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Thursday’s Workwear Report: Short-Sleeve Rib Polo Sweater Dress

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A woman wearing an olive green polo dress and brown heels

Our daily workwear reports suggest one piece of work-appropriate attire in a range of prices.

The Nordstrom Anniversary Sale is still going strong, and this polo dress from Julia Jordan is one of my favorite workwear pieces I’ve come across. The olive green color is lovely, and I really like the contrast trim detailing to make it feel a little extra special.

Add some flats, and this would be a great option for a business casual setting where the other folks are wearing chinos and polo shirts. 

The dress is $84.99, marked down from $139, at Nordstrom and comes in sizes XS-XL. It also comes in black. 

Sales of note for 8/10:

160 Comments

    2. I wore the hell out of stuff like this in my late teens/20s. It’s a no-go for me now (especially at this price point) for full body pieces. I am liking open weave knits for tops/sweaters and they’re flattering as long as the sizing is more generous or the weave is thicker.

    3. I think it’s more of a subtle “if you got it, flaunt it” sort of thing since it makes the most of curves.

      2. You have to be incredibly thin and have curves for it to be flattering. And most people who have curves are not incredible thin … which makes sense, since you need a little fat for those curves.

        1. Disagree on the thin with curves, I think thin, long torso and want the illusion of curves could work, though.

          I have had lots of curves as a previously unhealthily superskinny hourglass – F-cups on bones – and ribbing still looked so bad.

          1. I think the other poster’s comment was the general truth. You were more on the edge of the bell curve. Hope you are healthy now.

    5. Ribbed works for a lot of people when it is a really thick material. Think the weight of a Herve Leger dress from 2009. Oddly enough, at the right thickness it can smooth over rather than highlight. I have a few sweaters like that and they are work horses. This dress just doesn’t have enough heft.

    6. I am muscular and curvy but not lean, and I think ribbed is flattering on me for either a top or a bottom (where it emphasizes either my waist curve or my hip-butt curve. I don’t like the look on me full body though. The texture also imo hides small texture, like I like my ribbed leggings bc vpl is a lot less noticeable in them

    7. Well, I know when I wear a dress/skirt of this material at work, I get many more compliments from male coworkers about how nice I look today. Once I realized they were all staring at my a$$, I stopped wearing it to work.

      1. I had a sweater polo dress that I loved—but I got way too many compliments and I did not like it.

  2. This is a long shot, but can anyone recommend (or warn me off of) a Boston moving company for a small apartment move?
    And yes, of course this is Sept. 1 and in Allston.

    1. Boston to suburbs, we liked Michael’s Moving. A couple other friends also had positive experiences using them for the same type of move, can’t speak specifically on the within the city situation since we always used a uhaul and did it ourselves for those.

    2. Stairhoppers worked great for my around town moves. I liked their website interface and quote process and they were very responsive.

      Yes you’re going to encounter shenanigans of some flavor, deep breath and roll with it. more cash than you wanted, more delay than you needed.

    3. We had a great experience with Gentle Giant for a small apartment move, but that was years ago.

    4. The biggest protip I can give you–move on the 28th, ask the moving co to hold your stuff for storage for a few days (and pay), and move back in on the 2nd. Allston is literally a parking lot on the 1st. DO NOT book anything later in the day–you will be moving at midnight. Book first of the day. Truly, the entire city DOES NOT MOVE by about 11am. It’s chaos.

      Source: lived in allston for 3 years + Boston for 5

      1. I agree with this. I once sat on a restaurant patio for the explicit purpose of watching the car accidents. It did not disappoint.

        1. There was one year my husband got the last U-Haul on the lot before 9 AM. Everyone else behind him in lines had bookings that the company had no way to fulfill.

    5. I’ve used Anton’s Movers twice, once NYC > Boston and once intra-Boston and we had great experiences both times.

  3. Are we still calling them geriatric pregnancies? My teen daughter used that term yesterday and I was really surprised. I had her at 39 and that wasn’t remarkable for my part of my city at the time. I gave her my non-medical take that it’s mainly an increased risk of chromosomal abnormalities in the baby + how health generally declines with age in all respects, but these pregnancies are generally fine if your health is fine, which is also true for when younger women get pregnant.

