former boss is waging campaign of harassment against me

A reader writes:

I used to be quite good friends with my immediate manager; I met her through her brother, who I was very close to, and for a while we actually lived together. Then it all fell to pieces. On a personal level, we had a falling out (she stole a large amount of liquor from a friend after a party, the second time she'd done this, and when I discovered it, I called her out on it- something I hadn't done before).

She immediately began taking it out on me at work. We lived together, and till that point had commuted together in her car- now I had to find my own way. She didn't have hiring or firing power over me, however she found ways to make my job harder, and make me look incompetent. She developed the habit of eavesdropping at my door when I was on the phone and busting in to scream at me when we were home, so I took to going down the block whenever I had to call someone. Finally, she told me to move out. I thought it was all over, especially after she got a new position at a different company and moved on. I was unofficially promoted, and have been in her old role now for almost eight months.

But it wasn't over. Since she's left, she's waged a personal campaign against me with our mutual friends- this I can handle. What I can't is when it bleeds into the workplace. She's stated that the worst thing that ever happened to her was my moving to this city (I moved for my job under her), and that she wants me to die, or failing that, to move away as no one- professionally or personally- wants me here. She has a good relationship with my boss, who isn't exactly stable herself, after working together for several years, and still has professional contact with our company, not to mention she's still working in my field and has contact with many people I deal with in one way or another. She's approached my boss on several occasions, unsolicited, to express 'concerns' over my competency, my behavior, my professionalism, and my ability to do her old job. She's sent emails after projects my company did that she was involved with, which she knows, if they were actual concerns, should be sent to me as she used to BE me, to all my other coworkers (it's a small team), demanding changes after the fact and blaming me for not reading her mind or jumping at her command (in that situation she was a participant, not a client, which meant my judgement was the ruling factor, not her wishes). Most recently, she's started spewing even more hate filled rhetoric about me (never naming names but it's a small city and she's not a subtle woman) all over social media sites about me- this pops up every few weeks, that she'll start again. She presents herself as the victim who had to deal with me, or a passive aggressive concern. While socially people aren't buying it (she's lapsed one too many times into outright lunacy, not to mention obvious history-rewriting), in professional circumstances I worry she may be convincing.

I have no unnecessary contact with this women. When I deal with her professionally, I am professional and polite. Personally, I have no dealings with her at all. I've made it my policy to just bite my tongue, and not feed into this. However, this has to stop. I'm worried it could effect my current job, and it could have repercussions on future jobs- she was my direct supervisor, after all. Most importantly, my boss would like to bring her back as a consultant for several meetings about a recent relaunch we did- while she helped with the groundwork before she left, this was my baby. I know she's going to tear me apart. Is there anyway I can either make her stop entirely, or at the very least protect myself professionally? Contrary to what she says, I am good at my job. How do you damage control someone this wacky?

Holy crap. Several things:

1. This is why it's a bad idea to cross professional boundaries with your boss -- friendship alone puts you on shaky ground; living together is one of the worst ideas of all time.

2. Read The Gift of Fear by Gavin De Becker immediately. It'll help you figure out whether this woman is a nuisance or likely to turn into something more dangerous. Seriously, read this; she sounds unhinged and she's saying she wants you dead.

3. Talk to your boss and/or your HR department. Tell them that she is your former roommate, that you had a falling out, and that you are afraid of her -- that she's telling people she wants you dead (!), that she is sending people harassing emails about you, and that she is posting attacks about you on the Internet. Explain that your policy has been to try to ignore it and that you're not engaging with her at all, but that you are (a) afraid for your professional reputation and that of your employer, and (b) afraid that she may show up at the office and cause a scene or worse. Use the words "I am afraid of her."

I'm not a lawyer, but it's possible that your company may have some liability here, since she's your former manager. If nothing else, by warning them of what's going on, they probably incur some degree of obligation not to bring her back as a consultant ... and if you have any credibility at all, and handle this calmly, you'll probably destroy all credibility she has in their eyes.

Any advice from anyone else?

accepted a job; do I need to notify other places I applied?

A reader writes:

I got a job that I really wanted and I'm happy and grateful. My question is what's the best way to let other prospective employers know? These are places where I put in resumes, but haven't gotten interviews. (If I had interviewed for another job and was still waiting, I would call the hiring manager when I got another job offer.)

Some are easy--they have a link on their site where you can withdraw your candidacy. Others had email addresses to submit your resume. Should I email that same address and withdraw? Still others had U.S. Mail addresses to send your resume to. Should I call or email their HR offices and withdraw?

Even if I didn't think I had much chance of getting a call about some of these jobs, I don't want to waste HR's time, and I want to be polite. However, if they discarded my resume immediately on receipt, it seems a waste of their time to contact them and withdraw. What's the best way to handle this? I've applied for a lot of jobs over the last few months!

