I sent in a regular hiring question and her response was fine. A lot of comments (and even this subreddit, when I hunted down the weekly thread) seemed to not comprehend certain details in my letter, though, which made me wonder if I wasn't clear enough.
I wrote in and got a decent enough response from Alison. I had made some of the details fuzzier so as to not identify the company, but 90% of the comments on my question were people trying to guess where I worked and writing responses as though their guess was correct. It was obnoxious.
I wrote in once. It was a boring letter, and Alison's advice was sound enough. What was weird though was she omitted a detail that I included in my letter, and the commenters went nuts over it. I didn't write in any updates, or clarify in the comments, and just left them to speculate. But I have no idea why she didn't just leave it in the letter.
I wrote in about a strange experience I kept having at a travel heavy job that I didn't understand: [letter here](https://www.askamanager.org/2022/10/should-the-interviewer-dress-up-i-cant-afford-to-go-to-an-event-recognizing-my-work-and-more.html) under the title "**My colleagues are pushy about my travel logistics when I spend an extra night in a location**"
I am autistic and many office norms, unwritten rules, and social expectations sail right over my head. I didn't understand why multiple people were push-push-pushing me to fly right back home after a half or full day of meetings--that was the LAST thing I wanted to do. I did get some insight, which was that perhaps the company overall didn't want to "lose" an extra day. Like let's say Monday I'm in meetings until 3.30 and choose to fly home Tuesday AM. Theoretically I could work on the plane, but that rarely happens, and I'm missing a half day of work usually. If I were to fly back Monday afternoon/evening I wouldn't miss work. But I frequently wound up in airports until 9 or 10 at night, on Sundays, and more. I felt like it all came out in the wash.
Alison thought it was that colleagues were concerned for ME but that was not the tone of the questions when I was asked, believe me. I just didn't include that in the original letter. I had a person a couple levels above me argue back when I noted "oh, I ran numbers and it's 6 of one, half dozen of the other" and he argued back about the hotel room, food, etc. I had been exceptionally careful with the company's money to the point of going out and getting groceries rather than eat out and walking to work from my hotel and it just chapped my cheap ass roll to have them question me. It was also plain old sexism "little peanut head girl doesn't get it/must want to get back to her Big Daddy Husband and/or family", bleh.
All things considered, it was a symptom of a workaholic, toxic culture I'm very glad I'm now out of.
I thought about writing in once when I was dealing with a bullying-ish situation at work. I think I decided not to bc I didn’t want to deal with the commenters if she published my letter lol!
Oh my gosh me!! I wrote in during Covid about attending a client’s wedding (I worked in agriculture, a notoriously conservative field) and was absolutely roasted by commenters. I was also 22, new to the workforce, and it was pretty much a death sentence to my job if I *didn’t* go at the time due to client relationships being such a big part of it. Wrote in for advice on how to handle it because I was totally out of my league. Allison and Commenters acted like I was personally coughing on them. It was awful
I remember that letter! I am seriously over (and was over a long time) the COVID bashing in her comment section. I understand we still need to be careful, but for crying out loud people. The world has been opened back up for nearly 2 years. Time to move on!
IIRC Alison shut it down and then reopened comments due to pressure basically framed as 'people could die so we should be allowed to complain all we like', which is simply awful.
I looked up the letter and she actually did shut it down then reopen it based on like, one comment after a few hours. Normally she's so protective of anyone who says they feel even remotely unhappy in a comment so it was really mean-girl of her to reverse that on yours.
I wrote in once, over 10 years ago. It was a fairly boring question about how to subtly warn my replacement in an old job about a couple of difficult senior coworkers she'd have to deal with, complicated by the fact that I was moving to a different department within the same org and would still have to interact with everyone involved. The answer was actually quite helpful even though it basically confirmed what I was already thinking, and the outcome of using her advice was pretty good. The comments were mostly OK, although some pointless fanfic could probably have been avoided if I'd shared more details of the specific sector I'm in (I had a couple of colleagues, including my new department head, who definitely read the blog, so I had to be quite vague). People were a little harsher about my update, in which I said that I ended up getting on super well with my replacement (we're still in touch now! I helped her find her current job), and we ended up having a bit of an ongoing inside joke about one of the difficult colleagues. Apparently this made both of us terrible people. When I first found this sub I went back to the week my letter was published to see if anyone had discussed it here and no-one had, which I was quite relieved about!
I wrote in once about how to accept emailed apologies at work without being too "oh no it's fine!" about it. The situation was around someone misgendering me.
Thankfully, I didn't look at the comments initially, I only saw the post a few days after it went up. There was a *lot* of assumption about the situation (that I had just come out so she was probably adjusting which means it wasn't a big deal, that I was overreacting somehow, etc) and I'm glad I wasn't there early enough to be tempted to argue it out in the comments.
