employees are cuddling in staff meetings, unvaccinated new hire, and more — Ask a Manager

It’s “where are you now?” month at Ask a Manager, and all December I’m running updates from people who had their letters here answered in the past. Here are five updates from past letter-writers.

There will be more posts than usual this week, so keep checking back throughout the day.

1. My 2 dating employees are cuddling in staff meetings

Here’s an update on this one: initially one member of the couple was very reasonable after I talked to them, using very similar language to your suggestions (honestly, you confirmed my instincts about how to address it and gave me some concrete phrasing!). The other one said PDA was something she enjoyed doing at work but agreed to stop.

The PDA did mostly stop, but it was obvious that one person was trying to pressure the other into going back to it. After a few months, the person who had been initiating more PDA began to express frustration with regular parts of her job (e.g. speaking to customers, working evenings) and let it impact her customer service. Any time anyone attempted to discuss this with her or seek solutions, she would bring up the fact that I had told her and her partner to stop kissing and cuddling in the store as evidence that management was picking on her. During this time, two straight, cis people started dating and had a similar setting of PDA expectations, so this was a tough argument for her to lean on.

She quit about six months later after she tried to secretly record her performance review (in a two-party consent state) but her partner still works at the store very happily. I think I had a sense that “no PDA at work” would be an issue for this particular person, which is why I wrote in. One commenter wrote, “It’s kind of cute to see baby queers having the same struggles that I’ve seen baby straights have at work” which was also the perspective I was coming from. I myself am queer and (although queer people are not exempt from transphobia!) was trying to help these two navigate melding their first job and first relationship professionally, with a personal understanding of how LGBTQ folks are often hyper-visible, especially with regards to PDA — and also knowing that the amount of PDA from this couple was not acceptable for our workplace. Thanks for your advice!

2. Should I tell an employee that the new hire sitting right across from him all day is unvaccinated?

I wrote in a couple of years ago with a dilemma about how to handle having privileged info on COVID vaccination status and medical vulnerability status of employees and how to handle it.

It was good to see your response and the discussion in the comments, because it confirmed for me that it was a tough call to make because of “break the law but reduce infection risk” vs “follow the law but maybe put vulnerable people at risk” considerations meant there was no obvious one best answer.

The update is not exciting, but in this case, that’s a good thing.

I decided to not say anything directly to either of the employees in question, upholding the confidentiality requirements of my role at work. It helped (e.g., allowed me to sleep at night) to have seen the advice, comments about how it’s up to each of us to take reasonable precautions as we see fit and that the employee with the medically vulnerable family member was able to choose to mask up (out of caution, assuming anyone could be unvaccinated or coming down with something) or request a change in workstation, if they felt it was necessary. I also let managers know that I’d help with approval of new workstations, etc. if they had employees requesting to move to create more social distancing.

Since it was October, I wound up issuing general reminders to ALL employees about sensible precautions to prevent disease spread to ALL employees, things like frequent hand washing, wearing masks if you might have been exposed to something, covering nose and mouth if sneezing, coughing, noting that updated flu and COVID-19 vaccines are available free of charge at local pharmacies, etc. etc. I posted one of those “stop the spread” notices in a few places as a reminder.

The good news: as far as I know, no one spread COVID to anyone at work or beyond (though one person was out with it after catching it at a music festival) The two coworkers wound up having a good, collaborative work relationship after they got to know each other and said goodbye with tears in their eyes when the employee with the vulnerable family member recently left, moving away due to a spouse’s new job. And the family member’s health situation is much better, still higher risk for complications if they catch something, but they’re no longer facing health crisis after health crisis.

Reading my question again was a good reminder for me refresh those “Stop the Spread” notices, reminders again for the new flu season, and to keep in mind that anyone could have a vulnerable family member or be unvaccinated, and to act accordingly, schedule my own vaccines, boosters, etc. Oh, and I’m still the work-place safety nerd, reminding people to wear eye protection, safety gloves and putting away knives, scissors, open box cutters I come across laying around.

3. My assistant stands when women come in (#4 at the link)

As many of the commenters suggested, my assistant stands when it is someone who is higher up on the organizational chart/”superior officers.” That makes sense, and isn’t an issue in my organization. I don’t need to change it or address it in any way.

A positive update: the vibe in the office had seemed overly formal. I think that may have had more to do with my predecessor and her interactions with the executive assistant, than the assistant himself. I’m much less formal and generally chatty. He seems to be greatly appreciative of that and appears less stressed, and the office feels different.

I’d been concerned about some performance issues, and since we’ve made this transition, they have gone away. He is an enormous help, we’ve been working together on communication styles, and generally the vibe is better. I’ve only been in this promotion for a month, and some outside factors made it much more hectic. He has been amazing at juggling the tasks and keeping me on track. As an example, he just popped in with a family member who he had lunch with, to introduce them. He’s worked for us for five years and never done that. Really glad to have a more welcoming feeling in our office.

4. My boss suggested I work from home while still taking a sick day (#3 at the link)

I wrote to you back in 2023 about being told to take a sick day if I wanted to WFH. I said in the initial question that it was pretty low-stakes but I was curious if her suggestion violated any laws. I realized this was just the tip of the iceberg — I wrote in about my manager’s suggestion because I was worried about the really toxic behavior I’d seen from leadership, including my manager: bullying, insults, cruel gossip, you name it. I also finally realized that, while my workload had been unsustainable for years, and I had been asking for help with that for years, it was never going to happen. My big takeaway was that the entire handbasket’s infernal journey was accelerating, and that I needed to get out. I had been applying here and there, but I got serious about it (when I had the energy thanks to overwork and constant “emergencies”).

In May, a little more than a year after I wrote to you, I read a job posting and said, “They’re looking for me!” and I was right. I started my new job in September. It’s amazing so far, my team is great, and I’m able to do work I enjoy with a realistic workload.. My job also enabled us to move to a new area, which we’ve wanted to do for a few years.

As for my former office, it’s getting worse by the day. The worst of the Mean Girl clique has been telling her team (about a third of my workload went over to them and promptly overwhelmed them, even distributed across 10 people) that I “screwed over the office” by leaving. I also suspect that she’s the person who told my old grandboss that I had deleted my handover files (I did not), resulting in an accusation and vague threats about getting IT to “figure out what really happened”.

Thank you so much for everything you do. Even though you didn’t tell me “your boss sucks and isn’t going to change,” once I realized that in fact, my boss and workplace sucked, the next inevitable piece was “and nothing is going to change,” so I did the smart thing and got out.

5. Are offers to stay in touch with old coworkers really sincere?

You answered my question back in 2016 about staying in touch with old coworkers.

My update is that it was my old boss who reached out first with a party invite, a few months after I’d left. I attended and it was lovely to see everyone again. About six months later there was another great party to catch-up at. After those two parties, I became really busy with life things and didn’t end up reaching out to anyone for coffee. But I still occasionally email my old boss and colleagues.

I thought of your advice again recently when leaving a job and when my boss and coworkers from there reached out I took their offers with sincerity and met up with them again.