Congratulations on your new job!

I agree that you should notify anywhere that you had interviewed with (including phone interviews) that you're withdrawing from consideration -- because it's polite, and because you might be taking up a slot in their finalist pool that someone else could have.

However, convention doesn't really require you to notify places where you've just sent your resume and haven't yet heard anything.

But it's still a nice thing to do, if you choose to. I'd send an email rather than calling, for all the reasons I normally recommend email over calling (less of an interruption, more efficient, blah blah). I'd also just do it with the places you've applied in the last couple of weeks, not going back months. (Places that wait a long time to contact candidates should know that some of them will have accepted other offers meanwhile.)

But again, there's absolutely no obligation or even any expectation that you'll do this if they haven't asked you to interview.

Also, you are very polite to even be thinking about this -- many of those places you applied to don't even bother to tell applicants they've been rejected, so thank you for showing them how courtesy works.

how not to pitch a blogger: for publicists

Thank you, but no, I do not want to receive a free copy of your book to review, or interview the author who you're promoting, or reprint your press release about your product.

As you may notice from reading my blog, I've never promoted a book (well, except my own), interviewed an author, or reprinted someone's corporate-promotion-masquerading-as-career-tips. But you didn't know that because you didn't bother to even glance at my blog before you wrote to me to ask me to promote your client.

Yes, I'm going to rant about PR people now. The ones who are flooding my in-box with press releases that aren't relevant to me, about a dozen a day.

This is what bugs me: Of course it's easier for publicists to simply lump all bloggers into one group and treat them all the same, rather than taking the time to look at my blog and realize that it makes no sense to pitch me. But doing so makes it abundantly clear that they value their time and interests far more than my own: They have no problem interrupting people with an email that is of zero value to them, because they're solely working to advance their own interests. Which makes them essentially spammers, just cloaked in a veneer of respectability.

Now, someone might counter that with: If you have a blog, you're putting yourself out there and asking to be pitched, by nature of your existence -- just like a newspaper can't complain when people send it press releases.

But I would argue that blogs are different. I don't get paid to write this blog. I do it because I want to, but that means doing a lot of work for free. Why would I give space here, in what I've worked to create for free, to a publicist who wants to promote something to make their client a profit? You might as well ask me to display your company's billboard in my living room.

Of course, I can and do just hit delete. But it's still really annoying to see this behavior, and they're not doing their clients any favors.

Monica O'Brien has a brilliant post on this here. I highly recommend it.

no one told me my coworker was fired

A reader writes:

Yesterday I found out through coworkers that one of our managers left/was fired (closer to the latter, I think... I have heard he was in a "you need to show improvement in three months" situation which ended this week). His name is still on his office, and his things are still here, but he is definitely gone--after confirming with a coworker, I sent him an e-mail wishing him well and have heard back from him.

My thoughts on the matter are definitely biased by the fact I really liked the guy, as did a lot of the people who worked under him, but I am writing to ask what communication is proper from an employer after an employee is let go in a situation like this? I am angry that there has been no word from my employer--this is someone I worked with on and off for the past year and a half! We were not working together recently, but I did not like finding this out through "office gossip" and it makes me uncomfortable that management is not willing to communicate that this employee no longer works here. Within what time-frame would you expect to be told of a coworker's firing? Or is it appropriate not to communicate this?

Our office is about 60 people (the company is 300-400), and we frequently get office-wide e-mails. I was very frustrated yesterday, because I wanted to reach out the employee, but did not want to do so mistakenly in case the rumor was false. I know decisions like this are usually made with a lot of planning--is there some reason I'm missing why other employees can't be informed afterwards? When employees leave under other circumstances we usually have a little ice-cream social goodbye meeting ("Office Space" style) which makes it hard to take when one employee just disappears.

Yes, employers should let other employees know as soon as possible. Not only is it completely weird not to for the reasons that you cite, but there are also practical reasons that demand it -- for instance, you might still be transferring calls to the person, or sending them work.

However, for some reason, a lot of employers really struggle with how to do this gracefully. I worked at one place that would never announce it -- one day the person's desk would just be empty and it was clear that they were Not To Be Spoken Of Again. This place also fired a ton of people, so it of course the company's bizarre handling of it quickly became a morbid joke among all of us, and whenever anyone was out sick or even just late, speculation would be rampant.

Anyway, in my opinion, the way to do it is to let people know quickly and directly, along with information on how things will be handled while the position is vacant. For instance: "Jim's last day was today, and we wish him the best. Until we hire a replacement, Linda will be handling his accounts, and please talk to her if you have questions about specific projects Jim was working on."

But it's often going to be awkward anyway. In my experience, there are two ways people react when a coworker gets fired: They either think "I saw that one coming" (or even "it's about time") or they're shocked.

