It’s four answers to four questions. Here we go…

1. I’m drowning at work because of a family situation — how do I talk about it?

My father passed away this past summer from pancreatic cancer. The complications of his illness had slowly escalated throughout the year prior, and I needed to take increasing amounts of time off work to fly to my parents’ home across the country.

I work for an extremely small nonprofit and am in a director role. My work is project-based and I report to the board. No one keeps track of how much I’m working and when; they only care if the projects are done on time and well.

The summer is our “off” season, and it’s when I usually get the bulk of my project work done for the busy season. This allows me to take care of more urgent/time-sensitive tasks during the year, and gives me the time to plan for future years.

Unfortunately, due to the time commitment and mental load of last summer, I was unable to complete my summer project work. This has resulted in a very stressful situation where I am still working on my summer project load throughout the year while simultaneously doing the day-to-day urgent tasks on top of planning for the following year. It has been a domino effect of work piling up to amounts that are untenable. I feel like I’m trying to stem the tide of an entire ocean with a bucket of water.

Miraculously, despite missing most of my internal deadlines, I have managed to complete my previous projects on time and received satisfying feedback from the board. However, I am now approaching the final project and have missed three internal deadlines, and now I am missing external deadlines on deliverables, and people are noticing. It is affecting other people’s jobs because I’m unable to deliver what they need in an adequate time frame due to not having enough hours in the day. I think (hope) I’ll pull the project off in the end, but it is at risk.

I have told a few people I trust that this is a result of what happened over the summer, but I don’t feel comfortable telling clients who I don’t know very well that I’m missing deadlines due to my father’s death nearly nine months ago, even though it’s the truth. And of course, there’s the part of me that feels like nine months should be enough time to get my shit together, and I shouldn’t be struggling this much.

I think I need a reality check, and some solutions. I am the only person in my org who can do what I do, so there’s no staff to delegate to. But I think I need to start letting people know that I’m struggling. Is it valid to give the real reason? Is this even a good reason? How do I stem the tide?

Yes, this is a good reason. You had a terminally ill parent who died.

It’s completely reasonable to say, “I had a terminally ill parent last year and spent a lot of time dealing with that situation over the summer, when normally I would have been getting a lot of work done in preparation for our busy season. I’ve been trying to catch up ever since, but I’m at the point where I need to reassess what’s on my plate so that people aren’t counting on me for things that I literally have no time to deliver.” You’d say that to whoever on the board you work most closely with.

Have that conversation first — because “just do it all in significantly less time than it actually takes and in significantly less time than you’ve been able to spend on it in the past” is not realistic or possible (as you’re seeing). Then from there, decide what the message needs to be to clients — presumably some version of the first part of that, but instead of “reassessing what’s on my plate,” you’d tell them what the results of that reassessment mean for them, which could be anything from, “I’ll be able to get you X, but not until June” to “Jane is going to be your contact on X for the rest of this year” to “We need to put the X project on hold this year.” But have the bigger picture conversation with your boss first, because the actionable pieces for everyone else will stem from that. And start that process now, because the longer you wait to make (and tell people about) these adjustments, the more inconvenient it will get for them.

I’m sorry about your dad.

2. My boss is having memory issues, and I’m worried it could become malpractice

I work in a very small law firm in a support role and have been here for six years. The founder of the firm is older and is demonstrating some concerning changes over the last year that make me worried there is some kind of cognitive decline. He is only in his mid 60s.

At first, the signs were subtle: missing calendar invitations, falling behind on email, etc., which could be explained away by being overly busy. Then, it turned into forgetting how to use case management software we’ve been using for years, forgetting names of people with whom he has represented several times, and even once missing a court filing deadline. Sometimes, he will completely forget to update a client on their case, so they call me frantic for an update. I’ve also noticed a shift in patience. He seems much quicker to frustration than he used to be and is firmly rejecting new ideas. Everyone has noticed, but no one has said anything. We do not have HR.

He’s the best boss I have ever had, but the trend is concerning and is starting to affect his clients, which could be considered malpractice. I don’t want to report him for malpractice because that would make the issues he’s experiencing very public (not to mention would jeopardize my career), but he is not fit to represent clients! Attorneys wield a lot of power, so I don’t think I can stay quiet longer, and I know this is an issue with aging attorneys nationwide. I’ve been working in the legal field for a good chunk of my career, and it’s my observation that attorneys are a lot more receptive to feedback from other attorneys, not legal assistants (like me). Anytime I’ve tried to bring it up with another coworker, they brush it off, so I’m not optimistic I could get support from colleagues to approach him as a group, which is often your advice. How would you proceed? What’s my obligation, if any?

