Me Boss You Not

Ask a Manager

From the creator of the popular website Ask a Manager and New York’s work-advice columnist comes a witty, practical guide to 200 difficult professional conversations—featuring all-new advice! There’s a reason Alison Green has been called “the Dear Abby of the work world.” Ten years as a workplace-advice columnist have taught her that people avoid awkward conversations in the office because they simply don’t know what to say. Thankfully, Green does—and in this incredibly helpful book, she tackles the tough discussions you may need to have during your career. You’ll learn what to say when • coworkers push their work on you—then take credit for it • you accidentally trash-talk someone in an email then hit “reply all” • you’re being micromanaged—or not being managed at all • you catch a colleague in a lie • your boss seems unhappy with your work • your cubemate’s loud speakerphone is making you homicidal • you got drunk at the holiday party Praise for Ask a Manager “A must-read for anyone who works . . . [Alison Green’s] advice boils down to the idea that you should be professional (even when others are not) and that communicating in a straightforward manner with candor and kindness will get you far, no matter where you work.”—Booklist (starred review) “The author’s friendly, warm, no-nonsense writing is a pleasure to read, and her advice can be widely applied to relationships in all areas of readers’ lives. Ideal for anyone new to the job market or new to management, or anyone hoping to improve their work experience.”—Library Journal (starred review) “I am a huge fan of Alison Green’s Ask a Manager column. This book is even better. It teaches us how to deal with many of the most vexing big and little problems in our workplaces—and to do so with grace, confidence, and a sense of humor.”—Robert Sutton, Stanford professor and author of The No Asshole Rule and The Asshole Survival Guide “Ask a Manager is the ultimate playbook for navigating the traditional workforce in a diplomatic but firm way.”—Erin Lowry, author of Broke Millennial: Stop Scraping By and Get Your Financial Life Together

Bucolics

By Alia's Blood

In the end, the Miami paper would nail it in their editorial. "This thing was about Alia, all about her, and her swim that fateful night." The story began 28 years ago with a reporter stationed at a Coral Gables hospital located hard by Biscayne Bay. It concerned the mysterious death of a pregnant Honduran female and a deadly curse they say followed her from the Bay Islands. Alia, descendant of a 17th-century pirate and a woman taken from a captured slaver, was island nobility but chose to flee her family and an arranged marriage to be with the man she loved. Her daughter lived. Rumor had it that it was predestined the newborn would carry the curse, pass it to her surviving firstborn female offspring, then die. So it would travel, daughter to daughter, down through the generations until the bloodline was broken. The attending doctor filled in the required blanks of the death certificate and moved on, duty complete, official cause of death listed as cardiac arrest. Then, as is often the case in legends of cursed bloodlines, the tale sank into the tapestry of local lore. Now, after years of silence, it surfaces, exploding into the public consciousness. Serena, woman child of Alia, must now face her mother's legacy--and break the curse or die.