This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.
Itâs four answers to four questions. Here we goâŠ
1. Coworker is pushing us to read her self-published Christian novel
I work for a nonprofit that is provides a government-mandated service, is entirely funded by the government, and has very close ties to the government. Most, though not all, of my coworkers are fairly liberal due to the nature of the service we provide.
I have one coworker who is very religious and talks about religion a lot, which I guess is fine. (Iâm also religious but hardly ever mention it in the office.) However, she self-published a Christian fiction novel and brought copies for me and some of my coworkers, personally signed to us. She now keeps talking about her book and heavily hinting that we should be reading it. At one point I flipped through it and the literal first thing I saw was a priest explaining why all life begins at conception.
What do you think of this? Is it okay because sheâs not forcing us to read it and not in a position of authority over us? I find it pretty inappropriate to promote a religious book in any secular office, but especially one with government ties. But Iâm also queer and not cis so I could just be overly sensitive to this kind of thing.
Not okay in any work setting, not just government-affiliated ones â just like it wouldnât be okay to pressure your coworkers to read erotica youâd published. (Not that theyâre the same thing, but theyâre both inappropriate things to push on coworkers.)
Itâs fine for someone to mention they published a book! But they shouldnât be pushing it on coworkers. For that matter, thatâs true even if there arenât religious or sexual themes; a lot of people just really donât want to read their colleaguesâ novels.
If your coworker raises it again, itâs fine to say, âChristian fiction isnât my cup of tea.â Or âmy to-read list is so long I canât add another thing to do itâ or âI only read apocalyptic sci-fiâ or however youâre most comfortable declining.
2. Is it my job to manage a coworkerâs feelings?
I occasionally work with a relatively new (two years) hire from another department, âClaudine.â I donât report through their management but I have a lot of technical skill and experience that their department needs, so I consult with them regularly. In the year or so since Claudine has joined them, I have noticed that she does not appear to have absorbed any office norms and regularly gets offended when it is pointed out that the reason she is not getting the info sheâs asking for is because she is working outside expected channels (for example: scheduling meetings with technical experts directly on top of their technical meetings, then being surprised when her meetings are declined, scheduling daily tag-ups for work that takes weeks to complete per standard flow times). I wondered if this was just a personality conflict and asked around to other technical experts she works with, which confirmed that the behavior is not limited to her interactions with me, and that people are frustrated with her behavior in general.
I went discreetly to her manager, âKyleâ (who is a new manager with less than a year of experience in the role), with my concern that Claudine is alienating the technical experts she relies on. Kyle informed me that he is a supportive manager and sees nothing wrong with Claudineâs behavior, and that my feedback should go directly to Claudine.
Now, whenever I work with Claudine and explain why the things she is asking for cannot be done in the way sheâs asking (for example, a standard three-week review process with multiple sign-offs cannot be expedited to three days) or explain why people decline her workshops (because she schedules them over industry events that take precedence), she complains that I am âhurting her feelingsâ by explaining why she is not getting the results she wants.
I am not a part of her team, and this sort of basic coaching seems like it should be coming from Kyle, who has made it clear that he believes a supportive manager supports their employees unquestioningly. I also feel uneasy about having to manage Claudineâs feelings when my role was meant to be as a technical consultant.
Am I out of line in thinking that itâs not my job to manage Claudineâs feelings? How do I best communicate that the reason she is not getting the results she wants is, well, her behavior? Or am I just showing my age and not recognizing that the new generation of office workers donât put much stock in things like âoffice normsâ and âthe way things are doneâ and are more concerned about feeling validated? Have I become the office curmudgeon without realizing it?
No, it sounds like Claudine is objectively a problem (as is Kyle, her unconditionally supportive manager). You are going wrong by making this a generational thing; this is about Claudine, not her generation. Plenty of younger people understand how work works!
In your shoes, Iâd stop trying to coach Claudine or soothe her feelings. Provide the technical assistance that youâre supposed to provide to her department, but donât put more energy into trying to teach her why sheâs not getting the results she wants. You donât need to keep trying to explain why people are declining her meetings, for example! Sheâs made it clear she doesnât want that sort of feedback, so donât keep investing time in trying to get her to understand. If sheâs making it impossible for you to do your own job, take that to Kyle â but keep it focused on the âwhatâ (for example, Claudine refuses to allow three weeks for the X review), not the âwhyâ (âsheâs offended by having to stick to normal workflow processesâ). And loop your own manager in too, so she knows whatâs going on in case Claudine or Kyle complains to her.
3. How to explain an angry ex-employee is review-bombing us on Glassdoor
Iâve recently taken a job in management at a mid-size employer that until recently was a small employer. Part of my task is building up my historically neglected department so we can start obeying all our industry regulations and making fewer errors. So far, I really enjoy my job. I operate independently with freedom and trust in a supportive environment.
The last person in this position had a negative experience â so negative that when I spoke to him (our field is small and he was easy to find), he tried to persuade me not to apply. He also wrote a one-star review of my employer on Glassdoor. In the review, he claims to have been suddenly fired for no reason, but since I was hired here, Iâve heard that he was on a PIP for horrible work quality (he told people, HR didnât break confidentiality), disappeared frequently in the middle of the day with urgent tasks pending, and randomly insulted several coworkers. (I actually found documentation of him insulting someone in a file that people forgot to delete. It was bad.)
This would not be a huge deal, but I think heâs also making new Glassdoor accounts and writing up new negative reviews for the company on a regular basis. Pretty much whenever my coworkers and I write positive reviews about our experience, a highly negative one pops up within a couple days specifically addressing our reviews and claiming that leadership at our company is making us write them. These negative reviews all use about the same tone of voice and complain about similar issues, and none are from before this guy got fired.
As I go about building this department, how can I address the review bombing with job applicants? A couple have asked, and Iâm sure even more are just not applying or dropping out of the process early because of the increasing number of one-star ratings. âIgnore all that, our former employee is a weirdoâ sounds like the sort of excuse people would make at a toxic workplace. But itâs true, and I donât really know what else to say.
The most important thing is to ensure your hiring process includes opportunities for candidates to talk with other members of your team without you there, so they can see what your team says about the work environment when theyâre not in your presence (and so candidates can see youâre comfortable with that).
