site printing company. I immediately emailed my old manager to tell her, thinking she would love this new information. Turns out she knew this all along but didn’t trust the process. So she made us do it all by hand. I asked the internal post guy about it and he said we were the only admin team that he collected packages from. His team’s actual job was to arrange transportation of clinical samples to labs.

14. The tape terrorism

In my early 20s, I worked in insurance (home/auto/life) for a few years at a few companies. The first office I worked at after receiving my license was a very large and successful franchise office of one of the nation’s top home/auto insurance companies, so I assumed (naively) that it was a well-run representative of the industry. I did learn a lot, but the owner/manager was an absolute tyrant who would scream at us while we were on the phone with customers, move our bonus requirements so she never had to pay us, and required everyone in the office (all women) to wear makeup and keep their hair done and call all the male clients “honey” and “sweetie.”

Beyond all this, she had a set of strange rules/requirements we could never quite understand. We rotated desks monthly, and she didn’t allow us to have any personalization at our desk: no photos, no decorations, no notes. She enforced this by outlawing tape in the office — it was impossible to find a roll of Scotch tape for love or money, and we were screamed at if we brought in our own. The only exception to this was our list of agent names/codes, which was taped to each computer monitor with one piece of tape. If we desperately needed tape for a ripped paper or another normal office use, we would very carefully tear off a tiny sliver of this single piece of tape. If the owner noticed that we’d put tape on something else, she would shrilly demand to know where we’d gotten it and what did we think we were doing.

When I started my next job at another insurance office, I opened the office supply drawer to find rolls upon rolls of Scotch tape. I felt like the richest person in the world, and almost overcome by emotion exclaimed, “Oh my god, tape!” My new bosss’s reaction to this made me realize such tape-based terrorism was not, in fact, typical in the industry.

15. The Miller time

I used to work at a startup where the owner’s last name was Miller. So much of our internal design-related things (not official logos) was a clear rip-off of the Miller High Life logo, and for major celebrations the featured drink was always 40s of Miller High Life. I was straight out of college, so this frat-like stuff didn’t seem that weird at the time!

I should also mention that the only place in town to buy 40s of High Life was a sketchy gas station…. So for major office events someone would have to go to the gas station and buy a bunch of 40s, totally normal work activity!

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can I poach an employee from my mentor?

by Alison Green on April 7, 2025

A reader writes:

I am going to be leaving my company soon and starting my own business, and will need to hire support staff. One of the employees at my current company (Taylor) has told me she is looking for a new job. I find Taylor to be an excellent employee and I would be happy to have her working for me. I believe that she enjoys working with me as well.

The catch is that Taylor primarily works with Leslie, one of my colleagues here, and has done so for several years. Leslie has been a mentor to me since I started working in this city. She is well liked and well connected in our field, while I’m pretty new to it.

I do not plan on asking Taylor to come work for me. However, this would not prevent her from submitting a resume if I post a job ad, particularly if she knows that I will be hiring.

I am worried that if Taylor left her job to come work for me, Leslie would see this as employee poaching and would perceive this as betrayal of a mentor, even if I didn’t actively solicit Taylor to work for me. It would impact Leslie’s work because she would need to hire a new support staffer and train them to her specifications, which takes time and effort.

Primarily I want to preserve my good relationship with Leslie, but I also don’t want to become known in my relatively small professional circle as the one who left Leslie in the lurch by poaching her support staff.

I also recognize that Taylor is not an indentured servant to Leslie and does have the choice of leaving whenever she wants. If she were to submit a resume, I’m not sure that “you work for Leslie so I can’t hire you” is a good enough reason to strike her off of my list, particularly when she has worked for me before and we have a good relationship.

What are your thoughts? Could I hire Taylor if she submitted a resume to work for me, or is the risk of torpedoing a good personal relationship and a professional reputation too high?

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

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my boss loves being told she’s beautiful

by Alison Green on April 7, 2025

A reader writes:

My boss clearly loves compliments on her appearance, and our team is responding with more and more of them. It feels embarrassing and a bit ridiculous to me, especially since no one ever makes these kind of compliments to anyone else (e.g., “I love your shoes” to another team member but stuff like “you’re so beautiful, your face is radiant” to the boss).

