Good Job is Slate’s new advice column on work. Read about our new columnists and mission here. Have a workplace problem big or small? Send it to Laura Helmuth and Doree Shafrir here. It’s anonymous! Dear Good Job, There is a man at work who wears pants so tight that nothing is left to the imagination, and I mean nothing. Our department is about 75 percent women, and I suspect that he’s doing this for inappropriate reasons. Should I talk to him about wearing looser pants, or is this something to take to human resources? —We Don’t Want to See It Dear See It, It’s certainly possible that your colleague is an exhibitionist. But there are plenty of innocent explanations: Does he have ballet class after work? Is he the lead singer in a glam rock band? Maybe his social circle appreciates brutally honest fashion—or feels strongly about picking a side on the skinny-jeans debate. He might have gained some weight and can’t afford new clothes or hasn’t accepted that he needs them. It’s possible he doesn’t realize just how revealing the pitiless overhead lights of an office can be. Or maybe he never knew, has forgotten, or is deliberately rejecting the norms of office attire from the Before Times, when too many people felt obligated to wear khakis, blazers, and uncomfortable shoes to work. If he’s frightening the customers, you could check with human resources about the dress code and suggest they recirculate it. But don’t talk to him directly. It’s disrespectful to comment on a co-worker’s clothes. If you have evidence that he’s intentionally being creepy, that’s a different HR conversation entirely. But for now, I suggest you try to find the humor in the rich variety of modern office fashion. And keep your eyes up here, on his face. Send Your Questions to Good Job! Laura Helmuth and Doree Shafrir want to help you navigate your social dynamics at work. Does your colleague constantly bug you after hours? Has an ill-advised work romance gone awry? Ask us your question here! Dear Good Job, I’m a federal employee at an agency that is very popular with the public—one of the land-management agencies. I love my job. I truly enjoy both the experience and the service we provide to our visitors. I’m also very grateful that nearly everyone I work with is dedicated to our mission of providing top-quality service to the American people as well as visitors from across the globe. However, based on the executive orders issued in just the first few days of the current administration, it’s clear that the new president plans to demolish the civil service as we know it, including replacing our experienced, knowledgeable leadership with loyalists, many of whom are averse to the core purpose of the agency they’ve been tapped to lead. Right now my co-workers and I are trying our best to remain positive, waiting to see how things shake out. But most of us recognize that we are likely about to collectively go through very trying times. Do you have any tips on how we can be supportive of one another? Do you have recommendations on ways we can keep up our morale and continue to fulfill our mission to serve the public while the president constantly maligns and undermines us? —Ranger in Danger Dear Ranger, Thank you for your service. The work you and other civil servants do across the federal government is so important, and I’m sorry your careers and mission are being threatened by destructive, bigoted bullies. It feels as if those militia goons who occupied Malheur National Wildlife Refuge and destroyed federal property a few years ago are now in charge of everything. Donald Trump is the most nature-hostile president in history, and it’s easy to imagine him turning over our beloved national parks to developers who would pave paradise and put up golf resorts. Please know that most of the rest of us value your work. Thanks to all of you for staying in your positions as long as you can. Put safety first, of course. Assume that any emails, computers, work phones, and internal messaging systems are being monitored. Believe nothing—that “deferred resignation” offer from Elon Musk looks like a sham and is probably the first of many efforts to trick or scare employees away. Have you read the CIA’s World War II–era manual for simple acts of sabotage? Some of the advice might be relevant for you or your colleagues, like “misunderstand orders” or “haggle over precise wordings of communications, minutes, resolutions.” If you interact with visitors, talk to them (carefully) about what your park means for history, the environment, education, and the future. There are a lot of ways to express solidarity and empower your colleagues. Feed each other. Listen. Take on someone’s work when they need a break, and ask for help when you do. Recognize their accomplishments and praise them, in private and in public. Make more decisions yourselves about how to focus your work, because you know you won’t be getting good guidance from above. Remind each other why you got into this career, and what you still enjoy about the work and the mission. If you can go outside together during a break, take solace in the natural world and geological time. We’re all being pelted with propaganda, and sometimes the most supportive thing you can do is to confirm your shared reality and morality. Slate Plus members get more Good Job every week. Sign up now to read Laura Helmuth’s additional column this week. Dear Good Job, I work on a team with one member who is a rambler. He can talk for 25 minutes of a 30-minute team meeting and not even realize until the end that he’s taken up the whole time. He’s a good manager and co-worker, with great ideas and a strong work ethic, but this quirk makes it very difficult for meetings to go smoothly. We’re all remote, so these meetings are necessary. His habit is also particularly egregious when we have external parties on calls because they aren’t given a chance to ask questions or provide their own thoughts. As a technically more junior teammate with a good relationship with him, is there anything I can say to help him confront this issue and work on it? He’s aware of it (“There I go again!”) but doesn’t take it seriously enough to try to change. It’s a dynamic that causes secondhand embarrassment as well as legitimately wasting people’s time in a fast-paced industry in which minutes are valuable. Help! —Talked to Death Dear Talked, On behalf of all of us who have been stuck in meetings with Rambler, thank you for stepping up to seek solutions. These meetings need an agenda. Whether it’s Rambler or another team member who runs the calls, it is perfectly appropriate for you to suggest to them that they circulate an agenda beforehand to make the meetings more “efficient.” (Efficient is professional-speak for “Let’s stop wasting everyone’s time and tolerance.”) Tell the organizer that an agenda will let everyone prepare and prioritize and help you get through all the orders of business in the allotted time. Each agenda item should be assigned a discussion leader and a time limit. When time’s up, you move on to the next thing. Even if Rambler tries to dominate each subject, this breaks up his monologue and allows other people to start each new discussion. If Rambler doesn’t run the meeting, talk to the person who does about additional options. They are probably aware of the problem and struggling to fix it. Does Rambler need to be in every meeting? Should there be smaller, more focused working groups? Is there a Raise Hand option on your video call service that the meeting leader could enforce? Regardless of who is in charge, you and other people in the meeting could tag-team interrupting Rambler to call on someone else: “Rambler, I think Nicole had some ideas about that project, didn’t you, Nicole?” There’s a psychological phenomenon, called the cocktail party effect, that explains how people can hear their own name being spoken from across a loud and crowded room. Speaking Rambler’s name a time or two might cut through his background noise. If Rambler won’t be interrupted by someone else speaking, I suggest you make a timeout sign, like a basketball coach (hold one hand horizontally over the other, vertical hand to make a T shape), and wave it in front of your camera. Keep a big, nonconfrontational smile on your face as you trigger his respect for the rules of sports. “Timeout, Rambler! I have a question for Delia about her team’s experience.” Good luck. Classic Prudie A week ago, I went to a restaurant I used to work at. It’s not a particularly expensive restaurant, but it’s slightly more expensive than average where I live. It’s honestly the kind of place that any server trying to make good money would use as a stepping stone to a nicer restaurant. That being said, there were a few servers I worked with 15 years ago that were really good at their job. I went there about 10 years ago and was surprised that they hadn’t tried to find another job. This came up in conversation, and one of them mentioned being comfortable and still making decent money. That’s fair enough; I get that not everybody has the energy to get used to another job. So when I went there this weekend, “Amanda” was still working there …