Are there other attorneys on staff or is it just him? If there are other attorneys on staff, can you have a discreet word with the one you most trust to navigate this?

I asked employment lawyer Jon Hyman of Wickens Herzer Panza, who writes the Ohio Employer Law Blog and is the author of The Employer Bill of Rights: A Manager’s Guide to Workplace Law, what you can do if the firm doesn’t have other lawyers. He said, “Once missed deadlines, forgotten clients, and basic functional breakdowns occur, the issue stops being internal and becomes a client protection problem. As a non-lawyer, you don’t have a formal duty to report misconduct. But you’re not exactly free to ignore it either. Law firms rely on staff not to silently enable conduct that risks client harm, and when something goes wrong, everyone involved gets pulled into the fallout.” He agrees with you that this is a message your boss is far more likely to hear from another lawyer and suggests, “Identify a single attorney he respects and share concrete, client-focused concerns. That’s not ‘reporting’; it’s responsible escalation. At the same time, push for structural protections: redundant calendaring, standardized client updates, and pre-filing checks to reduce risk.” If nothing changes and clients remain at risk, “You can report concerns to a state disciplinary authority — anyone can — but that step is typically a last resort given its seriousness and potential consequences. It becomes more appropriate when there is ongoing harm and no internal response. Some jurisdictions also offer confidential lawyer assistance programs that may provide a less punitive path.”

He also says, “Focus on observable patterns like missed deadlines, communication lapses, and confusion, not speculation about causes. If you raise concerns directly, frame them around client service and support, not decline. The goal is to assess awareness and openness to safeguards.”

3. My coworker watches videos without headphones

In December, I started volunteering behind the bar at an arts venue. I enjoy the work and get along with most of the people there. Perhaps most importantly, I feel genuinely accepted, which is very different from most of my experiences as an autistic man in my part of the world.

One of my fellow volunteers, a man I’ll call Fergus, who is my peer but has been here longer than I have, has a habit that really annoys me. Every break without fail he watches TikToks, YouTube videos, and the like without earphones in our shared de facto break room. In other circumstances, I would politely ask him to use headphones, but I’m concerned that my status as a relatively new volunteer may make this fraught. Additionally, I otherwise get on very well with Fergus and don’t want to jeopardize that by being too assertive.

Additional context:
* Fergus has been spoken to about this by at least two different volunteers in my presence, both of whom have been volunteering longer than me. He always complies with their requests. I wonder if the fact that I haven’t this far asked this of Fergus means he assumes I don’t object.
* Fergus and I are both visibly neurodivergent men in our twenties.
* I am white and Fergus is not. (Ideally this ought not to matter but I’m conscious that this could engender social dynamics that I may not be aware of.)
* The content he listens to isn’t in and of itself problematic (religious, overtly political, NSFW, etc.).

With all this in mind, how assertive is it appropriate for me to be? My gut feeling is that politely asking him to use headphones is probably the best route, but would it be worth waiting a few weeks to press the matter? Or do I just need to “suck it up” and suffer in silence?

You’ve been there since December; you’re not so new that you can’t say anything! I agree it made sense to be more hesitant as a brand new volunteer the first time you shared a break room with him, but it’s been a few months. It’s completely reasonable to politely say, “Would you mind using headphones while you listen to that?” This would be fine even if you hadn’t seen others ask it of him, but the fact that you have should give you additional confidence that it’s an okay request to make and he won’t be shocked by it.

Go ahead and reclaim your break room peace.

4. Should I send an unsolicited recommendation for an intern?

Would it be okay for me to send a positive job reference without the applicant asking me?

My workplace has a student worker who wants to pursue the same career as me and is applying for an internship I told her about in that field. I’m not her boss; her supervisor is in my department but with a different job, and that’s mainly the work the student has been doing. But I’ve been able to borrow her now and then to let her learn more about my work and to help me, and I can tell she’ll be good at it.

Would be appropriate for me to email the internship place and put in a good word for her, even though I’m not her direct supervisor and she didn’t ask me to? I’m fond of her and proud of her and want her to succeed. I think this is the first time I’ve been senior enough in my career to be in the position of helping a junior.