When people saw it coming, it usually doesn't cause much of a ripple. But in cases where coworkers are shocked, it can be really be rattling. When you're shocked, keep in mind that most people don't advertise it when they're struggling in their jobs, and good managers are discreet about it too. So even though the firing came as a surprise to you, it probably didn't come as a surprise to your coworker. It's pretty rare for someone to be fired without any warning (except in particularly egregious cases, like embezzling or, say, punching someone). In most cases, the employee has had numerous conversations with their manager about whatever the problem is and what needs to change. And if the employer is at all responsible, the person has also been explicitly told that they could lose their job if the problems aren't fixed.

But that's a tangent. Back to your question: Anyone want to shed light on what's up with those companies that fire people and then don't announce to the remaining staff that the person is gone? Are they too wimpy? Suffering from misplaced fear that they'll get sued if they say the wrong thing? Something else?

employee potluck lunches, with allergies

A reader writes:

I am a third grade elementary school teacher and our school holds a "potluck" lunch for the staff every other Friday. Due to my numerous and severe food allergies, I have politely excused myself from attending these gatherings and therefore I do not sign up to contribute.

Since the economic downturn, it has been decided that sign-ups will now be by the entire grade level, rather than by individuals signing up, to keep costs lower. (We have 60 staff members, so it does get expensive to bring food for that many people!) The seven other teachers on my grade level are now expecting me to contribute, even though they are well aware that eating potluck food could jeopardize my health and I still would have to bring my own lunch anyway. Do you have any advice for me in this "sticky" situation?

Why the hell is the school having so many potlucks? Every other week?! I'd be curious to know if the majority of other teachers like having them be so frequent, or if others feel put-upon as well.

I would simply talk to the other teachers on your grade level and explain: "I'd love to participate, but I have so many food allergies that it would be an enormous imposition if I expected others to accommodate me. So I'm going to be skipping them and hope you guys understand." If you really want to soften it up, add in: "Maybe we can do our own occasional lunches on a smaller scale sometimes, although I totally understand if dealing with allergy restrictions is more of a hassle than people feel like taking on."

Notice the words that were used there? You're bowing out for their convenience, so that they don't have follow your allergy restrictions when they cook. Never mind that they obviously hadn't been planning to anyway; this reframes it in a way that should be easier for everyone to swallow.

Also, let's take this opportunity to broadcast a public service announcement to everyone in a position to influence this stuff: Biweekly workplace social events of any kind are too frequent -- and if you're going to do it anyway, under no circumstances can you hold it against people if they choose not to participate. If you want to expect people to attend and frown upon it if they don't, try twice a year. Jeez.

how much can you change your manager?

One of the most common themes in the questions people send me is: "How can I change my manager?" Or, how can I make her stop this annoying habit, or not be a jerk, or learn to manage her time better?

The answer is: Maybe you can't.

And rather than stewing in frustration for months or even years, it's better to determine whether the thing that's driving you crazy is ever going to change. If not, your quality of life will be much higher if you stop focusing on how much it irritates you and, instead, choose to accept it, and decide how you want to respond.

Over at U.S. News & World Report today, I talk about how and why to do this. Please check it out!

coworker moonlighting as prostitute during work hours

A reader writes:

My co-worker is a very open person and tells me to cover for her every time she has to leave the office. Our boss and manager are not here half the time so when they are not, my co-worker leaves either early and/or takes a really long lunch. At the beginning, the excuse for leaving early was because of a date. But she later told me that she's actually sleeping with people for money. She comes back all proud, telling me how much money she made in an hour.

I am no one to judge what my co-worker does and it doesn't bother me, but it does start to annoy me when I have to pick up the slack. When our boss gives us work to do together, I end up doing most of the work.

What really got me upset was when my co-worker was having sex with a client in our public restroom. I don't care what my co-worker does in their personal life but when this person is having sex for money during working hours, then it starts to affect me because I have to finish the work she never got around to doing because she was out of the office most of the day.

I don't know how to tell my manager. Should I even say something? I need guidance and advice.

Wow, this is by far the most titillating letter I've ever received here.

I'd just be straightforward with her and tell her: "I don't care what you do in your personal life, but while you're off making money, you're leaving me to pick up the slack here. You're putting me in a bad position, because you're asking me to cover for you and you're leaving me with more work."

If that doesn't change anything, then warn you that you're going to stop covering for her. And the next time she leaves with work undone, tell your boss that the work is undone because your coworker was out most of the day.

Personally, I wouldn't tell the boss why -- you don't need to explain to your boss how she's spending her time away from the office, only that she is indeed away.

But I do recommend that you take all of the steps above immediately. If your coworker gets caught, and it comes out that she told you what she was doing, you risk being seen in conspiracy with her. Good luck!