colleague wants help raising money for a bad idea, CEO doesn’t want anonymous questions, and more

by Alison Green on October 21, 2024

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

1. Church member at my job wants help raising money for a bad idea

I work for a small church, of which I am also a member. Laurel has been a member for many years and works as a freelance bookkeeper. For many years, the church supported her ministry (for the sake of anonymity, let’s say it’s tree planting trips to Chile) through an ongoing support group and individual donations. She raises about $10,000 yearly. I spent around 100 hours last year working on administrative tasks for Laurel’s project.

I am a terrible bookkeeper and caused Laurel much consternation. I do other parts of the job well, so the church kept me on and has contracted with Laurel to work as the bookkeeper one day a week. We’ve clashed over minor but irritating things, like can a small office fit both the new desk that Laurel added, and a couch that she likes.

Today, a member of her group contacted me to see if I could look for grants that would help pay for Laurel’s upcoming trip. In looking online for more info about Laurel’s work, I was surprised to find out she has no forestry background, no training in habitat restoration, or any background on Chilean ecology. She decides on her own where and what trees should be planted. It turns out that she’s planting trees that aren’t native to Chile and are bad for the soil, and missionaries from our church have a long history in the region of making local people feel terrible about those trees when they die.

I have a graduate and undergraduate degree in forestry, and one of them is specifically in South American habitat restoration. I’ve worked in the field for a decade, spent time in Peru studying tree restoration programs, and published a paper on the topic. While I don’t use that now, I’m qualified to evaluate whether a tree planting program is more likely to harm than help. Laurel’s program is harmful.

$10,000 is an outrageous amount of money to raise for the length and scope of her project. She has always provided financial reports to her group, which I have not read. I suspect the amount is high because of things like Laurel giving money directly to local farmers she’s made friends with. She also pays for a class of travel that an older person would need to be comfortable, and compensates herself for the lost bookkeeping income she incurs during these trips. I don’t think she’s scamming anyone; I do think this whole thing is harmful to Chileans and a terrible use of money.

I assume no one has said anything over the years about Laurel’s planting trips to Chile because “I am called to restore habitats in Chile, will you help me?” is a hard ask to cast doubt on, plus takes some pretty niche knowledge to question.

None of this is sitting right with me. How much of this is my business? How much of this is bitch-eating-crackery about the office couch and sweating to get Laurel’s donation reports right? Should I say something to Laurel’s committee member or my supervisor, and if so, what?

Yes, you should say something to your manager. She’s misusing church money (even if unintentionally) and causing harm rather than helping, and you happen to be particularly equipped to see that in ways that others there aren’t. Frame it as: “Jane asked me to look for grants to help fund Laurel’s trip and in doing that I learned XYZ. I’m concerned because ___ and it seems like a poor use of church money and resources. I don’t feel comfortable with what I learned so I’m bringing it to you.” Make sure to mention your background in the field as well.

It’s your business because you’re part of the organization supporting her. It’s not bitch-eating-crackery because these are serious issues. You might feel extra agitated since you’re not Laurel’s biggest fan, but the issues are legitimate ones that you’d have an ethical obligation to raise even if she were your best friend.

For what it’s worth, Laurel shouldn’t be in charge of bookkeeping if that gives her extra autonomy over the funds that ultimately flow her way. And “compensates herself for the lost bookkeeping income she incurs during these trips” is particularly alarming — does that have someone else’s sign-off? That means the church is essentially employing her on these missions and makes her less of a volunteer, and that amplifies all these concerns further.

2. CEO said anonymous questions about the company cause resentment

My organization lost a major contract recently, and we’re preparing for layoffs of a few departments in the next few months. Everyone’s stressed out about it and there are a lot of unknowns, so the CEO is doing weekly all-staff meetings, optional for non-senior staff. These have mostly been Q&A sessions, with occasional announcements as more information is available.

In our most recent meeting, someone asked whether it would be possible for staff to ask questions anonymously, since some of these are hard topics. We don’t really have a culture where people need to fear reprisal, but all the same, it seems totally reasonable to me why someone wouldn’t feel comfortable asking questions publicly. Our CEO’s response was that in the past, when we’ve had ways for staff to provide anonymous feedback, the people who put their name on theirs were resentful of those who didn’t, and that people should find another way to ask their questions. (For context about those past ways, they were short-lived. Once people started asking hard questions — about DEI concerns, mainly — leadership made excuses to get rid of them.)

Is that answer as BS as I think it is? If we’re concerned about staff being resentful of each other, I’m much more concerned about the people who’ve been denied anonymity being resentful, especially toward leadership and the organization in general! I know there’s nothing I can do about this — I don’t have that kind of influence — but it feels pretty slimy to me and I’d love a reality check.

Yeah, that’s a BS and cowardly answer. When everyone is offered the opportunity to ask anonymous questions, people who choose to attach their names anyway don’t tend to be resentful of the people who don’t! That’s a really odd argument.

If anyone felt resentful at the time, it’s a lot more more likely that it was the leadership — who were getting confronted with uncomfortable questions and who knew the anonymity was making people more willing to ask them.

3. Is it weird to mention you researched your interviewers on LinkedIn?

Is it a faux pas for a candidate to read the LinkedIn profiles of the interviewers — and mention it during the interview during the normal course of conversation?

Are candidates supposed to pretend they are not doing their homework? How many interviewers are not expecting to be looked up at all?

It’s a faux pas if you do it in a creepy way (like you have their complete professional history memorized and make sure to mention you know all five of the states they’ve lived in) or if you try to shoehorn what you found into the conversation in an unnatural way. It’s not a faux pas if it comes up organically and is relevant to the conversation — like “I saw you worked at the Taco Union — I used the research you put out on guacamole-to-jalapeño ratio in my last job” or “I saw you used to work with Valentina Mulberry — she’s been a mentor of mine for a long time” or so forth.

4. My new office building keeps giving me static shocks

My office recently consolidated locations with our parent organization over the summer, which I was fine with (shorter commute!) until, to my horror, I started experiencing static shocks almost every time I touch a metal door handle, elevator button, dishwasher, etc. Every time I reach for anything metal, I am flinching in anticipation of a shock, which has been noticed by coworkers. Sometimes from me yanking my hand back in pain, and other times from the very audible crackle of static.

It is definitely localized to this new office location as I don’t have these static problems outside or at home or anywhere else, but I’ve asked around and no one else has confirmed they have this issue. It is starting to genuinely impact my mood in the office as I am now nervous about anything metal, but somehow it seems like a silly thing to ask about. Is a request to increase building humidity reasonable? Is there any advice for what I can do to make my office day less shocking? Help!

It’s definitely reasonable to talk to someone in facilities or similar and explain you’re regularly getting static shocks in the building, and ask if they can increase the humidity and/or do an anti-static treatment in the building. You could also consider bringing in a humidifier for your own work area (which won’t help with the rest of the building but will at least help with the area you’re in most often), trying an anti-static wristband (although there’s conflicting info on whether or not they work), and also moisturizing the hell out of your hands. And while this is getting way outside of my area of expertise, I do see advice online that wearing natural fabrics rather than synthetics can help. Anyone else?

5. Should I reach out to someone who previously offered me a job?

Two and a half years ago, I was job searching and ended up in a great position — I had two offers the same week. I did some negotiating and when I accepted one offer, I called the other folks and let them know how much I enjoyed the interview process with them. They let me know that they’d love to hear from me if I ever wanted to come work for them.

I’m starting to job search a little now, and I saw a position posted with that agency that fits my experience very well. I applied on the job posting site, but would it be too much to also send an email to the folks I had previously interviewed with? A quick LinkedIn search shows they’re still with the agency.

Not too much at all. They invited you to contact them in exactly these circumstances, and you should. Say something like, “We met in 2022 when I interviewed for the X position on your team. I ended up declining your offer but really enjoyed our conversations and learning about the work you do, and you asked me to let you know if my circumstances ever changed. I’m thinking about moving on from my current role and saw you’re hiring for Y. I’d love to talk with you again if you think I might be a match for that role.” And include your resume.

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{ 393 comments }

{ 393 comments… read them below }

  1. Daria grace*

    #1. There’s no way for it to not be awkward but it’s really important you speak up. It’s especially important for the sake of the people she’s harming but you’re also doing her no favours by facilitating her being in situations she’s not equiped for. This is also doing indirect harm by diverting money and goodwill from worthwhile projects.

    If your church is part of a larger denomination there may be oversight people who can provide support on concerns about financial management, ethics and safeguarding of vulnerable people

    1. AcademiaNut*

      I agree. This is really, really dodgy.

      Personally, I think paying herself a salary to do this, combined with her actions being actually harmful for the people she’s trying to help, does push this into scam territory, although likely through ignorance and self-centredness rather than maliciousness.

      1. Thankfully no longer a manager*

        I also wonder about a non-economy ticket. If your age requires more comfort while flying, I question how able you are to travel about once you get to the developing nation. I’ve worked in non-profits and have volunteered with mission work. I’ve traveled to developing nations. You are not traveling in style. But if a higher comfort ticket is desired- it would only seem ethical to pay the difference between an economy and the cost of the class she ultimately purchases.

        1. Chocolate Teapot*

          This does sound off, especially given the unsuitable choice of trees and habitat.

          I get the impression Laurel is well-meaning rather than devious, but wouldn’t there be a conflict of interest if she is acting as bookkeeper and organising her trips to Chile.

          1. HonorBox*

            Well-meaning perhaps. But well-meaning is planting the trees the first time and then finding out that they’re the wrong trees, and then changing course in the future. That she’s continued to plant the wrong trees shows that she’s not asking for feedback or ignoring the feedback. She may still be well-meaning but that doesn’t give her a free pass from here to eternity to continue to take action that is not only not helpful, but actively harmful.

            1. PurpleShark*

              Especially horrifying is the response to the failure of the wrong trees…

              “and missionaries from our church have a long history in the region of making local people feel terrible about those trees when they die.”

              1. Allonge*

                This! Like, what do they think this is supposed to achieve?

                Honestly, with a history like this, I would strongly consider scrapping the whole programme. Leave these people be, or if they need help, provide actual help they need, not stuff they should be feeling bad about.

            2. MigraineMonth*

              With the reminder that “planting trees in Chile” is an anonymizing fiction, I lived for a short time on an island that had an erosion problem. Fortunately, white people were there with the answer: fast-growing trees with enormous shallow root networks that hold the topsoil in place and prevent the rain from washing it away.

              Except every hurricane knocks these trees over, leaving all the soil in its root structure to be washed away. Also, because they grow so fast, they’re now an invasive species outcompeting all the native deep-rooted trees. (Undoubtedly the solution to this is to introduce a pest that *probably* only affects the invasive species. After a couple of iterations, most of these environmental engineering stories start to sound like the “There was an old woman who swallowed a fly” folk song.)

              1. Quill*

                And to eat the insect, a wasp, and to eat the wasp, a toad, and to eat the toads, a mongoose… What do you mean, stop introducing new species to islands?

                2. Freya*

                  … literally, the history of cane toads in Australia, except it was sugarcane crops being eaten by beetles, not wasps, we haven’t imported an equivalent of mongooses yet, we’re still working on controlling the toads…

            3. Crencestre*

              It sounds as if neither Jane nor the local branch of that church bothered to work WITH the local citizens to find out what was actually needed there; they just marched in, planted some trees, patted themselves on the back and ignored the impact of what they were doing. Sorry, folks, but that’s not well-intentioned; that’s ignorant and arrogant!

        2. Lady Danbury*

          I’d not only push back on the idea that a certain class of travel is required simply because one is older but raise the question of how much she can do the physically taxing work of planting trees if she can’t fly coach. My grandmother is in her late 80s and is in no shape to plant a single tree due to mobility issues, but she can and has flown long distances in coach, including recent transatlantic trips to Europe and Africa.

          1. a clockwork lemon*

            Billing the church her market rate for “services” she should be donating as part of organizing the volunteer trip is what got my hackles up. I used to provide similar services to a nonprofit I volunteered with and it was explicitly part of my contribution to the org. Anything above my pay grade of “free” either got written up as a separate agreement or referred out to a board-approved service provider.

            I wrote my masters thesis on non-profit abuses within religious organizations and unfortunately this kind of thing is really common, frequently because there’s a culture of similar excesses in church leadership and a strong US cultural expectation that it’s not generally okay to interrogate religious charitable activity across the political spectrum. The nature of the work makes it pretty hard to keep track of reasonable expenses from the outside unless someone is willing to pay for a pretty expensive and technical audit.

            1. Sloanicota*

              Yeah, that’s why my comments here skew somewhat negatively; churches are rarely run like businesses or nonprofits, and I think it would be an uphill battle (not to say you couldn’t decide to do it! Just a warning!) to alter someone else’s charitable activities within the context of a church mission because of your opinion on their impact/austerity. Of course, OP should still raise it to the people in an oversight position.

            3. Former Librarian of SHIELD*

              Yeah, I’ve been involved in “charitable” church missions as a church member, and the gross feeling I got from them is one of the (many) reasons I don’t belong to that religion anymore. I’ve seen so many trips being planned that our group had no business being involved in. On one trip, a teenage boy being taught to use demolition equipment caused serious damage. On another trip to an area devastated by a natural disaster, a teenage girl with no knowledge or experience was put in charge of electrical wiring.

              We didn’t know what we were doing. We were told that we were helping, but we weren’t. We were doing considerable damage to communities that were already suffering. Our church was raising and spending large amounts of money to harm people, and since I’ve left I’ve met a lot of people who’ve left similar churches who sent people on similar missions.

              It’s systemic, and I feel like it’s a holdover of colonialism, the feeling that we’re “civilized” and know better than the people who have lived in that region all their lives.

              1. Slow Gin Lizz*

                I think you’re right about colonialism; it was one of the first things I thought of when reading this letter – more specifically, the Poisonwood Bible and how misguided the father in that book was. I know that book was fiction, but I don’t doubt that the father’s attitude held true for a LOT of missionaries.

                1. Sloanicota*

                  I would suspect most international projects are replacing the traditional “missionary” model where the original purpose was explicitly to send individuals to go convert native peoples. While many (not all!) congregations understand that’s not cool these days, using that framework and trying to just shift it over to international development is not likely to be very effective.

                3. Texan In Exile*

                  When I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Chile, I met some AOG missionaries from the US. Their congregation had paid to ship all their furniture and major appliances to Child. Because you know they don’t have furniture or ways to wash your clothes in Chile. Also, what a great way to spend the money raised from the widow who pulled five one-dollar bills from her wallet and smoothed them out carefully before putting them in the collection plate.

              2. Emily of New Moon*

                Some religions teach “God wants us to help people in need, even when it’s uncomfortable.” And some people take that a little too literally, and purposely volunteer for activities where they’re not just uncomfortable, but unsuited for that particular role, thinking, “God will be so proud of me for making the ultimate sacrifice by doing what is uncomfortable for me, and God will give me the ability to do the task even though I couldn’t do it before!”
                In reality, there is nothing noble or unselfish about putting yourself in such a situation, and in fact, you’re doing a disservice to the people you are trying to help! It’s also bad theology, but that’s a whole other story.

              3. I Have RBF*

                That type of thing, including the hubris of thinking that whatever we did to “save” people was good and holy, is a big part of why I left that religion. That and hypocrisy.

                The whole “ministering to the unwashed/less fortunate/benighted primitives/heathens” type of colonial BS, even within US borders, just turns my stomach.

                Planting the wrong type of tress that don’t grow well there is a classic symptom of the whole “white savior” complex those people have.

              4. Lenora Rose*

                My father in law, as an agriculture professor, used to travel all over the world trying to help farmers to farm better. Including sometimes with the help of his church community.

                It’s very much to his credit that later in life, and especially in retirement, he realised how very much the “Go there and tell them how to do things” church model was wrong, and started working on projects that involved funding people who lived there to do the things they knew worked for their own community. (this included sponsoring education opportunities or local farming collectives) He had a lot to say about the sorts of aid projects that swooped in to fulfill a “need” without asking the locals what they want and need – or provided what was needed right now, but without any autonomy (digging wells but not teaching locals maintenance or engineering/mechanical skills was a big thing; to the point where some towns would just cover up the old well when it was rendered useless and make another charity request to dig a new one…).

            4. Frankie*

              I would love to read your thesis; I am an accountant and have a ministry client. Would that be possible?

            5. Smithereen*

              I would love to read your thesis! My undergrad thesis was about one small, complex cross-cultural, cross-religious affiliation in the context of broader Nicaraguan history.

              Also in working with people who have been sexually abused in religious environments both hierarchy (leaving everyone afraid to confront power) and extremely flat power structures (leaving everyone to focus on trying to “be nice” and “equality” in name) seem to be breeding grounds for predation.

              Is your thesis available online anywhere to read?

          2. Parakeet*

            Hmm, I (not an elder but with chronic conditions) am something of the other way around, in that it’s harder for me to sit up with little ability to move around over a long period of time than it is to do physically taxing work where I can move around. I was as wrecked by a relatively short round-trip flight and a few days of hotel beds and conference chairs, as I was by running a half marathon. I still do fly coach, but it does take a significant toll and there may come a time where it’s no longer feasible.

            All that said, there’s so much that’s dodgy going on here regardless of any of that! Ultimately, the type of flight seat is the tip of a very large iceberg.

          3. Emily of New Moon*

            Remember, she’s not really planting trees. That was changed to avoid identifying her. She could actually be doing something much less taxing on her body.

