It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…

1. I Don’t Want to Hug Our Owners

Our smaller west coast insurance company was bought out by a southern-based, family-owned insurance company. The new owners, all male, occasionally come to town and, when greeting our mostly female staff, go in for a tight hug as greeting.

I am not a hugger, even with people I know. I’ve tried to deflect with a fist bump and have been verbally called out for not wanting a hug. This makes me so uncomfortable. The other women in my office do not like the hugs either, but are afraid of being singled out as difficult. This is so wrong, but how do I deflect without putting a target on my back?

If you’re otherwise warm and friendly, simply explaining that you’re not a hugger is very unlikely to put a target on your back (unless there’s extreme dysfunction going on there that’s not mentioned in your letter). You can say, “Oh, I’m not a hugger but it’s so great to see you, how have you been?” and otherwise convey warmth while maintaining a no-hugging boundary.

Since your coworkers don’t like it either, any chance you can convince some of them to do the same? Forming an “oh, we’re not huggers in this office!” united front will make it easier for all of you.

2. My Coworker Is Challenging to Work With, and Now It’s Affecting a High-Profile Project

I’m not someone who is judgmental about other people’s grammar since it’s not essential to our job. But working with my coworker, Janet, has become a headache because I can barely understand what she types, and she insists on sharing files a certain way.

Let me write this paragraph to demonstrate what I mean — she writes exactly like this. Janet barely uses punctuation and sometimes forgetstoseparatewords. I will read her sentences three times to figure out what she is saying, or ask clarifying questions in a polite way. She will do this on both Teams and in emails with directors copied. Sometimes it’s embarrassing, and I can’t tell if she says we need to fix the teapot or we don’t need to fix the teapot, especially when she has random clauses in the middle like “emailing this now,” and sometimes she’ll even leave sentences open like this and

This is an upper middle-class American-born woman in her fifties or sixties. Many of my coworkers are first-generation immigrants who speak English as a second language, and I never have this problem with them. I volunteer with middle schoolers outside of work who I never have this problem with either. Perhaps there are some disability issues involved that I’m unaware of.

Janet also insists that I share files with her differently than how I share files with everyone else. I send files through Teams, emails, shared folders in the network drive, and SharePoint pages, just like everyone else at my job.

When I first sent some PDFs to Janet on Teams, she said, “You need to send each with a separate email subject line [charge code, serial number, etc. in specific order] i cannot view in teams like i can in an email.” She also requested that my subject line follow a very specific format. If I so much as typed the serial number before the model number instead of the other way around, she would ask that I reattach the file to a brand new email with a corrected subject line. When I broached this with our project manager, they said that Janet uses emails to sort her files. These emails only go to Janet.

I’ve worked with her for a few months, but I never brought up any concerns again. Everyone has their quirks and mild nuisances, and these were just hers that I had to work with.

However, the project manager learned a customer is missing important records that we should have given them three years ago. My predecessors should have uploaded these to a specific shared folder, but the PM discovered that I was the only one uploading them properly since I joined. The PM and I have been on a deranged scavenger hunt where we peek in every shared folder imaginable and beg those formerly in my position to check their own files. This has gotten visibility from the directors as well.

The stress has made Janet’s idiosyncrasies less tolerable. The files that I could recover were too big to email, so I asked the PM if there was a folder I could place them into. Shortly after, Janet sent me an email with a link to a new folder in her own temp folder in the shared drive to drop them into. After I uploaded a few files, she asked me to email them individually to her. I told her that each file was too big to email, and she asked if I could compress them. These were PDFs with detailed graphs that needed to retain their quality, so I couldn’t. I made a zip file for each PDF, but she said that sending zip files was “unacceptable” since they’re “difficult to view.” I told her that she could access the files herself in the temporary folder that she had sent me, but she only reiterated that she needed them emailed individually. Then she told me, “You also misspelled Customer Name on your subject line please make sure not to do that you have to send me another email please this is important thank you.”

I was so fed up with her that I took a 10-minute walk and switched to unrelated assignments for the rest of the day. I want to bring up these issues to either my manager or the project manager, but I don’t know how. A part of me thinks that I’m overreacting — am I making too big a deal out of this?

