It’s five answers to five questions. Now we go…

1. My ex-husband has hired his new girlfriend

I’m in a pickle. My ex-husband left home out of the blue, a little over a year ago. After about six months, he started dating a contractor at his workplace. This didn’t really promote any red flag for me, because she was in an entirely different department. I told him to tell HR, but he didn’t want to, for fear that they wouldn’t widen her contract because of it.

Fast forward another six months, and she just got hired full-time. As his direct report. And this really concerns me, from an ethical view because( 1) consent are able to obtain truly icky and( 2) there is a high probability that she was only hired because of this secret relationship.

I’m apparently really biased because all my brain wants to do is” report it! spoil his life! he delved this hole himself !” but I’m likewise quite far removed from the situation, as I have very little contact with him or “the organizations activities”. I don’t want to be the “crazy ex” but I am also really uncomfortable about, you know, ethics. To report? Or to pick up the mantra” not my circus , not my monkeys “?

It’s not yours to worry about or report. You don’t work there! This would be like reporting the same thing to, say, your neighbor’s busines if “youve learned” your neighbor had hired his girlfriend. The neighbor would be solidly in the wrong, but it would be a very strange overstep for you to contact his company about it. It’s the same thing now. But you’re welcome to judge him from afar, which I will join you in doing.

2. My friend is in trouble for telling me I was going to get fired

My friend, who happen to be the COO of the company I work for, was just telling me on Wednesday evening that my director was going to sack me. I have been at the company for only shy of two years. Our HR manager told her this news from a meeting she missed on Monday. Everyone in the company knows that the COO and I are close friends.

She then went to see a fulfill about it with the exec squad and they said it was a performance issue and irreversible, and that I would have about an hour to leave the building and mitt my laptop back etc.

I am going through shock, as I have just bought a house and the highway this has been handled is incredibly upsetting. I was given no written warnings or testimonies that my operation was not acceptable and feel I have doing well there. Knowing this information, I made a call to resign before they could sack me, as I didn’t demand it divulging into our small industry. They countenanced my abdication, removed my be made available to all my reports and emails, got a courier to come and pick up my work stuff from my flat, and told me not to come in. They told me duty my notice as horticulture leave.

I had a lot of friends and consumers there who have reached out to me and asked what happened. I told a close friend at work that my COO friend had said that I might lose my job and so I decided to resign. My COO friend now says the whole building is saying that I have told everyone she told me very confidential info and that she may now lose her job. I feel terrible that I seeped this to a mutual friend, but control likewise knew how close we were when they informed her this news.

Can my friend lose her job over this? She is deeply concerned and enraged with me that I told person what happened.

Yes, she could lose her job over it. As COO, she’s expected to be able to handle confidential information with discretion, regardless of any personal alliances. Sharing that info with you was a serious breach and a violation of the rely beings at your corporation need to have in her. That’s true even though they knew you were close friends! There’s no rapport exception for duties of confidentiality at work.( And she couldn’t do her job if she felt be entitled to claim that exclusion .)

The reality is, she messed up in a serious way. I can understand why she’s unhappy with you, but it’s the decision she made that generated this.( And really, even if you hadn’t told your other friend how it happened, it might have been self-evident anyway — since likely your departure came out of the blue right after she was told they planned to fire you .)

3. Someone filled the part freezer with 30+ cuts of meat

I work in an office with some big personalities, beings prone to behave in somewhat odd styles. I’m the place admin, so it’s up to me to clean up after parties and finagle shared spaces. Someone has now crowded the freezer in the undermine area with cuts of meat and now I’m both stung and a bit baffled.

Literally like, 30 -odd independently wrapped cuts of meat. It’s taking up the whole freezer. If anyone else wanted to kept anything in the freezer today, they wouldn’t be able to. There is no work event coming up that these could be for and there is no oven or barbecue at the place that you could use cook these, so I believe they’re for personal use and are simply being placed here.

I don’t know exactly who did this or which is what their programme is, but I’m wondering what the best way for me to react to this is. I’m hoping they’ll be gone on Monday, but if they’re not should I take a deep wheeze and nurse my tongue until it’s gone? Bring my concern to the employee, formerly I catch out who it was? Send out an email to all staff with an ultimatum to make their groceries dwelling? Go to my manager?

Ugh, office kitchens.

If there’s any fortune this is for a work-related event, before you do anything else you should inquire with anyone who might be able to fill you in on that.

But assuming you don’t discover that’s the case, send out an email this morning saying that whoever packed the freezer with flesh has done it unusable for anyone else and you will be tossing it all at the end of the day unless you hear from the person responsible.( And even if you do hear from them, you still may need to toss it — but it’s worth hearing what’s up first. If, for example, person lost strength at home and is desperately trying to avoid losing their 15 -year meat supply … well, they are also can’t take over the whole freezer, but you might be willing to give them a prayer season rather than tossing it all immediately .)

4. Employer is enforcing our PTO cap and I’m way over the limit

My employer has a paid time off policy where vacation time deserved through the year is automatically flattened over to the next year and never expires( we give three weeks/ year, accrued in increments each repay point ).

A new HR director was recently hired and it has come to light that trip PTO is supposed to have been capped at 160 hours peak( four weeks ). This restriction caught me by surprise, since this is the first time I had heard about it( I imagined ). We checked the employee handbook and it does placed such limits, so I probably should have seen this question coming.

The cap has never been enforced in the 10 years I’ve been with this company. I( and several others) have sketched up PTO vastly surpassing the detonator( in my action, over 450 hours ). I’m concerned that if the detonator starts to be enforced, I will lose the time off I have earned.

Do you have any recommendations for how I should handle this? Can the company retroactively enforce the limit and delete the vacation hours once earned? Should I just take Mondays off for the foreseeable future( only half joking )?

Unless you’re in a state that considers accrued vacation to be compensation that can’t be later lifted( e.g ., California) the company was in a position to retroactively enforce the limit and cover you at 160 hours. That said, since they haven’t been enforcing the policy up until now, you have a good case for asking them to give everyone a year’s grace period to use up their accrued era before the ceiling starts getting enforced.

5. What should I say is my reason for wanting to work from home one day a week?

My company has formal telecommuting agreements, and I’m considering referring one to work from residence one day a week. The first issue on the agreement form is, “Please explain why you would like to telecommute.” To be totally honest, my reasons are not doing whisker/ makeup, readily putting together lunch, petting my feline while I’m working, shunning a 30 -minute bus commute, and not dealing with the drama of my colleagues. I don’t have kids, clas to take care of, or any “real” reason to telecommute besides accessibility. I also feel like if I reference the bus travel, it will create a bad instance for others in my position who may want to do this but don’t have much of a commute and therefore don’t have a justification. Too, why should my employer have to care if my travel is longer or not? Given all that, what are the best ways to answer this question?

“Spending little occasion on my travel, and the ability to focus without interruptions.”

You’re not setting a bad instance for parties without same travels. They presumably can still cite the ability to focus as a intellect. And not having to commute is a really common reason for telecommuting — you won’t be saying something no one had thought of previously!

You are also welcome to like: my new coworker is the contractor who I shelled last yearmy coworker wants the company to pay for a week-long sex romp with his shot lovercan I ask my coworkers why they didn’t hire two daughters ?

my ex-husband hired his new girlfriend, office freezer is parcelled with personal groceries, and more was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.

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