I’m her deputy. I can’t bring myself to say anything about her looks, it feels too weird. But the compliments come so often from other team members that I worry it starts to look pointed that I say nothing. And I also wonder if I need to point out to her that this dynamic that is intensifying and suggest that she cools it down a little (without implying that I don’t think she looks good)?

Or should I let this go and just accept this as a quirk of an otherwise good boss?

I wrote back and asked, “I am admittedly fascinated by this — how did it even start happening?! Did someone compliment her on looking nice one day and her reaction was so appreciative that others started doing it too?”

Yes, exactly this. It started with occasional compliments about something she was wearing. She normally says something like, “Oh, do you really think so? You’re so nice, you make me feel so good” and sometimes goes and looks in the mirror or reapplies make up. And I guess naturally people started saying it more and more.

And it’s been gradually ramping up to the point that now every day when she arrives at the office, it’s almost a team ritual to gather round and tell her how beautiful she is. I don’t think she favors the ones who gush about her the most, she just enjoys it in general. But it still just feels weird to me and I don’t know whether to tell her she’s gorgeous or try and tactfully tell her to shut it down!

Well…

This is of course really weird and not good from a team dynamics perspective, but it’s also hilarious.

Like, can you imagine coming to work every day and preening while people gathered round to tell you how beautiful you look? And then going to gaze at yourself in the mirror to bask in your reflected beauty? I do not think this is a normal experience, even for the supermodels among us.

And it is extremely entertaining.

As for what to do … you’re absolutely right that it’s weird and she should cool it, but given the balance of power between you, if you feel too awkward about raising it and would rather leave it alone, it doesn’t rise to the level of something where you have to intervene.

I generally try to apply a “is this really what I would do in real life?” test to my advice (because otherwise it’s easy to fall into giving advice that sounds right but isn’t actually realistic, given humans and politics and all the strange pressures of work life), and I’ve gotta say, I’d almost definitely leave it alone and just enjoy it as the very strange spectacle it is.

The exception to that is if you have the kind of relationship where you could comfortably say, “Dude, it’s getting weird that everyone is complimenting you so much every morning — I think we should try to stop that” — but I’m guessing that if you did, you already would have said it.

This would not be my advice if you were seeing favoritism toward the team members who compliment her or any chilliness toward those who don’t. If that were happening, as her deputy you’d have more of an obligation to speak up (although still not an absolute one, given the power differential). It would also be different if you were her manager; in that case, you’d really need to point out that she’s creating a weird dynamic and should stop it.

All that said, if you are comfortable speaking up, you could say something like, “Have you noticed we’ve developed almost a ritual of everyone complimenting you in the morning? I worry about people feeling like they need to curry favor with you.”

But man, it’s hard to say that without sounding like you’re saying, “You are not that pretty and they’re just sucking up to you.”

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boss was upset I wanted to leave when our A/C failed, when a beloved figure is laid off, and more

by Alison Green on April 7, 2025

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

1. My boss was upset I wanted to leave when our A/C failed

Last year, my coworker spent the majority of an eight-hour Saturday shift in a public building with no operable bathroom. She reported a sewage backup to our boss and the answering service of the facilities department responsible for maintaining the toilets, but her calls for help went unanswered.

This was on my mind last Saturday, when our building’s A/C failed. I put in the same calls, but the only response I got was my boss asking me to let her know if it gets any hotter. A little before noon, I texted back: “It’s hotter! If help is on the way, let me know. Because otherwise, I am not going to come back from my lunch break. It’s just too hot to finish out my shift.”

My boss called back and told me that if I did not come back from lunch, others would almost certainly follow until there would not be enough staff to keep the building open. And also, she could not even start the approval process to close the building until the temperature rose another five degrees, a temperature that represents an OSHA violation. So I had to come back from lunch to finish my shift.

I appreciate the tough position she is in, and I get that the most expedient way for her to do her job is to demand that I do mine. But my job involves air conditioning! And the last time a similar situation happened, she left my coworker stranded! As far as I know, she did not even try to summon help or start the building failure approval process even though the situation then was much more dire.