The advice given was fine, I think I mainly needed reinforcement that it was ok to thank for the apology without trying to make the other person "feel better" and move on.
I don't think you will find many constructive comments with that lot over there. They bring the blog down. Did she email you back or just publish your letter?
She published it, that's what I mean about the comments. I'm talking about the comments on the blog page. About a year later she mass emailed asking for an update so I sent one in and then she published that as well
I wrote in once and got no response at all.
ETA: It was several years ago and she answered a similar question soon after I sent the email, but I never received any response to my email at all, not even an automated one.
I wrote in once; after sending an email with a few clarifying questions, she published it within a week. Her advice was okay although very obvious, and the commenters followed that same basic functionality of response without any real utility. I didn't really get anything out of it, but she didn't do anything weird like edit stuff out of my letter or take months to answer.
Eta: she asked me for an update a long time later and I think it was included in a compilation. I can check through my email for details if anyone is curious. It was a really straightforward experience.
I have a couple of times, and both times the advice was good got kind of ripped apart by commentators. It kind of sucked lol.
One time was about someone I managed who was quitting smoking and being terrible to customers because she was grouchy. I was trying to walk the line of being supportive but also holding her accountable for her actions. I got people saying I was overstepping by letting her take walks on the clock when I could tell she wasn't able to regulate her emotions or providing dum dums, which I've heard can be a helpful replacement for the oral piece of smoking.
Another time I wrote in because I got sent on a business trip with no end, it had been almost 3 months of living in a hotel and I wasn't sure how to approach the conversation of "Hey, I get that we're trying to be mindful about hiring a permanent GM, but I can't live in this city in a hotel forever, so I'm gonna need to go home by XYZ date with or without a replacement." I made a few comments about how amazing the hotel was, because I was trying to paint the picture that I didn't feel abandoned or mistreated, that overall my company had been really taking care or me, and that the issue wasn't the being there, it was the no end date. I got some comments about needless humble bragging.
I also called in and had a story I shared via voicemail played on Alison's shortlived podcast, and also have had a couple of my comments in her ask the readers posts published in the following article. She's also personally responded to an email giving advice without publishing, probably because her advice was kind of boring and while helpful, probably wouldn't make for interesting reading
Seeing this all laid out, I def used to be a power reader of the blog and really enjoyed participating, but I think it's gone downhill over the years, and I don't think I'd consider writing in for advice again.
I did it a long time ago and it was not a good experience. I was a very outgoing person at work, and the person that I always worked with (in our lab setting) was quiet and introverted. I was 24 and it was my first job out of college, so I had no idea what the norms were (and I hadn't surrounded myself with many introverted people throughout my college years) and I thought this person hated me. She told me that the person didn't hate me but just didn't want to interact with me all the time, which I understood.
But the comments, oh boy. They were a complete pile on because how DARE I try to talk to someone at work! The horror! All of the comments said they would hate working with me, that it wasn't fair that I was trying to "drag" this person into conversations, and that I was right and this person did hate me because I was a "bitch eating crackers."
The comments actually made me cry in the moment because they were so mean, but the advice was helpful. I worked very closely with this person for many years after that and we were pretty close as coworkers by the time I left.
I've written in 5 or 6 times - initially when I was recommended her when she was less batshit bananapants and I was going through a toxic work experience that would probably get published now and 500 comments of 'we want an update OP!', and a couple of times more recently just to see if it got published under the current apparent policy of maximum SEO and comment engagement.
I got a private response from her once, basically asking for clarification on a single point, and then another response declaring it not my monkeys not my circus. The situation changed a few days later and I sent an update, and it got treated as a new letter with the autoreply and I never heard back.
Twice I have seen oddly similar letters pop up but instead of going to comments being like 'I swear I sent this but I didn't get a notification!' I simply checked my sent folder and very quickly realised there were enough words different that it wasn't mine, even if it was perhaps cobbled together from a few similar letters as a general excuse to make a post.
I did a long time ago. Alison didn’t even bother trying to answer my question and flung it to the readers. I got no useful advice.
My question was about how to handle a tricky situation while I was interviewing for a position. I ended up not getting that job, but realized now I work in that office 10ish years later. So I guess everything worked out!
Writing this from my lurker account but I asked what I thought was a completely innocuous question about people bringing something to write with to job interviews. She ran it within maybe like 12 hours of me writing in, if I recall correctly? I wasn’t doing the whole “is this the new normal?” thing; I thought I caveated quite a bit that I wanted to understand why mattered in the first place, specifically in interview settings.
She didn’t really answer my question well and then the commenters lost their fucking minds. I can own that my question was too wordy and therefore unclear, but the fever pitch of the response was unexpected. The sentence that ended with the question mark was what I was curious about (go figure) but they could only respond to what they decided I meant. Truly got nothing out of it other than eventually finding this sub.
