update: my vegan coworker is upset about getting non-vegan gifts three years in a row

It’s a special “where are you now?” season at Ask a Manager and I’m running updates from people who had their letters here answered in the past.

There will be more posts than usual this week, so keep checking back throughout the day.

Remember the letter-writer whose vegan coworker, Liz, was upset about getting non-vegan gifts three years in a row? Here’s the update.

Sorry I missed the post the day it went up; I was busy that day and then frankly overwhelmed by the number of comments! But thank you for your reply. You were perfectly right, I wasn’t a party to any of it myself so I couldn’t really get involved without causing drama or taking sides, so I didn’t, except to hum supportive noises whenever Marie was fretting about the situation to everyone in the office.

She really was very upset that Liz would think she was intentionally getting her non-vegan gifts. In sort of half-heartedly listening to her fret one day, I realized, and another coworker did at the same time, so she was the one to point it out, but Marie was clearly hearing “vegetarian” when anyone said “vegan.” She thought as long as no meat products to be consumed were involved, she was fine. My coworker actually looked up the definition of vegan and read it to Marie and she was like =O

You asked about Marie and Liz’s relationship outside of the gift debacles, and to be honest it’s complicated by the fact that Marie’s husband is a local councilman who is kind of controversial. There was some gossip a while back that Liz was in his public Facebook comments calling him out for some of his positions. Marie never talks about his job or his views; quite the opposite, she has said she has no interest in any kind of politics and she has banned her husband from political talk at home. Regardless I could see Liz maybe thinking she actually is aligned with him privately and being wary of her.

After her enlightenment, Marie bought Liz a Bath and Body Works gift card and apologized once again for her mixups. Marie sees herself as a bit of an office “mom” so she always goes a bit over-the-top in terms of the gifts, both in price and in trying to personalize them. She very much didn’t want to get a gift card because it was “generic” but in the end she thought it was safest. Liz still isn’t the warmest toward her, but they appear to be back on solid footing. We’ll try to vet Marie’s next Christmas gift ahead of time.

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