It’s a special “where are you now?” season at Ask a Manager, featuring updates from people who had their letters answered in the past. Here are five updates from past letter-writers.

1. I manage a married couple, and it’s causing problems

I set up meetings with each of them, back to back, and basically had the same conversation with each of them. I scheduled it that way because I wanted each of them to be coming into the meeting “fresh” and not responding based on what I had said to their spouse. This worked well. I had good conversations with both where I made it clear that they cannot fight each other’s battles at work or speak for each other otherwise and that if they aren’t asking for what they need, it’s not reasonable to put that resentment on me or others. With both of them, I had good chats, especially about that last part, and how we could work to prevent that from building up in the future. In one case, that resulted in more frequent one-on-one meetings with me and that person. For the other, I think giving them permission to focus on their own job responsibilities and treat their spouse like a colleague at work was most of what they needed.

I won’t say that this 100% solved everything. One spouse struggled with the resentment for a while longer, and we had a series of conversations about it through the fall, one of which got pretty heated between us, but after I apologized for snapping at them and we had a chance to take some space and come back to discuss again, we ended up in a better spot. Reading between the lines, I think they’ve been struggling with some things in their personal life that made the pattern that led to the resentment at work especially hard to let go of, but I think they are getting some support to work on that outside of work. Things are much better now and they have been much better about asking for what they need from me and the broader staff.

2. My boss wants me to buy a fitness tracking device

I said I wouldn’t buy the tracking device for the last time and they actually let go. Then on an offsite, my employees asked that we all buy it and have a group competition. Since it came from the employees, I adopted the idea and we paid for their devices.

Some insights from this story:

  1. I really believe that me standing up against the peer pressure as a C-level set an example for my employees.
  2. My founders and I are close and it didn’t affect our relationship at all. I believe their intentions were pure, albeit maybe unprofessional.
  3. You should start an Ask a Manager podcast.

There was an Ask a Manager podcast, but it ended in 2019 — it was a lot of fun, but also a ton of work. All the old episodes are still available.

3. Is it okay to hang target practice sheets up at work? (first update; second update)

I wrote in quite a while ago because somebody in my office had gun target practice sheets hanging in their cubicle and it made me very uncomfortable.

Since I wrote in, I left that job (for a variety of unrelated reasons), moved to a different state, and a couple years ago changed careers from a series of boring, super-corporate desk jobs to a public sector job in the court system. Through this work, I have been exposed to far more detailed information about gun violence in my community and state. Thinking back on my letter, what strikes me is how little of an idea I had then of just how many people own and carry guns in the U.S. It’s something I would never even consider for myself, and knowing now how prevalent it is while also seeing the consequences on a daily basis at work is very unsettling.

I remember getting roasted in the comments for having an “irrational” fear of guns, but with every passing year, fearing guns becomes increasingly more rational. It’s scary out there!

4. We’re pressured to attend after-hours social events at our own expense

I did not take the approach of gathering a group of folks together to advocate, more because of complexities of our org structure I didn’t include in my email. I gave one additional piece of feedback to leaders and then established a personal and professional boundary. Over the last few months, our financial stability has been in question, and I pointed out to leadership that it would be aligned with our mission and values not to ask staff to personally fund work-related activities when their future paychecks weren’t certain. After that, I established the boundary that I would only attend events that happened during the work day or where the organization was going to cover costs I incurred. I have attended zero events since.

And now, I am joining another organization where I will be part of the decision-making leadership and hope that my future team members do not have to reach out to you about me!

5. Should I tell my interviewer I like that the city is LGBTQ-friendly?

I recently emailed about the pitfalls and subtleties of interviewing while trans, and I just landed a new job, having interviewed as my new name and gender through the whole process! There are still some tricky things when it comes to paperwork, insurance, and legal signatures, but I’ve been impressed at my new employer handling things sensitively and trying to get it right with me. Thanks for your advice in that answer and in general — I had a few pieces of AAM advice at the front of my mind as I interviewed!