In the end, a repairman did arrive and cool us down so I was able to happily finish my shift. But my boss is very unhappy because I threatened to leave. Was there a better way for me to handle this?

It’s hard to know without knowing what kind of temperatures we’re talking about. OSHA doesn’t require specific temperatures, but they do recommend 68-76° F — so if your boss was saying she couldn’t close the building until it got to 77° … well, that doesn’t seem that outrageous (in fact, 78° is supposedly the best eco-friendly thermostat setpoint in the summer). That said, temperature is very personal (my husband might expire at that temperature) and if you’re too hot to comfortably work, you’re too hot to comfortably work, and explaining that wasn’t out of line.

Ultimately I think it really depends on (a) how much of your concern was based on knowing no one had been responsive to your coworker’s bathroom situation last year and worrying this would be the same, versus (b) your actual temperature/level of discomfort. If your concern was the former rather than the latter, telling your boss that you didn’t plan to come back from lunch based on something you feared might happen but hadn’t actually happened yet was overkill … although in that case it would have been fine to say, “There’s a point where it won’t be feasible for people to stay and work, so if that happens we’ll need to leave early.”

But either way, your boss being “very unhappy” over this is a bit much.

2. Does board member’s comment mean I’m about to get a big raise?

I work in a nonprofit where the staff and the board really get along and generally have friendly relationships. Tonight, I ran into a member of the executive committee at my nephew’s track meet. She’s a realtor by trade, and while we were chatting, she said, “So, you’ve been in this city for a while, have you thought about buying a house?” I laughed and basically said, “You know what my salary is. What are you on and can I have some?” Her response was something cryptic about waiting for review season.

Now, my boss had recently mentioned something about moving me from an associate in my department to potentially leading a small team, which I assumed would come with a pay bump, but definitely not one that moves me from “my car is 15 years old and I’m dreading the day it bites it” territory to “able to afford a house” territory.

On one hand, this is great news. On the other, this was a cryptic suggestion about a number that is probably not official yet, and I have no idea if what I’m even imagining she means is what she actually means (like most cities, it costs a lot less to get a house in some parts than others). So my question is, how do I not get too attached to this idea? I’m afraid that she’s set my hopes too high and my new number won’t measure up. Or maybe things change and I don’t get the promotion after all. Before this conversation, I was perfectly happy at the salary I’m at for the job that I do in the city where I live. Now I’m just anxious. Please help!

Put it out of your head entirely. There’s a decent chance that she was speaking to you as a real estate agent rather than a board member, and real estate agents like to encourage people to buy property. “Wait until review season” does not necessarily mean “you are about to get an enormous pay bump that will put buying a house within reach.” It could just mean “maybe you’ll get a raise, but I have no idea whether that will change anything meaningful about your ability to buy property” (as she doesn’t know your expenses, whether you have a partner whose income will go toward a house too, etc.) … or it could be a semi-uncomfortable “yeah, our salaries are low, hopefully you’ll get a bump soon” … or it could mean nothing at all and just be a pleasant nicety with no meaning attached to it. Frankly, she shouldn’t be intimating anything about any potential raise outside of official channels, and there’s a good chance that she didn’t mean to for you to take her remark as seriously as you did (even though it’s understandable that you did!).

That could all turn out to be wrong, of course. Maybe you’re about to get a huge raise! But you’re much better off attributing no meaning to her comment, and then letting it be a happy surprise if that does happen.

3. When a beloved figure is laid off, is fan outcry helpful or hurtful?

I’m hoping to hear your take on a situation from my doll collecting hobby. Mattel and Barbie are some of the biggest names in this space, and in a recent round of Mattel layoffs, a beloved Barbie doll designer named Bill Greening was included. The community reaction was immediate — people were sharing corporate contact information, people declaring on social media they wouldn’t add to their collection unless he was reinstated, etc. There’s even a change.org petition to get him rehired with 2,600 signatures.