Do you have any contacts at the place where she’s applying for the internship? If you do, you absolutely should contact them on her behalf! If you don’t … well, you still can, and if it’s a particularly glowing note (not a generic one), there’s a decent chance it’ll get her application a closer look. Just don’t do this.

5. Should I not turn on call screening when I’m job searching?

I recently applied for a job, mainly out of curiosity about the pay range I could potentially be offered as I am not really looking to leave my current job. I checked my application status on the online portal a couple of times and recently noticed it was changed from “under review” to “no longer under consideration.”

I am wondering if the (relatively recent) call screening feature from Apple may have blocked a call or otherwise screened it out? Do employers have a process for getting around the call screening? Or is having it enabled considered unprofessional? If someone is job searching should they ensure that this feature is disabled?

It’s possible that your phone blocked a call, but it’s more likely that they simply decided not to move your application forward.

On the call screening feature — which asks unknown callers to record their name and purpose for the call, then shares that with you so you can decide whether to answer — employers calling you will generally just proceed through the prompt. It’s not considered unprofessional to have it on. (That said, I would not turn on “silence unknown callers” if you’re job searching; that’s much more likely to cause you to miss calls from employers and recruiters.)

It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…

1. How can we convince employees to care about showing up to work?

Part of my job involves working with seasonal employees who are hired in the summer to work as 1-1 aides to kids with disabilities. We have a persistent problem of staff suddenly calling out or announcing late arrivals/early departures. In some ways I’m sympathetic — this is just their summer gig, we aren’t able to pay the rate I wish we could, and life can be complicated.

In other ways, I’m not. The impact of suddenly disappearing on these kids seems so self-evident I feel ridiculous explaining it. The shifts are 9-3, so there is time at the end of the day for appointments and other life stuff. Ideally we would just not hire back staff with consistent issues, but there just aren’t enough qualified people to fill all of these roles (although we are trying to expand our recruiting).

Until now I was not a direct manager to these staff, but I’m in the process of being promoted. So my question is, what is the best way to shift this culture going forward? Incentives for showing up consistently (beyond being paid)? Clearer consequences for call-outs? Explaining the impact of their behavior? I don’t want to be condescending or unreasonable, but this is genuinely a job where being on-site truly matters.

I think the issue isn’t “not enough qualified people to fill these roles” but rather “not enough qualified people to fill these roles at the rate we are paying.” I realize you likely don’t have the power to do anything about that, but are you able to make that case to someone who does, pointing out that without more competitive pay, this will continue to be an issue and will continue to affect the kids in your care?

Beyond that, though, you can try talking about this explicitly in your hiring process — explaining that it’s a job where reliability really matters because of ___ (fill in with specifics about the impact on the kids) and you need people who will commit to showing up reliably and on time. You can reiterate that as part of their training too. From there, yes, ideally you’d have clearer consequences for unreliability — but if you’re in a position where you’re having to hire back people who you know to be consistently unreliable, I’m not sure how practical that is. Realistically, if you don’t have the power to fire people who don’t show up reliably and you’re struggling to hire other candidates because of the pay, you’re in a bad spot.

That said, it would be interesting to actively enlist the repeat offenders in your problem solving — sitting down with them and saying “here’s the issue, here’s why it matters, here are our constraints in solving it, what are your ideas for how we can improve this as a team?”

2. Coworkers keep putting my team’s work into AI software

I work on a marketing and communications team for a public institution affiliated with a state government in the U.S. We produce a lot of written work, as well as photos and videos, for various divisions in our organizations. However, we’ve recently hit a few things that have thrown my team and I for a loop:

1. We produced employee headshots for one of the divisions we serve. An employee took the headshot from our photographer, plugged it into an outside AI service, and “updated” their own headshot. They then wanted our team to use that AI-edited headshot on our website. We refused, because (a) they put the work of our photographer into an AI system without the photographer’s permission and (b) it no longer accurately looked like the employee.

2. I created a written piece for a colleague in one of the divisions we serve. That colleague returned the piece to me having been rewritten by an outside AI service, asking me to approve that version. I felt incredibly insulted, but also frustrated that my work has been used to train AI without my permission. I ended up rewriting the AI version to feel more genuine and asked my colleague to consult with us before moving to AI solutions. Time will tell if that was a good approach.

Our organization does allow gen-AI use in work, as long as it’s cited and as long as we use software that’s been vetted and approved (both examples used unapproved AI software).

