open thread – July 31, 2015 by Alison Green on July 31, 2015 It’s the Friday open thread! The comment section on this post is open for discussion with other readers on anything work-related that you want to talk about. If you want an answer from me, emailing me is still your best bet*, but this is a chance to talk to other readers. * If you submitted a question to me recently, please don’t repost it here, as it may be in the to-be-answered queue :) { 1,275 comments }
Hooligan* July 31, 2015 at 11:03 am Any project managers out there? I just moved into project management after working as a data analyst for 5 years. I’m really happy with the move, but I haven’t figured out what my career progression could look like. There’s working on increasingly complicated and big projects. And there’s a list of skills I can upgrade (stakeholder management, budgeting, getting my PMI cert). I’m not sure how it would in terms of formal career progression. With analysis, it was pretty clear, data analyst – > senior analyst – > run my own analytics teams. I guess I could go from PM to director of PM, but I don’t have a super specific understanding of that progression. Anyone willing to share their own experience?
Rock* July 31, 2015 at 11:22 am My (limited) understanding is that this will vary a lot by field. Might help to give what industry you’re in? I am not a PM, but my industry has them. Around here at least it seems to be PMs with more experience get meatier projects with a lot more moving parts and a lot more risk and potential gain. The career progression isn’t laddered … specifically… but PMs are sometimes the ones who get tapped for Division Managers etc. We have one person who is titled Executive Project Manager, who manages the managers of a number of related projects, but that is a pretty specific situation/client, and I don’t know if it’s typical at all.
AnotherAlison* July 31, 2015 at 11:58 am I’m on the “E” side of an EPC company, and it’s similar. We typically start as engineering leads, move to engineering manager, project manager, project sponsor (over more than 1 project), then area manager (over a whole set of projects in a common market), and then up to DM or some other layer of senior management. You’ll also move up through the capital range — a guy in charge of a billion dollar job has done a few before. Sometimes, PMs (or people at any point on that path) will get tapped to go to another division and PM there or they get assigned to a special project for corporate.
Hooligan* July 31, 2015 at 12:01 pm So I also think the reason I’m having trouble envisioning a concrete pathway is that my company is small and growing. We just built our PM team this winter/spring and we’re working on developing systems and processes. It’s not like I can see what path people who came before me took, because no one came before me. My manager came out of a client services role, not PM.
AnotherAlison* July 31, 2015 at 1:59 pm My company is large but my specific division grew about 7-fold from when I started 10 years ago. If I knew then what I know now, I’d have done things much differently. Layers of positions will likely be created that you can’t even imagine now. It sounds like by moving into PM, you’re well-positioned to take advantage of the growth. I wouldn’t sweat it too much, unless “PM” starts to look like will-do-anything-required and you’re doing things you don’t want to do. For example, the PM role I have now used to be structured 50% sales/50% PM. I would have hated that, but once they changed it, I was interested in moving to this job.
Dawn* July 31, 2015 at 11:33 am I had the option to go either PM or Analyst and I chose Analyst because I hate doing PM with a fiery passion. Good PMs are like a combination of miracle workers and saints and are essential when doing any sort of software project at all. Be really honest with yourself about your capacity to organize and manage projects. PM progression usually has you starting out managing a smaller project, then moving on to bigger and more complex project and probably working in tandem with other PMs, then if you’re management track you’ll be put in charge of other PMs who are responsible for projects and then you just go up the ladder until you’re managing a lot of PMs and projects. 70-80% of the PM jobs I see advertised require the PM certification so set your sights on getting that early and keep your certification current.
SanguineAspect* July 31, 2015 at 11:36 am I’ve been a project manager for the last 5 years or so, and as Rock said below, it can very a lot by industry. I’m in software development, and I’ve worked exclusively with companies who are proponents of “agile development,” so having something like a PMI cert would be fine, but wasn’t necessarily as valued as, say, a CSM (Certified Scrum Master) certification. Experience counts for a lot as well. There are other companies where PMI certifications are highly valued, and someone like me probably wouldn’t fit their qualifications. Things like compensation amount seem to me to have to do more with your years of experience, rather than your title. “Project Manager” can mean someone with 0 or 20 years of experience.
SanguineAspect* July 31, 2015 at 2:05 pm Coming back to say that my title has varied in different organizations. I’ve been a “Scrum Master,” “Project Manger,” “Sr. Project Manager,” “Sr. Associate Program Manager” and “Project Director” at 4 different companies. I don’t place a lot of value on titles. As a “Project Director” in my current role, I’m client-facing and typically run 2-3 projects ($100k-$800k, depending on size) and 1-2 paid Research and Analysis projects ($30k-$60k) at a time. No other PMs report into me. In my prior role as a “Sr. Associate Program Manager” I did much the same.
JBeane* July 31, 2015 at 11:37 am PM here, and I agree that it really depends on your industry. In my former industry project managers would be promoted to account managers and then move up the client-facing ladder. Now I’m doing more software project management and it seems like career progression takes you into program management over multiple projects.
The Toxic Avenger* July 31, 2015 at 11:43 am Hey there Hooligan! I’m a senior-level technical project manager and my area of expertise is infrastructure (server operations, networking, storage, virtualization, disaster recovery, and the like). I have recently moved into program management (managing a series of projects that collectively achieve a goal that a single project cannot achieve on its own). Congratulations on your career change! I was an analyst for many years, and I still enjoy that kind of work. Having an analysis background will serve you very well as a PM, because you will know how to ask the right questions, dig for answers, press for details and challenge assumptions. Your career track may look like this: PM – Senior PM – Program Manager. I would recommend this progression if you are not interested in managing people (spoiler alert: I am not – I tried it and it did not work for me). If you are interested in being a manager / senior leader, it could look like PM – Senior PM – PM Manager – Director. I hope this helps!
The Toxic Avenger* July 31, 2015 at 11:45 am Oh…and…my personal opinion is that the PMI cert is not that valuable; I had mine from 2001 – 2009, and it was nothing but alphabet soup. However, some companies may require it. You may want to go ahead and get it just to put an extra feather in your cap!
AnotherAlison* July 31, 2015 at 11:53 am Interesting. . .of the 14 PMs in my group, only 1 has a PMI cert. I don’t think it’s very useful in my industry (people look at the PE license, MBA, or EMan degree more), but I was under the impression that it was a bigger deal for positions like the one you describe.
Hooligan* July 31, 2015 at 11:57 am I’m thinking it might make sense to get it if my company pays for it to have on my resume. If I ever want to go somewhere else, I can check that box. I do see it in job ads. I figure it might also give me better facility with the terms people in the field use.
AnotherAlison* July 31, 2015 at 12:01 pm Yeah, if you don’t have to fund it and you have time, why not? Related, I have a professional acquaintance who was laid off from a director position with a manufacturing company last fall and has struggled to find a new position. He revealed he’s getting some sort of lean six sigma certification now, because despite 25 years of experience and knowing the principles, he’s losing out on jobs by not having the certification.
M* July 31, 2015 at 12:35 pm Agreed! PM here w/ 11 years experience and no PMP and no desire whatsoever to get it (my firm won’t pay for it, I’m too cheap, and I just don’t want to back into study/test mode) The one thing it will do for you is get you past SOME HR/recruiters, but that’s about it.
hooligan* July 31, 2015 at 11:46 am For those who asked about my industry: I work on IT implementations for a tech start up. My work is heavily client facing, and I got this job because I used to work in the industry most of my clients are in. I don’t have any background in the software engineering end of of business.
Hooligan* July 31, 2015 at 11:55 am Also, I really like working with people and with clients. I enjoy brainstorming with colleauges how I’m going to approach a tricky interaction.I’ve had some challenging situations already, and while frustrating, I see them as opportunities to develop soft skills. I enjoy working with people far more than spending 5 hours a day looking at a Stata green screen or making pivot tables (though I’m glad I have those skills). I’m in IT now, and I have not IT background, and I’m wondering how much IT content knowledge I’ll need to move forward. Like I said in my first update, it’s really my client industry knowledge that faciliated this career change. I love my job so far. It really taps into my intuitive skill set. I have days that I show up to work and I’m like “this is what I’m meant to be doing.” In the past, it felt like I was capable of doing my job, but it was too much of a slog.
Girasol* July 31, 2015 at 8:06 pm In my company a PM job is different depending on the department. Some are admin supports taking minutes and updating status reports for a technical lead who is truly managing the project. Some do waterfall management (where PMI training is quite useful) and some do Agile scrum. Some move into program management and others are program managers in all but title. We have several project management offices (PMOs) where project managers who have moved up manage the process and measure the success of project managers. It seems like project management is a bit different wherever you find it. At the very least, if you’re exercising the skills from PMI or Agile training, you’re practicing a lot of the skills of a manager, which could open that career path. On the other hand, if helping groups solve problems is your bent, have you looked at business analysis? That’s another interesting possibility that can be a write-your-own-ticket sort of job.
The IT Manager* July 31, 2015 at 12:18 pm It depends. For my organization: Project Manager (smaller -> larger projects) -> Program Manager -> Portfolio Manager There’s also a stop in there to be a people manager/supervisor of PMs who are matrixed to another chain of command for projects, but need a supervisor to keep an eye on training and provide feedback. However my organization is huge and it sounds like your company might not have programs and portfolios as next steps.
kirsten* July 31, 2015 at 1:52 pm I’ve been working in project management since 2007 in the Market Research industry. My career path was associate -> PM -> Senior PM. As a Senior PM I take on the higher level projects and manage 2-3 associates/PM’s. My next step up from here would be Director and I would then manage other SPM’s (I am still a few years off from this though.) Can you talk to HR about what a career path would be? In some companies I’ve seen a good career path within project mgmt and in other companies I’ve seen people get promoted into a client facing role after they get good project mgmt experience. I am happy my company doesn’t do that because I enjoy project mgmt. As far as the PMI cert no one in my company has it so I don’t plan to get it but it definitely wouldn’t hurt to get it. good luck!
Beancounter in Texas* July 31, 2015 at 11:05 am Has anyone posted a resume/seeking job advertisement on Craigslist (or some other such similar site)? I have a dream job ad written for myself, but I was wondering whether it could be used as a marketing tool to attract potential employers. Has anyone done something similar? How did you do it?
Lizzy* July 31, 2015 at 11:56 am I have done it before and I would get bombarded with recruiters for commission-based sales positions and sometimes even scammers. There were also a couple of really weird ones in there, like someone looking for women willing to pose for private boudoir photo session for his clientele (I didn’t put any identifying info either whether I was male or female). A friend of mine had some relative success landing freelance work that helped him break into his field. He said small, growing businesses occasionally look for talent that way. You could try it, but I don’t think it is the best method.
Beancounter in Texas* July 31, 2015 at 12:26 pm I agree it’s probably not the best method, but the only alternative of which I can think is using my LinkedIn profile as a match-maker’s ad (kick-ass QuickBooks bookkeeper seeking small business employer with casual dress code). I’m not likely to be seen as much there, I wouldn’t think. I’m basically wanting to advertise myself like employers advertise available positions and interview employers who bite (as much as they would interview me). Maybe that’s Just Not How Things Work in the employment match-making… Although writing that out, perhaps teaming up with recruiters is what I need to do… Or become self employed. :|
Dynamic Beige* July 31, 2015 at 1:23 pm You could also start a website that is your ad. There are plenty of services out there that get advertised (like Wix) as build it yourself with our templates easy. Craigslist may be cheap and a lot of people may use it because of that but it doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll find the right people. There was a woman up here at some point in the last year who walked around the downtown core with a hand made sign/sandwich board about how she was looking for a job in marketing. It was on all the newscasts and generated a lot of “is this a good idea/is this what job seekers have come to?” commentary. She did get a job and the company that hired her was also on the news (hmmm). I don’t know if she still has that job, or how that job is going.
ACA* July 31, 2015 at 11:06 am I got the job!!!! The offer letter came in on Wednesday. They listed the salary by month (rather than by year), and I wasn’t reading closely because I missed the decimal point and was like, “That is less than I am making now, wtf.” At which point I noticed I’d missed the word “monthly,” did the math, and almost spit out my drink when I realized that it’s almost a 20% increase on my current salary, and significantly more than I was asking for. So, yeah, I accepted that without any need to negotiate. I haven’t given notice yet because one of my managers is on vacation, and I’d rather meet with her and my boss at the same time – hopefully that can be first-thing on Monday! I’m probably going to spend all weekend freaking out about it, especially because I’ve never had to give notice before. Anyone have any advice?
Beancounter in Texas* July 31, 2015 at 11:10 am I’ve Googled for resignation letters to get the right wording, but usually I come out right with the facts. “Boss, I’ve accepted another job.” Congratulations!!
GOG11* July 31, 2015 at 11:12 am There are some really great resources on here under the “resigning” tag. Congratulations!!!! I love that you nearly spit your drink out when you realized it is per month.
Cruciatus* July 31, 2015 at 11:18 am Congrats! I just did this on Monday (for the first time as well)! I told my boss in person first. I just ripped the bandage off. I was freaking out about his reaction. I just said that I wanted to tell him that received and accepted another offer but I had enjoyed my work while I was here. Then I wrote a very short letter to HR. Just about 3 of 4 sentences–basically what Alison has suggested to people. “After 4.5 years here at XXXX I have made the difficult decision to move on. My last day will be Aug. 7. I wish XXXX continued success.” That’s really about it. Took it to HR and they got the ball rolling with what I need to do by next Friday. You’ll be fine, I promise! After I got it out I felt a weight taken off my shoulders.
Retail Lifer* July 31, 2015 at 11:21 am Congratulations! You need to put it in writing that you’re resigning and what your last day will be. That’s all any HR manager ever requested of me.
Shell* July 31, 2015 at 11:43 am Oh, I sympathize with the freaking out about resigning. I didn’t like the first job I resigned from and I was still anxious about resigning; when I resigned from my last job I was practically hyperventilating because I did like my bosses and was afraid of…I don’t know what, considering I knew those bosses were very chill, very reasonable people. You’ll be fine. I padded my resignation speech more than was necessary (“I wasn’t really looking, but this fell into my lap” etc. ad nauseum, even though it was true). But the bosses took it very well and congratulated me. Deep breaths and good luck!
AggrAV8ed Tech* July 31, 2015 at 5:32 pm I’m gonna need advice in about a year for what to do when resigning when you DON’T like your boss. :)
Kyrielle* July 31, 2015 at 11:54 am Congratulations!! For speaking to them, I just said, “I wanted to let you know I am resigning, and my last day will be (date).” I think I added that I really enjoyed working there / working with him, which was true, but that’s not necessary. Not every company will want a letter of resignation as well as verbal so I didn’t write one – my HR asked for one. So I wrote and sent something along the lines of, “This is to formally let you know that I am resigning, and my last day will be (date). In my (#) years working here, I have learned a lot and been proud to be part of the team. I will miss everyone lots, and wish you the best.” (Again, all of that was honest in my case. It’s usually nice to say something positive if you can, I think, whether it’s about the opportunities or the people or something, but really the important sentence is the first one.)
Bea W* July 31, 2015 at 12:37 pm Congratulations! I got a spit out my drink offer on my last search and it was hard not to go skipping off down the halls of my current office.
Bea W* July 31, 2015 at 12:43 pm I also worked on a miserable toxic environment and it was really hard not to announce my resignation with a marching band, streamers, ballons, and confetti. In the end I opted for the subdued, starchy but professional couple lines on plain white copy paper.
ACA* July 31, 2015 at 1:24 pm I personally want to announce mine with skywriting, but that might be prohibitively expensive. :D
BenAdminGeek* July 31, 2015 at 1:38 pm Yeah, skywriting is going to eat into that 20% increase pretty fast :)
Honeybee* August 2, 2015 at 11:28 pm I was really glad I was off when I got my offer so I could celebrate properly, but I was also driving down a highway for a weekend trip. I had to pull over at a rest stop so I could listen to the offer details and scream a little scream.
JMegan* July 31, 2015 at 1:14 pm Wow, congratulations! On the resignation letter, just talk to your boss first. You may not need one at all, or if you do, she can tell you exactly what to put in it. Done and done. Good luck!
INFJ* July 31, 2015 at 1:17 pm Congratulations! I have recently quit for the first time (for a reason other than going away to college). I was super nervous because I actually liked my boss and job at the time, but found a job that allowed me to use my background in both X and Y, whereas old job was strictly X with no ability to do Y. That helped a little, because I was able to honestly tell my boss that I had been happy on his team, but found an opportunity that I couldn’t turn down. Before I give any resignation advice, please make sure that the offer no longer has any contingencies (background check, etc.) and that you have agreed upon a start date for the new position before resigning from the old. Now that that’s out of the way, my advice is to keep it simple and honest. Let your manager(s) know that you appreciate what you learned and accomplished in your position with them (as much as is true). Pick a last day and BE FIRM if they ask for more. You did good by deciding to wait a day to do it in person. If you haven’t already told others, make sure nobody else at work finds out before your boss. Good luck and try not to be too nervous this weekend!
ACA* July 31, 2015 at 2:27 pm I already have a start date (August 24), but I’m not actually sure what my last day is. I know my last day in the office will be August 14, and then I have a pre-planned vacation the 16th-21st. Since it’s technically an internal transfer (different department, same university), I think I’ll be able to stay on payroll while I’m on vacation? I don’t know. It’s one of the things I’ll have to talk with my HR manager about.
Elizabeth West* July 31, 2015 at 1:56 pm Congrats!!! LOL, I did the same thing when I got the offer for this job–I misread the number and thought they were offering me less. I asked my boss about it and she pointed out my error and thankfully didn’t hold it against me!
SanguineAspect* July 31, 2015 at 2:08 pm Congratulations!! A 20% increase is really exciting and it’s fantastic that you’re so excited about the role! Spend the weekend celebrating and don’t sweat the resignation too much. I think in-person is a really good impulse. As some others have suggested, I’d follow up the conversation with an email to HR, letting them know about your resignation conversation and when your last day will be.
Hermoine Granger* July 31, 2015 at 2:58 pm Congrats! Depending on your work relationship, it probably doesn’t need to be anything complex but let them know ASAP.
Vancouver Reader* July 31, 2015 at 3:58 pm Congratulations! I’m sure your manager will be very happy for you.
NoCalHR* July 31, 2015 at 4:13 pm Congratulations!!! A 20% raise is wonderful news!!! And giving notice is easy: TODAY’S DATE Manager Name – I am resigning effective DATE. My last day of work will be DATE2. (signed) ACA. You can add a line or two about appreciating the opportunities, or the great work environment, or whatever. If you’ll need to transition work, you can say something about that as well. Some of this will depend on your company and your relationship with your manager & boss. However all you need are the four lines above.
Jesse* July 31, 2015 at 4:17 pm Congrats! From the boss’s side of things, we almost always know when people come to the door all nervous and say “Do you have a minute?” So then you really can just say it, and it’s fine. Especially early-career staff, I’m always happy to see them advancing, even (or especially) when I’m sad to see them go!!
Folklorist* July 31, 2015 at 11:06 am I feel dumb for having to ask this, but…can someone please explain billable hours to me? I went from working through several temp agencies (including temp-to-perm at my current job—I’m exempt now; wasn’t before), and where I had to always have 8 hours on the books for the temp job, I now don’t know how to charge my time. No one taught me best practices for doing my timesheet here, so I’ve always just rounded my hours to make sure that there were 8 in a day, unless I took sick time or something. I’m so confused about how to even handle lunch that I normally just work through it. When I asked my boss about how to handle it, he just said “handle it like you’ve always handled lunch.” But, in a recent Open Thread, there was a long discussion about procrastination and how much time people actually spend WORKING at work—and several people said that they can work 45 hours in a week, but they might only get 35 billable hours out of it. Then someone else in my department mentioned off-handedly to me the other day that she under-bills a lot of the time, and sometimes only puts in for 23-25 hours. How does this work? I’m afraid if I start billing for the actual hours I work (like, taking out lunch or unexpectedly extended AAM breaks), they’ll think my productivity is dropping—even if it stays the same. But I also don’t want to over-charge on my projects. (BTW, I’m not a lawyer and don’t work with clients; many of our project funds come from different grants.)
Anon369* July 31, 2015 at 11:17 am Can you find another person at your company to ask? This is probably a know-your-office. (Are they billing for contracts, for expense allocation, etc.?)
misspiggy* July 31, 2015 at 11:18 am Billable hours works differently depending on the profession. If you’re grant funded, your organisation should be telling you very clearly what goes in as billable and what doesn’t. If you’re just being asked to put in timesheets for your total hours worked, and someone else decides what should be billed to which grant, it would make sense to be as accurate as possible.
AnotherAlison* July 31, 2015 at 11:25 am You would really need to get this clarification from your manager. I am a project manager for small cap engineering projects. Our budgets are small and typically ‘time and material,’ so we are very careful about billable hours. I can only charge the client on my time sheet for hours I worked on their project, so if that was 8 working hours, it’s 8 hours. If it’s 7 hours plus a one-hour department meeting, then it’s 7 hours billed to the client and 1 hour to overhead. There’s not a place for charging lunch or AAM-reading time. If I take 1 hour for lunch and 30 minutes doing nothing, then I need to work 9.5 hours that day to fill the 8 hours on my timesheet. There is of course some leeway for off-task time, but that’s a sense that I’ve developed over years and varies by manager, company, industry, etc. Now, if I worked on our large cap jobs with multi-million dollar budgets, the time-charging philosophy is different. They put all 40 hours per week on their time sheet for that project, even if they had department meetings or other things I would charge to overhead. The reason is that those projects are structured differently contractually and it’s covered. (The details would be a lot to get into on here.) Overtime hours are a whole other wrinkle. I don’t get paid if I work 45 hours, but we still bill those 5 hours to the client, so I have to put it on my time sheet.
AnotherAlison* July 31, 2015 at 1:18 pm You have to get manager approval to charge to overhead in that situation. We also have some work that the department manager will assign you that is OH anyway (training, proposals, department tool development). If I’m spending a 40-hour week doing OH projects for my manager, I’m not too worried about making sure I was 100% on-task 8 hours/day. The main concern is making sure we bill clients fairly.
hermit crab* July 31, 2015 at 1:39 pm In addition to getting approval for overhead/indirect tasks, like AnotherAlison described, other things I have done in various circumstances include: walk around the office asking if anyone has anything I can do; carefully review the work I just did to make sure it’s 100% awesome; see if there are any administrative-type tasks that are billable to a specific project (e.g., organizing files we’ve been to busy to tackle until now); go home and take the rest of the day as vacation; and go home and assume I will have enough hours later in the week to make up for it. But we have a very thorough workload tracking process and a lot of long-term projects, so work shortages are almost never a surprise.
hermit crab* July 31, 2015 at 11:31 am I totally get where you are coming from. I’ve been there! It is NOT a dumb question, but there are a lot of different billable hours models and requirements/best practices for your company could be completely different from someone else’s. The way we do things, working on federal contracts, is probably way different from your grant-funded model, so if I explain how we do things it might not be useful to you. Your manager probably just finds this all so second-nature that he doesn’t realize nobody ever told you what to do. I think you really just have to have a more detailed conversation with someone about expectations. If you are uncomfortable talking to your manager about this, I’d recommend going to a friendly coworker first. You can frame it like you just want to clarify things, which is true.
zora* July 31, 2015 at 2:42 pm or go to the person who processes the hours? At my last job where we had to report time for grant-funding, our payroll person was the most helpful because he was the one who understood the grant reporting the best and what information they wanted. See if there’s a person like that who can explain it more clearly than your boss has.
RR* July 31, 2015 at 11:34 am This is usually a really really important issue, but one that varies not only by industry, but by organization. Your supervisor should be able to detail for you how to charge your time. I work in the arena of grant-funded activities. Anyone who charges time to a grant must be able to demonstrate that they were working on that specific grant. Actual hours by actual activities. Your organization could be subject to criminal charges if you have Federal funding and the US Government is charged for work that was not performed. For those of us who are not working on specific grants have other charge codes to use for our time. Re AAM: as a manager, I have no qualms about charging my time reading AAM to my general management charge code – I figure it’s clearly a work-related activity. I’ve also pointed staff to this website, and have no problems with them spending a bit of work time reading this. I figure it makes us all more efficient performers in the long run. Now, if I decide to spend an extended amount of time reading the comment threads, that I do on break, and I don’t charge that time.
RG* July 31, 2015 at 11:37 am OK, I work as a patent agent at a law firm, so this may vary for you. So, a lot of orgs have a fixed fee schedule for different types of projects. Then, within the fixed fee, there is a certain amount of money you’re allowed to bill for based on the type of work and your particular role in the project. Divide the amount of money by your billing rate, and voila, there’s the amount of time you can bill. If you spend more time than you can bill, then that’s bad, because you can’t bill it even though you’re still working on it. If you spend less time, that’s great, because you still bill all of the allowed time even though you’ve moved on to something else. Now, everyone honestly gets distracted, but people usually still bill for that time – unless they’ve been goofing off for like an hour or something. I would only bill time didn’t lunch if I actually worked through lunch. I’m a bit worried that they would expect you to bill 8 hours everyday though. Typically, you wouldn’t bill dedicated breaks – as opposed to getting distracted for a few minutes. To expect you to bill 8 hours a day everyday would assume that you work through lunch or that you are constantly making time on your work, which would assume that the budget for that work is too high, the work is fairly simple, and/or you’ve done that type of work often enough for it to be second nature.
MaryMary* July 31, 2015 at 11:44 am Billable hours vary not only by organization, but sometimes by client contract. Some contracts are very specific about what can and cannot be billed to the client. In general, work that directly pertains to the client or project in question is billed to the client. Tasks that are not specific to a client are billed elsewhere, such as professional development. Lunch is not billed if you take a break, if you work through it you bill according to the word you did. But ask your manager. It’s much better to ensure you’re billing correctly than to go back and try to fix old time sheets.
The IT Manager* July 31, 2015 at 12:32 pm You need clarification from your office. If your time is being billed to different grants depending on what you work on there should be very clear cut instructions. For example, if you do an hour of web-based training that is work you will be paid for, but there’s a good chance that it is not billable to a particular grant because it’s considered overhead. Now if you are just talking about filling in your timesheet to show you worked 8 hours – no break out – it’s an entirely different story. You said you’re exempt, just put in 8 hours for every day if that’s the standard unless you left early, took leave, or worked late.
DaBlonde* July 31, 2015 at 1:00 pm Since you are exempt and your project has multiple funding grants, there is probably someone at your office who oversees all of the grant money and expenses. Find out who this person is and ask her how she would like the hours billed. At my office, billable hours are sometimes split on a percentage basis and sometimes on an hourly basis. For example, my current job I teach one group of students in the morning and then switch and tutor an entirely different group in the afternoon. Each class is funded by a different grant. My hours are billed based on the actual hours that I spend with each group. In the past when I was doing clerical work for multiple projects, my time would simply be split by billing 30% to Grant A and 70% to Grant B because I was continuously working on both throughout the day but Grant B had a heavier workload.
bridget* July 31, 2015 at 1:16 pm I weighed in on the open thread re: billable hours, but my answer was specific to law firms. Basically, I get paid a salary, but the way that my company gets paid by our clients is by sending an invoice saying “bridget spent 1.3 hours on Tuesday reviewing and revising Contract X” and “bridget spent 4.5 hours on Wednesday drafting Motion Y.” So my metrics are determined by how much time I bill; I have a set number of hours I am supposed to be hitting on an annual basis, and I keep track on a daily and weekly basis so I can know whether I’m up to pace for the year. Rules of legal ethics say that I have to bill my time in increments of 1/10 of an hour (six minutes), and I can’t round to the nearest hour or half hour, just the nearest tenth of an hour. Anything less precise is unethical. Lawyers track this in various ways, with more or less precision. Plenty of people leave the clock running while they go refill their coffee in the break room or go to the bathroom, because they are probably still in the mode of thinking about Contract X or Motion Y. Unless it was a working lunch, I don’t know anybody who would count lunchtime. Extended AAM breaks or other internet browsing are not ok. My general rule of thumb is that if whatever break I’m taking is more than 10-15 minutes, I stop the clock because I will probably get my brain unplugged enough from the project that it’s not ok to bill a client for that time. Smaller interruptions are just part of the cost of hiring a human to do the work, in my mind. So, none of this may apply to a temp agency. You need to check with your company to figure out how they figure out billable hours.
Creag an Tuire* July 31, 2015 at 3:34 pm Tenthing the “you need to ask your manager, not Ask A Manger”. Just to give you an example from WifesJob, though, their concept of billable time is that you detail the amount of time you’ve spent working on any given client project — 3 hours on the Wakeem’s Teapots account, 2 on Teapots Unlimited, etc., and that any time not directly connected to projects — so not just lunch but filling out HR paperwork, using downtime to take a company training, spending 30 minutes checking your e-mail, whatever — has to be marked as unbillable time. (Which doesn’t mean you don’t get -paid- for the time, just that the company doesn’t get to bill it to a client. Of course, companies with a billable time model usually expect you to maintain a certain ratio of billable hours/hours at work.) Hope this helps.
Student* July 31, 2015 at 4:08 pm Ask what the time sheets are actually used for. I work on grant-based research. Every place I’ve worked handled this differently. Some of them just want to use it to track your vacation / sick / holiday time allotments. Some don’t use it for anything – they don’t actually care at all what you put down and base no business decisions off the information, and only “track” the information because somebody told them it was a funding requirement to do so. Some use it to carefully track how much resources each different task or project takes, and re-balance the resources periodically based on the info.
afiendishthingy* July 31, 2015 at 7:43 pm That’s pretty annoying nobody’s bothered to explain it to you, because as you can see, it’s very workplace specific. My hours are billed to Medicaid, and there are very strict specifications on what each member of the clinical team can bill. A year into my job I’m still occasionally asking coworkers or my manager “Can I bill for this?” or “What code does this get billed under?” I’m fortunate to have a coworker who loves to make lists and templates and manuals for every process, and she gave me a big explanatory document on Teapot Masseuse Billable Activities when I started. If your manager is as hands off as he sounds, do you have any colleagues who might be able to give you more information on the process?
Rin* July 31, 2015 at 11:09 am Calling all authors: what do you put in your queries? I’ve had a couple of versions, with friends looking over them, and no one’s biting. I don’t want to misrepresent my work by making the query super exciting/eye-catching. I feel stuck. Thanks!
Charlotte Collins* July 31, 2015 at 5:10 pm I don’t currently write queries, but Writer’s Digest tends to have a lot of advice and resources for query letters.
katamia* July 31, 2015 at 6:54 pm Take a look at Miss Snark’s archives at missnark.blogspot.com. This is also a pretty good article: blog.nathanbransford.com/2010/08/how-to-write-query-letter.html. Hoping these don’t show up as links so they don’t get stuck in moderation.
hannah* July 31, 2015 at 8:57 pm Your query should answer the following three questions in 250-300 words: what does your protagonist want? what do they have to do to get it? and what will happen if they fail? I got this advice from Absolute Write’s Query Letter Hell forum (you have to sign in to access this particular sub-forum). I highly recommend you visit this site, it has tons of great advice – from writers, agents and publishers. You can also post your query there for critique and read over critiques others have been given.
LisaLee* July 31, 2015 at 11:21 pm You should check out Query Shark (queryshark.blogspot.com). The literary agent who runs the site, Janet Reid, takes real query letters and explains what does and doesn’t work in each of them, which I think is way more helpful than just having a formula.
Red* August 1, 2015 at 12:52 am Hey fellow querier! I find that composing a query letter is more agonizing than just writing and revising the manuscript itself. I don’t have a knack for correspondence. AbsoluteWrite’s Query Hell and QueryShark are both really good resources as others have already suggested. QueryTracker is also a really useful site, moreso for researching agents and response times. One hot tip is to not include a complete synopsis of the work in the query. Your ending/conclusion should be left up in the air a bit – you want the agent to be enticed. Nevertheless, I recommend starting by refining your elevator pitch, blurb, and synopsis. That will really help you crystallize how you want to describe your work to an agent. Make sure you’re also targeting your queries appropriately. Research your agents thoroughly. You don’t want to get hooked with a scammer or waste your time querying someone who isn’t into what you’re offering. Same for if you’re looking at small or indie presses. Pretty much anyone can hang out a shingle and say they’re an agent. It pays to know who they’ve repped and what they’ve sold (and to whom). Also, aim high and work your way down! As a cautionary tale… I’ve had a small press divulge my personal information and entire manuscript to a third party site, and I realized too late that an elderly agent I queried might be senile. Don’t be me!
Fact & Fiction* August 3, 2015 at 10:18 am Tons of good advice given already; I definitely echo the recs to check out Miss Snark, Query Shark, and Absolute Write’s Query Hell. I don’t frequent AW as much as I did before I got an agent, but there is a lot of great info there.
Sandy* July 31, 2015 at 11:09 am I have had an absolutely brutal week at work- I am seriously starting to question humanity. Too much death, hatred, cruelty, etc. Any tried and true strategies for pushing away? Surely some EMTs, emergency room nurses, social workers, etc. on here have some tips.
Folklorist* July 31, 2015 at 11:19 am I’ve felt like this a lot lately. There was a recent spate of violence in my neighborhood (someone shot half a block from me; another person 4 blocks away was shot, dumped in a trashcan, and burned). Now all I seem to see around me is violence and heartache. I wish I had something more productive to say other than “I feel you,” but will be watching this thread with interest!
Folklorist* July 31, 2015 at 1:17 pm Let’s just say major East Coast city and leave it at that. My neighborhood used to be a very dangerous one and has gotten much better over the past ~15 years or so. I’ve never felt unsafe there before this summer. The entire city has seen a huge increase in violence this summer, so it’s not just my neighborhood. My friend had a shooting on her block the same night as the shooting on mine, and she lives in the “nicer” part of town, where I had been thinking of moving. But, this summer, two of my friends were robbed on separate occasions and another close friend of mine found two(!!!) guns in the street by her house on the same night. (Turned out, a guy was fleeing the police and tossed them out the window.) It’s just been a very surreal, icky-feeling summer.
Steve G* July 31, 2015 at 2:55 pm Wow, yeah, that kind of increase in violence can shake your sense of a lot of stuff.
Paige Turner* July 31, 2015 at 2:32 pm Either I know where this is, or this happened in more than one place in the US recently :(
AndersonDarling* July 31, 2015 at 11:21 am I think of what Mr Rogers said: when there is tragedy, focus on the helpers- the people who show up and help save people and make the situation better. I work with tragedy in my job, and it can get you down (and scared!), so I look at the good my organization does, and all the wonderful people who work with me every day. It’s easy to see the bad, but when you look at all the good people, you see that there are so many more good people than bad.
Anon for this* July 31, 2015 at 11:32 am Like AndersonDarling said, focus on the helpers. It’s also okay to, if you can, limit how much of this you’re involved in. It’s not insensitive or selfish to take care of yourself. Taking care of yourself is what will allow you to do your best for other people. Put your own oxygen mask on before helping other passengers.
OriginalYup* July 31, 2015 at 11:35 am Lots of burnout in my field too. Things that work well for me personally: spending time with animals, visiting outdoor spaces/gardens/parks, and looking at art (museums, galleries, public displays of sculpture and murals, etc).
Shannon* July 31, 2015 at 11:37 am I like looking at pictures of kittens. Or babies playing with kittens. I know it sounds kind of stupid, but, I actually have emergency stress relief kitten pictures on my phone. I can literally feel my blood pressure go down when I look at them.
Hlyssande* July 31, 2015 at 11:47 am On the subject of Emergency Kittens ™, you might want to try http://www.tinykittens.com, one of those livecams. :) Or google any livecam of any animal of your choice. I swear you can find almost anything.
Ask a Manager* Post authorJuly 31, 2015 at 11:51 am God, yes, tinykittens.com. But right now the two cats there are pregnant and waiting to deliver, so there aren’t currently kittens. I think there are archived videos of former litters though. (She’s a foster home for pregnant cats and their kittens once they have them.)
Anonyby* July 31, 2015 at 12:37 pm There’s two related cams that she’s close to that have kittens–Foster Dad John has the Clone Trooper kittens, and Sarah’s Kitten Cuddle Room has the Cocktail Kittens. Both litters are supremely adorable!
Anna* July 31, 2015 at 4:28 pm I was having a rough day yesterday so a friend posted a YouTube video of squeaky baby sloths. ERMAGERD! It as so cute and totally helped. THEY ARE SO SQUEAKY!
oldfashionedlovesong* July 31, 2015 at 12:22 pm Baby elephants too! There’s this video going round the interwebs right now of a baby ellie chasing some birds and it’s kind of perfect. I also love videos of people rescuing baby ellies who get stuck in wells or pits, especially when mom is hovering a short distance away anxiously and then comes running over when baby is finally free.
Joline* July 31, 2015 at 2:43 pm Pandas on slides! (especially when panda coming down a slide acts like a bowling ball and knocks down pandas hanging out on the end of said slide)
Marcela* July 31, 2015 at 2:53 pm I like documentaries or videos of volunteers or vets helping animals. I cry all the time with them, but afterwards I feel the world can’t be all horrible if there are persons like them, fighting against the odds to save an animal (yesterday I watched a vet documentary about a rhino receiving a skin graft after she was attacked by poachers).
KT* July 31, 2015 at 11:45 am You need absolute trash in your life. Like complete and utter trash. Jersey Shore-level trash. Anything that shows ridiculous people being ridiculous and making you laugh. It will suppress the horror stories you’ve seen and make you laugh at utter petty nonsense. And lots of self care. Get good sleep, eat well, read a good book.
Muriel Heslop* July 31, 2015 at 11:52 am I’ve been there Sandy, and it stinks. I’m sorry. What helped me was exercise (lots of exercise), healthy food and definitely some wine (but not too much or else I became morose.) Escape TV and books, and definitely: find the good. There is always good to be found, somewhere, if only a sliver of sunlight. It can be hard to find, in my experience, but it’s there. I hope your weekend is full of peace.
Kat* July 31, 2015 at 11:59 am Write about it in a journal. I am a venter, but due to HIPAA I cant talk to anyone about what I’ve seen. I have a journal where I write every detail down, including my feelings. No one at work knows, I can just imagine that being subpoenaed in a lawsuit, but it helps. I dont go back and read it. I write, cry, look at kitten gifs and then pull myself back together. It’s hard. A therapist can help too. In EMS it’s frowned upon, which is stupid. We arent super heroes. We are expected to bounce back inmediately after a call, but even a rubber band breaks. On the plus side, EMS is finally starting to realize this is a problem and trying to address it. I am sending internet hugs and I’ll keep you in my prayers.
the_scientist* July 31, 2015 at 4:33 pm Putting in a plug here for the great work that the TEMA Trust is doing in Canada- if you’re an EMS worker and struggling, check out their website for resources! Also, debrief with your team. I think the culture of EMS is changing somewhat; a lot of the old guard are still very “real men don’t show emotions” but the younger members (and there are more of them than the old guard, now) are MUCH more open to debriefing, and realistically it’s a great habit to get into. Source: not an EMS person, but was a volunteer EMT for many years, we always always always debriefed and had access to traumatic incident stress services. If your org has access to crisis counselling, professional debriefing services after traumatic calls, or other resources- use them! And remember, admitting you need help and support is NOT a weakness, and doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be in this job. You’re just a compassionate human being who’s been exposed to a lot of horror.
Kyrielle* July 31, 2015 at 12:00 pm I haven’t been there and I can’t say if this scales up to that level of thing – but at the times of greatest stress in my life, I have found that returning to hobbies that have no relation at all (getting out in nature, photography, coloring – adult coloring books are awesome) has helped.
moss* August 3, 2015 at 10:21 am Adult coloring you say? My etsy shop is linked in my username. I will send out free samples to anyone who wants one!
Worker Bee (Germany)* August 4, 2015 at 7:13 am Me. I am curious.. I also use an old childs coloring book just bc it makes me smile and takes my mind of things. Also doing any crafts. I noticed for myself that working with my hands (crafting, wood work, painting ect takes of my mind completly)
moss* August 4, 2015 at 7:37 am Worker Bee, I would love to send you a sample! Send me an email at coloringforadults @ gmail.com and I will see if I have a picture you would like. If you take a look at my etsy shop you can pick any single page from there.
Career Counselorette* July 31, 2015 at 12:03 pm I get this every so often reading news stories and getting bogged down at work. Very long walks do it for me, especially when I’m able to go all the way to the water or deep into the park where you’re not likely to see that many people. It’s kind of silly, but being alone in nature makes you forget about people for a bit.
cuppa* July 31, 2015 at 12:06 pm I’ve been feeling a lot like this, too, so hugs to you! I was surprised at how much going to a museum helped. Also, a really absorbing book helps. I’ve been rereading the Harry Potter series this week and it really has helped to escape. I’ve been working on the Headspace app and it’s been helpful. And yes, cute animals help too. I definitely hit iStockphoto for kittens and lamb fixes in an emergency.
CJ* July 31, 2015 at 12:09 pm I live in Cincinnati and there was a lot of tension this past week. I think giving yourself a media break is crucial. If you’re online a lot like me, you see things everywhere. Don’t go to those websites and give yourself a break from the news. Turn to Netflix and visits with friends where the topics of conversation must be positive.
Camellia* July 31, 2015 at 1:05 pm Former Cincinnatian here – I deplore the act but am proud of my former city for all the things the people there DIDN’T do.
CJ* July 31, 2015 at 1:10 pm Camellia, I feel the same way. It’s been handled very well and thankfully the ones behaving the worst are really just the anons on the internet saying inappropriate things.
Elizabeth West* July 31, 2015 at 2:00 pm This is what I do also. When I see someone has posted something, and I’ve reached saturation/burnout, I either hide it (on Facebook) or tell myself, “I don’t need to read/comment on that!” and then scroll on.
