Good Job is Slate’s advice column on work. Have a workplace problem big or small? Send it to Laura Helmuth and Doree Shafrir here. (It’s anonymous!)
Dear Good Job,
I hired someone to regularly clean my house for the first time in my life a few months ago. The person I picked is amazing–so thorough in her work, kind to my pets and kids, and charges a reasonable price. She also owns her own small cleaning business, and I feel good about knowing the full amount that I pay her goes to her. However, there’s one problem.
Because she owns her own business, she also has social media accounts to show off her work … before and afters, and also short clips of her doing her job. Recently, I pulled up her Instagram in order to recommend her to a friend, and I discovered that my house is featured in some of the videos of her cleaning! It feels like a huge invasion of privacy, just on principle, to have my home featured online without my knowledge. But on the other hand—I feel for someone trying to make it as a solo business owner, and it seems like it would be hard to do so without having something to put on social media. And it’s not like the videos are going viral; she’s not an influencer or anything. I would assume they are mostly serving the purpose of showing off her (great!) work to someone who is interested in possibly booking her services. In fact, some of the before/after photos on her social media are exactly why I booked her in the first place—you can tell what a fantastic cleaner she is from the videos! I don’t want to lose this person as my cleaner. What do I do?
—Just a Little Bit Messy
Dear Just a Little Bit Messy,
As someone who is a lot messy, I know how much of a relief it can be to have someone come into your home and make it sparkle. It’s like magic! And I can tell you are a thoughtful, empathic person because you are concerned about your cleaner’s livelihood and know that she didn’t post the pictures of your home maliciously. But she should have asked you first. The first rule of posting client work to social media is that you ask the client!
You need to tell her that she absolutely has to ask people before posting their homes to social media. You could then ask her to take down altogether the photos of your home, or perhaps there are one or two that you feel OK about having her keep up (I’m assuming without your identifying details!). Perhaps you can come to a compromise that makes you feel comfortable and also will help her out, too.
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Dear Good Job,
We’ve recently had a new hire at my office and as luck would have it, “Caleb” just happens to be someone I had some bad blood with in junior high. To make a long story short, he once wrecked a science project I had spent weeks working on, and I retaliated by dragging him into the girls’ bathroom (I’m female) when we were between classes where I shoved his head into a toilet and flushed. More than 10 years later and Caleb is still pissed, even though I apologized to him. Interactions with him are tense to say the least. Am I just going to have to deal with it? Personally, I think he’s being incredibly immature about the situation.
—Seventh Grade Swirly
Dear Seventh Grade Swirly,
Oof. You’re probably not going to love what I have to say here, but I think it might be you that needs to reexamine your behavior 10 years ago—and since. I know he “started” it by ruining your science project, but you physically assaulted him and publicly humiliated him. I don’t think the punishment remotely fit the crime here, and it sounds like you haven’t fully come to terms with the trauma you inflicted on him. If I were Caleb, I would probably still be pissed too. I’m also wondering what exactly your apology consisted of. If it was just a generic “I’m sorry” or seemed to imply that he deserved what he got, then I’m going to have to say that doesn’t quite cut it.
I also don’t think it’s realistic to expect that your relationship with Caleb is ever going to be great. There might always be a degree of tension there, and that’s understandable. If you want to try to make amends, I would offer him a sincere apology—one that fully acknowledges what you did and that it was wrong. But you have to be aware that he might not accept it, and that he’s fully within his rights not to. Your job now is to keep things completely professional and fair. If he wants to fix the relationship on his own time, that’s his choice. Just be aware that it might never happen.
—Doree
Classic Prudie
My neighbor sends me religious texts every day, usually a passage from Scripture and a “daily blessing.” I’m agnostic, so I try to keep an open mind, but I sometimes find it annoying and certainly preachy. Should I block her number and risk missing important messages, ask her to stop and risk offending her, or try something else?