No, you’re not overreacting. Janet is making your work on a high-profile, important project significantly less efficient, and that’s something you can raise with your boss and/or the project manager. Frame it this way: “Janet is asking for X, which is making my work to solve this problem much less efficient because of Y, and when I’ve tried pushing back previously, she hasn’t been willing to budge. I would like to do Z, because it would help this work in these ways, but I’d need you involved to talk with her.”

Leave her confusing emails out of it unless you can point to concrete problems they’re causing on this specific project — others who work with her are undoubtedly already aware of how she writes. Keep the focus on how her rigidity is affecting this high-priority project that your directors are watching.

3. Why Do Employers Lead Candidates On Like This?

My husband recently applied for a job and was given an in-person initial interview. During the interview, on a Friday, several things were said or done that led him to believe they were very interested in him — they gave him a tour, said he should hear from them later that afternoon, asked him if he could start on Monday, and asked him what salary he was looking for. I know you’ve said before that none of that guarantees anything, but WHY don’t employers think before they talk like that? They could just as easily have said he’d hear from them next week, or not asked if he could start on Monday, even if it was jokingly. Instead, they not only got his hopes up while he had to wait over the weekend (because of course he didn’t hear on Friday), but he hasn’t heard anything today, Monday, either. If they’re not going to commit to doing what they say, then don’t say it!

I realize that they’re probably very busy, but how long does it take to send a quick email? “Sorry, something came up, we won’t know anything until next week/week after/next month” — that took me all of about 10 seconds. It’s not that hard! I know probably nothing will change, but I just don’t understand why companies can’t do better. And this is not an isolated incident — it seems like it’s become the default response these days, or non-response actually. Companies want to hire the best people, so be the best company and stop ghosting those best people!

It’s ridiculous to ask someone on a Friday if they can start Monday unless you’re prepared to make a job offer on the spot. (I do wonder if that was meant as a joke and they thought he would take it that way — like a way of saying, “We’re so busy and in need of this vacancy to be filled,” or even just, “You seem great.”)

However, none of the rest of it — the tour, asking about salary, and saying he should hear something later that day — necessarily implied that he got the job. Those are just normal things that happen in interviews without indicating anything about a person’s chances. That said, once they told him to expect to hear something later that day and then realized that wasn’t going to happen, they should have sent a quick email explaining the delay. If they couldn’t do it that day, they definitely should have followed up on Monday.

To your broader question about why employers give candidates timelines and then don’t follow through — sometimes for weeks or months, and sometimes not at all — it’s rude. There’s no excuse for it; as you note, it really doesn’t take more than seconds. But on the candidate side, it’s far better for your quality of life to recognize that this is endemic in job-hunting. Never put too much weight on those timelines, and let it be a pleasant surprise if employers do stick to them. That’s not to excuse the behavior — again, it’s rude. But as a candidate, the only part you control are your own expectations, and it’s better for you to keep them realistic.

Am I able to use positive performance reviews in my job search somehow? My last one was absolutely glowing, and I got “Exceptional” in several categories. It’s so bleak out there right now — I’d like to use anything I can to help.

Yes, and the more context you can provide to make it sound truly superlative — rather than something many employees received — the better. For example, “Awarded highest company rating on annual performance evaluation, given only to top 5% of employees” or “Awarded highest company rating on annual performance evaluation three years in a row” are stronger on a resume than simply noting the rating alone.

You can also think about what you did that resulted in those exceptional ratings and speak to those specifics in your resume or cover letter — for instance, “Regularly praised for meeting tight deadlines under challenging circumstances” or “Frequently lauded by customers for leading engaging, entertaining trainings.”

If there was something particularly memorable in the review that stands out as truly exceptional, you can sometimes include that as well. For example, noting that a manager called you “the fastest writer on the planet” is resume-worthy, while something like “communicates well and meets deadlines” generally isn’t distinctive enough to warrant inclusion.

5. Going Back After Taking a Voluntary Buyout

My UK government employer is talking about doing a “voluntary exit” scheme — what you’d probably call a voluntary redundancy or buyout in the US. I’m considering taking it, but I’m wondering whether doing so would prevent me from returning to work for the same employer in the future if I wanted to.

Voluntary exit schemes often come with terms that restrict re-employment with the same organization for a set period, and sometimes permanently, depending on the scheme’s rules. Before making any decision, review the specific terms of the offer carefully and, if possible, speak with your HR department or a union representative to understand exactly what restrictions would apply to you. That information should be the deciding factor in whether returning later is a realistic option.