Ask a Manager

This is a transcription of the Ask a Manager podcast episode “Evil HR Lady, Bedbugs at Work, and More.”

Alison: This week we have a special guest and I’m so excited to introduce her. Suzanne Lucas runs the website Evil HR Lady, which is an amazing website full of useful and funny advice on all things workplace and HR related. Suzanne spent 10 years working in corporate human resources where she hired, fired, and did all kinds of other mysterious HR things. In addition to Evil HR Lady, she also writes for Inc, CBS Money Watch, Business.com, The Balance, and many more – and she was a huge inspiration to me when I was starting Ask a Manager many years ago. Suzanne, welcome to the show.

Suzanne: Thanks so much for having me on.

Alison: I’m so excited to have you here. We have some letters that we’re going to talk about together – but before we get into those, can we talk about Evil HR Lady first?

Suzanne: You betcha.

Alison: What led you to start the site and where did the title come from?

Suzanne: When I grew up, we subscribed to two newspapers – a morning one and an evening one, and the morning one had Dear Abby and the evening one had Ann Landers in it. And I always read all of them and I loved advice columns and I thought, I want to be an advice columnist, but that seems like a silly dream. Right? (Laughs) I know you would never think that. When this new-fangled blogging thing came out, I said, “Hey, there’s nothing to stop me now – I can be an advice columnist if I want to be an advice columnist!” So that’s how and why I started. And the name comes from the fact that no one likes their HR department. You never hear somebody saying, “Oh, I just love HR.” Nope. Everybody hates HR. And a lot of that hate is well deserved. So that’s where the “evil” comes from.

Alison: (Laughs) And what do you think that is about? I feel like HR is really shrouded in mystery for a lot of people – people are kind of confused about what HR does and how they work.

Suzanne: Part of it comes from that shrouding in mystery, and people don’t understand, when we’re asking you invasive questions about race or whatever, we’re not doing that because we want to know, we’re doing it because the federal government requires us to know. So, some of those things are just the lack of explanation on the part of HR to employees as to why we’re doing it. Another part is simply that we’re the bearers of bad news. When the HR person shows up to talk with you and your manager, it’s not generally to give you a promotion. Their manager doesn’t need a witness for that. The manager needs a witness for something bad, so you only see HR in the bad times.

But another reason is that some of us – I probably shouldn’t use us since I’ve been out of for 10 years – are spectacularly bad at our jobs. One of the things that you talk about a lot, and I talk about a lot, is this ghosting by recruiters and treating candidates poorly. And while recruiting is a very tiny part of what HR does, it’s the most visible part and it’s the one part of HR that every employee has a relationship with. And when we do that poorly, then it’s hard to get respect on the other things that we do do well because everybody thinks, “Oh my goodness, recruiting is such a nightmare.”

Alison: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. People also have weird misconceptions about HR. I know you and I both hear from a lot of people who assume that HR will have to keep anything that they tell them in confidence, like a priest.

Suzanne: Right! Yeah, I say that often. We’re not priests, we’re not lawyers, and we work for CEOs. So…

Alison: Yeah, I don’t understand quite where people are getting that idea, other than maybe it’s just the only model they have for that kind of thing. But it’s a weird model to use.

Suzanne: It is kind of a weird model to use, and I’m not quite sure where it comes from either. I think maybe because a lot of times HR people are sympathetic, and they talk to you and you feel like you’re going in to talk to your therapist or whatever — and you’re not, and we’re not, therapists — and so there’s an expectation of privacy and help. And there’s a lot of things that HR does keep private — if you come in and say, “I’m dealing with a difficult divorce,” there’s no need for us to run that up the management chain. What we’ll say is, “What can we do to help you? Here’s the phone number for the employee assistance program, blah, blah, blah, come see me if you need something else,” or whatever. And that can be kept confidential. But if you come in saying, “I’m being sexually harassed,” we can’t keep that confidential. It’s against the rules – we have to act.

Alison: Yeah, that’s a great point. Maybe it’s that people see that some things are kept private and then they don’t get the nuance that’s involved where things aren’t private across the board.

Suzanne: Right, exactly.

Alison: The other misconception that I see people having of HR all the time is this idea that you can go to them to sort of mediate minor interpersonal conflicts that you might be having with a coworker or with your boss. And I do think that in some companies HR does do some of that more than they should. What do you think is up with that?

