my mom’s job relies on her too much, coworker sends me AI slop, and more

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

1. My mom’s job relies on her too much and she lets them

I was an accident baby, and the man who fathered me didn’t really stay around, so it’s always been my mom. We had her side of the family such as my grandma, great grandparents, and my uncle (my mom’s brother), but in terms of financing it was largely my mom.

I’m in college at the moment and its been difficult finding a job that isn’t just seasonal, and the permanent one I had was very toxic (lots of crying from me and hazing from my boss). I possibly have something in the fall and I want to be optimistic, but it depends if they will have openings.

So with all this in mind — for a long time, my mother had her own pet grooming business, but she decided to move to a bigger one (one of the multinational brands) a few years ago.

This place has been awful to her, despite her dedication and using her own money to make events go well, and she has improved sales by a lot. Despite running various parts of the store, she keeps getting passed up for higher jobs. The hardest thing, though, is that they are taking advantage of her, practically abusing her. Seemingly every day, someone is calling out and my mama is called in … and she goes! We will have plans or she will just be having a nice day off and they’ll call her and she will go!

My grandmother says it’s my mother setting a good example, but I think her going just tells her coworkers that they can do whatever and she’ll cover their asses. She is looking for other places but that means starting “all over,” as she put it, and not many places are hiring to begin with. She also says it’s so she can get more money, because I don’t have a job at the moment.

I want my mother to establish firm boundaries so they aren’t doing whatever with her, but I don’t think she’ll listen because I haven’t had a long-term job or I’m seen as young and inexperienced even though I’m turning 25 this year.

I just want to actually be able to go to the goddamn museum with my mother.

Yeah, if your sense is that your mom doesn’t take you seriously on work issues because she doesn’t think you have enough experience, you’re not well-positioned to really get through to her on this; she may simply dismiss you as not understanding the pressures she feels.

However, you can certainly talk to her as her daughter and tell you that you’re worried about her not having any real time off without always being on call, and you can tell her that you want to be able to spend time with her without getting interrupted by work. You can point out that most jobs allow people real time off (she might think you’re wrong about that, but you’re not), and that she deserves that too. You can try asking what she thinks would happen if she did the exact same thing her coworkers seem to be doing and not be available every single day, and you could even ask if she’d experiment with it just once to get more data for herself about what happens. But ultimately, you may have to accept that this is your mom’s to work through and your ability to influence her is limited (and may always be limited, even once you do have more professional experience to cite, because that is often the case with parent-child dynamics).

2. How to get someone to stop sending AI slop

I’m part of a project team that includes reps from other agencies. One of these external colleagues keeps suggesting additional deliverables in our meetings and volunteering to take the lead on producing them. This would be fine, if she weren’t producing them with AI and sending me screeds of incorrect content.

The first time it happened, I just sucked it up and reviewed it as if it were her own work, and she made significant changes following that made it much better (including cutting it back from a 10-page document to a little over one page).

The next time, I gave her a call and talked her through my concerns with the content, which she did respond well to. Again, an edited version followed which was much better. She can absolutely do great work, once prompted!

But then she also followed up with a 12-page AI document and I despaired.

I know her org is really encouraging AI use, so just told her that, while I was happy for her to use tools like this to shape her thinking, I didn’t think sharing it with the group was the best approach. Instead, I suggested she speak to her perspective along to our next meeting for us all to make a decision together. Her response back was immediately defensive and claimed that it wasn’t “just” AI, that she’d provided it with prompts and contextual materials, and also iteratively edited it.

I don’t know what to do next! Maybe I went wrong by outright pointing out the AI of it all, but I’m so busy and being asked to review and respond to screeds of slop is an issue in addition to the poor quality of the content itself.

Would it work to ask her for one-page documents from the beginning? The better work she does herself seems to be shorter — and if shorter is always (or usually) going to be a better choice for this stuff anyway, that might be a way to get to the better work faster.

Otherwise, you could handle it the same way you would if this were happening a few years ago without AI involved at all, if her first drafts were always bad and her second ones always significantly improved. For instance, after the next bad draft you might say, “I’m seeing the same issues that we talked about with the first drafts of X and Y. Can you look at that feedback and incorporate it into this one and then I’ll take a look after that?”

Or you could just be straightforward: “My sense is that using AI for these is leading to issues like XYZ, which then takes a lot of time to review and respond to. You should use whatever tools help you produce good work, but regardless of what tools you’re using, I want to make sure you’ve already edited for things like YXZ before it comes to me.” Or you could skip the AI mention there and just say: “The last few first drafts have had issues like XYZ, which then takes up a lot of time to review and respond to. Can you edit for things like YXZ before it comes to me?”