        3. Jackalope*

          Not to get too much into the weeds, but it’s plausible to have a medical condition related to aging that means you’re in a lot of pain the first few days if you squeeze yourself into a tiny coach seat but you’re still agile enough to get around once you’re there. Not that that changes your primary point, which is that in such situations the thing to do is to pay for the upgrade yourself.

          1. Banana Pyjamas*

            This one. It doesn’t even have to be a major or age related health condition. I am early 30s, and I have an unstable SI joint (yay hyper mobility), priformis syndrome and sciatica. The combination means I experience significant pain and lose range of motion in one leg if I sit in the wrong seat for even one or two hours. I specifically got a Ford Escape when I traded in my car because I knew from our work fleet the driver’s seat wouldn’t be triggering. I can still do things like carry my kids, assemble furniture, and garden. I just can’t sit in the wrong seat.

          2. Runcible Wintergreen*

            I imagine that “class of travel that an older person would need to be comfortable” might be the phrasing that Laurel herself uses to make this sound like a non negotiable need rather than her preference. Many people see cheap travel (things like hostels, trains, backpacking, red eye flights, etc) as a young person’s game so it makes sense that Laurel sees this as simply a necessity that anyone else would find reasonable, and illustrates why she’s so out of touch (a woman over 60 flying economy? Why would anyone do that when they could just buy business class?)

        4. Willow*

          Honestly, business class (and even some first class) are only luxurious when compared with economy on airlines. They’re not more comfortable than an average rental car in a developing country or a hostel. I know my dad no longer flies economy since the last time he did caused health issues that led to multiple surgeries and a week-long hospital stay. But he had no issues driving around in an old manual transmission vehicle on dirt roads.

        5. amoeba*

          Eh, I know quite a few people who would never fly economy for long distance – and not because they love luxury or whatever, but because sitting for 10-12 h in an economy seat is actually really painful for them. Those are all healthy people in their 30s, I feel like it’s mostly how long your legs are! Paying for at least extra legroom would be pretty standard in my circles. (And most companies I know do pay for business class for long distance, economy only for inner-European flights.)

          Unless she’s flying first and expensing the champagne, I don’t think that’s the issue to focus on here…

      2. Sloanicota*

        It sounds like she’s mainly enjoying free trips with above-average accommodations. I’m just doubtful OP can avoid trouble by wading into this, although I agree it’s “good trouble” that might be worth it to OP. The fact that you have a known issue with this person and that you’ll be trying to get people to appreciate back-pocket expertise you don’t use in your current role are both tough, plus Laurel has been there longer than you and presumably lots of people have donated in the past. OP should think through, what is their goal here? Do they want to get Laurel’s program to switch to native trees? Change some of their practices around site selection and maintenance? Or is the only acceptable solution to you that Laurel stop going. If the former, maybe there’s a way to volunteer/donate/introduce the right person into the mix.

        1. MassMatt*

          Honestly it sounds as though Laurel and the LW should switch places. LW admits to being a terrible bookkeeper, but seems to know a heck of a lot about forestry.

        1. Harper the Other One*

          Ooh, adding this one to my husband’s continuing education list – looks great! He gets regular requests for mission trips but has always redirected to local orgs in need of hands/donations.

      4. HannahS*

        I agree; this is really a problem. I also question the legality of soliciting donations and then effectively paying yourself a salary that isn’t part of the larger non-profit’s operating costs.

        I actually think that the OP is being so conscientious about trying not to be BEC about Laurel that they’re underreacting. This is a really big deal! I don’t think the OP’s judgment is clouded by the fact that they don’t like Laurel. Their first instinct–that this is significantly problematic and needs to be reported, is right.

        2. MigraineMonth*

          Especially since she’s paying herself a bookkeeper’s salary for untrained work she has little experience in. If I managed to get a second job dog-walking, it would be outrageous to set my rates based on my primary job where I have a decade’s experience.

      5. rebelwithmouseyhair*

        Regarding the suitability of the trees, I think it’s an excellent example of the road to hell being paved with good intentions.

        Regarding the finances, she’s probably not paying herself a full-blown salary, just covering all her costs, but it doesn’t look like there’s any oversight and it does sound like she’s getting first-class seats on the plain and probably staying at 4-star hotels too.

    2. Kivrin*

      I have been running a project that is a small legal charity in an African nation as a volunteer for 16 years. It is really, really not okay to pay yourself or upgrade your travel out of donations. That is even apart from the impact of the project, which any North Americans doing work in other countries need to look long and hard at over and over.

      1. Ganymede II*

        It is so dodgy to compensate herself for lost income… that’s not how volunteering works!!!

      2. Archi-detect*

        I know I have heard many times that unless you are a skilled professional like a doctor or engineer, your efforts are more likely to do harm than good, people over there are not helpless fools but more low on resources. I have even heard of missionaries “building a school” that is just brick that gets put together and taken apart for each group.

        1. 2024*

          As a former church employee, I can tell you that most of these mission trips and projects really have nothing to do with the needs or wishes of the people actually living there, but much more about the church members going over. They want to do what makes them feel good and righteous. Personally I think these very short term trips are just vanity feel-good projects. Missions and nonprofits that stay in the country year round or most of the year are much more likely to be of value to the population.

          1. ReallyBadPerson*

            I completely agree with this. The only good missions are those that partner with people already on the ground in the target communities, those who are actually part of the community. They are the real experts. The “white savior” mentality is real, and it isn’t helpful.

            1. Middle Aged Lady*

              My FIL finally admitted in his later years that all his good works were partly a way to get to go somewhere new!
              This mission is a bad idea for all the reasons others have mentioned. The harm to the people in Chile is the most important. The other huge red flag foe me is that the person going on the trip should have a checks and balances system on the funds. Sometimes even well-meaning people start to ‘cheat’ when there is no oversight.

            2. Slow Gin Lizz*

              Yeah, I got a super-strong white savior mentality from what Laurel’s doing and it makes me pretty mad.

          2. DJ Hymnotic*

            I got my start in churchworld too (it’s even where my name here comes from) and will co-sign all of this.

        2. Former Librarian of SHIELD*

          People have made jokes about schools in Africa that have 20 coats of paint because American church members want to feel good about themselves so they go to Tanzania and “remodel” schools.

          1. Archi-detect*

            and usually they need structural changes like the money to pay teachers and reduced social upheaval, not obvious stuff like painting things, but you can’t do that on a feel good week mission

              1. eater of hotdish*

                Argh, I have a colleague (we’re Christian clergy) who is supposed to be serving like five rural congregations in our area but just bugged off to a different African country, and is posting humblebraggy pictures of herself dancing with barefoot children all over social media.

                I’m like HOW DID YOU MISS THE PART IN SEMINARY WHERE THEY TOLD US NOT TO DO THAT.

        3. MigraineMonth*

          Even professionals massively screw up sometimes. U.N. forces sent to Haiti to help after a devastating earthquake in 2010 caused the cholera epidemic that killed thousands more (though it took a long time for the U.N. to admit even partial responsibility).

          So yeah… fewer amateurs would be a good idea. Also, most places on earth need more jobs for locals, not additional untrained laborers who show up for a week at a time.

      3. Artemesia*

        I would not flinch at premium economy but paying her salary — she should not be let near the books.

    3. RIP Pillowfort*

      Having dealt with some minor versions of this in churches in the past- make sure how you point out how many problems this creates. Laurel is taking a salary from donations, she’s flying better than coach, and the mission shames the local community when the non-native plants die. If I was donating to a mission and found all this out, I’d be furious.

      Doesn’t matter if she’s a well-respected member, she’s going to bring down massive scrutiny on how the church performs missions and takes up donations. A lot of the denominations have ethics committees for this exact reason. Laurel may not be malicious but she’s being an idiot. Doing a grant would open her up to more scrutiny than if she’s only asking for personal donations. I guarantee she’s not telling people she’s taking a salary from their donations and people will feel rightly betrayed by that.

      1. HonorBox*

        All of this is true for sure. And with that, I think LW needs to focus on two portions of one aspect – the trees. LW has knowledge that the trees are not native and what is being planted is harming the environment. And Laurel continues to do the same thing. Maybe not maliciously, but I have a huge concern that she’s not evaluating well. Ignorance is one thing, but continued ignorance isn’t something you can write off. And if there’s grant funding being sought, I assume it is the church that would be applying. The church could find itself in major peril if the grant funds are used incorrectly.

      2. Jackalope*

        If their church is a part of a larger denomination, and if raising it at the local level doesn’t work (since people may be too caught up in feelings about the project, Laurel herself, etc.), then maybe the OP can raise it with someone at the denomination level. Starting local is likely the way to go, but if they don’t listen it doesn’t have to stay there.

    4. iglwif*

      Absolutely. This whole situation sounds super sketchy, AND it’s actively harming the community Laurel allegedly wants to help. And I have to believe that the people donating to this cause would want to know the truth about what their donations are being used for.

    5. Slow Gin Lizz*

      I agree with all of these comments but the cynic in me is compelled to point out that while of *course* OP should speak up, they should also be prepared for the church execs to say that they know this all already and they don’t care, or to side with Laurel even if this was all news to them because they think Laurel is amazing and doing such a good thing (aka, don’t care that what Laurel is doing is actually detrimental to Chilean ecology).

      But please don’t let this stop you! I’m sure you are also a strong member of the church, since you are an employee and likely have a lot of institutional knowledge, more than Laurel does. It sounds like you wrote in knowing that what she’s doing is wrong and just wanted a gut check. Now that you are certain what she’s doing is wrong, and are backed by AAM and us commenters, I hope that helps boost your confidence in reporting to the church’s execs what’s really going on. Good luck!!

      1. Olive*

        Yes, I also fear that this is going to go poorly, not only that the leadership won’t care but that this will turn into church members taking sides.

        But being willing to do what’s right even when it might go badly is kind of a core tenet of Christianity, and I think the LW would feel worse and worse if they don’t speak up.

      2. MigraineMonth*

        My church would take this very seriously. They would immediately create a committee for nominating people for a committee to investigate the matter.

      3. MCMonkeybean*

        Yeah, I feel like the salary and the flight upgrades might be worth bringing up once but it’s likely the church already knows about that and it’s likely not in OP’s purview to really push on that.

        But the actual content of the mission where OP is uniquely qualified to know more about the problems than most other people in the church, I’d personally put all my weight behind pushing that over the other issues. It’s going to be really hard because it sounds like the church has been signing off on this program for years so being told now that it’s actually a bad mission will likely make them feel defensive! It’s going to be a hard line to walk. I’d probably try to come at it from like “I know this mission has been important to the community, but after looking into it a little more based on my background in [relevant knowledge here] I have some concerns about XYZ. I would like to present some recommendations on some changes that would make the project fit in better with the local environment.” Or something like that.

    6. learnedthehardway*

      The OP should be prepared for someone to tell them that they should be more involved to ensure that the programs are of actual benefit to the recipients. Because that is somewhat likely to happen, if the overall program is well planned, but the specifics need tweaking. Going by the example, planting trees native to Chile would be a fairly easy and beneficial change.

    7. Momma Bear*

      I agree. Sometimes fresh eyes are important. Sounds like she’s had the reins solo for far too long and no oversight. It’s also problematic that locals are getting grief about the trees that they didn’t need in the first place – which is a poor reflection on the church in many ways. I also think being repaid for her “lost wages” is highly unethical. OP, please bring this up. I’d start with “hm, this doesn’t compute” and go from there, but definitely review those trip and expense reports first so you have the full scope of what she’s giving the church as justification.

    8. DJ Hymnotic*

      I totally get why we would hope for “oversight people” from a denomination (or a middle judicatory like a diocese or a district) would weigh in, because something isn’t above board here. At the same time, depending on how the denomination or judicatory is structured, such people exist mostly in advisory capacities, so the congregation in question can simply not bother with going to them or just disregard anything they have to say.

      Additionally–and I say this with a great deal of empathy for the LW because having spent most of my career in church- or faith-based nonprofits, I’ve been there–that the simple fact that LW is simultaneously a church member and church employee suggests a comfort level with this sort of inside baseball that may make any beneficial structural change very difficult. Having church members on staff is not always considered best practice because of the conflicts of interest such arrangements can easily create, and at least in my experience a church that is willing to do that is also likely more willing to overlook a misuse of funds by another employee/member. (I want to be absolutely clear that in noting this broader trend, I am **not** suggesting such a conflict of interest on the LW’s part specifically.)

      I know we’re all hoping for someone/something to rein Laurel in. But this sort of stuff is unfortunately endemic in a lot of churches, and that does add a very real degree of difficulty to remedying it. I don’t say that to be discouraging, merely realistic. If the church leadership responds apathetically or defensively, the LW may need to weigh just how far she wants to push this or cut bait. LW, I truly hope you’re able to effect some positive change for your church as a result of this dilemma.

      1. Freya*

        I know my mother’s church has had members of the congregation as employees – my mother has been one of them, as the pastor there prefers to ensure that he is visibly above-board and refuses to be in the church offices with only one other person there, for reasons of being a person with power who spends a lot of time with vulnerable people, and his PA sometimes has to go do things like pick up stationery and go to the post office. So my mum has previously exchanged chaperone labour for hire of a small office outside the home to work on her novel in. But they’re also very very careful to ensure that everything is above-board and documented and legal.

  2. Honoria Lucasta*

    LW4: The “static electricity” might actually be a short somewhere in the wiring of the building. I would definitely mention it, at least to see if it happens to anybody else.

    I have to deal with frequent static shocks when I visit my parents in Albuquerque for the holidays, because the high altitude and dry air generate more static. I found that looking for ways to ground myself before touching door knobs or light switches usually helps. You might try changing your footwear, too, if it’s really bad, and might also look into ways to ground yourself before touching any of the offending objects.

    1. Honoria Lucasta*

      Sorry, I was reading without my glasses and skipped over the fact that you had mentioned it to co-workers before. In that case, definitely wearing less insulating shoes would be one of my first steps.

      1. Christine*

        My first reaction was, “it’s the shoes”. It could be the materials but it also could be that the letter writer drags her feet, which can build up a nice charge!

        1. General von Klinkerhoffen*

          Yes, same initial reaction. Check the shoes of the people who aren’t being shocked.

        3. Ruth Margolis*

          YES!

          Don’t schlep.

          WHEN I lived in CA I used to discharge electricity by putting my foot on the doorframe and THEN reaching for the handle.

          Back in the day, you could also get anti-static bracelets. (When working with computers, they were a must. Magnetic Tapes….im old .)

          1. Sharpie*

            I also wore anti-static bracelets when I worked with computers. The issue is that they have to be clipped to something metal to earth them and that wire can really get in the way.

          2. Kevin Sours*

            As somebody who builds static quite easily (and has mostly lived in CA) I make a habit of touching anything metal with the back of my hand before grabbing it. It doesn’t prevent the discharge but I find that it’s a less sensitive area and isn’t a much of a problem. Other than going around fist bumping doorknobs I suppose.

            1. Orv*

              Touching with something metal first (like the tip of your key) also helps, because the spark jumps between the two metal points instead of to your skin.

            2. sacados*

              Haha, omg yes that’s me too. It’s basically an unconscious reflex at this point, that I’ll just really quickly tap something with my fingertips to dispel some of the charge before I fully grab onto it.

            3. Hannah Lee*

              I have to do that during winter in my office, particularly before using the office printer/copier.

              The shocks I get touching door handles, etc aren’t a problem because they are so mild. But if I happen to touch the touch screen on the printer without ‘discharging’ static first, the whole thing freezes up and has to be powered off and restarted. (It amuses me that a Xerox machine designed with a touchscreen isn’t engineered to handle this without totally locking up)

              So I just grab the metal frame on the partition next to the printer whenever I’m going to use it.

      3. Emmy Noether*

        I also came to the comments to suggest changing shoes! If no one else is getting zapped, it’s probable that the door handles etc. are grounded as they should be, but YOU are building up a static charge somehow. Do you also get zapped sometimes when you shake hands? Most likely is a combination of the carpeting and your shoesoles (it could also be your chair, so also try switching chairs and/or wearing all cotton/linen for a day).

        There are even special static dissipating shoes made for people working with fragile electronics, but that may be overkill.

        In an old workplace, I was getting zapped by the door handle to my office. I started pulling down my sleeve and touching it through a layer of fabric. I wasn’t the only one in that case, but we never did find out what caused it.

        1. LW4*

          Not in the habit of shaking hands as much, but most of the time when I do it’s in the lobby of our building which requires me to pass through the static gauntlet of door handles and elevator buttons. I assume I am sufficiently de-charged by the time I get to shake hands! I’m in long sleeves now that it’s starting to get colder so I’ll give the sleeves option a try!

      4. Lucy P*

        When I switched from a leather office chair to a fabric one at home, I found I got shocked more frequently. During the winter particularly I have wipe the chair down with a fabric softener sheet to cut down on the static.

        Also, I used to get shocked frequently at one of the local grocery stores after they had done a renovation. It wasn’t just one shock per visit, but in almost every aisle. Everything from touching a metal shelf to grabbing a handle on the freezer door would result in a shock. Sometimes I could actually see the arcing. Now that I’m older and prefer thicker-soled shoes I find it doesn’t happen as much, but it still happens on occasion.

    2. LadyAmalthea*

      Echoing the comments about the shoes. some solving material and carpet combinations are deadly. check out what your non shocked colleagues are wearing.