    I wonder if social media starts skewing trad-wifey even in teens because I can’t really figure out how she even came across this term.

    1. For better or worse, it’s a medical term that has been adopted by the mainstream. It’ll be up to ACOG if they end up changing it as it’s been increasingly common for patients to have 35+ pregnancies.

      1. ACOG has switched to advanced maternal age. But I don’t think all providers have changed their language, especially those in areas where pregnancies at 35 or later are uncommon.

        1. +1

          We aren’t supposed to use geriatric pregnancy anymore. But these changes take years to be adapted.

    2. It’s the technical medical term for it and I think because it’s such a harsh-sounding way to describe a 35+ pregnancy, it’s more widely known than you’d think!

    3. A lot of providers use the phrase “advanced maternal age” now, which I think sounds a bit better.

      1. I’ve had two pregnancies after 35, and my doctors always used advanced maternal age. That’s what was in my medical file and paperwork, so I think the AMA switched to that term.

        2. Yes; I had my first at 38 and the nurse asked me if I knew what AMA was and I said “American Medical Association?” and she said Advanced Maternal Age.

      2. Yes, this is the correct term nowadays. I had a baby a year ago at 41 and was doing IVF for 5 years before that. I’ve been through so many providers. All of them have used the term advanced maternal age. No one used geriatric pregnancy.

    4. I think they’re shifting to “advanced maternal age.”

      It’s bad when women who want to start families at younger ages are hindered by the timelines of educational and career paths originally designed solely around the needs of men. It’s not trad-wifey to want to change that. I get that it could be trad-wifey to react by simply opting out.

    5. That and “habitual aborter” are two phrases that I feel like people should be prepared to duck and run after saying to me.

      2. Omg is that for women who’ve suffered multiple miscarriages? I’ve never heard of this but I am horrified for you and anyone else who has ever heard that term.

    6. It’s a widely known medical term and used all over the place. Maybe your daughter is reading high quality writing on reproductive health issues and that’s how she learned it. I was when I was a teen.

      2. Or she saw a dumb take on TikTok subtly promoting a tradwife lifestyle.

        When we were kids, we pretty much only had writing (at least somewhat) vetted by editors in order to access medical information. Not to say that kooky stuff wasn’t out there, but we weren’t inundated by it the way teens are now. I similarly spent loads of time perusing the encyclopedia and my dad’s technical manuals for his engineering job when I was bored.

        1. Yeah, maybe, which OP already suggested and neither of us know for sure. But I maintain that you don’t need to be consuming tradwife content (intentionally or otherwise) to come across this term.

      3. Apparently it’s an old / outdated term. But good to show a teen that women’s feelings about how they are talked about is of no importance to your medical providers or the medical establishment.

    7. As others said, some providers are shifting to “advanced maternal age” but “geriatric pregnancy” was the standard medical term for a 35+ pregnancy for decades and the term originates with medical providers, not social media. It’s used in plenty of books and TV/movies, so it’s possible she came across it that way? I think you’re overthinking this.

      2. IDK

        Lots of kids are getting the message from social media that you “should” marry and have kids younger. Implying that ambition, life goals, grad school are bad. Clip your wings. Make your life convenient for your husband.

        The tennis guy with the doctor fiancé who had to work while he won is my new hero.

        1. Why do ambition, life goals, and grad school have to be so much more convenient for men? Why should having kids younger have such severe repercussions for women and not for men? Why should women take on extra risk to make life convenient for their professors and bosses?

          1. For the first to, because men don’t bear children and because of misogyny. Right? Duh. We all know that. No one is taking the position that ambition, life goals, and grad school have to be so much more convenient for men, or that having kids young should have severe repercussions for women, or that women should take extra risks to make life for their professors and bosses. This laws strawman is especially egregious and something I see in hard right writing frequently. No one is advocating delaying childbearing for the convenience of bosses; rather, the goal is to protect your career trajectory. Do you see the difference? For YOUR benefit, not your boss’s. Obviously no women should suffer penalties from having kids while having careers. But it’s not unreasonable for individuals to consider reality when making these choices. Considering reality doesn’t mean endorsing that reality. There is no binary here where either have kids early or you’re giving into misogynistic structures.

