It’s four answers to four questions. Here we go…
1. How do I stop being so aggravated by a coworker?
I have a coworker who is a kind person with a lot of great qualities. They’re good at their job and an asset to the team. There is, of course, a big BUT: I find them to be a ton of emotional labor to deal with. I’m not looking to change their behavior; it’s pretty benign if exhausting, and definitely not causing any real work problems. I’m hoping for ways to respond, better framing, or personal mantras that will stop the slow creep into BEC territory.
They like to show enthusiasm by asking to participate — everything from “That looks good, you should bring me a bagel next time!” to “The complicated costume piece you’re making is so cool, make me one?” or “A picnic with your friends on the weekend sounds great, where should I meet you? Haha.” Logically I know they aren’t expecting a bagel, costume piece, or invitation to a picnic with my friends who they’ve never met, but I have no idea how to respond! I’ve tried deflecting with things like, “Oh, I’m never making another one!” or responding with a clear no or not responding and changing the subject. Mostly I’ve resorted to just sharing less to avoid it, which opened a can of worms of the “we never talk anymore, what’s up, are you okay?” variety. Clearly, I need to find a way to be okay with the interaction and move the conversation along.
They are also a big sharer, which I don’t have an issue with, I also like sharing what’s going on in my life as a way to connect with coworkers. The problem is that they start a conversation with a carousel of “Remember my weekend plans from three weeks ago? With Parker? Where we argued but I hadn’t talked to them since?” I probably remember the plans vaguely, but the details slip away quickly! I’m more than happy to have the conversation this is opening, or even listen to a “on the previous episode” recap, but the quiz makes me feel like a terrible person who doesn’t care about my coworkers.
They’ve self-disclosed with some neurodivergence and struggles with anxiety, and they interact this way with everyone at work. I just need to find a way to let it roll off my back like it does everybody else.
You are over-thinking it and making it harder than it has to be! From this point forward, when this coworker invites themselves to participate in future bagels/sewing projects/picnics/etc., your strategy will be to assume they aren’t serious and respond accordingly — which means much more lightly. You say that logically you know they’re not really inviting themselves along or making a claim on your bagels or sewing time, but you’re still responding as if you have the emotional burden of fending them off anyway. Give yourself the gift of treating it with less seriousness! So:
Coworker: “That looks good, you should bring me a bagel next time!”
You: “Ha, yeah, they’re good.”
Coworker: “Make me one of those costumes?
You: “Sure, just find me the 3,000 hours it takes to do them!”
or
You: “My favorite part of it was…” (In other words, you don’t need to engage with what you’re hearing as a request. You can take it as them just expressing interest and enthusiasm and continue as if they’d said, “Oh, cool!”)
Coworker: “A picnic with your friends on the weekend sounds great, where should I meet you? Haha.”
You: “Haha! Yeah, the weather is supposed to be nice. So (topic change)…”
Similarly, you don’t need to put so much weight on not remembering small details they shared previously. You can say, “I don’t remember — fill me in?” or “I think so? Tell me anyway.” You’re not a terrible person for not remembering everything and I doubt they think you are either; that’s something you’re putting on yourself. They clearly like you and aren’t offended; you’re borrowing trouble by wanting to ascribe negative meaning to it!
The whole theme of this answer is: lighter. Receive them with more lightness, and respond with more lightness. It’s only a big deal because you’re framing it as a big deal. You can choose not to.
2. My boss wanted me to share my LinkedIn login
Last week’s question “My company wants me to share its posts on my personal LinkedIn” reminded me of a situation I was in a few years ago, and I’m wondering if you have some thoughts on how I could have better managed it.
I was in a role that was sales-oriented: I would meet with prospects, pitch our company’s business, write proposals, etc., but the job description did not include prospecting for leads.
We had an outside group to generate leads for us. Their one and only lead generation tactic was leveraging LinkedIn. They asked me and other folks at my company for our personal LinkedIn account login credentials, so that they could pose as us and reach out to people via LinkedIn to see if they were interested in hiring our company.
I said absolutely not. My boss didn’t understand why, but ultimately didn’t force me to share my login. Instead, my boss told me to use the scripts developed by the outside group to reach out to people myself (who I did not know or have any real connection with) to “grow my network” and prospect for leads.
Extremely reluctantly, I followed directions. This meant scouring LinkedIn for people with titles that seemed like the sort of folks who would be hiring our company, who also had something else in common with me. I’m talking the most tenuous of connections — we both attended the same massive university, or lived in the same giant metropolitan area — by saying something like “hey, I’m building my network, can we connect?” and then if some sucker actually said yes, it was off to the sales pitch.
Needless to say, this sucked and was not productive in any way. I made very few contacts and we never got one legitimate lead from this. And I felt super dirty doing it — my personal LinkedIn is supposed to represent my actual network, not a bunch of people I cold called.
Anyway, I pushed back a lot and we finally stopped, but my boss was unhappy that this wonderful method for finding new business didn’t pan out. When we had layoffs, I wound up being on the list, and I can’t help but think this was in part due to my not being a team player with the LinkedIn stuff. But this was bananapants, right? What could I have done differently here?
Yes, bananapants — particularly expecting you to turn over your login so someone else could pose as you and say who knows what to people in your network.