I know that fan-related businesses come with a whole series of unique challenges, but collector dolls are a relatively small piece of Mattel’s business. Obviously there’s a lot going on over there the community isn’t privy to — there were over 100 employees laid off, but Bill is the one with the active community relationships that have rallied in support. In your opinion, is this community outrage likely to be more helpful or hurtful for Greening’s future employment opportunities, either with Mattel or with another toy company? If this is hurtful, can you think of positive ways for the community to support him?

I don’t know enough about the situation to comment with any nuance, but in general this kind of thing doesn’t tend to hurt people’s future ability to get hired and can sometimes help, by demonstrating community enthusiasm for the person and creating an opening for another company to capitalize on that fan base. It’s unlikely that the original employer will reinstate him based on the outrage (and presumably they were aware of his fan base before deciding to lay him off) but it’s not out of the realm of possibility either. (Although if you were Bill, would you go back if they offered? If they did offer, though, he’d be in a good position to try to negotiate something extra out of it.)

4. I’m applying for a job at my husband’s company — when should I mention it?

I received an interview request today for a position I’m very interested in — at my husband’s employer. He’s been there going on 13 years, and one of the reasons I applied for the role in the first place is the positive experience he’s had as an employee there.

The position I applied for is completely unrelated to what he does, and we wouldn’t even be working in the same office building (or in the same town, for that matter — the company has a pretty substantial presence in our area). But my home address is on my resume, and one of the first things that pops up when you Google either of our names is our wedding announcement.

Do I mention anything during the initial interview? I’m not trying to hide anything from the interviewer, but it also doesn’t feel like it would be super helpful to volunteer information about my spouse when it might not be necessary. Complicating things slightly is the fact that the role I’m applying for is within HR.

If the job wasn’t in HR, I’d say to bring it up at the offer stage — as a sort of covering-your-bases FYI, so that it doesn’t look weird that you never mentioned it and in case they have any policies that would make that a problem (which is unlikely given the very separate jobs, but it’s better to find out before accepting if they do).

But with the job being in HR, you should mention it earlier, since being in HR increases the chances that it might be something they wouldn’t allow. Given that, I’d mention it in the first interview so that you don’t waste your time if it’s a no-go, framed as, “I wanted to mention my spouse works in the X division. I don’t foresee that being an issue for us, but since the job is in HR, I want to flag it now in case that would pose any concerns for you.”

5. “Couldn’t care less” vs. “could care less”

This isn’t an office question but more of a clarification. I have several times noticed letter writers using the phrase “could care less.” I was under the impression it should be “couldn’t care less” because that announces that I am at the lowest level of caring. By saying somebody “could care less,” it means they are not quite at rock bottom, but I don’t think that is the message the writer is trying to convey. Am I wrong?

You are correct; the expression is properly “couldn’t care less,” for the reason you said. However, the scone is out of the barn on that one; “could care less” has been used for so long that in practice they’ve become interchangeable. (Here is Merriam-Webster agreeing with me.)

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weekend open thread – April 5-6, 2025

by Alison Green on April 4, 2025

This 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: Every Tom, Dick & Harry, by Elinor Lipman. Yay for a new Elinor Lipman, who I believe is the Jane Austen of our time. A woman is hired to handle the estate sale of her small town’s brothel/B&B. There’s intergenerational friendship, a romance with the chief of police, family drama, a high school reunion, and much more. (Amazon, Bookshop)

* I earn a commission if you use those links.

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open thread – April 4, 2025

by Alison Green on April 4, 2025

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.

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can I suggest that my employee rethink her career, pimple patches at work, and more

by Alison Green on April 4, 2025

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

1. Can I suggest that my employee rethink her career path?

One of my direct reports, “Mindy,” has worked for my organization since college; she’s now 31. I joined the staff three years ago and enjoy her a lot as a person: she’s smart, has a wonderful attitude, is very diligent and organized, and brings her best to every project. The problem is that I don’t think she’s on the right career path.

Right now Mindy does communications work. but the issue is that she’s not a very good writer, which is a fundamental skill for the job. We do a lot of writing and it has to be done well, and her pieces require lots of rewriting. After nearly a decade of writing projects, LOTS of coaching from me and her previous manager, plus related degrees, her work still needs endless rounds of revisions and is just overall not good enough.