            Anon at 10:39 is correct. There is lots of this content circulating right now, and a lot of it is very top-down. It is not pushed for women’s benefit, I promise you.

          3. “ Biological reality is more immutable than social reality.” But that’s only up to a point, right? There are plenty of societies where raising a child is a collective responsibility, or where there is financial and societal infrastructure that makes it easier. We live incredibly “unnatural” lives in environments and with capabilities that are entirely human devised and reflect societal and cultural values, not biological imperatives and in some cases quite extraordinary revisions of the natural environment, for better or worse.

            I lived in Eastern Indonesia for a bit, and the most important bond between a child and close relatives is the mother’s brother, and it is both amazing and amusing to see a teenage boy caring for his new niece or nephew proudly and lovingly.

          5. I wish we had more supports for young women who want to have babies while in college or grad school. And health care for all. I am very excited that my son just took a job at a place that has child care on site and paternity leave. We need more places of busines like that!

    8. I think you’re conflating a few things: the social aspects of having a child later in life versus the medical ones, and whether or not “usually fine” is a way of negating the statistically increased risks.

      As I recall, research done on women just over the age of 35 (who get extra monitoring and testing) compared to women just under 35 (who don’t) indicates a drop in negative outcomes. That tells us that the extra monitoring and interventions given to AMA pregnancies are in fact helpful.

      The risks get weird as you get older: placental abruption risks increase, stillbirths increase, preeclampsia is more common, all of that.

      Many of those things are frightening because you’re fine right up until something goes catastrophically wrong.

      1. Yes and it’s also like Down Syndrome in that because there are more babies born to younger women, the actual incidence of complications is not in the AMA group. Many younger women have complications as a maternal health follow-on and now that more women are less healthy than prior generations and many women get no care or ignore science, it’s just a hot mess all around. Sadly.

        IDK what trad influencers say about all this but I feel that we are going backwards in obstetrics and outcomes. But let’s start with not using pejorative terms to describe patients if we want to help them.

        1. Yes. Of course it’s better to be healthy at any age! A lot of people are not, at any age. And the odds of developing an elevated risk condition just keep going up as time passes for anyone.

          1. I’m the Anon at 10:20 am, and this exactly.

            Risk factors you can control: your diet and fitness. Risk factor that doesn’t respond to your willpower or choices: your age.

      2. I would also factor in the infertility risks (not everyone who delays starting family ends up with a child at all; there are risks to all of the available workarounds).

          1. That’s fair. But a young woman deciding how long to delay having children should definitely think about all of this!

            There’s a lot of survivor bias out there. I know my generation thought that (a) we’d enjoy the good health of our mothers and grandmothers, or (b) we’d evade the poor health of our mothers and grandmothers thanks to better lifestyle and healthcare.

          2. There is a lot of baggage attached to discussions of infertility and age, and pregnancy risks and age. I was doing my level best to not drag in more emotional soup when my entire belief is that the OP is conflating issues (largely due to her own social milieu).

        2. As someone going through IVF under 35 I have mixed feelings about messaging to delay pregnancy. There’s a lot of right-wing misogyny behind the “reproduce early and often” message.

          But the messaging slides too far in the other direction when you hear that the risks of 35+ conception are overblown. Sure there are plenty of individuals who safely give birth to a healthy child. But the statistics show you have fewer eggs and more of them are abnormal. IVF doesn’t guarantee you a child, or you may need multiple rounds to be successful. I know enough women who struggled with fertility to cringe when people tell me they’re waiting until their mid-to-late thirties to start a family.

          1. I hope it goes really well.

            Something I wish I had understood is how the statistics of a first time pregnancy at 35+ diverge from statistics about 35+ pregnancy that represent someone’s second, third, etc. successful pregnancy.

          2. Completely agree.

            There is a woman-friendly version of “start earlier” and then there is the gross version.

