Thinking Outside the Box

The thing with giving "professional advice" -- or receiving it from a "Work Buddy" -- is that everyone's interpretation is individually driven.  Hence, there's not a "right" answer here...

1) Re. the person who wrote in after hosting a Zoom meeting in which a participant noticebly "vaped" on camera several times, the advice columnist wrote essentially, "Why do you care? Let it go..."

Ok, fair enough. BUT... think of the poor person at the meeting who is trying to quit smoking who maybe doesn't want to be required to watch that at work.  Like with eating, if you're trying to diet.  Or drinking or whatever.  If a person can remove themselves from the situation at work, it works.  If not, it's not fair to make a captive audience watch your personal habits just because they work with you and cannot walk away. (It's horror to watch a movie/tv with people casually smoking when you're quitting, I hear. Sparks the urge to fire up.)

It's cool to do your thing, make your own choices sure, just vape before the meeting and after, like workers take smoke breaks while at work.  No problem. But you can't do it while you're with others doing your job. Just take a few minutes personal time to get away, relax and do your thing.  Not on camera with others watching.

My advice would be: next time you host, lay out some ground rules: "Friends, we're going to try to keep this meeting short.  Thanks for coming, and please, for the next 20 minutes (no Zoom meeting lasts  more than 20 minutes, right?) as we work through the planned agenda, let's not eat or smoke (or masturbate -- if you work at places with guys/gals where this needs special spellin' out) or otherwise get distracted during the meeting, ok?  Thanks.

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2)  Re. "the company retreat being hosted in the 'common rooms' of a colleague's condo"

Ruh roh. Red flag right there. The advice columnist naively thinks this is about cost savings, and is all "girl, why do you care if the underling is good to host?" when other departments pay for professional spaces for out-of-office retreats...

Advice columnist? Often the goodwill fomented at these annual 'retreat' "meetings" spills into separate private parties post-meeting, you know that right? Company Christmas party in the summertime, say. And underlings often are pressured -- whether they recognize it at the time or not, key being: "at the time" -- to continue to host the gathering, even after the majority of the people have left the main event.

Keep the office  meetings as far away from the personal spaces and the beds in the bedrooms as you can.  Everybody needs to use the bathroom, and eventually the meeting room rented in the common area of the condo will be closed... Think ahead.  Think liability.  Look out for the underlings, and listen to the concerns of the colleagues who call out -- in advance -- any deviation from standard procedure regarding hosting meetings.

Yes, it could all be an innocuous scheduling error.  And the junior person stepped up with a cost-saving solution.  And everybody goes home, at the same time, happy the professional meeting went well.  So let's just use the corporate budget to make certain of that, and rent a professional place to host the professional meeting for the professionals, so everyone knows that professional behavior only is what's expected and tolerated.  That's good solid advice, to and from, work buddies everywhere -- senior and junior and everybody caught in between...

3)  Re. Calendar scheduling for Academics and Professionals.

No advice here.  I'd say, keep your pre-set appointments.  But remember: if you miss enough work meetings, and don't show, in most places, you aren't on staff forever.  But once you get that magic tenure, it seems, you can kinda shove in others' faces how much of your personal life you perform on company time for top dollar.  That'll change too, in time, but for now:  the academic and corporate tenure is like the golden egg.  Pass on giving calendaring advice to others.  Take control of your time. And if you take BigPay, put in the BigWork that accompanies the paycheck, even if you have to sacrifice family time and make provisions well in advance to "cover" your absences at home.  That's not what you're being paid for, as many overextended professional families sadly learn when they overbudget their time.  Don't short the job if you're taking the professional pay. The work needs to be done and it shows when you don't perform. That's all I got.

4)  Lol.  I would take the advice she gives here and apply it to situation number three.  If you're not showing up to communicate with your co-workers, and working with them is a part of your job, it will affect your performance.  Here, the Work Buddy wisely advises:  if your work performance isn't meeting the job needs of the people who are paying you to perform, you need to be "unelected" so people who can better do the job have the opportunity.