My Boss “Babies” My Co-Worker. It’s Getting Weird.

Good Job Photo illustration by Slate. Photo by WeBond Creations/iStock/Getty Images Plus. Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily. Good Job is Slate’s advice column on work. Have a workplace problem big or small? Send it to Laura Helmuth and Doree Shafrir here. (It’s anonymous!) Dear Good Job, My team is made up of two people: myself and one other co-worker. Both of us are women in our mid-20s, and our boss is a married man in his early 40s (who talks about his wife a lot). I’m the one with more experience in our field, and I’m picking up more of the work. However, my teammate seems to have an interesting, close relationship with my manager (perhaps too close) and gets away with not showing up to the office and consistently doing less work than me. He also babies her when she doesn’t know how to do a task that is one of our job requirements. How should I handle the situation to make it more equitable? —Stressed and Depressed Dear Stressed and Depressed, The relationship between your peer and your boss could be romantic (not that a 20-year age gap, spouse, and power imbalance is “romantic”). If so, it’s inappropriate and gross, and you shouldn’t have to witness their workplace goo-goo eyes. But from what you know so far, it sounds like he’s more helpful to her than to you because she needs more help. She might be taking sick leave or dealing with emergencies she hasn’t shared with you on those days she doesn’t come to work. You also don’t really know what she gets away with because she might have been given notice that she’ll lose her job if she doesn’t improve her performance. It’s no fun seeing a co-worker get preferential treatment, if that’s what that is, but try to focus on your own job and career. Do you have quarterly or annual check-ins to discuss your performance? If not, ask for a meeting with your boss to talk about your work. Whatever the occasion, come prepared to talk about your successes, especially anything that made or saved money, improved relationships with clients, or made your team look good within your organization. Remind him that you have a lot of experience in your field, are very efficient, and do a lot of your team’s work. Ask him about the next steps to advance in your career. Could you take on interesting new responsibilities, train for new projects, and collaborate with other teams? If you’re doing your work well while your peer struggles, your boss might not have noticed your quiet competence. If there are tasks you’d rather not do because they’re boring, you could suggest your peer take on more of those while you focus on the more interesting parts of the job. (Describe it as a way to “improve efficiency” rather than cherry-picking projects.) You say your boss “babies” your peer when she can’t do something. If it’s not too aggravating, offer to train her in those tasks she’s struggling with—not out of generosity, although I assume other people helped train you—but so you can get credit for it when it’s time to distribute raises. Please keep questions short (<150 words), and don‘t submit the same question to multiple columns. We are unable to edit or remove questions after publication. Use pseudonyms to maintain anonymity. Your submission may be used in other Slate advice columns and may be edited for publication. Dear Good Job, I’ve been in my corporate job for four years, and I still completely trip over my words at meetings. It’s so embarrassing. Meetings and presenting are a big part of my job; just this past week I had to present to our chief financial officer about a new project he’s hoping we’ll get off the ground this fall. I do well with all the predictable parts of presentations that I control: creating the slides and going through what I planned with my notes by my side. But when I’m put on the spot with questions or tangents, I lose my confidence and end up stumbling over my words a bunch. I want to master this! But practice is not making perfect in this case. How do I stop being a nervous babbling mess when I’m in charge? —Tongue Tied Dear Tongue Tied, If it’s any comfort, a speaker’s stumbles are typically much more noticeable to them than to the audience. I don’t mean to minimize the problem of losing confidence and precision when you have to divert from your planned presentation—a lot of people have this experience. But I encourage you to remember that most of your presentation succeeded, even if the thing you remember best was that one surprise question you couldn’t answer. You can prepare a few multi-purpose responses for the next time you get an unexpected question: “That’s a good question. Let me look into that and get back to you with a complete answer.” “That’s a little beyond what we have time for today, but I can send a memo with additional information after the meeting.” “Yes, that’s an interesting angle. Why don’t we talk about that after this meeting?” “Thank you, that question ties into a point I’m going to make in a few slides.” If you stumble over your words, say, “Excuse me,” or “What I mean to say is…” and try again. Take a breath, look at your slides, and get back to the presentation you planned. You will get better at handling unexpected questions and interruptions as you give more presentations. You could also do drills: Set a few timers to go off during a run-through of your presentation, pretend the alarms represent colleagues asking something off-topic, and practice deflecting them. As the featured speaker, the floor is yours, and you don’t have to answer every question or follow your audience on tangents. When the person interrupting you is the CFO or someone else with a lot of power in the organization, another option is to ask them to tell you what they think. People in the C-suite love to tell you what they think. You risk not being able to convey everything you need to during the allotted time, but they’ll think you’re a genius for asking their opinion. —Laura More Advice From Slate In my husband’s family, it is a “tradition” to hand down baby items to the next pregnant family member. I am an only child and respect this to an extent, but most of the stuff isn’t valuable like a christening gown—it’s onesies, threadbare teddy bears, and beat-up strollers. A lot of the stuff isn’t safe to use. I caused a tiff because I refused to use my cousin-in-law’s car seat with my second child and offended the family by sending them all a copy of the recall notice for the car seat (they wouldn’t drop the subject until I did)… Never miss new Slate Advice columns Get the latest from Prudie and our columnists in your inbox each weekday, plus special bonus letters on Saturdays. Advice Workplace Jobs