Do you have advice on how we handle these kinds of situations in the future? Is there something we can say to our colleagues to keep them from doing this with our work? Working in marketing can be challenging because everyone thinks they can do our jobs — and AI certainly doesn’t help that. And I don’t want to immediately jump to reporting my colleagues to the IT admin for AI misuse; I feel like that could damage our working relationship. Thoughts?

Your organization needs to do more to communicate its policy on AI, because both of these situations violated that policy! Can you point out that people clearly haven’t absorbed what they are and aren’t permitted to do and ask that the company provide better training on what is and isn’t allowed?

On your end when this happens, you should feel free to cite the policy directly! You don’t need to tiptoe around it; it’s fine to say, “Company policy explicitly prohibits using that software, so we can’t do this.” If someone is a repeat offender, loop in their boss — not to try to get them in trouble, but to point out that the person needs more training to understand the policy.

But I would try to avoid feeling insulted by people using AI to redo your work; this is just the latest iteration of something that has always existed in writing jobs, where non-writers make changes that weaken the work (but because they’re not good writers, can’t see that).

3. When a job wants me to answer questions instead of sending a cover letter, how long should the answers be?

I’m currently applying for remote jobs at nonprofits. Many are not asking for cover letters, but instead have open-ended questions they ask you to answer when you submit your resume, such as “what about our work makes you most interested in working with us,” “describe your familiarity with and interest in Work Area X,” and “describe something you’ve worked on that you’re particularly proud of.”

Any advice on the recommended length for these responses?

Typically one well-considered paragraph. Or two at most, unless they specifically ask for something longer.

And because these are short answers (and also because the reader will likely be skimming, at least in their first pass), you really want to strip away any fluff and ensure what you write is heavy on substance.

4. My company is interviewing other people for the job I’ve been covering

My boss retired eight months ago, and I have been filling the position on an interim basis since then. I had an interim agreement which expired after three months, but no agreement since then. I am being stipended a small amount each week for additional duties.

I am being told that the position has to be posted externally, but they hope I will apply. But also they “want to see who is out there and available.” Other positions in other teams recently, where a similar thing has happened, have not been advertised externally. I was told they would like to complete in the next three months, but maybe not. No promises.

I’min the U.S. but I have a friend who is an HR professional in Europe, who told me that in that jurisdiction I would be considered to be de facto in the role and if asked to take part in a process, I would have some other options. I am not trying to cause trouble here, because I love this organization and this role, but do I have any recourse here? I feel like I am being held to a different standard than others are, and it makes me feel less valued by the organization.

In the U.S., you don’t have any rights to special preference for the position (assuming you don’t have a contract or union agreement that says otherwise), even if they’ve handled it differently for other roles. The exception would be if you felt you were being treated differently because of your race, sex, religion, or other protected class, in which case that could move into discrimination territory. But absent something like that, they’re allowed to treat this hiring process differently than others.

There are a lot of reasons why they might want to do that: this position might have higher stakes or pickier stakeholders, or they might want a change in strategy that they think an external hire would be better positioned to lead, or they might think you aren’t as qualified to fill the role on a permanent basis as the people recently promoted on those other teams were (even if you’re doing just fine in a pared-down interim version of it), and on and on.

You could definitely ask whether there’s anything about the way you’ve approached the role that they’d like you to do differently, but try to approach it assuming there may be legitimate reasons for why they want to talk to multiple candidates.

5. Can I ask for a higher raise?

A coworker left a different section of our department (think like payroll and recruiting) last year and I was assigned some of his tasks until we could find a replacement. The tasks I took on aren’t necessarily strenuous, but they do take 2-3 set hours per day and utilize a different skill set than my actual job, and I had to rearrange my daily work schedule and cadence. My manager helped pull back on some of the responsibilities of my day-to-day role to accommodate the time for the other work, but sometimes it takes extended hours to get both done.

When the interim period stretched to nearly a year without hiring anybody, I asked my manager how we might be able to adjust my compensation to reflect doing a not-insignificant portion of another person’s job for a more extended period than either of us anticipated. I was informed that my efforts would be reflected in my annual review and any resulting pay increase.

I have now received my positive review and the increase, and I’m getting the standard cost of living bump that everyone in the company is getting plus about 1% for “going above and beyond.” This equates to several hundred dollars over the year. Am I wrong to think this is an inappropriately low amount? I generally like where I work and the people I work with, including my manager. Is there any scenario in which “responding” to my raise amount has a point and doesn’t just make me a difficult employee?

Yes, many, many scenarios, including this one. Think of the increase they offered as a starting point in negotiations and ask for more. They may not be thinking of it that way, but it’s reasonable for you to.

