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. I saw a coworker’s “people I need to hit” list
In a meeting last week, my coworker Tony shared his screen while his OneNote was still visible and the title of the first note (minimized on the side) was “People I Need to Hit.” It was just him and me in the meeting, and I only saw the note title, and I’m sure he doesn’t realize I saw it.
I didn’t say anything to Tony, but mentioned it to my coworker Carmela later in the day. Tony has been reprimanded for being very defensive and verbally aggressive in meetings (nothing outrageous, just notably confrontational and unprofessional, such as saying, “I don’t even know why your department exists, we don’t need it” to Carmela’s boss). Carmela thought the OneNote was a hilarious example of his unnecessary aggression. We even joked that the title might’ve been cut off and was actually just a list of people he needs to hit up for money and that he’s a secret loan shark.
However, when I told my boyfriend, Paulie, the same story at home, he was appalled. Paulie is encouraging me to go to HR and tell them what I saw and is convinced that the “People I Need to Hit” list is a precursor to workplace violence. I don’t agree, and I have sometimes taken frustration out in note titles myself (naming a doc “Stupid 7am Meeting” to capture my meeting notes, for example) just for personal amusement. But I value Paulie’s judgment and maybe he has a good perspective as an outsider, vs. Carmela and myself who think of Tony as just an eye-rolling example of an annoying and tone-deaf coworker (he’s not even the most annoying or tone-deaf person we work with on a day-to-day basis). Am I under-reacting? Is my boyfriend overreacting?
Since you’re the person who interacts with Tony, you’re the one best positioned to know if it’s something to be alarmed by or not. I suspect he’s not keeping an list of people he actually plans to injure in some way … but it’s certainly a commentary on his stance toward colleagues. If you’re really worried, you could mention to Tony’s boss, saying that it was so jarring to see that you felt you should mention it. But I also think that if your vibe is that it’s nothing, this isn’t so alarming that you need to escalate it regardless of that.
– 2019
2. My director sent around a photo of my messy desk
I am from South America and work as a programmer in Sweden. Our director is always asking everybody to keep our office clean, and I strongly agree that many people need to learn how to not leave dirty cups all around the tables. Sometimes I myself organize and clean some messy shared spaces.
My own desk has two screens, a cable adapter hub, a laptop, a big keyboard, and a special game mouse — which are my work tools but make a lot of cables. I really struggle trying to organize my own cables and they never look 100% neat. I am very sensitive to it. I also have a notebook, a pen, and a Swedish grammar book on my desk, since Swedish is my fourth language and I am still learning it.
So, today the director was really pissed about messy and dirty desks (some tables with rotten food and dozens of dirty cups) and took pictures of them. She posted the pictures in a private Facebook group with everyone who works in the office (about 40 people) and wrote “clean your desks.” I was shocked and surprised to see my desk in one of the pictures — the only picture which identifies the owner (because of the screens and the grammar book). All the other pictures were focused on specific objects, not the entire desks, so we were not able to identify them. I am super uncomfortable and thinking about what I should do about it. I am feeling very badly treated. Should I open it to everyone? If yes, how?
Nah, let it go. It sounds like it was more of a group-shaming and I doubt any of your coworkers think it was a shot specifically fired at you. (And your desk doesn’t even sound particularly bad. Cables are a pretty normal part of many desks.) Other people may feel they were singled out because they recognized their mug or something. Your manager is just making a point about how people need to be neater; it doesn’t sound like it’s personal or something to feel bad about.
– 2016
3. Am I editing documents too heavily?
I am a new-ish program associate at a state agency. I know that they hired me in part because of my English degree, as part of my duties are that I edit official correspondence that our coordinators write on behalf of the secretary’s and governor’s offices. I enjoy editing and at one point had considered doing it professionally, though I haven’t yet been able to find a position I’m qualified for. In the meantime, I feel that this editing thing is also getting me in trouble.
Today, my supervisor brought me a document that had multiple authors that we were to be sending out to the counties and asked me to look it over and suggest changes. When she came back 40 minutes later and saw the mark-up (pointing out awkward sentences, suggesting reformatting when links and locations are delivered inconsistently, pointing out inconsistent oxford comma usage, etc), she seemed perplexed and almost offended. She said something about how she probably wouldn’t use some of the changes and that she’d been letting some things slide because of the multiple authors. I tried to assure her that I understood that/that I know that that’s part of editing, but the exchange still left me feeling odd and like I’d somehow disappointed her despite literally doing what was asked.
While it’s the first time this has happened in a document of this size, it’s not the first time I’ve gotten this impression. Am I doing something wrong here? Is there a different level of acceptable editing for this “last looks” sort of thing? Should I only point out when things are genuinely unreadable instead of a little confusing/inconsistently formatted? How should I be approaching this editing situation without stepping on anyone’s toes?
There are a bunch of different types of editing that a coworker might ask for: There’s thorough proofreading, there’s “take a look at this and see if anything glaring jumps out at you,” there’s “see if you can improve the flow of the writing,” there’s “flag anything that’s not accurate,” and probably more that I’m not thinking of. It sounds like you assumed your boss wanted something more thorough than she actually did.
Unless your job is specifically “proofreader” or “copy editor,” it’s smart to ask what type of edits a person is looking for before you edit heavily. In this case, you could go back to your boss and say something like, “I think I did heavier edits than you were looking for on that document. So that I know for the future, will you tell me a bit about what kind of thing you’re looking for when you ask me to look something over? I want to make sure I’m doing the right level of editing going forward!”
– 2019
4. My interviewer seemed uninterested in me from the start
I had a job interview a week ago, and it was clear right from the get-go that the interviewer seemed really disinterested and not really that responsive to my questions. She ended the interview after 15 minutes. Unsurprisingly, today I got a response that I wasn’t selected.
I’m not sure what I did wrong. It can’t be my qualifications, as she had to have wanted to meet with me for a reason, and I really think I answered everything well — she even said I “answered the questions really well” at the end when I asked if she wanted anything about me clarified (whatever that could mean). Yet she still seemed so bored by me and so eager to be done with it, right from the start. She said she was early in the interview process, so I feel like she can’t have gotten to meet with that many more candidates, if any.
What are the odds that her first or second candidate was so outstanding that she realized she would now have to drudge through a number of other interviews? What conclusion could she have come to so quickly before the interview to decide I wasn’t a good fit? If she knew she wouldn’t select me so early on, why even bother with an interview?
It could be anything! It could be that she already knows she wants to hire her friend … or she received terrible personal news that day and was rushing through your interview to go deal with it … or someone else selected you for the interview and she wouldn’t have but saw your resume too late in the process to cancel … or the day before the interview she realized she really needs to hire someone with llama wrangling experience, which you don’t have, and she felt it was too late to cancel … or she took an instant dislike to you because of your shoes … or you answered an early question in a way that was a deal-breaker, and she isn’t a skilled enough interviewer to either tell you that or handle the rest of the interview better … or something else that I’m not thinking of.
You can drive yourself out of your mind by trying to figure out this sort of thing without any real information to inform your thinking. It’s better to just figure it wasn’t meant to be for whatever reason, and move on.
– 2019
