I lost my temper at a teammate, coworkers keep using my desk, and more

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

1. I lost my temper at a teammate who said I was rude

I’m a student doing my final year group project. To get my degree, a large project has to be completed by a team of five. My teammate, Nora, had an internship as the project began and so could not help. Brooke and I began work and assigned work to the other two members. The heaviest workload was on me as I knew that particular technology well. I found this very stressful as I also had to prepare for job interviews and attend class, but I did my best, thinking Nora could help me out when she finished the internship.

When Nora eventually did finish the internship, she was less help than I expected. Whatever little work she did, I had to correct. I even had Covid when I had to fix her work for her. Whenever I asked her to learn a new technology to do some work, she just refused. The other member had lots of work so I had to take it up. Everything she did required step by step guidance and was very frustrating, as I had to explain the same topic multiple times to her, only for her to forget. Eventually Brooke and I finished the project and Nora had done essentially negative work. Brooke and I had to fix everything she did.

As a requirement for the project, we had to submit a report. Nora had to do one topic with tables (I had to make the tables for her) and label the tables. Nora called me up multiple times to say that it was too much work and I initially said that I didn’t mind what she did. She called me up one last time saying that she could not get it to work, and I replied saying it’s her problem and hung up.

I solved the issue and sent a text stating that if she wanted, she could use my solution. She replied saying she never asked me to do the work for her. I said that I didn’t mind if she deleted it if she didn’t want it. She later texted me saying it was rude of me to say it was her problem and that she was just asking for help. I said I didn’t care if she did it and she reiterated that I was being rude. I completely lost my temper because it’s unfair of her to do so little work and make me and the rest of the team do all the work.

I regret losing my temper and I will be apologizing for that. What would you have done in my situation? How could I handle people like Nora in the future?

This is the problem with group projects at school; there’s not the same kind of accountability that there would be (or at least should be) if it happened at work. In a work situation if a colleague wasn’t pulling their weight on a shared project, you’d first ask them for what you needed and, if that didn’t resolve it, pull in your manager for help. A good manager would then intervene with the person causing the problem. (There are a whole bunch of other ways group projects at school can be harder than they are at work — for example, at work it’s usually clear who should play what role and take the lead on what, and in class projects that’s often left up to you to negotiate on your own. At work it’s also usually clear who has the power to make decisions and hold people accountable, whereas with class projects that often not the case.)

I suspect you lost your temper with Nora because you weren’t given any constructive options to deal with her lack of work. Ideally your professor should have told you at the outset what recourse you would have if a team member didn’t pull their weight (presumably coming to her for help). Assuming that wasn’t made clear to you, it’s understandable that you felt like you were supposed to solve it on your own, and maybe you even worried that it would reflect badly on you if you didn’t. But if you could do it over, I’d tell you that once it became clear Nora wasn’t doing her share of the work, you should have gone to your professor (well before it reached the point that you were so frustrated that you risked exploding), explained what was happening, and asked for help. It’s not fair for you to be stuck feeling that you have to cajole and persuade someone who you have no power to hold accountable; at that point you really should be able to turn to someone who does have power.

2. Coworkers use our shared desk all the time

At my job, there are four desks in the office but eight staff who often require them. I am the longest serving employee and I’ve always had a desk that I keep all my things in and use the computer — a previous manager gave me this desk.

I understand that with new management and too many colleagues, I will not always be able to have access to my desk 100% of the time as others need it too. However, now it seems like I am never able to access my desk. I of course can use another desk if it is free, but all my paperwork, personal stationery, etc., is on that desk so it becomes very inconvenient when I have to move. Often colleagues will choose my desk over other free desks, leaving me feeling petty if I ask if they can move because my things are there. The desk is now not technically “mine” though, it’s shared.

Today, I was using another desk and asked the colleague using my desk if I could use my fan (which was plugged into the computer at my desk). My colleague said, “No, I’m using it and I’m dying.” This, on top of not being able to use my own desk for at least a week, made me angry. When I pay for my things, I don’t expect someone else to decide when their need for it is greater than mine.

I want my desk back in a more balanced share, and to be able to ask for use of my things without sounding petty and possessive.

There are two separate issues here: the desk, and the use of your personal things. It sounds like the desk is no longer yours and instead is up for grabs by everyone who shares desks … but you’re still thinking of it as “yours.” If the system is that no one owns any one desk, you’ll be better off if you shift your perspective so you no longer think of it as yours. You’re getting frustrated not to have use of it for many days in a row, but it sounds like that’s allowed within the system that’s been set up. If it’s causing a real work problem and you have a legitimate need for it more often than other people do, you could raise that with your manager and see if you could reclaim it — but if that doesn’t happen, then I think you do need to accept that you don’t have more of a claim on the desk than anyone else does.

