‘My Boss Won’t Do Anything About My Slacker Co-worker’

My colleague “Andrew” and I work in a specialized department for a midsize company (about 150 employees), each of us covering half of the company with no overlap. We both work remotely while the teams we support are on site in offices across our region, so we rely heavily on Microsoft Teams and email. Andrew is great in his role … when he’s actually doing it. Over the past few months, though, he has been incredibly difficult to reach. He’s not responding to emails, is always “away” on Teams, and only answers messages hours or sometimes days later, if at all.

Should I talk to Andrew directly? We aren’t terribly close, and he can be somewhat volatile — sometimes he’s standoffish and other times he’s warm and engaging, and I never know which he’ll be. I’m also at a loss as to what to say when colleagues come to me wondering where he is. So far, I’ve been sticking to a brief “I’m not sure about Andrew’s schedule today,” but it sounds so oblivious. I don’t want to lie, but I don’t want to throw him under the bus either. How should I handle this?

Nightmares do come true. Illinois is banning book bans. How Lara Logan went from respected 60 Minutes correspondent to fringe conspiracy theorist. The Beatles are releasing one last song with the help of AI. World governments are one step closer to breaking up with plastics. Mika Westwolf was killed by a driver whose children are named Aryan and Nation; two months later, police have yet to file charges. Home Depot is selling entire (tiny) houses now. MSCHF is at it again. Looks like the 1975 is capitalizing on front man Matt Healy’s recent fling and the resulting publicity. And that old truism still stands: Smart is sexy.

Sign up to get Brooding, a biweekly newsletter interrogating modern family life, written by Kathryn Jezer-Morton.