      1. MsSolo (UK)*

        Yes, I have a certain pair of shoes that, much as I love them, build up a charge when I walk on the synthetic fabric on carpet tiles which means I get static shocks in most public buildings (including my workplace).

      2. SarahKay*

        Thirding the ‘it’s likely to be the shoes’. I remember a few years back Mum and I both had the same pairs of shoes, and both found that we were building up static electricity far more than normal. Once we stopped wearing them, we stopped getting shocks.

    3. Alicent*

      My husband has a jacket that gives me a nasty shock when I touch him while he’s wearing it. I second the clothes or shoes.

      1. Affreca*

        If you go down the path of experimenting with different shoes, I recommend also trying different socks. I get more shocks wearing wool socks than cotton.

    4. Alton Brown's Evil Twin*

      Seconding the footwear change.

      Also, consider whether you are shuffling your feet when you walk. I used to a have a bad habit of doing that (especially when I was agitated or tired), and just being a little conscious of my gait made it so I was no longer destroying the soles of my shoes.

      1. Funko Pops Day*

        Agree on considering whether you drag your feet at all if the areas where this happens has carpet. My high school library had a lovely plush carpet that was notorious for generating static if you shuffled along it. Being annoying high schoolers, we of course used this to shuffle up to friends in study hall and then discharge static by tapping their skin.

        Also, in addition to the sleeve trick above, most of the rest of your body has fewer nerve endings than your hands, so tapping a hip/elbow/forearm against a likely shocker can discharge the static less painfully if it can’t be entirely avoided.

    5. Chirpy*

      In the winter, I try to ground myself by touching a leg or arm to things, so at least it’s not my sensitive fingers getting zapped.

      1. BenAdminGeek*

        Agree! This is what I do- I use the base of my palm to absorb the shock since that’s not too painful. Then I can open the door easily.

      2. Zelda*

        I’ve been known to carry my keys (or any metal object if your set of keys is unwieldy) and tap the doorknob/ filing cabinet/ whatever with that first so the zap isn’t painful.

    6. br_612*

      I used to get shocked in the winter in my lab building in Morgantown. It was ALWAYS when I was wearing my knock-off Uggs I got for $5 at Gabriel Brothers (they were so warm and cozy). So yeah definitely look into the shoe issue.

      Sometimes, about 1/20 shocks someone got on the doors, it would knock out the card readers down that whole row of doors.

      1. JustaTech*

        I learned the hard way to not to wear rubber rain boots to Trader Joe’s – I would get incredibly painful shocks from the freezers.

        As a very staticky person, here are the things that have helped me:
        1. If you have long hair, put it up in a bun or something similar so it’s not swaying around (generating static).
        2. Avoid polar fleece (any brand).
        3. Lotion up and run a humidifier if you can.
        4. Discharge if you can with a less-sensitive body part (elbow, leg).
        5. Try to stick to plant-based fibers (wool and silk can be almost as bad a fleece or polyester).
        6. No rainboots.

        If you’re still getting shocks after all of that, and it seems to be confined to a few locations, ask your building facilities to check the grounding on the wires. When I was in college we had one couch where people frequently got nasty shocks. We thought it was just the cheap upholstery, but at the end of the year we moved the couch and realized that there was a faulty outlet right behind it and we were lucky no one had gotten seriously hurt.

        1. JustaTech*

          Oh, and old-fashioned static spray for your clothes (it’s in the laundry section and not always easy to find, it’s advertised for keeping your slip from sticking to your nylon stockings).
          I only use it on stuff I know will be problematic but I still need/want to wear (winter outdoor gear mostly), but it really does help.

    7. Fsp3*

      I lived in a dry wintry environment and when it got cold there was static aplenty. When it was static season I discharged by tapping the back of my hand/wrist on the lightswitch plate or whatever metal object I was about to touch before using my fingers as usual. It takes a half second, you’re going in knowing you’re going to get a zap by deliberately going for it and not being cagey with anticipation, and it’s a less sensitive part of your hand. It just works. Give it a try!

    8. stargazer*

      Weirdly, increased static shocks can be a symptom of mold exposure. If the LW is having any other symptoms, it could be worth looking into. Seems a little odd for something related to the building to only affect one person.

    9. fhqwhgads*

      Yeah, my first reaction to LW4 was “is there different carpet in this new office, and do you always wear the same shoes?” Because it could be the combo of LW4’s shoes and the carpet.

    10. Nat*

      I have the same problem with static shocks. Changing shoes helped but didn’t completely eliminate it. I find that wearing a metal ring, or carrying a metal pen, and touching those to any metal surface before touching it with my skin usually discharges any static without shocking me. It can be tough to make it a consistent habit but the shocks are a pretty effective teacher, unfortunately.

    11. E*

      Touching something wooden (sometimes the door itself, a table, a wall, or something similar) before touching the metal doorknob can ground you and prevent static shocks! (I get them a lot with certain types of winter jackets and make sure to tap my door or table before doing anything else.)

    12. Filicophyta*

      Yes, I worked in a building where I got shocked all the time. We all wore similar things, but others weren’t bothered.
      I touched something non-metal nearby for a second; the door before the door handle, the counter before the microwave or equipment, and this helped a lot. It did not take long to remember to do it. When I couldn’t do this, for example at my locker, I touched with my elbow first, and that helped.
      I heard later that some people thought (unscientifically) that I had OCD, but it definitely helped.

    13. Im*

      This happened with a student of mine. Of course, he really enjoyed it! He would shuffle his feet to encourage the static electricity charge. Maybe you shuffle your feet, unawares.

  3. North Bay Teky*

    For LW #4 the static electricity
    Until there’s a permanent solution, try grounding yourself before touching anything metal. If there’s a wooden desk or countertop, a plaster wall, grab on firmly, just for a second. If there’s carpet, it might be the cause.

    1. David*

      I’ve found a good way to do this is, before you touch a doorknob or handle or any other protruding metal object, give it a fist bump. It still discharges the static electricity, but it’s less painful (and less noticeable) going through your knuckles than through your finger tip.

      1. Adam*

        You can do even better by touching it with something metal, like a key. Then the zap happens between the handle and the key.

        1. duinath*

          I think covid caused the invention of some metal door openers you can hang on your keychain? Crazy-Factory have them, they’re called non-contact door openers. I haven’t tried them myself, though.

      2. HeyLookAChicken*

        I’ve taken to tapping car doors, etc. with the back of my hand first, for the same reason.

        1. PhyllisB*

          That’s what I do. in the winter the doors to the freezer section of the Walmart stores all seem to do this, so I touch quickly with the back of my hand and seems to help. I know that will get tedious having to do it so many times a day, but better than getting shocked.

      3. WS*

        A fistbump (or touching with any larger surface like your palm or forearm) really works! I get shocks when it’s dry where I live and this tip has really worked for me. Also, as the carpet got older it happened less often.

      4. Arctic Tern*

        This was going to be my advice as well. Whenever I start noticing frequent static, I tap objects with a knuckle first to discharge with much less shock. It doesn’t take long for it to become a habit.

      6. Kuddel Daddeldu*

        There are key chain charms that you can use to touch metal first. They conduct electricity via a resistor so the discharge is slowed down to a level that is not noticeable.
        For prevention, look for ESD safe shoes – they have soles that are conductive (with a few megohm resistance), preventing static buildup.

    2. Square Root of Minus One*

      It used to happen to me in a former job.
      When the AC or heating was running, in a a whole row of offices, on both floors, opening a closed door would zap me every time.
      I had no problem with opened doors though so I’m certain closing the door closed some kind of circuit that made the door handle charge like a battery, but AFAIK this remains a mystery to this day.

      What I thought of then:
      – rubber gloves if aesthetics allow it
      – the shoes, indeed. The composition of the soles seemed to be a factor. If they were plastic or rubber, some are good and some very bad so it needs to be tested out. I never found the clothes to make much difference though.
      – grounding me on the furniture, or touching the door with the arm rather than the hand helped too ;
      – a rubber glove finger on the door handle (only my office of course) or open the door with my elbow (hurts less). That one made coworkers laugh a lot.

    3. irquista*

      In my current work place, in winter, I get static shocks from certain door handles. What I do then is carry a crochet hook around with me. Touch that to the door handle first before I grab it, and I get no shock. I have tested various things, and that’s the one that works for me (changing clothing and shoes didn’t).

      I tested this first with some scisors already in the office (which did work as long as I was touching the metal when tapping them on the handle) but I feel much safer walking around with a crochet hook!

        1. Seeking Second Childhood*

          With my car’s electronic keyfob on the same loop as my house key, I’d be concerned about repeated static affecting the fob. Those things are crazily expensive to replace.

    4. niknik*

      You won’t get shocked if you touch the object with something metal first.

      So carry a metal pen or something alike and touch the door handle or whatnot with it first before acutally gripping it. The larger surface area between you and the metal at first contact means that you won’t feel the discharge.

    5. Em*

      I once worked in a semi conductor manufacturing plant and we had to wear special grounding shoes. The ones we had were ugly af, but practical. I wonder if such shoes exist in an office appropriate style.

      1. Emmy Noether*

        They exist in all sorts of styles! You can also get grounding strips that can be adhered to almost any shoe. It’s an adhesive metal strip that goes between the heel of the foot and the shoe, then out of the shoe and under the sole. We have them for people who visit the production floor. Doesn’t look great, but it’s cheap!

      2. amoeba*

        We have a thing that checks whether your shoes are grounding or not, you basically stand on a metal plate and press a button and it gives you a green or a red light. A lot of “normal” shoes are actually grounding, not just the special ones. So, PSA:

        Dr. Marten’s are grounding, Converse aren’t.

        Unfortunately, I have no idea how to find out in advance of buying for other brands…

    6. Alex B*

      Grounding works wonders. I lived in Austin TX for a couple years and my hyper air conditioned office building always zapped me anytime I touched anything metal. My solution: touch EVERYTHING made of metal I came across while walking around. It prevented the static electricity from building up which made each zap much much more manageable. I still find I have a habit of touching railings, doorknobs, metal trim etc as I walk around even though it’s been over a decade.

      1. coachfitz13*

        I’m visualizing the intro sequence to Monk right now, where he’s touching all the parking meters, light poles, and car antennae as he walks down the street.

      2. LizB*

        This was also my strategy at my old office, where I for some reason built up tons of static! I’d tap all the metal trim of the cubicles and any door handles I passed as I walked along, so each shock was barely noticeable. It probably looked kinda weird but I was the only person onsite most of the time, so I didn’t care.

        Also, a non-office example, there was a period of time where I built up a bunch of static while running on the treadmill. I assume my shoes or clothes were to blame, but I solved it by just reaching out to touch the metal heart-rate-detection grips every couple seconds.

    7. Nonanon*

      If nothing else, I’ve found touching metal with the back of my hand or arm tends to help; there’s still a little bit of discharge, but something about the larger surface area reduces the “shock.”

      I also inherited my father’s swarthy Mediterranean genes, so YMMV in general, but especially if you have a… normal amount of hair for a human being.

  4. Raida*

    4. My new office building keeps giving me static shocks

    If you feel silly asking look at it this way:
    Static Shocks are not good for any kind of electrical equipment. Like phones, or computers, monitors… Good computer classrooms will have carpeting designed to earth everyone walking on it, to protect the equipment.

    So inform your manager, ask who to speak to in Facilities about this issue, and make it clear you not only did you not change your clothing with the new office location, you’ve made an effort to really avoid anything that would build up static easily.

    1. Wine not Whine*

      Oh, that brings back a memory… I’m the 1990s (the relatively early days of office computing), I entered payment data on a system that was essentially a glorified teletype using 17″ wide greenbar paper. This monster sat on its own metal pedestal stand, tractor-feeding paper directly from a box into a wire catch bin on the back of the stand. My first task each morning was to separate and distribute the several inches of reports that had printed overnight from the home office.
      At one point, the office was remodeled (much needed and appreciated), including new carpeting. That was when the fun began. If you walked across the room, and then touched any part of that terminal without grounding yourself, not only did _you_ get a fairly good shock – but you also completely and instantly rebooted the terminal.
      We ended up putting a thick pad of cardboard under the metal stand, and another under the terminal itself where it made contact with the stand. That seemed to insulate the silly thing enough to keep it from rebooting.
      (The entire system was replaced a few years later.)

    2. Irina*

      At one of my student temp jobs I got called “the printer killer” because it was one of those printers with magnetic cards, and every time I tried to use it I got a shock and the static wiped the cards. This happened only to me, even though I never wear anything synthetic (though it might have been the soles of my shoes).

    3. PhyllisB*

      I hadn’t thought about static shock being bad for electronics. My husband has a pacemaker. Will this affect him?

      1. MigraineMonth*

        From my brief search, no, the type of static shock you get when you touch a doorknob isn’t a concern for an implanted device. The static doesn’t penetrate deeply enough, and the pacemaker is designed to detect and cause electrical discharge (unlike, say, magnetic memory in the internals of a computer).

        Applying a defibrillator to his chest to restore heart rhythm would almost certainly cause damage, but presumably in that case he’s already heading for the ER.

        2. Lisa*

          Actually modern pacemakers are designed to tolerate external defibrillation, since it’s a thing that is somewhat likely to happen in someone with a known heart problem. The device should be checked out afterward to confirm but I wouldn’t expect damage to occur.

  5. Certaintroublemaker*

    LW4, I live in a desert climate and deal with this seasonally. I used to get shocked every time I reached for the door handle on my car, and developed the same hesitancy you’re feeling. I learned to touch the door handle with a key, first, which would discharge the electricity at the tip of the non-feeling key, not my fingers. Try carrying keys or some other small piece of conductive metal to tap against door handles, etc., first.

    1. Juicebox Hero*

      Those tools they were selling during the pandemic so people could push elevator buttons and things without touching them work well for this. My old office had carpeting, and whenever I touched the metal desk or filing cabinet I’d get zapped. Touching the metal thing with they key first did the trick.

      My new office has laminate flooring and wooden furniture so it’s not a problem, thankfully.

    2. My Useless Two Cents*

      Another option is turning your hand over and touching the metal with the back of your hand first. Less nerve endings than fingers so it hurts less.

  6. Change your shoes*

    #4 you probably need different shoes, something with leather or black rubber soles. Also maybe try gloves or using a sleave to prevent touching the metal surfaces.

    1. Wolf*

      +1 for the shoes. My work uniform has a fleece jacket, and I constantly get small shocks in our carpeted office, unless I wear my work boots which are designed to be antistatic.

  7. PDB*

    So the static shock thing is a real thing. I worked in recording studios for decades and every once in a while this would happen to somebody, and trust me, our equipment was properly grounded. Some people’s bodies act like a capacitor and store a charge. Since many capacitors are electrolytic, try changing yours by drinking a Gatorade. Taping a resistor to your finger and touching it works too.
    And that static charge is really bad for computers.

    1. JP*

      One time I received such a large static shock at my desk that my monitor flickered. I swear it happened, but no one else saw it, and I don’t think they believe me.

      1. Falling Diphthong*

        Probably this is when you received a super power, but it’s one of those obscure ones that just never gets triggered by normal life. Like you can talk to a species of duck that lives on a different continent.

        2. Nathan*

          JP can now degauss old-fashioned CRT monitors using just their hands, but is unaware of this fact because all monitors are now LCD.

            1. Elitist Semicolon*

              It made pretty waves of color glide across the screen. And probably something more technical.

              1. Rain, Disappointing Australian (formerly Lucien Nova)*

                It was meant to prevent burn-in iirc – you’d degauss to sort of “reset” things so the image on the monitor didn’t get burnt in.

                1. Nathan*

                  FWIW (probably nothing, these days) it’s less about burn in and more about distortion. Sometimes the color grid that the electron ray goes through would get warped due to residual magnetic field build up. In the old-old days, you had to use a degaussing coil to dissipate that residual magnetic field, but by the mid-to-late 90s most monitors had degaussing coils built in which would do the same thing. Degaussing does not solve burn-in.

      2. Keymaster of Gozer (She/Her)*

        I totally believe you. I have exceptionally frizzy hair and work IT. I have a grounding strap almost permanently attached to me.

      3. Kuddel Daddeldu*

        There are key chain charms that you can use to touch metal first. They conduct electricity via a resistor so the discharge is slowed down to a level that is not noticeable.
        For prevention, look for ESD safe shoes – they have soles that are conductive (with a few megohm resistance), preventing static buildup.

    2. Kevin Sours*

      My college library was terrible. I had to make sure I was touching metal at all times while I was in there. I forgot once and I swear I saw a blue spark and heard and audible zap when I touched the metal bannister on the way out.

  8. Leenie*

    Regarding the second letter, it’s odd to state that, “We don’t really have a culture where people need to fear reprisal…” and then end that same paragraph with, “Once people started asking hard questions — about DEI concerns, mainly — leadership made excuses to get rid of them.”

    Is the “them” (that were gotten rid of) the people who were asking the hard questions? Like people were fired? Or is “them” just the surveys or whatever manner of asking questions that they employed in the past? If people were fired, they absolutely have reason to fear reprisals. If they just got rid of some mechanism for feedback, it doesn’t say anything great about the culture, but it’s not nearly as awful. In any event, the LW is correct that that’s a strange and cowardly excuse.