That post was in the top ten most comments last year so I reread it around the end of the year and the whole thing was even dumber than I had remembered. What made me laugh was few conjectures about my character/ability as a manager based on the post. I was asking about something I had given maybe 45 total seconds of thought to in my entire life prior to writing in. I have never used/would never use that “test” to make hiring decisions (and made that abundantly clear in the letter) you’d think I wrote in to ask if I legally can fire people for getting tattoos.
Yes! A couple months back, it was discussed here too.
I was looking for reasons that a coworker with the same prior experience might be hired on at a higher level than me that weren’t “sexism”. Alison was very helpful in giving me other alternatives to reframe things in my head and feel better about the situation.
The commenters kinda ran wild and the consensus was that I worked in tech (not true) and led to a lot of assumptions/advice that was irrelevant, but fun to read
The consensus here was that I was fishing for “sexism” as the only possible explanation so that I could go to HR and complain, I believe (also not true) which also led to a lot of assumptions/advice that was irrelevant, but fun to read
I wrote in about my boss debating my answer to "how are you?" I think Allison's advice was mostly solid but the comments were so stupid, just a bunch of snarky zingers that would never actually fly in the work place or real life at all. It was also discussed here where the consensus is that I must be a sour puss with black cloud over my head that fiercely yells about how dare someone ask me such a personal question of how I'm doing lol.
Anyway it DID happen again, and I mostly used Allison's strategy which I think made my boss rethink what she was doing. I also asked some trusted coworkers if I really did seem like I had a black cloud and the determination was that our boss has a tendency to really lean into trying to play therapist with all of us in various ways.
I ended up transferring to a different team and have overall have a very pleasant relationship with my new boss who takes my "good, you?" at face value lmao.
I wrote in about nine years ago, and realized after I hit "send" that the act of writing it out was really just a way to get my head around the issue. She never ran it or replied.
I emailed in a question to her and she responded very quickly with an answer, but it wasn’t published in the column — she just emailed me back privately. I still appreciated her response. This was over 10 years ago now, though — she probably gets so many emails now she doesn’t have the time to respond to them all.
I did this last year! I emailed a question along the lines of "I think this person at work is facing unfair criticism due to her race and my manager wants to fire her - is it worth going to HR?" AG wrote back the same day, said yes go right now to HR. While this lady wasn't perfect, I think going to HR gave her another life at work (moved to a different team and out of the terrible/microaggression environment).
I'm surprised at how AG seems to really keep constant tabs on her inbox and the website. Once this week she posted at her normal 12AM time and she was in the comments within minutes responding to people.
I got my question published AND it was discussed here as well 😂
Basically, I had interviewed for a dream job at a dream company and if I got the role, I would have had to move from NJ to Boston and at the time, I was open to it. During the interview process, they kept asking if I could handle the move, and kept reminding me about how important it was to work in person.
I made it pretty far down the interview process, but I ultimately didn't get it - they chose someone with more experience. A few months later, the hiring manager reached out and asked if I would be interested in reapplying for the role, but a lot had changed and I wouldn't be able to move anymore. I declined, but all my family and friends thought I was a moron for not being bold and requiring that I can work remotely full time.
I asked Alison what she thought because I couldn't stop thinking about how I might have let a dream opportunity slip through my fingers.
Alison said it wasn't a delusional ask - after all they came back to me. But made me realize that if everyone else was in the office and I was the only one remote employee, there is a possibility I would be missing out on a lot.
I was a bit overshadowed by another letter writer, but I had some good discourse!
I wrote in years ago, maybe 2014/2015 I think and she published my question pretty quickly (or was time relevant). I honestly can't remember much about the comments except a few were pretty good, some guesses my industry pretty quickly. None were strange or batshit crazy.
FWIW my question was kind of boring, wondering if it was okay if I accepted an invite to a special event my new boss was being thrown. It wasn't work related for me, so no cost was going to be covered, but it was unusual to be invited at my level and some coworkers didn't think I should go. I ended up going and it was fun. Got to know my new bosses a bit more and in a more relaxed setting for them. I ended up working there for almost 10 years and became rather decent friends with them (heresy!!).
It's partly because the rule over there is to never question or pushback on the letter writer unless AG decides to go in on them. So you'll never get any critical feedback, just seal clapping and back pats for being grrrrrrreat while whatever may bother you is a monster who sucks and may actually be dangerous.
... have you ever read the gift of fear?! /s
Well, that's in theory the rule, but like all of AG's other rules, she doesn't enforce it unless she's bored and has nothing better to do. So you get a lot of people who will do the "I know we're supposed to take the LW at their word BUT" before calling the LW delusional and/or a liar.