Not So NewReader* July 31, 2015 at 7:16 pm This. Definitely watch out for how much news you are taking in. Is it necessary to have the news on while getting ready for work/ going to work/ fixing dinner? Perhaps you can have a no fly zone each day for news reports.
Sunshine Brite* July 31, 2015 at 12:12 pm I vent, try to find the good in people – including the people frustrating me if I know them well enough, hang out with my cat, get lost in a silly show, exercise, etc. I’m pretty introverted, but if I like crowds, I’d go out to events, go to museums that sort of thing to get my mind off it.
Nerdling* July 31, 2015 at 12:13 pm Sometimes I have to take a day off when we’ve had a particularly brutal week or two, just to get my mind back in a decent place. Otherwise, I find other things to push my energy into when I can. I bake. I decorate cakes. I play with my kid. I get lost in video games sometimes, silly TV other times. I try to go to the gym when it’s really bad – I had a crying jag on the elliptical once that probably looked ridiculous but left me feeling a lot cleaner, in a sense. *hugs*
Muriel Heslop* July 31, 2015 at 12:43 pm I am not the only person that has cried on the elliptical – that’s comforting!
Realistic* July 31, 2015 at 12:27 pm I keep 2 “memo files” in my phone: “Rewards” and “Recharge” — Rewards are things like links to easy recipes or good sounding restaurants, cheap trinkets and household items that are wildly decadent to my mentality (a funky pen, a cool notepad, a new toothbrush holder that I love. Recharge are things that I want to do. The “someday I’ll make time to” — figure out if I can afford a trip to Costa Rica, reframe that poster in the kitchen, clean out the junk drawer, re-listen to a favorite CD, make a new playlist…. Since I always have my phone with me, I get in the habit of typing those “some day” or “how, how cool” things into there. They give me inspiration at a time when I need it, but don’t have the brainpower to come up with it on my own. Good luck finding what works for you!
OriginalYup* July 31, 2015 at 12:52 pm What a great idea! I keep a bookmarks folder called “Fun Stuff to Do” with links to concert calendars, activity guides for my city, movies I want to see, and vacation ideas. But your Rewards/Recharge split is so much better, thank you!
Boop* July 31, 2015 at 12:29 pm Sorry to hear about your week, Sandy. We all have those weeks that make us wonder if humanity should have left the caves! Customer service has been a major push at my organization lately, and I find that by focusing on providing good customer service I can help maintain a more positive attitude in general. Sure, sometimes you want lose it at someone, but generally if you’re polite and helpful, people will respond positively. Also, find something that you do for yourself. I do jigsaw puzzles, keep and rainforest of plants, spend time with my parents, and do other things and go on outings that bring me pleasure. That way, I am re-charged for the next day’s craziness. If you have a family, see if you can carve out some time for yourself. Sometimes you just need some alone time!
Sparky* July 31, 2015 at 2:00 pm I like the site UpWorthy for good news, and I like Eldad Hagar’s Youtube videos of dog rescues on Youtube for his Hope for Paws, although they don’t always show a lot of the life after rescue for the dogs and of course, the dogs are sad and abandonded at the start of the videos. There is a Youtube video of a baby elephant interacting with a flock of birds that is pretty cute, too.
Anony-moose* July 31, 2015 at 2:17 pm God, yes. I work for a nonprofit that helps students cope with violence and trauma as part of our work. I’m not on the program side but I write about it all.day.long. So many shootings. So many children being killed. I spend a good amount of time just feeling…a bit hopeless. I don’t know how to shake it. But to deal day to day I do yoga, play with my dog, read fantastic journalism about this issue and others, and do more yoga. The most powerful tool for me has been adopting a regular yoga and meditation practice. For many others it’s running, or dancing, or something else where you have to push your mind AND body to let go.
Lizzie* July 31, 2015 at 4:47 pm I’m a social worker. I work with victims of human trafficking every day. Believe me, I understand questioning humanity – I’ve seen and heard some incredibly heinous things in the last five years. I find that what I have to do is find a safe place for me to let out whatever it is that I’m feeling. If I’m overwhelmingly sad, I draw myself a nice bath, hunker down, and have a good cry. Seriously. It’s very healing to allow yourself to just let that out, and it’s tremendously helpful to me. If I find myself unspeakably angry … well, I’ve taken up muay thai as a hobby and that’s a pretty good outlet (and has the added amusement of getting to bewilder grown men as a 5’2″ lady!). Physical activity in general is a really good way to channel that, if you’re up to it.
Not So NewReader* July 31, 2015 at 7:27 pm Your work has to be mind blowing. I can’t imagine. I picture this as something that impacts a person for life, and, in turn, impacts the social service people, around the person, for life. I admire your willingness to do this absolutely necessary work.
Lizzie* August 1, 2015 at 4:30 am Thank you very much. It’s honestly very difficult work but it’s very rewarding overall and I feel like as hard as it is, I’m in the right place. Sex and labor trafficking are quite prevalent where I live, and there are very few people who have the education and training to try to advocate for victims and combat it. The turnover rate is very high, though – I got this job right out of college thanks to an internship and I’ve been through three supervisors and several new co-workers in the five years I’ve had it (I’ve been here the longest). People think you can go home and turn it off, but you don’t. You just learn to cope. Self-care is ESSENTIAL in our field – social workers tend not to survive without it.
Not So NewReader* August 1, 2015 at 11:34 am “Self-care is ESSENTIAL in our field – social workers tend not to survive without it.” We (as a society) do not do a good job of taking care of those who take care of others. Coping tools are not in us at birth, we need to learn them. I can’t for the life me figure out why there are not programs and support available for our front line people. This is part of a much bigger soapbox I have. But, right, I totally agree. You can not get down in the trenches and then go home and turn it off. That’s not going to happen. One of Alison’s interviews with you would be verrry interesting. But I am betting most of what you have to say is covered by confidentiality regs.
Lizzie* August 1, 2015 at 3:33 pm Haha, it would depend on what she wanted to ask, I suppose. But I’m flattered!
Worker Bee (Germany)* August 4, 2015 at 7:18 am Came here to say the same as Not So NewReader. An interview with Alison would be very interesting!
RG* July 31, 2015 at 11:09 am Woo hoo, got here early. So, last week I saw a job opening at another law firm that I’m mostly qualified for, so I thought to apply. However, a couple of years ago, I met with one of the associates (who is now a partner) to discuss a possible internship (that didn’t work out for logistical reasons). On Tuesday, I sent the partner a message on LinkedIn reintroducing myself and asking if he has any particular insights into the job, since there is a possibility that he may give me work either directly or indirectly. How long should I wait for a response before applying? I understand that’s it’s LinkedIn, and people miss messages there frequently, but I don’t want to wait too long and end up missing my chance. Did waiting until next Wednesday seem like a good amount of time?
Christy* July 31, 2015 at 11:12 am I don’t know why you would wait at all. I feel like the information you might glean from him would be useful for something like an interview rather than your cover letter or resume. Apply now!
The IT Manager* July 31, 2015 at 12:46 pm +1 Don’t wait. Apply now and if he responds tell him you have applied and ask for whatever you want to ask for.
Beancounter in Texas* July 31, 2015 at 11:13 am I think so. The partner may not check LinkedIn very frequently, even if he gets email notifications about new messages. I’d proceed without his input as best as possible. Assume he simply didn’t get the message.
oldfashionedlovesong* July 31, 2015 at 11:23 am Replying to follow because I’m in a similar situation, having sent a message on LinkedIn to a former classmate who is now at a company that has an opening I’d like to apply for. My kneejerk thought was to wait until I hear from the person, but Christy and Beancounter’s dovetailing advice makes me think differently.
RG* July 31, 2015 at 12:31 pm Thanks for your replies. To give a bit more background, to apply for this job, I’m supposed to send a letter of interest. No resume, just the letter. My understanding is that a letter of interest differs slightly from a cover letter in that a cover letter advocates for a position but a letter of interest advocates for moving to the next step of the process. That’s why I decided to reach out now. But, like I said, I wanted to give him a chance to respond but also wanted a good cutoff where I could just go ahead and apply regardless of a response. Thanks again for your help!
The IT Manager* July 31, 2015 at 12:48 pm Next Wednesday – 8 days – sounds like a good time to wait. Recommend you work on your draft letter this weekend so you’re prepared if he doesn’t respond and have a starting point if he does.
ella* August 1, 2015 at 11:55 am Most law firms have websites with attorney email addresses. Try looking him up and contacting him that way.
Christine* July 31, 2015 at 11:09 am I’m looking for some advice/guidance on how to put together a freelancing resume. I have a full-time day job, but I also do some freelance work on the side (and in an ideal world, I’d build up the freelance side enough that I could do that full-time, but that’s years off, if ever). I know how to structure a resume for my regular job, but I’m a bit stumped on what information to include on my freelance resume. I’ve tried searching for freelance resume samples, but most of them seem to assume that as a freelancer, I’ve done contract work at various companies. I’ve got a couple contracts, but they’re remote work and on a project-by-project basis– I don’t go into an office, I just edit things when they’re sent to me. Does anyone have any tips or advice on how to showcase the work I’ve done? I’ve gotten a lot more work in the past year and I want to make that clear, but I’m not quite sure how.
GOG11* July 31, 2015 at 11:18 am You could group it all under “Teapots Consulting, Freelance Spout Designer” and then put any notable accomplishments. I don’t know what type of work you do or what metrics you’d use to determine how successful you are, but using those would be good. If your work was used in something with a lot of visibility, that could be noted, too. “Designed spouts for Macy’s spring and fall 2015 line of dessert teapots.” When I did freelance work, the expected measure was whether or not proposals were funded, so I would note the ones I wrote that were funded and how much they were for.
Lore* July 31, 2015 at 11:28 am On the topic of metrics–continuing relationships with editing clients generally indicate that you’re doing strong work. Our freelance pool is extremely deep, and if you’re getting a constant flow of jobs, especially from multiple staff people, that means you’re at the top of the list.
Lore* July 31, 2015 at 11:22 am Most of the freelance resumes that get submitted to my company (and we hire a lot of editorial freelancers) come one of two ways. If someone freelances alongside full time work, then there’s generally a single entry for freelance work that says something like “Freelance copyeditor: clients include companies x, y, z.” Or “recent projects include “magazine art
Lore* July 31, 2015 at 11:25 am Sorry–hit submit by accident. “Article on X or book on y.” Full time freelancers’ resumes tend to include more detail, possibly breaking clients out separate if they’ve got longstanding relationships and also including things like writing or artistic work.
MsChanandlerBong* July 31, 2015 at 2:06 pm I’m a freelance writer/editor/proofreader, so I have all my work under one heading. Under the heading, I have a short summary of my skills and a sampling of my clients (only the big brands people will recognize). Then I have a bulleted list of accomplishments/duties (e.g. wrote copy that increased client’s sales by 42 percent; increased traffic to landing page by 300 percent, etc.).
bassclefchick* July 31, 2015 at 11:09 am Interview update….. I posted about this in last week’s thread, but wanted to give an update. Last Thursday, I got a call to come in for an interview. The job sounded interesting, the company is a non profit that does great things and I met ALL of the requirements in the posting. I scheduled the interview for the next day and started to prepare for it. Three hours later, the hiring manager’s admin called and said the hiring manager’s calendar changed and they’d have to reschedule. Great! More time for me to prepare. I didn’t hear anything on Friday or Monday, so I called the admin back and said I was still interested and was wondering if they had an update. She said the manager hadn’t gotten back to her yet and they would be in touch. Now a week has gone by since this all started and I’ve heard nothing. And there was the thread earlier this week where all the hiring managers basically said to not call to check on your status. But this is a bit different, since they DID call me to set up an interview and flaked out on me. Right?! Job hunting should NOT be this confusing!!! I guess I’ve just mentally moved on and figured they changed their mind and no longer want to interview me. But this would have been a great opportunity.
Shell* July 31, 2015 at 11:51 am I think this is different. You don’t want to call hiring managers/potential workplaces to check on the status of your application. But if they had already shortlisted you for an interview and booked an interview slot with you only to cancel at the last minute, I think you’re well within your rights to follow up once.
bassclefchick* July 31, 2015 at 12:34 pm Oh, good!! That was my thinking too. I figure they’re telling me something significant about how they operate if this is how they treat me at this stage. Even a phone call of…”hey, sorry, manager STILL hasn’t told me her schedule yet, but we DO still want to interview you” would be appreciated.
Biff* July 31, 2015 at 11:54 am I think I’d call them and let them know you are still interested, but they need to reach out to you if they are still interested because you don’t want to hassle them. But that’s me.
bassclefchick* July 31, 2015 at 12:35 pm Yes, I did call them once on Monday afternoon. And you’re right, anything more would be too much. So, I patiently wait (or not so patiently!) for them to decide what they want to do.
Steve G* July 31, 2015 at 3:17 pm Job hunting should not be this hard! I interviewed 3X at a company in March and I still keep seeing the job advertised, now through recruiters as well. OK, I may not have said everything perfectly in the interview, and maybe I wasn’t a 110% fit, but I felt 90%+ across the board. Maybe my past salary was “too high,” IDK. But I just don’t get how them filling this not-hard-to-fill job is taking this long. It should not be this hard! Meanwhile, I’ve been sitting here unemployed since then!
T3k* July 31, 2015 at 11:10 am This may be a bit of an usual question but anyone have advice on how to go about letting my boss know that I want to cut my hours? I work 40 hours, but want to cut it down t0 20 (my work can easily be done in the first 3 hours I’m at work). The reason I want to do 20 is because my boss can’t afford to pay me more per hour (I’m paid 11/hr), so I want to pick up another job that can pay more per hour, but also because I know eventually I’m going to leave here anyways because there’s no room for growth or advancement here, but until I can find a full time job that pays a livable salary, my best bet is to find another part time job and split my time between them.
GOG11* July 31, 2015 at 11:23 am Are you hoping to go down to 20 hours at $11 an hour or are you wanting to work for fewer hours at a higher rate but with the promise that you’ll get the same results?
T3k* July 31, 2015 at 11:33 am Ideally, I’d love to do that (like go “Hey, I want to do 20 hours a week, and can you bump my pay up per hour to $13?”) but not sure how well that’d go over. Plus, in my reasoning with her on it, I want say “And since you’ll be paying me less overall, you can then hire extra help” which she’s always talking about doing. Because it’s such a tiny business, I’m hired for one thing but then have to help out elsewhere, so I need to find a way to show it won’t be a problem for cutting hours.
GOG11* July 31, 2015 at 12:16 pm Ah, okay. I agree with Dawn about focusing on how it benefits the business. It’s fine to show that it’s mutually beneficial, but the focus should largely be on how it affects the overall functioning of your department/company. In asking for more money, make sure you go about it in the general sense you would for any other raise – your work being worth more money, not this is how much I need to get by on fewer hours. Also address how fewer hours benefits the company. Working fewer hours makes a raise possible, but it isn’t the reason for the raise.
T3k* July 31, 2015 at 1:20 pm True. Th good thing is I look like a really stellar employee next to others here, so it shouldn’t be too hard for me to explain my time is worth more and if I can reduce my hours, it shouldn’t hurt too much to do that. I just now have to find a way to word it nicely.
Dawn* July 31, 2015 at 11:41 am Don’t phrase it as “I want to cut my hours”, go to him and see if he’s amicable about shifting your position to a part-time position. It’s not about what you want as an employee, it’s about what the company needs from the position that you fill. Be prepared for him to say no, and have a fallback plan for if that happens.
T3k* July 31, 2015 at 12:04 pm I’ve been thinking about what I’d do if they said no… and I think I may put my notice in then (assuming I was being offered a part time position elsewhere). Then I could use the 20 hours that freed up to take on some contract or temp. work with an employment agency I’m signed on with for my field. Reason I haven’t done that already though is because I like stable money coming in (which in the above scenario, would come from the new part time position).
Student* July 31, 2015 at 4:12 pm Look for a new full-time job that pays better instead. Or, if you’re going to cut your hours, use the freed-up time to try to get into some training for jobs that will pay a living wage. You are never going to get out of this situation by taking on multiple part-time jobs.
T3k* July 31, 2015 at 4:55 pm You seem to be out of touch with the job market. As I explained, I’ve been trying to find a full-time job, but the job market is very tight atm and cutting my hours/wages isn’t feasible right now for me without some other source of income. At least if I can find another part time that pays more, it’d allow me to actually save some money towards taking some training courses at nearby colleges. Also, some part time jobs can be turned into full time (two friends had that happen, and a few positions I applied to have mentioned they’d like to turn the position into full time later, or temp-to-hire jobs).
T3k* July 31, 2015 at 4:59 pm Sorry, didn’t mean for that to sound rude. Just your statement comes off like what my dad kept saying last summer, who thinks it’s so easy to find a job and still thinks the way to do it is by dropping in on the business and asking.
Katie the Fed* July 31, 2015 at 11:10 am So, um – any advice for dealing with puppy- and baby- induced migraines? I kid, I kid. Man, I am seriuosly needing a vacation. Just a few more weeks. I haven’t been on a vacation since my honeymoon, which is actually unusual for me, but with the accident this year we had to cancel our spring one. I think I’ll be crawling to the finish line before this one. So exhausted, cranky, and out of patience!
Christy* July 31, 2015 at 11:12 am Oh, yikes. Can you take a day and give yourself a long weekend before then? Or maybe a random Wednesday?
Elkay* July 31, 2015 at 11:14 am I love taking Wednesday off, it feels like such a treat (maybe I’m weird).
Katie the Fed* July 31, 2015 at 11:15 am I’ve been doing that here and there – but mostly to catch up on life stuff. I need a few days of doing nothing. And some quality time with Mr. The Fed.
AvonLady Barksdale* July 31, 2015 at 11:25 am I hear you. I’m out next week and I NEED IT. I have never needed a vacation so much. Just keep swimming… just keep swimming…
AnotherFed* July 31, 2015 at 11:45 am I hear you – I took last week off without realizing quite how much I needed it until I came back to work this week and discovered that things that had me at Bitch Eating Crackers were suddenly no big deal.
Mimmy* July 31, 2015 at 1:19 pm You’ve had a lot going on in your life this past year, both good and not-so-good. I would definitely try to get in a long weekend before your vacation so you can just relax. Even if you can’t, try to do something relaxing this weekend. Not sure how the weather is where you are, but I think it’s supposed to be less humid here in NJ for the next couple of days (though still very warm). Keep swimming!!
PhoenixBurn* July 31, 2015 at 1:21 pm Do you have a local spa or massage therapy place? Massage therapy works great for the headaches – releases all that tension, so you at least have longer in between bouts. And it’s an hour of YOU time, which is always beneficial. If you can’t do that – heck, spend an hour in a bubble bath and let Mr. the Fed handle puppy and baby for an hour! Best of luck!
Katie the Fed* July 31, 2015 at 1:27 pm Oh, that part was a joke, sorry :) just a reference to all the massive interest in the baby, puppy and migraine posts this week. But I DO like the idea of a massage!
PhoenixBurn* July 31, 2015 at 2:58 pm No worries. Chalk it up to me scanning posts and getting a little Friday afternoon cabin fever! Re-reading, I see you mentioning joking. A close friend of mine is a massage therapist, and I finally broke down one day and asked her what her rate would be for an hour because I was just going nuts! Best $40 I ever spent! LOL
Cruciatus* July 31, 2015 at 11:11 am For those keeping tabs, this week I officially told my boss I was leaving, sent in my resignation letter to HR, turned down the other job offer, and started my paper work for my new job. Phew! My last day at my current place will be August 7. I won’t have any break besides a weekend before I start the new one but that’s life. Word is officially out now. I’m the one being gossiped about (hopefully just in a “Did you hear? Cruciatus is leaving!” kind of way.) My boss asked if it was just about the money. It’s not. It’s about not working for a dysfunctional employer any more who thinks I’m only worth $10.60 an hour after 4.5 years of good damn work. And there’s nowhere else to go here. But it sounded like he was ready to fight to get me the 33% pay increase I’ll be getting from my new employer. I mentioned the contract was signed anyway and he stopped with that. I was super nervous about telling my supervisor, but he took it OK. Started by saying “Fuuu…!” but stopped himself and in the end congratulated me. Told me I could use him as a reference whenever I need to, that he won’t wonder why I’m asking about it 5 years from now or something. So now I’m just working on getting as far ahead as possible and trying to remember that, after I leave, nothing is up to me anymore. Part of me hates giving up parts of the job (“No one can do it better than I can!”) but that is untrue and I’ll have to let go. This time next week will be very weird. Right now it’s all surreal. I did/said what I needed to but it doesn’t feel real yet. I’m working on normal, everyday stuff… No one has had anything bad to say about my soon-to-be employer. Everyone thinks I made the right choice picking them over the other university that gave me an offer. It almost sounds too good to be true. I’m very optimistic about my future there (though I’ve never had a year long probationary period. Hopefully that’s not a big deal).
GOG11* July 31, 2015 at 11:26 am Congratulations!!!! Let us know how the new job is going once you’re settled in if you get the chance.
Mimmy* July 31, 2015 at 1:15 pm Yay, congratulations!!! A year-long probationary period seems pretty long, but if that’s the worst of it, you’re in good shape :)
Elizabeth West* July 31, 2015 at 2:02 pm Yay! That bit about the boss going, “Fuuuuuu….” made me laugh.
TheLazyB (UK)* July 31, 2015 at 2:24 pm Really glad to hear this update. Yeah it’s hard to let go! But you can do it :)
Vancouver Reader* July 31, 2015 at 4:13 pm Congratulations! The year’s probation will go by quicker than you think, you’ll be so busy showing them what a superstar you are, the year will just fly by.
Rebecca Too* July 31, 2015 at 11:12 am I’m going on holidays for two weeks on Tuesday (which I’m very excited about) but I have a ton of work to do before I leave. I’m pretty much going to have to work over all the weekend. And now I’m finding it impossible to stay focused. Anyone have any tips for getting through a huge workload when I keep getting off track/daydreaming about what I’m going to do in Paris?
Elkay* July 31, 2015 at 11:15 am To do lists, keep it visible on your desk so when you start to get distracted it’s there staring you in the face.
Beancounter in Texas* July 31, 2015 at 11:16 am Music helps keep me focused. And endless sources of food brought to me, so I don’t have to think about it. Beyond that, I’d be just as distracted as you! Have fun!
Kate R. Pillar* July 31, 2015 at 11:23 am For me, daydreaming mostly takes the from of “I should Google this!” “I could research that!” “I wonder whether…” “I absolutely need to pack..”. What’s worked for me (sometimes…) is keeping a “distraction notepad” next to my keyboard where I jot down all these ideas, so I don’t lose the thought for later. Or putting it in an e-mail to myself (or Evernote). Enjoy your holiday! Paris is awesome! Try some falafel in the Marais!!
Natalie* July 31, 2015 at 11:45 am Music and brutal prioritization. I move everything not absolutely critical onto my B-Squad to do list and put that list somewhere that I don’t see it all the time. Rank everything critical in order of priority and then just knock them out.
Almond Milk Latte* July 31, 2015 at 12:09 pm tomato-timer.com! Work for 25 minutes, spend 5 minutes reading the history of spoons on Wikipedia, work for another 25 minutes, think about sea lions for 5, work for 25 minutes, and so on and so on.
Windchime* August 1, 2015 at 2:37 am I’ve been doing something similar on my work-at-home day and it’s been working so well. I set the timer on my phone for 45 minutes, and during that time I work. If the thought of browsing the internet (even AAM!) pops into my mind, I just tell myself that I will have a break in a bit and get back to work. When the timer goes off, I can do what I want for 10-15 minutes. Throw in a load of wash, get a cool drink, read a little AAM, and then reset the timer for another 45 minutes. When I did this last Friday, I got a TON of work done. It seems counter-intuitive, but the timer really helped me.
Elizabeth West* July 31, 2015 at 2:05 pm When doing prep for my holiday last autumn, I made a list. I had to–all I could think about was my trip, and I knew I had to do as much as possible before I left because I wasn’t working while I was out. I was deathly afraid I’d forget something. So it was look at the list, do thing, mark off on list. Lather, rinse, repeat. I forced myself to concentrate on the list and only let myself look at itinerary/travel stuff on lunchtime.
Virginian* July 31, 2015 at 11:12 am I interviewed this week and did very well. I think I surprised myself.
Cruciatus* July 31, 2015 at 11:24 am I had 2 interviews on the same day about two weeks ago, and I don’t know what came over me–I wasn’t perfect, but I was confident and words (mostly) flowed from my mouth. I prepared with questions but tried not to get too bogged down in the process. Tried to remember the interviewers were human too. But I don’t know what made the difference but after both of them I thought, “Damn, I was really good!” I hope you get what you’re looking for!
OneWomanShow* July 31, 2015 at 11:14 am How to manage without authority? I am a one-person communications department tasked with helping to promote all organizational programs externally via traditional media, social media, printed materials, outreach events, partnerships, etc. I’ve only been in the position, which is revamped from an older job that’s now divided among departments, for about four months. As such, I need each program director to supply me with accurate and detailed information about their respective programs such as: cost, sign-up process, availability, specific services offered, etc. I am finding that directors expect me to magically have the required knowledge of their programs and know their audience(s) without engaging with me. Please advise me on how I can gently tell them that I need them to provide me with the necessary information in a timely manner to ensure the external communication/promotion is effective. Thanks for taking time to read this!
Dasha* July 31, 2015 at 11:19 am Maybe a reminder to them that this required information will help enhance promotions and make their programs more successful? Does it have to be the actual program director to supply this information? Maybe you would have better luck if you asked them to assign it to one of their staff?
Not Today Satan* July 31, 2015 at 11:24 am Do you have a boss with authority who could back you up? I was in this situation and it was pretty awful because the people whose work I relied on had zero accountability and my bosses didn’t back me up at all. I would imagine though if I higher up sent a memo detailing the workflow for your projects it might help.
Amtelope* July 31, 2015 at 11:28 am Step 1: talk to them. “In order to effectively promote your department’s programs, I need X information. Who in your department can get that information to me? Will that be by email, or should I set up a meeting? Who can I set that meeting up with? Let’s get that on the calendar. Step 2, if all you get is excuses, radio silence, or “I can pencil you in two months from now”: talk to your boss (executive director?) “In order to promote our programs, I need X information. Bob says his team doesn’t have time to get it to me/hasn’t replied to my emails/has promised it multiple times, but hasn’t delivered it. Can you talk to the other departments about the need to complete this task?” Ultimately you can’t make them get you what you need — but there’s probably someone in your organization who can.
Shannon* July 31, 2015 at 11:54 am +2 I don’t know if this helps, but, when you’re managing without authority, you often rely a lot on internal sales. Each program director is your customer. Really highlight what you can do for them. (“The sales of Jane’s product went up by X after I did Y for her.”) Another possibility is to back door the information you need from them. If you can get your hands on an old flyer/ web page, something, you can say, “Hey, Program Director. I found this old information about your product. How much of this is still accurate?”
GOG11* July 31, 2015 at 12:22 pm +1 to old info. It’s much easier for them to say “green, 17, it’s 24% now and the price is $300” than for them to dedicate the time and mental focus it requires to come up with something from scratch. Looking at old materials can help you create a timeline, too. I was having a heck of a time getting people to give me content for our social media accounts so I looked at the one account that had a couple of years worth of archives and I mapped out all of the posts by year. Now I know to cover X thing in December, and that Y happens in March. Now I have the entire year mapped out and I have a template for the other areas as well (if there’s a National Teapot Month, maybe there’s a National Spout Week, too). It doesn’t give you all the info you need, but it can help you generate content that they can give you a “yes” or “no, tweak this,” which will make everything much easier.
Shannon* July 31, 2015 at 2:24 pm Oh! And as a corollary, you can ask other people in the department and present the information to the Project Manager. “Hey, I got this information from Steve about your product. Is it accurate? Can I ask him for it in the future?”
catsAreCool* August 1, 2015 at 7:10 pm And if you can’t find old info, write down what you do know, add a list of items you need to know, include some educated guesses (make it obvious that these are guesses), and ask them to go over it and let you know what you need to fix.
Bea W* July 31, 2015 at 12:47 pm Agree with above. Don’t do it “gently”. You need to be clear and straightforward about what you need when and the consequences if you don’t get it.
Kate R. Pillar* July 31, 2015 at 11:42 am How are you asking them for that information? Would it be a possibility to have a questionnaire for them to fill in (or have filled in by their staff)? Perhaps with drop-down menus/checkboxes where appropriate to make filling it in somewhat faster? I have good experience with having (short, easy) questionnares for stuff where I need input: The format makes it clear what I need, and my aim is to make it easier for those I need input from to organize their thoughts. You could include short explanations also how this information fits into/leads to the finished product.
Not So NewReader* July 31, 2015 at 7:38 pm I agree. They need a check list. Come in on the plane of “I know you are super busy…. I hope this makes it easier for you….”
Ama* July 31, 2015 at 11:42 am I deal with needing info from very busy people who I have no authority over on a weekly basis — the trick is to set clear parameters on exactly what info you need, give a simple explanation of why it will help them, and to not be afraid to follow up (politely but firmly) if they don’t initially respond. If you need a standard set of info from every department, maybe a questionnaire in a Word document will help them know what you are looking for, along with a firm but reasonable deadline on when you need it returned. My nuclear option, if people don’t respond after multiple follow ups, is to write up whatever info I do have on hand, and send it to them with a polite “I know you’re busy so I tried to pull something together for you. Please let me know if you have any comments by X date, otherwise we’ll just [print this/run it on the website/include it in the press release] as is.” Only had to do it twice — got me immediate responses both times.
Bea W* July 31, 2015 at 12:54 pm There are some people I have to physically track down. You can email them to kingdom come and get nothing, but talk to them in person and it’ll be wrapped up in minutes. These tend to be the same people everytime. I get to know who they are, and will not spend a lot of time sending follow-up emails to them. Deadline dates are so important. If you give someone a clear deadline, they are more likely to prioritize your request and not forget about it.
Malissa* July 31, 2015 at 11:49 am Have you directly asked them? Jane I would love to get this to you but I need X, Y and Z first to make sure everything is good.
LQ* July 31, 2015 at 12:01 pm Can you ask for referrals to other people? There might be others who would have more time/information within those departments that could give you what you need.
Mephyle* July 31, 2015 at 3:27 pm Have they explicitly said things that let you know that they expect you to magically have the required knowledge etc.? I would combat this with some flattery – when asking them for their information, remind them that they are the experts on their program; they know more about it than anyone else (including OneWomanShow) and you are there (or enthusiastic) to help them get that knowledge out there.
I hope I'm not a mean girl...* July 31, 2015 at 11:15 am Kind of a weird question… I know a while back there was a letter to Alison from someone who wanted to remain a little distant from their co-workers for various reasons and the comments were really supportive and helpful. This is a little different because I’ve let myself get somewhat close to a coworker and I’d like to take a step back. I’m in a fairly new job (6 months) and I think part of the reason I love it so much is because I haven’t been close with anyone at work and therefore I don’t stress about anyone else or get involved in any drama/gossip/whatever. Recently, we had a new woman begin and she keeps trying really hard to be my friend because I think I’m the only other female in the office. I have been friendly to her because she was really struggling to get settled here. I don’t want to be mean but I really want to step back because I feel like she’s getting to personal with me. I’m engaged and she keeps hounding me when I’m having the wedding even though I’ve told her due to finances probably not for a long time. She’s almost pushy when she asks now despite me telling her something along the lines it’s really a sore subject at the moment and I’m going to rethink everything in a couple of months when we get a better idea of our finances. Any tips on how to not be a complete jerk but to step back gracefully? I don’t want to be a mean girl but I let her get too close to me and I need help stepping back.
some1* July 31, 2015 at 11:34 am Have you tried saying something non-commital and steering the conversation back to work? “So when are you guys having the wedding?” “Nothing’s really set on that. How is that data project going?”
KathyGeiss* July 31, 2015 at 11:39 am Can you reframe it a bit in your mind? The way the situation reads to me is that she’s the jerk, not you. She keeps asking even though you’ve made it clear you don’t want to discuss. I’d become a broken record with responses that shut down the line of questioning followed by redirection to Work Things: “I don’t want to focus on the wedding. Can you give me that file for that client?” “I’ve told you already that I’d rather not talk about it. Can we focus on work?” “I know you’re interested, but it’s important to me to focus on work while I’m at work.” “I’ve mentione this before, please stop asking me about the wedding.” – if you want to soften it you could add “I’ll share news when there is news. I’d prefer to focus on work for now” Repeat ad nauseum. And don’t beat yourself up for being rude. She’s being the rude one.
Jerzy* July 31, 2015 at 2:18 pm +1! If you directly say you don’t want to talk about something, especially because it’s a painful subject, and she just keeps going, she’s overstepping her bounds and you need to tell her that directly as well. If she gets upset, so be it, and you can tell her that you don’t mean to upset her, but she need to respect your wishes.
Dawn* July 31, 2015 at 11:44 am I love the Captain Awkward blog for finding good scripts for dealing with people like this- check out the posts there and I’m sure you’ll come up with a buncha stuff.
KT* July 31, 2015 at 11:47 am redirect and don’t engage on a personal level. “Have you set a date” “Not yet. Did you see the latest memo”
pony tailed wonder* July 31, 2015 at 1:56 pm The next time she asks, just ask her why she is being so rude when you have told her time and time again to knock it off. She might be under the impression that she is being friendly by showing an interest. Don’t say it in an angry voice because you don’t want to make an enemy and listen to what she says.
SherryD* July 31, 2015 at 2:19 pm Ugh. Some people can’t mind their own business about dating, weddings, and marriage. It feels like you’re talking to a dim-witted character from a Jane Austen novel. I have a coworker like this, and I’d love to tell her off with some feminist screed… But what’s the point? I basically try to ignore her. For example, after a delivery guy comes through, she’ll say, “Oooh, he would be a cute date for you!” I’ll say, “Sorry, I didn’t notice.” But it still makes me cranky, so I don’t know if my technique is so great!
Vancouver Reader* July 31, 2015 at 4:19 pm I don’t know if it would work or not, but if it were me, I’d just tell her straight out that I’m not comfortable with talking about my personal life at work, and to please stop asking me about it.
ActCasual* July 31, 2015 at 5:18 pm Maybe you can find a way to frame all this in the spirit you’ve explained here, that you prefer not to have overly personal relationships at work or talk about personal things and you are happy you have a comfortable working relationship with her but that’s it? Otherwise I think she’ll end up hurt and confused when that’s obviously not your intent.
Not So NewReader* July 31, 2015 at 7:57 pm “Hey, I have already answered that question so I will not be answering it again.” “You ask me that a lot. Please stop, I want us to focus on the work we have.” “I really should not have mentioned anything earlier. I like to keep “at home stuff” at home and “at work stuff” at work. I am sorry I gave you the wrong impression of my preferences.”
Christina* July 31, 2015 at 11:15 am How do you deal with a manager who doesn’t understand the value in communication styles other than her own? I work in communication (oh, the irony) and recently got “I want to push you out of your comfort zone, I want to see you be more outgoing and talk more.” What she means is she wants me to gossip/gripe about my coworkers, colleagues, and management the way she and her best buddy (who is also her subordinate, which brings its own level of awful) do. The working relationships I have are very good and I actually produce (which, honestly, cannot be said of her). I tried to explain that, and pointed out examples of how I do communicate well, but what she wants is for me to communicate like she does. I’m at a loss…
OneWomanShow* July 31, 2015 at 11:22 am Christina: You have my sympathies! I work in an environment where everything is communicated in color-coded emails, and people are discouraged from talking face to face. This leads to email chains of 20-30 messages when a 5-minute conversation would have easily resolved the issue. I hope you are able to maintain your professionalism, despite your gossipy boss and co-workers.
GOG11* July 31, 2015 at 11:48 am Is there a way you could ask her for examples of how she’d like you to communicate instead? If it would make her think through her request, she might realize that her idea of getting our of your comfort zone and being more outgoing is actually being more gossipy, and she might get off your back. That could backfire, though, if she provides gossipy behaviors to engage in because then you’d have specific behaviors she’s asked you to do that you really don’t want to do, and it’s easier to seem insubordinate if you’re not following specific requests than if you’re not following the vague one she’s set before you now.
Shannon* July 31, 2015 at 12:00 pm Would it be possible to engage in positive gossiping? That is, just saying nice or harmless things about your coworkers? “I really like what Sue did with the X project!” or “Did you hear that Jane has a new cat?”
GOG11* July 31, 2015 at 12:36 pm This is a great response, too. It works well if it’s something you can loop back to work. In my coworker’s case, I don’t think it would have worked. He complained to a student about an issue with his contract (in front of me, but I wasn’t actually part of the convo), he inquired about a coworker’s alleged divorce (he saw something somewhere and was wondering if it was our coworker or someone else) and he shared some deeply personal struggles a student was facing with me. In all of these cases, the only thing I could come up with was to be indifferent because they don’t even tangentially relate to work or to the behaviors of my coworkers. Luckily, my manager is much more in line with my take on things than his, so I’m not being roped into this stuff by anyone with authority over me.
pony tailed wonder* July 31, 2015 at 2:04 pm Ask him why he thought you needed to know xy and z and then follow up with a suggestion that he reread the FERPA requirements if it was something about a student.
GOG11* July 31, 2015 at 2:49 pm I hadn’t thought about FERPA (it wasn’t anything relating to her academics…it was about her health, funny enough, but we’re not covered by HIPAA). I was too flabbergasted to think about much.
GOG11* July 31, 2015 at 1:12 pm Just realize that perhaps you were offering that more to OP than me or that it potentially nested weirdly. If that’s the case, sorry for the mini novella on my awkward coworker’s behavior.
Shannon* July 31, 2015 at 1:32 pm No worries, it was for both of you. Your horrible co worker is….. horrible.
Christina* July 31, 2015 at 4:13 pm Complimenting other teams or people, except the ones she likes that day, results in being lectured on how I should be “coaching” them the next time I speak with them, and to talk to her before I interact with them the next time so she can prepare me on the “politics of the situation.”
ActCasual* July 31, 2015 at 5:30 pm Ugh. Sounds like my know-it-all, deeply insecure and paranoid exBoss. My defense at the end was usually to avoid him like the plague. Sending you good thoughts & moral support.
Shannon* July 31, 2015 at 8:56 pm I know “find another job” gets bandied about a lot on these forums, but, reading your other comments, I’m sorry. Your boss is nuts. There is no fixing her, though other commenters have given good advice for strategies to deal with her while you have to. This situation is not going to get better unless you compromise yourself and become her lackey. Get out before you have to get out. The writing is on the wall.
Anne S* July 31, 2015 at 11:49 am Other people might have better advice for trying to get your boss to see things your way, but if that doesn’t work, it might be worth thinking about ways to placate her. If she values a lot of verbal interaction, would a stream of mundane chatter satisfy her? I’m imagining a lot of talk about the weather, construction in the office neighborhood, places to get lunch, a hobby you have – something that will feed her need for ‘chatty’ without forcing you to do gossip that makes you uncomfortable.
ThursdaysGeek* July 31, 2015 at 12:03 pm Ask for concrete examples of how and where she wants you to talk more and be more outgoing. Ask questions. “You say you want me to talk more? Where is a situation where I didn’t talk as much as you would like, and what would you have had me say?” Get her to either explicitly say she wants you to gossip, and ask clarifying questions until it is clear that is what she is asking, or perhaps she really does have something else in mind. If she wants gossip, asking her to clarify will either make her realize what she is asking, and she’ll stop, or else she won’t. In which case, keep asking questions. “So, you want me to tell Bob that Lucinda doesn’t like his hairstyle? What is the business case for that? Will that help us work together better?” If she does have something else in mind, the questions will clarify that too.
Christina* July 31, 2015 at 3:55 pm Oh man, she hates when I do this because yes, it forces her to articulate what it is she wants. She prefers that I guess and then tears apart whatever I come up with. She gave me an assignment last week to come up with a newsletter and figure out who to send it to. I was trying to ask questions about what she was looking for, what had been done up to this point on related projects (which I wasn’t involved in) and she actually said “I don’t want to tell you what I’m thinking, I want to see what you come up with!” I swear I almost started banging my head on the desk.
Not So NewReader* July 31, 2015 at 8:02 pm If she can’t find her way out of a paper bag, how, oh, how, will this woman ever be able to lead people? You have a really crappy boss. I am so sorry.
Not So NewReader* July 31, 2015 at 8:14 pm “Well, Boss, I could guess. But we have done this before. I am concerned that I am wasting company time and resources by doing work that may or may not be used. If you tell me what you would like specifically, I will be very happy to get that for you. I will start it as soon as you give me the details, but meanwhile I still have A, B and C that I am working on.” The technique here is that you are worried about wasting company resources, but you are the most accommodating person on earth ANNDDD you are also busy with the last 3/4/5 things she has asked you to do. If you act like you are hurried/busy this gives her less time to torture you. If you act like the most accommodating person in the world, you have that to fall back on if she accuses you otherwise. Being concerned about company resources takes the focus off you and redirects the conversation to what is important- doing a good job. Job hunt like crazy. No one can fix her.
LQ* July 31, 2015 at 12:08 pm Can you try to get her to tell you the outcomes that are the problem? “Can you give me an example of a problem on a project this has created?” “It would really help me to know what the result of doing x would be.” Alternately can you listen and ask questions without talking yourself? Lots of people who are that kind of communicator are more than happy to talk extensively if you ask lots of questions. (Also the positive gossip mentioned.)
