Q: I work in a satellite office for a U.S.-based company, and my manager and I have been locked in a three-year battle of the wills I never signed up for (but she’s going to win because she writes my evals). She’s a first-time manager with little experience in our region yet she insists on doing her job and mine — badly.

She undermines me in front of my team, dismisses my near decade of experience and performs the corporate theater of “asking for my input” when she’s decided her course of action. My colleagues now look at me with pity and ask me what I’m going to do. My answer is that I’ve tried to no avail with her and her boss.

Upper management adores her “leadership potential” and refuses to step in. Meanwhile, morale’s tanked, productivity’s tanked, and I’ve become the office cautionary tale.

So now I’m done and counting down the months until my escape. My body’s waving the white flag — high blood pressure, eczema, anxiety. I’ve never been in a situation like this and I’ve learned a lesson about taking jobs where it’s not easy to leave.

I feel bad for my team when they look to me to push back on their behalf. But doing my job feels like it’s putting me in a bad spot. Tell me I’m right to save myself. That sometimes the bravest thing you can do is stop fighting a battle that’s cost too much.

A: The short answer: Yes, you’re right to quit. The longer answer: You should have quit 2 1/2 years ago.

When upper management communicated to you that they believed in the leadership potential of your manager, I’m sure it was couched in language about working together, valuing your experience and appreciating your service. But what they meant was: Your services are no longer needed here. Take a hike!

Is that a lousy way to communicate? Yes. Do you have every right to feel angry and betrayed? Yes! But as you write yourself, they hired someone who does your job and hers, too. Your staying and trying to make it work in the months and years since that moment have been a waste of everyone’s time.

Your commitment to your team is admirable, but they are (presumably) adults who can navigate this workplace without you — or find new jobs themselves if necessary — and their comfort at work is not worth your sanity or blood pressure. I don’t really know, as a philosophical question, if “the bravest thing” to do is stop fighting “a battle that’s cost too much.” But unless you are a smokejumper or an Army Ranger, I struggle to see how the question is applicable here.

I don’t mean to be harsh. I am sympathetic to your plight. When you identify yourself closely with a role you’ve performed for years, accepting transition is difficult even when it’s communicated clearly and directly. And a strong emotional attachment to one’s job and co-workers is all but impossible to avoid.

But such an attachment can conceal certain basic truths. I’d bet your colleagues understood this, and when they asked you, “What are you going do about it?” they were hoping you’d say, “Find a new position.” Certainly, your body seems to have recognized much earlier than your brain that you were no longer wanted at this job and threw itself into overdrive alerting you that it was time to move on.

The humming, drumming co-worker

Q: Our office, like many in New York, has an open-floor plan. Several of us have grown annoyed with a colleague who hums and taps constantly. He has no self-awareness. You can’t fault someone for being in a good mood, but it’s become distracting. This individual is very junior, so might not have a lot of experience in an office environment, and he’s also on another team, so it’s not as if we could ask our manager to intervene. How do we ask him to stop without coming off as rude?

A: As an advice columnist, I always find it nice when the answer to a question is contained in the question itself. How do you ask your co-worker to stop humming and tapping at the office without coming off as rude? Well, you ask him to stop and you don’t come off as rude.

If you want more specific instructions: Walk over to this person. Introduce yourself, if you don’t actually know each other, or get his attention if you do. Say: “Can I ask you a favor? I’m not sure if you realize this, but you’re humming and tapping while you work, and it’s distracting. Do you mind stopping?” Make eye contact and smile in a nonthreatening way.

I suppose it’s possible that the colleague might be offended. But it’s much more likely that he’ll be slightly embarrassed, a condition you can ameliorate by stopping by his desk later that day or week for some unrelated small talk that will helpfully communicate there are no hard feelings. He’ll probably also be thankful for the heads-up: No one wants to be the office annoyance. And if he is truly offended by your mild, polite request to the point where his behavior is disrupting your work, you should think of it as helpfully raising a personnel issue that would have cropped up eventually.

You didn’t mention it, but I wonder if you’re worried about offense if the co-worker is neuroatypical, and the noises are soothing, self-stimulating behaviors. Even if that’s the case, my advice wouldn’t change. Neuroatypical people deserve the respect of polite, direct communication, and if your colleague needs to be able to hum to do their job, you and he (and, if necessary, Human Resources) can find a reasonable compromise or accommodation. But such a discussion can happen only after you take the first step of stopping by his cubicle to broach the issue.

Years of propagandistic horror stories and urban legends about easily offended co-workers, not to mention the ongoing transformations of office life bequeathed to us by the pandemic, have made everyone a little too cautious about approaching co-workers about resolvable issues.

Granted, “annoying humming” is a somewhat less awkward nuisance to address than more intimate office irritations like body odor or halitosis. But by speaking with your colleague, you wouldn’t just be ending the terrible reign of an office hummer — you’d be creating a workplace culture where problems in general can be addressed, politely but frankly, without fear of offense or embarrassment.

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