If anyone asks about the Glassdoor reviews, you should say matter-of-factly, âAs far as I can tell, thereâs an issue with one unhappy former employee. In part because of that, Iâm going to be very deliberate about making sure you have opportunities to talk with team members one-on-one to ask anything you want about culture and what itâs like working here.â In other words, be transparent and then emphasize that youâre being transparent. Thatâs really all you can do, but itâll count for a lot with most people.
It doesnât address the possibility of people not applying at all because of what they see on Glassdoor, but thatâs not within your control (and thatâs probably fewer people than you think).
4. Stopping a clientâs endless apologies
Iâm a creative freelancer and right now my main client is a small company that Iâve been working with for a few years now. I really enjoy the work I do for them, and the employees are personable and great to work with.
The person I work most closely with often takes a very long time to respond to me or give me his notes. I know this is because heâs perpetually swamped, and I donât take it personally. The problem is that when he does make contact, heâll often make a big apology, lamenting how terrible heâs being for taking so long. I know the apology is genuine, but itâs starting to get grating. I usually respond with âitâs okay,â or âI know how hectic things can be,â but is there something else I should be saying? I feel like Iâm running out of synonyms for âno worries.â
For what itâs worth, this bottleneck usually creates more of a strain for my client than it does for me, and I can roll with it and trust that Iâll get a response eventually (even if âeventuallyâ means anywhere from 1-5 weeks.) Short of saying âstop apologizing!â Iâd love to know if thereâs a better way to cut off the apology song-and-dance short and skip to the part where we actually talk about the work.
Try to always have another topic ready to go, so that you can quickly redirect the conversation. For example:
Coworker: âIâm so sorry this took so long, I know I promised it to you ages agoââ You: âNo worries, actually Iâm glad you called because I was just thinking about X and wanted to ask you Y.â
You could certainly try just saying outright, âI never need you to apologize, I know youâll get back to me when you can, please donât spend any time on apologizingâ ⊠but Iâm skeptical it will change his strong need to apologize. Youâre better off just cheerfully and briskly redirecting to another topic that heâll have to respond to, which will hopefully short-circuit the sorry soliloquy in his brain.
SAN FRANCISCOâEmphasizing the extra steps it took to ensure the sex lives of its customers remained public, telehealth company Hims announced a new indiscreet shipping option Thursday that alerts neighbors to an impending erection. âWith Himsâ new indiscreet packaging option, it will be obvious to everyone that youâŠ
Wassup, fellow slackers, poseurs, losers, stoners, and the dorks smart enough to make loot before the dot-com crash.
I said yo, wassup! Not clapping? Good. Thought so.
I get that itâs totally wack, but this year, Iâm running for president of the USA, because I want to represent you, the voiceless and forgotten, my fellow Gen Xers.
Thatâs right, my entire platform revolves around Gen X values, like fixing everything that sucks about this countryâwhich is a lot. Our time is now. The boomers had their chance and blew it. Do we expect millennials to fix anything? Not when theyâre busy crying in the office bathroom they wonât. And Gen Z? Sure. Get lost and TikTok a new aesthetic or whatever.
With my Gen X cabinet full of bitchinâ advisors, weâre gonna do what we do best: point out societyâs flaws, work hard to work less, fire up the glorified blog, a.k.a. Substack, roll up our sleeves for another tattoo, and tell our grown-ass children to make their own goddamned mac and cheese.
Look, I am Gen X to the core. My parents divorced the day I was born. I lived in malls, surviving off Orange Julius samples and Chia Pet grass. Right after the Challenger explosion, I smoked my first cigarette. I was such a latchkey kid that I opened doors for other latchkey children. We raised ourselves without a cell phone or parent in sight, and turned out just fine, in no need of therapy today. I started a band before bands existedâwe could have signed to Electra but didnât want to sell out. In college, I translated the Cocteau Twins into English. At work, I stuck it to the Man by showing up and complaining. To this day, I never take off my chain wallet, not even in the shower.
On the campaign trail, I did something I donât typically do: I listened. I toured important Gen X enclaves, such as Austin, Bennington, Palm Springs, Montclair, and both Portlands. I took your shit talk into account, and present this plan:
Reclaim X.com for us. Just because Elon is an Xer doesnât mean our culture is his costume. X will go back to what it was: Imgur links, confusion about how the site works, and posts about what weâre eating.
Put a stop to new slang, for we invented slang, and ours was hardcore, while words like rizz, sus, and no cap need to chill out.
Build a healthcare system focused specifically on Gen X pain points, like the lower back area, special carpal tunnel treatment centers, and, at long last, a cure for that eeeeeeeeeee we hear 24-7.
Engender world peace by using the powerful motto we coined, âSilence the Violence.â
Never forget, Gen X, we are the party of Kennedy. MTVâs Kennedy. Who Iâm proud to announce as my VP. Kennedyâs first task: reclaim the word ârock starâ from the hands of the corporation. Kennedy will also serve as cultural ambassador. We will play more post-punk in public spaces like airports and drugstores. We will pioneer a bold new way to microdose cocaine. Last but not least, we will order Max and other streaming services to broadcast softcore porn late at night once again!
The challenges are many. But if we want to truly slack into retirement, we need to fix the system, even though we hate the system. Like you, I will be lazy and full of self-loathing. But I will be your voice, raspy since my parliament will smoke Parliaments. Itâs time we rise. Even the eldest millennial had it so much easier than any single one of us. Together, we are badass.
Thank you, and may our Goddess Winona Ryder bless the US of Fuckinâ A.
NEW YORKâEmphasizing the importance of gum health, former President Donald Trump reportedly tried to get out of his hush-money trial this week by scheduling a dentist appointment for the same day. âSorry, I really want to go to trial on Mar. 25, but unfortunately I have a teeth-cleaning appointment that day,â saidâŠ
Rachel Dolezal, the former head of an NAACP chapter who resigned after mispresenting herself as Black in 2015 and now goes by the name Nkechi Diallo, was fired from her position as an after-school instructor in Tucson, AZ when her presence on OnlyFans came to light. What do you think?
This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.
A reader writes:
I love winter weather and snow, always have. I live in a large city in the northern hemisphere, so itâs good I like winter since, you know, itâs a solid 4-5 months of my year. Due to global warming, though, our winter has been increasingly warmer and wetter, which drives up my excitement for a true winter snow when it finally arrives.