She wants so badly to do a good job and have a thriving career in this field, though! She has so much potential and I want her to succeed as a professional … but she flat-out doesn’t have some key fundamental skills needed.

However, I think she’d be great at marketing. She’s very good at analyzing and planning, and marketing jobs don’t require the same need to constantly produce really high-level written pieces. I’ve worked in marketing in the past and her strengths would be huge assets for that type of work, and it’s a career that wouldn’t involve the skills that she hasn’t been able to develop. It’s not a job that exists at my organization, though.

We have a good relationship and talk regularly in our check-ins about career growth. Is there a way I can diplomatically tell her that while I don’t think she’s suited for a career based around writing, I think she’d make an excellent marketer? I want to navigate this carefully with her so that she feels supported and respected, even if it means essentially telling her she should consider eventually finding a new job elsewhere.

Bonus related question: I’m at the point where I’m going to outsource a large annual project Mindy is usually very involved with. The quality of her work is poor enough that it will be faster, much less stressful, and will turn out much better if we hire a consultant to do it. Is there a respectful way I can explain that she’s not going to be working on that project anymore because of the quality of her work? Should I even tell her that? I know I wouldn’t be doing her any favors by hiding the reason for hiring the consultant, and I’ve been consistent in addressing her work quality, but I have no idea how to approach that conversation.

Yes, please tell her! In fact, you could use the outsourcing of the annual project as an opening into that conversation — first “here’s what I’m doing and why, and here’s what the issues were when you worked on this in the past” and then “I’ve been reflecting on where you’ve been struggling, and I want to be honest with you that while I know that you’ve been working extremely hard — and frankly you’re a pleasure to work with — I haven’t seen the level of writing that we need for this role. I see your strengths as more ABC, which I think would make you fantastic at projects like XYZ.”

I do think there’s another question here, which is whether you’re going to be able to keep her on at all if she’s not able to work at the level that you need. Ideally, of course, you’d have this conversation, she’d reflect and come to agree, and she’d move in that direction on her own. But if she doesn’t, you’ll need to figure out whether the issues rise to the level of something that jeopardize her current job or not. (Based just on your short letter, it sounds like they may. If that’s the case, since it sounds like you have an excellent and supportive rapport with Mindy, I’d try to do it through a series of candid and supportive conversations that end in a mutual agreement that she will move on — but I’d also be thinking about how you’ll handle it if that mutual agreement doesn’t occur.)

2. Hickies revealed in the locker room

This is more of a philosophical question than anything else. Is it okay to have visible hickies at work if they are normally covered by clothes and only seen when taking off your shirt in the locker room? Technically my coworkers might see that I have a sex life, although locker room etiquette is of course that everyone becomes invisible until their clothes go back on. Still: is this something to avoid?

No one in a locker room should be paying any attention to the parts of your body that are revealed while you’re changing clothes.

That said, there’s a difference between “should” and “will.” If part of your body is covered in what look very much like sex-related bruises … well, assume people may have thoughts about that, so proceed accordingly. They certainly shouldn’t say anything to you about it, but is that info you want your coworkers to have in their heads about you? If it’s a single small bruise, it’s almost certainly a non-issue, but I can imagine things that would be significantly more revealing than that. (For example, if your ass bears evidence that you’re into spanking, it’s better for everyone if you use a non-work gym that week.)

Related:
is it unprofessional to have hickeys at work?

3. Wearing pimple patches at work

I want to get your take on wearing pimple patches at work. I have a new employee who is Gen Z who wears pimple patches on her face, sometimes multiples of them, at a time. Our workplace is corporate with a semi-strict dress code, but it often goes fairly ignored. For example: the dress code says no leggings, but people often wear them, including my boss. Also, the dress code says no sneakers but people often wear stylish sneakers.

I wear pimple patches all the time, but wouldn’t wear them myself at work. We frequently conduct meetings via Zoom, and I feel like this comes across as unprofessional, but I could be off in terms of whether this is acceptable to another generation or other cultures.

