You Can Still Wear Masks in Meetings

I will also say this — I imagine that if other arrangements were possible, she would have already made them. Perhaps her attitude is not so much entitlement as desperation. Another way to look at this is to ask yourself what you would hope for if the situation were reversed. How would you want your co-worker to help you? If you’re feeling generous, I’d suggest talking to this co-worker and finding out why she needs to leave early so you are dealing with a choice instead of an obligation that isn’t really yours at all.

The Importance of Being on Vacation

I notice that out of office messages now generally have a subject line of “out of office” or “away from email.” I think it is important to normalize taking vacation — and actually not working during vacation, so I have been using that as my subject line when I do take vacation (e.g. “on vacation; back on DATE.”). Using the “non-vacation” language has some advantages since it doesn’t make it clear when people are likely out for medical or family leave reasons, and I want people to be able to keep that private and not to ask me about why I am out of the office if I don’t tell them. I’m wondering if I should rethink my one-person campaign to make vacations visible.

— Deborah, Berkeley, Calif.

No need to rethink your campaign. If people want to be vague about being out of the office, for whatever reason, they can and will. For those of us who want to normalize vacations, something absolutely everyone deserves, this is a way to take a small but important stand. There is more to life than work. It’s also an incredibly healthy boundary to say you’re not at work and will not be doing work during your time off. More people should take vacations that are truly vacations and more people should have the means to do so. May your next vacation be as restful and restorative as you need it to be.

Mandatory Gifting

I work for a small company that’s entirely made up of women in our 20s and 30s, aside from our founder and C.E.O., who is a man in his late 40s. Every year, the directors of our team solicit contributions to buy a birthday gift and a Christmas gift for our C.E.O. The contributions they suggest for each gift are small ($10/person), they’re technically optional and the directors make up the rest from their own pockets.

But something about this still rubs me the wrong way. The messaging around these gifts is always that we’re thanking him for everything he does for us, but honestly he’s a somewhat removed leader. We don’t buy collective gifts for anyone else. He likely makes quite a bit more money than the rest of us. Am I overthinking this? If not, should I speak up about it to my boss, or should I just let it go since the contributions are supposedly optional and it’s just $20 a year? I’m not sure if my peers at the company feel the same way and I’ve been too afraid to bring it up lest I’m perceived as ungenerous.

— Anonymous

I love gift giving. As cheesy as it sounds, gift giving is my love language. But I never want to feel obligated to give gifts, particularly to people I don’t have some kind of personal relationship with. To that end, is not ungenerous to not want to give the C.E.O. of your company a gift. The power imbalance between you and your C.E.O. is significant. The income differential is also significant. He is not your friend. He will not love you because you and your co-workers give him gifts twice a year.

I understand why your team is doing this but the implied obligation would rankle me. You could, casually, ask your peers how they feel about this gift giving to help you decide how, if at all, to proceed. These sorts of things are so tricky because if you resist such mandatory “voluntary” gift giving, you’re not a team player and you don’t fit with the culture and so on. Those are pretty hard labels to shake, so I understand your reluctance to say anything. This may well be one of those things you just have to tolerate, but it sure is ridiculous that people have to play these kinds of games in the workplace.

Roxane Gay is the author, most recently, of “Hunger” and a contributing opinion writer. Write to her at [email protected].