It’s “where are you now?” month at Ask a Manager, and all December I’m running updates from people who had their letters here answered in the past.
There will be more posts than usual this week, so keep checking back throughout the day.
Remember the letter-writer who was asked out on LinkedIn (#2 at the link)? Here’s the update.
It was really interesting seeing the commentariat split. I come from a family with a lot of public and semi-public figures (think your local news station’s traffic guy rather than, like, celebrity nepo baby) and unfortunately, we’ve dealt with actual stalkers that required police involvement before, so I’ll admit to being on higher alert to being tracked down on LinkedIn than your average bear. As people said, it wasn’t being asked out that gave me pause but being tracked down in such a manner. This situation ended fine — I took what one might call the coward’s way out and didn’t respond via LinkedIn but saw him at the same cafe a month or two later and waved, but didn’t engage. He didn’t engage either.
There were some responses that were mildly condescending about how “freaked out” I got by one message, so I hope this clarifies a bit. I work as a librarian, which means my job is public-facing day in and day out. To have someone suddenly know where I worked, at a job that had a set schedule, and therefore how and when to find me had me thinking a lot more about the optics of wearing a branded jacket out and about. It’s gathering dust in the closet at the moment, unfortunately not primarily because of this — because a colleague got harassed in a public park by someone upset by our policies about a month after this happened. (To anyone considering libraries as a career, they will not cover this in graduate school).
For the record, the initial interaction was sparked because we have the same gender-neutral name. The cafe employee called out “order for Taylor” and we both jumped at it, so there was kind of no way to avoid giving my name I realized after sending in the letter that yes, it would be a little ridiculous for the cafe staff to give out my relationship status, but that’s hindsight for you!
Update that is very little related to the initial post: my long-term partner is now my fiancé, and I was just(!) promoted out of my branch and therefore away from the coffee shop where this all went down. Sometimes you win a salary increase and the respect of your colleagues, but you lose the really good cappuccino.