Suzanne: Well, I think sometimes they can and do, and sometimes they should – because sometimes there’s just communication and personality mismatches and having a second person step in can be helpful and can give some coaching. But we’re not the playground monitors, and I think people expect us to be that way. It’s like tattling to your teacher that you’re being teased by the class bully. The teacher will step in and fix that. But unless the behavior is egregious or illegal, most likely you’re going to be coached on how to fix it yourself.

Alison: Yes. Do you think there are signs that people can watch for to get a feel for whether HR at their company is good or not very effective? I know sometimes when I am giving people advice, I find myself giving this caveat of, “Well, if you’ve seen evidence that your HR people are really good, then you can do this.” Do you have advice on how people can know if that’s the case?

Suzanne: I wish I could give you a magic formula, but there was one thing. I had the fortune of working for a great HR team and our head of HR used to say, “If we don’t do the little things right, how can you expect them to trust us on the big things?” And so one of the things I look for in an HR department is: are they doing the little things right? How is the onboarding program? How is the recruiting going? How are year-end performance appraisals and annual increases rolled out? If those things are smooth, you have a pretty good idea that your head of HR is competent. And if your head of HR is competent, there’s a good chance that your employee relations manager or your business partner are going to be competent as well, because competent people tend to hire competent people. If those things are a disaster, chances are your head of HR is a disaster and she’s going to be hiring other disasters, because disastrous people tend to hire disastrous employees. So, I do think there is some value to looking at how the little things are handled. But the other thing is, you should get to know your HR business partner or your employee relations person, and if you’re in a big company, those people will be separate. If you’re a small company, your HR department may be one person or two people. I’m not saying to become their best friends because HR really shouldn’t be friends with employees, that’s another story. But if they know who you are, they know that you’re a responsible, hard worker or whatever. If there comes a time when you need support, or you’re being accused of something or whatever, if they have a background on you, that’s going to be helpful for you.

Alison: Yeah, that’s great advice.

I love your column so much. You’ve been writing it since 2006. Are there questions that you find yourself getting over and over?

Suzanne: The questions that I get a lot are the difference between exempt and non-exempt employees, and can I take time off, do I have to be on time, blah blah blah in relationship to my status as an exempt employee or as a non-exempt employee. Those things, I get a lot of. And the other thing I get a ton of: Is this legal? And the answer is almost always “Yes, but what’s your company policy?” I think a lot of people don’t understand that 90 percent of what your HR department does is purely up to company policy. There’s not laws governing every little thing. And so, I get a lot of those questions, “Can my manager do this?” And my answer is, “Well, yes, but it might not be a good idea, but you need to check and find out if that’s within your policies.”

Alison: I remember you saying a long time ago that at the time you were getting more questions about DUIs and public drunkenness – people who were worried about how a DUI might affect their background check for a new job and that kind of thing. It’s pretty upsetting how often this is apparently coming up for people.

Suzanne: It is kind of upsetting and the interesting thing is not so much the questions but the comments that I would get back on it, some of which have been deleted due to their obscenities. I can now, through modern technology, edit comments, so I just take out obscenities and put in the word “squid lips” instead. But back in the day it was either keep or delete, and I had to delete a lot where people would attack me for saying, “Yeah, there’s a serious problem if you have a DUI – that’s a serious problem.” And a lot of people would get upset that I would say that, say I didn’t understand – and no, I don’t because you know before you drink that you’re going to be driving home, so you’re making that decision while you’re sober. Let’s stop that.

Alison: Yeah, I’m right there with you.

Okay, let’s get into our letters. We’ve got a few that we’re going to tackle together. I will read out this first one:

I have bedbugs. It’s been a miserable couple of months trying to deal with them. My building management are cheap bastards who pick the worst exterminators, but I also live in an 11-floor building in a bad neighborhood where many of the tenants just aren’t that clean, but it’s no one’s fault. Even if we were all domestic gods, bedbugs are notoriously hard to get rid of. People go on a lot about how bedbugs are gross, but they don’t understand how traumatic it can be living with them – the discomfort, the feelings of helplessness, almost nothing I do makes a difference even though we’ve tried a lot of different things to fix the situation and are continuing every effort.

My boss, who I was dumb enough to complain to about this when we were trading sob stories, just told me that she has to tell HR about it because it’s a risk to everyone I work with. And I’m not allowed to sit in anyone else’s chair – not that I would, but still. And she said she read online that some companies ask that the person not come to work until it’s resolved. I don’t know if they can legally ask me to do that, but I’m a little freaked out. Should I go to HR myself? Someone told me that she’s creating a hostile work environment, but I don’t know if it’s that bad yet. Definitely if she tried to make me take unpaid leave, but I’m in a huge company – whatever she asks will have to go through HR pay-wise. I don’t know what to do or what I should be prepared for. Any advice would be welcome.

