Posted by Ask a Manager

https://www.askamanager.org/2025/12/update-my-boss-says-my-salary-research-is-wrong-coworkers-wont-answer-their-phones-and-more.html

https://www.askamanager.org/?p=34801

It’s “where are you now?” month at Ask a Manager, and all December I’m running updates from people who had their letters here answered in the past. Here are four updates from past letter-writers.

1. My job wants me to hit up everyone I know for money and other help

So it’s been a bit of a twisty path since I wrote in. I’ll start by thanking Alison and the commentariat for really helpful advice.

The small group meetings with the explicit purpose of sharing our personal contacts and their locations kept being postponed. Casual discussions about the principles of the project continued during other meetings, and I began to lay the groundwork suggested in the advice and discussions along the lines of “of course” I’ll have a think about it, but it may not be appropriate.

At one of these meetings when our CEO was speaking, I caught some side-eye from a few coworkers and spoke to them separately afterwards. It turns out they were especially opposed to the idea of going in pairs to social groups to proselytize, and the idea of mixing work/personal boundaries.

Then it all got a bit mysterious because the consultant, who I never did manage to find anything shady about, vanished from the project and was never spoken of again by the CEO. There was quite a lot of speculation among our little band of rebels.

So then the individual meetings got put back on the table but in a different way. Basically we all got together one day in small teams and mapped out local groups — crucially not our personal contacts but publicly available information around groups like community centers, faith groups, seniors’ meetups and so on. Stuff that’s easily findable on Facebook and so on.

But then it all kind of fizzled out. I believe our management team reached out to some targeted groups and made a few useful connections, but we were never again asked to hit up our personal contacts, for which I was profoundly grateful! But a nice side note is that I now count two of those rebellious coworkers as personal friends — and in a note of irony, one of them comes along to my book club. (But we don’t talk about work there!)

Thanks again, really appreciated Alison and everyone taking the time.

2. My boss says my salary research is wrong because our benefits are so great

Thank you so much for publishing my question about my salary negotiation gone wrong! I love reading updates on your site, so here’s mine: about two months after the promotion, my manager called me into her office out of the blue and gave me a 5% raise! She also gave me a copy of my supposed “total compensation” in writing. It consisted of my new annual salary, plus the bonus I got last year, plus the total reimbursements I’ve received so far this year (which was wrong, by the way), plus the total employer match on my retirement contributions (which is not vested yet and I’ll forfeit when I leave). Ha! As one commenter mentioned, I think the company is trying to identify “total cash compensation,” but this doesn’t seem like an accurate way to achieve that.

The reason for the delayed response? The position I was promoted into didn’t exist at this company before, and from what I can gather (the office is an open floor plan and we hear things), executive management has had some difficulty determining an appropriate salary band for me, because there was no one else in the company in a comparable role. Instead of telling me that they needed time to consider, though, I got an immediate “no,” followed up months later by “here’s part of what you asked for,” with no explanation of why.

Unfortunately, I’ve found this to be a frustrating pattern of communication with my manager. Any time I try to voice concerns or dissenting opinions, she shuts me down in the moment, then comes back a day or two later and suddenly agrees with me. It’s also been really challenging trying to succeed in a job that’s new to the company (I know this work was being done by someone before me, but no one here seems to know anything about it, so I’m just making it up as I go). Like most of your letter writers, the issue I wrote in about is really just the tip of the iceberg. I took on the promotion because I saw an opportunity to step up and take on an important responsibility that had been dropped, and I wanted to take a more active role in addressing our team’s stressful workload. Instead I’m frustrated and demoralized trying to adapt to the new senior-level position without any guidance or support.

I appreciate the small salary bump I got, but I’m planning to start job searching in a few months (when I can say that I have six months of experience in the new role). Fortunately this role is highly desired in my industry and I think I have a good chance of finding somewhere with better management and an established team where I won’t be trying to invent my own job description, which has been an exercise in futility since the day I started working here.