Biff* July 31, 2015 at 1:19 pm What I’ve been doing is letting my boss chit-chat about those topics to me, acknowledge them in a way that it seems like I’m engaged, and then say something like “oh, you know, we don’t have a ton of time left, so can we talk about X really quickly.” Then I let her go off on another chit-chatty tangent. It’s okay, but not great.
Anony-moose* July 31, 2015 at 2:24 pm This is timely. I had a really freaking hard week. Our higher up basically just…lectures and yells at everyone. So a conversation this week would go: “Fergus, there are some discrepancies in this document I need your input on before we send it out. I’ve highlighted and bolded them in red and notated the pages where there are errors. Can we talk through them” Fergus, not listening. “There are errors in this. I can’t trust your work if there are errors. Do you know how important it is to turn in accurate work?” My solution has been to look for jobs across the country. It makes me feel better to pretend I can go live next door to my sister!
coffee or tea* July 31, 2015 at 11:15 am What is the best way to extract myself from internal drama? Some background: young attorney working for a small firm. I am the only woman attorney, the rest are men. All the support staff are women. The support staff view me as “one of them” which has worked to my advantage in certain situations but has put me in a real pickle. However, there always seems to be drama among the staff, lots of gossiping, etc… Since they are all high performers and great at what they do the other attorneys just shut their doors and ignore it. But since I’m viewed as “one of them” they often come into my office to complain about each other or about my bosses. It seems they are mostly just blowing off steam, which I get, but it makes me feel uncomfortable because I’m not really staff but I’m not a partner either. I try ignoring them, or telling them I’m busy or just not engaging but nothing works. This week has been especially bad and it has really started affecting my morale. Any advice?
Sadsack* July 31, 2015 at 11:24 am You are in a tough spot. Does the support staff have a manager? The next time someone comes to your door, you could cut in with, “I am sorry, I realize that you are upset, but I am probably not the appropriate person to discuss this with. Have you talked to Chauncey about it?”. If you keep that up, they may realize that they shouldn’t vent to you.
Swarley* July 31, 2015 at 11:33 am I agree. I think Alison might have addressed this in previous letters where coworkers were consistently complaining, but you might also try saying something like: “That sounds frustrating. So what do you plan to do about it?” But I definitely think that shutting it down in the moment within wording like Sadsack suggested is the quickest way to make this stop.
coffee or tea* July 31, 2015 at 11:48 am Unfortunately the support staff manager are the Partners and they usually have the more senior support staff actually manage the day to day stuff. When they come to my office to complain about the partners it is often after they’ve brought an issue to the partners and do not feel like it was adequately handled or they feel like there is an issue that I should bring to the attention to the partners (whole different issue that I think I’ve solved) But I think both those lines are worth trying next time it occurs, especially next time the younger woman comes into my office (she’s a couple years younger than I am). Thanks!
GOG11* July 31, 2015 at 11:56 am “When they come to my office to complain about the partners it is often after they’ve brought an issue to the partners and do not feel like it was adequately handled or they feel like there is an issue that I should bring to the attention to the partners (whole different issue that I think I’ve solved)” It’s okay to direct them back to the partner(s). “It sounds like that solution isn’t working as well as you’d hoped, but you need to bring that up with partner(s).”
Miss Pym* July 31, 2015 at 11:38 am Women are socialized to bond over “trouble talk” so it makes sense that you are being included. But there’s (at least) two problems with this! You are busy with your actual work…and you are an attorney, not a member of this group in work terms. I think you do have to draw some boundaries by being very pleasant but professional, ie keeping attention on work and redirecting complaints as suggested by another poster. But figuring out an appropriate way to stay friendly with this group is important too. That’s the tricky part. I’d lean though to doing it by acknowledging good work, showing friendly interest in good personal news, etc. Basically, do what the male attorneys do, but maybe with more warmth. They are judging you differently because you’re a woman. Find the fine line! :)
coffee or tea* July 31, 2015 at 11:55 am That is the problem! and one I’ve been trying to navigate since I started working here last year. I’ll try out your suggestions and hopefully I’ll be able to do so successfully!
Miss Pym* July 31, 2015 at 12:33 pm It can feel classist and all but you need to hang with the attorneys, not with the support staff. If the support staff feel you are “one of them”, how do the attorneys see you? Saying this not to pile on about past role blurring but to give you strong encouragement to recalibrate going forward even if it might feel “mean” . I’m super interested in gender, work and organizations so your issue really resonates for me!
QualityControlFreak* July 31, 2015 at 3:38 pm Your last sentence is interesting. I’ve been in the workforce a while, the past 25 years spent in industries which statistically are male-dominated (women are the minority in general as well as in leadership roles). However, support staff was often female, particularly in administrative roles. It does make for some interesting dynamics in workflow and organizational structure. I vote for directing them back to their managers (in this case, the partners). In some of the more highly structured organizations, I wouldn’t have hesitated to refer someone back to their own chain of command if they wanted action on their complaints. In organizations with a flatter structure (no “layers” of management) – which it sounds like this is – that may be the Big Boss(es).
Miss Pym* July 31, 2015 at 4:46 pm This plays out much the same for anyone who is the sole rep of their gender, race, ethnicity, social class in a professional group of “higher status” than support staff who share your characteristics. You’re no longer “one of us” but does that mean you’re now “one of them”? Well, yes, no and not really. Minefields to negotiate, not least forging your own identity. I do believe it’s possible though!
Limes* July 31, 2015 at 11:41 am This might seem trivial but, are they opening your door to come in? Or is your door always open and they just wander in when they want to chat? I worked in a support position at a law firm for a little bit and frankly was a little terrified to open any of the lawyers’ doors when they were closed because it was clear that they didn’t want to be disturbed. Is your door open more often than not?
coffee or tea* July 31, 2015 at 11:53 am My door is typically open and I realize that it does invite people to just walk in. I have been keeping my door closed more often, which has stopped some of it. However the worst offender has been known to walk into my office when the door is closed (knocking first). The way my office is positioned causes certain noises to amplify if my office door is closed, so if someone is nearby and having a conversation I can hear the entire thing
Limes* July 31, 2015 at 1:51 pm I think this goes back to how women have traditionally been socialized and how society’s been conditioned to interact with women’s space (i.e. often not respect it). We’re supposed to always be accommodating and “open”. You may just want to start leaving your door closed more often and use ear buds to block out the noise and signal to someone who STILL opens your door that you’re busy. If you keep your door closed and make a big show of being busy and inconveniently stopping whenever someone wanders in to chat they’ll probably start to get the hint. And maybe make a habit of opening your door the last hour or so of the day, like “office hours” so they still feel welcome?
Bangs not Fringe* July 31, 2015 at 11:15 am Two interviews and no feedback. My spouse applied to a position in January. His first in-person interview was in mid-February. It was a very good interview according to him. He followed up with a thank you, which was reciprocated with a nice email in return. In the first week of March he received an email that the client had suspended the project and hiring. They expected the hiring freeze to end the next month and “would love to reach out” to him again to see if he’s still available and interested. In mid-May (a bit more than next month) they each out to see if he was interested in another interview. He didn’t have the second in-person interview until June. This interview was with another person, who according to my spouse was off-putting, allowed people to interrupt the interview for coffee orders and other random questions, and seemed disinterested in the whole process. He again followed up with a thank you email. Since then, nothing. Two in-person interviews… and nothing? Is it worth reaching out again? If so to who? The interview organizer? The person he interviewed with first and had a good rapport with?
Swarley* July 31, 2015 at 11:37 am I wouldn’t reach out again. He’s had two interviews at this point, and if they’re interested in moving forward they won’t forget to reach out. I’d move on and continue searching. And if they contact him with something more concrete, then he can decide how he wants to move forward from there.
Bangs not Fringe* July 31, 2015 at 1:18 pm I guess it’s just a bummer to get nothing after 6 months and 2 in person interviews. I would at least expect a rejection. Not radio silence for two additional months.
brightstar* July 31, 2015 at 1:26 pm I wouldn’t bother reaching out again, they’ve shown if they’re interested that they will contact him. Hiring often takes longer than expected or maybe they’ve passed on and it’s the type of organization that feels it isn’t obligated to inform candidates they haven’t been selected. If they’ve had a hiring freeze they may have other fires they’re putting out at the time, it could be any number of things.
Like the turkey I am DONE!* July 31, 2015 at 11:16 am I turned in my notice yesterday! I was SO nervous – like couldn’t sleep, cold sweats, couldn’t eat nervous – and to top it all off, my husband works for the same company and he was ALSO resigning (we’re moving back to our home state) so we had to time it all really well. But it did go well! It was so weird, though – I’ve always felt like I do a good job, but I’m just kind of average. They hired someone in an equivalent position to me (but with significantly less experience) about a year ago and she was being paid significantly more than me. I brought it up and the answer was basically “sucks to be you”. And of course, when I turned my notice in yesterday, cue everyone freaking out and throwing significantly more money at me because I’m a “rock star” “stellar employee”, etc. But, whatever. I’m super excited for my new job, super excited to move closer to family, and super excited to explore and live in a new city!
Beancounter in Texas* July 31, 2015 at 11:25 am Yay!! Congrats on your new adventure and I hope your move is smooth & uneventful.
JP* July 31, 2015 at 11:17 am We’re relocating (I already have a job) and my husband has been job hunting for about three weeks now. So far, he has not really heard back from any applications. I’ve checked his resume and it’s great (I’ve read lots of advice here!), he tailors it to each position. Why is he not getting calls? He’s applied to probably 40 engineering jobs by now.
misspiggy* July 31, 2015 at 11:24 am What about cover letters? Alison has a lot to say about how vital they are. If he’s not submitting cover letters or supporting statements he may be disadvantaging himself, even if they’re not explicitly requested.
JP* July 31, 2015 at 1:25 pm Our strategy (yes, I’m helping, to an extent) has been to do a full out tailored cover letter/resume for things that are a good fit (most of the applications) and then just a resume to some “stretch” positions. I’m in a different industry and this stuff is 100% vital to getting a job, so I totally get it. I think I’m just panicking because I’d rather not move without him – we can’t afford for both of us not to have jobs, so he will be staying behind until he finds a position.
brightstar* July 31, 2015 at 1:30 pm I would think it’s especially important for the stretch positions to include a cover letter. Also, three weeks is a blip in the time line of a job search. Try to be patient. Have you worked out a plan if he doesn’t find a job immediately? This was years ago, but a couple I know had to move at different times to a new city because she got a job there and it took him a little while to find one of his own. It was tough for them but they got through it.
Retail Lifer* July 31, 2015 at 11:30 am I’ve applied to about 100 jobs this year. Scam jobs aside, I’ve received 6 phone calls, 4 interviews, and no offers. My boyfriend, in another field, has put in about 40 applications, gotten a few phone calls, two interviews, and no offers. The job market is tight and it’s a numbers game. I think he just needs to apply to more stuff to increase his odds.
Limes* July 31, 2015 at 11:36 am The job market is still not great. I have a job but have kept a spreadsheet of all the positions I applied to in the past year before getting it … it was around 70. And they weren’t stretches either.
AVP* July 31, 2015 at 11:41 am Three weeks isn’t a very long time. He might hear back from them next week, or in a month, or never.
Ama* July 31, 2015 at 11:50 am Three weeks really isn’t a long stretch of time — it’s entirely possible many of those jobs are still collecting applications and haven’t even started sorting through them to select people for interviews. Especially since it is summertime, and they may be working around vacations for people involved in the hiring process.
Honeybee* August 2, 2015 at 11:36 pm Yeah, some jobs took 3 weeks just to contact me about my application.
Recruiter* July 31, 2015 at 12:00 pm If he’s not already, he should include a cover letter that makes it’s clear he’s definitely moving to this new city, will be there by X date, and will not need relocation assistance.
Ad Astra* July 31, 2015 at 12:34 pm This could be key if he’s not doing that already. Or, if some of the applications are just “send me your resume,” he should be sure to mention that he’s relocating when he emails the resume. Beyond that, I’d say three weeks is not long enough to raise any red flags. I’m sure at least some of those companies are still evaluating applications and haven’t decided who to interview yet. I think it’s a good sign that he’s found 40 relevant job openings in one area.
The IT Manager* July 31, 2015 at 1:07 pm Three weeks is not a long time for companies. They will often collect resumes for a few weeks before sorting through them and deciding who to call. That said 40 resumes in three weeks sounds like a lot. Is he really a good fit for all the jobs or is he applying to anything sort of close? There’s nothing wrong with the shot gun approach per se but it’ll have less greater percentage of no responses than a more targeted approach.
Retail Lifer* July 31, 2015 at 11:17 am I had to take myself out of the running for the one job I got landed an interview for. It was a pay cut, which I could have dealt with, but that coupled with the price of insurance made it not doable. They were willing to negotiate a couple bucks an hour, but it wouldn’t have been enough. I just hit my second anniversary at this job and my first anniversary of trying to quit before I get fired or laid off. I think I’m secure through the end of the year at least, but I’ll be livid if I’m still here on Thanksgiving when we open at 6pm and I have to spend another holiday by myself because of my work schedule.
Ad Astra* July 31, 2015 at 3:01 pm I’m rooting for you! Even when you have great skills and experience, so much of job searching falls upon luck and timing.
Ms. Elizabeth* July 31, 2015 at 11:17 am My manager asked for my job description and asked me write one. Is this normal? What I find strange is that I already have one from when I started.
fposte* July 31, 2015 at 11:22 am It’s pretty standard around here; that’s how they evolve. Probably the one you got when you started was written by your predecessor. So use that as a template and update it to describe what you actually do.
AndersonDarling* July 31, 2015 at 11:26 am It happens. Someone in HR realizes that they haven’t updated the job description in 5 years and they are all outdated. Or they could be doing a compensation evaluation to make sure the payscales are still accurate and this is the first step.
Dawn* July 31, 2015 at 11:48 am Super common. Usually stuff like this is when someone in HR gets a bug up their butt to have totally updated job descriptions for some reason- either for making sure compensation is in line with job duties or maybe for regulatory reasons or tax purposes. When I worked at a big company there was this thing where R&D was counted totally differently than everything else for tax/stock market purposes so they had to go through EVERYONE’S job description with a fine toothed comb and figure out who was R&D. The easiest way to get an updated job description from everyone is to have everyone write their own job description, because who better to know exactly what you do at that job?
PhoenixBurn* July 31, 2015 at 1:27 pm Pretty standard, and with the proposed changes to the FLSA regs, a lot of companies are cleaning up their job descriptions even if they don’t do it regularly (which they should). It’s a good thing that they’re coming to you – who knows your job better than you do? You’re the best source for what makes sense to be on the job description – HR can’t know everything that you influence every day.
Ad Astra* July 31, 2015 at 2:29 pm This could be a great opportunity to talk to your boss about how you want to divide your time up. You could potentially address any duties that have fallen to you but might be better suited for someone else, or talk about taking over duties that fit well with your skills but are being handled (or mishandled) elsewhere. If your boss isn’t keen on you making actual changes to your official responsibilities, you could still turn this into a conversation about how best to measure success in your role. Or maybe she just wants an exhaustive list of exactly what you do all day. If you’re not sure, ask.
Erin* July 31, 2015 at 3:14 pm I do think it’s normal, I remember doing it for a prior job. Presumably your job has expanded since you were hired and you’ve taken on new responsibilities. Your manager is probably requesting an updated description because A, he just wants to have that on record, B, he trusts you to do your job and doesn’t micromanage, so he’d just like to be brought back in the loop as far as what you actually do every day, or C, he’d like it in case you go on vacation or have to take sick time, so he can ensure your duties are properly delegated and taken care of in your absence.
Notetaker* July 31, 2015 at 11:17 am Is taking a lot of notes during training off putting? I recently started a new job (entry level assistant position) and during my training meetings with my manager have been taking fairly detailed notes. She’s been teaching me both about the industry, big picture of the company, but also how to use a lot of the applications I’ll need. But I heard from my friend in the same company that when she was training, her boss (different from mine), said “Oh this isn’t college, you don’t need to do that.” Granted, this particular manager is not known for being very detail oriented herself and doesn’t rely as much on notes and organization in her own work. Is it offputting when I take very detailed notes? I just want to make sure I retain as much as possible, as I am new to both the job and the industry! Is it more professional to just retain things mostly aurally? I know I’m overthinking this, but if it is somehow a faux-pas I want to be aware of it. Thanks everyone!
TheExchequer* July 31, 2015 at 11:20 am If taking notes to help remember something is a faux pas, I would not work well in that place.
Notetaker* July 31, 2015 at 11:25 am That was my thinking too! To be clear, I WAS taking fairly detailed notes. It absolutely did not affect my ability to verbally engage with my manager or to look when she showed me things, but I am usually writing for the majority of the training meeting (not just jotting down things here and there). I mean, as I said, these are literally my first training sessions. I want to retain as much as possible and that system works best for me, but I want to make sure it didn’t come off as excessive somehow.
Elizabeth West* July 31, 2015 at 3:04 pm Me either. I tell people training me that it might take us more time to go over stuff if I take notes, but it’s unlikely you’ll have to go over it again. And if we miss something, I can easily see where we didn’t cover it or where I can insert it into my procedural.
Not So NewReader* July 31, 2015 at 8:24 pm Yep. I had a boss that would not let me write down the steps for a 27 step process. His excuse was that he did not have time to wait for me. I cannot tell you how many times I screwed up that process. But maybe that is what he wanted. I don’t know. I finally grabbed other people and they filled me in. Always take notes. Be wary of anyone who says not to take notes. I have had people tell me, “I am always willing to help you because you take notes, it shows that you care about doing a good job.”
Apollo Warbucks* July 31, 2015 at 11:25 am Take as many notes as you need, if that is how you retain information. Try to do it when there is a natural pause for a moment or when something is really important to write down straight away and don’t focus so much on the note taking you’re not engaged in the conversation.
Rock* July 31, 2015 at 11:27 am What. No. Taking notes is critical, especially if that’s how you remember things best. I’d be much more frustrated if a person didn’t take notes and then came and asked for answers that we’d gone over multiple times. There is no faux-pas here.
MissLibby* July 31, 2015 at 11:29 am If I was training you and you were not taking notes, I would be very worried about your success. Most people cannot retain all of the information given verbally and notes are really helpful. However, your note taking should not be taking more of your attention than the actual training.
Sprocket* August 1, 2015 at 7:32 am Yes this. When I train people and they don’t take notes, they always circle back to me on something we’d covered that they’ve forgotten. I’ve never had a manager discourage me from taking notes. Most have made comments about how much they appreciate that I do. But I’ve always been straightforward that if I don’t write something down, I will totally forget. Whereas something about pen to paper makes me remember got a long while before I even have to reread those notes.
T3k* July 31, 2015 at 11:30 am Your friend sounds odd, or maybe she’s one of those who can retain information from hearing it. However, I love taking notes and at my first job the manager was perfectly ok with me taking notes so that I could look at them first before bugging him if I had a question.
AnotherAlison* July 31, 2015 at 11:33 am A while back, I had a temp work for me who did this, and it was off-putting. With her, it was all about the notes. I wanted her to focus on *understanding* what I was saying rather than making a detailed step by step record of what I was showing her. I remember in college, I would write down a professor working through a problem step-by-step, and I couldn’t really think about what he was doing when I was furiously scribbling that down. Only later, when I could walk through it on my own, did I digest it. In the case of my temp, I wanted her to work on digesting it when I was there to explain the “why” of something. If she got stuck on a procedural step of doing something later, I could easily tell her, “Then you go here and do xyz.” So, it’s not necessarily wrong to do, but it may not be the best way to learn what your trainer wants you to learn.
AnotherAlison* July 31, 2015 at 11:34 am (Also, for clarification, I definitely think you should note a few things to help you remember. . .just not a verbatim record of what I said.)
Amber Rose* July 31, 2015 at 11:49 am I was gonna say, there’s a happy medium. Notes are meant to be quick, shorthand notations to act as reminders of key info. Not a full on recording of everything said.
T3k* July 31, 2015 at 11:58 am Just a heads up, but everyone is different in how they can process something. In college I was able to write/type and draw, almost verbatim, what a teacher said/drew while being able to process it in my mind. It actually helped me better because when I went over my notes it’d refresh my memory on that particular lecture.
Anx* July 31, 2015 at 12:53 pm Yes to this. I don’t pay attention well to oral instructions. I try, I really do, but so much of my workplace anxiety comes from looking or feeling stupid or unfocused because I need to have information repeated or not feeling confident that I’m hearing things correctly. The act of writing helped me focus on what is being said. If I try to hard to just ‘pay attention’ I find myself just nodding along. I must have done this for years throughout childhood and never realized I was doing it.
AnotherAlison* July 31, 2015 at 2:11 pm Yeah, definitely agree with that. . .I would end up thinking about what I was going to have for lunch if I wasn’t taking notes, so it helped me focus, too, even if I didn’t get all the details on how we got from step 1 to step 13 the first time through. I admit, this woman was an extreme case. It was to the point where the 3 of us working with her made jokes about her note taking after she left because she had to have notes to do anything, took notes on everything, and typed up her notes after the fact. She would interrupt you an make you wait while she wrote something down, and the notes were to the level of “Step 1. Open Spreadsheet.” The person really oversold her Excel experience, so it was aggravating when I had to stop showing her what to do while she wrote down notes on how to format cells and things like that. Any normal note-taking doesn’t bother me.
AnotherAlison* July 31, 2015 at 2:15 pm (I promise I’m not a complete a-hole. . .I interviewed her and asked her about advanced Excel functions she didn’t know how to do, and she assured me that she was great at researching things and using forums and YouTube to figure it out. Nope, not really, and once you showed her, she never fully committed it to her arsenal. She relied on her notes from day 1 until the end and spent 20 hrs per week doing what I had previously done in 1 hour.)
T3k* July 31, 2015 at 2:46 pm Oh wow… ok yeah, I’d make fun of that first step too xD Sounds like she’s either really forgetful, or needs to work on that skill where things eventually become automatic after doing something over and over.
nona* July 31, 2015 at 2:15 pm +1 I need to either do it myself or take detailed notes in order to… do it myself.
Clever Name* July 31, 2015 at 1:27 pm I process info as I write, and I remember it better. And if I don’t, I have detailed notes to refer to.
Ad Astra* July 31, 2015 at 3:08 pm It’s off-putting (to me, anyway) when someone is basically transcribing everything the speaker is saying when the situation is supposed to be more of a conversation than a lecture. Is your manager giving you detailed information, like step-by-step directions or due dates? Or is she trying to have a conversation about big picture stuff, like the office culture? Either way, your manager hasn’t brought it up with you, so it’s likely not a problem. The other manager probably just has different preferences.
Diddly* July 31, 2015 at 11:38 am Can’t imagine it’s a faux pas – if you’re writing everything down word for word it might come across as a little strange and might be a bit frustrating for the person you’re training with. If someone queries it you can just say it’s your learning style – and you learn better this way.
Swarley* July 31, 2015 at 11:42 am No way. And if someone does say something I’d say: you’ll thank me when I’m not in your office every 20 minutes asking the same question.
Bea W* July 31, 2015 at 1:00 pm I don’t think it normally is off-putting. A lot of people take notes. I’ve even had some who asked for a moment to finish writing something down before moving on. If taking notes helps you remember, that’s better for you and your trainer if you can take notes. I’ve been out of school more than 10 years. I still take notes, especially if I am being trained or learning something new.
Clever Name* July 31, 2015 at 1:30 pm If you’re concerned how you’ll come off taking copious notes, I think it might be a good idea to say something like, “I’m a compulsive note-taker, so if it looks like I’m not paying attention because I’m writing, I really am listening to everything you’re saying. Writing it helps me pay attention and remember the information.”
TheLazyB (UK)* July 31, 2015 at 2:33 pm I started a new job in June. Still taking copious notes every meeting. Some people don’t like taking notes, I guess. Those weirdos! ;)
Rebecca* July 31, 2015 at 4:12 pm What? No! I do some training for new employees and get really annoyed if they don’t take notes and then ask me about it later. Um, we’ve already gone over that. You should have written it down!
Notetaker* August 1, 2015 at 12:08 am Super late, I know, but thanks for the replies everyone! It’s been reassuring. Regardless, I do think I’ll taper off on the notes the more immersed I get in the job — my notes tend to get more detailed the newer the topic is to me, which is what feels natural. I was just paranoid initially because my manager never outwardly seemed approving of my note taking – she frequently looks stressed in general but has otherwise been giving me only good feedback. And I am happy to report that so far I haven’t had to ask her to repeat anything! :)
Carmen Sandiego JD* July 31, 2015 at 11:17 am For those of you who went to law school and are pursuing an alternative (non-practicing) career, what are you doing? I’m interested in crisis management/public policy/public relations but wasn’t sure where to start. Thanks :)
CMT* July 31, 2015 at 12:32 pm JDs are a good degree to have for public policy work, especially at think tanks.
Lo* July 31, 2015 at 12:59 pm A close friend/former coworker of mine just graduated with her JD. For the last summer and year of law school, she interned in govt relations at a insurance company. She was offered a full time position there, as a policy analyst, post Bar-exam.
Katiedid* July 31, 2015 at 2:03 pm I am a government relations manager for a non-profit (translation: a lobbyist without the big salary or any campaign contributions!). The JD is definitely helpful in deciphering legislative proposals and drafting them as well. I actually never even took the bar since by the time I was a 2L, I knew this was what I wanted to do and didn’t see the need to take the bar. Right after law school, I worked on the legislative staff for our state senate as well. I’ve also done compliance work in regulated areas (education and insurance), as an extension of government relations, where I analyzed newly passed legislation and informed business units on what processes would need to change because of the new statutes. For me, I didn’t like that as well because I like the legislative process, rather than dealing with its fallout!
Jerzy* July 31, 2015 at 2:27 pm My former chief of staff in a state legislative office was an attorney who only practiced for a short while before quitting. He didn’t quit law to be a chief of staff. He took the COS role because it offered him more flexibility… … to be a stand up comedian. He even helped start a group comprised SOLELY of former and practicing attorneys who really just want to be comedians. They’re called Comedians-at-Law.
S* July 31, 2015 at 10:19 pm I work in Alumni Relations at a university. I had Bachelor of Commerce majoring in Marketing before I got my law degree.
LENEL* August 3, 2015 at 1:28 am I am in Australia so jurisdictionally this may not be helpful, but I went straight from graduating to a policy and legislation role for State Government – it was the first offer to come in and I haven’t looked back (too much anyway). I did a whole range of things including delegations of legislative powers, writing letters to people about policy positions on my hot-button issues, working with other departments on relevant amendments to their legislation and writing cabinet submissions. I’ve since moved in to Governance in local government. It’s very interesting too, I still do legislation amendments and review, delegations, I help find relevant legal advices for internal departments and refer them for advice where it’s needed. I do Right to Information (FOI in other jurisdictions) and internal reviews of administrative complaints. It’s… satisfyingly legal without requiring me to engage in legal practice. I personally always loved the idea of the model litigant and am very rule orientated and risk-averse, so this type of role suits me (mostly) down to the ground. Aside from now and then stints of imposter syndrome and realising that I’m vastly underpaid for what I do (hello PPD time) I very much enjoy 95% of my job and I’m very glad I’m not practicing.
Bend & Snap* July 31, 2015 at 11:18 am I am struggling to not verbally eviscerate my BEC. Anytime I present a new program (these are vetted, approved and funded by my department by the time she’s in a presentation) she goes out of her ways to try to poke holes in it in front of management. Her critiques are almost always without merit but she spends a lot of time trying to take me down/make me look stupid in front of my team. How do you guys politely shut this stuff down?
fposte* July 31, 2015 at 11:25 am Or she thinks she’s being the useful devil’s advocate–it’s not necessarily about taking you down. I would consider what the goal of such a presentation is. If what she’s doing fits within the goal, then I think you just ride it out; if it’s outside the scope, you can say “Jane, we’re past that development stage now” or “That’s more granular than I can get today–could you write it up and send it to me?”
The Cosmic Avenger* July 31, 2015 at 11:41 am I would just let her keep sniping, and keep dismissing her “critiques” calmly and logically. Eventually someone in charge will get tired of her wasting time and tell her to zip it. Or maybe they see her as making sure that you’ve covered the bases on those issues she raises, so maybe you can be more proactive in talking about the possible obstacles you are trying to avoid by the particular approach you have chosen.
KathyGeiss* July 31, 2015 at 11:49 am I’ve had this happen to me, although it was actually constructive but still frustrating. Two things helped me: can you engage with this person in advance and create a new space for these critiques before it’s in front of the big bosses? That will work if she has legit critique and isn’t trying to be a jerk. If that does work, I find it helpful to reframe my expectations. Going into a meeting knowing you’re going to be attacked doesn’t feel great but it can help you prepare for it -emotionally and literally with responses.
T3k* July 31, 2015 at 12:19 pm Sadly, I’m like one of those people. It’s just how I am and in my case, I’m not trying to be rude, but since I’m highly logical (I’m the one trying to figure out in a movie why they didn’t do it this other, simpler way and such) I don’t realize I’m coming off as being overly critical. The best way for someone to get this through to me is to be blunt. Had a friend that finally snapped one time “I’m not doing it that way because of this and this!” I wouldn’t suggest that though in the workplace. Instead, if you can, try talking to her and be direct like “I appreciate your concerns, but they’re coming off as overly critical and makes me look bad in front of my team” or maybe, as another suggested, give her a chance to look it over first?
Bend & Snap* July 31, 2015 at 12:46 pm Part of my challenge is that she competes with me (one sided). My boss has proactively noted it with me and addressed it with her. I don’t think she realize she’s coming off as an a-hole; she’s widely known for being intolerable to deal with because she’s a know-it-all. In this case, anything she’s raising has already been covered in the development process or is without merit. I don’t want to loop her in ahead of time because frankly, I don’t want to give her critiques any weight. I just want her to shut her pie hole in these meetings and if she feels really strongly about something, discuss with me in private.
The Cosmic Avenger* July 31, 2015 at 12:55 pm Well, it sounds like everyone but her knows she’s being an asshat. So I’d say while you shouldn’t let her derail presentations or meetings with her nit-picking, that confirms to me that you can just say “Well, we already decided that X wasn’t a problem because of Y. Now, as I was saying…” and everyone else will take it as a poor reflection on her, not on you. You’ll come out looking like a well-prepared saint. :)
AMG* July 31, 2015 at 1:21 pm This happens to me and I think COsmic Avenger is right. People like this frequently dig their own holes, so take comfort in that while you shut her down.
T3k* July 31, 2015 at 1:25 pm After what you stated (she competes with you, boss knows, everyone knows she annoying) Cosmic’s is probably a better solution. Just be direct and leave no room for her to edge another word in.
pony tailed wonder* July 31, 2015 at 2:13 pm Wasn’t there a politician who shut down an opponent in a presidential debate by saying something like “Oh Jane, there you go again”, laughed and shook his head? I think he then continued with his point of view.
Not So NewReader* July 31, 2015 at 8:32 pm This might be the route to go, especially if everyone else seems about done with her questions also.
fposte* July 31, 2015 at 2:14 pm I don’t think shutting her piehole is worth spending a lot of effort on, though. You can go with “That’s outside of the scope for today, so we need to move on” when she raises something inappropriately, but getting her never to open her mouth in the first place is a goal beyond the workplace reasonable. So just keep your deflector shields polished.
Not So NewReader* July 31, 2015 at 8:50 pm Can you limit the number of questions per person? Can you tell her, “Jane, you always have lots of questions, let’s hear from other people.” As Jane starts her next question, “Jane, I have answered a few questions of your questions, I think that we should allow other people time to ask their questions. Does anyone else have questions? No? Good. [Go into wrap up.]” Which brings me to another point. Do you limit the Q and A time? That might help. Try, try, try to remember that you control the floor because you are the speaker. Practice redirecting the conversation at home and alone, if you want to. Personally, I do autopsies. I review the day and figure out what I let sail by me. Then I vow not to let a comment or question of that nature sail by me again. I work up a plan so it won’t. This takes time but the effect is cumulative. You will find that you think on your feet better because you have analyzed so many previous situations. It’s training your brain. Here I would decide to limit the Q and A time, if it is not already limited. Then I would practice and be comfortable with a couple of redirects that pull Jane out of the spotlight. See, this may not be about stomping all over you, it could be that Jane just likes the spotlight. Try to detach a little bit and frame it as “my audience wants Jane’s questions to STOP so they can go back to their jobs.” This detaching is important because it’s easy to want to cut her down with a few sentences. You give her those sentences and she’ll just be happy to be in the spotlight even more.
TheExchequer* July 31, 2015 at 11:19 am My last day here and then I’m FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! My boss wants to do an exit interview. It’s a tiny company (less than 10 people) and my boss is also the owner of the company, so there’s nobody higher to appeal to. While I’ll be honest that his not paying me on time multiple times was an issue (especially after I brought the issue to him multiple times), I plan on being as diplomatic as possible about all the rest of it. My work here is done, after all.
Beancounter in Texas* July 31, 2015 at 12:31 pm Ummm…. not paying you on time is illegal, assuming you are/were an employee. If you’d like to make a Big Deal about it or at least see him reprimanded for it, contact an attorney or the Department of Labor. Since you’re looking to be as diplomatic as possible, though, perhaps just show him the laws in your state and the penalties for not paying employees on time. You’re not threatening him, just trying to help him for future payrolls. Glad you’re getting outta there, but I’m surprised you stuck around after multiple late payrolls.
TheExchequer* July 31, 2015 at 12:36 pm I know, but even in the state of California, the wheels of the Department of Labor grind very slowly. (Ask me how I know. >.<). I had to have a paycheck, even if it was a late one, so I stuck around until I got a new job. With my current financial situation, I didn't have the luxury of just quitting. As tempting as it sometimes was.
bad at online naming* July 31, 2015 at 11:20 am I (finally) switched managers, and my new manager wants to have a career-pathing discussion next week. This is great, but… I honestly don’t really know what I want beyond the very short term. Short of spending $100s to go to a really fancy life/career consultation that several acquaintances have sworn by, any recommendations?
Dawn* July 31, 2015 at 11:52 am Honestly? Wing it. There’s really no more “Work for the same company for 45 years and then retire” anymore, so there’s no need to sit down when you’re young and go “Hmm what do I want to do that won’t make me die inside every day twenty years from now?” Talk to your manager next week, see what your options are at the company you’re at, see what sounds interesting, go from there. I landed as a Business Analyst because four years ago I had the option of either continuing in a customer facing role or trying out being a Research Analyst, and being an RA sounded more interesting and wouldn’t have required me moving my desk. Now I’m riding the BA wave and enjoying myself, but making plans in the back of my head for when I will open up an organic farm and charcuterie business and how the skills I’ve learned in customer service and now RA/BA/Business Strategy will help with that.
Not So NewReader* July 31, 2015 at 8:52 pm “Hmm what do I want to do that won’t make me die inside every day twenty years from now?” LOVE this.
AnotherFed* July 31, 2015 at 11:54 am It’s ok to not know what you want to do long term, just be honest that you’re still exploring that. One thing commenters here have recommended that seems really helpful is to think about what you can’t not do. Combine that with the things you’re interested in doing more of or learning about, and you’ll have something to talk to your manager about where you’d like to work/grow in the short-term.
AnonyGoose* July 31, 2015 at 11:21 am Fellow vegetarians: What do you do at work potlucks? I find that if I eat beforehand, I get a constant stream of “why aren’t you eating?” If I try to eat the things I can (and at least halfway want) to, I end up with a lunch of potato chips and iceberg lettuce. Nine times out of ten, the “main” is provided, and it would feel weird to bring a competing main dish.
Sunny* July 31, 2015 at 11:27 am Depending on your company, you can ask for accomadations. Be warned, for whatever reason, people will want to eat the limited supply of vegetarian food, leaving you without food.
Oranges* July 31, 2015 at 5:36 pm Not eating the vegetarian food can backfire though because then it’s not eaten and people assume there’s not less of a need them there actually is. In my choir we have a large spectrum of food issues from vegitarian/vegan to allergies to surgery and what works best is for the dishes to be labeled and the people who have dietary restrictions to go first if they so desire. That way if your diet is so restricted you’re sure to get food and the people behind you don’t have to worry that they’re going to leave you with nothing edible.
AvonLady Barksdale* July 31, 2015 at 11:29 am Mac and cheese can be both a main and a side! Don’t feel weird about anything. Potlucks tend to be weird no matter what! I’m not a vegetarian but my boyfriend is and we don’t cook meat in the house, so “bring a dish” from us is always something veggie. I like to make substantial sides. I just did a bulgur and lentil salad that was SO good, and I’ve made things like tomato cobbler, seven-layer dip, noodle kugel… If it’s potluck, you can (and should) bring in a dish that you can eat.
Erin* July 31, 2015 at 3:19 pm Yes, mac and cheese! Or different kinds of salads – things that can pose as a side dish or a main dish.
Apollo Warbucks* July 31, 2015 at 11:33 am Being vegetarian is a pretty standard dietary requirement to accommodate it shouldn’t be hard to get an option included in the pot luck you can eat I’m not vegetarian myself, but if there wasn’t normally anything to eat at the pot luck it would depend on if you are the only vegetarian? if so I would just bring some lunch for myself and eat it with everyone or I’d bring something along as a main dish, I can’t imagine that anyone would consider it being meant to compete with the meat based main dish.
Limes* July 31, 2015 at 11:33 am Say I have a “really awesome dish” that I want everyone to try/get feedback on. Veggie lasagna, macaroni and cheese, potato salad (German style), etc. Usually it is something entree-like (I love to cook) but that way it’s FOR everyone and it’s not weird that you’re eating it.
MissLibby* July 31, 2015 at 11:34 am We have a vegetarian in our office and for the last potluck, the organizer just put a note on the email invite saying that if anyone would consider bringing a meat free dish, it would be appreciated. People were really accommodating.
einahpets* July 31, 2015 at 1:47 pm I was going to suggest something like this — we don’t do many potlucks in my office, but amongst my friends we have a number of vegetarians and even though I am not vegetarian, I am happy to make something meatless that everyone can enjoy.
Calla* July 31, 2015 at 11:38 am The last job we did work potlucks at, I organized them and people knew I was vegetarian, so I feel like they were more inclined to bring some non-meat dishes. But imo, it’s fine to bring another “main” dish. It’s a potluck, not a planned dinner party, it’s ok to have 2 things that could be a main–then people can choose! or have both! I typically made vegetarian chili for our potlucks, which definitely COULD be a main, but doesn’t have to be—some folks would take a full bowl, some would put just a scoop with the rest of their food.
Jesse* July 31, 2015 at 4:28 pm Also, die-hard meat eaters don’t think it is a “main” if it doesn’t have meat! So it’s not like people would be insulted.
Retail Lifer* July 31, 2015 at 11:38 am I HATE work potlucks. I’m a vegetarian and I hate cooking. I usually eat beforehand and bring a bag of Sun Chips, or don’t attend at all if that’s an option.
Rock* July 31, 2015 at 11:41 am “I end up with a lunch of potato chips and iceberg lettuce.” Oh, do I feel you. I haven’t found great solutions, other than when possible, bringing stuff I actually want to eat. A good defense strategy to keep others from chowing down on all of it is to make it as completely Obviously vegetarian as possible. Put kale and chickpeas in it. Make it look weird and scary. ;) At my last jobsite we had monthly “site lunches” that were mandatory. The food provided, meant for 400-800 construction workers, was about as vegetarian un-friendly as possible. Coleslaw and cookies were many a lunch for me. Solidarity, friend.
Retail Lifer* July 31, 2015 at 12:00 pm We’ve had work lunches at previous jobs where my only option was picking the meat out of pre-made sandwiches or picking the pepperoni off of pizza.
Charlotte Collins* July 31, 2015 at 12:36 pm I once ate a lettuce and mustard sandwich at the yearly all-employee meeting with lunch provided to thank everyone. I really felt the gratitude. (Keep in mind that this was in an area where cheese production is a big part of the economy. Why wasn’t there any cheese? The burger-eaters would have appreciated it, too!) At the most recent such event, they gave us veggie burgers (yay!). With no condiments (huh?). Luckily, I had brought a couple cheese slices from home (just in case) and had some catsup packets in my desk.
literateliz* July 31, 2015 at 12:52 pm Haha, okay, I often quietly marvel at the (intra-US) cultural differences I see in the comments here, but I just had to comment on the equation of kale and chickpeas = weird and scary… anything with kale and chickpeas would vanish immediately in my office! Other winners at previous work potlucks: beet dip, lotus root chips. The problem for our vegetarians is that we think their food looks extra delicious and want to eat it but at least they have plenty of options.
S* July 31, 2015 at 1:21 pm I used to order fully vegetarian Mediterranean platters for work functions and the falafel would disappear in 30 mins!
Anx* July 31, 2015 at 12:57 pm Wait. Is it a faux pas to eat vegetarian dishes if you eat meat? So long as you don’t pile up your plate with any one dish until everyone has a chance to help themselves, what’s the logic here?
Charlotte Collins* July 31, 2015 at 1:21 pm It is a faux pas if everyone eats the vegetarian food before the actual vegetarians get a chance at it. (The same goes for gluten-free, kosher, or anything else where someone has some sort of dietary restriction. Also, if you have been asked in advance about a dietary restriction – such as for a work-sponsored event, only enough food for those who listed the restriction might have been ordered. If you didn’t request a special meal, don’t take the special food. This happened at a club event I attended once. The caterers were great about providing more food as soon as they could, but it meant that some of us had to rush through our meals and to the next event, because we were waiting for the food we could eat.) My experience is that people who are used to buffet meals with those with dietary restrictions often make sure that those who have the restriction get to go through the line first. (Or they hold some of the food back for when those people can go through line and put it out when the “special diet” people have a chance to get some food.)
