coworkers are attacking people over grammar, boss’s wife wants me to organize their house, and more

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.

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. Two coworkers are attacking people over grammar

At my company, we have a couple of grammar fanatics who go out of their way to correct people even when they’re not in the conversation. Sometimes this will even occur during important one-on-one meetings on projects that have tight deadlines. These two people will interject to say exactly what we said wrong, and how we should have said it. It annoys everyone, and we tried several times to get them to stop correcting everyone to no avail.

We have tried several things like stating that we don’t care if we are saying it wrong, throwing the logic out that if you understand what I am saying there is no need for correction, and some of us have even started changing our speaking habits so that we can stop being pestered over little mistakes. We have even found that sometimes they’re actually wrong on how they corrected us. When we confront them with this, they get extremely defensive, and more or less call all of us stupid for trying to look up something we clearly can’t understand.

I am at a loss of what to do here. At first I didn’t mind the occasional feedback, but they are starting to get more and more aggressive with their corrections and starting to blatantly call people under-educated, unprofessional, or just outright stupid. Half of me thinks its time to go to their manager (they have the same manager), but in the past when other coworkers would go to the manger over other issues with these two people, there would be a backlash from them. They would say that everyone is too “sensitive” and “can’t pull up their big boy/girl pants so they had to go to management.”

Is this something we should even bring up, or are we being too sensitive? Would just ignoring it be better to keep the relationship up with two people who I really don’t see leaving the company any time soon? (Seriously, several people have gone to their manager over similarly obnoxious things and nothing has come out of it.)

Normally would this would be something to address with their manager, because not only are they being annoying by weaponizing grammar like this, but they’re actually insulting people. Regularly, it sounds like.

But if your experience is that their manager won’t act, then you might be better off just ignoring them. They interject to correct something, and you just going right on talking as if you didn’t hear them. Or, when they correct you, you can say “I’m not interested in grammar corrections while I’m in casual conversation” — and repeat that as needed. There’s also, “It’s so weird that you think that’s appropriate” — but with the way you’ve described their hostility, I’d lean away from anything that might spur further engagement or attacks.

It’s also pretty messed up that their manager is allowing aggressively hostile behavior like insulting people, and you might consider whether there’s anyone else you could bring this to — your own manager or, ideally, someone who’s senior to their manager and has a track record of being willing to take on problems. If you do, part of the message to that person needs to be that these two have a history of attacking anyone who complains about them, and so part of addressing the grammar weaponization has to include laying out clear prohibitions on that as well.

– 2019

2. My boss’s wife wants me to organize their house

A few months ago, I started a job as a paid intern at a small marketing start-up. When my boss (the CEO) hired me on, he did say that the job sometimes involved not-so-glamorous tasks that everyone, including me, would complete, like cleaning and sorting the company’s storage unit, maintaining office space, taking out trash and recycling, packing and shipping, etc.

But recently, with his blessing, his wife has asked me to help her clean out all of her two children’s toys and sort them, organize a massive closet space including replacing shelves, clean out and organize her children’s art cabinet, clean out their “drop off” bench where they throw together jackets and purses and dirty socks, hang a bunch of hooks, and clean and organize her office. This is all at my boss’s home. The wife said this work would take three days to complete, and that I wouldn’t be able to do her work and the office work at the same time.

I feel like this work clearly crosses the line of what my job entails me to do. This isn’t for the company, this is my boss’s family’s personal, home life. On the other hand, I would (presumably) be getting PAID to do all of this work. Am I right in thinking this is wrong? Am I being taken advantage of? Or do I need to check myself? If it’s a problem, how would you mention it to my boss?

Yep, this is ridiculously inappropriate. You didn’t sign on to be a personal organizer in someone’s home. It’s true that jobs can sometimes shift, and sometimes you’ll be pulled into something you didn’t explicitly sign up for — but being asked to help someone with their personal tasks in their home is way outside of that.