3. My coworkers won’t answer their phones, ever

Thank you for your advice back in March on my colleagues not answering their phones, and thank you also to the commenters who provided additional ideas. I appreciated the reality check. Unfortunately I was unable to take a lot of the advice because it centered around asking my supervisor to intervene, and he is one of the main culprits. At the time I wrote, when things were quite bad, he was asking me to return most of his voicemails not obviously from the bank or a very high-ranked VIP. This led to things like me calling someone back to ask what they wanted, them explaining a problem I couldn’t possibly help with, and me explaining they would have to speak with my supervisor — which is obviously what they had tried to do. Very awkward.

Things are a little better now, mainly because a new person was hired — who also doesn’t really use the phone, but who is taking over a lot of work that was overwhelming everyone else, so in turn, people are more on top of their email inboxes. A lot of the phone calls were really people frustrated by lack of email response, so we get less of that now.

Another thing that happened is we simply alienated the customers who wanted constant contact by phone, which rightly or wrongly, was simply unrealistic for the team that we have. So we don’t work with those customers anymore, thus fewer calls. And finally, most staff got a tiny bit better about agreeing to set up phone meetings or otherwise speak on the phone — maybe 20% better? In total, I get far fewer calls that aren’t for me, without the problem having ever been fully solved.

Like a few of the letter writers I have seen on your site, I tried to solve one small thing I thought I could solve but really, it’s a larger set of issues.

Thanks again for your help, and for the site as a whole. I have learned a lot over the years, and appreciate the humor too.

4. I heard a rumor that an exec is harassing multiple women, but no one wants to make an official complaint (#3 at the link)

I did pass along the report of harassment to both our HR and Legal departments, and they seemed to take it seriously from what I could tell.

HR leadership let me know that they were going to conduct an investigation. I was later informed that it was complete. I was not told (nor should I have been) the findings, or whether there were consequences for anyone.

All I know is that everyone has remained employed. I have not heard any further complaints, and so I hope nothing further has occurred.

Thanks for your advice and for that of your readers.

The post update: my boss says my salary research is wrong, coworkers won’t answer their phones, and more appeared first on Ask a Manager.

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Posted by Ask a Manager

https://www.askamanager.org/2025/12/update-how-do-i-keep-cat-fur-off-all-my-work-clothes.html

https://www.askamanager.org/?p=34698

It’s “where are you now?” month at Ask a Manager, and all December I’m running updates from people who had their letters here answered in the past.

There will be more posts than usual this week, so keep checking back throughout the day.

Remember the letter-writer wondering how to keep cat fur off all her work clothes (#5 at the link)? Here’s the update.

You were kind enough to post my question and your readers responded with a wealth of information and advice. Since I’m retiring in a few weeks, and cat fur on office clothes will no longer be a problem, I thought an update might be in order. Plus, who doesn’t love update season?!

The number one piece of advice I received was to change into work clothes immediately before leaving, and out of work clothes as soon as I got home. I had been doing that, but was a little salty about not being able to sit down in my own house for five minutes without changing clothes first. The fact that so many people gave that advice helped me reframe it from an annoyance to a more Mandalorian “this is the way … when you’re a cat stepmom.” We also bought some dark, overstuffed leatheresque bar stools for the kitchen counter. With a quick dust of the hand, I did have a relatively fur-free place to sit if I was only going to be home a short time before going back out.

I tried several of the other products and suggestions the commenters recommended. I’m sure your mileage may vary depending on the type of fur you’re dealing with, but here’s what did and did not work for me:

I already had a chomchom roller for large flat surfaces like the couch and bed and it’s still the best tool I’ve found for that application.

The cats adore the spiky metal brushes, but the rubbery silicone brushes that readers recommended did a vastly better job of loosening and removing fur. Big thumbs up for those!

Keeping work clothes in a separate laundry basket from other clothes and washing them separately helped with transference.

Special thanks to the person who suggested the car might be an undiscovered transfer point — that upholstery is cat-colored and the amount of fur on the seats wasn’t as noticeable.

The silicone hair removers for laundry did not seem to reduce the amount of cat fur, and untangling long human hair from them made them more of a pain than they were worth.

