The Moment I Realized Who My New Coworker Was, I Knew I Didn’t Have the Capacity to Be His Professional Colleague

Good Job Photo illustration by Slate. Photos by 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, I work in a niche field and my company has about 65 employees out of three offices nationwide. I manage a small team, and report up to a generally OK manager who has some turf wars with our other offices. Last week I got a message that our sister team, with whom we work daily, has unexpectedly made a new hire at the individual contributor level. They’re in another state but I’m on Zoom with them almost every day. I never expected to see the new hire in my field, let alone have to work closely with him. The person they’ve hired is my ex-fiancé, who broke off our relationship in 2021. I was blindsided and heartbroken. I packed up and moved to another state. I got a new job (wow I miss the 2021 economy) and completely cut contact because I couldn’t be friends. I built a different life for myself, and I’m happy here. I saw him at a college reunion this summer, which confirmed that I definitely still have feelings, and he has definitely moved on. It was rough. But this isn’t an awkward social event I can sneak out of: This is my job. I don’t think I have the capacity to work professionally with my ex. What do I do? —Of All the Gin Joints in All the World (she/her) Dear Of All the Gin Joints in All the World, I am shuddering in sympathy, as are most people reading your letter. This is an awful situation, but there are things you can do to ease the pain and awkwardness. Your employer probably has an employee assistance program that can quickly connect you with a therapist. If you are already in therapy, ask for an emergency session to prepare yourself for the shock of working daily with the ex you moved states to avoid. The video conference meetings will be hard. If these calls are held in a conference room and you’re surrounded by co-workers, bring your own computer and find something you need to look at that isn’t the projection screen with his stupid face on it. If you’re on the call without other people in the room, some programs allow you to block certain participants’ videos from appearing on your screen. Do that so you don’t have to see his stupid face. If not, you can pin one person’s video and thereby minimize the other feeds or push them off the main display. If nothing else, use a sticky note to cover up the part of your screen displaying the video of his stupid face. If you work from home, go ahead and decorate it with a skull and crossbones. The end of the year is a good time to reassess how many video conferences you really need to attend. Research on meeting science shows that standing meetings tend to bore and frustrate people. Could some of these be an email or Slack conversation instead? Does every person involved need to attend every meeting, or could you designate one representative from each team to handle communications? You can’t completely avoid seeing your ex’s stupid face, but you can try to minimize your exposure. This is hard, but it will get easier. Your sense of humor helps—your sign-off shows that you recognize the absurdity of your film-noir-worthy situation. Remember that you are in a position of relative power at work. You have more experience in this niche field and in your company, and you lead a team. Be cordial to your ex but not warm. Don’t mention your past connection to co-workers, because this is hot gossip even for people who feel horrible for you, and you don’t want to feel scrutinized by an audience when you interact with the ex. If he blabs and people ask you about him, dismiss their question with something vague: “We knew each other at college and when I lived in [his state].” And please know that this new employee with his stupid face is not the same person you fell in love with. He’s changed, you’ve changed, and your lingering feelings were forged before you knew he was someone who would shock you with a breakup. It doesn’t diminish the reality and power of your past relationship to think of him as somebody you used to know. —Laura Advice Dating and Relationships Workplace