            The woman-friendly version isn’t about bouncing back or that crap.

            It starts with: IVF is brutal on you and that’s before pregnancy. It’s expensive and emotionally grueling, and its success is overstated.

            Then we get into the pragmatic aspects.

            If you are 39 and want two kids, it is pedal to the metal, no matter what else is going on in your life. You want a promotion and your brother just got cancer? Tough luck, you’re also TTC if you want those kids. You broke your leg? Whelp, better ask your doctor how much pregnancy would interfere with healing. Your company is being reorged? Better prepare to interview when you’re pregnant.

            Whereas if you are 30 when everything falls apart and you want two kids, you wait a year for things to settle.

            It’s even things like choosing to space out kids. Maybe pregnancy was awful and your body and mind need a break. That’s what happened to me when I was 39. I was really shocked by how much I (personally) needed to decompress and recover. My son was four before I felt physically and psychologically capable of going through that again. So he’s an only child.

          3. Agree on all of this, though I really wish there were just as many studies on men’s declining fertility after 35 as there are about women’s. The medical community is starting to look more closely at men but it feels like pulling teeth to get them to admit that women are only half the genetic equation.

          4. Anon at 12:18. I wish you luck. I didn’t have my child until 33 and was not able to conceive a second time. I am extremely liberal and annoyed that any statement that it should not be the norm for so a whole generation to take birth control from the age of 15-35 and then try to get pregnant. If there were access to health care, reasonable leave policies, and quality child care, I imagine many more women would chose to have babies in their 20s. And for all the mean girls here, of course you can wait until you are 40 if you want.

    9. During labor, my sister vomited on the nurse who had handwritten “geriatric pregnancy” in sharpie on her chart and I consider it one of my greatest real life karmic victories.

        1. This. The nurse was trying to make sure she’d get increased care and attention if anything!

    10. Am I the only one who doesn’t find this term to be some kind insult? I was geriatric/AMA for a pregnancy, and I wasn’t offended. It just means “over 35,” which is factual, not some kind of commentary on feminism, trad wives, or reproductive choices. Are women so conditioned to think they are worthless past a certain age, that anything acknowledging their age is a grave offense?

      1. It just makes it sound like a 60+ year old is pregnant. Geriatric doesn’t ordinarily mean “over 35” in other contexts, right?

      2. I was called AMA (39 when I had my son), and I didn’t care.

        I am the one who posted about the risks that happen with age (preeclampsia, stillbirth, placental abruption); good medical care involves knowing and understanding the risks involved.

      3. I was called an “elderly primigravida” and laughed my @ss off so no, I didn’t care. Had my son at 35.

      4. I had no feelings about being called advanced maternal age for both of my pregnancies. That’s just factually truer but I wouldn’t have like being called geriatric when I was just 36.

      6. I never saw geriatric, but I did get listed as “elderly multigravida” once. I wasn’t even 35 yet! (I turned 35 during the pregnancy.) I had to look up multigravida (it just means second or better pregnancy, but the “grav” sounded at bit too much like “grave” to me). It did surprise me, but I mostly just thought it was hilarious.
        And I’m glad my doctors were able to take good care of me and my baby and considered that there could be extra risks.

      7. No, I don’t care at all. But I do see the positive aspect of changing the label to AMA. That bothers me much less than “person with a uterus.”

    11. I think it just sounds funnier to a teen and something I would have for sure said to my mother.

      1. Yeah. I agree.

        But I’m personally over the handwringing over older moms. My anecdotal experience is that the most miserable women are those with kids they can’t afford. This path is suggested by some right wing weirdos. It’s a trap.

        We love to handwring about 36 year old mothers but I think the risks of having kids with a much older man or a man with an unhealthy lifestyle are under discussed. I grew up with a lot of guys who abused PEDS. You know those red faced short muscular dudes who are always angry? Their parenthood journeys are particularly rough.

        My “geriatric” self managed to get pregnant with alarming ease and delivery healthy babies twice. I really don’t care if they called me elderly in the process. However, I’ve gotta believe having a partner who wasn’t a 45 year old steroid taking dude with a diet like a Grateful Dead lsd dealer had a lot to do with it.