The most impactful solution, though, turned out to be shaving “Zsa Zsa.” It went surprisingly well. Just kidding, it was every bit the shitshow you’d expect it to be. Even after spending months trying to slowly acclimate her to a special pet shaver, including loads of high-value treats, we finally had to force the indignity upon her. When we were done, she looked like she had been attacked by a rabid weed eater, and cat dad and I did not come out of it unscathed. However, it greatly reduced the amount of fur throughout the house and had the added bonus of eliminating most of her sister’s hairball issues. We do it every spring and summer now.

Alison, even though I’m retiring, I can’t imagine not starting my weekdays reading your column. It’s been a wonderful resource, as well as entertaining, and I look forward to reading your blog for years to come!

Cat tax attached.

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Posted by Ask a Manager

https://www.askamanager.org/2025/12/all-of-my-2025-book-recommendations.html

https://www.askamanager.org/?p=33485

All year long, I’ve made a weekly book recommendation when kicking off the weekend open thread. These aren’t work-related books; they’re just books I like, mostly fiction. Sometimes they’re books that I’m in the middle of reading, and other times they’re just long-standing favorites.

Here’s the complete list of what I’ve recommended this year (maybe in time for holiday gift-shopping!). I’ve bolded my favorites of the favorites. (Interestingly, with some notable exceptions, it appears that what I was reading got lighter and lighter as the year went on.)

Long Bright River, by Liz Moore. It’s SO GOOD! It’s the story of two sisters, close as children but estranged as adults. When one becomes a police officer while the other struggles with addiction. When the younger sister goes missing, the other tries to find her. I thought this would be a gritty police procedural, which isn’t normally my thing, but it’s a beautifully layered literary exploration of family bonds and addiction that will get you right in the gut. The best book I’ve read in months. (Amazon, Bookshop)

Rental House, by Weike Wang. After the daughter of Chinese immigrants and the son of a white, working class family marry, they grapple with their relationship with each other and both sets of parents over the course of a summer vacation. (Amazon, Bookshop)

God of the Woods, by Liz Moore. A teenager disappears from the summer camp her family owns, 14 years after her older brother similarly disappeared. (Amazon, Bookshop)

Case Histories, by Kate Atkinson. After loving Liz Moore’s Long Bright River, I wanted more literary fiction mysteries where the character development gets as much attention as the plot. (Amazon, Bookshop)

Perfume and Pain, by Anna Dorn. A cancelled writer searches for inspiration and develops a surprising relationship with her new neighbor. Funny and smart. (Amazon, Bookshop)

Piglet, by Lottie Hazell. After her fiance confesses a betrayal two weeks before their wedding, a woman becomes inexplicably ravenous. (Amazon, Bookshop)

The Safekeep, by Yael van der Wouden. When her brother’s girlfriend comes to stay with her in the Netherlands, a woman’s post-war life is upended. (Amazon, Bookshop)

Blob: A Love Story, by Maggie Su. After a woman takes home a blob she finds in an alley, it grows into her ideal man. (Amazon, Bookshop)

The Uncommon Reader, by Alan Bennett. The Queen of England stumbles into a mobile library and develops a love of reading, which upends her life as the monarch. (Amazon, Bookshop)

The Rachel Incident, by Caroline O’Donoghue. A best friendship is upended when one of the friends begins an affair with a married professor. (Amazon, Bookshop)

Real Americans, by Rachel Khong. This is an epic family saga told in three generations: a pair of scientists who fled China’s Cultural Revolution, their daughter, and the son she has in America with the wealthy heir to a pharmaceutical company, whose business is intertwined with her parents in ways she learns of only later. (Amazon, Bookshop)

Show Don’t Tell, by Curtis Sittenfeld. I will read anything Curtis Sittenfeld writes, including short stories, which normally frustrate me for being … short. As she has moved into middle age, so have many of her characters, including one story that revisits the protagonist from her novel Prep. (Amazon, Bookshop)

