I’m on vacation. Here are some past letters that I’m making new again, rather than leaving them to wilt in the archives.

1. My staff found me bound and gagged after a robbery

I’m a 32-year-old woman who was recently made manager of a small financial firm. Being fairly young, I’ve had to overcome skepticism and sexism from my staff, but after three months I’ve established a reputation for being efficient, fair, and a bit stern. It’s worked, I’m respected, and we all get along very well.

Several mornings a week, I arrive very early for some alone time. Last Thursday, I arrived at 7 a.m., (we open at 10), and was “greeted” by a couple of thugs who demanded money, bank cards, etc. Thankfully, I wasn’t hurt, but they had a roll of duct tape and left me in a closet thoroughly taped and gagged. I struggled for nearly 3 hours but couldn’t get free. When staff members began to arrive, they heard me moaning and found me still helplessly all taped up. I was more embarrassed than relieved. The efficient boss felt like a chump.

Of course, everyone has been sympathetic and supportive, but I’ve felt like every ounce of my dignity, pride, bearing has evaporated. Having my staff see me bound and gagged was extremely humiliating. Now I go through the motions of being the same competent manager, but I’ve lost my sense of authority and don’t know if I can continue. How do I regain that sense of leadership I worked so hard to attain?

Put yourself in their shoes — if you found your manager the way they found you, would it affect their authority and leadership? You’d feel sympathy and concern, presumably, but it’s pretty unlikely that you’d think of them as less of a manager after that. The same is likely true with your staff. They didn’t witness you flubbing a presentation or losing your cool or being dressed down by your own manager (all things that could potentially affect their perception of your competence and authority); they saw you caught up in a crime, something that could have happened to anyone but happened to happen to you.

It’s understandable that you’re shaken — who wouldn’t be? — but that doesn’t need to shake your sense of competence. Try acting “as if” for a while — as if it never happened, as if you didn’t feel embarrassed — and give yourself some time to see that they’re responding to you just as they were before.

– 2014

2. My father keeps responding to my employee’s posts on Facebook

My father keeps responding to my employee’s political posts on Facebook. To make things even more awkward, my father is very conservative and my employee is very liberal, so you can guess that their opinions go together like oil and water. I feel that it is inappropriate for my father to be interacting with someone I supervise, and I asked him to stop. He feels that Facebook is a public forum, and that the fact that I supervise someone should not deny his right to respond to a public post.

(Before I was promoted to be his supervisor, I was friends with this employee on Facebook. When I became his manager I did not unfriend or block him, just stopped interacting or commenting on his posts completely, and let him know I’d be doing that. At some point, though, he and my father friended each other, but it was almost certainly because they were both connected to me. I realize now I should have completely cut the Facebook connection/unfriended this employee at the beginning. Lesson learned!)

While the posts in question are political, I would feel uncomfortable with my father interacting with any of my employees over Facebook, no matter how innocuous the topic. To me, it feels like it crosses boundaries. As I have asked him to stop without success, should I mention to my employee that I am aware of the posts and he is welcome to block my father if he wishes? Or should I stay out of it because Facebook is a public forum, and this is outside and unrelated to work?

For some context: The employee knows this is my father. My father is retired and has no relationship at all to my workplace. My employee has never mentioned my father’s Facebook responses at work.

Aggggh, what is your father doing?! Personally, if my parent were doing this, I would seriously consider sneaking on to their computer and unfriending the employee, but assuming that’s not an option and you know a harder line stance with your dad would be fruitless, then yeah, say something to your employee. I’d say, “I’m so sorry about my father’s comments on your Facebook posts. I have no idea how you two ended up connected, but it’s incredibly weird that he’s doing that. Please feel free to unfriend or block him with impunity.” If he says he doesn’t feel the need to, it might be worth telling him that you’re going to unfriend him so you’re not getting riled up by your dad’s comments and not to take it personally since you should have done that when you became his manager anyway. Say this all in a warm tone and it should be fine.

– 2020

Read an update to this letter here.

3. I resent how often my coworker is out sick

I am having trouble rallying appropriate sympathy for a coworker with depression and I’m hoping you can help me with this. I work in a public-serving, unionized institution with five full-time employees and three part-time. I’m pretty sure one of my full-time coworkers suffers from depression, on top of some mobility and health issues, in addition to being borderline morbidly obese. Recently she has been calling in sick, at times staying out for a week at a time, at others just two or three days before or after a previously scheduled day off. At this point, I’m pretty sure she’s used up all her PTO and will sometimes cut her lunch breaks short to try to make up time when she returns from one of these absences.