It would be entirely reasonable for you to say to your boss, “I’m going to tell Jane that I can’t help with the personal tasks at your house. I really want to focus on the work I took the internship to do. I of course understand that tasks may shift and that I’ll need to do some cleaning and organizing here, but I’m not comfortable doing that for someone’s personal home rather than for the company.”

If your boss is at all reasonable, he should accept this. But if he’s not reasonable, there’s a chance that he’ll be unhappy, so you’ll want to go in knowing that’s a possible outcome. If it does happen, you can say, “I’ll certainly do whatever you need me to do here as part of my work, but I’m not comfortable helping anyone manage their home.” (Frankly, I also kind of want you to say “I would charge significantly more for that kind of work than what I’m being paid as an intern” — because I bet you’re getting a much lower hourly wage than what personal organizing normally costs.)

– 2018

3. I don’t want my manager to email my team when I’m out

I work in the accounting department, and I called out sick because my kids were sick. I came into work the next day and saw an email that was sent out by my boss to the whole accounting team with the subject line “Jane Smith will not be in today.” I was just wondering if that is really anyone’s business but my own and obviously the person to whom I called out (in this case being my direct boss). Every manager in my department sends out emails like this, but when a manager is out, I have noticed that no email is sent out.

I would think that putting an “out of office” reply to my email would be enough to notify people that I am out. Also, if it’s someone in the same office that is looking for me, if they notice that my computer is not on and it looks like I’m out, they should just be able to go to my boss directly if they needed something. I have heard people make comments about others who have been out, and I know other coworkers like to “track” that stuff, but in the end, I feel like it’s really no one’s business. The only person who should know if I’m out is my direct manager. And I also think that if an email has to be sent out, then it should be for everyone, not just a certain department, or a certain “level” of employee.

What your manager is doing is very, very normal. There’s no real expectation of privacy that your coworkers won’t be alerted when you’re out; to the contrary, many offices like to proactively inform people so that they’re not left guessing. (Having to judge from whether your computer is off or on isn’t a particularly efficient or effective method.) As for why not emails go out when managers are out, who knows — but you’re fighting a losing battle on this one; it’s just not going to be seen as a privacy violation. If someone is tracking your time off who shouldn’t be, address that directly — but it’s reasonable to send “Jane is out today” emails to your team.

– 2015

4. Making a special request for a staff photo

I’m hoping to get some outside perspective. I was just informed that my work will be taking professional photos of a bunch of positions, including mine. The problem? They take them from the left side, which is the side of my face that has a lot of scar tissue from a childhood accident. It’s not like I’m walking around with a very noticeable deformity (though it is visible enough for some people to feel the need to comment on it), but when I smile, very deep creases and puckering appear on that side of my face, and if I wear lipstick, I essentially have to redraw part of my lip. My family says I’m being overly self-conscious, but I don’t want the photo of me that gets put in a yearly publication or sent out to other organizations that I routinely work with to be one that draws attention to the fact that I have a scar and that it causes half my face to smile differently than the other half.

Am I being unreasonable in wanting to make this request? I fear I will get push back from some management (because my photo would be different than everyone else’s) and the photographer (because he comes in and sets up everything for photos from the left side). To add to the worries, I would be quite embarrassed if the person that was organizing the photo session told my coworkers about my request (not maliciously, there’s a lot of idle gossip and chit chat at my work) or, worse, felt the need to give me a pep talk on self love. I guess I’m torn on if this is something to worry about or just vanity.

No, it’s completely reasonable to want to take a photo from your other side! You don’t need to make a big deal about it. You can just tell the photographer, “I know you’re photographing people from the left side, but I have a lot of scar tissue there from an accident. So let’s take mine from the right and then, if they want them to be consistent, we can flip the image.” That’s a thing they can easily do. If you get any push-back, you can say, “Because of my accident, I’m really not comfortable having the focus be on the the scar tissue, but I think this plan will solve it nicely.” Because it will.

I hope you don’t get preached to about self-love, but if you do, you can shut that down with a withering look and a “That’s really not something we need to address here.”

– 2018