      2. Exactly this. It sounds silly, I can totally see a teen doing a double take hearing that term for the first time.

    12. You’ve gotten plenty of good answers about the term “geriatric pregnancies” but I think there’s a lot to dig into about the present cultural moment around feminism/motherhood/menopause. There’s this tension between the idea that women are just as capable as men and we need to be allowed the same opportunities, and the biological realities of being a woman. The US government definitely doesn’t make it easier, but no government policy is going to make it so that starting a family doesn’t disproportionately affect women. And even if you do opt out of having babies, female biology could come for you in your 50s with peri/menopause. And there’s a lot more conversation about that, which is both good and bad. The awareness of the issues is important, but it also not-so-subtly implies that women are never going to be as successful as men in the workplace. This is in no way universally true and ignores that plenty of men can also develop disabilities or caregiving responsibilities that affect their careers in similar ways, but it’s also not completely untrue. So on the one end you have very conservative tradwife content where people see the game is rigged and “opt out” (they’re just switching to a different, riskier game) or you have the other end that pretends that women and men are the same and can’t seem to square that with the issues we know exist. I’ve seen some folks try and thread the needle on this, but it’s very difficult to do so in a sound bite. So if your algorithm gets a whiff of interest in women’s health, it tends to feed you tradwife content because those are the sound bites that relate to the issue that become popular.

      1. It would be closer to untrue if there were more flexibility for women’s health spans. Men peak a lot earlier than women do! Pregnancy always comes with the risk of disability though, and bodies that can become pregnant are more prone to autoimmunity, which for some reason is on the rise. And the bulk of caregiving work is still invisible, taken for granted, and mostly done by women whether we’re tradwives or not.

    13. Sigh the term also annoys me. I’d also like if we could fund more research into the effects having a “geriatric” father has on pregnancy and genetic abnormalities. My tin foil hat theory is that a not insignificant portion of the complications attributed to advanced maternal age are actually attributed to advanced paternal age. Older moms tend to have older partners as the fathers of their children. Just because men can continue to produce sperm their entire life doesn’t mean that older sperm doesn’t present complications, too. Recent research into dads who have unhealthy habits during conception windows suggests (not shockingly) that dads health at the time of conception also matters, but isn’t it much more fun to blame the “old” mom?

      1. I think there’s more research into this than we hear about, even if more should be funded. It’s not a tin foil hat theory at this point though; it’s just something we know and ignore.

      2. My son is six. When I was pregnant, my doctor asked for my husband’s age and my age to calculate risks of genetic abnormalities.

        I would be very interested to know if there are any studies on problems with the placenta as a function of father’s age. A fair number of problems with AMA involve the placenta, and father’s genes are a huge part of how well it functions.

        1. This is fascinating. I was not an AMA pregnancy but had a placental abruption. I wonder if my husbands age may have been a contributing factor (he is 8 years older)

          2. No. Why would it? It never occurred to the doctors to ask or mention it but thanks for the judgment about one of the most traumatic events of my life

      3. In addition, a lot of cases of fetal alcohol syndrome are due to the father drinking, not the mother. My husband (a light drinker to start – maybe 1-2 a month) chose not to drink while we were TTC.

        2. Look, I’d love it if more things were men’s fault, but this is not one of them.

      4. +1
        I wrote something along these lines above.

        I’d love to see a public health campaign where we urge young women to not marry men a decade or more older than they are if they want kids.

        Also, as long as we’re giving general life advice without accounting for anyones particular circumstances: try not to marry a much older man regardless. I swear these dudes get old faster than you think! The earlier marriage and kids with an older guy because he was mid to late 30s while you were mid twenties was a bad trade off even if the kids are fine. These age gaps are brutal as the years go by. I wish it was something someone explained when I was younger. I suppose it doesn’t help right wingers to keep the younger women away from the older men but that’s a pro life tip from an older lady.

  4. My android phone fell in a pool yesterday. It was fished out quickly and seemed to be okay but I have discovered that there’s a problem with the sound – videos are all silent, and phone calls only work on speaker. If you’ve had something similar, did the phone eventually dry out and return to normal?