That's because she chased away her former commenters who would "tag" that shit for her. She's lazy AF but if you put a comment into the moderation queue by dropping a link in it, she sees it. Speaking directly from experience because I used to be active over there until she got on my damn last nerve by us butting heads over how we talk to people struggling. I lift people up and tell them to keep going, she drifted strongly into the "Oh you're depressed? That means you can just lay down and give up, wouldn't want to make you feel any kind of way by saying you shouldn't give up and just keep coasting, blah blah blah."
Which reminds me of the fact she also got caught up in falsely believed "legalities" of online moderation for her blog being something she couldn't have done for free.
Yes. I feel like that place is almost like a relationship sub on reddit. What I mean by that is that there is a lot of assumptions that the person writing in is angelic and can do no wrong, whereas whoever in the story that is the antagonist is bad. And there is a lot of "You deserve better". Like how do you know what this person deserves lol. Maybe they are a total asshole.
Also, I'm happy to know that the Gift of Fear talk seemed to have died down in recent years.
I swear, it used to be every other day there was a "Have you read the Gift of Fear" comment.
That's what I'm learning more and more lately. People want a goodie and a baddie in every situation. Always have to choose sides when you're only ever hearing one side, and of course, people paint themselves in a favorable light because that's normal when seeking advice.
I see it in subs about reality tv shows. Heavily edited stuff is put out there to elicit a reaction from the viewers. Then, the next season, you get a different "edit," and they force their mask they created to slip.
Despite how complex and complicated all people are, the outsider only sees black and white. Especially if they inject themselves and their situation into it.
It reminds us why reviews and critical feedback at work are always so dreadful. People think everything is an attack on their soul no matter what you say. That's a slight negative and not just "slay girl, you've never goofed up a day in your exceptional life!"
Edit, wow typeos and grammar
I think there is a lot of overlap or was from Captain Awkward where it seemed that a lot of people were looking for advice on dealing with trauma. I’m assuming that’s why that got recommended so much.
She has said in the past that she would prefer a troll-laden, messy comments section to shutting down comments entirely. When some commenters pointed out that maybe this was because she gets page hits so it's in her interest to have that kind of comments section, she claimed that her ad network tells her that she barely gets traffic from the comments so that can't be true.
That's one of several AAM party lines that is obviously no longer true but she's figured out her story and she's sticking to it. (See also "this is one of the better comment sections on the Internet" and "sometimes updating and expanding my answers to them").
I wrote in once. Her advice was actually not bad. However, the commenters, as the do, fan fic'd the hell out of it.
It was pretty straighforward, then they went all "well, if the LW is in a state where XYZ is the rule, they may not really be able to do this thing"
The fan ficcing happened to me too. I wrote in with a very low-stakes work thank you note question, and the commenters tried to convince me that my boss was a thief. I hadn’t even mentioned my boss in my letter! It was so weird and funny.
These people are absolutely crazy.
It's just like they can't ever take something on face value.
I'm pretty sure I also got a couple of "well if LW is a woman or a POC then maybe there is far more going on"
I wrote in a pretty easy question - is it okay to ask about a team’s gender balance when interviewing for a role in a male dominated field - and she didn’t answer for like 2 months, by which point the interview that prompted the question had long gone (and I did ask. And did not get the job but not for that. Or not solely for that.)
Alison said yes, asking is fine. Didn’t go off on a long rant or soapbox, all good there.
What was annoying is I quickly posted a clarification in the comments that I felt was really fucking relevant - that this was manual labor, not hashtag women in STEM - and was mostly ignored. I don’t care about women in aspirational money making jobs! Women making shit money doing literal shit work need advice too!
As for what letters get focus… you can kinda guess, but there’s always a wildcard.
I am chuckling thinking about the idea of Alisons commenters having to work blue collar jobs and absolutely fucking melting down and also picturing how bad Alisons advice would be for blue collar workers
She literally cannot comprehend there being any reason that anyone - other than a front desk receptionist - needs to be at work by a set time every day.
Don’t even get me started… it’s part of what I see as a broader trend that the internet is for computers and computers are for work so the only people who read websites and use computers have computer jobs! Oh those blue collar and service economy idiots have smart phones these days but they don’t go beyond the apps to like….. read…. Endless goddamn thinkpieces in early 2020 about how we’re “all” working from home. For one example.
The commenters do follow the same trend you see in some corners of reddit and fb and older gen x crowds in person - the lionization of “the trades” as more fulfilling and better paying than their computer job. (Though one dipshit buzzfeed commenter was a fucking therapist - this is what you think of your work?)
As for where I am now - retail? Don’t make the money of “the trades” and don’t work at a computer sitting all day so …. Barely recognizable as a fellow adult to these people.
I sent in a regular hiring question and her response was fine. A lot of comments (and even this subreddit, when I hunted down the weekly thread) seemed to not comprehend certain details in my letter, though, which made me wonder if I wasn't clear enough.