But your personal belongings like your fan are a different story. You don’t need to ask your coworkers if you can use your own belongings or wait for them to agree! I suspect you presented it as a request to your fan-using coworker to be polite — but going forward you should simply say, “I need to grab my fan and move it to where I’m sitting today” and then do that. It’s yours; you don’t need anyone’s permission to use it. If someone says no, they’re using it, you can say, “Oh, it’s actually my personal fan that I brought it and I need it.” (And who knows, maybe they don’t realize that and mistakenly think it’s shared property like the desk itself.)

3. Food allergies during recruiting events

I am currently in a professional school, entering a career that has a heavy recruiting season (think law, management consulting, investment banking). Attending recruitment events that are hosted by firms helps applicants immensely, since they keep a record of events attended as a way of gauging candidates’ interest in them. Some of these are exclusively sit-down dinners, and I’m currently in a summer mentorship program by one organization that culminates in a sit-down dinner. One problem: I have several food allergies and am vegetarian, and to date none of these events have asked any information about allergies! Every event has a vegetarian dish, but a lot of them are cheese-based and I’m allergic to dairy.

I’m worried that if I ask about allergy-friendly dishes beforehand I’ll look demanding, and if I go but then don’t eat something the employees have almost always made comments that they feel really bad for not considering allergies beforehand, and making someone feel guilty also seems like … not the greatest career move. Should I go and suck it up and eat things that I only have mild allergies to, which will only give me a stomachache (though it also increases my chance of stomach cancer down the line)? Should I just avoid these events and the networking opportunities they present? Or is there a polite way to communicate dietary needs without looking demanding?

Do not make yourself sick, let alone increase your chances of cancer, in order to avoid mentioning your dietary needs! It doesn’t look demanding to politely explain your food restrictions; any decent employer will appreciate knowing in advance so they can accommodate you, rather than scrambling during the meal to try to find something you can eat, or learning you can’t eat anything there at all, or realizing they made you sick. In fact, dealing with this gracefully can show you have professional maturity and polish (after all, you’re going to have to deal with lots of situations on the job where you have to speak up politely about something someone needs).

It’s very normal to say beforehand (like when you’re RSVPing to an event), “I have some food allergies. Would it be possible to get a vegetarian meal without X or Y?”

4. Should I tell my boss that I will leave if things don’t change?

I have a good job, but my workload is unsustainable (and has been for the past 18 months). I have told my boss this on numerous occasions, but to date nothing has been done. I feel as though the only way to really show the severity of the situation is to tell him that if things don’t change then I will have to leave. Is this a terrible idea?

It’s not a great idea. First, do you really want to work somewhere where the only way to get a workload problem addressed is to threaten to leave? Even if your boss responds to that, what’s going to happen the next time your workload becomes unsustainable, or something else is going on that he won’t address? You can’t threaten to leave every time; you need a boss who responds when there’s a genuine problem, not just when there’s a threat to leave. Second, letting him know you’ll leave over it comes with the risks that always accompany telling your boss you’re thinking about leaving — like the risk of being at the top of a layoff list if cuts need to be made because your boss figures you might leave anyway.

There are exceptions to this. You will find people who did have this talk with their boss and things changed for the better … but they are very much the exceptions and not the rule (and they still face the issue of why it took threatening to leave to get real action taken, which is a sign of real problems).

5. Highly designed resume templates

I’m curious about how much design should go into a resume. I work in a nonprofit area that is not especially conservative, but not exactly “creative,” either. My resume isn’t especially designed beyond some basic formatting to make it a little bit more readable and visually appealing than just a giant block of text. But I was glancing at the pre-designed resume templates in Word and … boy howdy. They are a lot. I’ve attached an example for reference.

I get wanting to stand out and look nice, but this feels excessive. Plus, it seems like a lot of wasted space! I’m a reasonably experienced and highly educated professional. I would rather provide details on my experience than a link to my Twitter! I’m recently back on the job market for the first time in six years and seeing that got me a little bit freaked out that standards for resumes have changed a lot in the last few years. Am I out of touch, or is MS Word? (Also the resume templates are “designed by” an online business card printer, so I’m wondering how much of this is all just a marketing ploy.)

It’s not you, it’s MS Word … and most other places that provide resume templates without actually having any particular expertise in what a resume should look like. A disturbing number of the templates out there are wildly over-designed and don’t serve the most basic mission of a resume, which is to present information in a concise, easily skimmable format that hiring managers want to see. Hiring managers don’t generally want graphics or “creative” presentation — they want your work history, presented chronologically from most recent backwards, a small amount of info on your education, sometimes a skill section (though only if it’s necessary in your field and only if those skills are objective ones like certifications — subjective self-assessments like “strong communication” don’t belong there and will be ignored), and sometimes a few extras like community service or volunteer work. That’s it. They do not want word clouds or skill ratings or giant blocks of color or any of the other gimmicks you will find in a lot of templates. They also do not want resumes that sacrifice function for form, and a lot of templates (like your example) leave very little room for the thing hiring managers care about most: the details of your accomplishments at each job.