Dear Max, I am hiring for an open position on my team. We are having trouble finding good candidates, and my boss just came in to tell me that we shouldn’t waste time looking for a purple squirrel. I had absolutely no idea what he meant but did not want to let on, and said that we probably shouldn’t hold out for a crimson gerbil either. He paused for what seemed like a year, then nodded and agreed with me. What the hell is going on?
A purple squirrel is a piece of jargon for a candidate that meets every criterion on a job application: they have this nickname because they don’t exist. Your boss presumably now thinks that a crimson gerbil is another term for the same thing. Neither of you should admit your ignorance. Neither of you will.
I have just been on a business trip to America and have a question. What is going on with the toilets over there? The cubicles have this absolutely enormous gap at the bottom, deep enough that a pig could trot underneath and join you. I can just about understand why you might want to leave a small gap. But this is basically like camping in the open.
I am told that smaller doors cost less and that a bigger gap means easier access in case of an emergency. I doubt that helps ease your sense of discomfort. But I’m also not sure this really counts as a workplace dilemma. Or that you have many options.
I am often blamed for things going wrong at my workplace. For all intensive purposes, I am the office escape goat. Even when my work clearly passes mustard, I am told that I need to shake up. Can you help?
There is literally nothing I can do to help you, I’m afraid.
I occasionally have to take and make personal calls at work but I sit in an open-plan office. I could take them at my desk, as others do: the person next to me has been grappling loudly with a fungal infection for months. But I detest her as a result. Where do you advise I go?
Lots of people write to me about this problem, and the fact that it is so common explains why there is no good answer. Meeting rooms and phone booths are already full of people managing kitchen renovations. The stairwells are rammed with colleagues trying not to have their kids excluded from school or having whispered arguments with their spouses. My best advice is to head outside or not to have a personal life.
My manager has started requiring that we play something called the statue game in order to introduce more “fun” into the workplace. He picks some poor soul, who has to freeze in position at some point during the day. Everyone who notices that this person has become a statue has to freeze, too. The last person to notice loses. Should I refuse to play or grin and bear it?
You should probably join in but also urgently start looking for other work. In the meantime, if you have been asked to freeze first, make sure you do it at a point that suits you: when you have been asked where that overdue report is, say, or when you are having a coffee outside.
I was recently at an in-person meeting with a group of colleagues. I asked one of them for their point of view on something, and he asked me to come back to him later because he was in another meeting. It was only then that I noticed his ear buds and realised that his tablet was a sea of faces. Was he being very productive or very rude?
Definitely not productive and definitely discourteous but also much less rude than would once have been the case. The pandemic made it acceptable to do other things while in meetings. Just watch people on Zoom. The ones with poor eyesight are particularly revealing: you can literally see their expense claim reflecting off their glasses. It might help to put in place an explicit “one meeting at a time” rule. And to ask yourself whether your organisation needs so many meetings in the first place.
My team gave me a “world’s best boss” mug as a gift last week. I was a bit surprised at first, because I think they are all completely useless. But then I realised that they must appreciate my relentlessly high standards and uncompromisingly candid approach to management. My wife, however, happened to see it last night and instantly said that the mug could only be sarcastic. What should I do?
Take it to work and carry it around. If the gift was sincere, everyone will be happy. If the gift was not meant in good faith, members of your team will get a small kick out of seeing you drinking from it. In the meantime, my sympathies to your wife. If she, or anyone else, wants to write to me with an office problem, I’ll be back with another postbag in the spring. ■
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