Anx* July 31, 2015 at 7:27 pm Interesting. I wouldn’t want to feel like I was restricted to meat-containing food at a potluck or something just because vegetarians were present. Especially as a former vegetarian, I tend to gravitate to those meals. It would seem a little counterproductive to dissuade omnivores from vegetarian dishes if your motive for vegetarianism was ethical and not medical. Potlucks/buffets are much different than plated dinners in that regard. I don’t think I’ve ever done anything like eat an earmarked meal, but in cases where there were 3 types of sandwich with no indication that one was special I’ve probably gone for that one. I like the idea of people with special diets going through first.
Charlotte Collins* August 3, 2015 at 11:09 am For the record, I’m on the “bring enough that the majority can try some” bus. My former manager loved the fact that I always brought twice as much as I thought I might need of an appetizer/savory dish and hold half back to refresh my offering in the afternoon if it turned out to be popular. She felt it was a wonderful surprise to find more of something she really liked around 1:00. (Since she had Type II diabetes, I also tried to bring something that worked with her diet if I wasn’t baking for the day.
Anx* August 3, 2015 at 6:21 pm I love bringing two dishes to refresh one later. I’m a licensed health inspector so I like doing thing to keep them out in shifts or in case a bunch of flies lands in one.
Charlotte Collins* August 3, 2015 at 11:09 am For the record, I’m on the “bring enough that the majority can try some” bus. My former manager loved the fact that I always brought twice as much as I thought I might need of an appetizer/savory dish and hold half back to refresh my offering in the afternoon if it turned out to be popular. She felt it was a wonderful surprise to find more of something she really liked around 1:00. (Since she had Type II diabetes, I also tried to bring something that worked with her diet if I wasn’t baking for the day.)
also veggie* August 2, 2015 at 6:56 am For some reason this reminds me of my sister’s college graduation…there was a pre-ordered lunch where my mom ordered 7 vegetarian sandwiches. Well, it turned out that they assumed that there were only 20 vegetarians at the whole event and your ticket was for *a* sandwich, not the one you pre-ordered, so by the time we got there there were no vegetarian sandwiches (and lots of upset people waiting). It turns out that some meat eaters also didn’t want to eat turkey. For the OP – I would bring a veggie dish that some people might enjoy as a side – like a three bean salad or something similar.
ReanaZ* July 31, 2015 at 8:27 pm Yeah, it really depends on the amount of vegetarian food (or gluten-free food or lactose-free food or whatever) to the number of vegos (or people needing other food accomodation) in the room. It’s generally a problem only when vego food is a half-assed after-thought or ordered as a special accommodation (i.e. we ordered one sandwich per vego and PILES of meat-laden sandwiches for everyone to share or there’s one single vego dish at the entire potluck). Now the proper solution to this is to order a normal amount of food of different categories (i.e. 1 tray of vego sandwiches for every 1-2 meat ones, a mix of veg and non-veg potluck dishes), not shame people who want to eat vego food without being strict vegos.
Charlotte Collins* August 3, 2015 at 11:19 am The truth is that I *like* it when the non-veg people eat veg food and so we can prove to them how tasty it is. (Sadly, I have some really good tofu dishes that I’ve never brought because they’d be too “out there” at my workplace – the first time I brought hummus, I had no idea that it would be a New Thing and Big Deal for some people.) But I also like being able to get enough to eat. :) I’m lacto-ovo, and I guarantee that if there were any vegans or GF people at our potlucks, I’d let them go first. (And feel very sad for the GF people, because I love bread!)
The Cosmic Avenger* July 31, 2015 at 11:48 am I’m not a vegetarian now, but we have had a few on our team at various times, and we always have plenty of vegetarian options. I often prefer them myself. And if you find that people often don’t accommodate you, just bring your own dish or eat your own lunch beforehand. That’s what I sometimes did when I was trying to lose weight. People should already know why you’re not eating, so if they ask, you should remind them that there is nothing there that you can eat.
Elizabeth West* July 31, 2015 at 3:36 pm Yeah, I can’t understand why, if it’s a potluck, the OP wouldn’t bring something. At Exjob, if you never brought stuff to the potlucks but ate anyway, you got the side-eye. Even a couple bags of Lays or signing up to bring drinks was acceptable.
Liz* July 31, 2015 at 11:56 am I usually will make a side that can double as a main (which honestly is what most of my regular meals are), and then stick to that. Bean salads, mac and cheese, and pasta salads are all good for that. If I ever get bugged about not eating something, I just tell them straight-forward that I don’t eat meat and find it easier to stick to meals that I have prepared myself since there’s no knowing what someone puts in their food, especially when it comes to broth. For the most part people understand and leave it, but if anyone keeps prodding I just state that I’ve been doing this for over 5 years and it’s a system that works well for me and leave it at that.
Anonymous Educator* July 31, 2015 at 12:37 pm I’ve never done a work potluck, but I’ve done many non-work potlucks and often been concerned about what to eat. My solution is simple: the dish I bring is going to be vegetarian. If no one else brings anything for me to eat, I’ll eat what I brought.
Ad Astra* July 31, 2015 at 12:40 pm I’m surprised you have so much trouble finding something to eat at these potlucks. Other than the main dish, almost all the dishes my coworkers like to bring to potlucks — pasta salad, veggies and various dips, crackers, lots of desserts — is vegetarian. But this is about your office, not mine. Are the potlucks typically organized by the same person or group? I think it would be reasonable to approach them next time and let them know what you’d like to bring, and you can even add that you chose that dish because you’re a vegetarian. You could also ask them to provide something vegetarian, and most reasonable people would do their best to find an option that worked for you. Vegetarianism is a very easy dietary restriction to accommodate.
The Cosmic Avenger* July 31, 2015 at 12:47 pm I know, right? Now I’m thinking that AnonyGoose may work in the Chicago area. I love my family in Chicago, but they put meat and a stick of butter in EVERYDAMNEDTHING.
fposte* July 31, 2015 at 3:23 pm Hah, I’m from the Chicago area and I was thinking the south, where my vegetarian friend was lovingly presented with a salad–with ham in it.
Rebecca* July 31, 2015 at 5:37 pm Hahaha, one time my MIL made white bean soup for dinner. She proudly told me it was vegetarian, the sausage was in it but only for flavor. Oooookay…?
Liz* July 31, 2015 at 12:55 pm I was actually surprised when I first stopped eating meat how many side-dishes aren’t really vegetarian. A lot of pasta salads will have bacon thrown in, same with beans. Casseroles are often made with chicken stock. My roommate even makes a type of broccoli/coleslaw that has chicken seasoning in it which I never would suspect if I hadn’t watched her make it. Then you have the issue of salad dressings – many (Cesar is a big one, but certain brands do this as well) have fish or Worcestershire sauce in them. There’s also the threat of “natural flavor” in anything that someone buys from there store – there is no way of knowing what that natural flavor is, and there are cases when that is meat derived (I believe mcdonalds french fries are/were guilty of this). I have even found yogurts and desserts (twinkies!) that are made with meat products. Meat and meat-derived products are so ingrained in every type of food that it can be hard to get away from it.
Ad Astra* July 31, 2015 at 3:34 pm Ooh, I didn’t realize Worcestershire sauce wasn’t vegetarian! Though, it’s only just occurring to me that I have no idea what’s in Worcestershire sauce.
Charlotte Collins* July 31, 2015 at 5:15 pm There are anchovies in it, but you can buy vegetarian versions. Or you can make your own. (I’ve seen recipes but never actually tried this.)
Charlotte Collins* July 31, 2015 at 1:12 pm It depends on what kind of potluck we’re having. If it’s one where a complete meal is expected, then I always sign up to bring something that works as a vegetarian main. However, most of ours are just “bring what you want” and really tend to focus on the appetizers and desserts. I like to bake, so I often bring a dessert, but I will try to bring an appetizer that is vegetarian if I feel like that. (Brie wedges with grapes and candied pecans once was so popular that I think the entire tray was gone by 10:00 am. I also like to bring caprese skewers in the summer – grape/cherry tomato, basil leaf, fresh mozzarella.) However, unless it’s clear that the buffet is expected to be the meal for the day, I generally bring a sandwich and just enjoy the sides and dessert. On the other hand, I used to work with a woman who was allergic to chocolate. Because these events are chocolate heavy, I always brought a second dessert if I made something chocolate. She always really appreciated it.
ReanaZ* July 31, 2015 at 8:19 pm As a fellow sufferer of being unable to eat chocolate, I heart you for this. I love chocolate. I’m sad I can’t eat it. I’m even sadder when every single dessert option is chocolate and everyone is chomping down exclaiming how good it is and telling me I should have some. I even have one friend who routinely shows up to events *at my house* bringing only chocolate-containing snacks. Sigh. I don’t expect everyone to remember and accommodate my random food intolerance, but I have a deep and abiding love for those that do.
Cube Farmer* July 31, 2015 at 1:50 pm As a vegan, I know I have to plan well in advance for these types of meals. Even then, things sometimes do not go well (anecdote below). I like to cook so I bring a couple of vegan options, even main dishes. People usually enjoy trying new things. Inevitably there ALWAYS ends up being some BIG discussion over what I eat and do not eat…”You eat fish though, right?” No, I don’t eat fish. No animals, no animal secretions. “But what about cheese? You can eat that right?” No. “But what about…” No animals, no animal secretions. I eat plants. Plants and things that are made from plants, that’s what I eat. When vegan left me starving (well….very hungry): We were working on a Habitat for Humanity house as a company volunteer project. Lunch had been ordered by our awesome office manager and she had made sure to order me a vegan sandwich. We get there and it is announced that lunch is being provided by some other organization, so my company cancels the sandwich orders. I figure, “hey, at least there will probably be chips and veggies for me to eat.” No. There was chicken and rice, cooked in chicken stock, and soda. I was sitting with my company when over half way through lunch my boss looks at my soda and says “Oh, do you want me to go get you something to eat?” “No, hopefully the calories in this soda will get me through the day.” I learned to always have some nuts or peanut butter on me after that day.
TheLazyB (UK)* July 31, 2015 at 2:40 pm Oh god when I started working in one office my colleague could not get her head around my being a vegetarian. “But you still eat chicken, right?!” Errrr… no.
Rebecca* July 31, 2015 at 5:29 pm “Oh, of course! Chickens grow from the ground, right?” I have a friend who calls himself vegan, but eats fish. :/
Charlotte Collins* July 31, 2015 at 5:56 pm And this is why people ask stupid questions when they are presented with an actual vegetarian.
kirsten* July 31, 2015 at 1:59 pm Do people know that you’re a vegetarian? Everyone knows that I am at my office and I feel like some of them make an extra effort to bring veggie friendly things because of it. I also contribute something that could be a side dish or a main course like mac and cheese or pasta salad. There have been a few meetings where the person ordering the food didn’t ask for a vegetarian sandwich, and my boss will let me expense a lunch after the meeting because he felt bad.
Kristen* July 31, 2015 at 2:59 pm I would talk to the person who organizes the potlucks and make sure they are aware you are a vegetarian. They should include in the posting/email all dietary restrictions so that there is enough food for everyone. We have an employee that is lactose intolerant so we always take that into account when planning work potlucks and also lunch/dinner meetings outside of the office.
Elizabeth West* July 31, 2015 at 3:41 pm We have a person who has celiac in our meetup–when we have food, she doesn’t make a fuss and either eats beforehand or brings something she can eat. We always try to have at least one person bring a gluten-free option, and sometimes several GF things will appear. They’re usually quite good so we all can share. It’s nice to make sure the person gets something.
Mephyle* July 31, 2015 at 4:45 pm Bring a “side” of some vegetable and/or pasta. Never mind that to you it’s a main dish. Bring a lot of it. Somehow all the people who are all “I could never be a vegetarian – I love my meat” will decimate your vegetarian dish and leave hardly any for the vegetarians.
zora* July 31, 2015 at 4:49 pm when I was vegan, I just always brought something that would function as my main course. I just feed myself, and don’t worry about anyone else or what they bring.
Rebecca* July 31, 2015 at 4:56 pm I’m not entirely vegetarian, but I don’t eat pork or beef plus really dislike seafood. I volunteer to bring something that could be a side or main. Something like a big hearty green salad, grain/pasta salad, beans, something like that. So then there’s something that I know I can eat. I’ll fill up my plate with that and other sides. If someone asks why I’m not eating the main dish, I just say, “Oh, I don’t eat beef/pork. Everything looks great, though!” And then steer the conversation away from follow-up questions. I always have protein bars and other snacks at my desk, so if I need something else I will eat it later.
The Other Dawn* July 31, 2015 at 11:22 am I’m 8 months into my new job and I’m starting to struggle with the move from doing and managing the day-to-day and high-level stuff, to just mostly managing both. I was the long-timer at OldJob1. I was there 17+ years, was a VP, had all the institutional knowledge, had my hands into everything, and knew all the obscure bits of information. I was very much in the weeds. I was the go-to person, also. At OldJob2 – I was there only 10 months – I was a worker bee and hated it. The job, the boss, the company. But I was still in the weeds so that made it somewhat tolerable. At the current job I’m back to being a manager, which I’m thrilled about. But I’m not really involved much on the day-to-day stuff unless someone has a question or we’re talking through an issue. I have lots of higher level stuff I’m working on and that keeps me busy, though. I struggled a lot at first with not being in the weeds on the day-to-day stuff, but was OK once I saw the team in action and started learning more about the systems and how we do things. But now that I’m established in the department in general, I’m noticing that the feeling isn’t really going away. So, how do people deal with going from being so entrenched in all the day-to-day activities of a department, to just managing the department and dealing with the higher level stuff? Do I just need to get over it? Or are there ways to not feel so…I don’t know what the right word is. I guess I feel like if I’m not dealing with all the daily tasks then I’m not really part of the department. Not sure if that makes sense. (Sorry, I’m really tired and headache-y today.)
Dawn* July 31, 2015 at 11:56 am Well, I guess the first thing is: do you *need* to be in the weeds? Do the people under you operate well enough that you don’t need to be in the weeds with them? If so, freakin’ awesome, you’ve got a good team. Are you having meetings with your reports on a regular enough basis that you can at least keep tabs on what’s going on? Are you circulating out of your office and getting in face time with people- and I don’t mean on serious stuff I just mean hey are you learning everyone’s names and chatting about weekend plans when you get coffee and just generally cultivating a “hey I’m here for you if you need me and I’m nice and I have an open door policy” if that’s what you’re going for? To me, “Feeling like part of the department” is more of a really recognizing your role within the larger organization as a whole and then figuring out how to make yourself shine in that role.
Beancounter in Texas* July 31, 2015 at 12:21 pm I’m dealing with the same feelings. I use to be in the action, day to day work of keeping the books and now I have two bookies who do the boring payables and routine receivables, which is nice, but I feel adrift. When they go on vacation and I cover their essential duties during those days, I feel back to myself again, but I don’t want that to be my day-to-day routine anymore. What I’m finding helps me is asking them and thinking about ways to improve process efficiency. This week I convinced The Boss to (**finally**) let us print deposit slips from QuickBooks instead of handwriting them with a bunch of extra information about which the bank could not care less. I also earned permission to pursue online banking feeds directly into QuickBooks because The Boss is basically scared employees will find a way to steal money from him without his knowledge if we get online banking access. I’m also researching a SAAS to streamline the rents collections (basically the whole AR process), potentially going paperless, human resources management software (but probably just an Access database), and perhaps instituting a process workbook, so that anyone who comes behind me can get a sense of who/what/how/why/where. So these kinds of projects occupy my time (as does cruising AAM), but I work in a small family business (where the dysfunction is real) and I have more lateral reach to propose changes.
Hazel Asperg* July 31, 2015 at 4:29 pm I have no real, helpful advice, but I am glad I learned the phase ‘in the weeds’ since I’d never heard it before. I guess it’s an American idiom.
Not So NewReader* July 31, 2015 at 9:16 pm You are missing two things here: institutional knowledge and weeding. I think it’s normal to feel adrift if those two are missing. These are two things that make a person feel anchored/secured. Instead of focusing on the weeds, why not focus on stuff that would make you feel more “settled in”. This could be anything. Maybe you go through some archives to beef up your institutional knowledge. Maybe you spend more time talking to the employees to learn about their weeds. Maybe dig into the nuts and bolts of your job some more. It could be you need to rotate in and out of all three. I think that after being at a job long term, the first year on a new job is TOUGH. It’s like someone rearranged your furniture at home or maybe even moved your house. Nothing is familiar, nothing is old hat. It takes a while for things to be come old hat. Decide to grant yourself that time.
AvonLady Barksdale* July 31, 2015 at 11:23 am Because I have a few projects coming up and September is closer than we think, I’m curious– to all of you out there who are Jewish, Muslim, or belong to any religion where your major holidays are not observed by your workplace… how do your companies handle time off for big religious holidays? Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are right around the corner and I’m at a new job, so while I don’t need advice, I’m curious. :) For my part, I’m relatively observant but not very religious, if that makes sense– I don’t keep kosher or keep the Sabbath to the letter, but I do belong to a synagogue, attend services regularly, and the High Holidays are very important to me. I generally take two days off for Rosh Hashanah and a day and a half for Yom Kippur– during those days I am completely out of pocket, as I don’t check emails or answer the phone. At my first job out of college, my boss was Jewish and simply let me take the days without using PTO. At my second job, I had to take PTO– though we had 4 “personal holidays” in addition to vacation that I could use (and eventually I had 25 vacation days, so it didn’t hurt as much). At my last job, where I was the only Jewish person on staff (kind of strange to me, as I work in media and the company was based in LA! But it was tiny), my boss insisted that I get the days off without it counting toward my (very meager) PTO. At my current job, I’ll have to use vacation days; while we have the week off between Christmas and New Year’s and our Fridays are flexible, so it’s not the worst, this means I use 3.5 out of 10 vacation days for the holidays. So what do you do? Do you take the days you need and take the hit on your PTO bank? Are your employers flexible? Do you ever get in a situation where you feel like you can’t or shouldn’t observe a holiday because you can’t get the time off? Again, mostly just curious here, but this has always fascinated me. :)
Katie the Fed* July 31, 2015 at 11:30 am Well, in most places, not being able to get the time off shouldn’t be an issue, because your employer has a legal responsibility to allow you to observe the holiday as long it’s not an unreasonable burden on the employer. In practicality, I’ve never had an issue. I have a very devout Muslim employee who prays 5 times a day and despite us being super busy I’ve never noticed. He asked for Eid al Fitr off and that was an easy fix – if he wanted to make up the hours another time I would have let him. My Jewish employees have been able to take the high holidays off without issue, and they’re usually fine with working Christmas if we need so it’s a win/win.
Elkay* July 31, 2015 at 11:33 am But do they take them from PTO or are they given them without needing to use allowances? My old boss was Sikh and if she went “home” to her parents for Diwali she took leave (I’m in the UK).
Victoria Nonprofit (USA)* July 31, 2015 at 12:04 pm As it should be, right? Why would taking time off for a religious holiday (that is not an organization-wide holiday) be treated differently than taking time off for vacation, death in the family, illness, or etc.? (I do acknowledge the unfairness of the days that are usually given as org-wide days off – Christmas, for example, but not Yom Kippur or Eid or etc.)
AvonLady Barksdale* July 31, 2015 at 12:13 pm I think that’s the only time it truly irks me– Yom Kippur. I don’t mind taking days off for personal things, including holidays, but I don’t know a single Jewish person who doesn’t take off for YK (I’m sure there are many, don’t get me wrong), it’s a Big Freaking Deal, and… nope. Still have to take a vacation day. I do appreciate Christmas as my Day Off From the World, but my partner’s family isn’t Jewish (he’s pretty much Jewish minus the mikvah, at this point) so I have to, like, do stuff on Christmas now. Dammit.
Victoria Nonprofit (USA)* July 31, 2015 at 12:26 pm yeah, I hear you. My last organization closed down between Christmas and New Year’s, and while that was awesome (for me, because I do celebrate Christmas and usually do my family travel during that time frame; and for everyone, because it’s wonderful to have EVERYONE out at the same time), but was patently unfair. It aligned perfectly with all the Christian (and culturally Christian) people’s travel/time off needs and not at all for anyone who didn’t celebrate Christmas. Two jobs ago, we shut down for a week over the 4th of July. That seemed like a perfect solution to me. (Current job, no shut down. But tons of vacation days, so I’m not complaining.)
fposte* July 31, 2015 at 3:07 pm Though the December week off also aligns for all the non-Christians with kids in school; that’s a pretty significant addition to the constituency.
Cath in Canada* July 31, 2015 at 6:47 pm Well, a lot of places in predominantly Christian countries give Christmas and Easter as a “freebie” – it’s a public holiday, so you don’t have to burn PTO to get the day off. In some places I’ve worked, employees who observe non-Christian holidays were given the option to work on the Christmas and Easter public holidays and take their “freebies” on different dates – is that an option for you?
Retail Lifer* July 31, 2015 at 11:52 am My company was founded by a Jewish family but, depending in your position, you might only get standard (?) holidays off, or none if you’re part-time and work in a mall location. None of the Jweish holidays count for us. You have to use PTO for any additional holidays not granted to everyone, and you’te just screwed if you’re part time and are needed that day.
fposte* July 31, 2015 at 11:35 am It’s a fascinating question to me too, since I’m a version of a state employee; it made me curious to see how we handled it. The answer is that individual campuses and divisions seem to have have been allowed some wiggle room, which surprised me. However, we get “floating holidays” on top of vacation, and in at least one instance those are specifically indicated as what you’d take for religious holidays where we’re not otherwise closed. (The only religious-associated holiday we close on is Christmas, so it’s not like there’s a wave of Christian holidays we get off either.)
b lee* July 31, 2015 at 11:36 am First of all, truly excellent name! I am not at all observant and usually don’t take off for the High Holy Days (I actually started this job on Rosh Hashanah because I totally forgot about it when I agreed to the start date), but that is also partially because my company requires people to use PTO and I just don’t prioritize it. Whoops.
b lee* July 31, 2015 at 11:39 am With that said, I’m sure that if I asked my boss she would probably let me make up the time instead of using PTO. But we don’t allow for “extra” holidays or whatever.
MaryMary* July 31, 2015 at 11:48 am Old Job had a floating holiday. You could use it for Rosh Hashanah, Eid, Good Friday, or any holy day of your choice. Technically, it was an additional PTO day, so you could declare a holiday and take it whenever you chose. One year I decided my birthday should be a holiday.
Beancounter in Texas* July 31, 2015 at 12:49 pm RadioShack let retail employees have their birthday off as a holiday to even out that the corporate employees got the day after Thanksgiving. I thought it was a nice gesture so that nobody got more holidays than others due to the nature of retail business.
Beancounter in Texas* July 31, 2015 at 1:17 pm With the shoe on the other foot, as I work for an Orthodox Jewish family and we get all of the observed non-working Jewish holidays off paid. It’s a kind of golden handcuffs, because while it’s nice to get a some four day weekends in a row (as a Gentile), and lump together with vacation days, the same amount of monthly work needs to be completed in less time. But then, The Boss doesn’t comprehend how big of a holiday Christmas is for Gentiles, even the non-religious ones, so we’ve had to push for some flexibility regarding getting off early on Christmas Eve to travel and tacking on vacation days with Christmas. He either Doesn’t Get It, or Doesn’t Sympathize with employees enough, seeing that he takes a day and a half off for Yom Kippur and leaves early before Pesach. (But, he’s The Boss.) One of the Gentiles of the group is Catholic and likes to attend mass on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, with which The Boss does not have a problem, but the hourly employee does not get paid for leaving early on those days. I think he shortens his lunch to avoid taking vacation time. The Boss’ Son, however, is not penalized for leaving at 3:30pm to get home in time for Shabbat in the winter, but I think he works late in the summer and it’s not my habit to police the family’s working hours. I don’t think it’s fair that non-Christians (in the US) are can be required to utilize PTO to get paid for their observed holidays, but if everyone is treated equally regarding paid time off, the employer doesn’t really have control over the reasons for using PTO. This is also why I believe three weeks is the minimum vacation that should be given, but I digress. I sympathize.
someone* July 31, 2015 at 2:08 pm i’ve always had to use PTO/vacation to take the day/half-day off when i go to Eid prayers; however in my current job (exempt, usually >55 hours/wk) my boss doesn’t care as long as my work gets done – so I would just work more hours as needed later that day/week to get my stuff done and not have to use PTO.
someone* July 31, 2015 at 2:09 pm sorry, i should add that if i want to NOT WORK at all that day (i.e. if we’re going to prayers, then several people’s houses, etc. for celebrations), then i do in fact use PTO in my current job – it’s like a boundary around the whole day to let my boss/team know i’m not online that day.
Elizabeth West* July 31, 2015 at 3:49 pm We did not have any Jewish (or Muslim) employees at Exjob, but the Jewish holidays did impact us. We had customers in the eastern part of the country who would be closed on those days. I had to be careful to ship stuff to them so it would arrive before or after the holidays. I would write them all on my calendar so I could estimate delivery dates, because FedEx would either drop it off and it would sit there, thus risking theft, or we’d risk it getting lost in the warehouse or coming back to us (all of which would cost us money). It wasn’t much trouble for me, though we did sometimes have to overnight stuff to make sure it got there on time. I wrote down the Canadian holidays too, for our customers in Canada.
DebbieDebbieDebbie* July 31, 2015 at 8:18 pm I am also a Fed. There is one other person in my department who has the same role. She is Jewish (orthodox). She negotiated four 10-hour days compared to my five 8-hour days. She cares for things that come up with my projects after 3pm and I care care of business every Friday. With the generous paid leave that accompanies federal employment, she is able to take the holidays and days before for preparation. Since it is just the two of us, I plan to avoid taking time off in Sept-Oct. However, when Passover and Easter overlap, we are both permitted to take the time off we request without so much as a peep from our manager when such requests would never fly any other time. We have worked together for 8 years and while there have been some aches and pains, I would loathe to be a person who would interfere with any other person’s heartfelt worship.
ReanaZ* July 31, 2015 at 8:42 pm I really like the approach of having a few ‘floating holidays’ for all employees. It was a good compromise for both religious holidays and for navigating different holiday schedules between different state offices. People who didn’t take them for either were encouraged to take them at the end of the year/beginning of the new year. I like it because no one’s religious is getting prioritised or penalised. While I understand “PTO/holiday time is designed to allow you the flexibly manage your life priorities”, the fact that people of a dominant religious group get their holidays as paid holidays (and often, time around the holiday for travel and preparation) and members of minority religious groups have to use their PTO benefits to observe their own holidays is pretty icky.
Silver* August 1, 2015 at 8:58 am At a former employer the staff were under a union agreement that allowed for 6 weeks of PTO a year but you only got two listed public holidays off, the rest you could choose to take using your extra PTO. This was a very multicultural employer and it was their way of allowing employees to take their specific Holy Days off while still being fully staffed. (Note that this location had people working 24 hours ever day of the year.)
Me* July 31, 2015 at 11:25 am How do you guys remain “drama-free”? In the last two positions I have held, there is always a bunch of gossip and backstabbing. I know that I am the common denominator, but I am not sure what I need to do to change. Some people seem to be impervious to drama and I want to be one of those people. Tell me your secrets.
HigherEd Admin* July 31, 2015 at 11:34 am Don’t engage. When people start coming to you with gossip and ally-making, simply say you’re busy with work and can’t talk. Or say you like to keep your involvement professional. The only way to be impervious to drama is to not even remotely engage in it.
Retail Lifer* July 31, 2015 at 11:48 am This. If you respond, people will keep coming to you. When it starts, I usually just say “Uh huh” and either continue what I’m doing and walk away. If you’re no fun to talk to, no one will be interested in telling you.
esra* July 31, 2015 at 11:48 am Yea, this here. I just be really boring and dry when anyone tries to engage in this kind of this. Lots of “Oh, really?” and “I see, well, back to project X…” responses.
The Other Dawn* July 31, 2015 at 11:39 am I just go in and do my job. I’m being paid to do it. Time spent on gossip is taking time away from the things I’m supposed to be doing. I resist the urge to be “one of the gang”, even though I used to be a follower when I was younger, by not participating in any of it. I used to engage in gossip, but all it did was make my productivity and reputation suffer.
Katie the Fed* July 31, 2015 at 11:46 am Respond like this, and people will think you’re an old stick-in-the-mud and stop coming to you: “Oh, I actually like Daria” “Oh, I don’t this Daria is bad at that” “Oh, I don’t really like to speculate on people’s personal lives.” “mmmm”
nona* July 31, 2015 at 11:48 am When someone tries to gossip with you, suddenly become the most boring, least opinionated person alive. Vaguely like everything they bring up. Anything else gives them more material to work with.
sittingduck* July 31, 2015 at 11:51 am My co-worker recently commented to me that she had mentioned to my boss that I don’t ever talk about my other co-workers behind their back, and she found that admirable. I’m not sure I have a ‘secret’, there is totally drama in my office, and I tend to hear about most of it, from one source or another, I guess my ‘secret’ is to just not engage. I will listen to what my co-workers say about others, but I don’t engage, I don’t agree or disagree, I just act as an ear for them to talk to. I think most times when someone is griping, they are just looking for someone to listen. I am willing to be that listener, but since I really don’t want to be part of any drama, I don’t perpetuate it, or add my own opinions. I do have opinions too, I just choose not to share them, with my co-workers. I will from time to time gripe to my friends about my co-workers, if I need to gripe, but just never in the office. I even heard through a co-workers that others were talking about me once, and while it pissed me off, and i fumed for 1/2 a day, then I decided its not worth getting upset over, and I just let it go. I know that is harder than it sounds. I just really don’t want to be part of the office drama, so I choose to stay out of it (now consciously, before my co-workers comment it was actually unintentional) Good luck!
GOG11* July 31, 2015 at 12:10 pm I have a coworker who knows EVERYTHING. He gossips like you wouldn’t believe. If he talks about something, I do work in the background or, if it’s related to work, I give low-key answers like “huh, interesting.” If he asks me a question, I try to very nonchalantly say, “Oh, I don’t know about that.” or, lately, “I just work here” with a bit of a laugh. During my review, I did mention to my boss that sometimes I struggled to respond to some of my colleagues and I gave an example of something inappropriate my colleague had asked about another colleague (not naming any names). She knew who I was talking about (not from the example, but because he’s “that guy.”) and I took the opportunity to say that if she gets complaints that I seem standoffish or rude, that might be why. TL;DR – don’t engage with your tone, body language or words (be neutral, or as another commenter in a previous open thread said, be beige) and they will realize they can’t get what they’re seeking from you, whether it’s a listening ear or dirt on someone else.
CanoeSeeMe* July 31, 2015 at 12:13 pm Well, I stood up to my bullying ex-boss on multiple occasions, but she then fired me, so that may not be the route you wish to go. My secrets (MWA-HA-HA!): Be honest. Let your yes be yes, and your no be no. Flakiness leads to drama. If it’s your fault, just apologize for it and try to make it right or move on. As my friend says, “The maximum effective range of an excuse is zero meters.” If you’re known as someone who will never be at fault for anything and/or always has an excuse, that can lead to drama. If you’re in management, never apologizing doesn’t cement your authority; it just makes it clear that you’re afraid of losing your authority. Over-communicate. One of the best pieces of advice I ever read was to send your supervisor an email at the end of the week identifying what you did/accomplished that week. “What is that guy doing?” is replaced with, “Oh yeah, he just emailed me about the Larson project.” Boss knows what you’re doing = decreased drama. Refuse to participate in gossip. As with cheating, if they’ll do it with you, they’ll do it to you. Gossip leads to drama. At work functions, you may have one drink. More than one drink leads to the legendary stories about coworkers or predecessors: “Oh, yeah, at last year’s Christmas party, Dr. J got up and…” Avoid places in academia or with nepotism (if you can). If the odds of losing your job are excruciatingly low, then making someone else’s life miserable is easy because the stakes (for you) are so low. People who can walk and will over you with impunity lead to drama. Any other advice? People to tell me that they would hate working with me?
Not So NewReader* July 31, 2015 at 9:31 pm This does work. I had a boss tell me, “You never talk about other people.” Well, not totally true. And I believe most people gossip at some point. First thing, there is a difference between asking for help with a difficult situation and gossiping. Additionally, I tend to be work focused where I map out my day and I want to get x done by 9 y done by 10;30 and so on. If you are seriously doing this mapping each day, people pick up on your work focus and tend to not bother you with gossip.
LQ* July 31, 2015 at 12:31 pm Never repeat anything. If people come to you because you are a repeater/sharer then become the vault. Information goes in but never comes out. This cuts down on a lot. It does take a type of currency away from you which can be a problem. If you use information as a currency to make friends then not having that currency can be hard. So you’ll have to find other kinds of currency. But that’s a big piece to stop.
OriginalYup* July 31, 2015 at 1:10 pm I try to be courteous to everyone I work with, regardless of whether I like them. With someone who’s a total PITA, I try to keep our interactions limited and strictly business, and I try to start from a neutral place with them in each interaction (don’t start stewing about what a PITA they area before you walk into a meeting with them). When people try to bring me into their drama, I do what Katie the Fed says above. “I like Daria, I think she’s really nice.” “I’m sorry to hear you’re not getting along with Steve. Have you talked with him about what’s bothering you?” If someone tries to start drama *with* me, I remind myself that it’s a choice to engage. Just because they’re screaming and rolling around in the mud doesn’t mean I have to. I’ll speak up firmly if it crosses a line — “please lower your voice” — but otherwise, let them have their one-person boxing match.
Biff* July 31, 2015 at 1:38 pm I’m dealing with the same problem, compounded by the fact that the right mix of gossiping and backstabbing will get people promotions. I’ve had some harsh realizations in the last few months: 1. People are often talking to you to get or confirm dirt. They may use idle chatter against you much later. 2. I’m not good at filtering and I can easily be pushed to over-share. 3. I feel bad after interactions — and that’s the INTENTION. It’s not me ‘failing’ at small talk. It’s the intended outcome. The best way I’ve learned to disengage is to watch how they talk to other people. When I see people get baited or walk away obviously feeling bad…. it reinforces my desire to not engage and it also helps me recognize when they are engaging in a dirt-finding exercise instead of just slacking. I do have to make small-talk sometimes and I’m trying to teach myself that if I accidentally end up in potentially bad territory to back out instead of rush through to the other side, or just walk away.
Lasso* July 31, 2015 at 11:25 am Anyone have advice on taking a pay cut? I work in libraries now but have a potential offer (I know offers aren’t guaranteed, just trying to plan ahead) at a college office. I’d LOVE to work for a college, it’s been my goal, in just about any capacity. The pros: it’s in the state I actually want to live in, at an institution I want to be a part of, summers off. The con: pay is much less. Normally I wouldn’t care too much, but I’m a bit afraid of my student loans coming due soon. I think I can afford to pay them with an income based repayment schedule but I’m scared. I’d very much appreciate any advice or words of wisdom on this.
Dawn* July 31, 2015 at 11:59 am Be absolutely sure you can repay those loans, then go for it. If you don’t you’ll regret it for the rest of your life.
limenotapple* July 31, 2015 at 12:06 pm I am dealing with the same thing, and I work in libraryland. I don’t have an offer in hand, but I think if I do it could be for a lower salary. So, we are currently living as if we have that lower salary and we’re seeing how we feel about it. Not sure if you have time to do that, but it’s made me think about how I spend my money and what things are worth it and what things are not. I’m a list maker, so I am making lists of what I would have to give up on the new budget. It’s helpful to look at how many times I could afford to go out with friends/spend on entertainment/enjoy restaurants, etc, and then deciding if that’s how I want my life to be. Not sure if any of this is helpful, but i do understand the dilemma. Good luck!
Anonymous Educator* July 31, 2015 at 12:40 pm Spouse and I have always been able to ask to have the loan monthly payments reduced when one of us is between jobs or making less than before. You may want to contact your loan provider to see if you can lower the monthly payment. Loan payments aside, though, I will say I’ve taken pay cuts several times for a better working environment or a better job, and I have never regretted it. In fact, at my current job, I’m making 19% less than at my last job, and I’m in a properly supportive (and less stressful) environment and learning a lot more.
Ragnelle* July 31, 2015 at 2:49 pm What is the cost of living in the city and state you’d be moving to if you accepted a job offer? If you look at the housing options and other living costs in the area, you might find that you are getting a better deal if prices are lower. Alternatively, you might find that housing isn’t significantly cheaper at all, which would make the pay cut have a more dramatic effect on your quality of life. The city’s chamber of commerce may have some good information about costs, benefits, and other amenities in the area for you to consider as you make a decision.
Pineapple Incident* July 31, 2015 at 2:57 pm Income-based repayment has been my lifesaver! If you have Federal student loans, the kicker is for at least one of those plans you don’t have to pay more than 10% of your income (verified annually) each month- this plan is called ‘Pay As You Earn’. You can choose to put in extra payments or extra on any given payment if you want here or there, and it doesn’t count against you or change the amount that you’re required to pay. I was super terrified of this on a pretty low salary but I was able to make my payments even when I was working in retail for teeny wages. If, however, this is still too much of a stretch for your new salary, you can always file for a forbearance. This is basically a declaration that you’re making too little to manage loan payments right now, and it continues for 6-months (you can verify again at this point to continue the forbearance if you’re still making the same amount). Loan servicers want to keep you out of delinquency/default, so always explore these options before you miss a payment if you’re anticipating problems. I hope you get your offer!
Anonymousterical* July 31, 2015 at 4:41 pm I took a 36% pay cut to work in higher ed administration. Totally worth it. Just make sure that you can afford your loans and other bills, and be prepared to cut back on extras, but, if you can reasonably swing it, then go for it. The environment is like none other.
BRR* July 31, 2015 at 4:51 pm Specifically about your student loans, if you switch to an income-based repayment plan it’s a possibility interest can accrue faster than you’re paying them off. So you could be paying $X per month and at the end of the year extra interest has accrued (and if they’re federal which it sounds like they are I believe that amount gets added to the principal). Just because you’re paying on them doesn’t mean the amount owed is going down.
JustMelissa* August 1, 2015 at 9:45 am Also, if you have federal student loans, and the college is a non-profit state college you may qualify for the public service student loan forgiveness program. Of course, if you work in a public library this is also true!
Lizzy* July 31, 2015 at 11:26 am I have been reading over topics on how to answer “why do you want to leave your current position?” in job interviews, particularly when trying to leave a toxic environment. I have discussed my current situation in a few threads before–read here and here for more detail. Here is a summary: I have been working for a performing arts org since last fall. I was hired by the Managing Director (who herself was hired to clean up some org issues) and was doing a good job growing in my position in my first 6 months until she left for maternity in May. Since we are small, there was no plan set in place, thus leading to staff being managed by the Board. Not only have they done a poor job, but things have definitely gotten worse. They micromanage and expect every little detail to go through them, but they are inaccessible and never get back to us in a timely manner (they are constantly on vacation). They are very critical of our work, but not in a way that is very constructive. They don’t understand how day-to-day operations work, but won’t admit what they don’t know, which continues to hold us up since we are expected to constantly defer to them before moving forward with anything. We have a situation where we have books on backorder for our youth program that starts up again this fall and we are getting tons of angry emails and calls from parents on a daily basis. Yet they have been really nonchalant about dealing with this–and it is the organization’s flagship program! The icing on the cake is finding out from a coworker that the Board President doesn’t trust me to perform certain tasks, though she acts hunky dory and would not give me any feedback when I have asked a few times (kept saying I was doing a “good” job). I have contacted my supervisor and she is on her staff’s side, but there is still a lot of uncertainly going forward and she admitted she might not be able to come back–and I really liked working with her too. I personally am at the end of my rope and can understand why there has been such high staff turnover, especially in my position. Obviously, I want to avoid sounding bitter in interviews when stating my reason — i.e. “My boss was such a jerk to me!” But I am still struggling to come up with a good answer that doesn’t make it obvious that I am trying to get out of a toxic workplace. And of course, looking for work when I have not been there a full year yet is going to make it even more obvious to a hiring manager. Plus, the situation is so complicated to sum up in a succinct way (I really had to edit down my summary above). Any suggestions?
Lizzy* July 31, 2015 at 11:26 am Oops! Here are my past comments for context: https://www.askamanager.org/2015/06/how-to-cope-with-unreasonable-deadlines.html#comment-786310 https://www.askamanager.org/2015/07/open-thread-july-24-2015.html#comment-816113
Cruciatus* July 31, 2015 at 11:34 am I want to leave my current employer because they are insane and make rules apply to everyone when just 1 or 2 people do something wrong and they don’t pay squat and I have no room for movement. What I said was, “I’m looking for a new opportunity where I can take on more responsibilities that are more aligned with my career goals.” It’s technically all true and I didn’t get grilled beyond that. Good luck!
overeducated and underemployed* July 31, 2015 at 2:07 pm Could you say that your organization is going through some internal organizational changes (about which you’re not free to go into detail) that are changing the direction of your job duties, and you are looking for a new opportunity that is more aligned with your long term career goals?
Boogles* July 31, 2015 at 11:26 am Looping back to the previous post about migraines, how do you get your manager to stop being pissy about something you can’t control? I mean, I already feel bad enough as it is because I can’t be as dependable as I want to be. Career change to something more flexible?
Katie the Fed* July 31, 2015 at 11:50 am So vague – can you be more specific? Some things are legally protected – disabilities, religion, etc. But without knowing more I’m not sure.