Well, I am itchy just from reading that letter. I hope I haven’t done that to you.

Suzanne: I was going to say the same thing too. I’m scratching. (Laughs)

Alison: (Laughs) Yes! I think this is a really tough situation. What’s your advice for this letter writer?

Suzanne: Well, first sympathy, because I can’t imagine – I live in fear of bedbugs because we travel a lot and stay a lot in hotels and that’s where you pick them up. A couple things: it’s not a hostile work environment, because that’s something that’s very specific and it doesn’t have anything to do with bugs, it has to do with sexual harassment or racial discrimination, things along that line. It has nothing to do with that, so just a little pedantic thing there because a lot of people think my manager being mean to me means a hostile work environment and it doesn’t.

Alison: It’s such a confusing term because “hostile work environment” sounds like it would mean “people are being hostile to you” and so many people misunderstand that term. But yeah, just so people know, it’s got to be rooted in a specifically illegal form of discrimination or harassment. So, it’s based on your gender or your religion or your disability, your race, that kind of thing.

Suzanne: Right. But back to the bed bugs, now that we’re done being pedantic (laughs), I think this is a situation where the letter writer needs to flip the situation and think how much her life has become a living hell because somebody in her building brought bedbugs home. Right? So now she is in a bad situation. Well, all of her coworkers are in the situation that she was before where somebody is possibly bringing bedbugs to their lives. She didn’t want it to have happened to her and she shouldn’t want it to happen to someone else. So, I think a little bit of compassion on the other side might help see a little bit on what to do and how to do it.

I do think going to HR is a great idea in this situation, because they’re going to be prepared. She said it’s a large corporation, right? So, she probably won’t be the first person that they’ve dealt with that is like this. And depending on her job, if it’s something that can be done from home, it might be a good idea to keep the bedbugs out. The other thing that I don’t know, and she probably does because she’s probably researched this, is just how likely is it to spread and can she do things to prevent that from happening? And if she can, then she should prepare and present that information not only to her boss, but to HR. It sounds horrible to say, “You’re going through this terrible thing – we don’t want you to come into the office,” but if they don’t stop the bedbug outbreak, it can become a much worse situation for the entire company. If you get a bed bug infestation in your building – and I believe you had a letter about this a while ago, or a series of letters about this – it can be a nightmare for the company and for every employee. While I don’t think her manager was being super supportive, I totally get where the manager is coming from and she should work with HR and her manager to figure out a solution that is the least likely to infect the building.

Alison: Yeah, that’s great advice. It’s not unreasonable that the boss wants to talk to HR about it. I totally get how when you’re having a conversation that you think is just a casual conversation with your boss and suddenly now she’s taking something you said to HR, that doesn’t feel great – but I think she’s got to keep in mind, if the boss didn’t do anything and bedbugs did spread and then her coworkers found out later that the boss knew that they might have been exposed to them and didn’t say anything, they’d rightly be pretty upset. And so now that the boss does know, she’s in a difficult position and you can’t really blame her for wanting to loop in HR. And I love your point about flipping this around and thinking about how frustrated she must be that this has happened to her. Of course you don’t want it to happen to other people.

Suzanne: Yeah, and I think that’s something that we all need to do when we’re confronted with something difficult at the workplace is to flip it around and see what the other point of view is. Because how much easier would her life have been if whoever brought the bedbugs into the building had, when they very first brought them in, reported it, got an exterminator in right then, and had it taken care of before they spread? That would have been great and that didn’t happen. So, let’s not infect everybody else in the building. And I have so much sympathy, oh my goodness. It’s just the worst, terrible, terrible thing.

Alison: You have our sympathies, letter writer! Okay. Let’s see the next letter. This one is about invasive interview questions. Suzanne, do you want to read it?

Suzanne: Sure.

I have been job hunting for about a year and have been repeatedly seeing and getting questions where I feel like the employer is fishing for rather personal information, in a borderline-intrusive way. These questions have generally taken the following form:
What is the defining experience you have overcome in your life?
Tell me about a transformative life experience.
Where do you experience a sense of scarcity the most in your life?
What experience sparked a personal transformation for you?