I don’t love your framing of “what could I have done differently?” because you’re not to blame for not thinking up a way to convince your boss that this was both slimy and ineffective. I suppose you could have simply not done what they were asking but reported that you had (how would they know? I’m not a fan of lying but I’m also not a fan of pressure to misuse your network this way) or you could have told your boss you were getting angry messages from people who were then blocking you so you couldn’t continue without decimating your network. Or you could have held firm from the get-go and said you weren’t going to use your account that way, and pointed out that lead generation wasn’t part of your job (although I suspect you had the type of boss who would have responded that lead generation is everyone’s job).
All this was really about was that your boss sucked.
3. Navigating a vendor relationship after escalating an issue
I work in a high-profile scientific library. At the end of each year, we update our collection of journal and service subscriptions for the next year. It’s a busy period and involves a lot of negotiation with providers, agents, scientific societies, and so on, as well as internal budget negotiations. I handle both, but I’m not a manager, just a librarian.
Last year, one of our long-standing vendors didn’t respond to my invoice request for 1.5 months. I tried several approaches: (1) emailed their only salesperson, Jane, from different email addresses to ensure my message wouldn’t go to spam, (2) emailed the head of the sales department and tech support, (3) called their sales and general public service line—this was very difficult as we are in opposite time zones, and I had to make the calls late at night but I reached voicemail, (4) sent direct messages to their social media pages, and (5) faxed them.
Despite all these efforts, I still received no response. Time was running out for budget planning, and my manager wasn’t helpful. She told me she didn’t know what to do but emphasized that we needed their materials.
I decided to email their C-level executives using the email addresses provided on their website. I got my manager’s approval and wrote an individual letter to three people, apologized for taking an unusual and desperate step, didn’t mention Jane, and simply explained that I was having trouble reaching them and asked for assistance. I emphasized that maybe it was me who was doing something incorrectly here.
The next day, I found about 15 emails from C-level executives. They were apologetic, cc’d sales and other people I don’t know, and promised to help. That same day (night for me), Jane finally responded and her email had a very sad tone. I could sense how bad she felt. In the end, we renewed our subscription. I thanked both the C-level executives and Jane and that was the end of it. However, I feel very badly that I might have caused harm to Jane. I’m not sure if there were any consequences for her, but I know she didn’t lose her job.
Now I need to repeat the negotiation process with them for the upcoming year, and I’m unsure how to proceed. My manager has quit, so I have no one to consult with. Should I reach out to Jane again (she’s still the sales contact) or should I approach it differently?
You don’t have anything to feel badly about. You made repeated efforts to reach someone who could help you, including some efforts that were truly above and beyond what most people would do. This is a company offering a subscription for sale, and it’s reasonable to assume that they will be set up to respond to requests for it without you having to go on an onerous quest to make it happen. And judging by their executives’ immediate response when you escalated it to them, it’s clearly something they want their organization taking care of.
You didn’t go to Jane’s boss after she didn’t answer you within a day or because she sounded a little tired on a call or something else minor. You went to her boss after truly unusual efforts to reach her weren’t successful. (Social media messages! Faxes!)
Who knows what was going on with Jane — maybe she’s overworked, maybe it’s not her job anymore, maybe she was on a three-month bender. You don’t need to figure it out! You’re just someone trying to buy their product. Whatever problems occurred on their end, they can handle those internally.
For the upcoming year, follow whatever process they’ve laid out for you to follow. If that’s contacting Jane again, contact Jane again. You don’t need to tiptoe around what happened last time; if anything, Jane should be bending over backwards to get you helped quickly this time (and likely will after last time).
The only thing to do differently this time is that if she doesn’t respond to your email, don’t resort to multiple email addresses, late night calls, etc. — that’s way too much. Instead, if you don’t hear back in a reasonable amount of time, go back to the C-suite execs who got it handled last time and say, “Apologies for bothering you, but I had trouble getting our subscription renewed last year until you stepped in and I’m concerned the same thing is happening this year. I emailed ADDRESS on DATE and haven’t heard back yet. Can you let me know how to take care of this, both for this year and for future years?”
Separately: any chance you have a pattern of being excessively deferential in situations where it’s not called for? It really is okay to deal with people straightforwardly and to escalate when you’re not getting what you need from a vendor, without blaming yourself for problems that were clearly on their end.
4. Should people be able to prove summer jobs they worked decades ago?
I had a politics conversation this week, specifically about Kamala Harris’ claim that she worked at McDonald’s in the summer of 1983, and the Trump team claiming that’s a lie. This person said he thought it must be a lie because how could you not prove you worked at a job?
I tried to point out that this was a summer job from decades ago before everything was stored digitally, and I absolutely have jobs like that from only 20 years ago! Jobs where the company has since closed, or everyone who would have known me has left and the records aren’t kept, where I didn’t keep in touch with anyone, and I definitely haven’t held on to my old tax records from decades past. Even the IRS doesn’t promise to keep anything past six years, according to their website.
This person was still skeptical that anyone would be in that position, but it got me thinking! In your experience, how likely is it that people who have been active in the workforce for decades have an essentially unprovable past job? Are Kamala and I outliers, or is this common?
It’s extremely common. I am confident there is zero way I could prove I worked at TCBY the summer after I graduated high school, and that wasn’t as long ago as Kamala Harris’s McDonald’s job. Nor could I prove my Mrs. Fields’ Cookies job from high school, or the three months I spent being extremely cool working in a record shop at 17. You will just have to take my word for it that I ate a ton of white chocolate macadamia nut cookies and listened to way too much soft rock holiday music on repeat.
This was before everything was digitized, and who saves records from fast food jobs decades ago? It’s a ridiculous and impossible (and politically motivated) standard to hold anyone to.
