4 updates from letter-writers

by Alison Green on October 28, 2016

Here are updates from four people who had their letters answered here earlier this year.

1. Employee wants her husband to hang out in our office for hours every day

Speaking privately to the employee in question, I basically explained that while I sympathized with her and her husband’s situation, her workplace was not going to be the appropriate venue for her husband to conduct his job search on an ongoing basis. I did offer to allow him to spend a couple of days (as a gesture of support), initially, in the office to get his resume up and running, possibly apply to a few postions, etc., but I was adamant that we could not accomodate him longer term.

She wasn’t too happy about it (somewhat predictably) and reacted with something along the lines of “ok, well.. never mind then, I’m sorry I asked,” but after a day or so, I think she realized how having her husband there might have affected others and made things a little uncomfortable for people within the office, etc. At least, that is my hope! She never brought it up again, after that.

Alas, it arguably ended as more of a dropped issue, rather than a resolved one, but I suppose that’s fairly common in the world of HR!

2. New coworker keeps asking if I hate him

Well, it turns out that the issues with this coworker go beyond his need for validation. His inability to take no for an answer has crossed over into the boundary of his actual work. I just had a talk with my manager about his behavior on a day when the manager was out. My coworker tried to get into an argument with me about why I wouldn’t help him with a task that was given only to him and basically said that the work I needed to complete that day wasn’t important or as vital as me helping him with this task. I withstood this for maybe a minute before telling him, “I’m not going to argue about this with you. I’m not. I have my own work to do” and promptly returned to said work. He stood at the edge of my cubicle (possibly fuming) for a short length of time. I didn’t look up and continued my work until he finally took the hint and left. According to my manager, he does this to everyone in the office, including our manager.

He’s also continued with trying to have pointless conversations during the work day (such as asking “If you could have any superpower, what would it be?”). I keep my voice as deadpan as possible and give “I don’t know” answers or just stop responding. At this point, I think everyone in the office has complained about him to either my manager or the general manager, yet his behavior continues. I’m currently in the process of looking for a new job as it seems nothing is going to be done about it.

3. Resigning when my employer has bid out some work based on me (#5 at the link)

I ended up taking the first job offer – the background check came through and I felt it was the right decision. The offer from the second job ended up being below my range with additional commuting – and it didn’t feel right. And I was correct – I finished up my work for them – on time, because that’s how I work – and I had to fight to get paid. One invoice almost went to 60 days before I demanded payment of that and the other outstanding invoice. (I don’t think it was retaliation, I gave them 4 invoices and they were late with every one. The last one was so late because I was just distracted because of my new job and didn’t follow up.) I did the work, I deserved to be paid without having to beg.

I love my new job, I have nice coworkers and a great manager. I’m doing interesting work and learning new things – thank you everyone for your advice!

4. Can I use a new offer to get more money from the job I’ve already accepted? (#4 at the link)

I accepted the offer in the city I wanted to move to, for a little bit more money. Well, that was in February and I do not have that job anymore. Within the first week, I got some weird feedback from my boss that the West Coast team (who was overseeing the project I was hired for) thought I was too aggressive as I wasn’t the lead of the project (I knew that) and that I didn’t know enough about one aspect of the project (which I do but didn’t speak up about knowing about this in our meetings because the people who lead that aspect of the project were present, and I wasn’t the lead, but I was too aggressive?). I tried to course correct but wasn’t really sure what to do.

It was a clear personality clash. I had just moved back from the Middle East a week before where I was leading huge projects completely solo and was totally underwater and overwhelmed — so I quit. And re-entering the U.S. after some time outside of the country was a lot harder than I expected I guess. Anyways, my boss went on leave for a week and when she got back I was fired, I was there only 2 weeks. They said it was a bad fit and let me go. No severance, nothing. The director of my department who I interviewed with a few times and had built a rapport with didn’t even know and sent me an email afterward apologizing. It was quite the blow to my self-esteem and confidence in my professional abilities.

That was on a Tuesday. I immediately went and applied for about 75 jobs on LinkedIn throughout the course of the day. Luckily I have lots of experience in a sought after role in a good, competition-rich industry, in a huge city. I had interviews starting on Thursday, by Friday I had one offer, and by the following Monday I had 4 offers. I did not tell the places I interviewed about the job I had just gotten fired from. I deleted it from my LinkedIn and never added it to my resume. My line was that I moved to the city for a job that fell through — basically true.