Boogles* July 31, 2015 at 11:55 am It basically comes down to the fact that I miss more work than the average worker. In my current job, they don’t like for you to miss more than 3 days a year due to illness. If I have a BAD migraine, one that requires the doctor or the ER, that could keep me down and out for 3 days alone. Every time I miss, we have a talk about being dependable and not putting an undue burden on the team. She also says things like my absences are noticed and she fears when she comes in in the morning and sees a light on her voicemail. I’ve been absent 7 days this year, 5 were migraine related and one was because I took a severe fall and bruised my ribs and pulled a muscle in my back. I try to make up my time when I can, but sometimes, I’m so drained from the migraine it’s all I can do to make it through the rest of the week.
Katie the Fed* July 31, 2015 at 12:00 pm Is your employer big enough that you’re elligible for FMLA? You might want to check on that and see if you can take advantage of intermittent FMLA. That would be my first course of action. Next, I’d have a frank discussion with her. 3 days a year for illness is kind of crazy (but I’m sick more frequently than average, I think). A single bout of the flu can have you out for a week, and throw in a cold or stomach bug or two and you’re looking at 7-8 days on average. But if that’s their expectation, I think you need to talk to her about how she wants you to manage it. Does she need medical documentation? Does it just not matter and you hvae to come in no matter what? In that case I’d start looking for another job if the FMLA thing doesn’t pan out. I think your boss is being ridiculous. I was in such a bad accident I was out of work for 5 WEEKS this year. I recognize that not all employers could deal with that, but that’s life.
Dawn* July 31, 2015 at 12:03 pm If that’s her reaction she’s not going to change. She’s basically said that your absences are a serious problem and that you’re seen as not dependable, and regardless of if you think that’s fair or not it’s how you’re being perceived. This is a *huge* problem to your potential advancement at that company and to your continued employment. I’d sit down with her and have a very serious talk about your migraines, how they affect your life, and if you’re a good fit for the job knowing that you’ll probably have more absences the longer you work there. It’s a tough conversation, but it has to happen because otherwise she’s just going to get more and more exasperated to the point that you’re going to be fired for it. See if you two can’t come to an agreement on how to proceed before it gets to that point.
Ama* July 31, 2015 at 12:21 pm Well part of it is your employer is completely unreasonable. I don’t have any chronic health issues and I’ve already missed five days this year. I ‘m pretty sure that’s on the low end of sick days for my office, too.
Ad Astra* July 31, 2015 at 1:08 pm I would consider 7 absences a year to be on the high end of normal — more than what some people would use, but not excessive. Are you allotted just 3 sick days each year, or does your manager not want you to use the PTO you’re owed? It sounds like your manager is being unreasonable. I would also venture to guess that your office is a bit understaffed, which is why one person’s absence is so widely noticed. How is your actual performance and productivity? If you’re still doing great work, bringing that to your manager’s attention could go a long way.
Boogles* July 31, 2015 at 1:19 pm I do great work and am extremely productive. This company is large. We have a good team and plenty of staff. They couch everything under the umbrella of being “conservative” and my boss especially is an extreme rule follower. For me, I manage the work. If the work is getting done, I don’t care how my team is doing it. We all cover for each other, no big deal. However, my boss gets involved and creates drama where it’s not necessary. I can definitely look at intermittant FMLA, I just wish I didn’t have to and that they could be more understanding. Life happens. People aren’t robots. Thanks for the awesome feedback! I’m feeling much less crappy about the situation!
LQ* July 31, 2015 at 2:18 pm If your boss is an extreme rule follower I’d really look at FMLA. There’s NO reason to not use it. And there are lots of rules especially at big places. At my Big Place they boss only knows it’s allowed and what kind is allowed, they don’t see any paperwork and if they ask they get in big trouble. They don’t get to say anything or harrass people about it at all. FMLA is because some bosses aren’t reasonable. If everyone was always super good to other people we wouldn’t need to worry about it. You aren’t doing anything wrong or taking advantage or anything. You have a tool, if it is the correct tool, use it!
Creag an Tuire* July 31, 2015 at 4:02 pm If your boss is getting huffy about 7 (7! And that’s -with- a serious medical condition!) sick days a -year-, then I’m afraid this is an example of “Your Boss Is An Ass And Won’t Change”. My only advice is don’t beat yourself on top of this — you are -not- less dependable then the average worker, you really aren’t.
AnotherFed* July 31, 2015 at 12:23 pm Like Katie The Fed says, it’s all about context. If your manager is unhappy with you because of a performance problem (not completing work on time, making too many mistakes, being the office mean girl, etc.), then your manager has the responsibility to set clear expectations and give concrete feedback on what is not meeting those expectations. It’s up to you to take that feedback to heart and work on improving; if your manager isn’t giving good feedback, it’s worth considering whether you take feedback gracefully and professionally and trying to engage your manager to discuss the issues with your performance. If your manager is displeased over something that doesn’t appear to be a performance issue, it may be worth it to still approach them to discuss – something like “I’m getting the impression that aren’t pleased with X, Y, Z products/meeting results/attendance/whatever makes sense in your context. What should I do differently to address any concerns moving forward?” and then listen. You might find out that you have a performance problem you didn’t even know about, or that a protected accommodation for you is having unintended consequences for others that can be minimized by changing up something simple (and not getting rid of the accommodation), or just that your manager sucks and you aren’t going to get anywhere if you stay at the current job. Any of that is pretty valuable info, so I’d probably ask!
Anonsie* July 31, 2015 at 4:23 pm In my experience? You can’t. This is built into our culture. You just have to put your foot down and look out for yourself, maybe get FMLA going if that setup will help you.
Mephyle* July 31, 2015 at 5:23 pm It seems she doesn’t get the “not under your control” part. I don’t know whether it is worth trying to talk to her about that.
Not So NewReader* July 31, 2015 at 9:39 pm I worked for a place where two days a year was considered excessive. It’s embedded in the company. In the end, you may want to move on because this company is starting to cause you to have more headaches.
I am now a llama* July 31, 2015 at 11:28 am How much time do you spend on job hunting and sending resumes? I find that I come home so exhausted from being stressed at work and weekends are so busy. Please share your tips!
MissLibby* July 31, 2015 at 11:39 am I only apply to a few jobs a year so it is not really time intensive, but I hear what you are saying about being exhausted at night and busy on the weekends. I generally try to use my lunch hour to work on resumes and applications when I am applying. I am still in work mode then and it is easier for me to focus. If I am home there are too many distractions and I am not in my professional mode, if that makes sense.
some1* July 31, 2015 at 11:47 am When I was job-hunting I used to peruse jobs on my phone when I had down-time (riding the bus, waiting in line at the store) and email the jobs that looked promising to myself. Then I when I had an hour or longer to devote time to, I would get on the computer and apply to those jobs. I also kept a working template of a cover letter that I could tweak, and kept info that was likely to be asked on apps in a single doc so I didn’t have to go look it up every time (like mailing addresses and phone numbers of old jobs or schools). These steps saved me a good deal of time.
T3k* July 31, 2015 at 12:43 pm I spend about 5-30 mins. a day (not weekends, though occasionally I will look then too). Some days I’m dead tired, but I realized I really need to get out of my current job, so it’s pushed me to spend a small time everyday looking and applying.
overeducated and underemployed* July 31, 2015 at 2:09 pm It is hard! I’ve only been getting out about 3 applications a week, usually 2 on the weekend (average of 1-2 hours per app, but sometimes substantially more if they require special materials) and one in fits and starts during the work week.
Limes* July 31, 2015 at 11:30 am I previously worked for a nonprofit that – in addition to being dysfunctional – was either lazy or unethical (or both) when it came to donor information. Instead of using a CRM or secure database to maintain donor records (address, phone number, contributions, etc.) they used … a Google doc. Meaning a shareable Excel sheet housed on the internet that pretty much anybody in the office (or anyone who knew an employee well enough to guess their email password) could access. In that spread sheet they kept credit card numbers, which I’m pretty sure is illegal. I thought maybe it was a temporary thing, but I got an email solicitation a few weeks ago (guess I’m still on that list) for a campaign. What was in it? A Google Form where you could input your name, address, phone number and credit card for the donation. They added a “don’t worry it’s secure!” message at the bottom, but having worked there I know the data’s just going to a Google doc spread sheet and I know exactly who has access to it. I think it’s unethical at the least to expose people’s data like this … probably illegal. Should I mention this to someone? I already raised the issue when I worked there, is there an entity that monitors this? Or is none of my business?
fposte* July 31, 2015 at 12:04 pm Somebody more familiar with this stuff may chime in, but from what I can see, in the absence of an actual security incident it’s not breaking any laws. What it is, however, is a breach of PCI standards enacted by the card issuers and that the org agreed to when it signed up to accept credit cards. Which subjects them to the possibility of big fines–as well as the risk of bigger liability. In general, you have a better chance to fix something like that while you’re still there. You could poke around to see if you could find the Visa/Mastercard police to report them, I suppose; less punitively, you could drop them a note in response to the solicitation saying “Hey, this reminds me that I think we were way out of compliance on this–see what it says we should do on this PCI doc I’ve attached?”
Limes* July 31, 2015 at 2:55 pm I had mentioned it as a concern when I did work there … the Resource Development team failed to see the problem so I don’t think giving them a heads up would work. Every other nonprofit I’ve interned or worked for has been exceptionally careful with donor data, which I guess is why this just seems like a huge breach in protocol to me. There’s also ridiculously high turnover in this office and they’re not vigilant at locking people out of their Google accounts when they leave. Which I know from experience.
Observer* July 31, 2015 at 3:06 pm There’s also ridiculously high turnover in this office and they’re not vigilant at locking people out of their Google accounts when they leave. Which I know from experience. Now THAT is a major issue. But, it would not be any different if they were using any other CRM. They ALL depend on some level of due diligence on the part of the organization. In our organization, there are at least two people with the management password for every cloud based account (in case one of them leaves on short notice), and ALL account access is terminated as soon as someone leaves (with a few key exceptions, for which there always has to be a specific reason.) Otherwise, you’re asking for chaos. But, these folks don’t seem to be great managers.
Dawn* July 31, 2015 at 12:05 pm Not illegal, although I’m not a lawyer. Companies should probably keep stuff like that secure, but there is no law saying they have to (unless they’re a bank or something like that). Hell, look at the US Gov’s OPM breach- EVERYTHING WAS IN PLAINTEXT. Everything. And it was the freakin’ government. Let it go, send them an email asking for your information to be removed from the list, and let it go.
Dasha* July 31, 2015 at 12:08 pm OMG their credit card info??? I think you should mention it but I’m not sure to who… I mean put yourself in the donor’s shoes, wouldn’t you want to know if it was your info?
Sunshine Brite* July 31, 2015 at 12:25 pm I know! Is there a board of directors or some other sort of oversight committee that you could write and suggest increasing data security?
Limes* July 31, 2015 at 2:59 pm Don’t remember the Board being very involved and if there is an oversight committee for this sort of thing, I’ve never heard of them. It bugs me because this stuff is VERY easily accessible and I feel bad for the donors who actually are trusting them with their info. I wasn’t sure if there was some well known entity or a process to alert auditors about something like this so I thought I’d throw it out to the AAM community, but I guess the best course is to just let it go.
fposte* July 31, 2015 at 3:10 pm I think if you’re notifying, it’s either Visa/Mastercard or the BOD. But I really hope they figure this out before somebody gets ripped off.
zora* July 31, 2015 at 5:28 pm well the board technically has a responsibility to be overseeing the practices of the organization, but if this place is as badly organized as you say, no one probably gets that or cares. But I agree with fposte, the merchant services would be the ones with a stake.
T3k* July 31, 2015 at 2:16 pm Highly doubtful it’s illegal, but not a good situation either. If most of the employees work at a particular place, it’s safer to have it stored on the head’s computer where it can only be accessed through an internal network. At my last place, when we took CC#s down, we wrote them onto the customer’s job jacket and then that job jacket was filed away into unlocked cabinets. Not a good solution either but better than it being online where if a hacker gets into one of the employee’s emails, they could access the list.
Observer* July 31, 2015 at 3:03 pm Actually, Google Docs are not that insecure, if they are reasonably set up. Unless the document is set up differently, people need to have a password, not just an email address, to get in. What makes you think that you don’t need a password? On the other hand, what makes you think that other CRM do a better job. CRM has been moving into the cloud and some of the most highly regarded CRMs and donor management systems are cloud based. And they all use the same type of security – login and password. If they get hacked, though, they could get sued. And I’d be willing to bet that they are not PCI compliant, which adds another layer of liability. Beyond that, how does anyone manage donor information with a couple of spreadsheets?!
fposte* July 31, 2015 at 3:11 pm I don’t think the issue is so much the Google docs as the fact that CC#s aren’t supposed to be stored in plain text, period.
Observer* August 2, 2015 at 5:03 pm 100% on that. Actually, I would even question why they are keeping CC numbers – more often than not, it’s not a terribly good idea anyway. I think that if Limes wants to kick this upstairs somehow, the two things to focus are on the way the CC #’s are being stored and the fact that no one is being proactive about making sure that account access is being kept up to date. Both are huge red flags. And they are both independent of the system being used to store them.
Calla* July 31, 2015 at 11:32 am Oof, it’s been a week. 1. Last week I posted about a coworker who is making 2.5x what the women in his same position (with more experience) are making and how I found out he misled on his resume and (unrelated) actually ran a pick up artist group. WELL, since then, delightfully, I have found a couple of his “pick up artist”-y advice articles. Through another admin, we also found out that ANOTHER former employee at the director-level was doing the same thing. Is there an underground pick up artist ring at my company?? 2. I am expecting updates on 2 jobs today that I interviewed for and it cannot come soon enough. My boss has been brutal. I got chewed out for her calendar next week, even though every single meeting was at her request. I get told (IN WRITING) “Schedule this meeting at this time for 30 minutes,” then scolded for 5 minutes about how I shouldn’t have scheduled it for 30 min because she’s told me she wants everything to be an hour. Other instances this week include: — Coworker coordinating an interview for her through me; boss sends coworker a “nasty” email about how she had to reschedule something to do the interview. She had nothing on her calendar for the time of the meeting. — Boss and coworker have a weekly meeting, but my boss was traveling 4 out of 5 days this week. Last week, we went over her OOO time, and I asked if I should cancel everything on the days she was traveling. She said yes. Coworker (same as above) gets another mean email about how they didn’t get to have their weekly meeting this week. Basically, she NEVER remembers what she asks for, and when she forgets and/or changes her mind, you’re on blast for it. Having it in writing is useless because you don’t have TIME to point that out because she talks so much and so fast. I’m just SO OVER IT this week, I think it’s made so much worse by the fact that I’m waiting to hear back from two jobs that could get me out of here.
Calla* July 31, 2015 at 11:44 am OH MAN I should have seen this question coming! Ha, I’ll have to listen for that now.
Sascha* July 31, 2015 at 11:40 am 1. Do they quack? 2. I’m sorry. I’ve had those types of people in my both my personal and professional lives, and oof, not fun.
esra* July 31, 2015 at 11:43 am Oh yikes, I seriously hope one of those jobs pans out. I left a job last year with a president much like you describe here. Even if you had hard, written proof she asked for something, it still didn’t matter. Even being a mindreader wouldn’t have pleased her.
Calla* July 31, 2015 at 11:46 am Yes! As a good admin, I do try to predict certain wants/needs, but I do not have the time or brain power to do that when I’m getting constantly slammed for doing exactly what she asks for.
Persephone Mulberry* July 31, 2015 at 11:44 am Your point #2 is almost identical to the situation I had with my boss, and why eventually I hit a wall and resigned without another job lined up (they ended up creating a new position in order to keep me, but I realize not everyone is that lucky!).
The Cosmic Avenger* July 31, 2015 at 12:00 pm So, basically, her management style is “management by gaslighting”. Lovely.
Calla* July 31, 2015 at 12:03 pm You know, I don’t use the term gaslighting lightly, but it’s funny you say that because just this morning I remarked to a coworker that I was going to start keeping daily screenshots of her calendar (in response to her chewing out coworker because of having to “reschedule” for an interview, when she had no conflict) so I knew I wasn’t the crazy one.
The Cosmic Avenger* July 31, 2015 at 12:22 pm I realized that technically she’s contradicting herself or giving you contradictory instructions more than telling you that she said something that you know she didn’t (or vice versa), but from your account I have no doubt that if you pushed her she would claim she never told you that, and if you showed her proof, would either accuse you of making it up or claim “you should have known” which directive took precedence. I’ve seen it many times before, and I’m sorry you have to deal with her.
Anonsie* July 31, 2015 at 4:26 pm Ah yes. “You should have known.” The ol’ “I didn’t tell you this, and in fact maybe I told you do the exact opposite of this, but I’m not responsible for my actions. You are responsible for my actions.”
S* July 31, 2015 at 12:16 pm As an admin with an incredibly easy to work with ED, I’m so sorry about this. I hope those two jobs work out for you, and soon!
Steve G* July 31, 2015 at 11:32 am I wanted to share and get some good interview conversation-starters. I have noticed that a lot of the lists of “top questions to ask in interviews” are too canned to use anymore, and I am also noticing a shift in interview styles as this is the first job hunt where the (at least first round interviewees) are late genx/millennial age. I think younger people want the interview to flow as a conversation, and they aren’t coming with lists of questions for me to keep the conversation going….so it’s no longer about planning a brilliant question to impress the interviewer, and more about keeping the talk flowing so it doesn’t go quiet too long and you lose the momentum. So here are my questions. If you have some interview questions to add, please do so! Mine are for jobs in sales operations/analysis BTW: 1) What are your sales and growth targets? How would I be supporting the growth? 2) How much customer contact is there in this role? What type of customers are there? How big is the average sale? How long has the typical customer been a customer? 3) What is your sales structure – does it tend to be through channel partners, or through direct sales people? 4) How long does it usually take new employees here to start doing “real” work? 5) Is there a chance to practice VBA/C+/SQL, etc. here, or are most of your computer programs proprietary programs? 6) Are there any processes waiting to be automated? Is that a priority for you? 7) Is there a calendar of ongoing work, or is most of it ad hoc? 8) Where does new work come from – from management down? From coworkers? Or is most of it self-identified work? Is there overlap with other similar roles in the company? If yes, how do you split it up? 9) If I am working with data, where is the data stored? Will there be ongoing issues with data collection and accuracy? Would I be responsible for that? How many line items are the data sets typically? Are there any data issues I should be aware with, for example, that there might be missing time/date stamps on a regular basis?
Amber Rose* July 31, 2015 at 11:41 am I don’t like #4. It implies you’re expecting to not do any work for x time after you start, and that you don’t think of training as something to work at. Make sure you don’t get so caught up in a premade list of questions that you stop listening and asking things you really want to know.
Steve G* July 31, 2015 at 12:01 pm I’m trying to get a longer list of “premade” questions because I am finding I am interviewing with people who don’t come prepared and/or aren’t particularly talkative! I NEED MORE premade questions!
Dawn* July 31, 2015 at 12:07 pm Wait so you’re the interviewer in this situation and not the interviewee? Why are you coming up with these questions in the first place? It’s not your job to string these people along when they’re interviewing- if they don’t know well enough to come up with questions in the first place then that’s not your fault, it’s theirs.
Steve G* July 31, 2015 at 12:43 pm I am interviewing to get a job. So am I supposed to go to interviews without any questions? I have been on 20 phone screens/calls, and on about 70% of them the person leading the call or interview had 3 or less questions to ask, and only about 5 gave a shpeel on their company, with only about 2 selling their company as a great place to work. I can’t sit there and wait for interviewers to think up things to ask if they don’t prep for interviews, so I was asking for questions to ask when the interviewer doesn’t ask any.
Sadsack* July 31, 2015 at 1:34 pm Ah, I think a few of us were confused by what you wrote originally, so thanks for clarifying.
BRR* July 31, 2015 at 5:25 pm But it hurts Steve G to have a super short interview. Also I have found that asking more position specific questions reflects really well on you.
Sadsack* July 31, 2015 at 12:11 pm I am confused! I thought you were putting together a list of questions you would ask an interviewer. Are these questions you are going to give people you are interviewing and want them to ask you? Or do you mean that these are questions you would expect them to have so you are planning on addressing each of these items in your conversation without being asked…?
Sadsack* July 31, 2015 at 12:08 pm A better way to phrase it may be, “How long do you expect it to take the new hire to be trained and working independently?”
I am now a llama* July 31, 2015 at 2:09 pm I’m actually looking to get into sales ops, any tips to share from your experience?
Steve G* July 31, 2015 at 3:00 pm I’m sad that no one actually answered my question:-) As per getting into sales ops, 1) being advanced in Excel, 2) being advanced in at least one other popular computer program, Salesforce seems to be all the rage today, and 3) some sort of experience working in sales, inside sales, customer service w/ at least some experience upselling or handling sales-related paperwork, or sales support, and expressing a genuine interest in helping sales when you do get interviews
Steve G* July 31, 2015 at 3:19 pm And I should mention that beginning job titles will include Sales Analyst, Sales Operations Specialist/Coordinator/Analyst, Sales Coordinator, Operations Analyst (though this is often a term used specifically in investment banking), Commissions Analyst, Contracts Coordinator…..
YandO* July 31, 2015 at 4:48 pm I was just looking for semi-entry level sales op/client relationship mngmt positions it’s a lot of behavioral questions Tell us about a time…. Tell us about a client…How did you turn around a rejection? Salesforce is the rage, but any other CRM is good too. Make sure to express enthusiasm, a lot of it, for using CRMs. A good story about a CRM works really well. I also noticed that efficiency is a big thing, so a story about making this a priority is important. In general, story telling for any type of customer facing role is huge. You need to be personable. Finally, follow up, follow up, follow up. I cannot emphasize this enough. You cannot do sales ops without showing that you know to respond quickly, write well, and always always say thank you, but never in the same way.
YandO* July 31, 2015 at 4:40 pm I think it is important to remember to ask questions that make sense for a person to answer Every interviewer I ask why/how they joined the company, what they like, and what challenges they faced. I then thank them for sharing their story with me when I write my thank you email. I always ask questions around the concept of “what do I need to do to be successful and make YOUR job easier? How can I help YOU?”. I word it differently depending on person’s position, but ultimately that’s what I am looking for. Sometimes I ask how they handle mistakes and what would be a big/common mistake for someone in my role. I know this may not be the greatest question form their perspective, but it gives me a lot of valuable information.
CoffeeLover* July 31, 2015 at 11:23 pm I think it’s hard to answer your question because the questions you would ask in an interview will be really position and company specific. I mean in my line of work I would never ask any of the ones you’ve listed above. Usually I have a lot of things I’m curious about. I start with one question and then ask follow up questions as they come (I’m a millennial, so maybe this is the flow-style interview you’re talking about). I try to keep the things I’m most curious about (other than benefits/pay) in mind. For example, when interviewing for a consulting firm I asked, “Which industries does the majority of your work come from? Do a lot of your projects involve (some industry related issue where I show off how much I know)? Is there an opportunity to work in X industry?” I also like to ask firm specific questions if I can. A lot of firms want to know you want to work for THEM, so they like this. For example, “You recently acquired Y company; how do you see this impacting the work you do?” I tend to keep my questions very high-level. To be honest, I didn’t like some of your questions because I felt like they were too “in the weeds,” but that may make sense for your job/industry.
Sprocket* August 1, 2015 at 8:31 am I have not noticed a lack of questions from interviewers lately. Could it be that you were interviewing with inexperienced interviewers or they were just a short screen? I do always feel like a really good interview is a conversation versus a Q&A so it comes down to taking a thread running with it to highlight your experiences etc.
Windchime* August 1, 2015 at 12:01 pm I would be thrilled if a candidate came to an interview and asked these types of questions. We interviewed a really sharp young lady the other day, but she had zero questions for us. None. Not even, “What would a typical day look like for someone in this position?” I would expect people to ask questions about hours, flexibility, general duties, what kind of environment would I be working in, who would I report to, what are the training opportunities, etc. A really good candidate (that we unanimously loved and hired from another department) asked if it was allowed to listen to music on headphones while she worked. Her old department allowed that, and it was important to her to know whether or not she could keep bringing her headphones. Questions like that tell me she is actually *thinking* about the job and the environment.
voluptuousfire* August 1, 2015 at 5:21 pm Steve G, you’ve been interviewing with start ups mostly, right? I’ve had the same experiences where phone screens are short or stilted/one sided. It’s really quite amazing how many interviews I’ve had where I had to prompt the interviewer to tell me more about the position/company or I walked away not knowing any more about the company and role than I did before the interview. Usually those roles were with people who were not recruiters or experienced interviewers.
Cass* July 31, 2015 at 11:33 am I’m currently working a part time job, hoping to land a full time at my work (large university.) I may be offered another part time job in a different department with much higher pay and more of the area I want to go into for a full time job. I’d feel crummy leaving for another part time job, but it may be the right thing to do? I’m a bit conflicted. (And to add to it, I have an first interview for a FT position at my current work unit next week. Waiting to hear on a decision for the PT job next week.)
Nanc* July 31, 2015 at 12:26 pm Any chance you can work both part-time positions? I did this many years ago at a University and both departments were great about being flexible, including letting me respond to phone calls and emails about each job while at the other (if that makes sense).
Cass* July 31, 2015 at 1:38 pm Unfortunately, no. I believe with the health care restrictions, it would require adding insurance benefits. It’s a bummer
overeducated and underemployed* July 31, 2015 at 2:13 pm I’m in a similar position and I think it depends on whether or not you think the FT position is worth holding out for, with the risk that you’ll stay stuck in the current part time job if you don’t get it. If that seems like too big a risk, definitely take the other part time job.
The Other Dawn* July 31, 2015 at 11:34 am Well, the news is out that our rock star team member is leaving. The team member whose reaction I worried about went pretty much the way I thought it would: he was surprised she’s leaving, but is really, really worried about the department’s workload. I can understand, as it was a two-person department for a long time and they were working ridiculous hours. It only expanded to 6 in the last year, which includes me (and we still need another!). While I worry about the workload also – we have several big, planned projects, and several big, unplanned projects going on, plus all the regular stuff – I think there’s some work PTSD going on there. I just don’t know how to address it or if I even should. He vented a bit the day of the announcement and I let him, because I totally understand his feeling of being overwhelmed, but I just feel like I couldn’t come up with any words that would help how he’s feeling. He left my office and I felt crappy for not saying some magical words that would make it OK. And it doesn’t help that I’m horrible at comforting people. The two of us had a planning session with my boss the other day and that seemed to help a bit. We talked about having other departments help us and that we might hire a few more people instead of just the one. Any suggestions? Should I just continue to have a positive attitude that we will survive this and model that?
AnotherFed* July 31, 2015 at 12:31 pm Yes. Don’t get sucked into the doom spiral with him! It might help him balance if you stick to pragmatic but positive or at least neutral attitudes, just don’t go too overboard – excessive optimism can be just as hard to handle as crushing negativity. The planning thing helps a lot – if there’s a concrete way to get through a rough patch, even if I know going in that the plan requires long hours, it’s still reassuring to see that it’s been thought through and it’s crappy but doable.
Ama* July 31, 2015 at 1:26 pm Yes, I’ve been through the coworker left in the lurch a few times, and when I had a manger who not only had a plan for redistributing the work, but actually followed through with it it was great. Just try not to overpromise a timeline or help that you aren’t absolutely sure you can deliver — I was once handed extra work “until we can hire another full time admin” which got downgraded after six months of stalling to two student workers who worked 20 hours a week total. It won’t help in the immediate future, but if he handles himself well during the worst of the crunch and your company is able to give spot bonuses, that always went a *long* way with me in terms of feeling appreciated.
Sascha* July 31, 2015 at 11:35 am I don’t have a question, just a musing…so I applied for a position at another university in October 2014, and got an auto reject email in May 2015. I never received a phone call or email for an interview, which I know is not a guaranteed thing at all, but I thought I fit the position pretty well…it was asking for 2 years of system admin experience in the exact application that I’ve been system admin-ing for 8 years, at another university. It was like reading my own job description, but with a “manager” title instead of a “specialist”, so I thought I would at least get a phone screen (and I have been doing people management!). Anyway, I just found out the position has been reposted…and it was open for several months before I applied for it last year! It just amuses me as to why this school can’t seem to fill that position. Hiring is weird, y’all.
Amber Rose* July 31, 2015 at 11:35 am I cried at work on Monday. In front of everyone. D: I can still come back from that right? The one coworker that I dislike is being fired probably today or maybe Tuesday. My manager took me out for sushi to tell me about it. I feel sad for him. The job is a really bad fit for him and i’ve seen him struggling to keep up and fit in and it just didn’t happen. But as my manager said, you can’t employ people just because they’re nice, you have to employ people because they can do the job. Anyways, now I get half his work, plus we’re safety auditing, plus my other miscellaneous projects, so I’m looking at one hell of an August. *sigh*
Dasha* July 31, 2015 at 12:04 pm You can still come back from the crying :) just try to be professional and calm from here on out!
Chorizo* July 31, 2015 at 12:47 pm I cried at work last week when we were told our manager is moving to another department. Our VP was sitting in on the meeting. It was mortifying.
afiendishthingy* July 31, 2015 at 7:03 pm I’m sure it’s field dependent but my personal experience has been if it’s infrequent, doesn’t make it hard for people to give you feedback, not a spectacle (eg loud sobbing rather than a few silent tears), and you’re generally known to be composed and professional, it’s not a huge deal. It sounds like this is the first time it’s happened to you, and like you have a good relationship with your manager, so I wouldn’t worry too much. If you wanted to you could talk to or email your manager Monday and say something like “Hey, just so you know I do understand the tough decision you had to make. I’m grieving for Wakeen because he’s a nice person, but I know this is the right thing for the company. It’s going to be a busy month while I’m taking on some of his responsibilities, but I’m up for the challenge and appreciate any guidance you can give me for the transition.” For those like me who have lost track of how many times they’ve cried at work over the years, I like to tell my managers and coworkers (ideally not while the tears are flowing) not to worry, it’s often part of processing stressful situations for me, and (if applicable) I still appreciate getting feedback on my work. It still sucks! But it’s not the end of the world. We’re humans, and humans cry sometimes.
Amber Rose* July 31, 2015 at 11:33 pm Oh, man I worded that bad. I didn’t cry for jerk face being fired. I cried after a distressing personal phone call… and I totally just sobbed and made a bit of a spectacle of myself. :/ People were nice about it but it’s still pretty mortifying. In my defense, I did try to cry in the bathroom but I was heard. And then they asked if I was ok which set me off again. Bluh.
afiendishthingy* August 1, 2015 at 1:14 am oh, oh. I was a little confused by the wording so I took a guess. I think it’s one hundred percent okay to cry about a distressing personal phone call and unless they’re total douchecanoes people aren’t going to think less of you, they’ll just be concerned. Which I can understand can be embarrassing, but it’s really unlikely to change their opinion of you.
Not So NewReader* August 1, 2015 at 6:41 pm You will be okay. It was a moment, that is all. I hope I don’t sound like I am diminishing any of your concerns. A lot of people have hit that emotional brick wall at 90 mph, so there are a lot of people who understand. If they are asking you if you are okay, they, themselves, probably know something about going 90 mph into an emotional brick wall. This might sound counter-intuitive but invest in you- get extra rest, drink more water, all those little things that help with stress loads. Weepies, or leaks, can be a reminder to us to fortify- recognize that we are being drained and drained and now we must put something into ourselves. It can be anything, keep it simple, keep it doable.
esra* July 31, 2015 at 11:36 am Parents who have taken proper (6-12 month) mat/pat leave: Did you ever check in with the person covering your leave? I’m entering month 8 of a 12 month contract and haven’t heard a peep from the woman I’m covering, who has been in the position for five years. I wondered if this was normal? I’m torn, because I’m honestly not sure if I’d be checking in once a month, or pretending like the office didn’t even exist.
Joie de Vivre* July 31, 2015 at 11:42 am I’ve never taken leave, but I’ve managed teams where people regularly took 12-18 mths parental leave. Other than social events or coming in with the new baby once or twice, we generally didn’t hear from them until a couple of weeks before their scheduled return date.
schnapps* July 31, 2015 at 11:42 am Yes, its normal. I had a 12 month maternity leave (yay, Canada) and only dropped by the office twice: once to show off the baby, and once when she was older to have lunch with a couple of coworkers. Same with two subsequent mat leaves in my workgroup.
esra* July 31, 2015 at 12:01 pm Okay, that makes more sense. I’m used to mat/pat leaves (also Canadian), but everywhere else I worked, the person would check in every now and then.
QualityControlFreak* July 31, 2015 at 4:55 pm Heh. When I was on mat leave (US – 8 weeks), the person covering called me several times a week for guidance. That was interesting.
MaryMary* July 31, 2015 at 2:10 pm OldJob was super concerned about leave management, and if you went on leave (mat/pat, medical, unpaid hiatus, whatever) they completely revoked your security and access. You could not access email, you could not log into VPN, you couldn’t even swipe your badge to open the office door. As a result, we hardly ever heard from people on leave until they were ready to come back.
TheLazyB (UK)* July 31, 2015 at 2:47 pm I wasn’t replaced when I was out on mat leave, but if I had been, I wouldn’t have contacted my cover person, just my line manager.
Apollo Warbucks* July 31, 2015 at 2:49 pm In the UK there is a maximum of 10 days that can be worked whilst on maternity leave and there normally saved until near the end of the leave the only person I’ve worked closely with who took maternity saved them until the last two months and worked a couple of days a week.
Anonsie* July 31, 2015 at 4:29 pm When I covered someone’s mat leave, it was like she didn’t exist. No one heard a peep, not even about the baby haha.
RCB* July 31, 2015 at 11:36 am Hi everyone, I was let go this past week from my job. I was completely blindsided by this, there had been no indication up till now (in the form of PIPs or progressive disciplinary action) that there were performance issues. And in fact, what I was told was that I was actually very good at what I was doing, and completed my work accurately and on time. The official reason they gave is that I wasn’t “dynamic” enough and thus not a good fit, but based on some of the comments my direct supervisor made when I asked for clarification on what she considered “dynamic”, I got the sense that she just simply didn’t like me as a person (she refused to give specifics when I said I’d like more clarity to take with me as I move forward with a job search, said she didn’t have time nor the inclination to give me that kind of feedback). She was not always easy to get along with an in retrospect I think perhaps she just realized she didn’t care for me a while back but didn’t really have a concrete justification for terminating me (as I said, she admitted that I did good work, and I was well-liked by my colleagues) so came up with this. So okay, I was pushed out due to a personality conflict. It happens. Here’s my question: I was only at this company for 7 months, and it’s a pretty big company, well-known in our industry. Being there for only 7 months looks obviously suspect on a resume. On top of that, given the size and notoriety of the company, I am finding via LinkedIn that many other companies in my industry who are hiring have hiring managers who are connected with the company that just let me go. My concern is, if I apply for these jobs, seeing that I was only with this company for 7 months is going to take me out of the running, and further, if that doesn’t take me out of the running, any hiring manager who wants to find out more about me and is connected with anyone at my former company will call to find out why I was only there for 7 months and potentially hear unflattering things about me. So what do I do? Do I just not list this last job on my resume and deal with what will look like a 7-month employment gap? How do I explain that gap? I also spent a lot of time doing contract work for the past few years before landing this last job due to the difficulty of finding work during the recession, and now I really just look like a job-hopper. Am I screwed? How do I move forward and find a new job in these circumstances? Please help! I am so lost.
Apollo Warbucks* July 31, 2015 at 11:52 am It doesn’t sound like a big deal you weren’t fired for anything outrageous, its a shame you were blind sided by it but that’s the way it goes sometimes. Personally I would go with listing the job as a 7 month absence wont look great and you’ll only be ask to explain what you were doing in that time anyway. Alison has some advice about talking about why you were fired / left a job with out a new one lined up, but mainly it comes down to talking about it not being the right fit for you, not making any negative comments about the employer and if you can talk about skills that job required but are not needed in the new job you are applying for so much the better.
PontoonPirate* July 31, 2015 at 11:57 am I have to think through this a bit before I can offer any overall advice, but one thing I would advise is to make sure that on your resume and on LinkedIn you’re indicated that those short-term jobs were contract jobs. I’ve done work on contract and I usually say something like, “Teapot Marketing Analyst (limited contract)” to indicate that it was a contract job without possibility of extension. That lessens the perception you have trouble staying in one spot. If, by the nature of the job it’s time-limited, it shouldn’t be looked at as hopping.
Apollo Warbucks* July 31, 2015 at 12:00 pm but this was a permanent job, not a job that was intended to be a short term contract.
PontoonPirate* July 31, 2015 at 12:04 pm Right, I’m talking about the previous jobs, to prevent the perception this is another in a line of hopped jobs. You can’t say this job was a contract, but it helps soften the blow if the other jobs have a logical reason for being short-lived.
some1* July 31, 2015 at 12:00 pm It sounds like the company is pretty hooked in your industry/area, so if you get asked in interviews why you left the job, I’d be honest and unemotional. “I was given good performance reviews and feedback, but my supervisor let me go. She told me I wasn’t dynamic enough.” I assume there was a witness to the dynamic comment besides you?
RCB* July 31, 2015 at 1:07 pm Yes, my supervisor’s boss was also in the room. I have a good rapport with him but his job is several levels above mine so whatever information he knows about my performance came from my supervisor. Technically I hadn’t had a review yet – this is review time for the company, and I guess this is why she took this opportunity to cut me loose? But I have received lots of positive feedback from colleagues and other staff that I supported, and as I said, there is no documented trail of performance issues (unless my supervisor is shady enough to try to manufacture those after the fact, which I highly doubt – she’s prickly, but not dishonest, I don’t think). I can say truthfully that I got good feedback on my work from colleagues, and that I was told on the way out that I was doing solid work.
RCB* July 31, 2015 at 1:09 pm Thank you, I appreciate it. :) Truth be told, now that I’ve had a couple of days to process it, I’m a bit relieved. I did not find her easy to work with or for, and so I think in the long term this is probably the best outcome (rather than prolonging a tense relationship). I’m mostly just at a loss as to how to find a new job in this industry when everyone knows everyone.
Renee* July 31, 2015 at 2:26 pm It’s possible though that those hiring managers know your manager and have seen this kind of thing before. I worked as a temp at a company that had a pretty terrible culture. Two years later, a lot of friends I made there are at a competing company, and are pretty open about the bad atmosphere at the first company. I’d list the job and hope that anyone connected with your prior employer already understood the situation somewhat. You’re in a tough spot, but I’d simply describe it in a neutral way if asked. You were advised that your work was good and your reason for being let go was that you were not “dynamic.” No you don’t know what that means either but perhaps manager did not mesh with you personally. That’s never happened before but these things sometimes happen.
Not So NewReader* August 1, 2015 at 6:51 pm You might find out that everyone knowing everyone works FOR you, not against you. Both me and my husband would mention former employers, then we would hear, “Hmmm, now how long did you work there?” We’d answer. “You lasted THAT long with THAT person???” In some cases, places make a habit of hiring someone else’s former employees. I know of one manager, locally, that will look extra hard and carefully consider apps from people who have been employed by another well-known business here. This may not be as dark as you think. It might take a while to play out but you might find that your former boss has a BIG reputation.
Katie the Fed* July 31, 2015 at 12:02 pm Did you talk to your former supervisor about what kind of reference she’d be willing to give for you? If it was just a personality issue and they like your work, you should be able to arrange a decent reference. She might even have some connections she can link you up with. I removed a contractor from my team but felt he might be a good fit elsewhere and I connected him with companies I thought he’d do well in.
RCB* July 31, 2015 at 1:03 pm I haven’t done that, and based on what I know of her I’m sure that if asked about me she wouldn’t say anything outright negative, but I also don’t think she would be inclined to help me find something new. She seemed pretty eager to get me out the door. The whole conversation was fast – I showed up to work at 8, and was escorted to the elevator by 8:30. I don’t think she’s going to be interested in taking any extra time to help me. I am sure that I could get a colleague to vouch for me, and even if that’s not possible I am very close to my vendors and have already heard from one who is sad that I’m no longer with the company and has offered to be a reference, so I guess that’s something.
Ad Astra* July 31, 2015 at 1:18 pm I have no idea what “dynamic” is supposed to mean when used to describe a person. I would have a hard time not rolling my eyes at someone who told me I wasn’t “dynamic” enough. Anyway, I think you’re better off leaving this job on your resume, especially if you did work that you’re proud of and picked up some valuable skills. If they ask why you left your last job, you can explain that it just wasn’t a good fit. The situation isn’t awesome, but I really don’t think you’re screwed.
RCB* July 31, 2015 at 1:36 pm It’s funny, everyone I have told this story to IRL has had the same reaction as you to the term “dynamic”. It’s such a vague term, and then on top of that to have her refuse to clarify what she meant when she said I wasn’t “dynamic” enough is what has me thinking that this is at it’s core a personality conflict. If she has an idea in her head of what a good direct report would be and I didn’t fill it in some nebulous way despite doing good work, then…what else is there to say. This is the first time in my career I have encountered something like this and it has quite thrown me for a loop.
Biff* July 31, 2015 at 1:50 pm I think this might be a good time to pop out the tried-and-true “They decided to focus on X, but I’m more into Y.” Dynamic to me means someone who is good at presenting new Big Ideas or roping in reluctant clients, so I think I’d go with something like: “I got very good reviews for my work. However, the company is looking for someone who could do my work and also incorporate more sales and ideas. I’m just not a Big Ideas generator, though I’m great at helping people turn their Big Ideas into the real deal.”
Persephone Mulberry* July 31, 2015 at 11:37 am I applied for a job today! I have a sneaking suspicion that it will end up not paying enough to make me move, but we’ll see. On a related note, I was polishing my resume before submitting it and noticed that I apparently have a thing about August. Every professional job I’ve had since 2001, I’ve left in August. Isn’t that odd?