I get it. The employer wants to see some display of grit and/or resilience. There are basically turning a job interview into a college application. I’m extremely private and have absolutely no interest in sharing my life struggles in a job interview, nor do I think that’s appropriate to expect of a candidate. Of course, no one is forcing me to answer the questions transparently, but I get the sense that a vague and/or banal answer is unlikely to impress anyone and get me the job. Do you agree that this is inappropriate or am I being too sensitive? And most importantly, what’s a good strategy for answering these types of questions while protecting your privacy?

Alison: I am so annoyed whenever I hear about interviewers doing this. Not only is it invasive, but it’s not even good interviewing. This is just not how you find out if someone is well matched with the job.

Suzanne: No, it’s not, and it stems back to the problem that most managers hire one, maybe two people a year. They have no idea what they’re doing. None.

Alison: I know. That is a huge problem, because hiring the right people is so important and so often the people who are the decision makers in the hiring process and the people figuring out how to structure interviews are just winging it, and some people have really crazy ideas about how to identify strong candidates and what they are assessing does not in any way line up with what it will take to do the job well.

Suzanne: Right. And these things, “tell me about a transformative life experience”? Okay, so I’m 45. Do I have something that I would answer that question? There isn’t some big moment where I saw a light and change things – and I don’t think I’m abnormal. I don’t know that a lot of people even have these big transformative life experiences. You could say I changed careers – but it wasn’t transformative in the moment, it was just kind of how things work. I think a lot of times people feel forced to come up with some story as well, which doesn’t really help you determine if they’re a good employee or not. Part of me wants to just say, when someone starts interviewing like this, walk away. This is not the job for me. But I also recognize that finding jobs is difficult and not everybody has the luxury of walking away from something.

Alison: I struggle with that so much because I have the same impulse as well, but I also know there are interviewers out there who would turn out to be pretty decent managers who are just horrible at interviewing. And so, I want to tell everyone, “No, you should be assessing your interviewer right back and you’re learning something from them by the types of questions they ask you. And if you are running into ridiculous questions, take that as a big red flag.” But I also know that sometimes it doesn’t tie to the reality that you’ll definitely have a miserable experience there. So, I really struggle with this.

Suzanne: I do too because there are bad interview questions, and to be honest I’ve asked a few bad interview questions myself in my day because it’s a learning process, right? You don’t just wake up one morning knowing how to interview people. We’ve all done stupid things. When I first became a manager, the only management training I got – this is absolutely true – they sent me to a management training course which involved taking a personality test and determining whether we were red, yellow, green, or blue or whatever, and then having us guess what color each of our employees were and how we would relate to them that way. (Laughs) It was the biggest waste of time, but that’s more management training than a lot of managers get, so they don’t necessarily get any training on interviewing, and if you google you can find spectacularly bad interview questions touted as “these are the best things since sliced bread.”

Alison: Yeah, there’s terrible advice out there about interview questions to ask. So, what should you do if you find yourself in an interview with someone who’s asking questions like this? I think sometimes you can slightly reframe the question and just assume that it’s work-related. So, if you’re asked, “Tell me about a transformative life experience,” answer it about a transformative work experience and that’ll make it a little more appropriate and a little more relevant. But I don’t think that you can do that for all of these. I mean, “where did you experience a sense of scarcity the most in your life” is such a deeply personal question. I don’t even know what I would do if an interviewer asked me that question.

Suzanne: I’m not sure what I would do either. I would hope that I would say, “What are you looking for in asking that question?” But that might not go over well. I might not have the guts to do it. And the reality is, I bet any interviewer that asks that question has no idea what the answer is. They’re not coming into this saying, “I’m looking for someone that experienced scarcity because they were raised in a low-income family in a bad neighborhood.” That’s not what they’re looking for, I’m assuming, but they don’t know what the right answer to that is either. And so that makes it even more difficult because these types of questions, like she said, they seem like college applications – which, I’m not a fan of them for college applications either.

Alison: To interviewers out there, if you want to find out about someone’s level of grit or resilience or whatever else it might be, you can do that by asking about work-related examples which will not make people feel like their boundaries are being violated and will actually get you more relevant information anyway.

Suzanne: Exactly. So instead of asking about what experience sparked a personal transformation from you, do ask: “What was a time when you made a mistake and how did you recover from it?” Because that can be transformation, but it also is very much work-related.

Alison: Yes, it’s relevant to what you want to know.