    1. Ellis Bell*

      Yeah I think that refers to getting rid of the “anonymous ways”, which isn’t as alarming as firing people for unwelcome questions, but it doesn’t inspire loads of confidence either.

    2. Myrin*

      I’m pretty sure the “them” here refers to the “past ways [for staff to provide anonymous feedback]” in the sentence before it: “For context about those past ways, they were short-lived.”

    3. Hyaline*

      I had the same question as the phrasing definitely suggests that the antecedent of “them” was “people asking hard questions!” But I think the LW meant the means of asking anonymous questions. Still, though LW might not fear reprisals, a company culture that squelches difficult topics could have a different effect on others’ perception of fearing repercussions.

    4. Potatohead*

      Just suggest that the forms come back without any way to identify the writer, meaning everyone is anonymous and no one can be jealous. When they still object, it’ll be more obvious why.

    5. Captain dddd-cccc-ddWdd*

      More than a “strange” excuse, it’s one that doesn’t even have any kind of internal logic (even if we don’t agree with it), which is a pretty clear sign that it’s made up. You know what really generates resentment though? Telling people that some of them (but not who) are going to be laid off in a few months time, then having weekly sessions to re-hash it and rub their nose in their own fate over and over again under the guise of “q&a” sessions.

      1. LW2*

        To clarify, we do know who’s being laid off – it’s entire departments that deal exclusively with this contract. The situation is more complicated otherwise by details I’ve omitted for privacy, but in short, no one is having their nose rubbed in anything. These meetings are a lot more useful than you’re assuming, I assure you.

        Replying to others up this thread: yes, the “them” that was gotten rid of were the methods for anonymous feedback, not the actual people giving it. As for universally anonymous forms, we’re not using any forms at all currently. These meetings are over Zoom, and are asked by voice or text in the chat. The only was to get rid of non-anonymous questions or feedback would be to forbid questions during the meeting, which would also have a pretty chilling effect.

        1. Malarkey01*

          We had issues in the past with anonymous questions for a large program/process change so it “can” be a problem- under the cover of anonymity people can ask some inappropriate or unprofessional questions and can also really derail what you said are very helpful and generally good meetings.

          We dealt with it by having people submit them to the board assistant who would curate them and they may become an FAQ. We were very clear that questions would be vetted and that not all questions would be appropriate for an FAQ and may not be answered if submitted anonymously. It seemed to be a good compromise and based on some of the questions I saw- the board was right not to take them sight unseen.

          1. Pay no attention...*

            This has been my experience with open anonymous questions to a large audience as well — someone has a bugaboo that has nothing to do with the meeting topic, a personal grievance with someone they want to air to the whole room, or they want to troll the speaker. But also, my org is quite large and having individual Q&A would take eons so questions are presubmitted and consolidated by topic that way if 50 people are asking about DEI programs for instance, they can be answered (hopefully) at once, or if necessary, the topic can be a separate meeting. When presubmitted questions haven’t been done, it amazes me how often people don’t listen to previous questions/answers and end up asking the same-but-different-words thing over and over.

    6. Lab Rat*

      We have a suggestion box. Old manager wanted us to not submit things anonymously anymore and, shocked pikachu face, the suggestions stopped.

      NewManager is fine with anonymous suggestions.

      Big thanks to one of my sub bosses for listening to my concerns today and taking them seriously, as well. I will remain anonymous in any proceedings because it is involving a work clique that sub boss is also concerned about.

    7. So they all cheap-ass rolled over and one fell out*

      I read it the same way the first time – that leadership got rid of the people who asked hard questions. But since Alison’s answer didn’t address retaliatory firings, I kept re-reading trying to figure out what I was missing. I am a little embarrassed to say it took until my fifth try to realize it was the ways, not the people, that were gotten rid of.

  9. TheSüperflüoüsUmlaüt*

    LW#4, my first thought is you should experiment with wearing different shoes (soles). I only get static shocks – noticeable ones! – with certain footwear, but none at all the rest of the time.

        1. Myrin*

          Yeah, I hate it. (Not the username, which I think is very charming, but the fact that I can’t not read it as it is. It’s the old Motörhead/Mötley Crüe problem.)

          1. amoeba*

            Haha, well, I generally just blame the people who came up with the name and clearly had no idea how that would *actually correctly* be pronounced! (Meaning, of course, by me). But yes, Motorhead and Mötley Crüe definitely sound… different in my head and possibly the head of every German, ever, than they probably intended, haha.

          1. Audrey Puffins*

            We’re assuming they’re all umlauts, of course, some of them could be diaereses which would change the pronunciation rules altogether

    2. Crepe Myrtle*

      I had to stop wearing crocs for this reason. I kept getting shocked everywhere, but especially the grocery store!?!

  10. Indisch blau*

    Static electricity: This happens to me also. My solution is to discharge and ground myself as often as possible. First and foremost: Whenever I stand up from my desk, I hold the metal frame as I do. When I walk down the hall, I touch every heating element. And so on. I’ve also used the trick others have described of touching metal with my knuckles, rather than my hands.
    Good luck and stay grounded!

    1. A Girl Named Fred*

      Same. I haven’t found anything that stops the shocks, but doing it on purpose doesn’t hurt as much as being caught off guard. I now more or less have a ritual of stand up – tap toes on metal base of chair – tap back of hand on nearby metal door or metal wall corner. Then I’m good to go do whatever I was doing, and it takes maybe a second now that I’m in practice of it.

      It DOES amuse my coworkers, but mostly because they don’t understand how I manage to shock myself every time, even if I only sat down for a second.

    2. Skippy*

      Me, too. I developed the habit of brushing every corner I walked past with a forearm (beneath the paint there’s a metal protector on most modern inside corners) or brushing every door frame.

    3. allathian*

      Stay grounded, indeed. ROFL

      I don’t understand what’s happened, but these days I get static shocks far less often than I did even a few years ago. I think one change is that now that my hair’s grown past my shoulder blades and I mostly keep it up in a bun or ponytail, I no longer brush it when it’s dry. I used to get shocks all the time.

  11. Not Jane or Molly*

    Static: this may be different but I have this issue with my car. I find that touching non-metal before touching metal helps immensely. So in your case, tap the door itself and then grab the handle.

    Rubber-soled shoes may help too?

    Laurel: this does seem like a pretty big snag. I get the impression between the couch and the “getting paid for lost wages while she volunteers” bit that she is a bit entitled (I’m envisioning “I mean, I CAN’T be expected to sit in coach for the whole flight!!”) but otherwise well-meaning. The thing is, you don’t want your organization’s name associated with promoting a practice that does harm!

    Also, I’ve worked in a LOT of organizations and we always fly coach. A super long flight might warrant an upgrade to economy plus, but that’s it. If she’s volunteering, it should be coach and she can use her own travel points/funds to upgrade.

    LinkedIn: you should look people up if you can and plenty of people work details into the conversation…”I noticed that both studied entomology/went to Cornell/lead Girl Scout troops” or “I noticed that we’re both connected to Jane Spain, do you know her well?”, etc.

    Another way to do this is to use it to get info on the company: “I see that you came from xyz bank; what made you decide to pivot from finance to furniture sales?”

    Outreach to company you’d spoken with before: yes, they will likely be happy to hear from you. Like literally when someone sees the email they’ll go “omg guess who just reached out for the Head of Cat-herding role? Do you remember Molly Schmolly? Who talk to her first, do we want to fast track her?”

    1. Not Jane or Molly*

      Weirdly some entire words got lost to typos (“*we* both studied” and “who *should* talk to her?”) – but I hope it’s clear enough

    2. Beany*

      “Rubber-soled shoes may help too?”

      What you want is specifically *non* rubber-soled shoes — or at least, shoes with some conductive element to ground you. Pure rubber insulates you from the floor, and that’s why the charge accumulates on you to discharge painfully through your fingers when you touch something else that is grounded.

      1. amoeba*

        Dr Martens soles work (and are pure rubber, afaik) – we have a device to measure whether your shoes are grounded because we have ex zones at work, and they get the green light! (Maybe not surprising, seeing what they were originally developed for…)

  12. Silence*

    #1 I want to know if anyone other than Laurel thought the OP was a bad bookkeeper or if the consternation was because having anyone else involved in the figures would bring to light how much of the money was basically Laurel having a paid holiday?

    2. Artemesia*

      This just shouts. This woman is arranging paid vacations and flying at least Premium Economy, maybe business and has taken over bookkeeping. Whoever is running this place is asleep at the switch. No way she should be doing the books.

      1. Sloanicota*

        That said, it’s a tough position for OP even so. If Laurel is a volunteer and is doing this work as a mission, it’s kind of up to her to determine reasonable expenses, and I don’t see a minister telling an elderly volunteer they need to fly coach to Chile or cut back on meal costs etc. Especially if it’s church donors who gave funds directly to Laurel because they support her “ministry” the way it is. I did have the same brief thought about this oh-so-difficult bookkeeping; I would just quickly think back, OP, and wonder if you were excised from this task so Laurel could have everything her own way.

        1. Liz*

          It also makes me wonder about the class of the congregation. There are certainly communities where the church members would never expect “someone like them” to fly basic economy etc

      2. Carole from Accounts*

        The financial abuses in the not for profit sector don’t surprise me but ALSO never cease to surprise me.

      3. NancyDrew*

        Also wild to note how many commenters here have declared Laurel to be “well meaning.” The woman is ravaging local environments and doing very real damage with her ignorance. The LEAST of her problems is that she might be misusing funds.

        1. HobblingUpAHill*

          The whole tree planting thing is a fiction to preserve anonymity (like when commenters work for a teapot company or have colleagues named Wakeen), not what Laurel is actually doing. What she’s doing may be equally damaging to local environments, but it’s probably not planting trees.

          1. Quill*

            If we assume that the details provided are approximately in depth enough to make a decent analogue, what she’s doing is very possibly pushing a technological or social change on a local population that looks good when simplified down to a single slide but is actually impossible for them to maintain / use appropriately. So I’d say that there’s plenty of evidence that Laurel’s ignorance is possibly doing more damage long term to the people she’s “helping” than to the people providing the funds.

            On the other hand… “well meaning” is not an exculpatory statement. You can mean well all you want and it does not actually help people if your actions aren’t helpful.

            1. JustaTech*

              Something about the road to hell is planned by the well meaning and paved with good intentions?

    3. Resentful Oreos*

      I thought the same thing. Maybe LW1 was a bad bookkeeper; otoh maybe Laurel is up to something that she does not want found out. She could have started out as a well-meaning volunteer directing her efforts into a questionable cause. That happens due to ignorance, not malice.

      But using church funds to cover flight upgrades and other little luxuries screams “cooking the books” to me. Or at the very least, skimming more off the till than the church can or should tolerate. LW1, if you can get some kind of professional to take some kind of look at this – I know it’s different for churches than for secular nonprofits – that might be a good thing.

      And if you have a background in botany and environmental science, definitely talk to whoever Laurel’s boss is and explain that this project is harmful, not helpful, and you have the science to back it up – unless whoever supervises Laurel thinks the sun shines out Laurel’s backside and will automatically take her side. If you think Laurel’s boss will be reasonable, you can at least try to explain things.

      You are not BEC with Laurel – she sounds seriously shady, under cover of being a “sweet well meaning elderly lady.”

  13. nic*

    LW3 – A candidate once revealed they knew the names of the cats of both interview panel members, presumably from online stalking. It was a red flag you could see from space.

    1. Anon for this, anon for that*

      It’s not the sort of thing I’d bring up but if people insist on putting their lives online for everyone to see then I don’t think it’s reasonable for them to hold it against someone for reading what’s out there. I wouldn’t want anyone to know about my private life, which is precisely why I don’t use social media; I certainly wouldn’t put my life online and expect those around me to pretend not to know whether I was in a relationship or where I last went on vacation.

      1. Myrin*

        I think the red flag isn’t about knowing/having read something like that but more related to thinking it’s appropriate – or possibly even advantageous! – to mention it in a job interview.

        1. Anon for this, anon for that*

          No, as stated in the very first sentence of the comment to which you’re replying.

      3. nic*

        Also I think there is a significant difference between “putting your life online for everyone to see” and “mentions they have a cat”.

      4. Irish Teacher.*

        I think it’s the bringing it up that is the problem. I don’t think there is anything wrong with looking up somebody’s cats. I do think it’s rather weird to draw attention to “I know your cats names,” especially in an interview situation.

        And I wouldn’t really consider an interviewee one of “those around me.” This is probably somebody you are meeting for the first time, for a relatively short period of time and will likely never see again. Sure, I expect my colleagues to know a bit about my life and wouldn’t be surprised if they’d looked around at my social media, but somebody I’d never even met before bringing up in our first meeting, “I not only checked your social media before meeting but made a point of noting the names of your cats”…that is outside social norms.

        I’ve rarely even been told the names of who is interviewing me before an interview, though I suspect this may differ by field, so it would mean checking the name of the principal on the school’s website (perfectly appropriate), then googling the principal (not something I’d imagine most job candidates would bother doing until they’d been offered the job, but not outside social norms), then looking through their personal pages, making a point of noting the names and then making a point of bringing it up in the interview.

        It just comes across like making a point of letting the interviewer know “I know about you!”

        1. Anon for this, anon for that*

          I also think it’s an odd thing to bring up; however, I think people should be realistic about this aspect of online privacy. If I didn’t want people to know the names of my cats then the last thing I would do is make that information publicly available. If I did, I think it would be unreasonable of me to expect people not to come across that information and even less reasonable for me to expect them to pretend not to know it. The idea that someone is somehow “creepy” or “stalkerish” for discovering no more about you than you have volunteered about yourself online strikes me as ludicrous.

          1. Irish Teacher.*

            I don’t think the options are pretending not to know it or bringing it up unexpectedly when it’s not relevant though. I very much doubt they have any problem with the interviewee knowing the names of their cats or that they would expect the interviewee to feign ignorance if they mentioned “Mr. Meow went missing last night.”

            I think the issue is less about their discovering something and more about their not knowing what is appropriate to raise in what context.

            And there’s the question of why are they bringing this up? It’s a really odd thing to do and indicates a lack of understanding of social norms, not because anybody is likely to care if they know the names of their cats but because cats aren’t relevant in an interview.

            1. Ali + Nino*

              OK I admit I did this in an interview once! Not to the level of cats’ names but based on an interviewer’s LinkedIn I could tell they used to live in another country, and I asked what brought them back to the country we were in. SO not my business!! I could immediately tell the interviewer felt uncomfortable and I wished I hadn’t said anything. (I did end up getting the job and worked with this person for several years and we had a good working relationship.) I like to think I am generally pretty good around social norms but this was a misstep early in my career – I’m cringing just thinking about it – just giving a possible other side to these stories, hopefully intentions are good.

              1. Deanna Troi*

                Ali + Nino, I actually don’t think that is weird. If it was clear from looking at their employment history on LinkedIn, I would not be surprised if someone I interviewed knew it. I assume they might be checking my LinkedIn. On the other hand, if it from a post years ago on my Facebook page, I would feel differently.

            2. bamcheeks*

              It also depends how much digging it takes, which I think is something that people who don’t use social media don’t understand. I mean, if you google “Valentina Mulberry” and the first hit is ValentinaMulberry.com and it’s a WordPress blog with pictures of Snuffly McNuttikins on the first page, that’s one thing. On the other hand, if the first hit is Valentina Mulberry’s LinkedIn and the first two pages are all very standard llama-related posts but nine months ago she liked a post from Small Village Organisation about Local Fete so you look at the Facebook group for Small Village Organisation and see that in 2021 she posted a picture of knitted pumpkins for sale so you did a reverse image search and found her Ravelry under the name Val99 and on THAT she mentions her cats’ names… well. That’s not quite the same thing.

              1. Annie*

                Very much this. I am active on social media, but it would take a lot of digging for a stranger to find my non-LinkedIn social media. There’s a huge difference between “I googled you and clicked on the first link, your professional portfolio” and “I found your cousin’s instagram and then searched through his followers for every variation of your name I could think of, what a great bathroom renovation!”

              2. Baunilha*

                That’s what I was thinking. Was the information about the cats very easy to find, or did the candidate have to do some digging? (About a private matter that doesn’t affect them at all, nonetheless)
                Also, if the candidate actually memorized the names, rather than just ringing a bell if the topic came up, that’ very weird.

          2. Sloanicota*

            Eh. It’s normal to look a potential co-worker up on LinkedIn, which is a site designed for business networking. It’s a bit weirder for someone to keep digging and look the same person up on Facebook and Instagram or wherever they found this cat information. While I wouldn’t be surprised if both people switched their profiles to “private” after this, it was still an odd amount of effort that doesn’t reflect well on the interviewer. You weren’t going to find anything work-relevant on those other sites.

          3. anne of mean gables*

            I think it deeply depends on how public/private your online personal accounts are. I go to medium lengths to separate out my “professional” from my “personal” internet presence (both of which are pretty minimal). Someone mentioning they found my dog’s name or race results in a professional context would be an immediate orange flag that they had done a non-trivial amount of internet sleuthing that went well beyond where I worked last.

      5. strawberry lemonade*

        For sure, I keep things private so that ill-intentioned people have a harder time finding that information. That doesn’t mean that a less private colleague is wrong to be put off when an ill-intentioned person finds their information.

