DEAR ABBY: We are friends with a couple who married five months ago. My husband, "Ian," was one of the groomsmen, so we were deeply involved with wedding details a long time prior to the wedding. Ian and the groom, "Claude," are now on the same team at work.
Since the wedding, Claude spends a lot of time talking about his wife to anyone within earshot and on social media to the point of excess. (The bride is "perfect, beautiful, lovely" and he's "so lucky to be married to her," etc.) Everyone on the team works overtime every night because Claude posts love notes to his wife all day. The team supervisor talked to my husband about it, and asked him to cover Claude's workload because of his pre-wedding and now post-wedding bliss.
I have filtered the guy's posts and stopped reading, but Ian feels stuck in the middle at the office. He needs Claude to get his head back in the game and work. How can my husband gently communicate that this is affecting Claude's job performance and driving everyone batty? Ian is afraid that if he complains to the supervisor, his friend will feel betrayed. -- OVERLOADED IN ALABAMA
DEAR OVERLOADED: The matter should be brought to the attention of their supervisor so the supervisor can handle it before it becomes a morale problem. What's going on is unprofessional and unfair to the other team members. The supervisor should tell Ian's besotted friend that the time he's spending messaging his bride has increased the workload on everyone else, the honeymoon is over, and he needs to get his mind back on the tasks at hand.