I want to regard her with sympathy for these sick days, as depression is a serious disease and life can be hard for the overweight. But I’m having difficulty because (a) she often talks about staying up late night on Twitter and downing entire boxes of cookies at 3 am and it’s hard to sit by and watch someone “happily” engage in self-destructive behavior, (b) these sick days often seem to coincide with her daughter’s return to college, and perhaps on some level are a ploy to guilt-trip her child into moving back to town, and (c) any time she’s out, the rest of us have to pick up all her work, which is especially taxing since our institution is down a number of positions. Because of this coworker, the rest of us are loathe to take time off because we know from experience how that increases the workload on our peers and because we’re afraid that if she calls in sick while one of us is off, our institution will be run by a frantic skeleton crew.

I’m not giving this coworker any attitude or throwing shade at work; I’m friendly and simply glad she’s there. But on a certain level, I’m having a hard time not feeling resentful that her frequent sick days mean more work for the rest of us, and I foresee years and years of similar absences, as she can’t afford to retire or go on disability.

If you’re short-staffed when your coworker is out, that’s an issue for your management to solve, not your coworker. If her absences are causing problems for the rest of you, talk to your manager, say that you don’t have the staffing to run at full capacity when someone is out (or that you can’t do X and Y when you’re covering Z for someone who’s out), and ask how they want to handle that. Similarly, stop worrying that you can’t take your own time off; take it and expect your employer to figure out a way to cope.

Because the thing is, people get to use their time off. And they get to negotiate for additional time off beyond that, if that’s what your coworker has done here and your employer has agreed to it. And you really, really don’t want to get into judging what they’re using the time for, or if they really need it “enough,” or if some of it might be self-inflicted or they’re not taking sufficiently good care of themselves. You do not want colleagues doing that to you, and people can find a way to do it with an awful lot of illnesses.

There’s a lot of speculation in your letter, and I’ve got to think it’s feeding your frustration. It’s far better for your own mental health to remind yourself that you don’t know your coworker’s personal medical details (nor should you), you don’t know the exact causes for her absences (even if she shares info with you, she may not give you the full story), and she’s just as entitled as anyone else is to eat a box of cookies without her coworkers thinking that correlates with an increase in their own workload (which is, frankly, an awfully big stretch).

The issue here is that your employer isn’t managing its staffing levels appropriately. Put the issue squarely on their laps to handle, and don’t make your coworker the repository of your resentment.

– 2019

4. Can I ask my husband’s boss not to renew someone’s contract?

My husband told me that he and a contractor had an affair while on a company trip. This contractor’s contract is due to expire in a few months. Can I ask my husband’s boss to not renew the contractors contract for personal reasons (to save my marriage) without it bouncing back on my husband?

No, you definitely cannot. First of all, you shouldn’t be having any contact with your husband’s boss about anything, unless it’s to say that your husband is in the hospital or something like that. But beyond that, it would be incredibly inappropriate for you to try to interfere with someone else’s employment, or with your husband’s employer’s hiring decisions, because of issues in your marriage. It would reflect really poorly on your husband … and a decent employer wouldn’t take your opinion into account anyway. Do not do this.

This is between you and your husband, and needs to stay that way.

– 2018

5. Company wants me to come in for an eighth interview

I’ve been in talks with a company about a position for three months now. I initially had my phone interview three months ago and have gone there seven separate times (yes seven) for interviews. The company called me two weeks ago to let me know that they were still making decisions, but I was a top candidate and they would be in touch soon.

This was recently followed up by another in person interview request, rounding it up to eight. When I asked about the motivation, it was to get to know me a bit better and “continue conversations.” No hint of an offer was suggested.

At this point, I’m a little hesitant as I’ve recently seen the job on LinkedIn. It’s difficult to continue to take off work since my current employer doesn’t know I’m looking. The company seemed great and the position is what I’m looking for, so should these interviews be a red flag? How many interviews are too many?

Seven was already too many. Have you seen other signs that they’re flaky / indecisive / disorganized / inconsiderate?

And this is to “get to know you better”?! They’ve had seven separate meetings with you where they could have done that. If they’d said, “There’s been a change in the role that we want to talk to you about” or “our CEO just announced he wants to do the final sign-off before we hire,” that would be … well, it would still be too many interviews. But it would be a lot less egregious than “come in an eighth time for no real reason.”

It’s reasonable for you to say something like, “Can you give me a sense of the remaining steps in your process? This would be my eighth interview there, and it’s difficult for me to continue taking time off work to come in. In fact, if it’s possible to do this conversation over the phone, that would be much easier for me to do.”

Caveat: Whenever you push back on a hiring process, there’s a chance you’ll be taken out of the running. So you’d want to be comfortable with that possibility — but really, if they balk at a phone call at this point, that’s valuable info about how (in)considerate they are of people they work with.

– 2019