My Service Dog and My Boss Hate Each Other. My Proposed Solution Might Be Going Too Far.

Good Job Photo illustration by Slate. Photo by Thais Cordeiro/iStock/Getty Images Plus and Jovanmandic/Getty Images Plus. 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, I have a trained and certified seizure alert dog who accompanies me to work. “Mavis” is barely medium-sized, fluffy, and fairly unintimidating, but she is also very closely bonded to and protective of me. I don’t believe she would ever bite anyone who didn’t physically assault me, but she growls and sometimes barks at anyone who even raises their voice to me. On my old team, which was uniformly composed of chill people, this was never a problem. But several months ago I was transferred to another team under “Sandra.” Sandra is known for being short-tempered. She is also not the best at explaining or verbalizing directions, and has a tendency to blame whoever she’s speaking to for failing to immediately read her mind. Almost every day Sandra ends up snapping at me over something, which causes Mavis to voice her displeasure. I’ve tried to explain to Sandra that Mavis is just a dog and thinks she’s protecting me, but Sandra insists on interpreting her behavior as blatant disrespect from a human subordinate, and escalating the situation by raising her voice further, which upsets Mavis more. Sandra has said, “That thing had better not come at me, or I’ll kick the **** out of it,” in a tone that implies she wishes Mavis would, just so she could do that. I’ve spoken to the trainers I got Mavis from, who recommend soothing her and demonstrating that the person upsetting her is not a threat to me by both of us smiling and speaking nicely to each other. But this is simply not possible when Sandra has her back up. I want to meet with Sandra’s supervisor about this but I’m not sure if it would be going too far to request that Sandra communicate with me only by email, or if absolutely necessary by phone. I’d really appreciate your advice. —Between Two Barkers Dear Between Two Barkers, I’m honestly confused and slightly horrified that someone like Sandra is in a position of authority at your job. She ends up snapping at you almost every day? Mavis aside, this is not the sign of a healthy manager-employee relationship. But escalating it to “that thing had better not come at me, or I’ll kick the **** out of it” is incredibly concerning. She has threatened violence against a service dog! If you haven’t yet reported this threat to HR in writing, you need to. Make sure to include the time and date that it occurred and the exact quote. This should be its own report, independent of whatever else is going on between Mavis and Sandra. I’m assuming that Mavis is a documented medical accommodation, and so you also need to be documenting all instances where Sandra is behaving inappropriately toward you and Mavis, and take that documentation to HR and Sandra’s supervisor. It should be up to her supervisor and HR to decide how to deal with her behavior—not up to you to offer solutions. All that being said, I am a little concerned about Mavis’s reactivity, especially for a trained service animal. I’d encourage you to go back to the trainer and ask them for specific solutions to deal with someone who’s just not going to smile and speak nicely to you. What can you do when someone does constantly have their back up with Mavis, as you describe? Even if Sandra’s supervisor decides that email-only interactions is the solution, there will still undoubtedly be times when you encounter her in the office. I’m hoping that with the trainer’s help, you can figure out a better solution on your end for these occurrences. 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 teach kindergarten, and over the last five or so years have been encountering a rather unpleasant issue with increasing frequency: Each new school year brings at least a few of my students who are not fully potty trained and arrive in pull-ups. There have been enough accidents that I now keep a stock of pull-ups on hand for when one invariably occurs. Speaking to parents generally leads nowhere. My requests for them to get their kids potty trained are met with varying excuses. I’ve taken the issue to the principal, whose response has been that there isn’t anything she can do and that I seem to have found a solution with my pull-up supply. The pull-ups are costly (I pay for them out of pocket), plus I don’t think the expectation that a 5-year-old be potty trained prior to beginning kindergarten is an unreasonable one. Can you offer any solutions? —Dreading More Diaper Duty Dear Dreading More Diaper Duty, I’m not sure if this will make you feel better or worse, but anecdotally, you’re not alone when it comes to having kindergarten-age students who aren’t fully potty trained yet. But I worry that your solution—to keep a supply of pull-ups in the classroom—is actually enabling the very situation you’re trying to avoid. First, a word of warning: You will likely have to go over your principal’s head because she seems wholly uninterested in helping you through this. So I would stop buying pull-ups for the classroom immediately, and also find out what the district policy actually is on handling potty accidents. Loop in your union rep (if you have one) as well. If a kid in your class has an accident, send them to the nurse or the front office, and make sure to document every time a child in your classroom has an accident. (I should also mention that if a child has an IEP and a specific disability involving toileting, then the responsibility to help them should be with an aide, not you.) I hope you can come to a solution that makes sense for you—and the kids. —Doree Classic Prudie My boyfriend was in a wedding recently for his good friend as a groomsman. When we first got the invite (we live together and have for 3 years) we discovered I wasn’t invited and he did not have a plus one. We’ve met this couple before, and they knew we had been dating for close to four years by that point. 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