advice about your boss

Need advice about your boss? Here are answers to all the questions you have about your manager, from how to deal with a boss who yells, to how to tell your manager you’re allergic to her perfume.

we have public shamings about how often we say “um” and “uh”

I’m off today. This was originally published in 2017. A reader writes: Every month, my work has a “pep rally” where the whole staff gets together to highlight what’s going on in each department. My boss, the executive director, has recently decided she wants to cure everyone of using the words “um,” “uh,” and “like” […]

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when your teenager dates your boss’s son and it goes bad

A reader writes: I know that you’ve repeatedly discussed how romantic relationships at work can be problematic, but how do you navigate it when it’s your child? I was catching up with a friend (Sara) who told me that her teenage daughter had started dating Sara’s boss’s teenage son. Sara didn’t want to forbid the […]

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I’m worried a wedding vendor will complain about me to my boss

A reader writes: This starts with my wedding. To make a very long story short, my wedding dress alterations were a complete disaster. The seamstress produced such awful work that I had to have an emergency appointment with another shop to fix the dress, just days before my wedding. The new seamstress showed me how […]

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my boss says I need to socialize more with my team

A reader writes: I’ve been in my job for about two years, and I’m just going to say it: I don’t have a great manager. The biggest sticking point has been his over-emphasis on the team hanging out and “getting to know each other.” He never bothers to schedule work time for us to do […]

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

A reader writes: I recently took a couple of weeks off work because of a work-stress-related mental breakdown, and came back today. Our project is a nightmare — toxic culture, inexperienced leadership, over-budget, understaffed. Brian, our project manager and my grandboss, is responsible for a lot of the problems. He also can’t manage the members […]

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