I was recently told my someone at work (above me in rank but not my supervisor) that being excited about our impending snowfall was âinsensitiveâ as cold weather is a problem for so many people, ranging from annoyance (shoveling cars out) to actual danger for unhoused people. This made me see red, to be honest. Of course winter weather is dangerous for unhoused people, but so are heat waves and rain, and more importantly that fact never stops people at my office from being excited for warm weather in the summer or spring. Also whether Iâm excited or not has no impact on peopleâs winter hardships, which is why Iâm politically active and donate to causes to help unhoused people and others. But it does impact my ability to enjoy where I live for essentially half the year.
Iâm not an idiot â if thereâs a true blizzard or there are reports of frozen people/car accidents Iâm not going to jump in with âbut it sure is fun, amirite?â But this was at the end of a zoom meeting â when asked what I was looking forward to, I said âfinally getting some snow! Weâre so long overdue!â and mentioned some winter activities I enjoy. The other person responded by essentially telling me that was insensitive and immature as âadults recognize snow is not a good thingâ and creates hardships for others. Is this correct? Should I not talk about liking winter at work? Does this apply to other weather â when coworkers get excited for hot weather should I tell them all the ways the sun and heat hurts me and ask them to be more sensitive? Am I right to be annoyed at this or am I missing some key thing other adults know?
What on earth.
You are right to be annoyed by this. Seeing red might be a bit of an overreaction, but certainly not more than scolding you for being excited about snow was.
I mean, Iâm a redhead and the sun actively wants to kill me, but I donât take issue with other people enjoying a sunny day.
Youâre allowed to enjoy weather. You are allowed to talk about enjoying weather at work. Obviously if someone mentions some kind of cold-related tragedy, you shouldnât respond with âbut Iâm so excited to go sledding!â but otherwise you are fine.
Summary: Houston will warm up for the next couple of days before a wet Friday is followed by colder weather this weekend. After we flirt with lows in the 30s on Sunday morning, however, temperatures will be on the upswing again. Does that mean the end of winter is at hand?
Is spring just ahead?
Just one week ago there was a lot of online chatter about another outbreak of the polar vortex bringing very cold weather to Houston. At the time we wrote about that a repeat of frigid weather was unlikely in Texas. Now, one week later we can definitively say it: Texas is not going to see another Arctic blast during the month of February.
In fact, after a flirtation with lows in the upper 30s this weekend, Houston may be done with very cold weather for this winter. Is that a guarantee? No. March can sometimes produce some winter surprises. But most likely we are about to move into a more spring-like pattern about one week from now. Iâll take a look at freeze possibilities for the rest of the season tomorrow, but they are fairly low at this point.
âAn image capturing the dramatic scene of the Gulf of Mexico personified as a colossal water figure confronting a polar bear, rendered in the style of a 16th century Flemish painter.â (ChatGPT)
Wednesday
After a chilly start, conditions should warm nicely today, into the upper 60s. We should see mostly sunny skies through at least the morning hours before some clouds start to build this afternoon. Winds will be light, generally from the southeast. Lows tonight will be warmer under the influence of this southerly flow, and with clouds building in overnight. Expect temperatures to drop into the mid-50s in Houston.
Thursday
Skies will be clouded over on Thursday with light southeasterly winds. This will be a warmer and more humid day, with high temperatures in the mid-70s. Lows on Thursday night will drop to around 60 degrees.
Friday
This still looks like the day for widespread showers due to the presence of a coastal low pressure system and plenty of atmospheric moisture. The greater accumulations will be near the coast, with 1 to 3 inches possible in places like Matagorda Bay, 0.5 to 2 inches in Galveston, and lesser amounts further north. Rain will be possible starting early Friday morning throughout the day, evening, and overnight hours. This shouldnât be a flooding issue, but it could be a nuisance for outdoor activities. Highs will be in the 60s.
NOAA rain accumulation forecast for now through Saturday morning. (Weather Bell)
Saturday
Saturday morning will be colder after a front blows in on Friday night, with cloudy skies and temperatures in the low 50s. It also looks quite breezy, with gusts above 30 mph. The good news is that any lingering showers should be ending as the Sun comes up or shortly after. By Saturday afternoon, with highs in the upper 50s, we could see partly sunny skies. Saturday night should be rather cold, with lows likely to drop to just below 40 degrees in Houston, and a bit colder further inland.
Low temperature forecast for Sunday morning. (Weather Bell)
Sunday
This will be a fine winter day, with sunny skies and highs around 60 degrees. Winds look light. This may be some of the last really dry air we see this season. Lows on Sunday night will drop into the low 40s in Houston, probably.
Next week
Most of next week looks warmer, with highs in the 70s and lows in the upper 50s to lower 60s. There should be a fair amount of sunshine and, as of this point, not a whole lot of potential for rainfall. As I mentioned, it will feel a lot like spring.
This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.
Itâs the Thursday âask the readersâ question. A reader writes:
I have been the manager of a clothing retailer (think along the lines of Forever 21, H&M, etc.) for two-ish years. Unfortunately, the brand at large is not doing very well. My store, however, has outdone our performance metrics by over 400% and for the past five (!!!) quarters has been recognized as the top location in the United States. Iâm really, really proud of what my team and I have been able to accomplish.
Thereâs a catch, though. I did it by breaking all of the rules. The guidelines Iâm meant to be following as a manager are pretty draconian and I just could not bring myself to follow them. I rarely follow disciplinary procedures or officially file infractions, and I donât hold my team to our attendance policies. I basically created my own standards to replace my employerâs standards. As a result, Iâve had several employees tell me theyâve never felt more respected in a workplace before, and I think that shows in the quality of service we provide to our customers! Thereâs also littler things like creating displays following the guidelines corporate sends out, only to dismantle them and replace them with ones that will actually appeal to our clientele. I know that this isnât okay, but Iâve always justified it to myself by telling myself that my job is to manage this store and help it be successful. Upper management has been so checked out that I just got comfortable operating things this way.
Last week I got an email saying that theyâre sending some strategy consultants to our location to talk to me, pick my brain, etc., and I donât know what to do, because I feel like everything Iâve done to make our store a good place to work at and shop at has been directly at odds with the instructions and directions I am supposed to be following.
