boss talks to me like I’m a baby, coworker is making me late, and more — 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. My boss talks to me like I’m a baby

I am wondering how I should address a slight issue I am having with my boss. Because I am quite short and young-looking (I am actually in my early 20s, but probably look like I am in my late teens) my boss always makes pretty patronizing remarks about my appearance. She calls me things such as “cute” and “babyface.” For example, last week I had to give a presentation so I wore boots with a slight heel, and she said “Aww, are you trying to look taller for the important people? You’re so cute!” And if I can’t reach something, she says “Aww, honey, should I get you a stool so you can reach like a big girl?”

The comments make me quite uncomfortable, not because I am embarrassed about being short, but because I feel that any comments about a person’s physical appearance are inappropriate in the workplace, even if intended in good nature.

I’m young and pretty new to the job, so I don’t want to sour my relationship with my boss (who in every other way is a great boss) by calling her out. But I do find it very patronizing and demoralizing. Everyone always thinks that I am younger than I am (I get ID’d all the time still!) but I’m trying to prove myself in my industry and I don’t want to cower down to her comments. How should I address this?

Wow, that’s really inappropriate. Those aren’t minor comments at all; they’re actually pretty insulting. You say she’s in every other way a great boss so she probably doesn’t intend to be insulting — but she is.

I would try this: “Jane, when you talk about my height or call me ‘babyface’ or ‘cute,’ it undermines my ability to be taken seriously. I would really appreciate it if you didn’t refer to my height or my appearance at all.” If you want to soften the language a little, you could change the start of that last sentence to “could I ask you not to refer to…” But really, this an incredibly reasonable request, and if your manager truly is a good boss as she otherwise appears to you to be, she’ll respect it and stop with the comments.

But I’m really struggling with the idea that she could be a good manager and still be saying these things. If it was just “cute” and “babyface,” sure. She could be misguided there but great otherwise. But it’s hard to take remarks like “Aww, are you trying to look taller for the important people?” and “Aww, honey, should I get you a stool so you can reach like a big girl?” as anything other than deliberately infantilizing.

– 2018

Read an update to this letter here.

2. My coworker won’t leave work on time and is making me late

I have recently started carpooling with a coworker who lives nearby. She doesn’t have a car, so I pick her up from her house and drop her off after work and she makes a contribution toward fuel costs (about one-third, which I’m fine with). It’s only an extra five minutes each way on my journey (well, it should be — more on that later), and it’s nice to have some company in the car and also help toward fuel.

My problem is that she is never ready to leave work on time in the afternoon! I need to leave on the dot of our finish time in order to miss the worst of the traffic. An extra minute late leaving generally results in an extra three to five minutes on my commute, so leaving five minutes late means getting home 15-25 minutes late. I’ll get to her desk at the end of work and she will still be answering emails, or tidying up, or want to use the bathroom before setting off, so I am always late home which is starting to really frustrate me. I’ve tried saying in the morning “I need to leave on time tonight” but it has no effect. We do the same job which is busy but not overwhelming so it’s not that she can’t get her work done in the workday. To be honest, it feels like passive-aggressive dawdling but I have no idea why. She’s always ready to leave on time in the morning. I’d feel bad ending the carpooling, partly because I appreciate the gas money but also because my coworker is pregnant and I’d be subjecting her to a 60-minute commute via two buses rather than 30 minutes sitting comfortably in the car. Any advice on how to deal with this coworker would be welcome!

It sounds like she has a different definition of “on time” than you do. She might not realize that a few minutes would have such an impact and may think that what she’s doing is on time. If you haven’t been really explicit with her about what you mean, start with something like this: “The way traffic works, I need to leave precisely at 5 p.m. If I leave even at 5:03, it adds 15 extra minutes for the commute. 5:05 means it takes 25 minutes longer. So I need to be literally walking out the door by 5 on the dot. You’re often still tidying up at 5, or need to use the bathroom before we go, or so forth. Can we change our arrangement so that you have all that done and you’re standing with your stuff by the door at 5:00 on the dot? I realize that’s really rigid, but it makes the commute much longer if I don’t.”

That might be enough to fix it. But if it keeps happening, then you could say, “Hey, I’m happy to keep carpooling, but I’ve got to walk out the door right at 5, with or without you! So if you’re not ready then, I’ll need to just leave. Given that, does it still make sense to keep our arrangement?”

If it still happens after that, go ahead and leave without her or end the arrangement because it’s not working for you. And if that happens, you’re not subjecting her to a 60-minute commute by bus; with this kind of ample explanation and warning, she would be subjecting herself to that.

– 2017

3. Holding a Christmas Eve lunch

I work for a very small professional firm (think fewer than 20 employees). Every year our employers give us the afternoon of Christmas Eve off, as well as the entirety of Christmas Day. My question concerns our tradition of the office gathering for a lunch on Christmas Eve before we depart. Attendance at the luncheon is by no means mandatory, although most employees choose to attend. My concern is that this year our office hired someone whose religion doesn’t celebrate Christmas. We don’t want to be offensive, nor do we wish to create any sort of discomfort for our new employee. Are we okay continuing with this tradition, or is there some tweaking we should do to make it more inclusive?

Well … the existing tradition pretty clearly centered around Christmas, so I don’t think there are any tweaks that will change that in a meaningful way. If you start calling it a “holiday” lunch, it’s still going to be pretty clearly for Christmas. I suppose you could call it a “winter break” lunch, but all of these labels tend to be pretty transparent.

You could do it earlier in December so it’s not quite as obviously tied to Christmas. Using early/mid-December timing and not making it explicitly for Christmas is how a lot of offices end up handling it. It’s still pretty obviously for Christmas (especially since Hanukkah isn’t a major holiday, which a lot of non-Jews don’t realize), but that seems to be where a lot of offices have landed.

But also, if you change it right when a non-Christmas-celebrating employee arrives, you’re going to burden that person with being the person whose arrival caused the change in tradition. That might be fine with them, or they might really wish you hadn’t. And more broadly, they might be totally fine with the existing lunch tradition or might feel like an outsider; that varies considerably from person to person. So I don’t have a good answer to this one, unfortunately. (And I apologize for that because you definitely sound like you’re trying to do the right thing here.)

– 2017

Read an update to this letter here.

4. Can I ask to room with my fiance at an upcoming work trip?

This question is very hypothetical, since my fiancee is currently temping at my workplace, although she’s going to be interviewed for a permanent position this week.

In the next few weeks, we’re likely to need to make roommate arrangements for an upcoming 2-day event that my company puts on every year. All employees are strongly encouraged, although not required, to attend, and everyone at my level will be sharing a hotel room. I know that it’s fairly common to room with coworkers in other departments, as my fiancee would be if she was hired, and we are the same gender, which is also required.

We keep things pretty professional, but friendly in the office, and usually only cross paths when we come in in the morning and leave at night. (This is an almost aggressively casual office though, so we also try not to stick out too much by being overly formal with each other.) I’m afraid that asking to room with her (if she gets the job, big if still, I know!) would harm the image we’ve created for ourselves, even though it would only affect our non-working time. What do you think?

I don’t see why not. I’m assuming that people at work will know about your relationship, or at least that you’re not planning to hide it, since professionalism doesn’t require that you go so far as to deny that a relationship exists when one does. Given that, it would probably be weirder if you didn’t room together.

The only wrinkle I can see here is that she might not be hired by the time rooming assignments are being coordinated, but you can cross that bridge if/when you come to it.

– 2015