Yet Another Person Who Had Sex at Work

I had a secret relationship with a guy twice my age, and on top of that, he is a manager at my company. We dated for about two months, and everything seemed to be going great until one day he called it off because of the age difference, etc., and offered to be friends. We haven’t spoken since, and there is tension at the workplace (at least I can feel it). We don’t even look at each other. Should I get a new job, or try to deal with the awkwardness?

— Anonymous

Pal, you are misreading the situation. The tension, if it even exists, is not your problem. It is his problem. Leave if you want, but you don’t have any obligation to make him comfortable or do anything but your job, which is what you are there to do, instead of doing other people, which is what you have been doing. Maybe it was a mistake, but do not make accommodations for some dude who wanted to sleep with you, then dumped you because of the age difference — which, LOL. Knowing men, I bet he is actually not thinking about you at all except to make you feel uncomfortable so that you quit. Don’t give him the satisfaction. And watch your back. Men will go to great lengths to make problematic women disappear.

Hush Up About Your Tesla

I don’t work in an office. I am a blue-collar schmo. However, often in my work I serve many people who work in offices, on floors, in big buildings. I hear them talk about their “work group” before raving about their new “Tesla” or some other nonsense I have no comprehension of. I can’t help feeling like your advice is tailored for them and not for me, possibly because of the demographics of your readership. How do I deal with dozens and dozens of rich, vapid and condescending office workers daily? Good Lord, PLEASE, how?

— Sam, San Francisco

We fully tend to over-serve the “glued-to-the-email-machine” work force, though I’ve been heartened that we get letters from diverse workplace types. But yes: Office workers are incredibly hierarchy conscious and hierarchy anxious and are frequently dreadful to people who are different. (I write this column on a commuter train, and just now watched a middle-aged white woman get on and stand over an elementary school-age black boy until he gave up his seat — even though there were scads of empty seats all around us. Unreal.) People enact aggression and discomfort and hostility and bias constantly.

The other problem here is just how captured and enraptured we become by being what we spend. Polo shirts, cars, houses, children, purebred dogs, washing machines, golf clubs, boats. These are things we buy as a shortcut to an identity. Then we bond about it, standing divided against richer and poorer. We have to pretend that everything is fine.