Dear Juniper, agony aunt:

Offside at the offsite

My department recently had an away-day at a hotel in Hampshire. On the Saturday night, I overstepped the mark and had a go at my boss. She has been very good about it since and says that it will not be held against me, but I suspect she is plotting her revenge. Should I take pre-emptive action?

Yours truly,

G O Brian

Dear G O Brian

I'm tempted to say don't be too hard on yourself. Away-days, which quite disproportionately seem to be held at hotels in Hampshire, test everyone's mettle. They so often bring out the worst and not the best in us. I wonder why? Still, no use crying over spilt milk. You said what you said and now you are living with it.

I don't know what you said to your boss that was overstepping it, how charged or personal it was, whether you said something that others would agree with or whether you went out there leaving general opinion and commonly held views in the dust. In the absence of these specifics, my advice is that you should test the water before deciding whether to make a pre-emptive strike or to leave the incident behind you.

Ask others close to her if she has mentioned anything since and take your cue from them. Be charming and optimistic. Even if you have recklessly and publicly insulted your senior, a sincere apology, and perhaps some kindly corrective action, will most likely suffice.

Juniper

A dressing down

I sought your advice recently regarding my frustration about the waste of IT resources at our firm. Just as you said, I made a short bullet-point presentation to my boss, who sounded impressed. At our weekly section heads meeting this morning, he presented my analysis as his own and with no attribution to me. I went storming in after the meeting and had it out with him.

He came out with a lot of stuff about me not being leadership material, me being too long-winded and "not being inspirational, not someone the others look up to". It all went by in a blur, but I think he said, "Let's face it, Des, if we need a tricky systems problem to be solved, you are the one we all turn to, but no one is going to take instructions from someone who wears sandals to work."

I probably went too far in what I said to him and I admit to the sandals in summer. So, to avoid being long-winded, where do I go from here?

Yours,

Des

Dear Des

You could make an appeal to your boss's sense of justice, especially as he stole your pitch. But is he likely to feel any remorse?

Shame you didn't mention footwear in the first letter, then we could have ensured a well heeled and well argued pitch. This might sound shallow, but when people don't understand what is being said to them - and I think IT qualifies as incomprehensible to most - they take comfort from other things that signal that you are the same as them. This is important in any professional environment, but it is particularly important in financial services: just think of the "to khaki or not to khaki" dress-down debate. As someone who can obviously be relied on to solve tricky problems, are you hurting yourself unnecessarily by your appearance and manner, and is this something you would be willing to fix? Or are other factors at play, ones that raise more fundamental questions about your leadership potential and your readiness to take credible command as Head of IT, even with a technical grasp of the problems involved?

You need to address these questions, so my advice as to where you go from here is: go first to a shoe shop and then go back to your boss with more specific questions about your development and future at the firm.

Juniper

The futures market

I am caught in a trap. I became a derivatives trader because I like markets, the money is good and people told me that if you are good, you get on. I knew that the work was high-pressured and the hours were long, but I was led to believe that if you performed, you got paid.

Well, ever since I joined, it hasn't quite been like that. I do get a buzz out of markets and I can do the job. I can even handle the long hours and the pressures when things go wrong. But the fact is, I am not getting paid. I've got friends selling mobile phones on bigger basics than me and the bonus word has been just that - a word - since I came into the City.

The trap is that I love the business, but I am letting it rule my life for less money than my mates are getting for doing less work than I do. If I leave it much later, I will be too old to start anything else.

Should I stick it out or quit now?

Yours,

Trapped

Dear Trapped

If I am reading your letter correctly, then you really have only one problem, which is that you aren't getting paid what you expected or feel you deserve.

The fact that your pals in the phone shop are on more than you sounds very unlikely, but in any case, is this really the right comparison to make? Think about their earnings potential in future and yours. Your industry might be at the bottom of the cycle; theirs might be at the peak. Change direction if you wish, but don't do it on the basis of today's earnings.

The only thing we can predict with certainty about the future is that it will be different to the present. You should know better than me which way this particular market will turn.

Juniper