I could just revert things back to the way they should be, and shrug my shoulders whenever the consultants ask me why my store in particular is performing so well, but it feels bad to be given the opportunity to make a difference and not take it because Iâm scared of getting in trouble! What do I do!
Readers, this one is yours! Please weigh in via the comment section.
GAZA â In the wake of an intractable decades-long conflict that has left thousands of civilians dead in both Israel and the Gaza Strip, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netenyahu and the leadership of Hamas exchanged Valentines to thank each other for military efforts that ensured long-term job security for both parties. âDear besties,â began PM [âŠ]
BURNABY, BC â As inflation runs rampant and dress codes grow more relaxed, more people are dispensing with clothing altogether, prompting calls for public officials to increase fines for indecent exposure. âI always considered myself a pretty modest person,â admitted newly-minted nudist and realtor Alice Kowalski. âBut then I tried to buy new underwear, and [âŠ]
We Canadians pride ourselves on the contributions our country has made to popular music in North America and across the world. Songs by some of our most famous musicians are counted among the biggest in history. So letâs count down some of our favourite Canadian hits which weâre pretty sure exist but itâs entirely possible [âŠ]
A disclaimer, I am going to talk about the Eglinton Crosstown and the lack of information provided by Metrolinx about it.
Metrolinx has held some press briefs in the last year, but I have not been given access; I am apparently not sufficiently journalistic, which is amusing because apparently BlogTO (best known for clickbait online listicles and the like) is sufficient. This is frustrating because many people tell me my videos are what informs them about whatâs going on with transit in Toronto, and because unlike most of the traditional media outlets, I am not just interested in negative stories or scandals â I celebrate the wins too. I figure that the idea of me asking a technical question or something beyond âwhen is the Eglinton Crosstown opening?!â is disqualifying.
For what itâs worth and despite the agencyâs many problems, even the ARTM in Montreal has invited me to press conferences, and not to ask softball questions (I respect this a lot)!
I think itâs fair to say at this point that the Eglinton Crosstown is an unmitigated disaster.
Eglinton/Yonge intersection, fully reopened after long years of closure.
While I find comparisons with the construction timeline of the pyramids of Giza or whatever to be a bit hyperbolic, the Channel Tunnel (an undersea tunnel linking France and the UK) â a much more complex modern rail project â took about half as long to build.
I find Metrolinxâs refusal to commit to a public timeline for the project incredibly frustrating, because it makes it hard to hold the agency accountable, and also because without a publicly known deadline thereâs a lot less pressure to deliver. Even Crossrail released a statement that they would be âopening in 2022â before locking in a particular date. I hate to be that guy, but itâs our tax dollars, our city, and we deserve to know.
This lack of transparency and resistance to providing information that might be used in the future to hold the agency to account should not be allowed by the government, which really shoots itself in the foot by not having Metrolinx be more transparent. Everyone knows that the âarms lengthâ element of Metrolinx is wishful thinking, and so any lack of transparency from Metrolinx comes off as a lack of transparency from the government, which people might point out is right on brand.
I do think itâs worth stepping back and remembering that weâve heard many times from senior Metrolinx leadership and government officials, that they arenât ârushingâ things in order to avoid an Ottawa LRT-type scenario (which I think the government has done far too little on), and thatâs fair enough â but that should also mean that when the Crosstown does start running that things better be pretty flawless; there has been ample time to get things right.
What I think goes underrepported is that Eglinton is just one of many Metrolinx projects that is over budget and late: basically every big transit project the agency is running is at least a year, if not several late. Often the response to questions about this seems to betray an arrogance, as if questioning our poor performance is questioning whether Toronto really needs transit after decades of so little. To be honest though, the fact that we have built so little should not make Metrolinx arrogant, but humble â the Toronto transit building machine is clearly rusty. And while Metrolinx has been building for over a decade now, Iâm not sure the agency really has a single smash success capital project (even though we are paying through the nose for basically all of them). Even our politicians seem hesitant to take Metrolinx to task, lest there be problems with the oh-so-fragile state of transit expansion that was for so long nonexistent.
Trams on the Finch West LRT.
Iâm sorry though, Metrolinx does not get a free pass for building stuff, given they are not even doing it very cost effectively or expeditiously. The Ontario Line, which was supposed to be done (or at least substantially complete) in 2027, wonât even have some of its tunneling work started until 2025. Not holding Metrolinx accountable is bad for Metrolinx if they donât have pressure on them (or commit to the public), they wonât have pressure to improve â and that seems to be the status quo.
This issue of not making commitments is not limited to Eglinton. For a decade, Metrolinx has been committing to build two-way all-day GO service all over the place (sometimes electrification even gets in there) and yet there is no transparency regarding actual service plans. When will trains run all day to Kitchener? How many trains will run to Pickering in 2030? Will they be electric? What type of trains? What will their performance characteristics be? These are basic questions, many of which we should have been able to answer before we started spending billions on new infrastructure and with partners like ONxpress. You have to know what the trains will be and where they will be when to plan optimal infrastructure! To some extent, this may be analysis paralysis, but a suboptimal decision that gets made is better than a perfect one that never comes. Done is better than perfect is management 101, but itâs not clear that Metrolinx subscribes to it.
On top of all of this are the cost issues. While Metrolinx may be building, they are not doing it efficiently. While some big projects like the Ontario line have seen some scrutiny, I think itâs the numerous small projects that are the most egregious. Station rebuilds like on the Stouffville line for example cost several times more (sometimes as much as 10 times!) than similar works in Italy according to Marco Chitti. If youâre in the know about transit, you know that costs are an issue, and no doubt some in Metrolinx also realize this, but has the public been brought into the know? Has Metrolinx shared its strategy to address this crisis? What about lessons learned?
I think this the recurring issue you run into. Even when Metrolinx is clearly learning and improving, the agency manages to repeatedly shoot itself in the foot by not communicating this candidly and openly with the public. Clearly Metrolinx made mistakes with the Eglinton Crosstown (for example underestimating the difficulty of underpinning Eglinton-Yonge station) which it is trying to avoid with the Ontario Line (placing interchange stations like Queen in bedrock to avoid issues with the existing subway), but since there isnât transparency about these decisions and any room for public dialogue about the issues and preferred solutions, thereâs a real chance that the cure is worse than the disease (in this case, a super deep Ontario Line station at Queen and Yonge).