        We do actually have a cultural expectation of privacy online. In some cases that expectation is created by privacy settings that were changed out from under you, leaving your posts less hidden than you thought. In other cases we have the “privacy” of the public place, that even if you have a conversation out loud and someone overhears it, they won’t bring it up to you later. Finally, the US internet doesn’t have the “right to be forgotten” at this point, so there may be many data ghosts of people than they’re aware of.

        You can’t make the simple statement that if the information is public, it is okay to access it. I don’t think the cat mentioner would have been in the clear if only he’d kept his mouth shut; it was sneaky (if forgivably, universally sneaky) to do all the looking in the first place.

        1. Great Frogs of Literature*

          I think it’s acceptable to do a bit of social media stalking on someone you’re considering working with. I feel like employers have more of a duty to it than candidates (one hopes that the organization has already vetted current employees), but it’s not unreasonable for a candidate to want to know something about who they’re talking to. Personally, I wouldn’t invest that effort until I was maybe expecting an offer, if then, but I have seen advice to do a bit of research on the people you’ll be interviewing with, if you know their names.

          That said, for most people’s social media, you’d have to do a good bit of digging in order to get the names of both cats, which does feel a little over a line to me. And if you do read up on your interviewer, I’d agree that it’s weird and offputting to randomly advertise that you looked them up in sufficient depth to know the names of their cats (assuming that’s not, like, the first page of their personal website).

      6. Falling Diphthong*

        We’ve had past discussions about to what extent it’s a problem to literally be able to see through a window to someone in their own space (sometimes undressed). And the more crowded the environment, the more there’s a norm to pretend you can’t see them. (Like you don’t walk down a city street greeting everyone, but it’s normal to nod if you encounter a new person.) You might mention to someone you know well that the street has an excellent early morning view of them wandering around naked, but leaving anonymous notes about it tends to land as creepy more than helpful.

        With things visible online, there’s a reasonable distinction between examples like “I saw you helped create the new jalapeno shipping norms; I work with those” and “I saw that you took a vacation to the Yucatan 7 years ago, where you had an intriguing fish stew” when you just met for the first time to discuss your qualifications for a job. We’ve just added another interactive layer of “what it’s okay to have noticed, and what you don’t open with.”

        1. Anon for this, anon for that*

          This and the above comment from strawberry lemonade get at the substance of what I’m saying. I’m not actually interested in whether someone brought up their interviewers’ cats in an interview once—I’m interested in whether it’s reasonable to expect people not to find information that you yourself have willingly volunteered and, having found that information, whether it’s reasonable to expect them to pretend not to know it. This is why I don’t use social media; if someone tells me that she’s lost her job and I already know that from her recent Facebook posts, it seems ludicrous to me that I should be expected to say, “I didn’t know that—you’re telling me for the first time!” I’m not convinced that there is, or ought to be, such a thing as strawberry lemonade’s “‘privacy’ of the public space,” though I’m aware that many will disagree.

          1. Antilles*

            All because the information is publicly available doesn’t mean it’s normal for people to look it up and discuss it though. There’s tons of information that’s publicly available and yes someone could absolutely find legally but would feel creepy as hell for them to actively find.
            Especially if it’s someone you don’t know well; there’s an expectation that random people aren’t going out of their way to track you down and find out information about you – whether that’s via social media, public records, or good old-fashioned private eye stuff (e.g., covertly tailing your car to track your schedule).

          2. Falling Diphthong*

            As a social norm, it would be weird for me to tell a neighbor that I noticed a blue sedan parked in their driveway from 11:10 to 3:15. Especially if I am speaking to them face to face for the first time, in what is supposed to be a casual social interaction. (If their house was robbed in that timeframe, I should in fact mention my observation.)

            Even though the blue sedan was visible from both my home and the public street, and the more usual lack of a blue sedan was similarly visible, there’s a level of comment on such things that lands as “As your close social connection, I of course note these things” or “As a stranger, it is weird that I am telling you I have noted these things” that varies a great deal depending on all the surrounding variables.

          3. bamcheeks*

            I think you’re kind of mis-understanding social media norms here, to be honest! If you’ve added someone on your Facebook and you know they can in theory see your posts, there wouldn’t be anything weirder about them saying, “Oh yeah, I saw on Facebook, that sucks!” than someone saying, “Oh yeah, I ran into your mum yesterday and she mentioned it, that sucks!” The weird stuff would be following lots of links, digging well back into the past or doing lots of different searches like name+location, name+hobby.

            “I looked at [easily available site] and learned X” isn’t particularly weird. “I invested significant time and energy in researching you” is more alarming, and “I went well beyond finding out about your work and professional background” is extremely alarming. I mean, back when everyone’s telephone number and address were published in the phone book, you didn’t drive over to your interviewer’s house and note that you also have those Laura Ashley curtains to bond.

            1. Ano for this, anon for that*

              That’s fair enough. As I’ve said, I don’t use social media precisely so that I don’t gave to navigate these issues in my personal or professional life—it just seems like way more effort than it’s worth!

      7. SunnyShine*

        A good rule of thumb is: are you the intended audience? No? Don’t bring it up.

        It’s equivalent to Brenda at work talking to someone in the cubical next to you. If she mentions she is pregnant and asks the person to keep quiet, you don’t go bringing it up, even if you heard.

        Social rules in life don’t change just because they are online and easily accessible. Windows in homes are easily accessible, but you don’t walk up and look inside them.

    2. Literally a Cat*

      There is knowing, then there is mentioning unprompted.

      Then there is mentioning this in an interview. Yikes.

    3. Mike Engle*

      Once I interviewed for a job at law firm X&Y. Their current website said they started their firm after working together at Q&Z. Apparently Q&Z used to do some adjunct teaching at My Law School, but it must have been before my time because I had never heard of them before or in any other way.
      In the interview, X&Y noticed my graduation from My Law School on my resume, and they asked if I knew Q&Z. I said “I’ve only heard of them because I googled your professional background, but I never independently knew Q&Z.” Those Q&Z names never meant anything to me, so I would have had no use bringing it up, but I researched, and they asked, so I answered truthfully about what I knew.
      It must have been fine, I got that job. I think the above would have been the limit of how much research I would do about my future bosses, and that’s also what I would do with that information (some things are gonna be relevant right now…some things, not so much)

    4. Cat Lady in the Mountains*

      yeah, I once interviewed someone who asked me, in detail, about a band I performed with 20 years ago (which is definitely not listed on my linked in, but you could probably find if you googled my name and went 2-3 pages in on search results). Between the specificity of his question – which presumably was intended as a relationship-building exercise – and the overall vibe/his wildly over-the-top enthusiasm about working with me, I was creeped out enough to cut off contact with him and ask our HR team to reject him on my behalf.

      People who mention a past job or something on my linked in – no big deal, but it isn’t helping their candidacy unless they have a specific reason to mention it. I’m not gonna be like, extra-impressed that someone took two extra minutes to look me up on social media.

    5. Cinnamon Stick*

      That’s a bit meta, yeah. General LI searches though? I thought that was one of the things LinkedIn was for! I’ve used it frequently. My current boss and I were at the same college at the same time, though different programs, so we never crossed paths, but I brought it up at the interview.

      1. Midwest Manager*

        True, but it can definitely backfire. I usually think one of my strengths is reading the room, but….I was interviewing for a role at my current (healthcare, in the Midwest) employer, but in a different department, one that didn’t interact with my current dept at all. Interview was with the Dept Head and her 2nd in command, and I’d checked them both on LinkedIn. Interview was going well and was pretty casual/jokey (inside jokes about some institutional stuff, about parking, etc) when the 2nd in command asked a question about my (admittedly unusual) education/career history. Since we’d been very jokey up until then, I said something to the effect of “I know, mine’s weird—but it’s also pretty funny to be asked that by someone working here who has a music degree from Harvard.” He smiled and said in a joking voice. “Thanks for coming in,” and we both laughed and the interview continued.
        Readers, he was not joking. Yes, I was overqualified and they may have been concerned about salary as well, but it was clear that at that exact moment, my candidacy for the position came to an abrupt end.

    6. hereforthecomments*

      I’m an admin who was scheduling interviews, not on the search committee, and one of the applicants answered my email with references to past places I’d worked (not hard to find). I wasn’t impressed. Yes, it makes sense to do basic research on who is interviewing you. Beyond scheduling, I had nothing to do with this process. And, if this person thought they were making a connection, it didn’t work. The previous employer and I did not part well and I still have PTSD about some of my time there. Even though I had little to do with the selection process, my lack of enthusiasm for this applicant was shared. Be careful with bringing up such things. It’s more helpful to show that you’ve researched the organization, its goals and mission and how you can contribute.

    7. Daisy*

      yeah I once interviewed a guy who asked me detailed questions about my whole job history. I was the most junior person on the interview panel and the only woman, so I was pretty creeped out. He did end up getting the job and was perfectly nice, zero further signs of creepiness, so I think he was just attempting to build rapport and didn’t have a sense of what was appropriate. (IMO, asking one question about my background and then moving on to another interviewer would have shown that he had done some research without singling me out or getting into irrelevant details.)

    8. Consonance*

      I kind of did this once, and I think it was effective, but hear me out. I was taking a computer science course in college, and we were asked to write a reflective paper about digital privacy. To do so, I online stalked my professor and sprinkled personal details throughout my reflection as a demonstration that we effectively don’t have privacy because of the public/online nature of information. It completely freaked him out, which was the point.

  14. Glen*

    wait, they’re not even native to Chile? I accept that there’s a level of familiarity I have that the general public doesn’t, I could accept planting something not endemic to the specific area, but planting something that’s not native anywhere in the country?! See, this makes me doubt their sincerity – either literally zero effort has gone into trying to do it right, or she doesn’t care. Neither is a good look!

    1. Emmy Noether*

      I think the trees are a stand-in to preserve anonymity, so we shouldn’t get too hung up on them.

      Point probably still stands, though.

    2. metadata minion*

      The LW’s situation isn’t actual trees, but this sort of thing is weirdly common in tree-planting schemes — it’s a nice feel-good thing to say you’ve done, and it ends up with trees getting planted that aren’t native to or appropriate for the site, or areas getting planted with forest trees because Trees Are Good when it should be being restored as prairie or scrubland. (Do you know how much carbon prairie grass can capture?? The stuff has roots 10 feet long! But no, Trees Are Good. And trees are good, where the land is appropriate for trees.)

      1. rebelwithmouseyhair*

        Also, I read about replanting in areas devastated by forest fires. Trees planted quickly by well-meaning people withered, while others that grew naturally a good few years later, were soon thriving and outgrowing the older planted trees. So it’s much better to let bats do their pollination work (bats often precede bees!).

    3. Adriano*

      I live in Chile, and this anonymization made me recall the time when the Torres family (Spanish winemakers) pushed a project to plant millions of pines in southern Chile. Pines that were not native to southern Chile. An ecological disaster.

  15. bamcheeks*

    LW1, this wouldn’t just making me wonder whether I should say something, it would make me doubt my whole involvement in the church. You are a member of a church with so little oversight or ethical guidance that someone can say, “I want to do X”, and as long as they phrase it in the appropriate language, the church’s response is, “Sure! Have some money!” And you as a member of the church and and employee, with substantial professional expertise in the area, don’t feel you can push back on what you know to be a harmful project? That’s scary. Who knows what else your work, your time and your money is supporting?

    You should absolutely speak up about this, and I would also be scrutinising what else the church is supporting and ask some hard questions about the broader governance and accountability structures.

    1. Zoe Karvounopsina*

      I think the issue OP is having is that she might be able to bring it up with someone else, but because of the pre-relationship with Laurel, there’s a history there. She might be very able to push back on anything else!

      1. bamcheeks*

        Possibly, but, “no one has said anything over the years about Laurel’s planting trips to Chile because “I am called to restore habitats in Chile, will you help me?” is a hard ask to cast doubt on”, which suggests that it’s a broader cultural issue rather than just a personal issue with Lauren.

          1. Falling Diphthong*

            Yes, I think that was at the root of everyone involved setting off down a tangled path. If the church had a step where an outside neutral person with specific expertise was looped in to review any funding requests, this probably would have been quashed earlier. But I also see why that’s not usually a step for donations at this level, since it would take a substantial portion of the budget.

            So often this would all be fine! A person noticed something that they thought would help, and others helped with funding, and all the intentions were good. And now you have an established badly designed thing, and it’s hard to launch “this is a badly designed waste of money” when people are invested in not having been fools. So much easier if one thought the tree planter was ill intentioned.

            I type this as someone who thinks impact heavily outweighs intention.

            1. Sloanicota*

              I agree that a church which has not spent any time thinking about these things probably has a bunch of other issues, but I doubt OP is in much of a position to fix them on a broader scale. However, she may decide it’s still worth it to raise with the church leader for her own conscience, and maybe she’ll get lucky and it’ll start something.

              1. ecnaseener*

                OP may not be in a position to fix the broader issues, but that doesn’t make them any less worth interrogating for reasons less wibbly than conscience – this isn’t just a job, it’s OP’s church, and if there are deep-seated issues then may need to decide whether they want to keep supporting or attending the church.

        2. Sam I Am*

          Yes, this feels like an unhealthy culture. Just because you decided you’re “called” to something doesn’t mean it’s immune from scrutiny. This smacks of white saviorism.

    2. Hyaline*

      The problem may be–I am unclear from the letter–that it’s not *the church* saying “sure have some money” but *church members* donating to her directly. This gets way stickier and not necessarily something anyone can shut down–but also means that the LW’s ethical fears don’t go nearly as far as “egads, what else is my work, time and money supporting?” She should raise the issue, but it may be one of those situations where the only real recourse is setting up better boundaries between Laurel’s project and The First United Church of SomeSuch.

      1. bamcheeks*

        There’s an ongoing support group and 100 hours a year of LW’s time as an employee of the church is spent on Lauren’s project— that’s pretty substantial support, IMO! It’s not just “sure, you can have a donation box at the back of the church and I’ll mention it in the notices”.

        1. HonorBox*

          This is very true. The church is providing resources.

          The reason (probably) that the LW is conflicted is that they don’t have a great relationship with Laurel. So does saying something look like they’re just finding a way to poke a hole in Laurel’s charity work, or is this something to raise an issue over?

          That fraught relationship is why I’d lean heavily on what LW has learned about the harm the charity work is doing and not the part about Laurel paying herself back or upgrading travel.

          1. Sloanicota*

            Agree. Presumably if the work was good, it would be nothing more than eye-rollie that Laurel is treating herself a bit, and if she has no background in philanthropy she may be unaware of some conventions (also, our nonprofit *did* allow upgrades on flights over a certain length of time, but on the other hand it wasn’t the employee’s idea to travel there). Since the work is not good, that’s the most important issue to resolve IMO. However, the most likely outcome is that you are asked to contribute your knowledge on the changes needed to make the work better, so you will still be privately irked by the stipend and flight upgrades and extra accounting.

          2. rebelwithmouseyhair*

            I think there’s every chance Laurel has caused friction precisely because she knows the accounts are dodgy.

        2. Hyaline*

          FWIW “support group” sounds like a volunteer committee to me—not a resource provided by the church but members who wanted to help—and I was unclear if LW was paid by the church for those hours at first, though the more I think on it, the more likely it seems that it landed on her desk and she used work hours for it. I think LW should start the conversation with a discussion of this project’s impact on their own work hours and push back on this as not actually part of their job…

  16. Harper the Other One*

    OP1: my husband is a minister so let me say from the perspective of someone who’s got some second hand knowledge about church-based fundraising/mission – there are SO many concerns going on here, and I promise that when someone makes a public issue of one of them (which will happen eventually) it’s not going to be Laurel who is blamed: it will be “did you hear that the Church of the Cheap-Ass rolls isn’t even planting native trees on their mission trips?” or “I can’t believe The Holy Order of Wakeen would use donor money for first class plane travel.”

    At least in Canada, where I live, the way these donations are being collected and used could possibly cost a church its charitable organization status – which would mean it would have to stop collecting ALL donations until status was reestablished.

    I also highly recommend that you encourage your church to set official policies about volunteers operating missions related to/out of the church so that this doesn’t happen again. This kind of thing can destroy a congregation.

    1. Richard Hershberger*

      Yes, the church would be blamed, and rightly so. “We aren’t crooked: We just have terrible financial controls” is not a good look. Nor is “We have known Laurel for many years and trust her.” Worst is “We are all Christians, so we have faith in one another.” The reimbursing herself for lost income really jumped out at me. That’s not how volunteering works. The church has an additional employee without even knowing it.

      Oh, and the church (writ broadly) has a long history of sending missionaries to blunder about, annoying the locals and doing more harm than good. This is not good stewardship.

      1. Irish Teacher.*

        It also strikes me as being based on problematic ideas, an assumption that a “nice Western lady,” with no qualifications in an area nonetheless knows more about it than the locals. I would be side-eyeing this church if I knew about this, not because of their lack of oversight but because of what it says about how they view people.

        It sounds to me like they are just assuming Laurel is doing a good job because they assume that any person from their country who goes to a “less privileged” country must be of benefit to them and aren’t bothering to check with the locals or find out what she is doing.

        1. Sloanicota*

          My dream would be that in future the church only has local missions, and anyone who wants to do international work has to do it through the auspices of some sort of better positioned organization. But I expect there would be a lot of pushback.

          1. Jessen*

            I was actually going to suggest this to OP as a political move – find a reputable charity doing suitable related work and suggest that as a solution to the concerns, people could donate money to the charity and Lauren could work with them rather than going on her own. While pointing out the many concerns with what she’s doing on her own. But it’s a way for OP to avoid being seen as just shutting down a charitable work, if they’re offering a way to continue doing the work in a better manner (even if, as I suspect, there’s little to no chance that Lauren will accept the solution).