Two of my offers were really good and I was deciding between them but one was dragging their feet to get me an offer letter, and I was dead broke, so I signed on to the bigger agency but as freelancer for a 2 month contract and started that week. The hourly was awesome and I got overtime, and I was really only out of work for about a week. After 5 weeks, they offered me a full-time position at director level and sweetened my deal with a signing bonus. The offer was for 10k more than the job I originally moved for plus bonus. I accepted and officially went full-time in April and have been extremely pleased with my decision. I love my job and the work and my coworkers and boss are all great. I have perks of being at a senior level and am really settling into the role. I am still so embarrassed at what happened at that first job here in the city though. It’s a black mark on my record but it brought me back to the U.S. and to the city I wanted to live in and to a job I love, so all’s well that ends well.

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{ 74 comments }

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  1. Biff*

    I’m completely stumped as to how I would take being fired after two weeks for “aggressiveness” and then getting a written apology. Did the job fall through? Well, not really, since the OP was fired, but what a bizarre firing. I mean, truly bizarre. I don’t know that I’d spin it as non-existant if I was asked if I’d ever been fired from a job, but I’m not sure how I’d spin it either.

    That is just really, really weird. I wonder if OP was the “B” candidate, and the “A” candidate suddenly became available.

    1. RVA Cat*

      The part about OP having just returned from the Middle East makes me wonder if there may be some religious or ethnic discrimination going on. “Aggressive” sounds suspiciously like “tone….”

      1. neverjaunty*

        Eh, or it may just have been a clash of expectations and approaches, as the OP said in her letter.

      2. Bwmn*

        Having worked in the Middle East and then returned to the US – the aggressive aspect honestly sounds far more on point than it does religious or ethnic in tone. Having worked there for years, styles of management and general communication (both written and verbal) can be far more aggressive than in the US. Essentially, imagine every “aggressive” job seeker behavior you’ve heard and then combine that with a more open attitude towards shouting/speaking loudly as well as body language.

        I’m not saying that the OP was necessarily doing all of that, but even when you’re not actively doing those things – your responses can reflect a far more combative personality. In addition, if you’ve been used to writing emails in English to a range of non-native speakers – your writing style can get really short. It’s not so much in the style of being rude but rather a sentence like “Thank you for taking the time to meet with me today and following our discussion, I’m sending along the following materials” gets replaced with “Here are materials A, B, and C” because you know extreme brevity in English is appreciated.

        Lastly – as a noticed American in the office – my style was always perceived as “soft” compared to others. So any aspects of my behavior that had become more aggressive, I was likely the last person to realize. When someone’s rolling their eyes, audibly gasping, and throwing up their hands in a meeting – the fact that I’ve started rolling my eyes didn’t really register in comparison.

        1. Artemesia*

          That is very interesting. I did a few weeks of corporate training in the middle east and found that rather than aggressive, the style of communication was incredible indirect . I am a fairly blunt person and it took some getting used to, the dance of influence. I needed something from an important person and it was excruciating to go through the very delicate indirect process to get it done.

          It reminded me of communication in the US South but on steroids.

          1. Sandy*

            I came back to North America this year after working in the Middle East for several years.

            I would argue that it’s both aggressive and very indirect (some would say passive-aggressive…), sometimes both within the same conversation.

            It’s a huge challenge to make sure everyone is on the same page- and stays there!

            1. nofelix*

              Yeah my brief experience has been that there is a lot of “I’m so angry about X” as a way to get Y.

        2. INTP*

          This is interesting. I have no experience with business culture in the Middle East, but I do have experience on the West Coast, and have had a few colleagues from the East Coast have difficulty adjusting to us being less direct than they were used to and taking their communication styles as hostile. So if the OP was originally hired by an East Coast office, it makes sense that the West Coast office might react differently, and I agree that it seems likely that the “aggressive” comment was the genuine reason and not a cover for discrimination.

          OTOH, if the hiring office was in the Midwest or South, people are even more indirect than on the West Coast in my experience – in Wisconsin I never, ever figured out how to differentiate an offhand suggestion from a dire command phrased as an offhand suggestion! So it would be weird to me that the hiring team would see no issues while the West Coast team found the OP’s communication style intolerable, though of course there could just be differences between individual teams.