My ultimate belief is that transparency is the only way forward. While being transparent is not always comfortable, itâs the right thing to do, and more importantly it can make an organization come off as flawed, but working on it, as opposed to arrogant and denying issues. When an organization is transparent it can be held accountable, it can get better. And when it gets better, we get more better transit â which we should all want.
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This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.
Itâs five answers to five questions. Here we goâŠ
1. We have to walk almost a block to get water for our coffee machine
I work for a large company, and my office has seven people in it. The company has placed a Keurig machine in each office and provides pods for employees to use (yes, itâs an ecological nightmare, but it is what it is). My office has a policy of âyou kill it, you fill itâ when it comes to the Keurig machine. The water light comes on and you fill it up. No big deal, right?
The issue is that my supervisor insists that the machine must be refilled by taking a Brita pitcher to the water filter across our large building and then refilling the coffee maker from that. She insists the water be double-filtered before use. I think this is silly and a waste of time. The water in our city is clean and safe to drink, plus the coffee machine has a filter of its own. When itâs my turn to refill the machine, I just fill it up from the sink immediately beside the Keurig.âI know my supervisor would be upset if she ever caught me, but it feels like such a waste of time to walk almost a city block to get water for coffee. Can I justify continuing to take the lazy way out in filling the machine? FWIW, my supervisor has never mentioned any health concerns that would require this sort of caution and she doesnât seem bothered by eating shared food.
That is A Lot, and I would bet money youâre not the only one whoâs just quietly not doing it. I donât feel 100% comfortable saying âlet someone believe youâre handling their food/beverages in a specific way that youâre not actually doingâ but this is also an excessive ask from her! Can the rest of you band together and say itâs taking up too much time â especially if youâre grabbing coffee in the middle of a time-sensitive project and donât have time to trek almost a block away and then trek back â and so youâre letting her know youâre not going to be fully consistent about it? Or just opt out of this magnificently filtered water altogether and just bring in your own coffee?
2. Can I ask my boss whatâs up with my coworker never being here?
I work for the federal government and am staff. My coworker, who trained me, is a contractor. I have no idea what her hours are. Sometimes she comes in at 7:30 am, sometimes itâs 9:30 am. Most days when she comes in, no matter what time she arrives, she announces that she needs to leave at 2:00 that day. Itâs always random day by day. I never even know if she will show up!
Since I started working here, in January 2023, she has called in eight times telling me and/or our supervisor she will be late because she overslept. Usually late means arriving at 9:30 or 10 am. One day, she called in to another coworker and said she would not be in. I assumed she was sick. The next day, we hadnât heard from her by 9:00, so I asked around. She ended up arriving at 11 and left at 2 pm. I asked her if she was feeling better and she said, âYeah, why?â I told her I assumed she was sick. She said, âNo, I was just stressed out about my move next week.â In other words, she inconvenienced us because she was stressed out moving into her new house. This is just one example of many that have me feeling resentful.
Our supervisor has made a comment once when our colleague was late that she âwas getting tired of this.â
Am I out of bounds if I ask my supervisor what is going on with my coworker? This is a very abnormal situation. I know itâs none of my business, especially if they have worked something out I know nothing about, but it is impacting me and the other lady in our department.
It would be an overstep for you to ask whatâs going on with your coworker  (because while it doesnât sound like this is the case, it could be something medical, something she has formal accommodations for, etc.), but you can and should explain to your manager what the impact is on your own work and ask for her help in handling that. Thatâs the part thatâs most relevant to you, and youâre on very solid ground in bringing up that piece of it.
3. Should I clue my staff in about internal politics and personalities?
I work in an intensely relationship-based organization, which is code for âif I donât like you, I donât have to do what you say.â As a result, my job is very political. I donât mind and I think Iâm pretty good at navigating it, but I worry about my team. Although they are individual contributors, their work is highly visible and they are often in political situations with the C-suite without being aware of the dynamics. I know my job as their manager is to shield them from politics, but I think navigating the realities of our work environment and knowing some basic psychology are critical job skills and key to their professional development.
How much should I be cluing them in on personality dynamics, the psychology behind change management, etc.? Obviously I donât want to gossip and would share only what they need to know. For example, if I know Bob doesnât get along with Sue and the meeting will go off the rails if they attend the same meeting, should I be explaining to my team that they canât be in a room together, or do I need to make up an excuse? If I know Larry will automatically agree with you if you frame your proposal in a certain way, and for Deborah you need to bring it up in another way, how much can I explain the whys behind it?
I know this environment is probably most folksâ worst nightmare and I donât want my team to be cynical, but I do want them to be able to operate independently without my constant air cover and be successful.
You should be cluing on them in on what they need to know to do their jobs effectively. In your Bob/Sue example, you definitely shouldnât make up an excuse rather than explaining the situation forthrightly, because otherwise youâre opening the door to them inadvertently stepping on a land mine. For instance, if you say Bob wonât be available for the X meeting when you really just want to keep him out of a room with Sue, what if your employee decides to reschedule the meeting for a time when Bob can attend? Or mentions to Bob that sheâs sorry he canât attend, and he has no idea what sheâs talking about? Youâre better off just giving it to them straight so they can make fully-informed decisions and do their jobs well.
The key is to talk about it in a way that doesnât feel gossipy. Youâre just giving them the context they need to do their jobs effectively, and that should be your tone â the same tone youâd use to say âthis client really doesnât like us to push extra servicesâ or âthat funder wonât read emails, youâve got to call them.â Be matter-of-fact and respectful about it; donât roll your eyes or use a tone that says âwhat a baby.â Your staff is likely to take their cues from you, and if you talk about this stuff calmly and professionally, theyâre likely to follow suit.
4. Can I advise my boss not to hire a contractor?
A year ago we hired a contract worker to help out and my boss is now talking about making that position permanent and hiring her into it. Everyone raves about her but I think she is failing at some key parts of the job. My manager doesnât work with her and hasnât been managing her because sheâs a contractor. Is there a diplomatic way for me to suggest we not hire this contractor into the position?
