Posted by Ask a Manager

https://www.askamanager.org/2025/10/is-it-tacky-to-bring-branded-items-from-your-old-job-to-your-new-job.html

https://www.askamanager.org/?p=32339

A reader writes:

I have a pretty low-stakes question but it’s been on my mind a lot lately: is it tacky to bring branded items from your old job to your new job?

For context: I used to work for a big tech company, and I acquired a lot of swag over my tenure: jackets, mugs, travel cups, etc. At my old role, my colleagues and I would use branded items from competitors and no one batted an eye; lots of them would be free items from conferences and similar events, and hey, sometimes that branded travel mug from our competition is just REALLY nice.

But I’ve switched to a more conservative industry (law) and I’m wondering if it would be weird to bring branded stuff from my old job into the office. I’m not planning to like, plaster my laptop with stickers from my old company or anything; I’m thinking more along the lines of bringing in a branded mug (since my new office only supplies paper coffee cups). I wouldn’t think twice about bringing random branded stuff from other companies, but I wonder about the optics of bringing stuff from my old job specifically. Is it tacky? Does it make it look like I’m pining for the past?

Like I said, this is incredibly low-stakes, but I’d love your thoughts!

Nah, you’re almost certainly fine.

I mean, it would be weird if you were, like, fully decked out with branded items from your old job to the exclusion of having anything from your current one — like if people walked into your office and found you wearing your old company’s branded jacket, t-shirt, and hat and your mousepad and notebook had their logo — but that seems highly unlikely. A mug or a shirt? No big deal at all.

The exception to this would be if there’s bad blood between the two companies or, in some industries, if they’re a direct competitor (like wearing Pepsi swag when you work at Coca-Cola, and I’d suspect wearing Nike if you work for Adidas or similar).

The post is it tacky to bring branded items from your old job to your new job? appeared first on Ask a Manager.

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https://www.askamanager.org/?p=32339

Posted by Ask a Manager

https://www.askamanager.org/2025/10/update-my-coworkers-are-joking-that-im-pregnant-when-im-not.html

https://www.askamanager.org/?p=33879

Remember the letter-writer whose coworkers were joking that she was pregnant when she wasn’t — including having a local radio host congratulate her on her “pregnancy”? The first update was here, and here’s the final resolution.

I was reading AAM as I do every afternoon when one of the recommended posts catapulted me back into my past. I’m the reader who wrote to you about six years ago about my co-workers who wrote into a local radio station to pretending I was pregnant as a “prank.” I’ve been meaning to share an update for a while now, and this felt like a sign. In the years since, things got okay, worse and then much better.

After the first post, I spoke to my director to put a stop to the joking around. No one apologized, acknowledged that they’d crossed a line, or even made eye contact for a while, but I was just grateful that the jokes were over.

A few months later, my relationship unexpectedly fell apart, and a couple of weeks after that I found a channel on our internal messaging system that had been set up to talk about me behind my back. It had been running for months, predating the radio prank, and was absolutely a nail in the coffin. We also now had an external HR provision by this point, so I made a formal complaint against everyone involved. A coworker had been on the ropes for a while and they were let go not long after. I’m not sure how much the channel played a role in this, but it certainly didn’t help. The others apologized to my face, which I was grateful for at the time.

As some background, when I first started, the company was owned by two directors, a husband and wife. A couple of years into my tenure, one served the others with divorce papers and the business was squarely in the middle. But even before I started there were office norms that were only there to keep us in our lanes. We weren’t really allowed to talk to one another other than on IM, were made to take staggered lunches alone, had to sit with our screens facing outward so the boss could monitor what was on them, and so on. I found out later that my job only opened up because one director got drunk and threw a punch at a past employee on a work night out, prompting a few people to quit. When that director finally left, the other did try to open up communication but things just ran too deep. I’m sure I contributed to this environment too and I remember being deeply frustrated with nowhere for it all to go.

I also don’t remember exactly what the messages in the channel said but I was so angry that it snapped me out of my post-breakup funk and made me realise that my workplace was crap and was not going to change. I searched for all the jobs I could find with a short list of prerequisites — they must have an active HR department, visible salary scales, and be based in an interesting part of the country. I applied for the one that was closing first, which turned into one of the best things I ever did. I said yes to an interview because I’d never been to this city and at least if I didn’t get the job I could spend a couple of hours in a museum I always wanted to visit. I interviewed in February 2020, got the job, and started my new role that April, just after the first Covid-19 lockdown hit in the UK. I moved to my new city about five years ago as restrictions were starting to lift, so as people were getting used to socializing again there was me starting life again in my late 20s.

I’ve since changed roles a few times but have been in the same organization, and I can honestly say things are a million times better. My job is infinitely more fulfilling, has scope to grow, and I’m strengthening skills that are niche enough to be interesting and broad enough that I’m not stuck in a corner. I’m also actively involved in our workplace union so there’s a perfect outlet to channel any injustices in a positive way.

I’m not in touch with anyone in my old job. I wish them the best and hope everyone is successful and fulfilled in their own ways, but it took me far too long to realize it wasn’t the place for me. The fact I didn’t realize this after someone wrote to a radio station to pretend I was pregnant is beyond what I’d ever put up with now. I’m still embarrassed by the whole ordeal but grateful I can look back on it as a bizarre story rather than a situation I’m still stuck in.

The post update: my coworkers are joking that I’m pregnant when I’m not appeared first on Ask a Manager.

https://www.askamanager.org/2025/10/update-my-coworkers-are-joking-that-im-pregnant-when-im-not.html

https://www.askamanager.org/?p=33879