    1. You could buy some dessicant packets and seal your phone up in a plastic bag to see if that dries things out more.

    2. Put it in a Tupperware box filled with rice, and snap the lid on. It overnight or for a day or two and it will help dry out remaining moisture.

  5. Hi all, I am hosting a party and I would rather not have giant amazon ads on the page. It seems that Paperless Post and Evite are a bit pricey to remove that feature for 50+ guests (50 to 70 dollars). I don’t need tons of information but track RSVPs. Any other option besides Partiful (not a fan of Palantir). Thanks

    3. What? I have sent and received Paperless Post invites for years and have never seen any ads?

    4. Google form in a email will do this easily. Less cute, but who needs cute for this sort of thing?

    5. given the amount of phishing/scams going around with evite types emails, whichever route you go, please make sure to let people know that it is real!

    8. Just email all the guests BCC with you as the main recipient. They can reply to you directly. Not everything has to be a paid service.

  6. my hair is fine and while not curly has a sort of frizzy wave about it. I blow it and mostly it’s fine but has anyone had any luck with a permanent or semi permanent process that takes out the frizz without making it super flat and straight? does that exist? i went to my college reunion and an event at my jewish sororority and all these women who had had beautiful curls when we were kids now wear their hair like cher in 1973 and, honestly, it’s not so flattering on an aging face. I don’t want to loose the fullness and body, just the frizz.

    1. I thought a keratin treatment was supposed to do that. They iron it straight when the apply the treatment, but once it’s fully set, if you don’t straighten it, the natural wave is still there.

      1. +1 to some sort of smoothing treatment. Do you use any products in your hair before you style it? I’d start there before jumping to a salon treatment.
        I’d add a lightweight heat protectant, and colorwow or some sort of smoothing/frizz product. I’ve got thicker, wavy/curly jewish hair and the Olaplex oil is great to tame the frizziness, I bet the oil mist would be good for finer hair.
        Fully agree on the Cher look being not so flattering as you age, my aunt who had thick curly hair my entire life starting doing keratin about 15 years ago and it’s wrecked her roots/curl pattern which she regrets.

        1. Keratin itself is fine, but you can get it from product; Paul Mitchell Awapuhi is a popular line.

          I think the salon treatments are relying on toxic stuff and then calling it keratin to make it sound better.

          1. Yes, it’s not the keratin itself that’s toxic but the formaldehyde that’s in the salon treatments.

      1. I also wonder about the blow drying. Would using the fine hair version of the old Bumble & Bumble “don’t blow it” and letting it air dry still result in a lot of frizz?

    3. Magic Sleek. It defrizzed my hair, and I told the stylist I didn’t want it super straight. She adjusted accordingly when she got to the appropriate step.

    4. I have similar hair, and my hair is actually wavy without the frizz using the right products. Innersense daily shampoo + Jessicurl Confident Curls and Gelebration Spray are what I use.

    5. Suave Mousse No 7 (now called “Shape it Up”) takes my wildly frizzy curls to perfect soft curls. Apply generously when wet. I also use very gloppy conditioner – Nexxus Humectress.

    6. I’m also Jewish and anti straightening (for me, not as a universal truth). For me it’s about finding the right products to contain the frizz. Sometimes this changes depending on weather/humidity but right now I really like the Ouidad products. Had good experiences with Innersense in the past but sometimes they are too heavy for my hair. And sometimes a bit of frizz is cute… so there is an element of embracing it too.

    7. Second the Ouidad recommendation especially the heat and humidity gel; I also find Davines “this is a curl building serum” effective in keeping the curl, getting rid of the frizz.

  7. Looking for recommendations on a favorite Michigan hotel, closer to a beach is better. thanks!

    1. This may not be quite what you’re looking for (it’s an all-inclusive with a focus on waterskiing/watersports), but my family has had excellent experiences at the White Birch Lodge in Elk Rapids.

    2. Assuming you’re in Chicago by the username – I haven’t really found a great hotel on the southwest coast of MI. We normally go for the day because our hotel stays there have all been so underwhelming, even at the “fancy” places. If you want to stay overnight in that area, a lakehouse rental is probably the best option, even though I normally prefer hotels to Airbnbs.