Formerly The Office Admin, Now Full Time Job Huntress* July 31, 2015 at 12:51 pm Mine is October. Apparently I get antsy at the end of summer?
Elizabeth West* July 31, 2015 at 3:58 pm I seem to have gotten on a winter kick. I got Exjob in December and left six years later in January, then I got this job the following January.
schnapps* July 31, 2015 at 11:38 am Oh I have been waiting for this thread. I’ve mentioned in passing that my direct report manager is a bully. We went through a process where they brought in an external “coach” for her and she had a 4 month period to shape up or ship out. A month in she had done SFA with the program. A week after the one-month follow up meeting where we all called her out on doing SFA (and by “we”, I mean the three of us who brought the complaint, the coach and our department head), she went on medical leave for two months. That was a little over two months ago. Yesterday my department head got a note from HR saying the manager is resigning her position with my local government body. On the outside, I said, “I hope she’s happy and that she feels she made the best decision for her. I just can’t muster up any sadness that she won’t be returning.” On the inside I was doing the Snoopy happy dance because I was so relieved we don’t have to pick this crap back up in the fall.
The IT Manager* July 31, 2015 at 1:24 pm Ummm … Congrats! I’m glad the situation was resolved in a positive manner.
Not So NewReader* August 1, 2015 at 6:57 pm It’s the best possible outcome. Hopefully she will find something better for herself. [I’d be doing a happy dance, also!]
Anie* July 31, 2015 at 11:39 am You would not believe what happened to me this week. Cue rant: New guy started on Tuesday. I wasn’t involved with his interview, but my boss was unexpectedly late that morning so I was stuck with him for a few hours. I have never disliked someone at work so intensely, so immediately. He’s in his mid-late 30s, I’d guess. I’m in my late 20s, but look much younger. He’s a former military man with absolutely no respect for women. Early on, I broke a nail. I made a side comment to a different co-worker about going to get a bandaid for it to, you know, stop the bleeding. This new guy would NOT let it go. The whole day, all day, I get comments from him, generally in a pouty baby-voice, like, “Aww, are you feeling better? Does your nail still hurt? Today is all about YOU!” I regret not being more firm. Instead I brushed him off, or looked at him like he was crazy, or just said “I’m fine” and changed the subject. Here’s the next example of this guy being a douche-bro. I try to be polite. For the most part, when I was training him, I’d say something like, “When you’re done, please put it over here. Thanks,” or “Can you do it this way please? Thank you.” So then, after an hour or two, I said, “Put that here when you’re done.” His response? He slurred, “Yessa masser!” I guess implying that I’m some sort of rude, terrible, slave master? The worst was even though we were around people, no one heard him say it but me! He also said it again later to our (female) boss, but she didn’t hear him either. You want to know the real kicker? He made a joke about me having a big rack. Some dude, his first day, made a joke about a female coworker having big boobs TOO HER FACE. I immediately called him on it, but he denied saying it. I think he feels if he says something semi-softly it doesn’t count, like “master” comments? My boss has already put in a recommendation that he be terminated.
LizB* July 31, 2015 at 11:45 am WOW. I was so relieved to read your last sentence (that your boss is already trying to fire him), because holy crap this guy is incredibly out of line. What a glassbowl.
Elizabeth West* July 31, 2015 at 4:24 pm I know– the whole time I was reading, I was thinking, “REPORT THIS! REPORT THIS!” but then when I got to that, I thought, “Thank goodness!!!”
Sadsack* July 31, 2015 at 11:46 am Wow! I am glad for you that you manager is handling it now. Why does this guy think it’s ok to act like that? I bet he’ll be shocked when he is fired.
voluptuousfire* July 31, 2015 at 11:53 am “Oh, I was just kidding her! She’s too sensitive. Women!” –is what this Broseph will say when he’s fired and his comments come back to bite him in the ass. Could you imagine what he’d do if he was settled in and comfortable? He’d be a walking sexual harassment lawsuit waiting to happen.
Anie* July 31, 2015 at 12:14 pm I know he’ll say this. In his mind, I’ll be a bitch who can’t take a joke. That is EXACTLY how his worldview works.
Not So NewReader* August 1, 2015 at 7:11 pm “Modern thinking is that no, this is not a joke. Just so you are aware, most people would not consider that funny.”
AVP* July 31, 2015 at 11:58 am ohmygod! Burn him with fire. He deserves it. I don’t even know what I would do in that situation…probably just stand there dumbfounded and come up with a witty reply three days later.
PontoonPirate* July 31, 2015 at 12:03 pm Wow. Even though you say people around you didn’t hear it, I think it’s worth documenting in a factual, objective email to your boss all the moments of crass, undiluted, astoundingly awful racist and sexist things he’s said/done.
someone* July 31, 2015 at 2:22 pm +1! definiely document this – your boss might get pushback on terminating someone so quickly, and the documentation will be really critical. be as complete and factual as possible, and don’t be embarrassed by documenting it all – he’s the one that said crazy stuff and acted inappropriately.
Dasha* July 31, 2015 at 12:03 pm Wow, has this guy like never had a normal job where he had to have normal interactions? So inappropriate!
Observer* July 31, 2015 at 3:38 pm I’d love to find out if he really was ex-military, or he lied on his application. I don’t think you can get away with that kind of garbage in the military.
QualityControlFreak* July 31, 2015 at 5:06 pm I’ve known a lot of current and ex-military men (and women) and none of them would ever act like this. I think he’s just a douche.
Charlotte Collins* July 31, 2015 at 5:24 pm Yep. That kind of behavior is insubordination, and they tend to take a dim view of it… But he might be ex-military for a reason. In the US military, if you can’t show yourself as promotable, you do not get to renew your enlistment.
zora* July 31, 2015 at 5:46 pm seriously. My friends who were/are military would have been overjoyed to get rid of him, too. UGH!
Elkay* July 31, 2015 at 12:05 pm Please come back next week with an update! Glad to hear your boss is onside with you.
Anie* July 31, 2015 at 12:18 pm I hope I’ll be able to come back with good news. I’m seeing him again tomorrow (I’ve been out of the office) and I am prepared to be MUCH more firm. Apparently his second day (which I was not there for) also did not go well. My boss called me about it. She asked him to do something a bit basic and he started laughing and rolling his eyes. She asked his about his behavior immediately and he was very upfront that he was too good to do that role. I have no idea where his entitlement is coming from, as he saw both myself and our boss doing this task his first day.
LizB* July 31, 2015 at 12:47 pm Well, yeah, but you and your boss are ~women~! He can’t be expected to do ~girly~ ~female~ tasks, now can he? (Ugh ugh ugh, what a waste of space.)
Ad Astra* July 31, 2015 at 1:27 pm How did he manage to hide this kind of disdain for women during the interview process? I’m stunned.
AMG* July 31, 2015 at 1:41 pm Like PontoonPirate said, start documenting now. Are you going to say something to your manager about what he has said?
OriginalYup* July 31, 2015 at 1:51 pm My jaw is on the floor at this whole story. It’s like a horrendous bingo game for bad coworkers. You’ve already got arrogant, racist, sexist, and stupid. If he eats someone else’s food tomorrow, you win a prize!
Not So NewReader* August 1, 2015 at 7:13 pm Him: “I am too good for this job.” Boss: “You’re right. There’s the door you can leave now and find a job that is good enough for you.”
The Cosmic Avenger* July 31, 2015 at 12:08 pm I’m so happy that management is on to his act. He should take a long walk off of a short pier into shark-infested waters…wearing bacon pants.
The Toxic Avenger* July 31, 2015 at 2:54 pm Yes! Bacon pants! Anie, I’m with Cosmic…it sucks to be stuck with this douchewaffle, but – he is misbehaving and your boss got to see it firsthand. He’ll be gone soon.
Sunshine Brite* July 31, 2015 at 12:32 pm Oh. my. gawd. That’s absurd. I hope that the boss can get rid of him ASAP.
literateliz* July 31, 2015 at 1:05 pm ADJ:KLFJ:’; I can only agree with the person who said BACON PANTS.
Ad Astra* July 31, 2015 at 1:25 pm Oh my god. Obviously the big rack thing is the most outrageous, but the part that actually bugs me the most is the broken nail thing. I hate that “Oh, did you break a nail?” is used essentially to mean “Oh, did the lazy, shallow girl find herself mildly inconvenienced?” because breaking a nail actually does hurt, and frequently involves blood. Why don’t men understand that?
someone* July 31, 2015 at 2:26 pm i’ve worked with a lot of former military officers. most of them adjusted after some time to civilian corporate life, mostly having a hard time dealing with the non-straightforward power realities… only one had trouble with women in power, as far as i could tell (they mostly reported to me (a woman) for 6-10 months). i’m really sorry to hear this one has been such a disappointment! how did he even get hired??
Paige Turner* July 31, 2015 at 5:14 pm WHAT THE WTF. I guess the only good thing is that he started off being a sexist, racist ass right away instead of waiting a bit when it might be harder/ more time-consuming to fire him?
Human Services* July 31, 2015 at 11:41 am Does anyone else work in a direct human/social services role? At my new job, I spent between five and seven hours a day in meetings with clients. I really like my job, and I like spending time directly with clients, but it can be overwhelming/exhausting. And while many clients are nice, a minority are very rude, and that causes me stress. Any tips in general to help take care of myself?
JMegan* July 31, 2015 at 1:54 pm I’m not in a role like this, but a couple of my friends are, and they have to focus a lot on self-care. Not just thinking about it, but prioritizing it, and making it a thing that they do regularly and often. Does your workplace have any sort of EAP or support system for its employees? Surely you’re not the only one dealing with this, so I’d like to think that your employers have a plan to help you out.
NicoleK* July 31, 2015 at 2:03 pm I use to work in direct service in the social service sector. Try to take breaks in between client meetings. Even if it’s a 10 minute break. I try to leave the office for a 15 minute walk around the block/building.
afiendishthingy* July 31, 2015 at 8:42 pm I supervise direct human services staff, and I did direct human services and special education work for about five years. Direct support staff have really hard jobs and their pay doesn’t reflect it, so it’s easy to burn out even when you love the work. Are you one on one with the clients, or in a group setting with colleagues around? If you don’t have much contact with other staff, I’d try to find a way to find someone to debrief with who’s familiar with your work, whether it’s a supervisor, a colleague, or talking to a therapist or using your EAP. It’s really helpful to have someone to process with, just make sure you’re not violating client confidentiality. If you’re struggling with a particular client, please TELL YOUR SUPERVISOR sooner rather than later so they can help you figure it out. Unless they’re terrible people they will not think less of you for needing help, they want to be in the loop, and they don’t want you to burn out, because burnt-out employees have absenteeism issues and are much more likely to make big mistakes or do something unethical that’s going to be bad for the clients and/or the agency. Be very mindful of your boundaries. Try to avoid sharing too much personal stuff about yourself with your clients – among other reasons it helps you realize that when they’re rude to you, they’re not attacking Real You, they’re frustrated with their own situations and the System and you’re basically a stand in for all that. Unless you’re required to be “on call”, don’t answer calls outside of regular work hours. Try really, really hard to keep work at work. Listening to talk radio or podcasts on the commute home or to and from visits helps keep me from obsessing over my client’s problems or the client who treated me rudely. After that debriefing session with your colleague or supervisor, try to objectively take what you learned from a difficult situation to use in the future, and put the rest of it aside. Watch movies, read books, go for walks, make time for yourself. Lastly, recognize that you may not want to stay in a direct service role forever. There were a lot of things I loved about doing direct service, but those five years were PLENTY. Having to be “on” with clients all day is absolutely draining, not to mention the abysmal pay. I went to grad school at night and became a BCBA a year ago. Now I supervise home-based services and spend maybe five to seven hours a week with clients instead of 35. It definitely comes with a lot of its own stress, irritation, and risk of burn-out, but I’m so glad to be in this position. So look around and see if there are other positions in your field you could see yourself moving into that may have less client-facing time, and what you’d have to do to work up to them. In the meantime, take care of yourself. Good luck! Hope this novel-length comment is helpful. At the very least there are reminders for me of all the advice I don’t always follow :)
Sunshine Brite* July 31, 2015 at 10:45 pm All of this! I also try to remind myself that a lot of a time it’s not me, it’s the system. Sometimes the frustrating clients even say that to me as they’re chewing me out for things that are not my fault. Let clients know what’s unacceptable. Sometimes they need a model of positive behavior, it really depends on your role and delivery though
afiendishthingy* August 1, 2015 at 1:31 am Also: recognize that you’re not going to solve all their problems, and for some you won’t solve any, and that is very unlikely to be your fault. Most of the families I work with have so much going against them that if I can make one tiny part of it better that’s a success. Some people aren’t ready to change. I recently said to my supervisor that I was trying to accept the fact that I can’t make things any better for a client in any single home visit, and she responded “No, and sometimes you’ll make things worse.” Sounds depressing but it was comforting for me, just that acknowledgement that I am not in fact Annie Sullivan the Effing Miracle Worker. “Things getting worse” temporarily is often an important part of change, because progress isn’t usually linear.
ModernHypatia* August 1, 2015 at 8:41 am Librarian, but some jobs I’ve had have been very ‘helping people all the time’ sorts of jobs. Besides the other good tips, one I’ve found really helpful is having a clear routine that separates ‘work’ from ‘home’ – stuff I do on the commute that’s different than work, and I often have my bath right when I get home. The separation makes it much easier to leave the complex social dealing with people at work, and helps keep me from going “I could have done X better” all night at home.
Not So NewReader* August 1, 2015 at 8:24 pm I did direct care for years. Everyone here has excellent advice, including realizing that these jobs are probably finite. There will come a time to leave. If the rude people are stressing you out, please take a look at your boundaries. Make sure you are setting boundaries at the earliest possible point into the behaviors. Escalation is never good. Be consistent about your boundaries. This means never being tired or having an off-day. What I did was target behaviors that I could commit to following up on. For example, screaming FU at me was never, ever acceptable. Make sure you know what recourse you have when the client exhibits an undesirable behavior. Get together with other people who serve the same client and ask them how things are going and what they are seeing. This is important, don’t skip this step. Some folks have lots and lots of problems. Don’t allow yourself to be working alone on these things, it’s too much for anyone person, talk with other people.
Hlyssande* July 31, 2015 at 11:41 am I have to give a 20 minutes presentation to my group’s new VP next Wednesday and I’m really struggling with it. He just wants to know what we do day to day and he’s an extremely laid back and awesome guy, but 20 minutes of talking about myself and what I do is seriously daunting. I’ve put together powerpoints in groups before for other presentations, but I haven’t done one myself since 2004 and it was only the once. I’ve been completely comfortable giving other presentations and training via conference calls, but this is somehow different. I’m sure I will get it done and it will be fine. This is just majorly nerve-wracking and triggering my tendency to procrastinate on things that make me anxious. I have scheduled out time today, Monday, and Tuesday to work on it.
OriginalYup* July 31, 2015 at 1:20 pm If it helps, change “I have to present to the VP” to “I need to explain what we do to a new employee.” Pretend you’re putting something together to help the new Junior Teapot Associate understand what the Global Teapots Division does. It might help you be less nervous, and also approach concepts in way you already feel comfortable talking about.
someone* July 31, 2015 at 2:35 pm i second originalyup’s advice, and would add to think about the various activities you/your group does, organize them into categories, add detail on who the stakeholders are upstream and downstream, and the benefits each provides to the stakeholders. it might help your procrastination ( i have the same for tasks which i think are “really big”) to break down the content in notes first and then build the slides, i.e. make the task less big.
LizB* July 31, 2015 at 11:42 am Anyone have experience with a non-typical schedule? I had an interview yesterday for a position that I think I’d really like. My one hesitation is that the schedule would be Friday-Tuesday 2pm-11pm. I’ve thought a lot about it, made my pros&cons list, and I think I could make it work, but I know it would be a big adjustment. I’ve love to hear from anyone who’s worked these kinds of hours. How did it affect your life? What surprised you about working this kind of schedule? What issues did you run into that you hadn’t anticipated? (I also had an interview today for a position with “normal” hours that also went well, but their hiring timeline is much longer, so if I get offered this first position I’m going to have to make a decision on it.)
Anon the Great and Powerful* July 31, 2015 at 11:51 am I love that type of schedule. Having your “weekend” on Wednesday and Thursday is awesome because nowhere is busy. Small lines at the grocery store, fewer tourists at fun local places, super easy to go to the doctor/dentist/post office/other 9-5 places. Oh and no more rush hour traffic.
LizB* July 31, 2015 at 11:59 am Yeah, I put that on my “pro” list — never having to scramble to get to the bank or the doctor around your work hours.
MT* July 31, 2015 at 11:51 am I would look at your social life outside of work. If the majority of events are currently happening during this time frame, it will be an issue. You tell yourself that event time will change due to your schedule, but they prob wont. 2pm to 11pm is a rough schedule.
LizB* July 31, 2015 at 12:00 pm I’ve thought about that, and there really aren’t that many events going on during those hours. I would probably miss out on a few parties, but I’m not a huge partier, and most of my friends would be just as happy to meet up for brunch as for dinner. It would definitely be an adjustment, though.
Anonasaurus Rex* July 31, 2015 at 12:00 pm As long as you don’t have kids or pets that need looking after in the evening (or your significant other is okay with being on their own for the whole evening with them) and you don’t mind watching all your favorite TV shows on demand or off a DVR, it’s not a bad schedule. It gives you tons of free time during the day during the week so you can actually go places like the DMV and the bank that have terrible hours for day shift workers, and the stores are less busy. But, my husband did that for 2 months, from when our daughter was 7 to 9 months old. It was horrible. I’d pick up the kid from the sitter, come home from work and basically feel like I never stopped working because there was no one to help me with anything. I was worn out and getting depressed so he had to stop even though it was good pay with the shift diff and the OT he’d inevitably get when they had to stay late a couple nights a week. He’d also still have to do his weekend rotation so sometimes he wouldn’t really be home for a stretch of 6 to 7 days.
LizB* July 31, 2015 at 12:04 pm Thank you for sharing your experience. I don’t have kids or pets, my boyfriend is okay with having evenings to himself, and I watch all my TV on Netflix or the internet anyway. I’ll keep the challenges in mind if I happen to be working this schedule when I start thinking about kids, though.
Anonasaurus Rex* July 31, 2015 at 12:29 pm Then it sounds like it could be a perfect shift for you, and if you get shift diff that’s even better. Just make sure if you ever go off that kind of shift that you factor in the loss of any shift diff.
Gwen* July 31, 2015 at 12:24 pm I worked second shift over a summer while I was in college, and I reallyyyy disliked it. I never properly adjusted to it and always felt like my entire day was wasted. To be fair, it was also a much more physical job than I was used to (I walked almost constantly for the whole shift), so I was always exhausted.
LizB* July 31, 2015 at 12:49 pm That’s a good thing to keep in mind. This job would definitely take a lot of energy, so I’ll have to make sure I get enough sleep.
LCL* July 31, 2015 at 12:32 pm Swing shift can be awesome. Good points are being able to stay up late, sleep in, and run errands and go to the gym and parks without dealing with crowds. The bad comes when you have to interact with other people. You have to be very assertive about setting up your appointments and commitments so they don’t interfere with your sleep time. The schedule you will be working looks particularly brutal because it is swing shift every weekend and non rotating. I think you should take the job and work it for awhile so you can experience it for yourself. Eventually you will get sick of working every weekend, and either work with your company to adjust your schedule or else find another job.
LizB* July 31, 2015 at 12:52 pm Good to know about setting boundaries with people — I’ll keep that in mind. I’ve thought about taking it and then trying to negotiate a switch if I hate it; there’s also some room for growth (they’re going to be adding another middle level of management soon, and said I would be a good candidate for that position), so it may be possible to move around.
AnotherFed* July 31, 2015 at 12:45 pm I love hours like that – I hate hate hate mornings, so it’s nice to be able to sleep in, get any errands dealt with, and then go in to work. The downside is that having those hours on weekends mean you’re probably limited to lunch social events with people. It can be a real drag if your spouse/SO is working normal M-F day shift – there’s not much time to overlap.
LizB* July 31, 2015 at 12:54 pm Yeah, the non-overlapping with my boyfriend is the thing I’m most concerned about, but he thinks we can make it work. We mostly saw each other on the weekends for the past two years, but we’ve just moved in together, so I’ll definitely see him in the evenings (he stays up late) and weekend mornings. It’ll be an interesting challenge, that’s for sure!
Arjay* July 31, 2015 at 3:56 pm Tagging onto this, if you guys ever want to go away for a “weekend” or whatever, it sounds like one of you will have to take PTO for whichever days you select. Manageable in many cases, but something to be aware of.
LizB* July 31, 2015 at 12:55 pm …and this just became a much more urgent question, because they just called to offer me the job! :D :D :D :D I have until Monday to look over the benefits package and decide. I’m so excited!
Ordinary Worker* July 31, 2015 at 1:03 pm From my experience (2+ years working 4pm to 12:30am) the biggest adjustment is enjoying your morning and then realizing that you have to go in to work at 2pm. It can make the time off seem very short at times. There were days we were enjoying a nice day with the family and then at 3:00 I realized, Oh yea, now I have to go work for 8 hours. It can be a shock even though you know it’s there. Sounds from what you’re saying that it could work well for you though!
LizB* July 31, 2015 at 1:05 pm That’s a really good point. You kind of have to rearrange your concept of work hours vs. free hours — I’m so used to work hours in the morning and free hours in the afternoon that this would definitely be a big change.
Ordinary Worker* July 31, 2015 at 1:15 pm Exactly that. Most of us are used to getting up in the morning and heading right to work it’s a shock to reverse that.
Charlotte Collins* July 31, 2015 at 5:33 pm I loved it when I did it while training PT evening employees. I’m a night owl, so it worked for me. And I prefer to do my errands/chores in the morning, anyway. The best part is that you get errands done much more quickly when you are going to businesses during their slow time (it’s pretty much you, retirees, and people with young children out and about). But I definitely agree that you have to prioritize your time so that you can judge when it’s time to leave wherever you are for work. (If I had a lot of errands to run, I made sure I had everything I would need at work with me in case I wasn’t going to get home before work.) Also, I highly recommend getting your dinner all ready in the morning/early afternoon to just throw in the oven or microwave when you get home. You will not feel like cooking when you get home. Unless you decide to completely change your sleeping schedule and get up at noon. :) This is possible, but it makes it harder to adjust to a “regular” schedule on your days off. Also, you really want to get your sunlight exposure in before work, as the sun will be down when you get home, and you will miss it!
cardiganed librarian* July 31, 2015 at 1:20 pm Yes, I hate those shifts for that reason! I liked doing them once or twice a week, because I could run errands in the morning, but I never felt like there was time to do much more than run some errands – it wasn’t at all the same as having an evening off. If you’re more of a night owl than me and can adjust your schedule so you have some time off in the evening and can enjoy sleeping in in the morning, it might work better.
AVP* July 31, 2015 at 1:17 pm I had this schedule for awhile when I was freelancing and ended up on a project that needed round-the-clock coverage. I liked it at the time but it did take a toll on my social life – on the other hand, I knew it was a temporary situation so I didn’t mind it. The only unexpected con for me was FOOD. I could not figure out a normal eating schedule, the only restaurants open during my “lunch” period were junk, and I had a hard time cooking because I had roommates and making noise super early in the morning seemed rude. Unexpected pro was being in the office when no one else was there, so I could just do my work, finish it, and leave, without getting sucked into a mot of meetings or face-time or having someone dump more work on me when I was about to leave. Also, going to a 24-hour gym at 1am after work was awesome.
LizB* July 31, 2015 at 1:24 pm Ooh, good to know. I would definitely be eating dinner at work, but I’ll have to think about how to do other meals. This is a client-facing position, so I won’t be alone in the office, but I’m definitely looking forward to morning gym time! I hate going in the afternoon.
Anx* July 31, 2015 at 1:17 pm I’ve worked similar positions and I wasn’t too thrilled about the hours. It made it very difficult see people as I could never visit them on weekends and they could never visit me. Also, weddings, baby showers, funerals become much more difficult to attend. It probably won’t be as bad if you’re paid minimum wage or more because you aren’t taking the pay hit that a bartender or server would (where 80% of your weekly pay comes from weekend work, taking a weekend off is almost akin to taking the week off pay wise) I have Fridays off now and I love it because it’s awesome. I mean, I would much rather have the hours or be full-time, but if I’m going to be part-time, it’s awesome to have a proper weekend plus a bonus banks-are-open day off.
LizB* July 31, 2015 at 1:27 pm I’m paid a decent wage, and given pretty generous PTO, from the looks of it, so I think if I have a wedding/baby shower/etc. to go to it’ll be okay to take it off. (Also, I’m still young enough that most of my friends aren’t getting married or having babies quite yet. Soon, though, I’m sure!) I think this may be one of those things where you have to start doing it to figure out how you’re really going to react.
Charlotte Collins* July 31, 2015 at 5:37 pm My dad worked nights when I was a kid, so I think schedules like this don’t seem as odd to me. It actually helped with childcare. Both my parents worked, and they didn’t have to worry about daycare (not easily available in my area when I was a kid, anyway), since someone was home during the day in the summers and when a kid had to stay home sick or because school was closed. Also, we had a closer relationship with our father than many of our classmates did.
Anon the Great and Powerful* July 31, 2015 at 2:00 pm “Also, weddings, baby showers, funerals become much more difficult to attend.” This can be a good thing! My work schedule has gotten me out of so many social events that I didn’t want to go to.
Ad Astra* July 31, 2015 at 1:56 pm I worked a very similar schedule for about 2.5 years after college. Same days, but the hours were more like 3:30-12:30 or 4-1. Advantages 1. I got really good at fitting my workout in before my shift because it meant I only had to wake up by 10 or 11 a.m. 2. You can schedule appointments on Wednesdays and Thursdays, so you never have to use PTO for a check-up 3. I managed to get 8 hours of sleep most nights just by forcing myself to go to bed by 3 a.m. 4. You’ll be doing stuff like grocery shopping at working out either during most people’s workday or late at night, so you can avoid the crowds. 5. This schedule is also great if you’re into stuff like golf, where it’s cheaper to do it during the week. Wednesday and Thursday night drink specials tend to be better than Friday and Saturday night specials. Live music venues typically have a lower cover on weeknights. Air travel is less expensive when you leave on a Wednesday. Disadvantages 1. You wind up using a lot of your vacation days on normal Saturday things like weddings, baby showers, beach days with your friends, etc. After a while, I started really resenting this. 2. You won’t be able to get much done after work, so you’ll have to be disciplined about doing everything before you go in. If you live in a city that has 24-hour grocery stores and pharmacies, you’ll be better off. 3. Your schedule won’t match most people’s schedules. How big a problem this is depends on what’s happening in your personal life. Will your friends want to hang out on a Wednesday night? Are you ok with not tailgating on Saturdays in the fall? Do you have a spouse or significant other who works 9-5? 4. Depending on the laws in your area, the liquor store may be closed when you get off work. Parking in popular bar areas will also be a little more challenging if you want to meet your friends out. 5. Holidays that fall on a Monday will just interrupt your week instead of giving you a 3-day weekend (disregard if this is a job where you work holidays and then take an extra day off to compensate). Overall, I liked this schedule, but it stopped working for me when I started planning my wedding and needed to align my scheduled with my fiance’s. Think hard about how your lifestyle would fit into this schedule. And definitely consider the late night convenience and entertainment options in your location. It works better in Chicago than it does in, say, rural Minnesota.
Ad Astra* July 31, 2015 at 1:56 pm Oh gosh, I didn’t realize how long this was until after I hit submit.
LizB* July 31, 2015 at 7:45 pm Thank you for this comprehensive comment! I had thought of some of these, but other ones I hadn’t come up with. It’s funny that you use Chicago vs. rural MN as your example, because I live in Minneapolis; my closest grocery store is 24-hour, so that won’t be a problem. Hadn’t thought about the liquor stores, though… I’ll have to make sure I go in before my shift, since they close at 8 most evenings!
Anonymousterical* July 31, 2015 at 5:05 pm I’ve worked 1-10p and 2-11p for three years, with my days off being Tuesday and Thursday; went to a traditional schedule for 4 years at another company; and then worked 12-10p for four months then 1p-1a for seven months at yet another company, with my days off rotating to different days every week. And now I’m back to a traditional, 8-5p, weekends off job, very happily. It’s nice to have weekdays off to get appointments in (vet, bank, doctor, etc), and it’s nice to have less crowds, but, after a while, for me, I became more and more bitter about missing the world. Because the world is set up to accommodate a traditional schedule. Festivals, fireworks, parades, community events–everything is geared toward a traditional schedule, not a swing shift where you’re at work all afternoon and all night every weekend. I never saw my husband — a little bit here and there in the morning or at night and maybe one day a week was not feasible, even though we thought it would be. I missed out on weddings, cookouts, get-togethers, and Christmas parties — a lot of fun things with friends. And these are all things that happen much, much more often than a dentist visit, a doctor visit, and a vet appointment. Congrats on the offer, but go in with your eyes open and complete honesty with yourself. This schedule can really work for some people.
LizB* July 31, 2015 at 7:49 pm This is a good perspective to hear. My boyfriend and I are both very aware that we’re going to need to find ways to spend time together, since it won’t be built into my schedule. I’m definitely going into it from the perspective of, this is going to be a big challenge, and if it doesn’t work for me I can start job searching again. (I haven’t done any job-hopping, so it wouldn’t be a huge deal to bail after 6 months if I really couldn’t handle it, and I think employers would probably understand.) Thank you for sharing!
NZ Muse* July 31, 2015 at 10:36 pm I’ve worked Wed-Sun, shifts starting at 12 noon or 10am. Honestly, it got old fast.
ModernHypatia* August 1, 2015 at 8:50 am I worked two sets of weird schedules (1:30-11 M-T, 5:30-11 Sunday, one about 11-8 M-Thurs, and 11-5 Sunday) in the previous year. I am not naturally a morning person, so that was great. And being able to do errands and things was also great. But the meal timing was weird, definitely (and it got weird when I tried to do errands) and I also found it had a big impact on the kinds of projects I’d normally do for 2-3 hours after work. In the mornings, even when I had the time, I’d often feel like I didn’t want to pick them up, because I’d have to get ready to go to work in a bit and even though I had about the same amount of time free, it didn’t feel the same. What I ended up doing was coming home, having dinner, and then staying up late enough to get that time after (going to bed around 1:30 when I was working until 11), which when I was working until 11 sort of mitigated having much time free time in the morning for things that need to happen when stores/offices were open.
Not So NewReader* August 1, 2015 at 8:37 pm I did a 2-11, M-F for a while. The pay was good, the people were nice and the work was not hard. I hated it. The number one reason was because everyone else in my life lived on the other end of the clock. It felt like all I did was sleep/work, sleep/work. I am more introverted than extroverted and at that time, I was more so than I am now. It surprised me to see how much I did not like being unable to see family and friends because of conflicting work schedules.
ZSD* July 31, 2015 at 11:42 am I’m frustrated at the lack of security at my new job. -None of our office doors have locks. -There is nothing *in* my office that locks. There’s a filing cabinet that has a lock, but I don’t have the key. So I have nowhere to secure my purse while I’m away from my office. -My first paycheck was given to me on paper, yesterday. Since I didn’t want to carry it around the city – or leave it unlocked in my office – I immediately went to my bank to deposit it. They couldn’t take it because the check was post-dated to today! I went back to the head of HR and asked her to lock up the check for me until today, but she said she couldn’t do that because she’d be out today. I told her she should have either had one of her employees give me the check on Friday or have the check dated for 7/30. She said the paychecks have to come from the person in charge of payroll, and they can’t date a check for other than the official payday. I ended up having my husband take the train down to get the check from me and then take it home to our place so that I wouldn’t be dragging it around a dangerous city all day. But none of that would have been necessary if there were just something that locked in my office!
Anie* July 31, 2015 at 12:11 pm This sounds like a personal problem. Nothing in my office locks. Heck, I just got back from a meeting and realized I’d left my new iPhone 6 Plus on my desk. Have the people there given you a reason not to trust them? Maybe you could invest in a small lock box for your office?
Spiky Plant* July 31, 2015 at 1:11 pm This is what I’m thinking. I’ve never felt the need to lock anything up, and I’m unclear on why you can’t carry a check on your person for a day? Does your office have some kind of rampant theft problem?
Molly* July 31, 2015 at 12:25 pm None of the offices at my company have locking doors, and most people don’t lock their cabinets. Actually about 80% of our work force is in cube farms and nobody locks their cabinets. This has always just seemed normal to me. Do you have a bad problem with theft where you work? I would think that just putting your purse and/or the check in a closed file cabinet would be pretty safe, unless you have some reason to believe this office has been experiencing theft. Or maybe there was a big theft problem at your last job? I’m afraid if someone came to me with this concern in our office I think I’d find it a bit weird/security obsessed. The only time I ever worry about putting stuff in a drawer at work is when I bring my personal laptop; then I mostly just make sure it’s out of sight. But maybe I’m too *relaxed* about security!
ZSD* July 31, 2015 at 12:48 pm I’m honestly less concerned about my purse and more about paperwork with PII on it. In my first week, they gave me official paperwork to fill out, which of course ended up having my and my husband’s SSNs on it, and then when I went to turn it in, all the HR people were already gone for the day. Of course I didn’t want to leave paperwork with SSNs on it sitting out in an unlocked room, so I ended up taking it home and then bringing it in again the next day, which was a pain. Also, my office has no drawers whatsoever. The filing cabinet is the kind with hanging files, not drawers, and my desk has no drawers. So I can’t even stick things out of sight. The HR people don’t seem to understand why it might be nice to have a desk where I didn’t have to keep my pens, scissors, staple remover, Wite-Out, post-its, and paperclips on top of my desk.
Molly* July 31, 2015 at 1:00 pm I suggest the same solution for checks and paper work with personal identity info – tuck it in a file folder and bring it with you. Everybody in my office carries files or notebooks or something to meetings, even lunch, so it would look totally normal. For your purse, you might consider swapping to a bag that will accommodate the folder with your personal id info in it. Nothing huge like a beach bag, but just something you can stuff folders in. Carrying that around with you would not look at all out of place in most offices.
Amtelope* July 31, 2015 at 1:32 pm I suggest a desk organizer for your office supplies, a briefcase or file box (locking, if you really want) for papers that you don’t want on public view, and a hook for the underside of your desk so that you can hang your purse out of sight. Really, unless your office has a known problem with theft, that should be all you need.
AnotherFed* July 31, 2015 at 12:54 pm Echoing this – is there a reason to believe that your office has a theft problem? Even if you’re uncomfortable leaving your purse, can you just bring it with you with the check tucked away? Unless you look super uncomfortable, it’s unlikely that anyone is going to be more suspicious that you have a paycheck or other valuables in the purse than they would have been before unless you work at a large company widely known to pay people on Thursdays without direct deposit…
CMT* July 31, 2015 at 12:54 pm I’m curious about why you’re so concerned about the security of a paper check?
Amtelope* July 31, 2015 at 1:28 pm +1 That’s hard for me to understand — if by some chance the check were stolen, your employer would stop payment on it and issue you a new one. That would be inconvenient, but not worth worrying excessively over the small chance that a check might be stolen from your purse in your office.
ZSD* July 31, 2015 at 2:42 pm It’s just weird to be carrying around a document worth over $2k. Yes, I wrote, “For Deposit Only,” on the back of it, but still. I’ve lived in this city for less than a month, and in that time, one person has been stabbed to death on the metro, and another was shot to death in a metro parking lot. At least for the stabbing case, it originally started when the eventual murderer tried to rob the victim. This is just a much more dangerous city than I recently moved from, and I don’t like the idea of carrying around something that valuable.
University Girl* July 31, 2015 at 3:03 pm If that’s the case I’d be more comfortable leaving the document at work then taking it home
bridget* July 31, 2015 at 3:18 pm Unless you endorsed it already (which one generally shouldn’t do to a check until the moment of depositing it), it isn’t any more dangerous to carry around than any other piece of paper that may or may not be valuable to some people. You’d need ID to cash or deposit it, and if it was missing before you had that chance, you’d just tell the company to stop payment and issue you a new one. Holding it does not increase your chances of being mugged in the metro. I don’t want to discount your fear, but I think you may be overestimating the amount of personal danger you are in, perhaps because you are used to other cities. Unless you live and work in a bad neighborhood of some city with an absurdly high murder rate … two acts of violence in a city in one month is not alarmingly high, honestly. I live in a very safe smallish city and have never felt in any danger, and if there were only two deadly acts of crime in my city in a month, I would think it’s pretty light. Unless you plan to move to Mayberry, one just has to get familiar with which places of the city are unsafe and when, and plan your life accordingly. I know that can be daunting when you are new to an area.
Nashira* July 31, 2015 at 3:59 pm I live in a small Midwestern capital city and we’ve had three shootings this week. Based off that, one might assume it’s dangerous, but… That’s in the news because it’s weird. Not because it’s normal.
Anonsie* July 31, 2015 at 4:39 pm It’s not worth over $2k without your signature and your banking information. Without you, it’s just paper. No one robs people for checks– and that’s why you can send them in the mail, too.
BlueSunday* July 31, 2015 at 5:10 pm I know what city you are referring to. As a local to this city, I’d like to gently suggest that you are over estimating how dangerous this city is. It is a relatively safe city to live in and work in. Like any large city, there are going to be scary incidents, but for the most part, they are few and far between. Frankly, I was shocked by both of those murders, and I think they got a lot of media coverage because things like that don’t happen here. So, to summarize, my advice is, please consider that your reaction may be disproportionate to your actual safety.
zora* July 31, 2015 at 5:59 pm I think you are misunderstanding how checks work. I have carried checks around in my wallet for up to a week before getting a chance to deposit them. Don’t ever write anything in the endorsement area until you are actually at the bank depositing it, but as long as it’s blank, it really is not that easy for just anyone to take the money. And even if someone uses your check to get your routing number and account number, they really can’t do anything with that info except to deposit money INTO your account, and if they want to do that, I’m fine with it. ;o)
Marcela* July 31, 2015 at 3:19 pm Well, I do worry like a crazy person, as my boss would say, about checks. I do not know if they are easy to forge, or how easy is to cancel one, or anything, but my gut feeling is that they are very dangerous, an open door to my bank account :D And the feeling is the same when the check is not mine. It feels like a time bomb, it I wait an extra second to deposit it, it’s going to explode, i.e. the money will disappear. Hehehe, I know I’m weird about it, and I was so happy when ai discovered that in Spain nobody use checks… only to discover that in the US I have to use them because that’s how my landlord wants to get the rent :(
Clever Name* July 31, 2015 at 4:08 pm What about setting up direct deposit so you don’t have to worry about a paper check? As to where to keep your purse during the day, what do your female coworkers do? The only office where I locked my door (or even had a door that locked) was when I worked in an airport and my office was accessible to the public. Granted, it was tucked away where I’m sure no passengers ever ventured, but they could technically get up there. So we locked the door when we left.
BRR* July 31, 2015 at 5:40 pm If you can’t do direct deposit could you mobile deposit it? I’d see if theft was a big problem in your office. Everywhere I have worked never had locked offices, drawers, or cabinets. I know that’s not representative of everybody’s office but I’d evaluate.
Sophia in the DMV* August 1, 2015 at 4:02 pm Yes, this. If you have a smart phone and bank with a major bank, you can deposit the check via your phone. It’s actually quite simple
Not So NewReader* August 1, 2015 at 8:57 pm Several things: If you feel this strongly about it, why not bring in a cabinet that locks? Ask people what the deal is on no locks anywhere. Get a belt that you can wear under you clothes. Don’t they have ankle wallets, too? I hate saying this but a lot of safety boils down to planning, keeping a watchful eye, and looking like you know where you are going, even if you don’t. Be deliberate with each step. Keep your cell handy. I grew up in an area that was relatively safe. One night when I was twelve, I caught two guys trying to break into the house. Fortunately, my 135 pound dog had a woof that sounded like a base drum. It went right through you and made your hair stand on end. I learned something about the importance of presence of mind, being cognizant of where you are and what is going on. I always say, if I am worried about something I just made a commitment to me to find ways to mitigate that worry. Commit to finding ways to keep yourself safe.
A Minion* July 31, 2015 at 11:43 am I’m still new to management and, fortunately, I only have one direct report and two with duties that fall within my department so I have partial oversight of them. So far I haven’t had to have any really uncomfortable conversations, but I know that part of managing is sometimes having to confront someone or be very direct. The problem is that I have a serious aversion to conflict and find myself trying to avoid it at all costs. I’ve always been this way and I experience overwhelming anxiety when I even think about having to have a direct conversation that I believe will upset another person or will make them angry at me, etc. Has anyone else experienced this level of conflict aversion, (seriously, I’ve been a doormat all my life in my personal life and even in my professional life because I can’t seem to say what’s on my mind unless I’ve been pushed beyond a certain point and by then I can be very emotional), and, if so, what have you done to counteract this when you have to have a very direct or uncomfortable conversation? How do you cope with it, day to day? Do you have any strategies that won’t leave me curled up in the fetal position breathing into a brown paper bag? I really want to be a good manager and I can’t if I let this continue.
Christy* July 31, 2015 at 11:53 am Do you actually want to be a manager? I’m not a manager, but I would probably address the doormat thing in general with a therapist. My anxiety therapist was life-changing. Even this week, when I was feeling some anxiety and was thinking about making an appointment, I instead thought about what she’d tell me to do, and I did that instead. It took about 18 months but it’s been great. I haven’t seen her since April.