Say this to your manager: “As you know, I was willing to help out with the X work in a pinch, but it’s been a year and it’s a considerable change to my responsibilities and daily work for a significant period of time. I don’t believe the extra $300 (replace with the correct number, but do give the exact figure because it’s a ridiculous one when spelled out that way) added to my salary accounts for that, and I’d like to request that be revisited.” If you have a number in mind, name it, but you don’t have to.

You are being the opposite of a difficult employee; you’ve been the solution to a major problem for them, and you should ask to be compensated accordingly for that.

It’s four answers to four questions. Here we go…

1. My senior employee is a terrible communicator

My employee, “Jordan,” has been in a senior role for 15 years. Their job involves communication and coordination across many different teams and with customers; understanding and being understood is one of the most important competencies. Jordan’s communication skills are lacking. I have highlighted this as an area for improvement every year I have been their manager (nearly five years) and in annual goals and performance reviews, as did their previous manager.

Jordan has attended trainings and I have provided job aids and feedback, but there has been little improvement. I deliver feedback at our weekly meetings, and I only raise one thing at a time, even though there are usually 3-5 communication breakdowns I’ve observed. I bring it up and ask for their perspective, then talk through my perspective and what I’d like to see differently in the future. I give feedback 1-2 times per month, because more than that feels like I am putting them down and being nitpicky every time we talk.

Jordan seems to disagree with me. I believe this is the root of their lack of improvement — they don’t think they need to improve because they don’t believe me that there is a problem. When I ask what support they need, they have not been able to give me anything actionable, just “I will work on it.” My boss and I feel that if Jordan can’t improve in this skill, we may need to replace them.

Jordan struggles to put themselves in the context of the person with whom they are communicating and, conversely, when they are interpreting someone else’s communication, they struggle to put themselves into the context the person is speaking from and what matters to them. Here’s one typical recent example: Jordan needs to, let’s say, change the design of a teapot a customer has ordered for five years. The customer asked, “Will the new teapots still be able to go in the dishwasher?” Jordan responded, “You can still wash the teapots.” The customer interpreted that response as a “yes.” I knew that we hadn’t tested whether the teapots could go in the dishwasher, and that Jordan was speaking about hand-washing. I said, “We aren’t sure if the teapots can go in the dishwasher. We will get back to you.” Jodan later emailed the customer, “I have confirmed with the Dishwashing Safety team that the teapots are rated to 90 degrees.” The customer does not know what that means; they do not know that we consider teapots rated to 150 degrees to be dishwasher safe, and anything less not safe. I had to again jump in to clarify that the teapots aren’t dishwasher safe. Jordan delivered, verbatim, the response from our internal team to the customer without doing any translation into the customer’s context, or even making sure that the answer actually answered the customer’s question. The customer could have left with the impression that the teapots are dishwasher safe, resulting in customers unhappy when their teapots did not withstand dishwashing.

I’ve asked my boss, HR, and manager friends about how to coach Jordan. One person advised that I should document every instance of communication issues and review them with Jordan weekly. I am concerned that, particularly for a senior employee, this will feel as if I am hovering over their shoulder watching everything they do and documenting every tiny mistake they make, which will be demoralizing. What do you think?

Jordan isn’t right for this job.

You’ve been coaching them for nearly five years. They not only haven’t improved, they disagree that there’s even a problem to fix.

The reality is, not everyone has the skills you’re looking for. Some people can get better at it within the amount of time that a manager can reasonably invest in coaching. Some people could get better at it if they had extremely hands-on help over a long period of time, going beyond what’s reasonable for a manager to invest. Even with that, some people won’t ever get better at it to the level that’s needed in a job where it’s a central and essential skill.

You have made a good faith effort, and it’s not working. It’s time to move to the next step in managing the situation, which means telling Jordan very clearly that things are now at the point where if you don’t see XYZ specific changes in XYZ amount of time, you will need to let them go. (That amount of time should not be lengthy, given how long you’ve already been working on this — I’d give a maximum of two months to demonstrate significant improvement or otherwise you’ll just be dragging things out for no reason.)

Related:
my employee can’t accept that his performance is bad

2. My coworker is in crisis but not doing her work

I work for a very small company (literally four employees and the boss) that I was hired to eight months ago. HR is one of several roles that I fulfill, and one I’ve had zero training for. My boss is great but he’s away from the office most of the time because he isn’t a U.S. citizen and he travels a lot, so we employees are very free with little oversight most of the time.