  8. How do you all deal with days of back-to-back meetings (including any public-facing job duties, if not specifically a meeting). I have a full day of “being on”. I do have 30 mins for lunch so I am not eating at my desk but it is not enough decompression between hours of meetings, running to the bathroom quickly, coming back and doing the next thing. Is there such a thing as cognitive whiplash? Anyway, I know I’m not the only one who had to deal with this and wondered if there are any tips out there for surviving. I go home completely wiped and unhappy.

    1. I inform (do not ask) that I will be turning off my video to “eat lunch after back-to-back meetings” or whatever. It helps a TON to not be on video the entire time. I really wish we could go back to the days of conference calls (when appropriate) so I could take a walk with my Airpods.

      1. Advocate more widely for that if you can. My leadership demands cameras on for no reason except respect.

    2. You can schedule your time differently. Some people thrive in back to back and some people don’t. Do you have a scheduler or are you at the mercy of leadership schedules?

      If you have any agency at all, schedule “on” days and “off” days so you have breaks during the week.

      1. Yes — take charge of your schedule and exercise whatever control is possible. If you are able, block out times on your calendar so that a meeting can’t land there.

        And yes, of course cognitive whiplash is a thing! Some people might thrive on quickly moving from one topic or skill set to another. I personally don’t.

        For days when you have no control and just have to deal, leave one meeting early and be late to another, if needed, to give yourself 5 minutes between. Go outside for a minute whenever you can, instead of checking emails or messages. While outside, walk or stand somewhere and just . . . stop thinking for 60 seconds. If you can’t do that, go to the restroom, run water over your wrists while you’re washing your hands, etc. In short, focus on your body for a bit instead of your thoughts; it helps. Even if you only have 60 seconds.

    3. If my day starts looking busy, I block my calendar both for breaks and a chance to deal with the follow-ups from the prior meeting.

    4. Agree with the other commenter to turn off video when you can. During those meetings try to stand and stretch. Drink plenty of water and either drop a few minutes before the meeting ends or join the next one late. I’m not shy about saying “I’m back to back all day, I need two minutes before we start.”

      Make a consolidated to-do list for yourself and add to it in real time. Log on early in the morning but close Teams or Slack while you get organized for the day. At the end of the day do the same thing- make yourself invisible while chipping away at the to-do list.

      1. This drives me a bit nuts. Usually when I’m tracking down info for our CEO (and no it can’t wait—part of the job), people’s TEAMs being off means I do walk to your office and I do give you a post-it note while you are on a call. I’d rather just be able to TEAMs you.

        1. I meant turn off Teams when it’s outside your typical working hours. If you’re not expected to be available until 8:30am then log on at 8:00 to check emails but don’t turn on Teams until 8:30. Obviously don’t turn off Teams in the middle of the workday.

          If you need to personally walk into my office for a task outside my core hours so be it. The alternative was me being completely unavailable.

    5. Way, way smaller suggestion than the other good suggestions offered here: take a pause & a deep breath (or two) before starting each thing. It sounds small & maybe worthless, but that pause has helped me a lot when I have days where I have to be on and on and on again.

      But if this is more often than a once-in-a-while thing, then bigger restructuring is necessary.

  9. I work in a small-medium nonprofit and report to the Director of A. On Tuesday, HR messaged me that they would like to talk (why is an unexpected meeting with HR so nervewracking?). She said in the light of boss leaving, what support do I need. I must have looked confused because she said “She hasn’t told you she is leaving yet?” I assumed it was because we were working together in person on Wednesday. But nothing yesterday, nothing in our Teams meeting today, she says she is planning on going to a training with me this weekend. How long do I wait until I tell her I know? I am not upset she is leaving, we have a friendly relationship (much friendlier than most people in the org), and I suspected she was job searching. Part of me wants to wait it out and see how long she goes, but I also don’t want to have anything slip through the cracks after she leaves.