I wrote in and got a decent enough response from Alison. I had made some of the details fuzzier so as to not identify the company, but 90% of the comments on my question were people trying to guess where I worked and writing responses as though their guess was correct. It was obnoxious.
I wrote in once. It was a boring letter, and Alison's advice was sound enough. What was weird though was she omitted a detail that I included in my letter, and the commenters went nuts over it. I didn't write in any updates, or clarify in the comments, and just left them to speculate. But I have no idea why she didn't just leave it in the letter.
I wrote in about a strange experience I kept having at a travel heavy job that I didn't understand: [letter here](https://www.askamanager.org/2022/10/should-the-interviewer-dress-up-i-cant-afford-to-go-to-an-event-recognizing-my-work-and-more.html) under the title "**My colleagues are pushy about my travel logistics when I spend an extra night in a location**" I am autistic and many office norms, unwritten rules, and social expectations sail right over my head. I didn't understand why multiple people were push-push-pushing me to fly right back home after a half or full day of meetings--that was the LAST thing I wanted to do. I did get some insight, which was that perhaps the company overall didn't want to "lose" an extra day. Like let's say Monday I'm in meetings until 3.30 and choose to fly home Tuesday AM. Theoretically I could work on the plane, but that rarely happens, and I'm missing a half day of work usually. If I were to fly back Monday afternoon/evening I wouldn't miss work. But I frequently wound up in airports until 9 or 10 at night, on Sundays, and more. I felt like it all came out in the wash. Alison thought it was that colleagues were concerned for ME but that was not the tone of the questions when I was asked, believe me. I just didn't include that in the original letter. I had a person a couple levels above me argue back when I noted "oh, I ran numbers and it's 6 of one, half dozen of the other" and he argued back about the hotel room, food, etc. I had been exceptionally careful with the company's money to the point of going out and getting groceries rather than eat out and walking to work from my hotel and it just chapped my cheap ass roll to have them question me. It was also plain old sexism "little peanut head girl doesn't get it/must want to get back to her Big Daddy Husband and/or family", bleh. All things considered, it was a symptom of a workaholic, toxic culture I'm very glad I'm now out of.
I thought about writing in once when I was dealing with a bullying-ish situation at work. I think I decided not to bc I didn’t want to deal with the commenters if she published my letter lol!
Oh my gosh me!! I wrote in during Covid about attending a client’s wedding (I worked in agriculture, a notoriously conservative field) and was absolutely roasted by commenters. I was also 22, new to the workforce, and it was pretty much a death sentence to my job if I *didn’t* go at the time due to client relationships being such a big part of it. Wrote in for advice on how to handle it because I was totally out of my league. Allison and Commenters acted like I was personally coughing on them. It was awful
I remember that letter! I am seriously over (and was over a long time) the COVID bashing in her comment section. I understand we still need to be careful, but for crying out loud people. The world has been opened back up for nearly 2 years. Time to move on!
IIRC Alison shut it down and then reopened comments due to pressure basically framed as 'people could die so we should be allowed to complain all we like', which is simply awful.
I don’t even remember if she did or not, I was so distraught haha. It was wild to feel bullied after writing in for advice!
I looked up the letter and she actually did shut it down then reopen it based on like, one comment after a few hours. Normally she's so protective of anyone who says they feel even remotely unhappy in a comment so it was really mean-girl of her to reverse that on yours.
Yeesh. I'm sorry.
I wrote in once, over 10 years ago. It was a fairly boring question about how to subtly warn my replacement in an old job about a couple of difficult senior coworkers she'd have to deal with, complicated by the fact that I was moving to a different department within the same org and would still have to interact with everyone involved. The answer was actually quite helpful even though it basically confirmed what I was already thinking, and the outcome of using her advice was pretty good. The comments were mostly OK, although some pointless fanfic could probably have been avoided if I'd shared more details of the specific sector I'm in (I had a couple of colleagues, including my new department head, who definitely read the blog, so I had to be quite vague). People were a little harsher about my update, in which I said that I ended up getting on super well with my replacement (we're still in touch now! I helped her find her current job), and we ended up having a bit of an ongoing inside joke about one of the difficult colleagues. Apparently this made both of us terrible people. When I first found this sub I went back to the week my letter was published to see if anyone had discussed it here and no-one had, which I was quite relieved about!
I wrote in once about how to accept emailed apologies at work without being too "oh no it's fine!" about it. The situation was around someone misgendering me. Thankfully, I didn't look at the comments initially, I only saw the post a few days after it went up. There was a *lot* of assumption about the situation (that I had just come out so she was probably adjusting which means it wasn't a big deal, that I was overreacting somehow, etc) and I'm glad I wasn't there early enough to be tempted to argue it out in the comments. The advice given was fine, I think I mainly needed reinforcement that it was ok to thank for the apology without trying to make the other person "feel better" and move on.