            1. Annie*

              This is the way to go. The best way is to work in collaboration with existing, on-ground resources, either religiously affiliated or not. Churches can be weird but this is weird even for churches.

            2. Mary*

              Jessen’s idea of a related charity is a good one. I was thinking of approaching it in terms of the grants you were asked to seek out. I suspect many of these may have financial reporting requirements with someone more than a bookkeeper, conflict of interest declarations and so on. If this is the case, you can approach the leadership with “as I was trying to see if this grant was a good fit for Laurel’s project, I looked into the project and noticed it doesn’t meet in x, y and z ways” and then go from there.
              As for the trees, in addition to going to the church leadership, it may be a gift to Laurel to allow her to save face in her project if she can use the grant as an “out” for the switch in tree variety (a native tree that would be hardier and fulfill the same role, maybe that could be sourced more locally, would restore the land and native soil ecology and would look so much better on the grant applications etc etc). I mean, unless the charity is “The Apple Tree Planting Initiative” or something.

              1. basically functional*

                Yes, and a grant would also require reporting on project outcomes. No grant-making body would fund a project like this with zero accountability.

          2. Guacamole Bob*

            I’ve seen a few of these small projects driven by one or a small group of people, and even when they do seem to have ongoing relationships with the community they’re trying to help and the money does seem to be spent on good things (a child’s school fees for example, or rebuilding homes after an earthquake), it often seems like the project is driven to some degree by ego and the organizers wanting to feel good about themselves. There’s an inherent inefficiency in spending money on these ad hoc small projects compared to donating the same amount of money to a more established and better-positioned organization, but it doesn’t create the same personal vibes.

            1. Jackalope*

              Just pushing back slightly on the idea of the “inherent inefficiency”. That can be the case, and things can be done for ego reasons, but it can also be for helpful reasons. Any large solution for a problem will have people who slip through the cracks, and smaller outreach is better poised to meet those needs. (Also, given that it is consistently a desire by people to feel personal involvement, it’s better to plan for that instead of thinking that it’s less efficient and getting annoyed with people. Nicholas Kristin does a good job of getting people to help by taking people’s typical reactions into account, and that’s a good thing to consider when trying to raise money or otherwise help out.)

      2. Harper the Other One*

        The church has an additional employee without even knowing it.

        You saying this also made me think – try is may be legally true, in which case the church could be running afoul of labour regulations and/or be exposed to liability for mistakes or damages Laurel causes.

        OP, I hope you see this and make sure this gets addressed.

        1. HonorBox*

          Depending on the setup – ranging from “church sponsored” to “church is fiscal agent” – there may be labor problems or liability problems. If the church is acting as the sponsor, labor problems and liability may be a big concern. But I think that Laurel is compensating herself for missed work and upgrading her plane ticket is less of a problem than the fact that the charity is doing work that is harmful to the land and there’s no evaluation of the impact of the dollars. If I’m the LW, I’m leading the conversation with those things. Planting trees that aren’t compatible with the land is something that is a fact. No evaluation of the process is probably something LW could determine to be fact. My worry is that raising the travel and compensation parts does seem more BEC level simply because Laurel could probably say “well this is my activity and I do provide a financial statement.” Even though donors might find that suspect, it seems much more directed at Laurel personally.

          1. Sloanicota*

            I still think OP coming in hot on someone else’s charitable work, pushing for more evaluation and changed practices, is going to be a delicate proposition (and it *is* a lot easier to criticize others than to organize your own charitable mission) – in the context of a church, where Laurel’s spiritual benefit is actually considered a significant factor even *if* the trees aren’t sustainable, and particularly for someone she’s known to dislike, *especially* if it seems like her main objectives are to reduce a few “small” luxuries like an upgraded flight and personal stipend. Ideally, OP could raise these issues with someone who has oversight authority, and perhaps encourage a sea-change in the way the church sponsors oversees missions generally – rather than risking the appearance that she’s running a targeted campaign against Laurel’s comfort and enjoyment of her volunteer work. I hope I’m just biased here by my own church’s wellmeaning but often low-impact bumbling around in philanthropy and that this church is much higher-performing.

            1. fhqwhgads*

              I don’t think it’s coming in hot to say “she said she was called to restore the habitats and the effect of her work is actually destroying them”. It’s a not “the trees aren’t sustainable”.
              The financial stuff could sound like a personal vendetta, but not if tactfully phrased. You’re talking about being influence by wellmeaning low impact bubling. But what’s described in the letter – even if it’s an analogy and not literal – still describes big bag impact.

          2. Harper the Other One*

            The reason I suggest starting with the financial/liability side is because those are what could get the church actually shut down, which will typically get some fast action. “Planting non-native trees” may be excused by “but her intentions are good!” while “we might be at risk of losing our charitable status” is a whole different ball game. It’s extremely rare that a church can survive even the temporary loss of donation status.

            That said, I agree that the approach should not be “Laurel is taking advantage but more “Laurel may not realize that doing X and Y exposes the church to risk and we should look at that.” And if the church is a member of a larger denomination, regional officers/advisors can probably assist with defining a general policy around missions to mitigate risk.

      3. Falling Diphthong*

        When Bill and Melinda Gates got involved in charity, it added the criterion “So how do you evaluate that the funded program had the impact you predicted?” Which is usually a good question to be asking, and at some point evaluating. Some things are genuinely hard to evaluate, but a lot of things are evaluated by “Is the land in better condition than five years ago, measured by degree of soil erosion?” And if it’s not, or it’s worse, then one needs to find a different approach.

    2. Seeking Second Childhood*

      As an aside, your church names made me laugh loudly enough to startle the dog. Kudos!

      1. Juicebox Hero*

        I believe (although I’m a member of the Church of the Poison Mind myself) you have to ritually sacrifice a store-brand hamburger bun by spreading your favorite accoutrement on it and eating it, while making Cookie Monster om nom nom noises.

          1. Harper the Other One*

            Newest member has to bring the communion rolls and throw an appropriately dramatic tantrum if anyone else dares bring their own.

          2. ACG*

            not for nothing, I once attended a church that used generic off the shelf oyster crackers for their communion.

    4. Harper OO's Church of Cheap-Ass Rolls*

      Yes all of this.
      For others reading, if you are considering taking employment at the place you worship, don’t do it. Source: My dad, pastor for 30+ years. He always said the best church employees leave on Fridays and don’t come back until Monday. It makes managing and oversight much easier for all involved when you aren’t emotionally connected as fellow worshippers.

      1. ReallyBadPerson*

        ^^^This this this! so much this. I was the director of Christian education for my church years ago. It was indeed an education.

      2. Harper the Other One*

        100% – the best assistants, treasurers, etc. my husband has ever worked with might have been members of his denomination but they were not members of his specific church location. They had knowledge but did not have the emotional attachment that blurs judgement.

    5. iglwif*

      At least in Canada, where I live, the way these donations are being collected and used could possibly cost a church its charitable organization status – which would mean it would have to stop collecting ALL donations until status was reestablished.

      Also in Canada, had the same thought! I’ve been on the board of my synagogue, and it’s surprising the number of projects people come up with that sound great but, if handled incorrectly, could result in losing our charitable status and our ability to fundraise for ourselves. You have to be very careful and keep very good records, because CRA will ask to see them.

      1. Lynn*

        This is true in the US as well. The IRS does not look kindly on “private inurement” and it can definitely impact your tax/non-profit status.

    7. Resentful Oreos*

      This is a really good point. If word gets out that the Church of the Fuzzy Llama is involved in shady (ha ha) projects, and uses donor money for first class plane travel for a “volunteer,” the excrement could really hit the moving cooling device. Even if it doesn’t cost the church its non-profit status, it could cost it a good name in the community, and donations would go down or even stop entirely, people stop attending, and the church might have to close if things get bad enough.

  17. This Creature Has An Exoskeleton*

    I’m so interested in the replies to the static question! I also get static shocks so routinely that I don’t notice them much anymore – but now I realize I do a lot of the grounding tricks unconsciously. Thanks for the Gatorade tip PBD!

  18. Action Kate*

    I always wear rubber-soled shoes and I would get a lot of static shocks in the winter too. My solution was to keep a damp paper towel in a mug at my desk and wet my fingertips before going anywhere in the office. Problem solved.

  19. Cinn*

    LW2 “Our CEO’s response was that in the past, when we’ve had ways for staff to provide anonymous feedback, the people who put their name on theirs were resentful of those who didn’t, and that people should find another way to ask their questions.”

    This is BS for all the reasons Alison says, but also surely the most obvious solution would be to remove the ability to out names to the questions and make them *all* anonymous?

    1. iglwif*

      I think the CEO is making this up, tbh. But yeah, that certainly does seem like the obvious solution …

      1. Momma Bear*

        Right. Surely people would stop signing their name if they were resentful about it. Easy solution.

        In my company, there’s a tendency to go back to our offices and bring concerns up to our managers who feed it back to upper leadership. The manager knows who asked, but the CEO might not. Sometimes it also brings weight for a manager to say, “Several people have asked about….”

        1. iglwif*

          100%! My manager very explicitly does this — if several of us raise the same concern in a team meeting, she will ask if we are comfortable with her escalating it in a “several people have asked about” way. (Currently we are lobbying to get our organization off of twitter…)

  20. Bookworm*

    LW3: I think Alison has it right. There is an expectation you put your resume on LinkedIn, use it as a social media platform (post, like, share, etc.) which I personally hate because I’m private and am now also uncomfortable with the knowledge LinkedIn is using AI to train, etc. But I did recently mention that I had a few connections (not close) in common on LinkedIn in an interview and that they had interacted with a post by an employee which led me to keep an eye on the org.

    It was along the lines of the introductory, “how did you find out about this position” sort of thing and unclear to me if this helped/hurt (they’re still doing interviews and I’m supposed to by updated within the next couple of weeks). If by any chance it is “common” knowledge (like you can find it elsewhere via other public social media or news, etc.) I don’t think it’s creepy. Like I’d argue the cat answer from one of the responses here wasn’t necessarily creepy if it’s well known the person has cats but it can depend, you have to read your audience, etc.

    For instance, if you’re interviewing for an investigator/research type of role that might actually be impressive (based on the reaction, though, it’s clear that wasn’t it, so again, YMMV).

  21. Hendry*

    I’m not a member of a church, so I’m a bit confused how #1 works. Doesn’t your church or Laurel have to coordinate with anyone in Chile? How do you just go to another country and start planting trees if you don’t know anything about it. Why does it cost 10K? Why are the locals there going along with this is ? Sorry this whole thing is weird to me!

    1. Ellis Bell*

      Well, it’s not actually trees, and the country is probably not even Chile. OP says “for the sake of anonymity, let’s say it’s tree planting trips to Chile”. Bringing non native plants into most countries would get you into super hot water with customs or border control people, so i don’t think it is actually planting. But if whatever it is, if it is not actually against the law, doing things with the church’s backing and in the church’s name will get you a long way before even reluctant people try to stop you. Look at OP, who thinks she’s going to get called the charity grinch.

    2. Hyaline*

      For better or worse, a lot of churches support individual or small charity organizations or short term projects or longer term partnerships. I belonged to a church where someone (for the sake of anonymity let’s say) was a member of First Nations tribe and organized trips to build and repair structures on a nearby reservation. As far as I can tell, it was totally up and up— he was working with reservation leader ship, and doing work that was appreciated. But the funding was entirely through church member donations and the staffing was completely volunteer. There was no tax ID number or oversight or anything like that. So this kind of thing can be kind of a wild West.

      1. HonorBox*

        Not a tax law expert, but I serve on a board of a non-profit that will, from time to time, serve as a fiscal agent for a charitable activity or cause. Getting IRS status is harder now that it was in years past, and if it is something that is smaller or shorter-term, it can be easier to get someone else to be your fiscal agent. A good fiscal agent will ensure that things are on the up and up, but may not be able to be as deeply involved in an oversight capacity to determine, like in this case, whether the sponsored activity’s actions are actually helping/harming.

        1. Coverage Associate*

          Tax law is different for non profits that have worship as their primary mission v other non profits. There’s a lot less reporting. For those familiar, churches file post card 990s while other non profits have tax forms with more data than individuals’, in a way. (Individual tax returns don’t include anything about assets, while non profit tax returns do, for starters.)

          Once 501c3 status is given, I understand it’s not monitored much except to make sure tax returns are being filed and maybe the algorithms check for obvious errors in e filed returns. There’s some oversight at the state and local levels. State prosecutors also have authority to investigate misuse of funds, and tax exempt status must usually also be obtained and maintained at the state level. And then localities check for non profit use of real estate, because churches don’t pay property taxes.

          But a church in Illinois sold some real estate many years ago and distributed the proceeds to the members, which is like the one thing a non profit can’t do. I know about this because the “experiment” in a “giving ministry” made national news, and I doubt any regulators stepped in.

          I am a member of a church where I feel leadership intentionally disguised the financial situation for several years. (The individuals are dead now.) My husband has a finance degree and goes back and forth as to whether the law was actually broken. (There wasn’t any self dealing or even over spending, unlike OP.) I have since taken leadership positions in the church, and have tried to raise issues of fiscal management, but so many people just hate looking at numbers, especially bad news numbers. Like with OP, the information can be there in black and white and no one cares.

        2. Hyaline*

          It’s also worth noting that you don’t *have* to be a registered nonprofit or tax exempt to, like, do charity stuffs. You just have to have them to be tax exempt yourself and for people to be able to write off their donations and that sort of thing. Laurel doesn’t have to operate as a registered tax exempt nonprofit to, like, collect $100 from a bunch of acquaintances and fly to Chile to plant trees, any more than you would have to be a registered tax exempt nonprofit to buy Christmas gifts for the kids down the street whose dad just lost his job or Thanksgiving turkeys for every family in your town affected by an apartment fire or something–and if your friends liked the idea and chipped in, cool. (There’s an element of “caveat emptor” to those who would just give $100 to anyone at church saying they’re doing “missions work” here, too.)

          1. Scholarly Publisher*

            And in the US with current tax laws, most people aren’t able to itemize charitable donations anyway. Which means as far as the donor’s concerned, there’s no difference between giving your money to a registered tax exempt organization, a church, or Prudence Snooter’s informal food drive.

    3. Khatul Madame*

      The type of the charitable activity aside…
      if Laurel raises 10K;
      – spends 1/3 to half of that amount on travel and accommodation;
      – pays herself back to account for lost income;
      – gives gifts to local friends/farmers…

      there would be hardly anything left for ANY activity or supplies.

    4. Irish Teacher.*

      It’s possible it’s something more like delivering items to an impoverished area but she is bringing items that are either unsuitable for many people there – think bringing foods that are prohibited by a large religion there – or that delivering food parcels is causing local businesses to lose custom and that it would be better to buy locally and deliver to the homeless/unemployed/otherwise going hungry local people. Something that could be done rather more casually.

      It’s also possible she is coordinating with other members of her religion in “Chile” rather than people who are in any way qualified in the area she is working in. In which case, the local church authorities may also accept “I was called to…”

    5. Jessen*

      In addition to what other people have mentioned – it’s a SUPER common issue in a lot of US churches that people go over to various other countries to do work that’s probably not necessary and may be actively harmful. There’s a lot of racism and classism that goes into it; often the base is an unspoken assumption that because someone is poor and (often) non-white they must not know anything about how to take care of their own needs. The trips make the donors and volunteers feel good about helping even if they don’t do anything useful.

      For an example, when I was in my teens there was a bunch of pressure to raise money to travel to various places so we could do building projects for orphans. Now that I’m an adult I have a lot of serious questions about what sort of building projects actually needed a bunch of teenagers with no specific skills and who aren’t used to manual labor, and why we really needed to pay to transport and house american teenagers to do the work rather than sending the money to hire local workers. But it was a whole thing to go around getting people to donate so you could go on your mission trip and help the poor needy foreign children.

      1. bamcheeks*

        This is to be honest what would make me question my place in the church. I am not an expert on international development or philanthropy, and I think I’ve been aware of some of the problems caused by Western charities for about three decades. If nobody in this church is raising concerns about Lauren’s activities because she said the magic words, “I am called to…”, that would be raising some pretty fundamental concerns about the people I’m in communion with. Either they have some completely unreconstructed and unchecked assumptions about the role of global north charities in the global south, or they are choosing not to rock the boat and upset the well-meaning church lady over environmental degradation in South America. Whichever it is, that’s inevitably going to mean the church is actively going to make the world worse, and that would be a deal-breaker for me.

        1. Irish Teacher.*

          We were taught about those problems in school, honestly, starting around the age of 10. At 10, it was fairly basic, just stuff like learning this song in religion class that talked about how people in poor countries “need no pity or advice” and how “different ways are different, no better and no worse.”

          In secondary school geography classes, we learnt a lot more about the problematic elements of Western charity and how a lot of aid comes with conditions that means it benefits the West rather than the countries it is intended to. I remember our 5th year (equivalent to Lower Sixth or to Junior year of high school) Geography teacher talking about things like local markets going out of business when food aid was supplied to certain areas and how it would have made more sense to buy the items from the local markets and distribute them or just give the people in need money instead of food, so that they could buy food themselves locally.

