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Dear Work Friend,
This is the third year in a row my boss and work colleagues have forgotten my birthday. I’m not saying I want a party, a cake or even a card. A Teams message or an email would be great. I always celebrate their birthdays, their kids’ birthdays, their pets, their accomplishments, etc., but they don’t do the same for me. I think it has to be a sign of a bigger problem that they just don’t care about me? They also didn’t acknowledge my work anniversary this year. They always acknowledge each other’s birthdays, so it’s extra noticeable that they ignore mine.
I’m not sure I should go to H.R. about it (it would probably just sound like I’m whining?) and I’m not sure it would change anything.
I just need to find a new job, right? Last year I tried to just let it go, but I’m still hurt.
— Anonymous
I agree that the situation you describe is a sign of a bigger problem. But I’m not sure that the problem is your colleagues’. Unless you work for an astrologer, and maybe not even then, your colleagues are not particularly obligated to celebrate, note, or even remember your birthday. They are especially not obligated to celebrate, or, really, be aware of your “work anniversary.” (Indeed, I’m not sure anyone, even close friends or family members, is obligated to remember a work anniversary.)
This might be hard to hear if you’re a “birthday person,” which it seems clear you are. But the important thing to remember is: Just as they’re not obligated, neither are you! You need to be helpful and respectful to your co-workers so you can all do your jobs, but you don’t need to remember their birthdays, or their work anniversaries. And you really don’t need to remember — or celebrate — their kids’ birthdays or their pets.
In fact, it might be better if you didn’t. They’re not expecting this level of remembrance or celebration from a co-worker, and I wonder if the lack of acknowledgment about your birthday is, at least in part, a passive attempt at de-escalation. The kind of behavior you seem to regard as ordinary kindness — like knowing and remarking on your co-workers’ kids’ birthdays — is very likely to be read as over-familiarity by others, and they may withdraw a bit in response.
So no, don’t go to H.R., unless you want to give your HR rep a story to tell their friends over drinks for years to come. But you don’t need to look for another job, either. You are weaving a dense web of social obligation that is paralyzing you and potentially alienating your co-workers. The trick isn’t to “let it go” when your expectations aren’t met, but to stop creating any expectations at all. Delete whatever calendar you’re keeping all these reminders on, and focus on doing your work with your colleagues and celebrating your birthday with friends and family.
The Nit-picking Boss
Dear Work Friend,
I’m eight months into my role as a director at a major financial institution. The learning curve has been steep, and my boss nitpicks — from meeting facilitation to minor email details and deck typos. Despite my strong qualifications, this nonstop critique leaves me feeling completely inadequate.
Meanwhile, two male peers on another team operate with total impunity: One delivers subpar work, while the other is rude, immature and accusatory. Multiple colleagues have reported similar issues with them, advising me to document requests from these two in writing. Their manager, an empathetic woman, acknowledges their behavior and claims to be working on their communication skills.
How do I reconcile my boss’s scrutiny of my errors with these men’s freedom to underperform and treat people poorly without consequence? While I hesitate to make this entirely about gender, it’s hard to imagine a woman getting away with their behavior. How do I manage my growing frustration with both my boss’s micromanagement and my peers’ unchecked behavior?
— Anonymous
Analytically, it’s correct to connect the behavior of your hypercritical boss and your boorish and incompetent peers, and see between the two an unfair gendered behavioral standard. On a long time horizon, with some dedicated advocacy and the help of sympathetic co-workers, you might be able to change your firm’s culture enough to eliminate this kind of dismaying and irritating inconsistency.
But practically speaking — as a matter of day-to-day survival — you’re going to be better off severing the two issues. You don’t need to reconcile your boss’s hypercriticism with your colleagues’ hyperstupidity; you need to find ways to address (or mitigate) them, on their own terms and separately.
As regards your boss: Close scrutiny of this kind can mean many things. Your boss might be difficult and demanding. The job might be a bad fit. But they may not realize how discouraging you find his critique. After all, you have strong qualifications and were clearly impressive enough to be hired; they might see the criticisms as fairly minor — they’re just typos! — and assume you have more confidence than you do. They may even be giving you more attention because they’re invested in your success and have high standards.
The only way to find out how you should understand the criticism is to ask. Eight months is as good a time as any to ask if you’re meeting expectations and where you can improve. If your boss responds with another barrage of criticism, at least there’s some clarity: You might be better off transferring or finding a new job. But I wouldn’t be surprised if he tells you that you’re doing fine, or better — a bit of explicit confirmation that might help the criticism seem less harsh.
As for the Chuckle Brothers: Follow your colleagues’ advice and document their requests. Otherwise, disengage from them — both socially and mentally. Unless you and other co-workers have a clear plan to obtain consequences for their behavior, adjudicating their impunity is a costly waste of your time and energy. Imagine how many fewer typos your decks might have if you weren’t grinding your teeth over those two losers and their kid-glove treatment!
Ghosted, Again and Again
Dear Work Friend,
I’ve been on the job hunt for two years now; it’s brutal out there. Hands down, the worst part of the process is a phenomenon that increasingly feels like common practice: being ghosted by a recruiter/HR professional.
Multiple times now, I’ve applied and interviewed for a position and then, after the interview: Nothing! After a reasonable amount of time, I send polite, friendly reminders asking if I’ll proceed in the recruitment process, and nothing! No response ever! To be clear, these are positions where I know I was a compelling candidate: I was asked to interview! It strikes me as unprofessional and flat out rude to leave job hunters hanging. Is it not a recruiter’s literal job to manage hiring processes responsibly?
How are recruiters getting away with this behavior? What recourse, if any, can I take?
— Anonymous
I would love to be able to say anything here besides “yeah, it sucks.” But this is one of the single biggest “yeah, it sucks”-type situations in white-collar work right now. Surveys from recruiting firms over the past few years suggest that anywhere from 61 percent to 77 percent of recent applicants have been “ghosted” during the application process; as far back as 2018 the celebrated workplace-advice columnist Alison Green wrote that “post-interview silence is one of the most common complaints I receive from disgruntled job seekers.”
Shockingly rude as it may be, the reason for the ghosting is not exactly a mystery. As you likely know from experience, in many sectors the job market is so competitive that a given listing receives hundreds of applications. If you want to be sympathetic to H.R. recruiters, you might say they’re overwhelmed by the process, especially in an age where they’re reading too many cover letters written by ChatGPT. Less sympathetically, you might say that they don’t send out rejection letters because they don’t need to: In a loose labor market, the applicants will keep coming no matter what.
So, yeah, it sucks, and there is no real recourse, short of organizing the unemployed to withhold their applications and demand better manners from the recruiters of the world. The only real advice is to keep your chin up, and learn to emotionally detach the second the interview ends. That way, any further communication is a pleasant surprise.
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