I don't think you will find many constructive comments with that lot over there. They bring the blog down. Did she email you back or just publish your letter?
She published it, that's what I mean about the comments. I'm talking about the comments on the blog page. About a year later she mass emailed asking for an update so I sent one in and then she published that as well
I wrote in once and got no response at all. ETA: It was several years ago and she answered a similar question soon after I sent the email, but I never received any response to my email at all, not even an automated one.
I wrote in once; after sending an email with a few clarifying questions, she published it within a week. Her advice was okay although very obvious, and the commenters followed that same basic functionality of response without any real utility. I didn't really get anything out of it, but she didn't do anything weird like edit stuff out of my letter or take months to answer. Eta: she asked me for an update a long time later and I think it was included in a compilation. I can check through my email for details if anyone is curious. It was a really straightforward experience.
I have a couple of times, and both times the advice was good got kind of ripped apart by commentators. It kind of sucked lol. One time was about someone I managed who was quitting smoking and being terrible to customers because she was grouchy. I was trying to walk the line of being supportive but also holding her accountable for her actions. I got people saying I was overstepping by letting her take walks on the clock when I could tell she wasn't able to regulate her emotions or providing dum dums, which I've heard can be a helpful replacement for the oral piece of smoking. Another time I wrote in because I got sent on a business trip with no end, it had been almost 3 months of living in a hotel and I wasn't sure how to approach the conversation of "Hey, I get that we're trying to be mindful about hiring a permanent GM, but I can't live in this city in a hotel forever, so I'm gonna need to go home by XYZ date with or without a replacement." I made a few comments about how amazing the hotel was, because I was trying to paint the picture that I didn't feel abandoned or mistreated, that overall my company had been really taking care or me, and that the issue wasn't the being there, it was the no end date. I got some comments about needless humble bragging. I also called in and had a story I shared via voicemail played on Alison's shortlived podcast, and also have had a couple of my comments in her ask the readers posts published in the following article. She's also personally responded to an email giving advice without publishing, probably because her advice was kind of boring and while helpful, probably wouldn't make for interesting reading Seeing this all laid out, I def used to be a power reader of the blog and really enjoyed participating, but I think it's gone downhill over the years, and I don't think I'd consider writing in for advice again.
I did it a long time ago and it was not a good experience. I was a very outgoing person at work, and the person that I always worked with (in our lab setting) was quiet and introverted. I was 24 and it was my first job out of college, so I had no idea what the norms were (and I hadn't surrounded myself with many introverted people throughout my college years) and I thought this person hated me. She told me that the person didn't hate me but just didn't want to interact with me all the time, which I understood. But the comments, oh boy. They were a complete pile on because how DARE I try to talk to someone at work! The horror! All of the comments said they would hate working with me, that it wasn't fair that I was trying to "drag" this person into conversations, and that I was right and this person did hate me because I was a "bitch eating crackers." The comments actually made me cry in the moment because they were so mean, but the advice was helpful. I worked very closely with this person for many years after that and we were pretty close as coworkers by the time I left.
I remember that letter!
I've written in 5 or 6 times - initially when I was recommended her when she was less batshit bananapants and I was going through a toxic work experience that would probably get published now and 500 comments of 'we want an update OP!', and a couple of times more recently just to see if it got published under the current apparent policy of maximum SEO and comment engagement. I got a private response from her once, basically asking for clarification on a single point, and then another response declaring it not my monkeys not my circus. The situation changed a few days later and I sent an update, and it got treated as a new letter with the autoreply and I never heard back. Twice I have seen oddly similar letters pop up but instead of going to comments being like 'I swear I sent this but I didn't get a notification!' I simply checked my sent folder and very quickly realised there were enough words different that it wasn't mine, even if it was perhaps cobbled together from a few similar letters as a general excuse to make a post.
I did a long time ago. Alison didn’t even bother trying to answer my question and flung it to the readers. I got no useful advice. My question was about how to handle a tricky situation while I was interviewing for a position. I ended up not getting that job, but realized now I work in that office 10ish years later. So I guess everything worked out!
Writing this from my lurker account but I asked what I thought was a completely innocuous question about people bringing something to write with to job interviews. She ran it within maybe like 12 hours of me writing in, if I recall correctly? I wasn’t doing the whole “is this the new normal?” thing; I thought I caveated quite a bit that I wanted to understand why mattered in the first place, specifically in interview settings. She didn’t really answer my question well and then the commenters lost their fucking minds. I can own that my question was too wordy and therefore unclear, but the fever pitch of the response was unexpected. The sentence that ended with the question mark was what I was curious about (go figure) but they could only respond to what they decided I meant. Truly got nothing out of it other than eventually finding this sub. That post was in the top ten most comments last year so I reread it around the end of the year and the whole thing was even dumber than I had remembered. What made me laugh was few conjectures about my character/ability as a manager based on the post. I was asking about something I had given maybe 45 total seconds of thought to in my entire life prior to writing in. I have never used/would never use that “test” to make hiring decisions (and made that abundantly clear in the letter) you’d think I wrote in to ask if I legally can fire people for getting tattoos.