          1. Irish Teacher.*

            So basically, yes, this would raise broader questions about the church’s attitude to global injustice for me too. Hit reply too soon.

        2. londonedit*

          Yes, there’s been a lot of similar discussion here about students doing ‘charitable’ stuff on their gap years (here in the UK it’s fairly common – or at least it was before the pandemic, not sure about now) for 18-year-olds, especially middle/upper-class 18-year-olds, to take a year off in between school and university. The idea is meant to be that you do something self-improving, learn a bit about the world before you start uni, and so the traditional/stereotypical thing is for kids to take off travelling for a year, reinvent themselves as a hippy in Thailand, work in a bar in Australia for a bit, and maybe swing by a couple of African countries to do something charitable on the way home. The problem being, of course, that a lot of these ‘charitable’ endeavours are really just glorified holidays set up by big organisations, and the kids aren’t really helping, they’re just doing something to make themselves feel better and something that looks good on your uni application form when you say ‘I intend to take a gap year and spend three months painting an orphanage’ or whatever. There’s a lot of white saviour stuff that goes on, and a lot of it isn’t really that beneficial to the communities themselves.

          1. Not Australian*

            Yeah, one could find plenty of less glamorous opportunities to be of service to a community closer to home.

      2. Former Librarian of SHIELD*

        Right, and this is not a new phenomenon. The denomination I was brought up in would still send missionaries to countries where missionaries were prohibited and instruct them to lie about why they had moved to that country to avoid getting in trouble. Regular rank and file church members were told this was because those countries had “closed their ears to the word of god” or “the devil wanted to prevent us from sharing the gospel” there. But when I got older and started learning more about the situation, I learned that most of those countries had banned missionaries because in centuries past, missionaries had done things like traveling to the country on opium ships and causing addiction issues, or other kinds of harmful and unscrupulous things. Those people had every reason not to want us there, but our denomination decided they knew better and sent people into danger anyway.

      3. Strive to Excel*

        I hear you.

        I know of one group that does this well and they have a) people embedded in the local populace that give them a long-term boots on the ground perspective, b) a core of well-trained staff, and c) a very well-defined mission that they’d had vetted by an outside 3rd party to make sure it wasn’t problematic. Without all of those things, I would be wary of a mission that’s raising money in the 5 figures.

    6. EventPlannerGal*

      “Why are the locals there going along with this is ?”

      – fear of damaging relationships with other charities/agencies that are delivering more useful aid by seeming “ungrateful”
      – lack of resources on the ground to formally evaluate the impact of Laurel’s project
      – loss of any side benefits that her presence brings (maybe the project itself is useless but she’s spending a lot of money locally on food/accommodation/equipment)

      There’s also the possibility that she’s primarily dealing with a single individual/company/agency that she’s successfully pitched the project to, and the wider local community may not have much say. To continue the tree-planting scenario, perhaps she’s convinced Major Landowner that this is a good idea and gotten permission to do her thing on their land, and Local Tenant Farmer’s first-hand observations don’t get listened to.

  22. LW4*

    LW4 here about the static! As far as what I wear, I generally wear the same boots to the office every day which are supposed to be leather outer and rubber soled (Sorel brand) and I try to wear mostly natural fibers (cotton/linen) but synthetics do get in there in small amounts (blended fabrics). I haven’t gone to the office since sending in my letter, but I’ll give some of the options above a try! The Gatorade option was something I never thought of!

    1. LW4*

      Also I just put in a ticket with my building’s facilities services and fingers crossed. I go to the office again tomorrow and hopefully they can help me out!

    2. Generic Name*

      You might also try using fabric softener (either liquid or dryer sheets). That helps my clothes to be less staticky. And if you are concerned about scent, pretty much every brand does a “free and clear” version of softeners.

  23. Optimus*

    Two places I used to consistently get static shocks: on the treadmill and when getting out of the car in the winter and touching the handle to close the car door. In both situations, I eventually learned to avoid it:

    On the treadmill, I learned to touch one of the metal handlebars every few seconds to prevent static from building up from me shuffling on the treadbelt. I did not feel shocks at all after starting this habit.

    In the car, I figured the static was likely coming from me sliding out of the fabric seat. So I started grabbing the thick metal latch inside the car door frame (on the frame to the left of the driver’s side opening) before I slid out of the car. Haven’t been shocked since!

    So I wonder if, in addition to the other tips offered, you can carry something metal that touches you or that you can touch often that will continuously discharge small amounts of static and keep it from building up. I’m not expert whatsoever, just sharing what worked for me. I can imagine how anxiety-inducing it would be to work somewhere you get shocked all the time!

  24. WOOLFAN*

    LW4 – Don’t know if I have much advice to give, but I absolutely needed to say that I share your pain. Quite literally. Or shared, at least.

    My first paying job ever was in an office, largely filing things. Definitely a cushy first job for a high school student — I’ll always be grateful to my amazing gov’t teacher who recommended me and a classmate to the organization we worked for part time after school. It was a wonderful experience in many ways, but the biggest drawback was the freaking static shocks I’d get every time I touched a filing cabinet. Which, since most of the job turned out to be filing things, was often. Some days, constantly.

    I never said anything. Because I was the flavor of kid who rocked no boats and wouldn’t have dreamed of complaining. I mostly pulled my sleeve over my hand, which didn’t usually prevent the shock, but at least dulled it somewhat. I definitely got to the point where I was flinching. DECADES later, I still sometimes find myself flinching when reaching for a filing cabinet.

    So, um, solidarity and long sleeves? But also please tell someone. No need to be like a pigeon in a Skinner box, punished for doing your freaking job.

    1. Sloanicota*

      Wow, in that case I probably would have gone for anti-static gloves, if I was going to be literally sitting and filing in one place most of the day. It would be harder if you’re walking around doing all sorts of different things and getting shocked from various doorknobs etc. Sorry that happened to you!

      1. WOOLFAN*

        Oh, it was definitely caused by the walking I had to do while filing! This was in the 90’s, and the person I was working directly for most of the time had created her own personal, analog database of news articles relevant to her work — so much of my time was spent cutting articles she flagged and then filing them, or sometimes retrieving previously filed articles for her. (I vaguely remember a lot of taping and photocopying – maybe we were filing copies on regular printer paper — more durable and easier to file than newspaper?) The filing cabinets were on the other side of the office, so I was shuffling back and forth and between cabinets, building up charges and getting shocked all the time.

        It was worth it. She was also fine with us sitting and reading stuff we found interesting. I regret not staying there longer — it was a really awesome organization, and the person I worked for was a wealth of experience and knowledge.

  25. Rhetorical bathtub*

    OP#4: You have my sympathy; in the drier months I turn into a walking, talking, static machine. I have had my hands cramp up from a bad one; I’ve frozen computers in their tracks; I’ve seen sparks leap from my hands to the metal carts I have to push to do my job. Sometimes I can still somehow generate static electricity by standing perfectly still (ie: I touch a thing, get a spark, touch it again, get another spark).

    I haven’t found a way to *stop* it, but I mitigate it by touching metal things with the back of my hand first; it hurts a lot less. Tap with back of hand, then grab with fingers. It looks weird, and takes some getting used to, but if you consign the sparks to a place with fewer nerves, it might help. Good luck!

  26. Didi*

    Hate to break it to you, OP#2, but there’s not such thing as anonymity at work – asking questions or anything else. No one has privacy rights. Management can and will track anything.

    While the idea of anonymous questions might lead some people to ask things they would not otherwise, everyone should know that nothing is truly anonymous.

    1. It Ain't Me Babe*

      #2 Agree. Even anonymous surveys online contain metadata that can be used to identify you When completing a survey I always say everything is rainbows and unicorns.

      1. Anon for this one*

        I always say what I want is more communication from upper management. They love nothing more than hearing themselves talk, unless maybe it’s thinking that everyone just loves their bloviating all-hands meetings.

    2. inksmith*

      Can doesn’t mean will, though – like IT being able to read your emails. Most managers have better things to do with their time than figure out which employee said what in a survey (speaking as someone who does survey building and analysis for a living, I actually can’t extract any data from a lot of my surveys that would allow someone to be identified, and managers don’t have access to the survey software so they can’t either).

  27. Hyaline*

    OK, just to play devil’s advocate and counter any potential BEC with Lauren on #1–I am VERY unclear on whether the church as in the entity is supporting this with church resources, or if it’s just the church as in the membership supporting as individuals. The answer assumes she is misusing “church” money, but if the only money coming in is from individuals given to her, not via the church, it’s not church money–it’s “I donated without due research to a very stupid cause” money, but there’s nothing illegal about that. I’m seeing a lot of speculation here that Laurel is using her bookkeeping job to cook the books–this is a real overreach of the potential for the situation if it’s just that she’s soliciting donations from MEMBERS but the church itself is not involved in any way. I’m not seeing examples of how the church’s resources have been involved, up until someone from the “support group” (I assume made up of volunteers from the membership) asked LW to do grant research on, I presume, her paid time as an employee (which–LW, did you feel that in your position you COULD say no? Was this use of your time condoned or encouraged by your supervisor?)

    Basically–how much you can do and whether your manager/the minister/the local denominational leadership can or will do anything may really depend on whether she’s using church resources here or whether it’s really just her personal connections within the church. Overly simplified–could she run this out of her basement with no contact with the church except the members with whom she has connections? If so, what do you expect anyone to do about this?

    Now–either way, I think once someone asked LW (seemingly in her position as a church employee?) to research grants and she turned up questionable stuff, LW became involved and has every right to say something to someone. But if the church as an entity is not doing any active support, there may not be much they can do other than raise and/or reiterate some boundaries–Laurel may not use church property, resources, or access for fundraising, the church will not be a sponsoring organization for grants, that kind of thing. It’s going to be a lot harder, however, to stop a church member from using their personal connections with other members. I’m not sure how you do that without really engendering some bad blood within the congregation and honestly, I would not push for that.

    1. HonorBox*

      I agree with this. There’s definitely a line between church sponsored and church member asking parishioners. That said, I think that the LW now KNOWS that what Laurel’s “charity” is doing is actively harmful it is time to raise the concerns. I think “no” is a fine answer to helping with grants because that’s not an aspect of their job presumably. And in saying no, they could very easily just point out that given the research they did into grant funding, they’ve found that what Laurel is doing is not just not helpful, it is directly harmful. And honestly, even if Laurel is just doing this completely on the side, as a parishioner, I’d want to know because I want to give my charitable donations to organizations that are doing good.

    2. Emmy Noether*

      LW does write this in the first paragraph:

      . I spent around 100 hours last year working on administrative tasks for Laurel’s project.

      so I read it as at least some church resources in the form of LW’s time are going into this.

    3. Tg*

      This:

      It turns out that she’s planting trees that aren’t native to Chile and are bad for the soil, and missionaries from our church have a long history in the region of making local people feel terrible about those trees when they die.

      Makes it sound like the church is involved at some level.

      1. Hyaline*

        Except the tree planting analogy is so obtuse (though necessary!) that I have no idea what this even actually means.

        1. inksmith*

          I assumed something like providing computers or electrical equipment that isn’t designed for the climate where it’s being used (for example, somewhere really hot and dusty but no protection for sensitive electronics) and then when it breaks, the local folk get blamed for not keeping it working.

  28. HonorBox*

    OP1 – I think you must say something. Here’s the biggest thing that stuck out to me: While Laurel probably has great intentions, she’s doing something that actively harms the area she’s trying to help. She’s probably ignorant so no harm in that, right? But if she’s been doing this for years and continues to take action that is actively harming versus helping, she’s either not hearing from people about the harm being done (problem) or not taking what she’s hearing and changing course of action (larger problem). If the farmers she’s friendly with and paying are just taking the money because it is money and not sharing the negative side, she’s too friendly with them. And if she’s not working through proper channels that can be a problem too.

    If she was doing this on her own completely, it is still bad. But she’s running this under the umbrella of a church, and there needs to be more accountability for how the money is being used. This is like someone raising money through a church to buy books for schools, but then someone finding out that the fundraising is going to purchase collegiate textbooks for preschools, who then can’t get grade-level books elsewhere because “they have plenty of books.”

    The other stuff – upgraded travel, paying herself for missed work – is also problematic, but I think more minor here. They’re a big problem, but raising those issues could seem like you’re raising something more interpersonal. Instead focus on the fact that she’s engaging in a harmful activity and has continued to do so, which shows a lack of accountability to both the church and the people / country she’s trying to serve. She’s either not gathering information and feedback, which she should be doing, or she’s disregarding that information and feedback, which clearly she shouldn’t be doing.

    1. anonymous anteater*

      I imagine OP coming out with the fact that they have all this very niche expert knowledge that can help these missions be more successful, what an amazing coincidence, looks like He is calling her to keep harm from the church!

      1. HonorBox*

        Call it whatever you want. :)

        But the fact that the OP has the knowledge to point out how the funds are being put toward things that are harmful to the area being “served” means something should be said.

        While I won’t always advocate from walking away from a job, I think this is a situation in which the OP should strongly consider that if raising this issue results in any sort of pushback or if the church continues to provide support. At the very least, I think the OP has good standing to tell their boss that they’re going to discontinue doing whatever they’re doing that leads to the 100 hours providing support for Laurel’s charity.

    2. Great Frogs of Literature*

      When I volunteered for an NGO and lived in another country for a year, I discovered that there’s a HUGE problem in some (perhaps most? I don’t have that data) of the countries that are often targeted by these NGOs, where the locals have figured out that if Toilets For U comes around asking if you need toilets, and you say yes, Toilets For U will send a bunch of volunteers to the area and dump money into the local economy and build toilets. But if you say you don’t need toilets to people who feel mission-driven to provide toilets, they may just go away again and you don’t get anything. Will the toilets be reeking cesspits in three years because you don’t have enough water to support them? Very possibly! But those volunteers need food and people to cook and clean for them while they’re here, and probably someone to dig the holes for the pipes, and maybe you can get them to come back to repair the pipes in five years.

      In this sort of situation, you need to be REALLY careful about asking leading questions, because if the people you’re talking to can figure out what answer you want, that may well be the answer you’ll get, whether or not it’s actually what the community needs.

      1. HonorBox*

        Oh for sure! The farmers who are getting financial support from Laurel may not want to stop the flow of the money she’s providing. So the feedback they’re giving her may be only what will keep the money coming their way.

        Getting proper feedback isn’t easy. But it also seems like a little bit of research on Laurel’s part may have led her to information that the LW found, even without a specialized degree. And if I was advising Laurel, I’d suggest she seek feedback from others who aren’t on her payroll so to speak.

      2. Falling Diphthong*

        Former Peace Corps volunteer, and unused latrines were the go-to example of “a monument to my time as a volunteer.”

    3. Tg*

      From the letter above “missionaries from our church have a long history in the region of making local people feel terrible about those trees when they die.” it sounds like the church needs to distance itself from Laurl’s work as fast as possible.

    1. Beany*

      Rubber-soled shoes should make it worse — you want excess charge to leave harmlessly through the floor (ground), rather than build up until it discharges painfully through your fingers.

  30. TheLoaf*

    OP#4: I get badly shocked in my office. I carry around a key I found at my house (attached to my work badge lanyard), and I touch the metal door handle/drawer pull/light switch with the key first. This creates a bridge between the shock source and you, distancing you from the point of the initial shock. After that, I can touch the knob/filing cabinet to my heart’s content! Also, try a mini humidifier in your office, that can sometimes help!

  31. Kjenkers*

    Op #4 – Put dryer sheets in your pockets. It sounds SO silly but I promise it works! (added bonus – you will smell delightful).

      1. Crepe Myrtle*

        They make unscented softener sheets! This is another trick I used to use for static. I only use unscented laundry products so no one ever mentioned it.

  32. GhostGirl*

    OP#4 I used to get static shocks at my last job and to this day I still touch the door or something else wooden to dissipate the static electricity before touching a door handle.

  33. dulcinea47*

    Touch something non-metal before touching metal. This mostly dissipates the shocks. (I have the same problem from about October to March.)

  34. Kristen K*

    #4 – I am full of electricity. in winter I cannot even wear fleece (in Wisconsin no less) because I will get shocked every. time. I touch something I get electrocuted. Seriously people will hear the shock because it’s so much & then comment to me, lol.

    One thing that works for me is to touch the back of my hand to the door before I grab the knob. That helps dispate the charge a bit. Also don’t drag your feet on carpet. I found the shoes I was wearing was part of the problem, although I don’t know how but when I bought different shoes for work it wasn’t as bad. Stay hydrated, that helps too!

  35. mm*

    I know in these comments there’s a lot of resistance to using social media and someone knowing you worked for a specific company 3 years ago is an invasion of privacy. But IRL most interviewers expect that you look them up on LinkedIn and would be pleased to share some kind of connection. As long as it’s done tactfully or at least reasonably, it would be a great leg up to show that you did your research and aren’t just showing up with no preparation.

    1. Falling Diphthong*

      The skill being measured in the interview is one’s tact, and ability to recognize what’s a natural opportunity to mention X and what’s a weird time to leverage it into the conversation.

      1. amoeba*

        I mean, it’s not just whether you bring it up in the interview – unless you’re in anonymous mode, they will also see that you have visited their page on LinkedIn! It’s a discussion I always have with my boyfriend – he’ll be like “nooo, don’t click, they will see you stalked them!” and I’ll be like – “well, that’s a normal thing they probably expect, anyway?”

