It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…
1. Is it okay for bra lines to show at work?
I have an ongoing battle with my bra cup lines showing under my shirts. It’s not like I’m wearing sexy silky tight shirts! I buy fairly expensive shirts from business-oriented clothing stores, but alas, they don’t always see fit to line their tops. I also have to wear a lanyard at work which pulls in exactly the wrong way and exacerbates the problem. Clothes that seem fine in the store have turned bad by lunch time.
I worked at Victoria’s Secret in college so I like to think I know how to fit myself. I’ve tried buying “full coverage” bras but it seems they just relocate the line somewhere else. I’ve tried t-shirt bras. I’ve tried wearing camisoles under my shirts, but find them so uncomfortable, and still a line shows (albeit not a bra-shaped one).
I was lamenting about this recently and my husband told me I was being crazy and no one cares. I do notice female coworkers with the same problem ocassionally. But I still walk around feeling paranoid. Do I have a reason to be?
Nope. It’s normal and no one cares! Bras just do this sometimes unless you’re wearing a top made of thicker material. Seamless bras and t-shirt bras can minimize it, but they’re not foolproof. (That said, if you’ve never been fitted at a non-Victoria’s-Secret shop, it’s worth doing and could possibly lead you to a solution. Victoria’s Secret is notorious for getting sizes wrong. But if you don’t feel like doing that, it’s fine! Bra lines are not a big deal.)
2. My boss repeats my ideas as his own
I’m writing because I have a certain situation that I encounter semi-regularly and I don’t know how to deal with it. When in large meetings (that include the head of the office), often I will give my thoughts and then directly afterward, my boss will repeat the exact same thing I just said. I feel its incredibly undermining and I don’t know what to do about it. I’ve spoken to him about it before, and asked him not to. He apologized and said he’d try not to do it. Then it got better for a bit, but now it’s back with a vengeance. Should I go back and ask again? Is there anything else I can do?
It’s great that you talked to him about it and he apologized and said he’d try to stop, which indicates that he was willing to acknowledge he was doing it and wasn’t defensive about it. That makes it a bit easier to go back to him now and say something like, “You know how we talked last year about how I was offering thoughts in meetings, and then you were repeating the same thing I’d said without giving me credit? I really appreciated that you were open to hearing that and did stop for a while. But it’s back to happening, and I’m not sure why so I wanted to raise it again.”
Also: It’s pretty well documented that this happens to women far more than to men. (There’s an interesting story here about how the women in the Obama White House dealt with it.) If you think your boss is someone who wants to do the right thing on gender equality, you might consider adding something like, “I don’t know if you know, but this is a well-documented thing that often happens to women, and so I’d really appreciate you being conscientious about not doing it.”
3. My boss keeps winking at me
As a whole, I loathe winking. I find it condescending. I’ve voiced my opinion about this lightheartedly with coworkers, and most people agree that winking is weird, at the very least.
However, my boss has starting taking up this habit. When asking me to do tasks or projects of any size, she winks at me. It’s usually when she’s under pressure or is trying to just get me to complete something without asking any questions. It drives me insane because it feels like she’s just trying to put me in my place.
Many friends and coworkers say that winking is a generational thing and, as odd and out of touch as it may be, that most people mean it as a friendly gesture. But it makes me really uncomfortable when a superior is winking at me in stressful situations. Am I overreacting? How can I address this? Can it even be addressed?
I am RIGHT THERE WITH YOU on winking. I do not get it; it seems oddly smarmy to me. And I would be irritated by a colleague winking at me all the time, particularly my manager, and particularly if my manager were using it as a way to say “don’t ask any questions about this.”
But yes, it does appear to be generational and yes, I do think you’re reading too much into it. I doubt she’s trying to put you in your place (that would be a really odd way to use winking, as well as just an odd thing for her to be doing in general). Your best bet is to write it off as a weird quirk and try to ignore it.
If you absolutely must say something, you could say, “I’m never sure how to read it when you wink — why do you do it?” But that’s making too big a deal out of it, and it won’t necessarily get her to stop. (And you don’t really have standing to ask her to stop if this is just a communication quirk of hers.)
4. Can we pool our funds for an office couch?
I work for a large nonprofit organization that has several offices across the country. Our location is considered the “main office” and has by far the most employees and office space (think hundreds of employees in our office versus 7-12 in the other ones). Until recently, we had a small couch in the break room for people to sit and rest, but earlier this month the couch seemed to mysteriously disappear. We later found out that administration removed the couch because some visiting staff members from the offices across the country complained that they didn’t have couches in their break rooms and it wasn’t fair that we had one in ours. Instead of giving every office a couch, our organization took ours away. I understand the other employees’ frustration, but removing the couch has made it harder to find an open place to sit during lunch and the handful of chairs that are left in the room are very uncomfortable.
I suggested to a few of my coworkers that we could put some money together to buy an inexpensive couch for the break room, and many were enthusiastic. Is this something that would be appropriate for the work space? I would obviously check with administration to see if it’s okay to put a new couch in there, but is even asking about this out of bounds? Also, do you think I’d be potentially striking up some bitterness between our office and the smaller offices across the country if they found out we had a new couch?
Whoever complained about this is ridiculous, and whoever gave into them is even more so. Different offices have different amenities, and a couch is hardly up there on the scale of unfair perks. It’s a couch. It’s not like your office has company cars and weekly massages and the others don’t.
Anyway, I think you can ask about it, but be prepared for the answer to be no … not because it should be no, but because your organization is being silly about this. But if you get the go-ahead and there’s bitterness from other offices when they discover this amazing luxury you’ve obtained, you can say very matter-of-factly, “It’s employee-provided. We pooled our funds. Your office could do the same if you want to.”
5. Should I check in monthly with a hiring manager who sent me a personal rejection?
I recently had a phone interview for a job, which did not lead to a job offer. However, the interviewer personally notified me via email that I had not gotten the job, which is very odd for this organization. Further, in the email she stated and I quote, “If anything changes in this area, which it does often, I will personally reach out to you.”
A friend suggested that I email her about once a month or so just to say hi and touch base. I know that you often say to not keep contacting the hiring manager, but given that she said that she would personally reach out to me, is it worth me just sending a simple email once a month or so (or even less frequent) so that I stay on her radar. I do want to note that the interviewer and I had met before and that I had attended seminars she had given. She did remember me from the seminars.
No, definitely do not email her once a month. That would be way too often and would be annoying. She’s going to feel like basically no time has gone by in between each of those emails. At most, I’d say to do it maybe twice a year.
visible bra lines at work, my boss repeats my ideas as his own, and more was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.
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