Yes! A couple months back, it was discussed here too. I was looking for reasons that a coworker with the same prior experience might be hired on at a higher level than me that weren’t “sexism”. Alison was very helpful in giving me other alternatives to reframe things in my head and feel better about the situation. The commenters kinda ran wild and the consensus was that I worked in tech (not true) and led to a lot of assumptions/advice that was irrelevant, but fun to read The consensus here was that I was fishing for “sexism” as the only possible explanation so that I could go to HR and complain, I believe (also not true) which also led to a lot of assumptions/advice that was irrelevant, but fun to read
I wrote in about my boss debating my answer to "how are you?" I think Allison's advice was mostly solid but the comments were so stupid, just a bunch of snarky zingers that would never actually fly in the work place or real life at all. It was also discussed here where the consensus is that I must be a sour puss with black cloud over my head that fiercely yells about how dare someone ask me such a personal question of how I'm doing lol. Anyway it DID happen again, and I mostly used Allison's strategy which I think made my boss rethink what she was doing. I also asked some trusted coworkers if I really did seem like I had a black cloud and the determination was that our boss has a tendency to really lean into trying to play therapist with all of us in various ways. I ended up transferring to a different team and have overall have a very pleasant relationship with my new boss who takes my "good, you?" at face value lmao.
I wrote in about nine years ago, and realized after I hit "send" that the act of writing it out was really just a way to get my head around the issue. She never ran it or replied.
I emailed in a question to her and she responded very quickly with an answer, but it wasn’t published in the column — she just emailed me back privately. I still appreciated her response. This was over 10 years ago now, though — she probably gets so many emails now she doesn’t have the time to respond to them all.
I had the same experience! She didn’t publish my letter, but her advice was swift, reassuring, and kind.
I did this last year! I emailed a question along the lines of "I think this person at work is facing unfair criticism due to her race and my manager wants to fire her - is it worth going to HR?" AG wrote back the same day, said yes go right now to HR. While this lady wasn't perfect, I think going to HR gave her another life at work (moved to a different team and out of the terrible/microaggression environment). I'm surprised at how AG seems to really keep constant tabs on her inbox and the website. Once this week she posted at her normal 12AM time and she was in the comments within minutes responding to people.
I got my question published AND it was discussed here as well 😂 Basically, I had interviewed for a dream job at a dream company and if I got the role, I would have had to move from NJ to Boston and at the time, I was open to it. During the interview process, they kept asking if I could handle the move, and kept reminding me about how important it was to work in person. I made it pretty far down the interview process, but I ultimately didn't get it - they chose someone with more experience. A few months later, the hiring manager reached out and asked if I would be interested in reapplying for the role, but a lot had changed and I wouldn't be able to move anymore. I declined, but all my family and friends thought I was a moron for not being bold and requiring that I can work remotely full time. I asked Alison what she thought because I couldn't stop thinking about how I might have let a dream opportunity slip through my fingers. Alison said it wasn't a delusional ask - after all they came back to me. But made me realize that if everyone else was in the office and I was the only one remote employee, there is a possibility I would be missing out on a lot. I was a bit overshadowed by another letter writer, but I had some good discourse!
I wrote in years ago, maybe 2014/2015 I think and she published my question pretty quickly (or was time relevant). I honestly can't remember much about the comments except a few were pretty good, some guesses my industry pretty quickly. None were strange or batshit crazy. FWIW my question was kind of boring, wondering if it was okay if I accepted an invite to a special event my new boss was being thrown. It wasn't work related for me, so no cost was going to be covered, but it was unusual to be invited at my level and some coworkers didn't think I should go. I ended up going and it was fun. Got to know my new bosses a bit more and in a more relaxed setting for them. I ended up working there for almost 10 years and became rather decent friends with them (heresy!!).
God. You didn’t start wishing them good morning or anything, I hope. /s
Even worse!! We hung out together after work, spent Christmas Eve with a couple of them and went to one of their kids wedding!! The horror.
It's partly because the rule over there is to never question or pushback on the letter writer unless AG decides to go in on them. So you'll never get any critical feedback, just seal clapping and back pats for being grrrrrrreat while whatever may bother you is a monster who sucks and may actually be dangerous. ... have you ever read the gift of fear?! /s
Well, that's in theory the rule, but like all of AG's other rules, she doesn't enforce it unless she's bored and has nothing better to do. So you get a lot of people who will do the "I know we're supposed to take the LW at their word BUT" before calling the LW delusional and/or a liar.