        1. Lily Rowan*

          Yeah, I’ve had people in an interview ask my about my past jobs when I ask if they have any questions, and that is off-putting. Not that they looked at my LinkedIn, but they should be asking about THIS job. And sure, if I had a public Instagram and the candidate found it they would learn (whatever I put out there) about my personal life, that is fine, but don’t bring it up in the interview, because it is not relevant!

  36. HSE Compliance*

    LW3 – I don’t think looking up people that you’ll be interacting with – especially work-related information for work contexts – is weird until you make it weird.

    I did recently have a weird situation kind of similar. I started a new role about 6 months ago. The person I replaced was fired (and I do know it was for cause after cleaning up a lot of sketchy things – and this is a regulatory compliance based role). My old team messaged me a couple months in because the person I replaced interviewed for my old position. Apparently, this person spent about a third of their interview talking about me and could rattle off my job & education history with dates & locations. Of course, this is all freely available on LinkedIn…but I’ve never met this person, nor did we have any overlap while at this company. It also didn’t help that this person spent another third of the interview complaining belligerently about my new company. 

    1. Bruce*

      Now that is very weird! Why are they snooping about you? It sounds like it made a bad impression too…

      1. HSE Compliance*

        It was incredibly weird, and my old team let me know because they were pretty creeped out.

        Said person was immediately struck off the hiring list because of their behavior, too. It’s also not like my old company wouldn’t have known my history? Like…. what was the purpose here? If they would have said “oh yeah, I saw on LinkedIn that HSE Comp is now at my old company, and here I am! What a small world!” that would have been totally fine.

  37. KTbrd*

    Just want to thank LW4 and commenters– I’m about to start my seasonal part-time retail gig for the holidays and EVERYTHING shocks me there– most notably the time clock and water from the sink when I wash my hands!! I wear Dansko clogs and most of the spaces aren’t carpeted so I think it’s just the dry air in there for me and not many of these suggestions will help, but I’m looking forward to trying a few!

  38. Knighthope*

    Letter 1 – I’m puzzled by “I spent around 100 hours last year working on administrative tasks for Laurel’s project.” On the church’s “dime”? So many questions!

  39. on the couch, with the cat*

    #3: Maybe 7 or 8 years ago, someone did this to me via (what was then) Twitter. It wasn’t a casual thing, either, they had clearly read back along my TL quite a stretch. I wouldn’t have minded much if they’d asked after my cat, but they brought up something I’d said months earlier and in passing about my adolescent child.

    It was a very strange encounter all around–the person had just a few minutes to pitch their project to me and began by setting their briefcase on the table and opening it, creating a physical barrier between us. Then they said, “I looked you up online” and asked me a question about the months-old parenting issue. I was really creeped out.

    I redirected by saying, “we only have X minutes, perhaps you should tell me about your project.” But honestly, it could have been a million-dollar idea and I would not have wanted to work with them.

  40. Amanda*

    For OP #4, this happened to me when my office remodeled and added new carpet and cubicles. We added equal parts liquid fabric softener and water in a spray bottle and sprayed the soft surfaces – carpets and cubicles. Worked like a charm,

  41. I'm just here for the cats!!*

    The most obvious and easy fix for letter 2 is to make all questions anonymous. Then everyone can ask their questions and there wont be “resentment”
    But we all know the real reason why the bosses don’t want anonymous feedback. So they can’t take it out on the employees that ask questions.

    1. Space Needlepoint*

      I think you can expect some replies saying your comment is too cynical, but I agree!

      I prefer anonymous and I also work to keep my answers short so nobody can figure out by writing style.

      1. I'm just here for the cats!!*

        yes. And for all those who say that nothing is really anonymous at work I would say you have to do a lot of back door digging to figure it out. For example, my work uses Qualtrics forms for surveys. I’ve given anonymous surveys before and yes it does have data in the results, like location, etc. But you would have to know what employees’ IP address is, etc. For most managers they aren’t going to have that information. And if you have a large company its probably not going to work.

  42. Pizza Rat*

    LW1, seconding Allison’s reply to talk to your manager. It sounds like Laurel is not in your chain of command, so hopefully your manager can run interference and let you focus on what you’re hired to do.

    Searching for grants is time-consuming and I know people at non-profits who spend all day searching and applying for them–and I wouldn’t put it past Laurel to ask you to fill out grant applications! Your manager needs to step in. Good luck!

  43. NobodyHasTimeForThis*

    LW#4- If you are the only one getting shocked you might try different shoes. That is the one thing that has always made a big difference. I get shocked like crazy with one specific pair of shoes and just don’t wear them anymore.

  44. Delta Delta*

    #4 – I’m not sure if anyone has mentioned this (did not read all the comments) but there are anti-static mats that certain labs have. They’re sort of sticky and are designed to eliminate the buildup of static. Maybe the facilities folks can get some of those for high-traffic areas, as probably multiple people are having this problem.

  45. beautiful, talented, brilliant, powerful musk-ox*

    To OP #4 – One of my coworkers experienced the static shock thing as well! I think she figured out that it happened when she wore specific shoes?

    This may not be the best solution, but when she came on board, I happened to have a sanikey that our company provided for all of us when we returned to the office after lockdown, so I gave that to her (though, ours were made of acrylic or something similar, not zinc alloy like the ones listed at that link…I don’t know if the zinc alloy will also pose static issues). It at least helped her avoid touching the door handles.

  46. Not my real name*

    LW3: Just a couple weeks ago, I had this happen for the first time, although it wasn’t in an interview, it was in a cover letter. Someone called me out in their letter by name and mentioned something about my work history. I was extremely creeped out by it but I tried not to let it influence my review for what was a pretty strong candidate. That said, I do NOT recommend this strategy, and I hope it doesn’t catch on. I found it deeply off-putting.

  47. Meep*

    LW#1 – I get your concern of coming off as petty, but I suspect that all those “bitch-eating-crackers” feelings you have are actually more like vindication of other red flags you have noticed but have been too polite to voice even in your own head.

    Think about it this way – the desk and the couch are not petty examples, but another example of how Laurel operates. She doesn’t think things through to the benefit of others or even herself. She just does what she thinks is best with no consideration towards the future. Sounds a lot like how she plants trees in Chile, no?

    The other example you gave of handing out money and reimbursing her salary for bookkeeping are other ways in which she is short-sighted. Yes, helping others is nice and should be a mission statement of the church. But giving away project money to someone based on friendship isn’t actually helping anyone in the long run. It is just opening up your church to be taken advantage of – because well she is literally doing nothing for the environment, at least she gives a short infusion of cash.

    Really, I would not kick yourself. You are intuitive and that is a good thing.

    1. Dandylions*

      Well OP said they suspect she pays farmers based on friendship. TBF to Laurel they don’t know for sure it’s happening and haven’t seen the finance reports.

    2. Ellis Bell*

      I think this is really insightful; it’s common, too. Particularly since most of us have put our settings on Give the Benefit of the Doubt to All (a good thing) on infinite repeat, no matter how uneasy you feel (less than good). It was years before I allowed myself to change my reaction of unease with someone from “ugh, this person is annoying, but I must be a terrible and impatient person” to “Hmm, this person has twanged my ‘what the heck are they thinking’ response; it doesn’t necessarily mean anything, but don’t dismiss it out of hand either, just in case more details are coming along shortly”.

  48. Enn Pee*

    OP1 – if you haven’t already, you may want to read the books TOXIC CHARITY by Robert Lupton. (Search for “Lupton Center” on google.)
    It addresses a lot of the issues you are seeing in this particular ministry, and it might be worth reading as a larger parish community.

  49. Bruce*

    LW3: as a hiring manager I expect that candidates will have looked me up on Linked-In, it would be dumb for them not to. I agree with Alison that you don’t need to dig into it during the interview, but it should not hurt to mention it if you find a big connection that would put you in a good light.
    LW4: regarding anti-static wrist bands, they are not something you can wear while walking around, they have a strap and have to be plugged into a grounding plug. As for fibers, wools create static too. I think the best thing is to get the carpets treated with a static reducing spray…
    Back in the early days I used to have to check layouts by reviewing a rolled up drawing on a light table, on dry days I would unroll the drawing and get a loud ZAP on my tummy where it touched the metal rim of the table. I found that wearing an anti-static coat helped reduce the pain of the shock, I borrowed one from the test lab whenever I had to check drawings!

  50. Qwerty*

    OP2 – A good way to handle this is not to announce anyone’s name with their question so you don’t know whether it is anonymous or not. I worked for a place that had someone screen and aggregate the questions ahead of time but allowed people to ask follow up questions in the Q&A , which solves a lot of what you are looking for. This was during 2020, so concern about layoffs was common for us as well.

    Having questions get slightly reworded worked well for both employees and leadership – the hard edges were taken off, so tough items sounded less adversarial and if three people asked about similar topics it gave leadership the ability to address the core issue rather than one specific use case.

    1. So they all cheap-ass rolled over and one fell out*

      These are great tips… for leadership that is (and has a track record of) acting in good faith.

  51. Dandylions*

    #1 When you bring this up stick to facts and stay away from speculation. For example, I wouldn’t say that the class of travel she’s chosen is inappropriate because she’s too young, she may have RA or other invisible disabilities that means that type of travel is needed. You haven’t seen the financial report so don’t make sweeping statements until you do.

    If I were in your shoes I’d say something like:
    “I just learned what Laurel’s trips are for. I actually majored in Forestry in college and have X and Y experiences. Now that I know what the projects are for, I looked at Y document and she’s planting species that are not native to Chile. Overall this will harm the local farmers for A, B, and C (high level) reasons. I also noticed the price and in my experience a trip like this could be completed for closer to $Z. I’m concerned about this project and the price. Please let me know if I can assist in validating the expenses or provide alternative species to plant.

    Just be sure that $Z is an up to date figure. Domestic flights in the US have exploded. A trip that used to cost me $500 per person was $1,600 per person even though I was getting lots of discounts. Same with food and rental cars. My car was $380 for just 2 days, last year that same car was $295 for 4 days. And the locations aren’t always a good indicator either. It’s cheaper for me to stay in a hotel near NYC (which I do frequently for work) then it is stay in a hotel in rural IA or NC to visit family. Hotels have started to charge a premium in small towns because they know that they are the only game in town and that if you are getting a hotel in town it’s to visit family and you are stuck using them.

  52. RagingADHD*

    Just a thought on #1 – giving cash grants directly to local farmers is probably the best way to do effective work, if this is a third-world country with corruption issues. It is common practice for charitable / ministry / NGOs to cultivate trusted relationships with residents who can make informed choices about how the money should be spent, and bringing resources / money in person is sometimes the most reliable way of making sure it gets to the intended recipient.

    Indeed, if she focused more on equipping local farmers to do the plant selection and planting practices and less on imposing her own wrongheaded ideas, that would be a better outcome.

    So, out of all Jane’s problems, her own travel expenses and the grants are the ones I’d worry about the least, and the fact that she needs mobility-friendly travel should not be an issue. After all, you would not want the ministry or the church to say “accommodating your mobility needs or disability is a waste of money.” That’s not just bad optics, it would be pretty egregiously ableist.

  53. LW3*

    Hi Commenters! I am LW3. Thanks for sharing your perspectives!

    More detail on the interaction:
    I did not mention any personal information of the interviewer.
    She is technical side and I am in project management.

    We were a few sentences into our meeting each other, and I replied to one of her statements approximately “Oh! Yes, I saw __professional experience__on your LinkedIn.”

    She replied, “That is incredibly creepy.”

    I was obviously taken aback because it seemed very disproportionate to my comment (like you all said, it wasn’t like I mentioned a parenting decision from months ago or her cousin’s sister’s cat), but I did my best to save face. Also: we are both female and small. Interview was in person. I was not standing too close to her or anything like that.

    I can’t remember exactly what I said, but my tone was a mild ‘oh that is an interesting perspective’ vibe (we are in southern California), and clarified my interest by bringing it back to the interview and interview prep: ‘…for example, because you worked in y, I think you would be interested in my experience managing x, which I have 3 years of experience in…’

    She replied ‘that makes sense’ and acknowledged that I had nailed what she was interested in about me, but was very grudging about it. She was borderline hostile for the rest of the interview, and tried to grill me in a way that is not best practice in her expertise area, but a completely bad fit for mine.

    Ultimately, I did not get the job and I think it was a very obvious case of poor social fit with her reporting line (all my other interviews with the company were fine, but her boss was also awkward. Not lacking social skills type awkward for either of them, but perhaps task oriented to a degree that makes social jobs like project management difficult) but I was pretty aghast that she reacted so strongly from such a minor mention.

    Thanks for any further feedback!

    1. Moose*

      Some people are just weird about LinkedIn. Once someone new to the nonprofit I volunteer with said “I have lots of experience with X; you can see so on my LinkedIn.” So I checked her LinkedIn and referenced it in an email. I said something like “I saw you do have experience with X however, I still think we can pull off event for A, B, C reasons.”

      She later listed this as an example of why she quit and why our organization was so hostile. So like, whatever dude.

    2. Hyaline*

      I…think she was being very strange. LinkedIn is supposed to be a social networking site with emphasis on the networking, right? If you had gleaned the information by Googling her, I’d find it very uncomfortable to raise it, but she theoretically put the information on LinkedIn so that potential future employers or collaborators could see it–she intentionally shared it for her own benefit. Maybe she felt strange realizing that, yes, that information can also be used for others’ benefit, too, but that’s on her.

      1. LW3*

        “she intentionally shared it for her own benefit. Maybe she felt strange realizing that, yes, that information can also be used for others’ benefit, too”

        I think this was the case. She was stopped in her shoes shocked to hear me reference it. But between her shock and how hostile-ish she was after that I was questioning myself.

        There are people who feel very driven to be ‘in charge’ of the interview and actually are not looking for a rapport or a conversation that flows. I think she might have been like that and therefore resented a more level power dynamic. Which, fine if you are manager, not so fine when you are hiring me for a position where sociable is a key aspect of the job description specifics.

        1. LW3*

          I meant, “Which, fine if you are the hiring manager, not so fine when you are prospective colleague and the company is hiring me for a position where sociable is a key aspect of the job description specifics.

  54. Mushroommushroom*

    “no forestry background, no training in habitat restoration, or any background on Chilean ecology. She decides on her own where and what trees should be planted. It turns out that she’s planting trees that aren’t native to Chile and are bad for the soil,”

    The gasp I just gasped. My own feelings about ministry abroad aside, this just plain sucks and she’s actively harming a community in your church’s name.

    Take the church and “being called” aspect out of it- If you were working for a nonprofit that worked with llama populations, and one of your coworkers was using $10k a year to plant bushes that it turns out are llama poison, you’d say something right?

  55. Red era*

    Ugh, every church wants to build a well like no other church has ever thought of that before (insert eye roll). If Laurel is gonna scam people, at least try to scam with originality.

    1. Peanut Hamper*

      I always want to see the best in people, but I really think you’re on to something here. Laurel has figured out how to get an all expenses paid vacation, gets to groom her ego at the same time, and nobody is calling her out on it because of the religion angle. Oof! This may not have started as a scam, but it certainly is one now.

  56. Moose*

    “missionaries from our church have a long history in the region of making local people feel terrible about those trees when they die.”

    This is enough reason to stop the mission trips on its own. Missions should not be making people in the location they’re going to help feel bad for any reason. I would take a long hard look at your church if they don’t see this as a reason to stop. It doesn’t say good things about what y’all are doing on these trips.

  57. Jessica*

    LW#4 with the static. I’m the only person in my office that has this issue, but I swear it was starting to give me an anxiety disorder. I was afraid to open my own office door. I got an essential oil diffuser, and that increased the humidity in my office (along with the nice smell), which really helped with the static. I also stopped using those wool dryer balls in my laundry, and that also helped. It’s nice to know I’m not alone :-)

  58. bravo*

    LW #1: I just wanted to say how incredibly amazing it is that you just happen to have formal credentials in the EXACT FIELD some rando at your work is doing sketchy things in — and getting away with because no one else knows anything about it! It’s like if someone was sending payments to vendors for chinchilla grooming and you just happened to know exactly who the major players in the space are and how much they charge for common services.

  59. Peanut Hamper*

    Just gotta say props to the OP for “bitch eating crackery“. That’s genius!

    Stay gold, OP!

  60. The Gollux, Not a Mere Device*

    LW1: If you decide to approach this from the angle that Laurel is wasting resources, you could point out that her pet projects are eating up 2-3 solid weeks of your time every year. Or, it’s like blocking out two or three hours every week that isn’t available for the rest of your work. (A hundred hours is a bit over twelve eight-hour workdays, or two and a half 40-hour weeks. If you get ten vacation days a year, and the office is closed for ten paid holidays, that’s two and a half weeks out of every 48.)

  61. vicki*

    LW5 – I was in your shoes back in 2022, after having received 2 offers in 2020, graciously declining 1, and not enjoying the job that I had accepted and looking for a change. I did exactly as Allison suggested: I emailed the hiring manager (whose offer I had graciously declined in 2020) with an update and expression of interest when a new hiring cycle opened. They accelerated the processing my application and I started a few months later after a long period of voluntary and very fun funemployment in between roles. :) I am a little over 2 years into my new position and still doing well.
    All the best with it – you got this! :)

  62. KatePM*

    LW 4: FWIW every flooring type has static electricity coefficients. Facilities could look into a different flooring if nothing else works.

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