I am currently a senior in high school and have been
having a problem that began during freshman year with
one of my classmates.

Every morning when I come to school, I make sure to
greet him and ask him how he is feeling. Every
morning without fail for the past four years, I have
always been greeted with a pretentious tone of “I am
well, thank you,” which invariably starts my teeth
a-gnashin’.

I am quite sure that the word “good” should be used in
place of “well” because of the rule on auxiliary
verbs. However, I was wondering if you could set
things straight once and for all! Thanks a bunch!
(Ah, how I love tomato puns!)

Sincerely,
Grieved with Grammar

I have a problem with work I was hoping to get your
opinion on. Feel free to tell me to keep my nose out
of other people’s business.

My office is not a very happy place to work. Everyone
in the company generally gets along well, as far as I
can tell, but my department has gotten screwed over in
new and interesting ways (“That client you all despise?
Now he’s your boss!”) repeatedly in the past year. From
what I’ve heard, everyone is looking for a new job and
would leave at the drop of a hat should the
opportunity present itself (one former supervisor
demoted himself, then went to work at Kinko’s because he
couldn’t take it anymore). But that’s more background
than problem.

I have a coworker who is consistently late. And I’m
not talking 15 or 20 minutes — I mean up to two hours or
more. The department works on shifts — I’m 2 PM to
midnight; he usually works 6:30 PM to 2:30 AM.
Since his shift doesn’t start until most or all of the
regular 9-5ers are out of the office, I’m not sure if
anyone else knows that he sometimes doesn’t come in
until after 8. The situation is more complicated
because although we don’t do the same job, our jobs do
overlap. If he is out sick, I (or someone else in the
department) have to do his job.

The thing is, he’s a good guy and has an increasingly
crappy job with bad hours. I get that he doesn’t want
to be here but his lateness is driving me nuts. I
don’t want to be the office tattletale, running to our
supervisor to complain. But I have a really
overdeveloped sense of duty — yeah, it sucks, but
you’re getting paid to be here from 6:30 to 2:30, so
you show up. My approach so far has been pretty
passive-aggressive, refusing to do his work when he
isn’t here (but is supposed to be) and hoping someone
higher up will notice. That doesn’t seem to be
working. I want to just ask him, “Dude, did you realize
you were supposed to be here at 4:30 this afternoon
when you showed up at 7?” Because, you know, maybe he
didn’t realize the schedule had changed (as it seems
to every week) or maybe he was working at home
(possible, but highly discouraged).

I know I probably just need to keep my mouth shut, but
there is constant complaining in our department that
the rest of the company doesn’t take us seriously and
a general rumor that the company is making things as
bad as possible and waiting for us all to quit so they
can maintain their “we never lay anyone off!” image.
And employees who show up two hours late on a regular
basis only feed the idea that we aren’t worth keeping.
I really don’t need to lose this job before I can find
another one.

Any thoughts on what I should do — if anything?

Sincerely,
They don’t pay me enough to put up with this crap

My best friend from college, and the only one still living in the same city as me, is very oversensitive, needy (at least in the context of our friendship — she actually admitted this once), and whiny. I have always enjoyed our friendship, and I have fun when we go out and do an activity or hit the social scene.

However, for the past six months, I have felt my energy and enthusiasm for our friendship drain away as she becomes more and more negative. She calls me at least four-five times a day, and each phone call consists solely of her complaints. She rarely asks how I am, and my only contribution to the conversation is to say “that sucks” a bunch of times. This is because most of the issues that she brings up I have already given her concrete advice about (including physically giving her referrals to therapy since I work in the field). She never takes my advice, just continues to complain. She is often oversensitive about the way her other friends treat her, and I have tried to subtly hint that she takes things too personally. Sars, I know you will say, “Then stop the hinting and say it clearly,” but I know that this will lead to her being overly sensitive about my remarks on this topic. I have also taken to purposely ignoring her phone calls, which seems mean, and makes me feel like a bad friend.

Basically, I must walk on eggshells around her, I am constantly worried that she will be mad at me, or that I will set off a bout of depression, and in the meantime, I am emotionally drained by being her sole support, and get very little out of our friendship. She oftens apologizes to me for “being this way” and being such a “downer,” but of course, I say that she is silly and not to worry about it, because I know that acknowledging that she is, in fact, a downer, will only bring her down further. Do you have any suggestions on how to improve her outlook and our friendship?

Thanks,
Friend In Need

Seeking your always-excellent advice directly for the first time.