Every Tom, Dick & Harry, by Elinor Lipman. Yay for a new Elinor Lipman, who I believe is the Jane Austen of our time. A woman is hired to handle the estate sale of her small town’s brothel/B&B. There’s intergenerational friendship, a romance with the chief of police, family drama, a high school reunion, and much more. (Amazon, Bookshop)

Three Days in June, by Anne Tyler. The night before a woman’s daughter is getting married, her ex shows up on her doorstep with no place to stay (and a cat). The story is the day before the wedding, the day of, and the day afterwards, and it’s charming and cozy and ended too soon. (Amazon, Bookshop)

Greta & Valdin, by Rebecca K. Reilly. Greta and Valdin are siblings and roommates, one dealing with his break-up with a much older man, and one trying to figure out love and her career. It’s also about their large Maori-Russian-Catalonian family, and about struggling to find your way, and it’s funny. (Amazon, Bookshop)

I See You’ve Called In Dead, by John Kenney. An obituary writer publishes his own obituary after drinking too much one night, then he learns his newspaper can’t fire him because their systems now list him as dead. (Amazon, Bookshop)

Back After This, by Linda Holmes. A podcast producer who’s been wanting to host her own show gets offered the chance to do it … but she has to agree to let the show be about her dating life and to work with a relationship coach and influencer, of whom she’s highly skeptical. It’s smart and funny, and I looked forward to reading it every night and was sad when it was over. (Amazon, Bookshop)

Three Junes, by Julia Glass. The story of three generations of a Scottish family, across three summers. It’s about the expectations and obligations of family, as well as marriage, love, and loss. One of my favorite books of all time. (Amazon, Bookshop)

Dearly Departed, by Elinor Lipman. After the unexpected death of her mother, a single mom returns to her small hometown and realized life there was different than she’d previously understood. (Amazon, Bookshop)

The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern, by Lynda Cohen Loigman. A retired pharmacist moves to a retirement community in Florida, where she reconnects with a man from her past. The story alternates between their relationship in the present day and what happened between them when they were growing up in Brooklyn in the 1920s. (Amazon, Bookshop)

The Glitch, by Elisabeth Cohen. A tech company CEO who’s the walking embodiment of every piece of dehumanized corporate advice you’ve ever heard has her life disrupted when she meets a woman who appears to be the younger version of herself (literally — same name, same scar, same history). Darkly hilarious. (Amazon, Bookshop)

Food Person, by Adam Roberts. A down-on-her-luck food writer is hired to ghostwrite a cookbook for a messy, narcissistic TV star who doesn’t even like food. Roberts, a food writer himself, seeds the whole thing with expertise about the food world, and it’s hilarious and in parts surprisingly moving. (Amazon, Bookshop)

Consider Yourself Kissed, by Jessica Stanley. The title makes it sound like a light romance, but it’s the story of a woman who enters a relationship and finds, like many women before her, that her life must narrow so his can expand, and how she deals with that. (Amazon, Bookshop)

Aftertaste, by Daria Lavelle. A chef who can taste ghosts’ favorite meals finds he can temporarily reunite people with their lost loved ones by preparing those foods. (Amazon, Bookshop)

Girls Girls Girls, by Shoshana von Blanckensee. As soon as they graduate high school, two best friends (and secret girlfriends) drive to San Francisco and try to make a life there. It’s about being gay, Jewish, and loving your grandma. It’s also about strip clubs, cringing at yourself, and figuring out who you are versus who your family is. I loved it. (Amazon, Bookshop)

Far and Away, by Amy Poeppel. A family in Dallas and a family in Berlin swap homes for the summer, then find their lives intertwining in unexpected ways. Funny and sweet, and I am already missing many of these characters. (Amazon, Bookshop)

Park Avenue, by Renee Ahdieh. An ambitious young lawyer is asked to take on a case against a monstrously rich family’s patriarch, who seems to be hiding money from his kids and terminally ill wife. (Amazon, Bookshop)

The Bedwetter, by Sarah Silverman (Amazon, Bookshop). If you like her comedy, you’ll like this. Warning: it is crude. If you don’t like really crude comedy, then let me suggest some hilarious but less crude books by other comics: I’m Just a Person by Tig Notaro (Amazon, Bookshop); I’d Like to Play Alone, Please by Tom Segura (Amazon, Bookshop) and You’ll Grow Out of It by Jessi Klein (Amazon, Bookshop).