Katie the Fed* July 31, 2015 at 12:07 pm Honestly, if you have that strong of an aversion to conflict, you’re in the wrong job. YOu shouldn’t have too much conflict as a manager but there are definitely times you need to just pony up and have a really hard conversation. It’s not fun – I dread it and lose sleep in the lead up, but you’re not doing your job if you avoid conflict or difficult conversations. You might want to work with a therapist on this. I think it would help you in life in general. I’m more confident in general since I became a manager – I actually CAN do this! If you don’t think you can get there, I’d recommend you tell your boss you don’t want to manage. It’s better to be self-aware now than to screw up later.
zora* July 31, 2015 at 6:02 pm side note: I love your use of ‘pony up’ and i’m going to steal it. ;o) I’ve been using “woman up” instead of “man up”, but a non-gender version is even better.
afiendishthingy* July 31, 2015 at 7:28 pm Minion, my personal opinion is you should DEFINITELY seek treatment for anxiety, especially if you’re committed remaining a manager. I’ve struggled with it my whole life and, while it’s still a constant in my life, I’m able to function so much better in my personal and professional life thanks to therapy and (sometimes) medication. There’s no cure, but there’s definitely hope of improvement. I’ve been in my first management position for a year. My position (not quite social work but similar) also sometimes requires me to have frank conversations with parents about how they may be contributing their children’s challenges, how their house needs to be just a little cleaner when staff are present, how I don’t see their child making progress if the parent doesn’t get counseling for herself. I’m nervous before any of those conversations or any tough conversations with staff. But I agree with Katie the Fed, I am getting more confident in general the more tough conversations I get through at work. It is hard but it’s kind of liberating to say something painful but true, especially when it works and actually helps your employee, your team, your client, whatever. Good luck!
The IT Manager* July 31, 2015 at 1:42 pm I think you can be a good manager despite a natural aversion to conflict. I struggle with that part of management too though not as badly as it sounds you do. I just try to psych myself up by telling myself that the uncomfortable conversation now is better than letting things so. It usually is. Telling them that they’re messing up now gives them a chance to improve before things get so bad that they need to be fired for example.
Billybob* July 31, 2015 at 2:58 pm I didn’t/don’t have that level of anxiety, but I can tell you it does get better with experience. What you can do to feel more comfortable: 1) Make sure you know the job (all the technical details, not just the managerial tasks.) This way you can tell if the person you’re talking to is trying to string you along. 2) Make a script, or bullet points with details of supporting evidence, so that you don’t have to memorize everything. Practice it like you would a speech. When the time comes, you probably won’t even look at the paper. And if you do, no one will notice because it’s natural to consult notes during a meeting. 3) This depends on who it is you need to confront and your actual level of influence in the organization, but my next advice is to not assume that you’ll actually get in a fight. Don’t forget that you are a manager, and that there is power in being right. Once I had to make a speech to my team (mainly targeting one specific guy who was badmouthing me to other people in my organization), I had my speech written out word for word in front of me, I felt like I was shaking and could even hear my voice quavering while I addressed everyone, to tell them that if they have a problem, they bring it to me so that we can resolve it. Well, the guy in question (a former Marine as he always liked to remind us) looked like he was going to die, and didn’t open his mouth for the entire meeting. 4) Realize that you don’t have to engage in a debate on the spot. Some people are big debaters, and can spin words around you. If they say something you didn’t realize, note it down so that you can think about it without the pressure. Never try to debate them at their level/speed; you’ll probably lose. And again, remember you’re the manager. You don’t have to make a decision on the spot; if you need to revisit, tell that person you will schedule a follow up to discuss. There will be situations where it’s best to respond immediately and ruthlessly, but you can slowly work up to that. Hope this helps! Hope this helps!
NicoleK* July 31, 2015 at 3:13 pm Try to find a mentor with management experience in your field. Or pay a consultant to work with you. It was very helpful for me to work with a consultant my first year in management.
Nashira* July 31, 2015 at 4:30 pm Have you considered working with a therapist on better tools for managing your conflict anxiety, so it doesn’t overwhelm you? It can be very helpful.
Not So NewReader* August 1, 2015 at 9:05 pm Agreeing with everyone here. OP, if you avoid conflict with your subordinates you will have worse problems than you ever imaged. Figure out what it is about conflict that makes you go to extremes to avoid it. It could be that you don’t have the confidence to believe that someone would listen to you. It could be that you do not know what words to use. Maybe you think that any rebuttal you come up with won’t carry any weight. FWIW, I don’t think a good manager needs to actually argue that much. People discuss the pros and cons of something- but that is not true arguing. But there are times where managers need to make tough decisions. Are you actually avoiding tough decisions? Don’t answer here, I am just throwing out stuff to think about.
Billybob* August 3, 2015 at 4:42 pm Yes, I definitely agree that making decisions is also very important. It doesn’t even have to be tough ones. If you are too afraid to express what you prefer for day-to-day operations (you don’t even have to be conflict-avoidant to suffer from this. Many people don’t want to take any responsibility in case something doesn’t work out), then no one is going to get anything done either.
Nonnymousie* July 31, 2015 at 11:44 am More of a vent than a request for advice, but if anyone has any of the latter, I’ll take it. A few months ago, Big Boss asks me to put together a write-up on all our organization’s projects and services for prospective clients and partners. She stresses that it should be comprehensive. Okay, sez I, and write the draft. Not comprehensive enough. I get feedback from all the project directors, try to wrangle it into something resembling a coherent document, and send it back for further input. She makes some minimal changes and declares it good to go. I continue to offer her the chance to review customized variations on it we send out. She approves these as well, or just says she doesn’t need to see them. Flash forward to this week. Suddenly, Big Boss hates the document. Can’t believe we’ve been sending this out to people. I ask her for feedback on what she wants changed: page limit, cut certain sections, go back to the drawing board? Nope. Apparently I can’t be trusted with it any more. She hands it off to the Chief of Staff, who also declares himself disgusted with it (despite having seen those same earlier versions), and now I’m even being cut out of conversations relating to what we do with it when it’s finalized. This isn’t the first time she’s made a 180 degree turnaround in opinion, and I don’t plan to stick around for the next one if I can help it. At this point, I wouldn’t even mind being summarily dismissed, if not for the impact it’d have on my immediate boss. But for the love of the Chicago Manual of Style, I wish she’d at least acknowledge when she’s gone back on her original vision and give me a chance to make it better without having to read her mind to do it.
OriginalYup* July 31, 2015 at 1:36 pm That’s so frustrating. I’ve been in your shoes a lot lately and it often makes me want to scream, “USE YOUR WORDS.” I don’t have a lot of advice for handling it other than to wait for the final product to see what they come up with. – If it’s pretty close to what you did, you can mentally roll your eyes at them. – If it actually is very different and yet pretty good, you can chalk it up to bad management and try to retro-assess what they wanted, so you know for future when they burble about “wrong bad hate you are terrible fix this” that it’s code for “please add more details on technical specs.” – If it’s very different and yet very bad, you can reassure yourself you’re perfectly fine because honestly, how you would ever have known to produce this cr@p?
Sammie* July 31, 2015 at 7:55 pm I used to deal with this all the time. It sucks when management only knows what they don’t want—but can’t tell you what they want. The twit I report to now is KING of this. Sorry!
Sadsack* July 31, 2015 at 11:44 am Wow! I am glad for you that you manager is handling it now. Why does this guy think it’s ok to act like that? I bet he’ll be shocked when he is fired.
afiendishthingy* July 31, 2015 at 11:45 am Managers, want to share firing stories? I fired someone for the first time yesterday. Staff claimed I had always had it in for her (my coworker hired her to work with one of my clients without consulting me, I never would have even given her an interview based on her awful application materials, so it’s true I never thought she was a good fit) and that I “set her up” when I caught her doing Against Policy Thing two days after we wrote her up for doing Against Policy Thing. I known she brought it on herself, and I’m relieved to be able to move on, but it definitely doesn’t feel great. I’d especially like to hear how you dealt with emotional reactions, both the terminated employee’s and your own (I was professional in the meeting and said “I’m sorry you feel that way,” but I was a bit of a wreck afterwards).
AVP* July 31, 2015 at 1:33 pm Hmm. I was in somewhat of a similar situation a few years ago although I didn’t do the actual firing. [My boss hired someone to report to me who was flat-out terrible, never would have gotten an interview in a normal company, and was just really unreliable. She also appealed to him under the guise that I’d had it in for her for no reason, was setting her up to fail, etc.] Honestly – the best thing that happened was that, after she got fired, time passed. We hired someone great to do her job, and the people around me could see what that position looked like when someone great was doing it. It took some time but I think everyone eventually realized that I hadn’t been exaggerating, particularly when they finally got access to her files and realized that longer-lead projects she had been working on for them were in disastrous states. Six months later, we got a call to be a reference for her and it was discovered that she’d lied about dates on her new application – these things come out eventually. As for the emotional reactions – I was thankfully not in the firing meeting. I did feel a lot of guilt, and questioned my role in a lot of what happened – was my conduct really unimpeachable? What can I learn about managing people in the future? What could I have done better? There were definitely lessons I told from that, and I learned a lot about remaining professional every when you’d rather not. Trusting my own judgment but presenting that in the right way for other people to understand. Everyone is different, but I can confront guilt much better if I feel like something good is coming out of it, that I’ll learn something and be better next time. It’s a process that takes time, though, and firing people in any situation takes a lot out of you.
afiendishthingy* July 31, 2015 at 2:28 pm Yes, thanks for this, this does sound similar to my situation and reaction. I do think I did a lot of things right with this employee over the last couple months, and as for the things I could have handled better, those were just training for the next time around.
Boogles* July 31, 2015 at 1:48 pm Discuss it with someone outside of work. Don’t discuss it with any members of your staff. Keep things confidential and eventually the dust will settle. Moving forward, it sounds like you might have to reestablish trust with your staff. I would be extracommunicative and transparent whenever I could and call people out that are doing good work.
afiendishthingy* July 31, 2015 at 2:24 pm Thanks. Luckily the staff morale/trust is not an issue; I supervise staff who work directly in client’s homes; only one or two direct staff is assigned to a case at a time, and she was the only staff currently assigned to this particular client. (There is a little smoothing over to do with the client, but if we find a good replacement she’ll be ok.) So none of my other reports are aware, and I think I have a pretty good relationship with most of them. Nonetheless it is a good reminder to be extra communicative with all my staff and make sure to recognize those who are doing good work.
PhoenixBurn* July 31, 2015 at 1:49 pm As HR, I’ve been part of many terminations and have had to fire people on my own team. It’s never easy. Positive thoughts in your direction! It’s ok to be emotional about it as long as you stay professional in the meeting (like you did). I actually do my best to schedule termination meetings (when possible) at the end of the day, so that I have the evening to regroup. They always drain me. Just remember – people tend to fire themselves (if management is doing the right thing). If you’ve done everything you can to coach, counsel, write up, etc., and they continue the behaviors – they have fired themselves. A mentor told me that long ago, and told me to always make sure that I felt we’d done right by the person before making the decision to terminate (barring egregious things like theft, violence, etc.), then I could at least go to sleep with a clear conscience, even if I needed a glass of wine to be able to get to sleep!
NoCalHR* July 31, 2015 at 5:26 pm Two suggestions: First, debrief with your manager and/or HR about professionalism in a termination interview. Your description sounds professional to me both in how you dealt with persistent Policy violations, and in how you handled yourself and the employee reaction in the exit interview. That said, the opinion of those closer to the situation and familiar with your organization can validate/coach your behavior. Second, if your organization sponsors an Employee Assistance Program (EAP), reach out to them! They specialize in workplace issues and you find both support and guidance there. I give everyone participating in a termination interview (soon-to-be-Ex-employee, manager, director, etc.) an EAP referral card. Both your manager and HR can talk with you about this, the EAP’s support and feedback is golden!
Liane* July 31, 2015 at 8:45 pm I have never been in a position where I would be doing this. However my dad owned his own business, which wasn’t very big, so was only one who could fire people. He told me many times that firing someone was the worst part of being The Boss, no matter how bad the person’s performance or attitude was. And that it was worse if you actually liked them. He had to let a guy go because of drug addiction, but he never forgot the man.
Not So NewReader* August 1, 2015 at 9:15 pm One thing that I have held on to is that a bad hire must be shown the door for the sake of the group. I cannot keep asking the group to work with Person Impossible indefinitely. I must take a stand and protect the group. In turn, my decision also protects the company, which part of my job to protect the company interests. Sounds a bit cold, I think. But I need to think logically like that, because, dang, firing is that hard.
kristinyc* July 31, 2015 at 11:46 am Have any of you worked as consultants with Guidepoint or GLG or something similar? I was just asked to do this, and they want to know what rate to charge. (I’m in a niche techy/marketing industry – email marketing). I know what I would charge for freelance work where I’m actually doing the projects, but not sure what it should be if I’m just talking to someone on the phone for an hour. Should it be more? I’ve heard a pretty wide range of rates, and really don’t want to undersell myself.
CJ* July 31, 2015 at 11:46 am I have an interview on Monday at a huge University. I’m excited and nervous at the same time. Any tips on interviewing at a University and/or in a Design, Communications, Public Relations role? What will they be looking for and what are they trying to avoid in candidates? Anything specific to the educational realm that is different than general interviewing? I’m in a comfortable spot as far as reviewing all of Alison’s “interview” posts, gathering information and my portofolio and rehearsing my answers… just preparing 110% is what calms me down so that’s where I am. TIA!
Sascha* July 31, 2015 at 12:01 pm The only thing I’ve noticed that is different about interviewing in higher education is that they seem to place more emphasis on having a degree, and also they seem to be looking for an interest in overall higher education and an interest in helping students. Even if you don’t interact with students at all in the role, hiring managers seem to appreciate a student-focused mindset. Take it with a grain of salt – I’ve been working at universities for 8 years now, but of course every workplace and hiring manager is different. Good luck!
CJ* July 31, 2015 at 12:13 pm Thank you, Sascha! I do value higher education and was going to bring that up, but I don’t know if I would have thought to mention something about the students specifically.
Sascha* July 31, 2015 at 12:40 pm I would also say just kind of take your cues from the interviewers. And like with most jobs, they really want to know that you WANT to work in higher ed, because often going into higher ed from corporate is a step down – pay is worse, there’s not as much room for growth, etc. But the trade off is that it’s usually more flexible, slower paced, and can be less stressful. On the flip side of that, it’s often harder to transition out of higher ed into corporate for those exact reasons – so that’s something to consider for long term planning.
CJ* July 31, 2015 at 1:14 pm Luckily for me, the pay is almost exactly the same, but the benefits are somewhat nicer, the job is more in line with 90/10 what I what to do instead of 40/60% right now and (best of all) my commute goes to 30 min max versus 1 hr 15 min. The transition out thought is interesting. I think with the role I am pursing, that will not be as much of an issue than it would if I was looking into the management or professorial side of things, but definitely something to consider. Thanks again. You’ve been very helpful!!!
Sascha* August 3, 2015 at 9:53 am A shorter commute is a pay raise in and of itself – I started my career with around an hour commute and I’ve gotten it down to 15 minutes, and I feel so spoiled now. I hope everything goes well and this job works out for you!
idontwanttoliveonthisplanetanymore* July 31, 2015 at 1:27 pm I feel weird right now. I am a receptionist and I think the title is really getting to me. Don’t get me wrong, I get great pay lots of flexibility with hours great benefits too easy of a commute. Really it’s the best paying job I’ve had so far in my short career. I just feel like all the project managers and engineers give me no respect. I guess my job is way easier than theirs but of course their pay is much larger than mine so… Anyways, I would really like some work that uses my training. My training being Public Relations and Marketing. (those were my internships, my BA is in Philosophy). I’ve had plenty office experience and recently, almost on a goof, I applied for a job that I found on linked in. Within hours I was on the phone interview and then then next day I came in for the interview. Today, the day after the interview, I am going over how the interview went and I think I did really well. I mean I know it’s not a given but IF the job is offered to me then I’ll have to make some tough decisions. First, my job currently allows me so much flexibility and my manager and I just talked about receiving a raise. They are really supportive in me growing with the company, but I just feel like the type of job that I want will never be available here. I guess I’ll just have to wait and see if they extend the offer to me and what type of benefits the company has.
Too Midwest? Regional Diff @ Work* July 31, 2015 at 11:48 am How do you view people from other American regions? I am a Midwestern woman working remotely for a DC based company in HR. My boss keeps telling me “oh, that’s your Midwestern niceness” or ” yep, that’s the Midwest for ya.” I’ve worked across the us before, and this is new feedback. What is this Midwestern niceness? Is it a problem, and how should I adapt? I am so curious about how you perceive other regions, and whether this is a thing!
Christy* July 31, 2015 at 11:54 am Sometimes you can tell. Like, I have a bunch of coworkers in Utah and you can just tell they’re from Utah. But I don’t typically say anything to them about it! It sounds like your boss is being weird about it.
Christy* July 31, 2015 at 11:56 am It’s more that they’re similar to each other and similar to my former boss, also from Utah. It’s nothing actually about them. I’m realizing how weird it sounds.
bridget* July 31, 2015 at 4:26 pm Ha, I’m a Utahan who is probably oblivious to her Utahan-ness. Unless it’s causing an actual problem with your work (like, if someone from the Midwest is too nice to negotiate strongly in a role that requires it), it just seems weird to mention it all the time. People are different and come from different cultures. It’s rude to fixate on it, and just shows that the speaker is the type of person to buy into (and look to confirm) stereotypes, which is awkward and best.
Anonasaurus Rex* July 31, 2015 at 12:04 pm Your boss is being weird and also buying into stereotypes that really don’t exist. There’s this perception that people from the East Coast are rude (NYC, Boston mostly) and therefore people from areas that have a lot of small towns aren’t. But as someone who has lived in the Midwest her entire 35 year life both in small towns and in larger cities, I have encountered a large amount of bigotry and rudeness over gender, sexual orientation, race, etc. I think it’s just that people in the Midwest are good at being fake nice, or nice in different ways as long as you appear to match their preferences.
MaryMary* July 31, 2015 at 2:50 pm I think Midwesterners are polite, not necessarily nice. ;-) I might not like you or respect you, but if you have knee surgery I’ll stop by and drop off a casserole.
Elizabeth West* July 31, 2015 at 4:30 pm Yep. Midwesterner here. Though bigotry and rudeness are universal, this area of the country tends to be somewhat culturally isolated.
Anonsie* July 31, 2015 at 4:41 pm It’s that the idea of what’s polite is different everywhere, not what people actually think or do.
S* July 31, 2015 at 12:06 pm I’m from California! I have lots of friends from Chicago and I like to joke that Midwestern politeness is a thing, but I’ve never heard it outside a social context where you are already close friends with everyone else, and definitely not when I’m in the workplace.
Anie* July 31, 2015 at 12:08 pm I’m originally from Minnesota. When I first moved to Boston, I would seriously have random strangers tell me I was clearly too nice and obviously from the Midwest and how sweet I was blah blah. Boston has broken me though. I am no longer nice to strangers. Or customers. Or people on the phone.
Ad Astra* July 31, 2015 at 2:22 pm East coaster can smell the Midwest on you when you walk into their cities. Even worse if you come from the upper Midwest, because your accent will give you away. I always feel so conspicuous when I go back east.
afiendishthingy* August 1, 2015 at 1:32 pm I grew up in Missouri, went to college in Minnesota, moved to Rhode Island 5 years ago. I was really appalled at first at how unfriendly cashiers were here, but now they seem totally normal. I think Midwesterners tend to come off a little friendlier/warmer than East Coasters, but I also suspect your boss is attributing Midwestern Niceness to you just because she knows you’re fromm the Midwest.
The Cosmic Avenger* July 31, 2015 at 12:16 pm It doesn’t sound like the boss thinks it’s a problem, so I wouldn’t try to change. And I agree that they’re weird and awkward for mentioning this more than once. Could it be that the boss has a lot invested in her identity as a tough, independent Big City Gal, and so they are using this as a way of reinforcing their own hard-won identity?
Charlotte Collins* July 31, 2015 at 5:42 pm Too bad we don’t have any cities here in the Midwest… Oh, wait. Sorry, I forgot that we do. But I’m too nice to mention them.
Formerly The Office Admin, Now Full Time Job Huntress* July 31, 2015 at 12:19 pm Midwesterners ARE nice. As a Californian born and raised now living in the Midwest, I sometimes feel like the biggest jerk ever. I try really hard to fake it, but sometimes it just doesn’t convey. Like, who stops when entering a highway or interstate??? Midwesterners. Maybe not you, Too Midwest? Regional Diff @ Work, but someone living near you totally does this on a regular basis and I’m the one laying on the horn behind them. Sorry, had to get that off my chest. ;) That being said, I typically rely on accents to know where someone is from not their mannerisms at work.
bridget* July 31, 2015 at 4:29 pm Nooooooooo! It totally messes up the flow of traffic! Incoming traffic shouldn’t brake to merge, they should speed up to existing traffic and zip in, and you shouldn’t brake to let them in, because then it forces them to brake to merge, causing the whole flow to slow down. Most freeways have the space to accommodate all rush hour traffic without a jam, except that unnecessary braking creates an accordion effect and BAM. jammed every day.
Elizabeth West* July 31, 2015 at 4:34 pm I sometimes HAVE to do this, because the damn idiots in the middle lane won’t move over and let me move out of the way, and the idiot in front of me is tootling along wayyyy below the speed limit, oblivious to the fact that someone else may be behind them. There is nowhere for anyone to go if I don’t! See why I hate my commute!?
bridget* July 31, 2015 at 7:39 pm Oh, I’m not saying it *works*, just that it theoretically should if everybody drove just like I do :) The reason why traffic in general is so aggravating is that if everybody approached it the same way (or if we were all in self-driving cars), we could avoid almost all of the problems. It only takes one tootler or brake-merger or slow driver chilling in the left lane to mess it all up, and make it harder for everybody else to do the Good Thing For Traffic. Anyway, I’m going to start blaming it on visiting Midwesterners based on the stereotypes I am learning in this thread. :p
S* July 31, 2015 at 2:46 pm My best friend went to college in Chicago and met her Chicago-native boyfriend there, and when he moved out to CA to be with her, he was driving at 50 mph on 65 mph roads with clear traffic. In a city notorious for fast and impatient drivers. 2 years later, he’s broken the habit, but oh man, did we rib him for that for a while…
MaryMary* July 31, 2015 at 2:51 pm I lived in Chicago for 8 years and then moved back to Ohio. Ohio law enforcement does not approve of my Chicago driving habits (particularly my lead foot).
Charlotte Collins* July 31, 2015 at 5:44 pm OK, that is not typical Chicago driving from my experience. Trust me, drivers there drive plenty fast and aggressively.
hermit crab* August 1, 2015 at 9:56 am On the other hand, my friend actually got rejected from a job because he didn’t have “California values” — whatever that means!
Not So NewReader* August 1, 2015 at 9:21 pm When I went for driving lessons I was taught never, ever, never stop on an entrance ramp. If there is an accident and I stopped on the ramp it would be MY fault. It’s funny. I went to PA a while ago. Went up the entrance ramp and there is a STOP sign! wth. If you did that here you would probably get killed by the pile up behind you.
Timothea Horton* July 31, 2015 at 1:32 pm Canadians get this from Americans all the time. You know what – we’re not that nice, it’s just hard for you to tell when we’re being snarky. :). I once tried to explain to an airplane seatmate on a US flight that Canadians were a mixed bunch, just like Americans but it seemed to really upset her. Seriously. I think “move to Canada” was some sort of life escape plan for her and I was ruining it.
Ad Astra* July 31, 2015 at 2:20 pm In my experience, Southerners are friendly, Midwesterners are polite, and Northerners are direct. (Less flattering descriptions would be that Southerners are slow, Midwesterners are pushovers, and Northerners are brusque. It’s a matter of perspective.) That’s if we’re talking in terms of how much a person values certain social niceties like introductions, small talk, holding doors, etc. Of course, there are a million exceptions to these generalizations because there’s a lot more to our personalities than what part of the country we come from. Your boss is being weird, and I can’t tell if he’s trying to be complimentary or suggesting that you’re to deferential.
Ad Astra* July 31, 2015 at 2:24 pm For what it’s worth: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/23/regional-differences-personalities-united-states-friendly_n_4137846.html
MaryMary* July 31, 2015 at 2:53 pm I’d push back and ask for specifics. Are you being too indirect? Too non-confrontational? Or does your boss think it’s weird that you end emails with “Thanks!”
AnotherAlison* July 31, 2015 at 3:12 pm I just got off the phone with someone in PA and immediately thought of this question! He kind of pissed me off. I was looking for information, and dude was immediately adversarial. First time I’ve ever talked to him. Whatever. What’s so bad about being decent to people? Midwesterners for the win. ; )
Charlotte Collins* July 31, 2015 at 6:36 pm Are you the only remote worker? Maybe just the distance is making you seem somehow exotic to your boss… Or is it just in response to normal, everyday politeness, like saying “please” and “thank you”? Also, does it seem like this is in response to things he likes, but for some reason feels the need to mention the Midwest?
Sprocket* August 1, 2015 at 8:58 am Oh I get this a lot too. There’s something about growing up as Midwesterner that born and raised East Coasters see, find endearing, but believe we need to overcome/work around. Typically in my experience these follow situations of “if I have nothing nice to say, I won’t say anything,” or when wanting to give someone more of a chance to “get with it” than impatient east coasters do, or when just being able to easily small talk with truly anyone (particularly to urban east coasters, this is apparently some magic ability that only a Midwesterner could possess) Mind you, I’ve now lived as long on the east coast as I did in the Midwest but growing up there has apparently stuck with me more than I always consciously realize.
Sprocket* August 1, 2015 at 9:03 am I should clarify that I meant North East/tri-state in all of my east coast examples.
Too Midwest? Regional Diff @ Work* August 4, 2015 at 12:59 pm Thank you, everyone for your comments. The next time she says this, I am going to ask her for clarification and whether she sees this as having a job impact, so I know to evolve my skills!
Too Midwest? Regional Diff @ Work* August 4, 2015 at 1:07 pm And, thank you also for letting me know my boss is weird!
Anonasaurus Rex* July 31, 2015 at 11:51 am I don’t know if any of you remember, but a couple of months ago I was offered an internal job that was half lateral move, half promotion, because a coworker was leaving for another job in another state. Then that coworker because undid everything. He unbought a house, unaccepted the new job offer, and unresigned, staying at our company. This also undid my new job. So that all kind of prompted me to start looking for another job. I figured that I might as well since it’s far easier to look for a new one while I have one and can be picky if I want. Well, I had an interview last week and received an offer yesterday afternoon. Unfortunately, I’m not inclined to accept it. The money, which is the best they can do – they were very open about the pay range – and it’s not enough to counter the cost of living increase we’d have by moving. I am over qualified for the job as well, though that division is expanding and the hiring manager stressed there would be opportunity for me to move into another role within a year. Is it worth it to talk to my boss about this and tell him I have another offer, even if I’m not going to accept it?
Anie* July 31, 2015 at 12:06 pm I don’t think I would. Then you’ll be firmly in their minds as the person with one foot out the door and you’ll definitely not get a future promotion if you stay.
CMT* July 31, 2015 at 1:16 pm Nooooooooo! What if your boss’s reaction is “Okay, go take that other job.” Then you’re SOL.
Apollo Warbucks* July 31, 2015 at 2:27 pm I can’t see it ending well or achieving anything to be honest.
catsAreCool* August 1, 2015 at 12:44 am I wouldn’t talk to the boss about another offer, but it’s OK to talk to your boss about things that would make your work life better without having a job offer as leverage.
MrsL* July 31, 2015 at 11:52 am After 7 months of job searching I finally interviewed for what seems to be a dream position and I could sense how everything just clicked. It’s a really good fit and a great stepping stone in getting my career on the right path. I don’t want to get ahead of myself, but I am sensing a job offer coming. 2 things though. I have concerns about the commute. It is 1.5 hours door ot door. Anyone with experience in commuting far for the right job? Is it worth it? I really fear missing out on valuable family time. Second thing. Turns out my former employer has worked with who is going to be my new boss. Upon the reference check, he called me up (we had a great working relationship and we still keep in touch) and mentioned how the person had been a real pain to work with and that it basically was the devil in disguise. He just wanted me to get his perspective, but also said that it does not necessary mean that she will be a bad boss or manager. Bur it definitely raised a red flag. I don’t know what to do with this information. Any thoughts?
Apollo Warbucks* July 31, 2015 at 11:58 am Is that 45 each way or 1.5 hours each way? 1.5 hours day isn’t that bad but 3 hours is more travalling than I’d want to do
PhoenixBurn* July 31, 2015 at 1:53 pm Ouch. I did this for two years. It’s doable – but very tough, and frequently means sacrificing social life and even something as simple as cooking dinner at night. I was completely exhausted at the end of two years and didn’t realize how much of a difference it had made – until I only had a 1/2 hour commute to work one way, and was able to see how much energy and time that equated to. Good luck with whatever you do!
Diddly* July 31, 2015 at 12:09 pm I did just under an hour each way for awhile (50 mins if I was lucky) and it did get tiring especially at winter when it’s just driving constantly in the dark. It wasn’t awful, just could be draining, and there always seemed to be slower moving traffic the closer I got to work – grr – nobody else commuted either – or not that far. Also depends how you commute I was driving and had previously done similar commutes by bus, but in the bus you could read, nap, daydream – driving not so much. It definitely wears on you, but is manageable- if it’s 1.5 hrs each way by public transport I think I’d be more for it than by car.
MrsL* July 31, 2015 at 12:18 pm I live in New York and the job is in New Jersey. I would use public transport since I do not have a car nor a drivers license. Public transport feels better than spending time in a car. But still, it is a lot of time. Any I would have to weigh in the cost of the commute as well of course. On the flip side, the work would be 9-5, but not really rigid, so there is a lot of flexibility on when I start and leave work. And some jobs are actually 9-6. So I might return home approximately the same time as I would in a 9-6 job in the city. I feel like this is a hard nut to crack. I would not know what it would be like with the commute, unless I actually done it for some while. That’s why I appreciate the input from everyone here.
the_scientist* July 31, 2015 at 4:05 pm I would not do this type of commute, personally. I am in Toronto and for a time, I commuted downtown from the suburbs surrounding the city, using public transportation. So that would be: drive to train station –> train –> subway–> streetcar/walk, and later car–> train–> subway. Regardless, it was 1.5 to 2 hours each way since the trains going to my hometown left at the most bizarre hours and I’d frequently need to wait 40 minutes for the train. I had decently flexible workplaces, where I could come in a little after 9 or leave before 5 to make my train (plus, almost everyone in the suburbs surrounding Toronto has a 1 hr.plus commute, so employers are generally flexible) and I was miserable after only a few weeks. I stopped doing any hobbies, because my hobby became commuting. It was a struggle to get the bare minimum of anything done (like exercise, housework, packing lunches, grocery shopping) and I was actually living with my parents at the time! So they were shouldering 90% of the housework and meal prep. If I was on my own and had that type of commute, I’d need to hire a housecleaner, and would probably end up eating takeout 80% of the time unless my partner picked up the slack- so that’s something for you to consider. Also, I would think that this type of commute would be completely unsustainable if you had kids that needed to be picked up from childcare at certain times. Finally, while, yes, public transport is more relaxing than driving…..it’s not completely stress-free. Here, the transit system is completely overloaded and can’t support the number of daily riders. So you’re dealing with un-airconditioned streetcars in 40 degree heat, frequent delays, malfunctions and other service issues, and packed-to-the-gills trains. Anyway, TL;DR, I know there are some relentlessly organized people that do long commutes for years, but I absolutely hated my brief time commuting and now would really try to avoid having a commute longer than about 45 minutes each way.
another IT manager* July 31, 2015 at 5:19 pm This. The year I commuted 55 miles each way DTD was terrible. I was doing ~50 miles on the highway, against traffic, and it was still awful. That was also the winter where I spent SO MUCH money on car maintenance and tow trucks (I had the alternator die, the gas line ruptured, and something noisy happened to the brakes over the course of 13 months). F-, would not commute again.
Sammie* July 31, 2015 at 8:09 pm I did 1.5 hours each way (3 total) for a year. It KILLED me. My attitude was lousy–my social life dwindled and my wine consumption doubled. Additionally I spent entire weekends dreading the Monday commute…
Windchime* August 1, 2015 at 12:35 pm I’ve done it for a week at a time and it was soul-sucking. I occasionally have to drive to a city that’s about 20 miles south of here, but it could take over 90 minutes to get there. Which means that the average speed all the way down was about 10 MPH. It was horrible.
Dawn* July 31, 2015 at 12:23 pm A 3 hour round trip commute is going to slowly kill you, even if the job was amazaballs perfect. With someone who knows you and trusts you calling you up telling you that your new boss is going to be a dickbutt, yeahhhhhhhhhh that’s some serious red flag right there. That commute is insane tho and totally unsustainable. It’ll sap your will to live very quickly. If you could move closer to your new job, then perhaps I’d say go ahead even with the negative news about your boss, but don’t take the job if you couldn’t move closer. (And this is coming from someone in DC so I know a thing or three about insanely stupid long commutes!)
Christy* July 31, 2015 at 12:46 pm I’d really watch out for that boss. Do you totally trust the former coworker’s judgment? If so, I’d probably run unless you really wanted to work this job for a while to move up. As to the commute, how many transfers do you have? What’s your usual bedtime? I think getting home at 7:30 in NYC is totally fine and doable. I used to have a 90 minute train commute and I slept the whole way there and hung out or read the whole way home. It was great. Sure, days were long, but it wasn’t really bad time commuting. Now my commute is about 40 miles shorter but still 55 minutes long, with a transfer from bus to train now. 90 minutes won’t kill you. Do you have family that you live with? What about your spouse/partner/kids/schnauzer?
MrsL* July 31, 2015 at 1:32 pm Yes, I trust my former co-worker entirely. It’s hard though, because I had such a great meeting and talk with who would be my new boss and did not get any red flags. Also talked to another employee at the company, and she did not raise any red flags for me. With the commute, I would have to walk 15 min to the subway, change lines once and then switch to a bus and lastly walk approximately 5-10 minutes. I live with my husband and we have a 1.5 year old. I mostly worry about missing out on family time.
AMG* July 31, 2015 at 1:48 pm a Person can behave differently with different people. Maybe She hates men, so even though she’s out of line, it isn’t your problem to solve. Maybe she doesn’t like introverts, or extroverts, or whatever. Just go see and then you will have more information. It’s a file-this-away type of thing.
MrsL* July 31, 2015 at 4:57 pm That is true. It’s funny though, she really seemed like the type of person that easily gets along with all kinds of people, and she seemed to really welcome different personality types. She seemed to enjoy the mentoring aspects of her job, which is why I got so excited about working for her. It does not feel right to speculate to much about what happened between her and my college. It could be a one time thing, where she lost it a little bit. But it definitely created some smoke. With this possibly being my first job offer since January though, it is really eating away on me. I want to make a smart decision, but I feel desperation is rising as well.
Christy* July 31, 2015 at 1:48 pm Two transfers sounds rather miserable to me, but I think that’s just because it’s one more than I have now. Can you start before 9? Could you do 8-4? That would have you leaving at 6:30 and getting home at 5:30. 5:30 gives you a ton of time at home in the evening while your kid is awake. I am gone 6:30-5 for work and I have basically infinite evening. Is your husband closer? Is he a SAHD? I think the family time is fine–you just need to make an effort to actually have family time when you get home. If you husband cooked, you could have concentrated time with child after zoning out and de-stressing on your commute.
MrsL* July 31, 2015 at 4:14 pm I did not feel like the transfers where that big of a deal. But then again, I have only done it once so far. I could and would not move closer to the job. My husband on the other hand is super close to his job. It is basically across the street from where we live, so is the daycare. So he will be the one to both leave and pick up for daycare. But I would feel really bad to leave all responsibilities at home to him. I guess I probably could leave earlier for work and get home earlier. But that would mean early bedtime as well, and that would be a big adjustment. The whole family is nighttime people.
Lo-lee-ta* July 31, 2015 at 4:02 pm I had a 4 hr round trip commute. 4 hrs out of every day. It was terrible. I really liked my job, but we couldn’t sell our house to move closer. I quit one morning after driving past a horrific accident on the highway. Not to mention, I think my kids, husband and dog weren’t happy with me never being home.
MrsL* July 31, 2015 at 4:16 pm Wow 4 hours! I actually think that if I had a car, I would not be very comfortable driving, because of traffic. It sounds like that accident put perspective into things. And that is what I am trying to do here as well. I want to make sure I thought things through before I take the job (if I get it).
NJ Anon* August 3, 2015 at 2:45 pm Honestly, a 3-hour round trip commute with a toddler would not be something I would do. My commute now is about an hour each way and I am starting to hate it.
MissLibby* July 31, 2015 at 5:10 pm I have been doing a 3 hour round trip commute for almost 7 years. My drive is easy, no traffic, and I have a little bit of flexibility where I can work from home if the weather is bad. It is time away from my family, but has been a trade off that we as family have been willing to make to live on an acreage, not make kids changes schools, and hubby change jobs. I really like my job and get paid well so it works for us. I don’t have experience with public transit, but in some ways I think that would be better than driving. At least you could read a book, work on an ipad, etc.
DaBlonde* July 31, 2015 at 7:48 pm I would definitely give some weight to the warning from your former employer. If he was concerned enough to call you and warn you about your new boss it is serious. I had a former boss try to warn me about the administration at my new employer, I didn’t listen and I regretted it later.
Not So NewReader* August 1, 2015 at 9:27 pm I agree. Actions speak louder than words. He felt it was important enough to call you. I’d think about this one very carefully.
Aussie academic* July 31, 2015 at 11:54 pm My commute is roughly similar, about an hour 15 into the office and an hour 30-45 (depending on traffic) coming home. I have flexibility about the hours I work, so I start early (leave home 6am, start at 7:15). This reduces the morning commute and as a bonus, I get uninterrupted work time for a bit when I first get in (I’m in an open plan office, which is really annoying at times). I also take public transport (2 buses each way). It would be quicker by car (45-60 mins each way) but parking is really expensive, and I like the time on the bus to check email, read AAM, etc. I don’t find the commute too bad, just need to be organised (eg put dinner in the slow cooker before leaving for work in the morning so don’t have a lot of meal prep in the evening) and schedule as much as possible for the weekend. Often I don’t leave at the 3-4pm you’d think the early start would warrant (more like 5-6pm) and the getting home in the dark/not seeing daylight during the week is the hardest bit, and I try to get some sun on the weekends for my vitamin D levels. I also will IM/email my DH during the day as needed to organise things as he’s still asleep when I leave in the morning. Ultimately for me, it’s worth it – I live in a much cheaper area (houses cost half, literally, here than where I work) and there aren’t any jobs like mine around here. Definitely not for everyone but it can work.
Sunday* August 1, 2015 at 3:44 pm 2. Can you have some chat time with potential co-workers if you get an offer or another interview? Perhaps your old boss can give you an idea of what kinds of things were issues for him, and figure out ways to ask about those and other traits with those folks? 1. 3 hours or more a day of commute time is a lot. An 8 hour workday plus a 1 hour lunch plus a 3 hour commute is 12 hours a day. Have you done the commute at rush hour? What are your transportation options if you have to work late/come in early/work weekends? If your spouse is away or unavailable, how would you handle child care, including pick up and drop off? If the need arises, can you get a cab, and if so about what does that cost? Can you make good use of the commute time as it’s public transit? Can you read, nap, whatever? Can you telecommute? What does the commute cost? What does that do to your take home pay? Does the company subsidize public transit costs?
BD* July 31, 2015 at 11:53 am My manager is thinking about retirement and is doing succession planning. Our organization is set up so that departments generally have a senior vice president who runs the department and a vice president that helps, although sometimes there are people who are vice presidents in other roles (e.g., not necessarily just one per department). My manager is the senior vice president of our department. She had a vice president under her who left the organization a few years ago and hasn’t been replaced, so my department hasn’t had a vice president in a while. My manager has been open that she is grooming me and another dude in my department for management/leadership. Great, right? The problem is that this has put me into total Imposter Syndrome mode. I’m convinced that the other dude would be a better manager than me, and that everyone knows that, and that he’s going to get promoted to a vice president and I will not be. I think there is a touch of truth to some of my thoughts—I’m a quieter female and he’s a less-quiet male, and I could easily see people above us thinking he has more of an “executive presence” than I do. (Not necessarily related to our genders as much as to our more gender-stereotypical styles, but I am putting it there for context.) I get stupidly jealous whenever he’s invited to something that I’m not, never mind that I am sometimes invited to things that he is not. And my manager has been making an effort to pull both of us into important meetings. Obviously my manager wouldn’t be actively grooming both of us if her plan was to promote him and not do anything with me, although I suppose she could do that if her thought was that he be promoted into the “vacant” VP spot now and that we both move up one when she retires. But our structure isn’t so rigid that they couldn’t theoretically promote both of us to VP now, either. I’m not looking for advice, but more wanted to vent!
Sammie* July 31, 2015 at 8:17 pm Been there. I’ve both been the person that was promoted–and not been the person that was promoted. I have no miracle-working guidance—but mad empathy from me to you! Bonne Chance!