3. Should we do a collection for our grieving coworker?

I work in an office building that supports a regional educational program. Our department has dwindled over the years and we’re fairly close-knit. Our managers work alongside us physically, but they keep themselves distant otherwise. When we occasionally organize office get-togethers, such as a potluck to celebrate a milestone birthday, they are always invited but rarely participate. I believe some of them do contribute to collections for a gift card, but that’s about it. If there’s no collection, they don’t even acknowledge what’s going on. Our building in general will hold large celebrations for major and minor holidays/events, and I have been told by a few people that our department director has told the organizers to not include our department. This dynamic is odd to me, to say the least, and it is a sore point for some of my colleagues.

One of my coworkers recently experienced the sudden and unexpected loss of an immediate family member. They are out on bereavement and my coworkers would like to do a collection, possibly for a food card. We have been waiting for an email from their manager with any information, but it has not come even though they’ve been gone almost a week now. The loss was not even announced. From my understanding, they did speak to a couple of coworkers about the situation, so we can confirm that it happened and that it wasn’t being kept private. Due to distance, we also knew that attending a wake or sending flowers wasn’t going to be an option, but the expectation was that something would be done. After speaking with their manager, it would appear that the manager is not a fan of the practice and does not believe it would help but will (I think slightly begrudgingly) facilitate a collection due to the office sentiment.

On the one hand, I don’t necessarily disagree with her as I understand that the family was taken care of and is not in need of a food card, nor do I believe anything can “help” in these circumstances. That being said, I also understand my coworkers who would very much like to support our grieving colleague and are a bit incensed at the coldness/lack of response. Some even mentioned that we should do our own separate collection but I don’t think that would be a good idea due to the office dynamics. Do you think a collection is a bad idea here?

Some offices do collections in situations like this and some don’t. The most important thing isn’t whether you do it or don’t do it; rather, it’s that (a) you are consistent in how you treat people so someone doesn’t end up feeling slighted when they aren’t supported in the same way a colleague was, (b) if you do it, people can opt out without any pressure, since no one should feel obligated to contribute money at work, and (c) the bereaved person feels the support of her team in some way — like a card, people acknowledging the loss when she’s back, a manager proactively adjusting her workload in the weeks following it, etc.

Separately, though, what’s up with your director telling event organizers not to include your department in building celebrations? That part is extremely odd.

4. HR refused a medical accommodation and now my wife can’t get to work

My wife is an outpatient medical professional in a hospital system with multiple locations and is at a location with multiple people in her position.

One of the locations within her system is currently understaffed, and the great-great-grandbosses are not allowing her boss or grandboss to hire new staff to fill the position, requiring them to shift staff from my wife’s location to the understaffed location first. For a variety of reasons, they have decided that my wife should be the person shifted instead of her coworkers.

This is a problem for my wife because her physical disability limits how far she can drive at a time. Her current work site is within the range she can drive; the new work site is not. Her boss and grandboss know this. She has thorough documentation from her medical team, who also work in the same hospital system.

She was told she needed to apply for an accommodation through HR, which she did. Her boss said that she did not think that the accommodation was unreasonable, but her hands were tied by her grandboss on the change in job site until HR formally approved the accommodation.

HR just reported back that they were unable to accommodate her request because HR only covers elements of her job description, and travel from her home to work is not part of her job. They compared it to a situation where an employee had a seizure that prevented them from driving; in that situation, according to HR, it would be the employee’s responsibility to find a new way to get to work, and if they couldn’t, the company wouldn’t even be required to hold their job under employment law, because such laws only apply to job duties.

This seems to us to be an excellent way to force a disabled employee out of the company (which is doubly gross because this is a hospital system doing it), but we’re not sure where she can go from here or if there even is anywhere to go from here except for job hunting. Do you have any advice?

Actually, courts have held that the ADA can indeed require employers to consider a change in job site (or in this case, not changing a job site) in order to accommodate an employee. So the best next step would be to talk with a lawyer to help your wife explain that and otherwise navigate this. Some helpful links:

Must an Employer Accommodate a Disabled Employee Who Is Able to Work but Unable to Commute?

Job Accommodation Network: Accommodations Related to Commuting To and From Work

5. Interviewing in the middle of an ongoing medical situation

I am currently seeking new employment. I am also going through reconstruction after a mastectomy. The reconstruction will require doctor’s visits every two weeks for about three months, which will likely take less than half a work day, and then ultimately minor surgery, which will probably be on a Friday so will only require a couple of days off. How do I address this with prospective employers?

Wait until you’re offered the job and then, as part of negotiating, explain the time off you’ll need. Most employers would agree to this without it being a big deal, but it’ll be easier to nail it down as part of the offer negotiation than after you’ve already started.

Related:
everything you need to know about time off when you start a new job