Musical Chairs, by Amy Poeppel, who loves nothing better than to assemble a big messy group of family and chosen family and let the chaos fly. This time, the musician daughter of a famous conductor, her chamber trio, her kids, her octogenarian father’s new fiancé, and assorted other characters gather at a ramshackle home in the country and nothing goes as planned. (Amazon, Bookshop)

A Witch’s Guide to Magical Innkeeping, by Sangu Mandanna. The latest from the author of The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches, this is just as cozy and delightful. After one of the most powerful witches in the world loses her magic and is exiled from the magicians’ guild, she must find her way back while running an enchanted inn that only people who truly need can find. (Amazon, Bookshop)

Carnegie Hill, by Jonathan Vatner. A newlywed struggling with her marriage watches other relationships in various states of disarray in her her New York co-op building. It’s about people with money, people with less money, marriage, fidelity, and secrets. (Amazon, Bookshop)

I’m Glad My Mom Died, by Jenette McCurdy. An incredible memoir about her abusive stage mom that grabs you and won’t let you put it down. (Amazon, Bookshop)

Bring the House Down, by Charlotte Runcie. When a performer discovers a theater critic wrote a scathing review of her show the same night he slept with her, she creates a hit show about what happened. Told through the eyes of the critic’s friend and colleague, it’s an exploration of what (some) badly behaved men tell themselves and the chaos they create for those around them. (Amazon, Bookshop)

Flying Solo, by Linda Holmes. After returning home to clean out her great-aunt’s house, a woman who recently called off her wedding finds a mysterious love letter and an even more mysterious wooden duck. (Amazon, Bookshop)

Morningside Heights, by Cheryl Mendelson. The woman who wrote the amazing Home Comforts: the Art and Science of Keeping House also wrote a novel! Two married musicians grapple with the their careers, the troubled love lives of their friends, the aftermath of a neighbor’s death, and the way rapid gentrification may soon push them out of their beloved home. (Amazon, Bookshop)

Sisters of Fortune, by Esther Chehebar, who’s been called “a Jewish Jane Austen.” Three sisters in the insular Syrian Jewish community in Brooklyn try to figure out their relationships to men and to each other, as one begins to question her engagement. (Amazon, Bookshop)

Sister Wife, by Christine Brown Woolley. I don’t know what made me pick this up but once I did, I couldn’t put it down. Written by one of the (former!) three sister wives from TLC’s reality show about a polygamous marriage, it’s absolutely fascinating. (Amazon, Bookshop)

Single, Carefree, Mellow, by Katherine Heiny. I don’t normally like short stories but I will read everything Katherine Heiny writes and these short stories are just as funny and smart about love and relationships as her longer books. (Amazon, Bookshop)

Great Big Beautiful Life, by Emily Henry. Two very different writers — one an outgoing celebrity journalist and one a Pulitzer-Prize-winning curmudgeon — compete to write the biography of a once-famous tabloid princess who long ago dropped out of sight. Not my favorite Emily Henry, but everything she writes is so entertaining that it’s still worth recommending. She’s an ideal author for when you want fluff that’s still smart and well-written. (Amazon, Bookshop)

The Sisters Weiss, by Naomi Ragen. The daughter of a strict ultra-Orthodox Jewish family rebels against the expectations of her parents and community, to mixed results. (Amazon, Bookshop)

Everything Here Is Under Control, by Emily Adrian. Two estranged friends reunite when one is breaking under the strain of new motherhood. (Amazon, Bookshop)

Land of Milk and Honey, by C Pam Zhang. With food supplies disappearing after an environmental disaster, a chef escapes to a job in the Italian Alps to cook in a closed oasis for the world’s elite. (Amazon, Bookshop)