The most pressing priority is to tell your boss the problems youâve noticed. You could frame it this way: âI know youâre considering making Janeâs position permanent, so I wanted to share some concerns I have that I think youâd want to be aware of.â If sheâs removed enough from the work not to understand why the specifics are serious, make sure you spell that out explicitly â âX caused Y consequences.â
Depending on how the conversation goes, at some point during it you might say, âIâd be concerned about bringing her on permanently if these issues arenât resolved first.â But it sounds like your boss doesnât even know there are problems, so fill her in on whatâs going on right away.
5. Salary negotiation: a success story
Longtime reader, first-time writer. Late last summer I used your archive to guide myself through a request to increase my salary. I thought it might be a long shot because I appeared to be underpaid for my experience and role, so I was asking for a big hike in pay. The conversation went very well and my manager said she would advocate for whatever she could get me, but I knew I wouldnât have an official raise until late Q1.
Then in mid-January, the company reorganized the division and my entire team of five was let go. On the same day I was notified, my grandboss chatted me to say she had a role which she had designed with me in mind; not just an open role Iâd be a good fit for. I expressed interest and interviewed with her and my current boss. At the end of the interview, I asked about compensation, and my grandboss said that would need to be a future discussion.
Fast forward to yesterday: I was officially offered the role, at a nearly 30% increase in salary, a big bump in the profit sharing benefit, and jumping up to a higher level. She explained that she had to eliminate my old position in order to rehire me at this level, because I wouldnât have been able to get this high of a promotion and raise from where I stood before. The offer was also more than my current boss is making, so she didnât want to have an awkward discussion in the interview (and sheâs planning on improving that situation in the next review cycle, too). She suggested I come back with a counteroffer and let her know what I think, but she wanted to hear back by the end of the day. It didnât leave me much time to research with recruiters and people in my network.
I went back to AAM and read through a bunch of articles, then did some quick research on the title. I felt my situation was different since this was already a very generous offer, so I appreciated your advice that not every offer needs to be negotiated if the terms are favorable. I was reluctant to ask for much more, and I wasnât about to say no, but I took my bossâs advice to heart to do some negotiating. I chatted her my reply and asked if she would consider a very slightly higher number.
She responded and confirmed she could do that without further deliberations, so we agreed and I signed my offer this morning! This just goes to reinforce what youâve often said: salary negotiations are normal and expected, so it was worth it to ask for a little extra sauce on top.
SALT LAKE CITYâPausing their boisterous conversation to greet some new faces, the nationâs hairy men in hot tubs confirmed Wednesday there was plenty of room for one more if anybody else wanted in on the fun. âDonât be shy, we can all squeeze in here,â a man completely covered in hair and sweat said on behalf of theâŠ
Alaskapox, a virus discovered in 2015 that is mostly endemic among Alaskan small mammal populations, recently claimed its first human victim despite the fact that experts say the illness is often mild and infections remain rare. What do you think?
CHICAGOâNoting how dirty the glass still looked even after going to all that trouble, sources confirmed Thursday that the window washer theyâd hired could have at least dragged his squeegee along the building as he fell. âYeah, I know his rope snapped and he ultimately fell to his death, but would it have killed himâŠ
LA JOLLA, CAâScooting over to make room for more people on their serape blankets, a bunch of dudes seen jamming Thursday invited the nation to come on over and grab a tambo. âDonât need to know how to play to feel the groove,â said local djembe player Christopher Moran, who reportedly kept the beat alive with one handâŠ
WASHINGTONâAfter top advisors patted his head and called him a good president, Joe Biden was rewarded with extra time on his tablet Thursday, according to sources within the West Wing. âSince you were so patient and quiet all the way through the National Security Council meeting, you can play on the iPad for 30âŠ
Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming/recent appearances, current writing projects, current reading
Prison-tech is a brutal scam â and a harbinger of your future (permalink)
Here's how the shitty technology adoption curve works: when you want to roll out a new, abusive technology, look for a group of vulnerable people whose complaints are roundly ignored and subject them to your bad idea. Sand the rough edges off on their bodies and lives. Normalize the technological abuse you seek to inflict.
Next: work your way up the privilege gradient. Maybe you start with prisoners, then work your way up to asylum seekers, parolees and mental patients. Then try it on kids and gig workers. Now, college students and blue collar workers. Climb that curve, bit by bit, until you've reached its apex and everyone is living with your shitty technology:
Prisoners, asylum seekers, drug addicts and other marginalized people are the involuntary early adopters of every form of disciplinary technology. They are the leading indicators of the ways that technology will be ruining your life in the future. They are the harbingers of all our technological doom.
Which brings me to Minnesota.
Minnesota is one of the first states to make prison phone-calls free. This is a big deal, because prison phone-calls are a big business. Prisoners are literally a captive audience, and the telecommunications sector is populated by sociopaths, bred and trained to spot and exploit abusive monopoly opportunities. As states across America locked up more and more people for longer and longer terms, the cost of operating prisons skyrocketed, even as states slashed taxes on the rich and turned a blind eye to tax evasion.
This presented telco predators with an unbeatable opportunity: they approached state prison operators and offered them a bargain: "Let us take over the telephone service to your carceral facility and we will levy eye-watering per-minute charges on the most desperate people in the world. Their families â struggling with one breadwinner behind bars â will find the money to pay this ransom, and we'll split the profits with you, the cash-strapped, incarceration-happy state government."
This was the opening salvo, and it turned into a fantastic little money-spinner. Prison telco companies and state prison operators were the public-private partnership from hell. Prison-tech companies openly funneled money to state coffers in the form of kickbacks, even as they secretly bribed prison officials to let them gouge their inmates and inmates' families:
As digital technology got cheaper and prison-tech companies got greedier, the low end of the shitty tech adoption curve got a lot more crowded. Prison-tech companies started handing out "free" cheap Android tablets to prisoners, laying the groundwork for the next phase of the scam. Once prisoners had tablets, prisons could get rid of phones altogether and charge prisoners â and their families â even higher rates to place calls right to the prisoner's cell.