          1. SadieMae70*

            I live in the South. Our church, about 10 years ago, hired a minister who was from New York. She was an impassioned person on social justice issues, and I think people were inspired by her and therefore hired her for the role. But as soon as she took the job, her extreme directness started to *really* upset congregants (most of whom were Southerners, of course). I’d lived in Massachusetts for a while, and I tried to explain to a few people who complained to me that she was a nice, caring person and that her affect was absolutely normal for the Northeast. She wasn’t mean, she was just from a different culture where people are much more curt and more direct. Still, after about five years it was clear she was a bad fit for the congregation, and she became very frustrated that people didn’t seem to like or appreciate her (which didn’t help the church dynamic). So she took a job back home. Cultural differences like these are no joke, even when people understand that they exist and are trying to work around them!

        3. Honeybee*

          But that’s all about cultural interpretation, right? What’s simply loud/assertive to some may be perceived as aggressive to others. There’s tons of research evidence showing that the same actions that are perceived as neutral from white people are perceived as more aggressive coming from black people, and that women are perceived as “bitchy” or overbearing for doing the same things that get men branded a “leader.”

          1. Princess Consuela Banana Hammock*

            Honeybee, normally I would agree, but I do think there are significant differences in West/East Coast professional norms and communication styles—especially when it comes to “aggressiveness” or an “aggressive [i.e., direct] tone.” I’m not saying it’s ok, but just saying this may be less external-identity-perception” driven than other, similar scenarios.

            1. The Strand*

              I couldn’t agree more. The biggest difference I’ve seen is more North/South, though, particularly between New England and the Deep South.

      3. OP #4*

        Just to clear this up, I am a white lady, so it was not motivated by those factors. Others downthread have nailed it. Working in the ME is different and I got used to that style then you add in back in the US and then the West Coast, super chill office vs. the NYC office and it just wasn’t a fit. It was wholly awful and embarrassing but I love my job now. Though I did get some feedback that I can be a little abrasive recently… Sigh.

        1. Bwmn*

          I also found the transition rough – but I think working on the East Coast made it a little less obvious. But yeah – just chiming in to say I can empathize with that transition!

    2. Imaginary Number*

      That is exactly what I thought when I read this. They hired OP and then someone they wanted more became available. Or boss and director had a disagreement over who to hire (potentially boss had an internal candidate in mind.)

    3. Engineer Girl*

      It’s possible that she offended someone very high up on the ladder. As a new person there is no standing. That would be enough for someone to say “get rid of them now”.

    4. Intrepid*

      I was pretty confused on that– it looked like the update said both that the OP was fired and that she quit at the 2 week mark, but I found it a little hard to follow so I’m not sure if I read that right.

    5. INTP*

      I think there was some sort of discord between the hiring team and the West Coast team, and someone on the other team happened to have enough power to refuse to work with new hires or get them fired. Maybe it was personality (I don’t agree with firing people for personality issues – unless those issues make others feel unsafe somehow – without trying to resolve them first, but I’ve seen it done a few times on the West Coast). Maybe they wanted someone with more experience in something the OP didn’t have, who didn’t require training, or something like that, and blamed it on personality for whatever reason.

      If that happened, I think that the apology makes sense. It IS very crappy of a company to hire you and then fire you for things they ostensibly assessed during the interview, like your communication style, your skills and background, or whatever it was. They screwed over the OP by failing to communicate.

      1. OP #4*

        I think this is exactly what happened. The lead of the project on the West Coast didn’t interview me. She was like a SVP or VP or something so obviously very senior and I could just tell she didn’t like me within like a day. Plus it was an agile project and I have plenty of agile experience but I’m not SCRUM certified. They said that would be fine but then I guess it wasn’t. It’s been like 8 months and I’m over it but I was definitely upset, especially since I moved across the world with no re-lo.

    6. April*

      OP wasn’t open to differing opinions or even AAM’s advice the original letter. If I recall correctly, LW insisted they had received differing advice elsewhere and no matter the comment would poo-poo it or respond in a “no, because…” manner.

      Sometimes aggressive isn’t cultural and doesn’t have a hidden meaning. Maybe they called OP aggressive because they were…aggressive?

      1. OP #4*

        I prefer assertive, but yes, I am. But that’s also a good trait to have as a project manager, though you have to read the room. And I think in my original responses to comments was because I had already made a decision and was in the job once my letter was printed. But fair assessment.

        1. April*

          I certainly didn’t mean it negatively, I hope you didn’t take it that way. I only meant that sometimes we (as commenters, people, whatever…) really read into something and try to over analyze when really we sometimes need to take things at face value and call a spade a spade, you know?

