updates: my boss’s wife cheated on him in front of me, sob stories on LinkedIn, and more

Here are three updates from past letter-writers.

1. My boss’s wife cheated on him in front of me, and now he’s icing me out at work

I took the part of your advice that involved just being cool and it sort of worked, for a while. I am American but this all happened while I was working at an office in Ireland. They do have a different attitude to drinking there (that stereotype is true) and it’s much, much more common to mix work and booze. They also have a very different approach to clear conflict resolution — in my experience, it is very unusual and rare in Ireland to just address a conflict directly and they find it very American and deeply uncomfortable. If I were to bring that whole thing up to my boss directly, he would likely self-combust before my eyes … so I didn’t. Or rather, felt like I couldn’t. And eventually, it got better.

I started feeling that if someone chooses to drink that excessively with people they give performance reviews, then they need to expect that there might be some wobbles in the professional relationship. And it definitely changed my willingness to drink with people who manage me (or fund our work)! When I think about the whole situation as well, the boss’ wife was falling over drunk, and I see it more through the lens of her being taken advantage of rather than some sort of affair. I wish I had framed it to him that way when we spoke about it. It makes the whole thing uglier. The boss ended up leaving in a spectacular fashion — lawyers were involved — and I haven’t been in touch with him since.

2. Does posting sob stories on LinkedIn hurt your job search?

I wrote to you asking if posting sob stories on LinkedIn hurts your job prospects.

As suspected in the comments, the majority of these colleges are much younger than me (mid-late 20s/ some early 30s) and spent most of their childhood / adolescence years constantly online. While some of my former colleagues eventually found jobs, quite a few have admitted that they felt that posting those sob stories definitely hurt their prospects (especially when one found their posts posted somewhere else mocking them). However, some have dug their heels in the sand saying that “naming and shaming” companies who do not hire or ghost them is the new norm.

As for myself, while I was able to continue to work in my field, the effects of the industry layoffs are really starting to show its effects. I am currently doing the job of 2-3 people, and have been averaging 70 hours a week. I experienced burnout before in this field, and I do not want to compromise my mental and physical health, plus I want to spend more time with my family, which right now I sadly do not get to see often.

I am currently job hunting for positions outside of my field. Luckily, my position has given me a variety of skills that can be transferred to admin roles. I am positive that the skills I learned from reading your blog will help me in my future hunt.

3. My coworker won’t use women’s names

I did end up asking my coworker what was up, after a particularly baffling conversation where he was talking about a manager who had retired before I started working here while comparing her to our highest manager and never using either of their names.

He admitted he had a hard time remembering names on command and just kept things vague, hoping we’d understand through context because constantly pausing to make sure he had the right name would disrupt the flow of the conversation. That’s about what I thought was going on, since he would often use phrases that in our country’s dialect of English refer to a woman whose name you don’t know or can’t remember.

When I asked why he seemed better able to get the men’s names right, he said it’s because there’s so many fewer of them in the office and he supervises most of them, so he’s been able to memorize which guy is which by remembering what job they do, which is harder with the women because our jobs are less clearly defined and he doesn’t interact with our work area as much.

Some people in the comments (which I couldn’t reply to at the time because I didn’t see it, but did read after the fact) seemed to want to assign him some kind of Christian offshoot religion that explained it, but we’re not in the U.S. and those kinds of hyper-specific churches aren’t a thing here. People can be shitty to women at times but it’s the Catholic flavor of shitty.

Since I chatted with him about it, he’s started trying to use women’s names more often, at least when talking to me … which hasn’t really made things less confusing because he keeps calling people by the wrong names at first call. But I caught him mixing up two of the lads who don’t usually work in the same space as him, so at least it’s no longer so targeted?

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