The background: I started a new job about three months ago, and it’s
incredibly busy, but great. I came to the company via an old friend
who had been both telling me for years that I should come work there
and telling the CEO for years that he should hire me. After a recent
reiteration of this, he and I agree to meet for coffee (mostly as a
favor to her on my part, and I assume on his as well). We have
coffee, we hit it off, two hours later he tells me I should come work
there, I say “um, sure,” the next day I negotiate salary and start
date with HR, and two weeks later I’m there. The company is great, 75
people or so, and I’m one of ten directors under five VPs, your standard
corporate setup.

I learn later that people just aren’t hired like that at this company
— there are several open positions where people have been trying to
bring candidates in, and there are all sorts of hoops and hurdles.
There’s some initial friction with a few of my other directors who
wonder why I was able to bypass that, but we get past all of that once
they see I’m competent and can do my job. We all get along
splendidly; life is good.

The current situation: I’m working on a project that is a bit hectic,
and it requires some involvement from the CEO. As the CEO is kind of
a hands-on guy, we’ve started spending a lot of time together. In
fact, as we both live about 30 miles from the office, and it’s more
convenient to meet where we won’t be interrupted, we’ve been spending
a lot of time together out of the office. Since it’s even more
convenient to meet in a quiet place where we can spread out our
paperwork and draw on a whiteboard and not have to worry about talking
confidential stuff in front of other coffee shop patrons, we’ve been
meeting at his house. And since work days get pretty busy, we’ve been
meeting up on weekends, ordering dinner in, working, hanging out, all
of which is very nice, and all of which is highly unusual — he’s not
meeting up with the other directors or even the VPs on weekends over
dinner at his house.

You see where this is going.

I too see where this is going, and realize how much easier it would be
if I didn’t want this to go there. If I didn’t feel really attracted
to this man and enjoy what appears to be his attraction to me, it
would be easy to say, “Hey, let’s schedule this meeting for Monday
afternoon at the office.” Instead, however, he says things like, “Hey,
call me over the weekend if you want to catch up,” and I say, “Yes,
let’s plan to talk Saturday,” knowing that this will of course lead to
meeting up on Sunday.

Part of me thinks this might just be some weird Stockholm Syndrome
thing where I’m getting so completely sucked in to work that I’m
falling for him by default, but mostly I think that he and I have hit
it off since we first met and it’s just grown from there. And though
we’ve had more and more moments of the sort of eye contact that speaks
volumes and flirty banter and standing too close together, we have not
actually taken anything further. He’s four years older than me,
single, smart as a whip, Jewish — if I’d met him in any other context,
I’d probably be dating him already.

There is no corporate policy on workplace relationships, and if this
was someone at my level or even at a senior level who was not my
immediate superior, I’d probably go for it. The fact that this is the
CEO makes me a bit more reluctant — mostly in imagining the various
THINGS GO HORRIBLY WRONG scenarios. This is complicated even further
by the fact that we’re in the process of hiring the VP who would run
my department, and gosh, won’t that be fun when s/he figures out that
there’s something going on between us (if in fact there is).

So, Sars, is this a wait and see sort of thing? I know that I could
easily shut this down if I wanted to, but I’m realizing more and more
that I don’t want to. I’m also not sure how/if to bring this up with
him, but am reasonably sure that it’s more awkward and difficult for
him to bring it up with me, harassment policies being what they are.
I’m also reasonably sure that getting drunk at the company holiday
party and seeing what happens isn’t the best idea either.

Help me oh wise Sars!

Crushed out on the Chief Exec

I’m writing to you because I enjoy the advice that you give and I hope that you can be of some help to me.

I’m eighteen years old and I’m on the verge of, well, life. High school is almost over, and I’m busily filling out all these applications and financial aid forms. In other words, I’m going through what thousands of other teenagers my age are going through.

My problem is that I feel…old. I feel like I’ve missed out on something in my youth. I’m the farthest you can get from being a delinquent. I’ve never had sex, never kissed a girl, never even been on a date. I’ve never been suspended from school and I’ve never even had detention. I’m fairly proud of myself for abdicating from sex, drugs, and alcohol, but it seems like other kids have had an opporunity to grow up and make mistakes and “know” themselves while I am “green” to everything.

My parents don’t want me to go to college out of my state because, along with the financial ramifications, they say I’m not “ready” for it. I tell them it’s not uncommon for kids worse off than myself, financially and otherwise, to go away to college but they still think I won’t “make it.” You’d think a kid who has a pretty good track record with staying out of trouble and making decent grades would have a modicum of his parents’ trust when it comes down to going away.

So my questions are, what should I do? Should I stay in state under the watchful eye of my parents or go to a school in a state where I know no one? What should I do about this feeling of loss?

Sincerely,
R.I.P. Mr. Carson