jerks

Jerks at work come in all flavors — credit-hoggers, bullies, underminers, and more. Here’s help in dealing with them.

my employer says we can’t stop patrons from filming us

A reader writes: I work at a library in a two-party consent state for recording people. Recently people have been coming in and harassing the staff and filming their reactions. Some of these videos have ended up on social media websites, giving our library a minor amount of fame (much to the staff’s dismay). In […]

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I wrote a Glassdoor review and the employer is losing their minds

A reader writes: I wrote a Glassdoor review and the employer is absolutely losing their mind. Recently, I left my last very chaotic workplace for new pastures. The prior workplace had leadership that would constantly go on social media and talk about how much they disliked certain employees and clients (which definitely impacted our business) […]

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what can I do during a client’s bigoted rant?

A reader writes: I work as a manager in specialized retail establishment and had a client come in today to review and complete her order. We were chatting while I finalized her paperwork, and she mentioned her children. I said something to the effect of, “Oh, I love teenagers — I used to teach high […]

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why are there so many abusive bosses?

In the 15 years I’ve been writing Ask a Manager, I’ve heard about some really bad bosses. There was the boss who crashed an employee’s wedding (and then wrote her up for having him escorted out!), the boss who told bizarre lies about all her employees, and even the boss whose negligence killed someone’s horse. […]

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