          But, sure, assertive is a reasonable description, too!

    7. Aci*

      Behavioral and verbal styles can differ in surprising ways. I teach EFL (English as a Foreign Language) to adults in Spain and a lot of what I teach is more work-place interaction than grammar. Here, interrupting someone as they speak is ok in many circumstances, even if they have the floor. While yelling and getting emotional isn’t cool, it does happen and is often acceptable. Group meetings that seem to me like shouty fre-for-alls are often viewed as perfectly normal. My job is to explain what’s okay and what isn’t in a multi-cultural situation. And I’ve had students (and I mean high-level professionals, managers, executives) come back from meetings or conventions abroad and report, chagrined, of the faux-pas they’ve made. It takes a while to acclimate yourself to a new verbal style and affect (and BTW when I go back to the US for vacation, it takes me a few days to get my attitude and mouth back to an acceptable level, and I’m from NYC!

    8. ..Kat..*

      If you were a man, you would be assertive and forthright, not aggressive. And all would be good. Sigh…

      1. AD*

        And sometimes assertive can cross the line to abrasive, no matter the gender. Reading the original letter (and the OP’s comments there) is enlightening.

  3. Rincat*

    I used to have a coworker like #2. He would ask really prying questions and get aggressive if you didn’t answer him or told him you were busy. One day I just stopped talking to him altogether unless it was work-related. My boss either didn’t notice or didn’t care, probably because he likes talking about himself so he didn’t mind answering endless personal questions! That guy moved departments after a while, so that was a relief.

    OP, I hope you can find a new job soon or he gets dealt with!

    1. Artemesia*

      me too — hope the OP finds something great and the non-managing managers get left with a whole collection of their failures.

    2. OP #2*

      I’m actually considering going into business for myself. My husband and our friends are all very encouraging of it since the business I would be starting has a very good customer base. I doubt the coworker will be dealt with though, the office manager (another person with complaints about the coworker) has vented her frustration over the fact that even when there’s a blatant problem in our office it rarely, if ever, gets fixed.

      1. Buu*

        This is a reason to leave a job, I had a great job that became awful as problems stopped getting fixed. They used to arise and then get dealt with but things started to get left to fester. The next step is staff leaving. This makes things worse as this increases the problems. Hence a spiral of awfulness.

  5. Colorado*

    I’m curious as to what industry LW#4 is in. 75 job applications in one day and 5 offers the following two business days??
    Please tell me “what a sought after role in a good, competition-rich industry” exactly is.

    1. Lil Lamb*

      The first thing that came to mind was something technology or engineering. Definitely not anything academic because those jobs can take months to fill

      1. Honeybee*

        This was my first thought, too. I work in technology and my role is a relatively sought-after role; once you break into the industry and gain a bit of experience, it can be relatively easy to find positions at other tech companies and hop somewhere else, especially at the mid to senior levels. I’m not sure I could fill out 75 applications in one day, though.

        1. OP #4*

          Oh it was LinkedIn and rotating stable of about 6 different cover letters. So not as hard as it sounds.

    2. Ksm*

      Yeah, good senior programmers who have experience on enterprise-level stuff can seem callous about layoffs, because they are generally only “funemployed” for a week before they accept an offer.

      1. Engineer Girl*

        That’s usually true until you run up against age discrimination (around age 40).
        I know that when I was a junior engineer I would receive 5+ offers within hours of getting notice that a program had ended. Of course, reputation and connections help. Usually the recruitment would start while you were at your current assignment. “You should think about joining our team when this assignment ends”.

    3. Abby*

      I know someone working as a data scientist who seems to be at a new full-time position every 18 months or so– and it’s not because they get let go, it just sounds like they get bored and want to do something else and can easily find another job in the same field.

      Seems like people with data science/programming skills are in really high demand these days.

      1. Rincat*

        I work in business intelligence/data warehousing and I’ve seen this too, especially with data scientists and engineers. It sort of makes me wonder if it will come back to bite them as “job hopping,” or if that’s the norm, or even expected, for people with those skill sets.

        It’s a little annoying for those of us who work with vendors though, because now I’ve been through three engineers and two data scientists on a big application implementation, and every time we get someone new, they have to get familiar with our business requirements, and it just keeps slowing the project down. Of course that could just be a problem with the vendor and bad documentation!