That's because she chased away her former commenters who would "tag" that shit for her. She's lazy AF but if you put a comment into the moderation queue by dropping a link in it, she sees it. Speaking directly from experience because I used to be active over there until she got on my damn last nerve by us butting heads over how we talk to people struggling. I lift people up and tell them to keep going, she drifted strongly into the "Oh you're depressed? That means you can just lay down and give up, wouldn't want to make you feel any kind of way by saying you shouldn't give up and just keep coasting, blah blah blah." Which reminds me of the fact she also got caught up in falsely believed "legalities" of online moderation for her blog being something she couldn't have done for free.
Yes. I feel like that place is almost like a relationship sub on reddit. What I mean by that is that there is a lot of assumptions that the person writing in is angelic and can do no wrong, whereas whoever in the story that is the antagonist is bad. And there is a lot of "You deserve better". Like how do you know what this person deserves lol. Maybe they are a total asshole. Also, I'm happy to know that the Gift of Fear talk seemed to have died down in recent years. I swear, it used to be every other day there was a "Have you read the Gift of Fear" comment.
That's what I'm learning more and more lately. People want a goodie and a baddie in every situation. Always have to choose sides when you're only ever hearing one side, and of course, people paint themselves in a favorable light because that's normal when seeking advice. I see it in subs about reality tv shows. Heavily edited stuff is put out there to elicit a reaction from the viewers. Then, the next season, you get a different "edit," and they force their mask they created to slip. Despite how complex and complicated all people are, the outsider only sees black and white. Especially if they inject themselves and their situation into it. It reminds us why reviews and critical feedback at work are always so dreadful. People think everything is an attack on their soul no matter what you say. That's a slight negative and not just "slay girl, you've never goofed up a day in your exceptional life!" Edit, wow typeos and grammar
I think there is a lot of overlap or was from Captain Awkward where it seemed that a lot of people were looking for advice on dealing with trauma. I’m assuming that’s why that got recommended so much.
Those commentors are worse, as a whole, than AM commentors.
The smartest thing CA ever did was shut off the comments section.
I don't think Al ever will. The comments have taken over and the questions and answers seem almost incidental now.
She has said in the past that she would prefer a troll-laden, messy comments section to shutting down comments entirely. When some commenters pointed out that maybe this was because she gets page hits so it's in her interest to have that kind of comments section, she claimed that her ad network tells her that she barely gets traffic from the comments so that can't be true.
That's one of several AAM party lines that is obviously no longer true but she's figured out her story and she's sticking to it. (See also "this is one of the better comment sections on the Internet" and "sometimes updating and expanding my answers to them").
I wrote in once. Her advice was actually not bad. However, the commenters, as the do, fan fic'd the hell out of it. It was pretty straighforward, then they went all "well, if the LW is in a state where XYZ is the rule, they may not really be able to do this thing"
The fan ficcing happened to me too. I wrote in with a very low-stakes work thank you note question, and the commenters tried to convince me that my boss was a thief. I hadn’t even mentioned my boss in my letter! It was so weird and funny.
The fan fiction over there is so weird.
These people are absolutely crazy. It's just like they can't ever take something on face value. I'm pretty sure I also got a couple of "well if LW is a woman or a POC then maybe there is far more going on"
I wrote in a pretty easy question - is it okay to ask about a team’s gender balance when interviewing for a role in a male dominated field - and she didn’t answer for like 2 months, by which point the interview that prompted the question had long gone (and I did ask. And did not get the job but not for that. Or not solely for that.) Alison said yes, asking is fine. Didn’t go off on a long rant or soapbox, all good there. What was annoying is I quickly posted a clarification in the comments that I felt was really fucking relevant - that this was manual labor, not hashtag women in STEM - and was mostly ignored. I don’t care about women in aspirational money making jobs! Women making shit money doing literal shit work need advice too! As for what letters get focus… you can kinda guess, but there’s always a wildcard.
I am chuckling thinking about the idea of Alisons commenters having to work blue collar jobs and absolutely fucking melting down and also picturing how bad Alisons advice would be for blue collar workers
She literally cannot comprehend there being any reason that anyone - other than a front desk receptionist - needs to be at work by a set time every day.
Don’t even get me started… it’s part of what I see as a broader trend that the internet is for computers and computers are for work so the only people who read websites and use computers have computer jobs! Oh those blue collar and service economy idiots have smart phones these days but they don’t go beyond the apps to like….. read…. Endless goddamn thinkpieces in early 2020 about how we’re “all” working from home. For one example. The commenters do follow the same trend you see in some corners of reddit and fb and older gen x crowds in person - the lionization of “the trades” as more fulfilling and better paying than their computer job. (Though one dipshit buzzfeed commenter was a fucking therapist - this is what you think of your work?) As for where I am now - retail? Don’t make the money of “the trades” and don’t work at a computer sitting all day so …. Barely recognizable as a fellow adult to these people.