It really depends on the office, but the culture has definitely moved toward seeing pimple patches the same way as bandages (i.e., fine to wear at work).

Particularly if they’re clear or flesh-colored, I’d mentally categorize them as bandages and ignore. If they’re brightly colored, it gets more into questions about your particular office culture (and if you’re unsure how it’s playing there, I might ask someone senior to you whose judgment you respect if it feels out of sync in your particular office).

4. My boss keeps using WhatsApp, Signal, and texts to contact me

I have a new boss (about two months) who pretty much never replies to emails. She’ll WhatsApp/Signal chat me instead. This is definitely not the culture, and I personally find it really annoying as I usually only use these apps for personal reasons or if there’s an urgent issue. She’ll also text me after hours / on weekends for not time-sensitive stuff. Sometimes it is actually urgent so I can’t mute her and check on my own schedule. Having to monitor three channels of communications with her is exhausting, especially as someone who’s trying to keep better work/life boundaries, and logistically annoying because if I’m trying to refer back to something, it’s not as easy as just searching one platform for the conversation. That said, she’s not aggressive or scary like some other bosses who text at all hours.

Is there a way I can ask her to stick to email unless it’s time (or otherwise) sensitive, or as the lower in the hierarchy do I have to just accept her way as a new annoyance of my job? I am pretty senior in my organization but she is clearly above me in the hierarchy There are other issues with her management style which I don’t find to be the most strategic, but not to the level of my considering quitting over.

Yes, you can say something! I’d frame it this way: “I don’t really use WhatsApp or Signal so I’ve been missing messages when you contact me there. Could we stick with email so I can be sure I see everything you send me?”

And the next time she texts you after-hours, wait a while before responding (to reinforce that it’s not work time) and then say, “I’m going to move this to email so it’s with our work messages; I’m trying to keep work stuff off my phone. I’ll email about this shortly!” Do that enough and it might retrain her.

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can I resign but still ask for severance?

by Alison Green on April 3, 2025

A reader writes:

Last summer, an old mentor from my past company — who led a couple projects I was on but was not my direct manager — took a new VP role and sent for me. I had applied for a role on her team at our former org and didn’t get it, but she was able to create a similar opportunity for me at her new org. I’m absolutely grateful.

The tricky thing is I’m actually not happy here. This company is not my jam overall and I only somewhat give a shit because of my mentor and now boss. But as you’ve written about before, going from a friend (albeit a senior friend) to a manager had unexpected growing pains now that the dynamic is markedly different.

I can sense things going south (i.e., at a recent off-site, I got feedback about my attitude and communication resulting from frustration with the org as a whole, and my gap in executive presence has had repercussions and has also created tension with my boss for making her look bad) and while I still have a sense of duty to someone who has advocated for my career, this company as a corporate entity can go fuck itself.

Here’s where I’m stuck. I’ll be eligible for unemployment in April and will have accumulated enough hours. I’m not interested in resigning altogether (and can’t collect unemployment if I do), and I want to preserve relations with my boss and leave on good terms rather than being a miserable employee and leaving on bad terms. Is it an option at all to have a frank conversation negotiating a smooth exit that they initiate, and with severance?

It’s possible! The severance part is less certain, although it’s possible too.

Since it sounds like your boss knows things aren’t going well and probably won’t be surprised to hear you’re not loving it there, can you have a candid conversation where you lay out your concerns? You could say something like, “I really appreciate how much you’ve advocated for me, so I want to be up-front with you that I’m increasingly thinking Company isn’t the right place for me. I’ve encountered issues XYZ, and I’m concerned I’ve also caused problems for you since you brought me in. I’d like to be realistic that it’s not working out, and I wondered if you’d be open to negotiating a planned transition out of my role, where I could file for unemployment while I look for another job? Ideally I’d hope to discuss severance as well, with the hope of bringing this all to an easy resolution for everyone.”

Your manager might hear this with some relief! If it’s been clear to her that things aren’t working out, it’s easier to have you raise it before she has to and to have you offer a clean solution for everyone.