Enter problematic coworker, Lisa. Lisa is a wonderful coworker and good friend … most of the time. Other times, she gets drunk at work and misses workdays with little notice, even though she’s already used up all her allowed PTO for the year. In the last few months, she’s lost both her parents and had some other serious personal stuff going on; she’s really going through it and I would feel for her deeply even if we weren’t friends.

Recently she was hospitalized for what I suspect may have been an attempt to end things, though I don’t know that for certain. She’s been saying she’ll work from home while she recovers, but she doesn’t answer work messages or send emails, which is a major portion of her job. I don’t want her to be stressed out when she should be recovering, and I definitely don’t want her to lose her job, but like I said, she’s used her PTO for the year already and she’s just not doing her work. I’m worried the boss will let her go considering the problems we’ve had with her in the past, but I also don’t feel right about just letting her miss work. What do you recommend?

Oh no. Your company is too small to be covered by FMLA (which would require you to hold her job for her for up to three months while she’s on leave), but that doesn’t mean that it can’t choose to offer something similar.

How senior is your role? If you’re fairly junior and your HR work is usually things like dealing with benefits paperwork and ensuring payroll gets processed (as opposed to higher-level HR strategy, employee relations, management, etc.), it’s probably not really within your purview to handle this; your boss would need to. But someone should be reaching out to Lisa to find out what she needs during this time and giving her some options, which ideally would include the option to take extended leave if she needs it. (If we’re using FMLA as a framework, that leave would normally be unpaid since she’s out of PTO, although of course in practice that can make it harder for people to use it.)

3. How honest can I be in a stay interview?

My organization recently announced that they will be conducting stay interviews. In the past, they conducted anonymous surveys to get an idea of general workplace perception and environment, and I do not know if the interviews are in place of or in addition to the survey. Either way, I do have real issues with the organization and its leadership that I have raised on surveys in the past but which still remain unaddressed (mostly to do with a lack of timely communication between leadership and staff and attempted standardizations of policy that only work for staff in non-public-facing positions, although there are also unaddressed issues involving a huge safety lapse a couple of years ago) but am unsure of whether it’s safe to bring up those concerns in a stay interview.

I feel like it would be one thing to mention these issues in an anonymous survey or even an exit interview, but I am concerned that something I say in a position where they will know who I am and that I currently intend to continue working for the organization could potentially be held against me. Are my concerns founded? Will being fully honest in a stay interview potentially harm me, or would it be more helpful to share the issues I feel the organization has?

There’s no guarantee that your feedback in a stay interview won’t be used against you. It shouldn’t be — that would go against the entire spirit and purpose of conducting them — but does it happen? Sure. Not all the time and not under good managers, but enough that it’s a legitimate worry.

Generally the way you know whether it’s safe to be honest with upward feedback in any form, and particularly when it’s non-anonymous, is by watching whether your company has done the work to assure people it’s safe. That’s stuff like creating opportunities for meaningful input that’s taken seriously and at least sometimes acted on, actively welcoming dissent, and demonstrably not penalizing people who offer opinions that make leadership uncomfortable. If you haven’t seen enough of that to feel comfortable, assume it’s safer to pull your punches.

On top of all that, in your case, you’ve already raised these issues and they haven’t acted on them. So they already have the info you’re considering offering with your name attached this time; there’s not a lot of benefit to you in sticking your neck out further.

4. When you’re allergic to nuts and your employer puts nuts in your workplace as retaliation

A question based on a novel I read recently. The main character is a waitress with a severe nut allergy. The restaurant doesn’t serve nuts, so it’s all good. She upsets the owner and comes in a few days later to find that they’ve updated the menu to include several items with nuts. When she asks if she’s being fired, she’s told no, that would require paying unemployment, but she’s free to quit if she can no longer perform the job duties.

Other than being overtly evil, this wouldn’t hold up, right? She could still file for and receive unemployment?

She could likely still receive unemployment, both because it’s a fundamental change in the job for her that means she has to leave it through no fault of her own, and also because it’s clearly retaliatory. In fact, depending on what she did to upset the owner, it’s possible there’s legal recourse too; if the nuts were in retaliation for her engaging in legally protected behavior (like making a good faith report of harassment, discrimination, or safety violations or requesting medical or religious accommodations), that would be illegal. And employment lawyers will tell you that retaliation is often much easier to prove than other offenses from an employer.