My Boss’s Weird Personality Flaw Has Gotten Totally Out of Hand. I’ve Got to Protect My Employees.

Good Job is Slate’s advice column on work. Have a workplace problem big or small? Send it to Laura Helmuth and Doree Shafrir here. (It’s anonymous!)

Dear Good Job,

I am a department head with many direct reports, and am junior only to the founder, “Matt.” We have had two different staff members make significant, but not unheard-of mistakes in the last month that have been the source of a lot of procedural discussion between me and Matt. The main issues we’ll work out, but something I realized in these conversations is that Matt is a grudge holder.

One employee had a tech issue that wasn’t even really her fault, but she should have caught it sooner. Matt said, “We’ve already had several issues with her,” referring to her very tough negotiation of her salary and employment terms when she was first hired. I found her negotiations reasonable, savvy, and professional, and I appreciated learning how to navigate the conversation on my end! The other employee made an actual mistake, and Matt said, “This is like the third time he’s had this particular issue,” which was incorrect. The first two times, the problem was related in topic, but completely out of the employee’s control. In both instances, I cleared up the misunderstanding and advocated for my team.

But now I’m just noting that he has a pattern of remembering friction as a strike against someone. I have also noticed in hiring that he is paranoid about extending trust to new hires and has a very weird contract and onboarding process that assumes the worst-case scenario. Matt always goes to extreme examples when creating policies (“What if an employee kicks a client? What if they intentionally wipe out our database?”) instead of practical ones (“What if they miss a deadline? What if they act unprofessionally to a client?”).

We do three rounds of interviews, references, a written assessment, a practical demonstration, and a contractor period, followed by a slow vesting of benefits over the first year of employment. I have asked him if he has been burned before, and the only example he gave was a former employee who falsely filed for unemployment after quitting, which was denied by the state anyway.

Do you have any advice for dealing with a boss who is surface-level pleasant, but harbors an under-the-radar mistrust of all of us? As a baseline for myself, I try to be meticulous in my documentation, communication, explaining my motivations when we disagree, and budget reporting. But I’m thinking about how I can best advocate for and set up for success the 20+ people I am responsible for.

—Side-Eyeing Matt

Dear Side-Eyeing Matt,

Yeesh. What a charmer. I’m sorry your company is dominated by this guy. It’s obviously lousy for retention and morale when the founder expects the worst of people and blames them whenever something goes wrong. And you, of course, have to beware of becoming one of the people Matt holds a grudge against.

You probably can’t change Matt’s suspicions of other people, but you can try to protect yourself and others. Being meticulous, communicative, and transparent, as you’re doing, can stop his mistrust before it starts. And you’re showing great leadership by calmly clearing up his misunderstandings about your team’s performance and by advocating for them. Another thing you can try is re-framing problems (or potential problems) in terms of his ability to deal with them. (“I’m confident you can manage this worst-case scenario if it ever happens.”) You could use any mistake as an opportunity for a “lessons learned” exercise that might help him come up with more practical policies. When one of your team does make a mistake, assure Matt that you’ll find out what went wrong and train the staffer not to make that mistake again. Use your catch-up time to talk about progress your team members are making, problems they solved, and other accomplishments to shift his focus to some of their successes rather than dwelling on perceived failures.

Too many companies are run by founders who have enough expertise to start something, but lack the social skills to lead it. You’re managing to recruit, retain, train, and defend good employees despite him. I hope, but doubt, that Matt recognizes your essential role and compensates you appropriately. It can be exhausting to cover for a boss who is hostile, suspicious, and unrealistic. Please take care of yourself as well as your department.

Dear Good Job,

My company switched to full-time in-office this year. We’re doubled up in single-person cubicles and it sucks. I’m job searching, and I think everyone else is too. In the meantime, I’m trying to keep my head down and collect the paycheck. But my cubicle-mate, “Marissa,” is making that difficult. Marissa has a constant snuffling spitty cough/ gasp combo that seems to be chronic. It’s loud, distracting and, frankly, very gross. I’ve politely asked her to stop or at least turn away from me, but she can’t stop, and when she turns away from me, she faces another co-worker who is more aggressive about how much he hates the coughing. My request to her to use tissues only lasts as long as the office tissue supply holds out each month. I would ask to move but there’s nowhere to move to.

Marissa can’t help her health thing, but she’s also not managing it well, and I don’t want to be next to her. When I’ve brought it up to my boss, he acts like I’m just joining the litany of complaints about our undersized office and says, “Office space has been discussed at length, you need to be a team player.” (He has his own office, so he doesn’t witness how disruptive this is.) But this is about her, specifically! It’s not her fault, but I can’t work with it. We’re too small to have HR, what do I do here? My boss’ boss is the head of the company, and rarely in. the office. Would it be overkill to go to him? It’s gotten to the point that I flinch when Marissa breathes loudly, and I’m always disinfecting my laptop from her spit. I hate this, and I hate it even more because it’s unnecessary—we used to be hybrid, and I never interacted with her. How do I deal with this?

—Don’t Breathe on Me (she/her)

Dear Don’t Breathe on Me,

Nobody loves in-person workplaces more than respiratory infections, unless it’s those bosses who sit in a nice office while they tell people in crowded, loud, germy shared spaces to be team players. Marissa might not be shedding any virus or tuberculosis bacteria when she coughs, but you shouldn’t have to wonder or clean up her spit.

Marissa must be miserable, too. You say you asked her to use tissues, but have you had a larger conversation? If not, invite her to talk outside your crowded office. Maybe offer to buy her a cup of tea. Tea can’t manage her cough, of course, but it’s a friendly ritual that gives you both something to do with your hands. Tell her, while smiling and shaking your head, that it’s tough working in double-stuffed cubicles. Ask how she’s doing. Share something about yourself. You don’t have to start a friendship, but getting to know Marissa might give you more patience with her cough. Ask her if she has any ideas about how to make your shared cubicle more hospitable. If she seems willing to talk about her condition, encourage her to look into whether she qualifies for accommodations under the Americans with Disabilities Act. (Working remotely would be one such accommodation.)

Otherwise, ask your boss or the office manager to supply more tissues so they don’t run out each month. Use headphones or request white-noise machines in the office so you don’t hear Marissa’s coughing. Wear a mask at work and keep a big supply on your desk so you can offer them to other co-workers, including Marissa.

I wouldn’t recommend talking to the boss’s boss until you’ve found your next job. Once you do, please tell him that one reason you’re leaving is that it’s dangerous and unpleasant to squeeze so many people into a shared office. Tell him it doesn’t make business sense, either, no matter what they’re saving on rent, because one infectious disease could take out most of the workforce for days or weeks.

—Laura

Classic Prudie

In a bit of a perfect storm of hair care, I recently shaved my head and then decided to stop straightening my curls when working from home looked to be a full-time thing at my job. Then my company brought us back into the office on a hybrid schedule. The timing has made the hair situation look a lot more extreme than it will in a couple of months (because there’s now no weight in my hair to pull down the curls). This seems to have set off the marketing manager. “Fern” doesn’t believe white women have curly hair. She’s accused me of cultural appropriation and blackface. She’s even threatened to go to HR. (Fern is white, too.)