Suzanne: And the other thing that I don’t like about these questions is it opens up the possibility to bring in discrimination – illegal discrimination, and discrimination that isn’t necessarily illegal but immoral. So, you want me to talk about a personal transformation or something and I start talking about when my kids were born – and now you know a lot more about me that’s not relevant to my ability to do the job. And are you going to say, “Oh gosh, she’s got kids. I really don’t want someone that’s not dedicated.” And it can be not something that is blatant, and it doesn’t even have to be conscious on the part of the interview – you just get those things stuck in your head — “I want somebody that’s really dedicated.” Well, you don’t know if I’m going to be dedicated or not, having children doesn’t really indicate one way or another, but we have these stereotypes in our heads. And I shouldn’t be asking questions that prompt you to tell me things that are not relevant to the job.

Alison: Yeah. Well said.

Let’s do one more letter. We’ve got one from someone who is struggling with how her boss handles vacations. I’ll read this one:

My boss, who is wonderful, dedicated, and very driven, has a hard time signing off when she’s out on vacation. Once or twice a year, she makes a point of announcing that she’s going to, quote, “set an example and try to be truly off,” but she rarely achieves this and often just pops in and out of our discussions periodically while she’s away.

One example: this week during her vacation and after she had emailed us promising that she was really going to sign off, she emailed a colleague and I about a decision that we needed to make. This is an important decision and we will need her input, but it would have been okay to wait to get that input until she’s back. I was actually on a day off myself when she emailed and just happened to see her note. I didn’t want to respond because I was on vacation – but so was she, so it felt irresponsible not to respond even though it could have waited. I just let it lie along with all my other emails from my day off, but it ended up making me feel really uncomfortable, like I look less dedicated by not responding.

As her deputy, I am in charge of things while she’s gone, and my general approach is to move forward what I can and retain a small backlog of items that really do need her approval and therefore have to wait until she’s back, but I’m not sure if this is the right approach. Does she want to be approached with important things while she’s out, since she actually does respond to some emails? I’m hesitant to approach her about this because her use of vacation time isn’t my business, but the issues are: 1) I never know if she is secretly lurking on email and is going to pop in with a strong opinion or whatever she wants us to move forward without her, and 2) I don’t know if my approach to vacation time, where I don’t respond to emails unless they’re an emergency, is all right. Any thoughts on this?

I don’t blame this person for feeling this way at all. Suzanne, what’s your advice for her?

Suzanne: I don’t blame her either, but my first advice is with the second part, “I don’t know how to approach the vacation time,” is to just ask straight out: “Do you expect me to keep up on email or to call in for conference calls?” And ask what the expectations are. I faced a little bit of this when I was managing people. I had kids then, I was pregnant and I couldn’t sleep, so I would get up in the middle of the night and I would answer emails. And my employees would come in in the morning or wake up at seven and check their email and there would be 20 emails from me and they started to feel like they needed to be responding and they needed to respond to this before they got into the office. And fortunately, one of them came to me and said, “You’re sending out emails at 3 am. Do you need me to respond to this before I come into the office?” I was like, “No, I’m just up then because I have insomnia and I can’t sleep.” And after that, then they were okay to know that they didn’t need to deal with it until they came in and that was just what I was doing. And I think this might be a similar situation. If you’re standing in line at Disney World, it’s really boring, so why not have your phone out and be checking your company emails? But it doesn’t necessarily mean you expect other people to do it. So that’s my first advice is just ask your boss, “When I’m on vacation, do you expect me to do this?” And see what she says. My bet is the boss will say, “Oh no, no, no, no, no. This is just something that I do.”

Alison: Yes, I agree. That’s so funny, I have the exact same story in my past about sending out emails late at night. In my case, it wasn’t because I had kids and was pregnant. I’m just a weird night owl who loves to be productive at two in the morning. And I would send all of these emails to my staff and it took me a long time to realize, “Oh, I am modeling this behavior for them and it’s making them feel pressure to be on email after hours.” And so, I had to do two things. I had to be very explicit with them that that was not at all what I expected. And I had to start saving emails in my draft folder and sending them in the morning.

Suzanne: I used to do the same, except our email system had the ability to set a time on it for them to go. And so, when I would write emails at strange hours I would set a time on them to come back. And I actually started doing this when I would get emails at 10:00 at night. I didn’t want people to feel like they could email me or my staff at 10:00 and expect an answer. So even though I was on my computer and I would be able to answer, I would answer and then set it to not to send until eight the next morning. (Laughs)

Alison: That is smart. Otherwise you train people to expect it.