Then, prisons could end in-person visits and replace them with sub-skype, postage-stamp-sized videoconferencing, at rates even higher than the voice-call rates. Combine that with a ban on mailing letters to and from prisoners â replaced with a service that charged even higher rates to scan mail sent to prisoners, and then charged prisoners to download the scans â and prison-tech companies could claim to be at the vanguard of prison safety, ending the smuggling of dope-impregnated letters and other contraband into the prison system.
Prison-tech invented some wild shit, like the "digital stamp," a mainstay of industry giant Jpay, which requires prisoners to pay for "stamps" to send or receive a "page" of email. If you're keeping score, you've realized that this is a system where prisoners and their families have to pay for calls, "in-person" visits, handwritten letters, and email.
It goes on: prisons shuttered their libraries and replaced them with ebook stores that charged 2-4 times the prices you'd pay for books on the outside. Prisoners were sold digital music at 200-300% markups relative to, say, iTunes.
Remember, these are prisoners: locked up for years or decades, decades during which their families scraped by with a breadwinner behind bars. Prisoners can earn money, sure â as much as $0.89/hour, doing forced labor for companies that contract with prisons for their workforce:
So those $3 digital music tracks are being bought by people earning as little as $0.10/hour. Which makes it especially galling when prisons change prison-tech suppliers, whereupon all that digital music is deleted, wiping prisoners' media collection out â forever (literally, for prisoners serving life terms):
Let's recap: America goes on a prison rampage, locking up ever-larger numbers of people for ever-longer sentences. Once inside, prisoners had their access to friends and family rationed, along with access to books, music, education and communities outside. This is very bad for prisoners â strong ties to people outside are closely tied to successful reentry â but it's great for state budgets, and for wardens, thanks to kickbacks:
Back to Minnesota: when Minnesota became the fourth state in the USA where the state, not prisoners, would pay for prison calls, it seemed like they were finally breaking the vicious cycle in which every dollar ripped off of prisoners' family paid 40 cents to the state treasury:
But â as Katya Schwenk writes for The Lever â what happened next is "a case study in how prison communication companies and their private equity owners have managed to preserve their symbiotic relationship with state corrections agencies despite reforms â at the major expense of incarcerated people and their families":
Immediately after the state ended the ransoming of prisoners' phone calls, the private-equity backed prison-tech companies that had dug their mouth-parts into the state's prison jacked up the price of all their other digital services. For example, the price of a digital song in a Minnesota prison just jumped from $1.99 to $2.36 (for prisoners earning as little as $0.25/hour).
As Paul Wright from the Human Rights Defense Center told Schwenk, "The ideal world for the private equity owners of these companies is every prisoner has one of their tablets, and every one of those tablets is hooked up to the bank account of someone outside of prison that they can just drain."
The state's new prison-tech supplier promises to double the amount of kickbacks it pays the state each year, thanks to an aggressive expansion into games, money transfers, and other "services." The perverse incentive isn't hard to spot: the more these prison-tech companies charge, the more kickbacks they pay to the prisons.
The primary prison-tech company for Minnesota's prisons is Viapath (nee Global Tel Link), which pioneered price-gouging on in-prison phone calls. Viapath has spent the past two decades being bought and sold by different private equity firms: Goldman Sachs, Veritas Capital, and now the $46b/year American Securities.
Viapath competes with another private equity-backed prison-tech giant: Aventiv (Securus, Jpay), owned by Platinum Equity. Together, Viapath and Aventiv control 90% of the prison-tech market. These companies have a rap-sheet as long as your arm: bribing wardens, stealing from prisoners and their families, and recording prisoner-attorney calls. But these are the kinds of crimes the state punishes with fines and settlements â not by terminating its contracts with these predators.
These companies continue to flout the law. Minnesota's new free-calls system bans prison-tech companies from paying kickbacks to prisons and prison-officials for telcoms services, so the prison-tech companies have rebranded ebooks, music, and money-transfers as non-communications products, and the kickbacks are bigger than ever.
This is the bottom end of the shitty technology adoption curve. Long before Ubisoft started deleting games that you'd bought a "perpetual license" for, prisoners were having their media ganked by an uncaring corporation that knew it was untouchable:
Revoking your media, charging by the byte for messaging, confiscating things in the name of security and then selling them back to you â these are all tactics that were developed in the prison system, refined, normalized, and then worked up the privilege gradient. Prisoners are living in your technology future. It's just not evenly distributed â yet.
As it happens, prison-tech is at the heart of my next novel, The Bezzle, which comes out on Feb 20. This is a followup to last year's bestselling Red Team Blues, which introduced the world to Marty Hench, a two-fisted, hard-bitten, high-tech forensic accountant who's spent 40 years busting Silicon Valley finance scams:
In The Bezzle, we travel with Marty back to the mid 2000s (Hench is a kind of tech-scam Zelig and every book is a standalone tale of high-tech ripoffs from a different time and place). Marty's trying to help his old pal Scott Warms, a once-high-flying founder who's fallen prey to California's three-strikes law and is now facing decades in a state pen. As bad as things are, they get worse when the prison starts handing out "free" tablets and closing down the visitation room, the library, and the payphones.
This is an entry to the thing I love most about the Hench novels: the opportunity to turn all this dry, financial skullduggery into a high-intensity, high-stakes technothriller plot. For me, Marty Hench is a tool for flensing the scam economy of all its layers of respectability bullshit and exposing the rot at the core.
It's not a coincidence that I've got a book coming out in a week that's about something that's in the news right now. I didn't "predict" this current turn â I observed it. The world comes at you fast and technology news flutters past before you can register it. Luckily, I have a method for capturing this stuff as it happens:
Writing about tech issues that are long-simmering but still in the periphery is a technique I call "predicting the present." It's the technique I used when I wrote Little Brother, about out-of-control state surveillance of the internet. When Snowden revealed the extent of NSA spying in 2013, people acted as though I'd "predicted" the Snowden revelations:
But Little Brother and Snowden's own heroic decision have a common origin: the brave whistleblower Mark Klein, who walked into EFF's offices in 2006 and revealed that he'd been ordered by his boss at AT&T to install a beam-splitter into the main fiber trunk so that the NSA could illegally wiretap the entire internet:
Mark Klein inspired me to write Little Brother â but despite national press attention, the Klein revelations didn't put a stop to NSA spying. The NSA was still conducting its lawless surveillance campaign in 2013, when Snowden, disgusted with NSA leadership for lying to Congress under oath, decided to blow the whistle again:
The assumption that let the NSA get away with mass surveillance was that it would only be weaponized against the people at the bottom of the shitty technology adoption curve: brown people, mostly in other countries. The Snowden revelations made it clear that these were just the beginning, and sure enough, more than a decade later, we have data-brokers sucking up billions in cop kickbacks to enable warrantless surveillance, while virtually following people to abortion clinics, churches, and protests. Mass surveillance is chugging its way up the shitty tech adoption curve with no sign of stopping.
