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Dear Max, My employer has a policy of allowing dogs in the office. Almost everyone there seems to think this is tremendous but I don’t like the things. (To be honest, I don’t like people either but I accept that they should be allowed to come to the workplace.) Is there anything I can do, or do I have to grin and bear it?
You are not alone: I probably get more letters about this topic than any other. It’s very hard to admit to disliking dogs, so lots of people end up suffering them in silence. You could talk to HR about ending the policy, but would risk being known to all your colleagues as the psychopath who hates puppies. It’s much better to try to subvert the system. My advice is to say that you need to bring another type of much less acceptable animal to the office. If pressed, use the word “wellness” and hint at discrimination if they do not seem keen. With luck they will reach the conclusion that it is best simply to ban all pets.
My boss is very enthusiastic about the idea of using psychedelics in the workplace. She claims it is a way of unlocking creativity and bringing people together. She wants our team to go on a group ketamine retreat and keeps sending emails with subject lines like “Let’s ket it on!” Should I go?
No. There is very little evidence that the use of drugs in the workplace genuinely increases creativity—and lots of experience to suggest that they make you do things you later greatly regret. If you want to ingest psychedelics, my advice is to do it at home. If you want to be more creative in your thinking, go for a long walk. And if you want to bond with your colleagues, do great work together. Tell her you are on other medication and cannot participate.
I have noticed that about five minutes before the end of one of my regular weekly meetings, the person chairing it will say, “I’m conscious of time”. Aren’t we all?
I doubt it’s meant as a boast. Even if it is, try to be generous-minded. Your meetings are probably more likely to end when they should.
A colleague of mine has started bringing a skunk to work. She claims that it is her comfort skunk. I asked HR whether this was really allowed and they started muttering some twaddle about dogs and discrimination; they also said that the skunk’s scent glands had been removed. I don’t mind having animals in the office but this is ridiculous. Lots of my colleagues agree. What can I do?
This is ringing a bell. My advice would be to go back to HR and see if they would be prepared to ban all pets. If that doesn’t work, you and your colleagues could try bringing in other animals. By the time the office resembles that scene in “Ace Ventura”, they will have to see sense.
My manager often says that “we need to go to the balcony”. Everyone else nods, but then they don’t actually go anywhere. As far as I can see our office doesn’t even have a balcony. In a meeting the other week one person said “this is a two-finger point” and the person running the meeting replied “let’s double-click on that later”. I have no idea what is going on half the time. What can I do to keep up?
Just hang in there. Incomprehension is an enormous part of office life. You will eventually develop a sense of what phrases like this mean. In fact, you will eventually start saying this kind of rubbish yourself and someone else will write to me about you.
In order not to interrupt people’s weekends and evenings, the managers at our company are encouraged to schedule non-urgent emails to arrive during work hours. The result is that at 9am on a Monday, I get bombarded by 50 messages that all have to be answered quickly. Now my weekends are being totally ruined by the thought of all the emails that are being lined up for me. Can you help?
“Schedule send” is a good thing but it moves work around rather than reducing it. So unless people stop working at the weekends altogether, their efforts will eventually affect you. Your only real option is to tell people what time you want the assault to begin.
I wrote to you before about my boss’s plans to have a ketamine retreat. For the past few weeks I have been having the weirdest hallucinations. I regularly imagine there is a skunk in the lift. Yesterday I could swear a man came to our staff meeting with a grim expression and a Vietnamese pot-bellied pig. Is it possible that she is drugging us without our permission?
I have good reason to believe that you are not hallucinating and that something else explains what you are seeing. Please try not to worry about it. And if anyone from a different office ever has problems they want to share with me, do feel free to write. Till later in the year. MF