What Is Wrong With You? by Paul Rudnick. Both funny and poignant, it follows a motley cast of characters (including a former TV action star, a fired book editor, and a dentist in mourning) as they prepare to attend the wedding of one of their exes to a famous tech billionaire. (Amazon, Bookshop)

Nobody’s Girl, by Virginia Roberts Giuffre. It’s an account of the author’s abuse by Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell (including abuse that simply took another form after she escaped them), and it’s absolutely harrowing. (Amazon, Bookshop)

Grace & Henry’s Holiday Movie Marathon, by Matthew Norman. After being recently widowed, a mom raising two young kids meets a man who recently lost his wife, and they slowly start to rebuild their lives. It is charming and legitimately funny and there’s a lot of Baltimore in it, and I loved it. (Amazon, Bookshop)

Wreck, by Catherine Newman. A woman in middle age has a a delightful family, a mysterious rash, and a preoccupation with a local train accident. The family is the same one from her first book, Sandwich, but this book is 10 times funnier, and you don’t need to have read the first one to enjoy this one. (Amazon, Bookshop)

Ladies in Waiting: Jane Austen’s Unsung Characters, by Adriana Trigiani and more. A bunch of well-known authors, including my personal favorite Elinor Lipman, reimagine the lives of some of Jane Austen’s minor characters, including Mary Bennett, Georgiana Darcy, Caroline Bingley, and Miss Bates. (Amazon, Bookshop)

Buckeye, by Patrick Ryan. A short-lived affair in a small town in 1945 has long-lasting consequences for two families. I loved this! This ended up being my favorite book of everything I read this year. (Amazon, Bookshop)

And if you’re looking for more, here are my lists of book recommendations from 2024 … from 2023 … from 2022 … from 2021 … from 2020 … from 2019 … from 2018 … from 2017 … from 2016 … and from 2015.

This site is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites, as well as an affiliate of Bookshop.org. I make a commission if you use these links.

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Posted by Ask a Manager

https://www.askamanager.org/2025/12/update-employer-who-laid-me-off-is-now-asking-me-to-sign-an-indemnification.html

https://www.askamanager.org/?p=34528

It’s a special “where are you now?” season at Ask a Manager and I’m running updates from people who had their letters here answered in the past.

There will be more posts than usual this week, so keep checking back throughout the day.

Remember the letter-writer whose employer who laid them off and then wanted them to sign an indemnification (#2 at the link)? Here’s the update.

Your advice was incredibly helpful.

My previous manager continued to send me multiple followup texts regarding the indemnification that felt very guilt-tripping (reminding me they could not proceed with the critical business operation unless I signed and agreed). I did not reply to any of the texts. I did reply to the document they sent me via email (indemnification document). I cc’d the company’s head of legal. In the email, I refused to sign, said I did not consent to the use of my credentials, and that this was my final decision. In reply, they said they hoped for a different outcome but “respected my decision given the use of my name and dob in login credentials.” I also contacted the government agency that I had the credentials with and informed them I no longer worked there, asking them to remove my credentials from association with the company, and they did so.

Months passed and I heard nothing more, but eventually I received a text from this same manager, who let me know that they found another partnership and were able to continue with business as usual (they “thought I’d like to know”). I responded with a very brief “Glad to hear” and have not heard from them since. Of course, what I would have liked to say was, “Why do I care? This isn’t my business since you fired me” but I wanted to end on an okay note.

I am still job searching. It’s extremely rough out there, and I have not been able to get very far in interviews for the same job I left at this company because I am so early career. I’ve been getting feedback from companies when they do not move forward with me that they just have more candidates with more experience, always. I feel resentful that I was cut off from developing in my early career by this company that clearly didn’t think through their own needs before making that decision. I’m starting to look outside my previous industry with a little more success (and a big pay cut). I wish everyone out there looking right now the best of luck.

Again, thank you so much for all your advice, and your readers for their comments! I enjoyed reading through them all and it felt very vindicating.

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