man at our events monopolizes attendees, beverages on video calls, and more

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

It’s four answers to four questions. Here we go…

1. A man at our events makes other attendees uncomfortable

I’m on a planning committee for an event involving a fandom generally beloved by mostly women, often mothers and daughters. This event is spread over a few days and involves speakers, tours of book/filming sites, etc.

There’s a middle-aged man, Alex, who is a fan and has attended previous in person and virtual events (where I was not on the planning committee). Alex is passionate about this IP, which is great, but he tends to monopolize the attention of a few of the attendees. When one would gently but firmly say, “I’d like to stop talking now and enjoy the tour, Alex,” he would move to another and so on.

Additionally, at past events, the committee has gotten verbal and written feedback that Alex made some people uncomfortable, mainly by approaching their daughters to talk about this IP and other similar ones. Absolutely nothing untoward happened and all the children were with their mothers, but the girls involved didn’t wish to engage in conversation and their mothers had a hard time ending the conversations with Alex.

Alex was also removed from a social media group for this IP, for continuing to call and text a member, Joyce, after she asked him not to, and then mailing things to her home as apologies for upsetting her. This social media group isn’t officially part of the event, but Joyce will be there as a speaker. Alex has attended other, virtual events since then and has behaved appropriately and not interacted with Joyce.

Alex is neurodivergent, and his difficulties with communication, social cues, and rejection are absolutely part of his disability. It’s worth noting that while he clearly has higher support needs in terms of interpersonal skills, he has low support needs in his high-level career. The other planning committee members and I are struggling to figure out how to best handle this. We want Alex to be able to have a good time without impeding on other attendees’ boundaries. (As an aside, I only mention Alex’s neurodivergence as background that he processes the world differently than neurotypical adults. We have other neurodivergent folks attending and on the planning committee, and we’re trying to be as inclusive as we can.)

Past committees chose to rotate time buddying up with him to try and smooth these experiences, but that’s not something this committee is able to do. Should we quietly look for volunteers to keep Alex company? That might be our solution, but it also feels like we’d be imposing on people who are paying for this event to ask them to give up their focus on the event to engage Alex. Are we able to request that he only attend virtually instead of in person? I’d love any advice on how to proceed with being sensitive, respectful, and maintaining everyone’s boundaries while not being infantilizing or rude to Alex.

Can you just be straightforward with Alex? “We’re looking forward to seeing you at X! We want to share some feedback from previous events to help ensure everyone has a good experience. At previous events, some attendees felt you crossed boundaries by approaching kids who didn’t want to talk with an adult they didn’t know and by keeping people in conversation when they wanted to focus on the event. We are happy to welcome you back this year but ask that you not approach kids you don’t know, and be mindful that while adult attendees may enjoy a brief (five minutes or so) chat, most will prefer to return their focus to the event. We look forward to seeing you and hope you have a great time.”

It might sting, but it’s kinder to clearly spell out what he needs to do if he wants to be welcomed back in the future. You also have the option of asking him to only attend virtually, but you could give this a try first and see if it solves the problem.

Related:
telling a member that his behavior at our events is ruining it for everyone else

2. Acceptable beverages on video calls

I have a very low stakes question that I find myself overthinking in a new role. What are the generally accepted beverages and/or containers to drink out of on calls?

I would assume water bottles are fine, coffee mugs, coffee tumblers, etc., but I recently found myself thinking about things like cans of kombucha that might look like beer, a green juice with a straw, soda, that kind of thing.

My job is casual enough that it definitely doesn’t matter internally, but there’s something about seeing myself using a straw on camera that makes me feel like a toddler.

If it looks like beer, pour it in non-clear glass. Otherwise, any of those are fine, including straws! (Assuming it’s a standard straw and not, like, a Krazy Straw.)

The exception is if the meeting or your industry requires an especially high degree of polish. For example, I wouldn’t bring a soda can with a straw to a meeting with a VIP client for the first time — although it’s hard to defend why and, like so many things, it’s about cultural connotations around those items rather than any real reason.

Related:
does it look unprofessional to have an energy drink at my desk every day?

3. Management scheduled a team-building workshop to fix our bad manager

I’m part of a small team in a government agency. The team lead is my skip-level boss, Julie. Our team and our larger agency have gone through a bit of turmoil and employee tension in the past few years. There were a lot of factors, both in and out of our control, that contributed, but the main one was Julie. She has poor communication skills, is disorganized, and doesn’t seem to understand much of the work we do but refuses to admit it. This is especially a problem because our team is responsible for making sure the agency is in compliance with certain laws, so we are breaking the law if we don’t do our jobs correctly.

For years, upper management has ignored the problems with Julie, until this year when one of my coworkers reported the lack of compliance to the appropriate authorities. Upper management is now showing some interest in addressing the situation by asking us to attend a three-day-long workshop to “rebuild our working relationships.” We all anticipate that this will be a long and awkward “team-building” event that will do absolutely nothing to address the serious management issues we’re having, but will make our lives harder by interrupting our actual work.

Is it worth going to upper management as a team and telling them that we don’t think this workshop is a good use of our time, and that they should focus their energy on actually managing Julie? I don’t personally have a lot of confidence that management will actually listen to us.

You can try. The problem, of course, is that the same incompetence (and/or lack of care) that has allowed them to bury their heads in the sand about Julie up until now is the same incompetence that now makes them think a workshop on “rebuilding relationships” will somehow address it. Either they’re truly inept enough to think that’s an appropriate response, or they don’t actually care about resolving the issues and just want to be able to say they’ve done something. (However, this such a ludicrously bad attempt at “something” and so unlikely to fly with anyone exercising any real oversight that I’ve got to think incompetence is at least one of the factors in play.)

That said, it sounds like they were moved to action after the initial report, so it’s possible that applying additional pressure will move them a little more. So I say give it a try; tell them you’re happy they want to address the problems, but the workshop has nothing to do with what the issues are. Just keep your hopes low.

4. Porn Hub sticker on laptop

I work at a community college. One of my colleagues has a student in her class with a Porn Hub sticker on her laptop. We’re just curious if and how you would address this with a student?

In college? I’d leave it alone. If she doesn’t have the sense to realize not to do that once she’s at work, she’ll be informed pretty quickly.

This assumes the sticker is just words and not, say, an X-rated photo. If it were that, you’d need to tell her to stop exposing unconsenting classmates to it.