        2. Honeybee*

          Hm, I don’t know. I work in a research role and I think a bunch of 18-month stints would be frowned upon – it takes a while to get deep into the role and learn some tricks with your particular team. On the other hand, data scientists are in such high demand these days that even if a hiring manager would prefer someone without the short stints, they might not have the power to pass over them if they want to move quickly on a skilled data scientist.

      2. Junior Dev*

        Is this true even if you don’t have a CS degree? I got laid off, and am taking a couple weeks to improve my personal website before actively job searching, but I’m pretty anxious about what my chances will be with a humanities degree and roughly a year of total experience.

        1. Honeybee*

          Not really, not in the same way. The highest-demand positions in tech are definitely engineering/data science/other technical roles.

          That’s not to say that you can’t get a position with a technology firm with a humanities degree, though. I know tons of people at my large tech company with humanities and social sciences degrees – I myself have one in psychology, and some of my coworkers in program management and business roles have degrees in linguistics, history, theater, nursing, political science, etc. It’s just that the level of demand isn’t really the same.

          That said, once you do break into the industry and have a couple of years of experience under your belt, I think it’s easier to move on within the industry, especially if you are in a tech hub city. Networking is so important – I never realized how important it was until I actually started working here and realized that people basically hire their former coworkers or their coworkers’ former coworkers or people they went to grad school with or whatnot I get asked all the time for referrals within my professional circles. So while you take that year to improve your website, also see if you can join some tech networking or professional development groups in your area and meet some people.

      3. Blue Anne*

        Yeah, I’ve seen this with a lot of my friends. The smartest of them hop from one exciting cutting edge project to another every 18-24 months, and get a 10-20k pay bump each time. By the time they’re in their 30s they’re known on the scene in the city and they start getting offered equity positions in startups. One is in negotiation to get bought out by a tech giant and coming to me for advice on where to invest the hundreds of thousands of pounds his stake is worth…

        Hard not to think I’m in the wrong field. :P

        1. the gold digger*

          Hard not to think I’m in the wrong field

          If I had a time machine, I would slap my 18 year old self for changing my major from biomedical engineering to English. What the hell was I thinking?

          1. Princess Consuela Banana Hammock*

            That you wanted to pursue a specific kind of mind-expanding, critical thinking program that would enhance your writing skills? ;)

            (Not to say biomedical engineering doesn’t achieve many of those same things; I’m just a humanities/social sci person who gets frustrated with the “trade school-ification” approach to undergrad higher ed)

    4. MK*

      My main takeaway from OP4 is that he should have been more cautious in his original job search; apparently they can afford to pick and choose. It sounds as if he was desperate to return to the U.S. and didn’t search widely enough.

    6. SystemsLady*

      At least in my technical niche industry, with enough experience (not even that much), you could be starting a new job within a month of getting fired pretty easily, so long as you’re extremely flexible about location.

      (It’d be somewhere closer to that level if companies were diligent about hiring what they actually needed these days, but that’s a rant for another thread and probably not even my industry-specific)

  6. Cue-ball*

    #4 seems really odd, but reading through the comments she/he made during the original post and Bwmn’s comments above make me think it really is just a matter of unlearning a decent amount of the aggressiveness that the OP had to have in the Middle East. I’m hoping they are internalizing the quick dismissal more than the update let on.

  7. MissDisplaced*

    Oh #4 I just really wouldn’t worry about a two week gig that didn’t work out. As you said, treat it as a blip. Something really sounded off about that place. At least ONE person there seemed ok (the one who hired you) but who knows what may have been going on there! It may have been political or not even about you personally. Very weird though.

  8. Ducky*

    The co-worker described in #2 almost exactly matches the personality of a former co-worker of mine. I’m fascinated that such a specific set of traits (“Why do you hate me?”, personal questions, getting others to do his work) is apparently a semi-common personality.

    My former co-worker, unfortunately, is former because he used his influence to get me fired while our manager turned a blind eye, and less than a year later he failed up to a higher position at another company. How anyone could hire someone who so obviously pushes his work on others and has such a strange standard for the behavior of others is beyond me, but that’s why I do freelance now.

  9. SIZZLEDIZZLE*

    #2 sounds like a textbook case for being on the autism spectrum/aspergers syndrome. It is quite sad that this individual has 0 understanding for the cause of their co-workers lack of social skills that stem from a certified medical disorder. Please educate yourself OP, it’s not this person’s fault their brain is neurotypical like yours.