Suzanne: Well, exactly. And I didn’t want to be in a situation where people could expect. If it was a true emergency, we all had each other’s cell phone numbers and you could call, but let’s face it, we were HR. Nobody’s going to die before 8 am the next morning. We’re not brain surgeons where you need to come in right now. There’s very rarely in most jobs, a true emergency that needs to be answered at 10:00 at night or when you’re on vacation.

The other thing that she could approach with her boss is to say, “Before you go, are there specific projects that you want us to hold off on or should we flag emails that we want you to respond to? Or should you flag things that you want to be looped in on? How do you want us to handle this? And should I just assume that if I don’t hear from you all is good, or should I wait to hear from you?” And let her spell out exactly what she wants and go from there, because this is one of those things where it’s totally a management style technique.

Alison: Yeah. And I think too, if that does not solve it, that she can lay out the whole problem that she’s dealing with and talk to her boss about it. She can say, “When you’re popping on and off email and weighing in on some things and not on others, it complicates things. I don’t know if you might weigh in or if I can just go ahead and move forward.” She’s the boss’ deputy, so I think she’s got to be able to raise this kind of thing and get aligned with her upfront about how this should all be working. And then if they do that and the boss isn’t following what they’ve agreed to, then she’s got to raise it again – not in an angry way, but just matter of factly. “Hey, we agreed to X, you’re doing Y, how do you want to handle this?”

Suzanne: Right, and I think one of the things that’s important for people to remember is that while there’s the hierarchical structure in most businesses, we’re all equals and it’s okay to push back on some of these things and to say, “How would you like this handled?” And we don’t have to worry as much as we do about upsetting that hierarchy. As long as your boss has shown herself to be rational in every other area, there’s no reason to be panicked and scared about approaching a boss about something like this. Because like in my case, I was horrified when I found out that my employees were feeling this pressure when I was just like: I can’t sleep, so as I’m sitting here eating my 3 am ice cream, I’m going to check my email – and that’s what I did. I didn’t mean to put any pressure on them. There’s a good chance this boss doesn’t need to put any pressure on her employees either. So, ask.

Alison: Yeah, yeah. People get very intimidated by hierarchy, and the weird irony is that I do think that you will do your job better if you aren’t so intimidated by hierarchy. That doesn’t mean like go in guns blazing, don’t be adversarial about it. Choose your battles, but calmly, very matter of factly, collaboratively raising an issue and saying, “Hey, here’s a work issue.” Just like you would raise a less emotionally charged work issue – just like you would raise, “Our printer is terrible.” Bring it up with your manager, lay it out, and see if you can problem solve it together and you will probably be a more effective employee for doing that.

Suzanne: Absolutely. And I think that’s really good advice to think of it as “Boy, this was a copier that keeps jamming, we need to fix this,” instead of, “Oh my gosh, my boss is going to think I’m a failure because I don’t check my email 47 times a day when I’m on vacation.” You just ask and be matter of fact and straightforward. And the nice thing about asking is once you have the answer, then you can make a decision in your own life of how you want to go. If the boss comes back and says, “You know what? When you’re on vacation, I expect that you’ll be checking your email at least three times a day. And if we have a client call, I expect to you be on that.” And then you can decide, well, is this a job I want to have? Is this where I want to keep working? Or should I start looking for something new? But when you don’t know, there’s this feeling of nervousness all the time and you never quite know if you’re living up to standards. So, ask.

Alison: Yes, we are as one on all of these answers (laughs). So next steps for this person: talk to your boss. Lay it all out.

Well, that is the show. Suzanne, will you tell people where they can find you online?

Suzanne: I am easy to find. You can find me at EvilHRLady.org, or you can just Google “Evil HR Lady” and I will pop up.

Alison: Thank you so much for coming on. It was such a pleasure to have you.

Suzanne: I’m so happy to be on your show. Now I feel famous.

Alison: Thanks for listening to the Ask a Manager podcast. If you’d like to come on the show to talk through your own question, email it to podcast@askamanager.org – or you can leave a recording of your question by calling 855-426-9675. You can get more Ask a Manager at askamanager.org, or in my book Ask a Manager: How to Navigate Clueless Colleagues, Lunch-Stealing Bosses, and the Rest of Your Life at Work. The Ask a Manager show is a partnership with How Stuff Works and is produced by Paul Dechant. If you liked what you heard, please take a minute to subscribe, rate, and review the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Google Play. I’m Alison Green and I’ll be back next week with another one of your questions.

Transcript provided by MJ Brodie.

You can see past podcast transcripts here.