    1. Oh my gosh I work in HR and this is hilarious to me (if it weren’t so dysfunctional). I am the kind of person who would mess with a friend, but I think it’s probably better to wait and in the meantime start to think about all the transition planning you might need. Is there any chance the HR person told other people? If you think it’s a broader screw up I might say something just so it doesn’t get weird.

    2. Don’t be weird about this–just schedule a transition planning meeting in your next 1:1. Be breezy, say you’re trying to make sure that things run smoothly after she’s gone, yadda yadda.

    3. a) don’t run weird “how long until she tells me” tests
      b) did you not mention to HR you didn’t know Sheila was leaving? did HR not mention a date?
      c) in a generally good relationship in a generally healthy company you just ask in your next 1:1. Or ask to schedule a time to meet with her and say “hey, I heard you were leaving; I’m not sure if wires got crossed on the timing of that communication, but does it make sense for us to plan for Project A,B,C handoff?”

      Who knows, maybe she’s retiring in 6 months or something. Maybe her boss wants to tell you all and HR jumped the shark. Just talk to her and don’t make it into a weird test.

      1. +1, the next time you see her in person (this weekend?) I would just say “so this is awkward… but HR reached out to me this week about your departure — are you leaving??”

    4. Just tell the truth. “HR asked me what support I need since you’re leaving — I was surprised to hear. Congratulations! Can we schedule a time to talk about timing and transitions?”

  10. If you are in leadership, and there are snarky comments in the employee feedback surveys or whatever they’re called (we do anonymous surveys every quarter), how do you process them? I got one ten years ago that I’ve never let go of (something about how I should dress more professionally) and then one more recently where someone said I wasn’t following some rules with respect to work from home (which I am! I want to shout that from the rooftops or like mass clarify or something). I usually just let myself feel bad and move on, but…anything else out there besides “haters gonna hate.”

    1. I ask myself if there is any tiny nugget of truth in them, and if the answer is yes, I think about how I can change the perception/my behavior for the better. Generally though, if it’s just one person, I ignore it and go about my business. I am good at my job, well-liked, all the good things, so like hell am I going to let one person ruin that.

    2. You can’t please 100% of people 100% of the time. Probably has more to do with them, and maybe they are having a bad day and taking it out on you.

    3. that sounds like one bitter person who was told WFH didn’t work for them for some particular week or day. Self-reflect on whether there’s any truth to it (since a lot of people will avoid saying anything negative in these assuming it will be tied back to them); if not, let it go.

      1. There’s always some grain of truth, even if it’s nothing to do with you (example—are other people getting disciplined for something you regularly do—log in at 9:05, 90 minute lunch, etc.?)

        1. +1 we got a company wide email that there would be no exceptions to WFH for home repairs, medical appointments, etc, then last week my director WFH all week because she was getting her house painted. I would bet if you asked her she would completely believe she follows all rules completely.

    4. I teach & get evaluations every semester. I get useful comments and snarky ones. Figure out what’s useful (and there maybe something useful in the snarky ones, too) and let the rest go.

    5. I think there’s two levels of processing here. The first is the usual, of looking for truth, understanding how to sort out what to apply and what to discard, etc.

      The second is the more personal level, of how you deal internally with being criticized by an anonymous person to whom you can’t respond. Since there’s a comment from 10 years ago that you haven’t let go of yet, it sounds like you could do some reflection to better understand what is making these comments stick with you at the level they do. That reflection might point you to a pathway for how to begin to release them.

      (There could be ANY number of reasons why these comments stay with you. Everything from still reacting to a parent criticizing you as a kid, to wanting to fight the injustice of the comment, to a situation in high school where a kid lied about you, to being a perfectionist who hates being seen as wrong. The examples could go on; the reasons can be endless.)

  11. Send me all the good vibes. I have an important presentation at 3:30 today. The draft presentation I sent to my boss Monday was called “sloppy”, a word that has never in my 42-year lifetime of Type A, detail orientation has been used to describe me or my work. That’s a conversation for another day about my boss, but I need to nail this.

    1. Good luck!!! My boss does this occasionally, too. Always out of nowhere and rarely accurately reflecting my work.

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