However, on the severance part: Companies typically only pay severance when they’re firing someone or laying them off. The idea is to give you a financial cushion so your income isn’t yanked away overnight (typically in exchange for you signing a general release of any possible future legal claims against them, whether or not they think you actually have any).

However, there are some occasions where you can try to negotiate severance when you’re leaving voluntarily — like if it’s clear your work isn’t going well but your employer would prefer not to fire you (this might be your situation), or when you moved for a job that turned out to be very different from what you were promised and the employer feels guilty about that, or if the employer is worried you might have a legal claim against them for something otherwise. In your case, you’d basically be asking them to offer severance in exchange for a relatively clean exit from a messy situation. You don’t have a ton of leverage to negotiate it, but you can certainly ask without looking ridiculous. (And if there’s anything that would give you more leverage — like that you left a good job for this one and it ended up being different work than you were told — definitely mention that.)

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update: my boss is pressuring me to work more hours … I just came back from stress leave

by Alison Green on April 3, 2025

Remember the letter-writer whose boss was pressuring them to work more hours when they had just back from stress leave? Here’s the update.

Good news all around, thank you for the advice — I desperately needed to hear it.

It ended up working out — eventually. Brian’s outbursts, yelling, and general unreasonableness got worse after I wrote in, to the point where he would shout at me and everyone else in front of the team. I’m proud of keeping my cool in those moments, but I was in tears afterwards. It sucked. “Nobody is bigger than the project” became a sort of meme on our site, which was a funny upside. It seemed targeted against me, with him nitpicking my work and trying to embarrass me in front of the team to the point my client and subcontractors were asking why my project manager had it out for me. I also got close with our client, who loathes Brian, so that’s nice!

Because our project was so distressed, our ops manager, Luke, ended up taking more of an active role in managing the job, and thus Brian’s performance. He was onsite more, so I was able to skip Brian and talk to him about what was going on (because he had eyes, he had also seen what was happening). I also did end up going to HR, and they were great — they agreed that Brian was out of step with the org culture, and made sure that I had backing to set boundaries around my work. I also did have a discreet chat with my mentor and he flipped his lid at what was happening, so I think that’s one reason why Luke was looking at Brian’s performance.

I ended up electing for mediation so Brian and I could work out how we could work together (outcome: he would be less of an ass and I would proceed as usual). The damage was done and I was mega burnt out, so I agreed with my ops manager and Brian that once my work was handed over, I would go on long mental health leave from October 2024 to late January 2025, so that I could move back home from this regional hellhole. The leave was amazing, my husband got a job, and the break let me reassess what I actually wanted. Turns out, not my current high hours, high stress job. 38 hours a week sounds like paradise to me right now, and I don’t even have to take a big pay cut to work client side. Thanks to my close relationship with our client, they helped me find a new job. I’m starting there with three days WFH at the end of April with a great team, and I’m really excited!

My company was running out of work and major layoffs are on the cards, so as soon as I came back last week I had a redundancy meeting, I took the package — 12 weeks pay! I’m free! I couldn’t be happier with the outcome, and I’m so glad to see the back of this company without having to resign. As for Brian, the project has ended badly — the client hates us and half of our team, including Brian, is on a permanent internal blacklist for them, so if they’re ever on a project org chart, Questions Will Be Asked. Management has him pottering around the office doing not a lot until something comes up or he gets made redundant too, but his reputation is wrecked after our project.

Thanks again for your advice and the advice of your comment section. It really helped clarify what I needed to do and how much power I actually had in the situation!

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things your company did that you thought were normal … but were actually very weird

by Alison Green on April 3, 2025

Especially early in your career, it’s common to think that they way your workplace does things is normal — and then you move somewhere near and discover that having a goat shrine isn’t normal at all. This can also happen if you stay at one job for a long time, or if you move to a new field. We don’t always know that what we’re surrounded by isn’t normal — until something makes us realize that it’s not.

Today’s “ask the readers” is a suggestion from a reader, who requests stories of “expressions, traditions, methods that you thought were universal but which you learned were actually just a weird thing your old workplace did. Bonus points if you learned this in a manner you are still embarrassed about to this day.”

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