Like Little Brother, The Bezzle is intended as a kind of virtual flythrough of what life is like further down on that curve â a way for readers who have too much agency to be in the crosshairs of a company like Viapath or Avently right now to wake up before that kind of technology comes for them, and to inspire them to take up the cause of the people further down the curve who are mired in it.
The Bezzle is an intense book, but it's also a very fun story â just like Little Brother. It's a book that lays bare the internal technical workings of so many scams, from multi-level marketing to real-estate investment trusts, from music royalty theft to prison-tech, in the course of an ice-cold revenge plot that keeps twisting to the very last page.
It'll drop in six days. I hope you'll check it out:
"Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin", on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 https://chokepointcapitalism.com
"Attack Surface": The third Little Brother novel, a standalone technothriller for adults. The Washington Post called it "a political cyberthriller, vigorous, bold and savvy about the limits of revolution and resistance." Order signed, personalized copies from Dark Delicacies https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1840/Available_Now%3A_Attack_Surface.html
The Bezzle: a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about prison-tech and other grifts, Tor Books, February 2024
Picks and Shovels: a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about the heroic era of the PC, Tor Books, February 2025
Unauthorized Bread: a graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, 2025
This work â excluding any serialized fiction â is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. That means you can use it any way you like, including commercially, provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link to pluralistic.net.
Quotations and images are not included in this license; they are included either under a limitation or exception to copyright, or on the basis of a separate license. Please exercise caution.
This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.
A reader writes:
Before I signed on for my new job, I agreed to do a couple of personality tests. My new employer said it was to get a sense of how to work with me and my strengths and weaknesses. They stressed that my hiring wouldnât depend on the result and did not send the tests through until I signed the offer.
One personality test was what they said it would be, but the second ⊠oh boy, I got a bad feeling when the very first question essentially asked if I had a history of depression (âdo you feel blue sometimes?â).
It only got worse from there. The results I got basically said that I was lazy and âblamed external circumstances,â that I was âneuroticâ and âvolatile,â that I was âhighly likely to lash outâ but also that Iâm a doormat. It wasnât about strengths or weaknesses, it was an objective assessment on my mental stability and work ethic.
I seriously reconsidered whether or not I wanted to go through with this job because of the results. I know theyâre not true.
The test said I was in the top 1% of introversion, but I have a customer service job and Iâm constantly striking up warm conversations with patients and their families. It said I was lazy, but when we had an issue with an external contractorâs reports not going through automatically, I volunteered to do overtime for weeks to manually proofread and approve them; the national director said I was the only person other than himself that he trusted to do that. When I had appointments, I often made up my hours instead of using sick leave. When we had a patient brushed off by a doctor, I called around to multiple places to see who would give her the mental health evaluation she needed. I know Iâm a better person than this test said and Iâll be damned if I have to prove it right out the starting gate.
I mentioned in my responding email that I was surprised at the results and my new employer just said they looked forward to discussing it after I started, so they havenât run away yet, but Iâm still pretty rattled. The employer was talking up the test and how âaccurateâ it was before they sent it, through.
I ended up deciding to still go through with the job because of personal reasons, but I start in two weeks and Iâm dreading this awful result following me around my whole time there. Itâs a tiny family-owned company. I donât want to be micromanaged because the test said Iâm lazy, or my concerns to be brushed off because I got a bad result, or to be treated like a bomb about to go off when Iâve never had more than a minor conflict with a colleague (which was resolved without animosity).
How do I address this with my new employer without looking like Iâm just salty I got results I didnât like?
WTF! Thatâs horrible. Of course youâre rattled. It would be unnerving in any context to be told youâre a whole litany of negative things that you know youâre not, but itâs particularly awful in an employment situation where they donât really know you yet and youâve got to start a new job with âlazy, neurotic, volatile, and likely to lash out (but also somehow a doormat)â hanging over you.
Moreover, your new employer set you up to believe this assessment was something it very much wasnât.
I looked at the test they gave you, and it doesnât mention anything indicating itâs designed for use in employment contexts. It talks about taking it with a friend, family member, or romantic partner. They essentially gave you a Cosmo quiz.
As for what to do ⊠the fifth paragraph of your letter is an excellent rebuttal. Iâd seriously consider if you want to send a version of it to them before or soon after you start the job, changing the last sentence to something like, âThese results were strikingly different from how I work and at odds with the feedback Iâve always received from managers. My strong preference is to move forward in our working relationship without engaging with the results. I hope youâll learn who I am from working with me, and I believe that will paint a very different picture than this assessment did.â
And then youâll need to go into the job prepared to do exactly that: show them who you are by how you operate on the job. If you sense that theyâre treating you differently because of the test results, you could name what youâre seeing. For example, if you sense theyâre hesitating to give you feedback because your test said youâll lash out at the slightest provocation: âIâve noticed you seem wary about giving me constructive criticism, so I wanted to assure you I welcome it â Iâd be grateful for anything you can share about how I can approach XYZ betterâ ⊠and so forth.
More broadly: itâs time to get rid of personality tests in hiring and onboarding. Some people do find them useful frameworks to discuss and better understand their colleaguesâ ways of working and communicating, but so many people donât â and if you are going to use them, pre-hire and pre-start is the wrong time to do it, since it asks people to make themselves vulnerable before any real trust or mutual knowledge of each other has been established.
Youâve probably heard various renditions of The Star-Spangled Banner, and sometimes singers put a little extra something in the anthem. A bit of flourish. Some attitude. For The Pudding, Jan Diehm and Michelle McGhee quantified that extra something into what theyâve dubbed a Diva Score.
Out of the 138 versions they scored, the highest belong to Chaka Khan at the 2020 NBA All-Star game and Patti Labelle at the 2008 World Series.
