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Go High, Not Low, on P.T.O.

I work at a small company that is quite strict about paid time off. Employees are often questioned about how they use their P.T.O., have permission withheld for weeks and are made to feel like they are personally scamming or hurting the company when they take time off. One employee, however, is a good friend of the chief executive and seems to get endless leeway. He missed several more days of work than allotted and has been able to make this time up by working on the weekend — something the rest of us aren’t allowed to do. Some employees have actually been denied P.T.O. because this individual was one of the few people in the office that day and is “not reliable.” How do we bring up this blatant preferential treatment without sounding like finger-pointing rattle tales?

— Illinois

I like this expression “rattle tales.” I believe that it’s a typo, and that you meant “tattle tales,” but “rattle tales” has a nice ring to it. Like the terrifying sound of a rattlesnake that’s telling a story with its tail!

But you shouldn’t tell this story, with your tail or any other part of you. Because, look, if there is one thing I learned in my time in corporate America, it is that everyone already knows everything. That co-worker who acts as if she doesn’t know you’re stealing all the little bags of chips with only, like, three chips inside, so of course you have to steal a whole bunch of them to experience fullness: She knows. That other co-worker who acts as if he doesn’t notice your sniffling or coughing or whatever other sounds you make (see every other question that comes into the workfriend@nytimes.com inbox): He knows!