    2. Cambridge Comma*

      While I think it’s good advice for OP2 to remember that the problem is with the coworker and not her fault, the commenting policy here (under ‘how to comment’ on the top right of this page) is not to armchair-diagnose.

      1. Myrin*

        Also, just because a situation “sounds like a textbook case” for something doesn’t mean it’s actually true. And it’s really not the OP’s problem whether her coworker has a disorder or not, he sounds endlessly annoying and horrible to work with regardless.

    3. MakesThings*

      You don’t know that he’s “certified”, what a weird assumption to make that the offending coworker actually has a diagnosis. He might never have seen a psychologist in his life, for all we know.

      Yes, he might well be autistic. He’s also just an ass with apparent anger issues. Having Asperger’s doesn’t prevent anyone from *also* being a good or a bad person.

    4. Mookie*

      Please do not stereotype neuroatypical people as lacking “social skills” (or, in the case of the OP’s colleague, manners, respect for repeatedly-articulated boundaries, and control over their temper). There is enough demonizing and stereotyping without this species of benevolent ableism.

    5. Artemesia*

      It doesn’t matter why someone is a dipstick at work — they just need to stop. IF he has a disability then he may need more direct counseling about appropriate work behavior but that doesn’t mean he can’t be expected to display appropriate workplace behavior. Most people with this condition I have known have been very trainable on such matters; they just need to be given firm and clear direction. This guy feels more manipulative to me and more of a jerk rather than someone with an actual disability — but we can’t know that from a letter and so need to focus on the workplace behavior issue.

    6. Anon for this*

      The coworker’s inner workings are none of OP’s business. OP isn’t their therapist or doctor, OP is a coworker looking for pragmatic advice to deal with their behavior.

      Interesting, by the way, that you assume OP is neurotypical.

      1. OP #2*

        Thank you, because I’m not “neurotypical.” I have anxiety and depression so I’m no stranger to how sucky it can be trying to get through a work day when symptoms are spiraling downward.

    7. Princess Consuela Banana Hammock*

      This is a really inappropriate/unkind response, for all the reasons previously listed. We have no idea who in the story is neurotypical or neuroatypical, and it’s dangerous to assume or project otherwise. Moreover, neuroatypicality does not necessarily guarantee a lack of social skills or understanding. Regardless of why OP #2’s coworker is behaving as he is, his conduct is inappropriate and unprofessional, and it’s perfectly ok for the OP to seek advice on how to respond to the situation s/he faces.

    8. Lissa*

      Even aside from the “don’t diagnose people” it’s really weird that you wouldn’t just say “it’s possible that this person has . . ” and jump right to “this person is absolutely not neurotypical and the OP needs to educate themself” as though it’s a definite fact, based on a few sentences in a letter. Sometimes an annoying person is just an annoying person, and people don’t need to “educate themselves” about every possible cause for somebody’s behavior.

    9. Simms*

      I just want to say I have Asperger’s as does my husband and his sister has high functioning Autism and none of us act this way. In fact alot of people I know with Asperger’s don’t either.

      Being a pushy jerk is not a prerequisite for having Asperger’s or Autism.

      1. Artemesia*

        This. And it is up to the manager to provide appropriate training/feedback if someone with this issue does act inappropriately — not just dismiss it as inevitable. Same if the behavior is just being a jerk and has no neurological component.

  10. cncx*

    i was in a similar situation to OP 4, moved to a city for a job and while i agree it was a bad fit, i was a little miffed that we parted ways as soon as we did (both sides agreed for me to leave, but i left the day of the agreement, no notice or anything). I got a better job about two months later, but i am still upset that they knew i was moving, we parted ways literally the day after i signed my lease, and they did nothing in terms of offering me a few weeks’ severance or staying on until unemployment would kick in, knowing that i had basically moved house to take the job. Legally they didn’t have to but it would have been kind under the circumstances. Like OP though, all is well that ends well, and the lady who thought i was a bad fit- when the reality was she was the manager and had no idea of the job description she wanted for the role i was hired for- has bounced around ever since, so i guess there is a lot she doesn’t know.

  11. marymoocow*

    “I’m sorry I asked” is a phrase I can’t stand. It’s so dismissive. The coworker in question isn’t sorry for making anybody uncomfortable. She’s sorry she asked because she wishes she didn’t hear your answer.

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