Student* July 31, 2015 at 11:53 am I’m trying to figure out how to handle something obnoxious at work. I recently went on a business trip to perform some work with an external business partner, Tyrion. He’s not a client, exactly – more like a collaborator on a joint project run by two different businesses. He’s in charge of getting the project done, but doesn’t have direct authority over me. During this trip, Tyrion asked me (I’m a woman, it may or may not be relevant) if I’d ever been to a strip club and made some speculative comments regarding my personal life. In front of a room full of guys eating lunch. At the time, I brushed it off with no comment, because I didn’t want to show weakness in front of the room full of guys and possibly have them decide to pile on. The location has a reputation for bad behavior towards women, and I didn’t want to spill blood in a shark tank.. I’m angry about it and deeply annoyed – I didn’t like Tyrion before and I certainly don’t like him now. I don’t really know what he was trying to accomplish with this, though. It didn’t come off like he was hitting on me, and if it was an attempt at a power play it sure fell flat. It came out of nowhere, conversation-wise, so I don’t really have any context for why he’d say something like that or what he was thinking. I’m trying to decide whether to mention this incident with Tyrion to my company’s project manager for this project. I don’t think our company can really do anything about this guy, though, so I’m not sure what complaining would accomplish. Any thoughts?
Anie* July 31, 2015 at 12:04 pm I think I might say something. In a casual sense, if he’s already the topic. Not this wording, but something along this lines of: “I’m not really feeling Tyrion. He was very inappropriate such and such time. This is what I think of his performance (good or bad), but I’m not appreciating his personality/sense of humor.”
esra* July 31, 2015 at 12:05 pm What kind of relationship do you have with the project manager? I’m the type who would mention something like this, it’s valuable information to have going forward about the type of behaviour people can expect with Tyrion.
catsAreCool* August 1, 2015 at 12:48 am I think I’d say something. Try to be as factual as possible. This seems like the kind of thing that needs some documentation. One possible answer when someone’s being obnoxious like he was is saying “Excuse me?” in a tone like you can’t believe your ears and with just a bit of push back to it.
Not So NewReader* August 1, 2015 at 9:32 pm I would say something. It might get results or it might not. But at least you would be on the record with this complaint. If anything else happens, (hope NOT!) you can reference your previous complaint.
Grumpy Editor* July 31, 2015 at 11:54 am Wednesday’s letter (about editing) made me think of this. I realize that I am being a bit petty, but a former coworker who never made it out of training has a link in his LinkedIn to “some of [his] editorial work.” Which would be a good idea, except for the part where he selected one of the documents that he did an absolute terrible job on, that I spent hours cleaning up for him (so the final version is quite nice), and that we had to credit 30 hours to the customer because he billed an outrageous amount of time. It pisses me off that this condescending butthead is misrepresenting his editing skills with something I heavily edited for him. I know there is nothing I can really do and this is small in the scheme of things, but it feels good to get this off my chest. Anyone have similar stories? (With poetic justice endings?)
Trixie* July 31, 2015 at 10:26 pm Not really but it sounds like you can rest assured knowing he’ll fail any editing rest/project/assessment they give him.
Clever Name* July 31, 2015 at 10:29 pm Yeah. Not cool. I had a coworker, let’s call him Tim, who came onboard as a field teapot assessor with several years experience assessing teapots in remote locales. I was just learning teapot assessment, but had several years of experience (plus a masters) in a related field. Initially, I liked Tim. I thought he was a decent guy, and if we weren’t friends, I at least considered us to be friendly at work. About a year later I’m asked to lead a functional teapot assessment, involving a team of coworkers, including Tim. Apparently Tim’s ego could not handle this, and he went off at me in a reply-all email, to which he added several managers not on the original email, accusing me of stealing his ideas. I was taken aback. As part of this, he also had other complaints about me, one of which was I was making more money than him (recall my equivalent experience plus masters). He managed to get himself a fat raise, among other things. I resigned, but was convinced to stay on under certain conditions. For several years, I keep my head down, doing good work in the meantime. In the interim, we hire many new people. Tim gets a reputation for being an obnoxious blowhard in meetings, as well as being generally unhelpful. It also comes to light that when he does his field teapot assessment work, he does not follow procedure, making the company look like we are wasting our clients’ money because he has. Nothing to show for his field efforts. I have no idea if there will be any consequences for Tim (other than people knowing what a lazy dickbag he is), but I really feel vindicated.
Windchime* August 1, 2015 at 3:45 pm His name isn’t really Ted, is it? Because he sounds like a guy I used to know. Who may or may not have actually been called Ted.
Victoria Nonprofit (USA)* July 31, 2015 at 11:54 am My husband passed the level 2 CFA test! Wahoo for him!
Victoria Nonprofit (USA)* July 31, 2015 at 4:44 pm Thanks all! Elizabeth: It’s the second test (of three) that one takes to become a Chartered Financial Analyst (a credential necessary for working in a lot of finance jobs, especially trading – traders, portfolio managers, etc.). The three tests are long (~6 hours each), very difficult (pass rates between 35% – 50%), and offered only once a year, so passing is a Very Big Deal.
Hey you, right there* July 31, 2015 at 11:55 am I unexpectedly lost my job not long ago, and was promptly offered a part-time, freelance position within my industry (i.e. no benefits). I accepted it and have been there for a few weeks. I’ve now been offered a full-time job (with benefits) in my industry with another organization. Is this one of those situations where I’m a jerk for leaving quickly or should I “stick it out” at the part-time gig? As a bit of background, I have about 10 years experience.
Diddly* July 31, 2015 at 12:01 pm I guess it depends how the part time role was offered and how small the industry is. But I think they should understand that full time with benefits trumps freelance part time without. Don’t lose a full time job for a part time job is my thinking it seems like you’d just be hurting yourself, and whoever hired you should hopefully understand. It might be pretty awkward but I’d hand in your notice, you can thank them for the opportunity but since you were hired you’ve been offered a full time job with benefits and while you love x y and z about this company you can’t turn down a full time role.
Shannon* July 31, 2015 at 12:12 pm Is the freelance position time based or project based? If it’s time based, just hand in your notice like any other job. If it’s project based, I’d consider staying on until my project was finished or at a good stopping point with detailed directions for the next steps. You really can’t lose a full time gig for a part time gig. Sane people understand that.
Hey you, right there* July 31, 2015 at 12:31 pm It’s just part-time freelance. No project or anything. Just a freelance gig.
Dynamic Beige* July 31, 2015 at 2:21 pm Then it’s your choice whether you want to go to the full-time job and never hear from these people again or work it out as a side business (provided your full time job doesn’t have any sort of conflict with that). But, if they’ve hired you as part time freelance, you don’t really owe them any loyalty. And as someone who has been freelance for over 15 years now, what exactly is part-time freelance? You either freelance or you don’t. You have either committed X hours per week to this client (leaving you free to work for other ones) or some other arrangement. These kind of things usually have an end and if you would prefer a full-time job with benefits, hello ending!
Nanc* July 31, 2015 at 12:45 pm I’m with everyone else, go with the full time position but do whatever you can to make the transition smooth for this part time place. Any possibility you could finish the current work evenings and weekends until they can hire a replacement? Can you recommend someone to step in on short notice?
MaryMary* July 31, 2015 at 11:55 am Earlier this week, I attended a presentation where whoever created the powerpoint slipped in a Friends reference and called the person in an example Regina Phalange. However, the person actually doing the presentation kept calling the example Regina Fa-longe, and ruined the joke (actually, I found the whole thing pretty funny). Last week, I saw a demo where all the example people were characters from Firefly. Do you have a favorite pop culture name or names to slip into work documents?
Sascha* July 31, 2015 at 12:07 pm I use names from Ghost in the Shell. One of my coworkers likes using Twin Peaks. I have to create a lot of fake accounts for application testing and then documentation, and I just prefer seeing Motoko Kusanagi to Student_1.
Cruciatus* July 31, 2015 at 12:09 pm How do you work that reference in and then not know how to pronounce it!? I’m an administrative assistant, but I wrote an email to the students once about something they weren’t doing properly that they needed to hand in to me and used Hermoine and Ron as examples. I would do it all the time if it came up more!
MaryMary* July 31, 2015 at 1:44 pm I’m guessing the person who created the powerpoint is not the person who gave the presenatation.
Elizabeth West* July 31, 2015 at 4:50 pm Heh heh, I like this. I don’t typically do it in work documents, because I don’t get the chance, but I would love it if I could. I do use stuff for examples on my blog. Mostly Doctor Who, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Batman, X-Files, Sherlock, and occasionally Scooby Doo. The funnier the example, the better. Like for the vocabulary posts, I use the word in a sentence. Here’s one of my favorite ones, from my R post: Rhizogenic: produces roots. ——The Doctor shook his head sadly. “This poor alien’s rhizogenic properties doomed him. See, he could not get out of the Cyberman’s way and was crushed.” ——“Doctor,” Sarah Jane said. “That’s a carrot.” ——“Well, so it is. Must have left my glasses in the TARDIS! Hmm…suddenly, I’d like a salad. With extra aliens, if you please!” :D People here use Game of Thrones a lot, but I don’t watch it, so half the time I have to stop and think, Oh yeah, that’s GoT, when you guys do it.
littlemoose* July 31, 2015 at 5:10 pm I like names from “The Office.” One of my sample documents uses the name Dwight Schrute.
littlemoose* July 31, 2015 at 5:11 pm Also, the presentation creator should have stuck with “Ken Adams” – much easier to pronounce.
Cath in Canada* July 31, 2015 at 7:06 pm I created some sample completed grant application cover sheets for our trainees, because they kept doing it incorrectly. I used Honeydew and Beaker as the professor and grad student in my example, and “The genomics of accident-proneness in laboratory scientists” as the application title. One of the postdocs submitted the form with the joke title. TWICE. He is now known as Dr. Muppet. I gave the two senior professors who signed the form a hard time about it – but luckily our grants office found it hilarious! Oh, and the forms are now on the intranet as PDFs, not Word documents.
bkanon* July 31, 2015 at 11:20 pm Hah! Yes, I do this. It’s mostly Harry Potter and Friends references, but I’ll switch it up to Wings or Frasier from time to time.
hermit crab* August 1, 2015 at 10:01 am I use American first ladies. The “approved users” for the test case of my reporting tool are Martha Washington, Abigail Adams, and Eleanor Roosevelt.
Windchime* August 1, 2015 at 3:47 pm We used to have a bunch of test users in our system named Fred and Wilma Flintstone, Barney and Betty Rubble, etc.
Diddly* July 31, 2015 at 11:55 am Mild annoyance. I applied a while back for a job I’d love, but the application really stumped me. You put your previous jobs in, asked some questions and put your education in without dates. There was no boring how do you skills and experience meet the role, or why would you be the best person for the job part. I would love this job but felt i couldn’t convey that with the little I got to say – the qs were all related to the job as in things you might do, but without a cover letter type section I don’t really understand how they can judge applicants at all. Also I understand the idea of not putting dates in for education in terms of ageism (which would help me as it’s a graduate role and I graduated years ago) but without indicating how long you spent there, years, and also the institution I felt I like it didn’t make a whole lot of sense… Oh well I didn’t see myself likely to get the role anyway.
JessA* July 31, 2015 at 12:01 pm Hello. Does anyone have any experience in group interviews? Or has anyone been on the hiring side of this? I have one coming up and I’m rather nervous. (Personally, I generally prefer to have singular interviews where it’s just me and the hiring manager rather than doing a group interview.) Any tips or suggestions? Thanks!
Nanc* July 31, 2015 at 12:52 pm Do you mean group interview as in a bunch of interviewees in the room with the interviewer (which is done but why, oh why?!), or as in you’re interviewing with a panel/group of interviewers?
Persephone Mulberry* July 31, 2015 at 1:13 pm Group interview as in several candidates together, group interview as in multiple interviewers, or both? I’ve done one group/panel interview (5 candidates and 5 interviewers), and it was actually one of my favorite interview experiences. I liked being able to hear all the other candidate’s answers to the questions and to tweak my planned answers so that they weren’t too similar to someone else’s. I’m still mad the universe for giving me the flu on the day of my second interview for that job. :(
Anonymousterical* July 31, 2015 at 5:29 pm I’ve never been part of a multi-interviewee situation, but I recently had an interview with four interviewers (and got the job). I tried to make eye contact with every interviewer during an answer, giving more attention to the interviewer who had asked me the question. I thanked the person who had asked the question, after they said they were satisfied with my answer. I made an effort to not ignore one or two people or give one person more attention than the others. Smile. It really comes down to controlling the room, and a little confidence goes a long way.
JessA* July 31, 2015 at 10:54 pm Myself and other job candidates will be applying for the same job at the same time.
S* July 31, 2015 at 12:02 pm Well, since we just had the discussion about dogs in the office earlier this week, I wanted to mention that there is indeed a dog in the office today (she’s visited before) and she is still the sweetest, sleepiest pup I’ve ever seen. But in other news, we’re going to be going through some major (temporary) changes in the next couple of months at work, and it’s making me a little nervous. But we won’t know much more until next week. The waiting, it kills…
Katie the Fed* July 31, 2015 at 12:03 pm PUPPIES!!! God, I love dogs. Even when my dog is bad I can’t help but brighten up at her silly, stupid smile. Go pet that puppy and try not to stress.
S* July 31, 2015 at 12:49 pm There has already been plenty of belly rubs for her (and a sacrifice in the form of a plastic ball I usually keep on my desk) and it’s still early in the morning over here!
Anon Accountant* July 31, 2015 at 12:03 pm My medical leave ends today and Monday is my first day back after 7 weeks off. :( This time off helped me realize just how much I dislike my job. I’m applying for a few jobs yet feel guilty about the possibility of leaving. We are a small company and lost 3 people including me in 2 weeks. 1 quit and 1 was fired. My leave was unexpected due to emergency surgery but everything is going better now. I’d tried to negotiate another week of paid time off while on the unpaid leave but was turned down. They’ve hired 2 far less qualified people and paid them considerably more but given me their work to correct. In several cases they’ve given me their work to do because the hires didn’t do it correctly. Negotiating a raise didn’t work due to “budgetary reasons” but I’m “their right hand gal”. So I’ve made myself a doormat and shouldn’t feel guilty but do. Why do we feel bad about the possibilities of leaving dysfunctional places? Better the crap we know than the crap we don’t know?
Ashley the Nonprofit Exec* July 31, 2015 at 12:56 pm Nope. If your manager has been around for a while, they know it’s pretty common for people to quit after an extended leave. It’s not a manager’s favorite day when lots of people quit at once, but it’s also just something that happens. Your manager might get upset, but it’s their responsibility to handle their own feeling of frustration.
Apollo Warbucks* July 31, 2015 at 2:12 pm Leave and don’t look back, they’ve brought in junior staff and pay them more than you, refused to adjust your pay and wouldn’t even give you an extra week of PTO that tells you all you need to know about how much respect they have got for you.
Anon Accountant* August 3, 2015 at 6:55 pm You are right. They sure haven’t shown respect. :( Time to just suck it up, cut my losses and move on.
Nurse? or Not?* July 31, 2015 at 12:03 pm Any nurses out there? The company I work for is in health insurance. I work with a LOT of nurses, but I’m not a clinician myself. I’m more of a project manager/member education person. I’m looking for ways to move up, but many of the positions I might want that are higher on the ladder require you to be an RN or BSN. Most of these positions are not practicing nurses in contact with patients or members; they just require a higher degree of clinical knowledge than non-nurses tend to have. How crazy would it be to get a nursing degree in order to progress at my company, with no intention of being a practicing nurse at any point in my career? I like the company I work for; I have great relationships at my own and higher levels, and I like my coworkers. I don’t want to leave – but I don’t want to stagnate at the NotaNurse Project Manager level. The plan I’m considering is to pick up pre-reqs and get my ADN at a local community college on the cheap, then do an online RN-to-BSN program if I need more credentials. My boss is likely to be flexible with time out for clinical training, and my company reimburses most tuition costs. I’ve always had a strong interest in the medical field, so this is not something I’d be doing ONLY for a better job. I also have a physical challenge, in that I’m overweight and worried about a lot of standing up during clinical training. But I think I can get in better shape by the time I reach that level – I have at least a year of prerequisites to take before I would start the ADN. Is this just nuts?
Biff* July 31, 2015 at 2:09 pm I like the idea! You might want to get your LPN first, to see if you like the actual work.
Emmie* August 3, 2015 at 11:06 am Here are the questions I would ask myself: * Nursing programs in my area require a full-time clinical rotation, which means you cannot work while doing the clinicals. What do the reputable programs in your area require? Can you, if needed, quit your full time job? * Education alone will probably not equate to the higher positions. You may need some practical experience in nursing (i.e. working a part-time or contingent nursing job at least.) Are you willing to do that? Would that work conflict with your current job (i.e. hours, rules about working for hospitals / doctors in your network.) * Are there any other ways to achive this goal? Nursing programs have a VERY long wait. Can you do something less competitive like radiography, etc … (I am using radiography as an example b/c that is less competitive in my region.) * Are these promotions you really want b/c the work interests you, or is it for another reason (prestige, money, new challenges)? Is there another way to reach that goal? * What is it about healthcare that interests you? You have been in the field a long time. Perhaps your skills could lead to promotions in another related sector (hospitals, extended care facilities), or in a different industry (anything really.) Good luck!
Paloma Pigeon* July 31, 2015 at 12:06 pm Anyone have suggestions for free web-based project management software for volunteers? I’ve looked at Trello, Asana, and a host of others. I’m leaning toward Trello, because it seems intuitive, but really it’s more about a culture shift from endless email chains and ‘reply alls’ that I’m looking for – plus a place to stash versions of stuff that is easily accessible.
Paloma Pigeon* July 31, 2015 at 12:18 pm Really? Can you elaborate? Just trying it on my own, it seemed okay, but why does it work well with teams/tasks?
Formerly The Office Admin, Now Full Time Job Huntress* July 31, 2015 at 12:55 pm It has the live update/cooperative work usability of Google Drive, but is easier to use on the go. The app is really good, it allows you(or anyone) to make the list and then drag tasks as they work on them and complete. And it has reminders/alarms/dates to complete. It works for me. I could see some people not liking it, but I like it’s simplicity.
AVP* July 31, 2015 at 12:18 pm I love Trello for organizing things with friends! My company is incorporating Podeo, which I also like, but if you have a lot of volunteers it might not be free? I’m not sure how or if they charge.
Bekx* July 31, 2015 at 12:55 pm We use Asana! At first we all felt a bit overwhelmed with it, but after using it for 6 months I’d say it’s definitely something that helps.
esra* July 31, 2015 at 8:34 pm We use asana and it’s working pretty well. The endless email chain was exactly why we chose it, and so far so good. I like being able to get a quick overview of my task list, but it definitely depends on sorting tasks well, thinking about how subtasks will work, and making sure everyone agrees to the same flow of information.
MrsL* July 31, 2015 at 12:07 pm Anyone else sensing an increase in the pressure on availability “at all times” from employers? Me, job hunting, it seems to occur all over, in lots of job ads and it is definitly keeping me from applying to positions. Frankly, it annoys me. I want to invest my time and effort in my career, but I am also a mother. Does those two have to be som hard to combine? It is important to me with some sense of respect for life outside work with a toddler at home. When I leave work, I am basically entering my second one. I have a hard time even preparing dinner and could not possibly be checking and following up on emails throughout the night. I would become misearble. Just yesterday I went to an interview which clearly mentioned that I would be expected to answer e-mail as late as 11 pm at night. Really? My only time off would be when sleeping? How do you approach the “available at all times” in your job search or in your daily job?
Ashley the Nonprofit Exec* July 31, 2015 at 12:54 pm That is absurd. I mean, we do list that we sometimes require evening or weekend work, but we are also pretty clear that and (a) it’s 8 to 10 evenings and up to 2 weekends per years (b) because of the nature of the job you can normally schedule the dates yourself. I don’t know who – besides maybe young, single, healthy people who are only responsible for caring for themselves – can do this kind of work and stay healthy. The only way I could see this working is if this job paid a LOT – enough that you could hire someone at the last minute to take care of personal things for you task-rabbit style. But obviously you don’t want to turn over all your parenting to someone else 24-7. Also, most of the parents of small children I know go to bed well before 11pm, so that makes it sound even crazier. This is not a good strategy for attracting good people, but I wonder if the employer is doing this because they are tired of people asking too much availability-wise, and if they might actually accommodate some reasonable boundaries on your time. I mean, our management team normally answers e-mail in the evening if there is something urgent, but we do ask that you text us so that we don’t have to constantly check e-mail just to see. And the person wanting an answer is supposed to move on to a different manager if they don’t hear from the first one within an hour. But I would never take a job like that unless I absolutely had to.
MrsL* July 31, 2015 at 1:24 pm Well, the particular job I mentioned is in a start up and they are hiring for a new position. They are small but growing fast and I felt like they probably would be better off with someone you are describing. It is not paying a lot either. And they would only pay office hours and not the time you spent answering emails late at night. (?!) I am no stranger to answer an occasional urgent e-mail. I like to be on top of things and resolve things quickly and in my previous jobs I had no issues with finding a balance between work and life. But to now find the “available at all times” requirment in a lot of jobs is really off-putting. I can see how it attracts the “desperate for a job”-types (almost me, I’ve been job searching since January), but I can’t see how someone in a role like that would be happy for long. I would become miserable quickly. Which is why I stay away. But with this increasing requirement, I worry that this is becoming more normalized and that I would have to adjust to that.
Ashley the Nonprofit Exec* July 31, 2015 at 2:46 pm I agree. I don’t know who would want that unless you were desperate or did not have other demands on your time and attention.
Elizabeth West* July 31, 2015 at 4:55 pm That’s ridiculous. I don’t have kids, and I’m not going to be available at all times. Since I’m usually hourly, it’s easy to avoid; most places don’t want to pay overtime. If my boss wanted me to be available at all hours, I’d push back big time—many times, you can’t do anything about whatever it is from home anyway because you have to be on the company intranet or your computer. Lucky for me I don’t have one of those bosses.
Anon Admin For This* July 31, 2015 at 12:12 pm Ok, I need help here y’all…. I’m in the middle of the interviewing process with THREE companies(seriously, when it rains it pours and when there’s a drought, it’s DRY) One sent me an offer yesterday. Here’s the catch. I know the company via my former company and this company is friends with the owner of the old company. So they asked the old owner what I made(didn’t ask me ever) and then asked me for my range. I’ll say my range was 30,000 to 34,000(it wasn’t but I also don’t want to out myself or anything here) and let’s say at OldJob I was making 29,000. They offered me 29,000. This new position is basically exactly the same, but this position requires business dress(old was jeans/blouse/sweater generally pretty casual) AND OldJob was in a small town and this new job is in a large city. They do have a better PTO accrual, but the health benefits are expensive so I’d likely stay on my husband’s and wouldn’t take advantage of it. Am I crazy for being annoyed and slightly offended? Top it off with: I have an interview on Monday that I feel pretty confident about that I know would pay more than this first offer, AND I am finishing up another interview process with a position that would pay the same as this offer, BUT it would be 100% telecommute. Which obviously would have no commute, no dress code, ect. But I only have one offer(I think I’ll get the other two early next week) HELP ME I’m lost and confused.
Maria* July 31, 2015 at 12:24 pm Congrats! I had a similar experience a couple weeks ago. I landed 3 interviews in a week. Two were admin jobs at my dream school and one was for an internship in the IT field. I ended up accepting the internship for the experience and I’m at my admin job part time. Anyway, if your goal is for more money, ask for it or wait until you have other offers come through. I don’t think you’re crazy for being annoyed or offended, but this isn’t something I’d take offence to. It’s the nature of the recruiting process. You told them a range and they came in slightly under the low end of what you told them you wanted. Maybe if you gave them a higher range, you’d be happier with your offer. Either way, you should definitely wait and see if you get other offers before making a decision. Sounds like you’re not that into the job you were offered anyway. Just wait it out :-) Good luck!
Rock* July 31, 2015 at 12:32 pm Ask for time to think things over, and then in a day or two come back and explain your salary range (again) and ask if there’s any way to make it work. AMA has mentioned before it’s not your salary history that matters, it’s what the position is worth and what you’re worth. They offered below what you outlined, and you should 100% negotiate. :) And hopefully in that time you’ll get something else and can use that as either a plan B, or as negotiating power. Do you WANT the job you have an offer for?
BRR* July 31, 2015 at 8:55 pm I’d be more than slightly offended that they sought out your current salary and only matched it. I’m not sure if your range is a lot higher than your current salary but I’d negotiate. It doesn’t sound like there’s a reason to accept the offer.
Malissa* July 31, 2015 at 12:13 pm So last week I had two great interviews. Both with companies I interviewed with last year. Both are supposed to get back to me next week. I’m trying to put it out of my mind and move on. Yesterday, after two years, my current job has finally decided I need business cards. Two years! I really tried to convince them otherwise. I really haven’t had much reason to give any out. They are insisting, so this means I’ll end up with a new job right after they order them right?
Windchime* August 1, 2015 at 4:00 pm Yes, but business cards are like six bucks a box, I think, so I wouldn’t worry about it. They are insisting so let them buy them.
Ghost Pepper* July 31, 2015 at 12:13 pm How do you deal with a coworker who does not respect you and with whom you HAVE to work? This person does not report to me. We are both director-level positions and our jobs necessarily have to collaborate. However, I find that he pushes back on everything I attempt to do. He flatly disregards my opinions and previously attempted to exclude me from a committee that dealt with my subject-matter expertise. Only after both his boss and my boss tell him he is wrong and I am right will he back down. I haven’t experienced this with anyone else in the organization. While sometimes other coworkers have disagreed with certain things I’ve proposed, they back it up with sound reasons. This guy is rigid in his workflows and doesn’t back up his positions with any real reason other than “this is how it should be done.” Reasoning with him doesn’t work. I have no say over his work. His work personality makes it very difficult for me to do my work. I’m not sure if this makes a difference: He is male, I am female. He is in his fifties, I am in my thirties. He likes to name drop all the large companies he’s worked with in the past and tout his “decades” of experience. Experience is great, but it doesn’t automatically stamp every one of your proposals as The Correct and Only Way. The only way I feel like I can get things done is to escalate it to my boss (who is male). Any other ideas? Anyone every go through this? How did you resolve it?
Even more anonymous than usual* July 31, 2015 at 12:50 pm I’m in a similar situation, but I don’t think I have it quite as bad as you do. My co-worker is actually technically underneath me (though does not report to me–we have the same manager) and constantly makes it sound as if whatever I’m doing is the “wrong” way to do it, even if there are multiple legitimate ways to do something or if my way is actually better or more efficient. He will constantly butt into random things I’m doing and say “Oh, don’t do that” or “You don’t have to do that,” and I’ve sometimes had to explicitly counter that our manager has told me to do that, and he just looks upset about it. He also does a lot of name-dropping about experience he has or companies he’s worked for. I wish I had some more advice than commiseration. Unfortunately, the best way I’ve had to deal with it is just to deal with it. I do my work, and my boss likes the work I do. I’m not sure if your office is like this, too, but I’m in a weird dynamic where I don’t feel I can comfortably bring up a complaint to my manager without it backfiring somehow (my manager would probably say something to my co-worker but not really enough to change his behavior, and then my co-worker would give me the stink-eye and probably badmouth me to everyone).
AMG* July 31, 2015 at 1:52 pm I would love to see you submit this to Alison and see what she has to say because I am at a loss. I know just what you mean, but I don’t know how to deal with it. I end up switching jobs or departments to avoid people like this and I suspect there’s a better way to head this off.
pony tailed wonder* July 31, 2015 at 3:21 pm The next time he brings up decades of experience, just tell him things have changed since the Eisenhower administration or some other kind of version of that. When he repeatedly brings it up to try and make it a positive, turn it into a no go, doesn’t apply here kind of thing. If the does the this is how it should be done without a valid reason just ask him directly if he has a valid reason and put it on him to come up with something other than the old dish he has been serving.
it happens* July 31, 2015 at 4:25 pm That is tough to deal with. Have you sat down with him and told him that specific aspects of his treatment of you bother you and make it hard to do your work? He might be oblivious. He might be able to shut off some of his behavior. He might not, too. I think it would be worth it to have a meeting with him and discuss a few specific examples of what you just wrote here – not an exhaustive list but enough examples to show that it’s a pattern and then how it affects your ability to complete your work in the most efficient manner. And yes, the gender and age thing make a difference, and calling him out on it might just get him to at least cut down on some of it. I have no doubt that it would be difficult to have this conversation in a completely neutral and friendly tone, but it would be necessary to have any chance of working. That he approaches his work in a rigid manner does not give a great indication that he will be open to change, but you can’t know until you try. And then you can go to your manager to talk to his manager to get him to shape up. It is not efficient for your manager to have to step in every time there is a dispute, so he has something to gain as well.
Maria* July 31, 2015 at 12:13 pm I started a new internship this week. Finally starting to get some experience in my field (Technology) but things have been slow. The guy that hired me has been super busy and I’ve been fending for myself for the most part. In my down time, I’ve resorted to browsing the company website, intranet, and whatever else I can find when I’m finished with my assignments. I have also gone to the other worker here and asked if I can help with things, I’ve asked them about what they do, and general small talk just to get me through the day. Today is my third day here and yet again, I’m left with nothing to do. Everyone is busy and I feel like such a noob and the thought of going up to anyone for some direction brings me anxiety that I know is completely unnecessary. I’m not new to the professional world, but I’m new to this environment. And I’m new to being an intern. Today I brought a book with me. There’s literally nothing for me to do right now. My boss made it clear that he won’t have time to spend with me until late afternoon. I’m going to read my book but I feel anxious about that too! Can someone help me with some encouraging thoughts or insight?
S* July 31, 2015 at 12:45 pm Are there any industry sites that you could read from? You mentioned that you’re in tech… TechCrunch and Medium (but you have to sift through to find stuff worth reading) are two of my favorite tech sites. If you’re interested in public policy, Politico recently did a whole series on “the Internet of Things” that talked about wearables and other stuff like that. I was an intern in tech policy, so I spent a lot of time reading up on well-known venture capitalists, new start-ups, IPOs… it was a whole new world.
Maria* July 31, 2015 at 2:07 pm Thank you for the suggestions. I’ll definitely check out those websites! Everyone here is pretty much glued to their computer so at least it’ll make me look like I’m doing something productive, even though I’d be essentially surfing the internet.
Nanc* July 31, 2015 at 1:06 pm Piggy-backing on S’s suggestion to peruse industry sites, how about joining some industry-related LinkedIn groups. If your internship doesn’t have SOPs for your tasks, create some. Is there a specific software they use? Can you do the tutorials or ask if there is a training you can take? Keep an internship journal listing all the things you’ve done/learned and repurpose it–make a Power-Point version, bullet point list, Infographic (if you have design skills), etc., if nothing else, you’ll have a chance to keep fresh on basic software programs. Are you assigned to one department, or can you ask to shadow other departments for an hour each day? If the boss hasn’t asked, at the end of the week write up a little list of what you’ve accomplished and at the bottom what you’re planning to work on next week. Send it to him mid-day and ask if there’s anything he’d like to add, or (if you think he’s a better verbal communicator) ask for a 15 minute checking-in meeting and review the list there (may want to send him a copy in advance). I get your frustration but I would work really hard at finding something to do besides reading your book. It’s not your fault they’re not giving you assignments and structure but folks are funny and someone is bound to get their kickers in a twist because you’re reading rather than twiddling your thumbs. Good luck and let us know how it goes!
Maria* July 31, 2015 at 2:12 pm Thank you for your suggestions! I’m assigned to the IT infrastructure department. I have tried to bother the others who work around here but they usually end up saying something like “I’m sorry you’re being left alone. I’m super swamped. I’ll try to carve out some time with you later though!” Or they’ll give me a rushed run down of something they want me to do without much context, so essentially I end up just doing data entry without a real understanding of what I’m doing.
Sammie* July 31, 2015 at 8:34 pm What about reading tech analyst blogs—Gartner, Forrester, IDC, etc? Lots of good 1,000-foot-orienting information to be found there!
Elizabeth* July 31, 2015 at 12:14 pm Hey all! I posted last week about a first interview I got for an Event Coordinator position with a gaming company, despite not being a gamer myself. Well, good news: interview was Monday morning and I thought it went really well, which was confirmed on Wednesday when they contacted me about a second interview, this time with the person who has become the de facto events handler in their office (this position will be a new one; until this point people had just been doing events as part of their “other” jobs and the task had finally gotten too big). They warned me in the first interview that their hiring process is notoriously slow and I’m still worried that my lack of knowledge about their game will haunt me at some point (though I am/will be studying up), but I just wanted to thank everyone who chimed in with messages of advice and support!
Anon Longtime Reader* July 31, 2015 at 12:15 pm This is crazy but here I go. I am an early 40’s professional female, occasional commenter, happily married with a kid, great career, house, family, you know, all that stuff. I have worked in the corporate world for over 20 years, I have managed people, taken umpteen ethics and sexual harassment trainings and I KNOW better but.. I have a crush on a guy I work very closely with {insert my mother saying “first, middle, last name” very sternly}. I can see how it happens in the workplace. You spend a lot of time with people, people with similar interests working in similar jobs and fields. I don’t want a lecture on the million reasons this is bad, I know it’s bad. I just think by admitting this anonymously, I’ll realize how silly it is. Since its open thread Friday, thought maybe if this has happened to others they can sigh with relief they’re not alone. I’m sure it will pass and of course NOTHING I would ever admit or remotely act upon. For now though, I feel like a silly, little schoolgirl. Happy Friday everyone!
Katie the Fed* July 31, 2015 at 12:29 pm Totally normal. I had a bit of a work crush this year and it caught me off guard since I just got married and my friends assure me it’s totally normal. As long as you never, ever, EVER act on it, just think of it as a little something to make your day a little brighter :D
anoooon (but just for this)* July 31, 2015 at 12:41 pm Ugh, god. I had a work crush at my old job. Same alma mater, similar majors, mutual friends, but we’d never met until then. It was a perfect storm of compatibility. Nothing ever happened and I left that job, but it did make my work day a little brighter. It’s totally normal to have a work crush!
Anon Longtime Reader* July 31, 2015 at 12:53 pm whew, thank you! I guess we are all just humans trying to understand and control our emotions :D And yes, it does make my day a wee bit brighter.
Shell* July 31, 2015 at 1:01 pm I enjoy it. But then again, relationship-wise I move at the pace of molasses, and given all the dangers of dating at work there’s no way I’d risk my job to pursue something. So I just treat it as an extra bright-spot in my workday and enjoy it. It usually burns itself out after a bit (usually about 2-3 months for me).
AVP* July 31, 2015 at 1:41 pm I had a dream in which I was happily dating/married/something with one of my coworkers who I’d never thought of that way. Honestly, the dream was so sweet and happy it made me reconsider the coworker, which is so weird. He is married, I live with my boyfriend, we are both very happy in our respective situations. Admitting how silly it is here and that I’m not alone makes me feel so much better.
SQL Ninja* July 31, 2015 at 2:00 pm I had such a crush on my old supervisor, she was very happily married with three young kids there was no way in hell anything was going to happen but it didn’t stop me enjoying the idea.
The Toxic Avenger* July 31, 2015 at 3:01 pm Totally normal. I’m married, and every once in a while, I’ll get what I call an “OC” (Office Crush). Don’t sweat it. You recognize it for what it is (when you see him, say to yourself, “woohoo! there goes my OC!”), don’t act on it, and allow it to add a spark to your day. :)
Very anon* July 31, 2015 at 4:45 pm *sigh* I feel you … in the midst right now – it makes work more fun, but it’s starting to annoy me…
Elizabeth West* July 31, 2015 at 5:02 pm Ugh! I haaaate this. Hate hate hate hate. It’s completely normal for this to happen to people, but it suuuuuuucks. Since I’m single, I could do something if I wanted to, if the coworker were single too. But there’s always the possibility of rejection. Or getting blown off (same thing, really). Which suuuuuuucks. (Don’t ask me how I know this. >_<) What really sucks is there are a bunch of people who met here and got married even but anything at all seems off the table for me! Arrgh! I guess the best thing to do is just enjoy it while it lasts. Here is some commiseration: http://www.buzzfeed.com/benhenry/keep-your-hands-to-yourself-doris#.jfDDae1LK
shall remain nameless* July 31, 2015 at 10:46 pm Augh, yes, been there. On a boss no less, not long after starting a job. Thankfully it passed after a month or two. If it makes you feel any better, am currently going through another – but this crush is on one of our flatmates (so someone I live with rather than work with!) and it has lasted MONTHS. Waiting for it to fade…
Sunshine Brite* July 31, 2015 at 10:58 pm Reminds me that I haven’t seen my work crush in awhile lol.
NicoleK* July 31, 2015 at 11:58 pm I developed an infatuation with a married coworker. It was distracting and so awkward at times. There were times when I couldn’t look him in the eyes. I don’t know if he ever knew. I worked with him closely so it was tough but I really did try to keep things impersonal. When he gave notice, I finally relaxed a bit and started joking with him.
limenotapple* July 31, 2015 at 12:15 pm Anyone have suggestions for handling anxiety attacks at work? My current job is pretty awful, but in an over-saturated field, I’ll probably be stuck here for a while. I have an appointment with a doctor at the end of August, but for now, I have to be able to deal with this situation without freezing up. So far, I think I have hidden things well…leaving for walks, getting some water, going to the restroom to compose myself. But I need to find some better ways to handle this, because I don’t think my situation is going to improve. Before this, I never really had this problem. I’m in middle age and have worked since I was 14 and have never had a supervisor or situation that has caused me such an extreme reaction. If anyone has some ideas on how to manage the anxiety, I’m all ears.
June* July 31, 2015 at 12:22 pm My son deals with this and he’s in retail. He’s on meds, so that should help when you see the Dr., and his doctor also suggested he repeat “I’m ok, this will pass, I got this”, etc, until the episode passed. Don’t know if that will work for you, but it has helped him. Their POS machines went down Tuesday for 3 hours and that caused him alot of anxiety, but through meds and mental exercises, he got through. Good luck!! I know this can be bad. My son used to get nauseous, have chest pains, his lips and arms would go numb. Is changing to a less stressful job a possibility for you?
Cocoa Puffs* July 31, 2015 at 1:50 pm Reminding myself that I feel awful, but am not dying and this will pass is my go to for panic attacks at work when I don’t have access to medication. I also do deep breathing, move around (I get fidgety with anxiety), go to the bathroom, and if possible step outside for a few minutes. Medication can be VERY helpful for anxiety attacks though.
Gem* July 31, 2015 at 12:30 pm Mindfulness until you see the doctor? That’s generally how I handled it before I was put on meds/in therapy, but it depends on your job; like are you in a customer facing role/is it easy for you to get a minute or two to do breathing exercises if needed, things like that. It really sucks, I hope you find a mechanism that works for you!
Ashley the Nonprofit Exec* July 31, 2015 at 12:44 pm Sensory interruption – and you can do some version at work (sounds like weird bullshit – but it works for me :-)). You want to expose one of your senses to something different and distinct to interrupt the feeling you are having. Like: Run your hands under very hot (or very cold) water in the bathroom Scratch your own back/leg (don’t hurt yourself, but do it hard enough that you can feel it well) Brush your hair Have a hot drink Listen to music (all the better if it’s something you wouldn’t normally listen to and it’s loud (earbuds!) Rub your feet Talk to someone – just make small take about anything. It can get you out of the panic bubble Tap out a rhythm on your arm or leg Wet your face Smell something strong (and ideally, not unpleasant) These might not be possible at work, but just to give you more ideas: Pet your dog or cat Get in the shower Blast music and make yourself dance Put a cold pack on your head, neck or forehead Sprint down the street or do jumping jacks Soak your feet in hot water
limenotapple* July 31, 2015 at 1:02 pm I have never heard of this before, thanks so much for the suggestion. I can actually see how this would help. Some of it is really practical for the workplace, too.
Ashley the Nonprofit Exec* July 31, 2015 at 2:34 pm I’m glad! I meant to give you some taste examples too – because those can be extra-discreet. I’d try something with a very strong taste – ginger candy, Hot Tomales candy, strong chai tea, etc. If you don’t like stuff like that, even ice water can work.
JMegan* July 31, 2015 at 2:15 pm For me it really helps to name the anxiety for what it is. “What’s happening here? Is this a situation that I should actually be worried about? Is there something dangerous/hurtful/etc going on? No? In that case, this is just the anxiety doing weird things in my brain, and I don’t have to believe it. THIS is the situation as it actually IS, and my brain is playing tricks on me.” Basically, I just logic the heck out of myself, and remind myself that the anxiety is neither necessary nor helpful. And also, having identified that my brain is not necessarily trustworthy right now, that I don’t have to listen to it! Just keep breathing, and reminding yourself that the anxiety will pass. Good luck.
Ashley the Nonprofit Exec* July 31, 2015 at 4:14 pm YES! Name it. “I am having a panic attack. I feel like I am floating. I can’t hear very well”. And then I start moving into the mindfulness of noticing what is around me: “I’m sitting in a chair. It is really hard. My feet are on the floor. I hear the copier humming”
NicoleK* July 31, 2015 at 3:47 pm I posted several weekends ago about my situation (stress escalated to anxiety due to horrible experience with new coworker). I started taking a day off here and there. Planned a much needed vacation. Got on anti anxiety meds. Utilized EAP. Started exercising. Played relaxing music to help calm myself. Started journaling. What really helped was to reframe the situation and alter my expectations. I now expect that new coworker will remain obnoxious and will not change her behavior. I expect that new coworker will continue to ignore my tasks that I need her to do. Once I changed my expectations, I was able to develop new coping strategies.
BRR* July 31, 2015 at 9:10 pm I take medication as needed which has honestly helped me the most. For an over the counter treatment I like l’theanine or this flavored sparkling water called “neuro” and their bliss flavor. When I just need some time to myself we have a little room that’s basically used by everybody for phone calls so if I can escape to there and lock the door and lie down on the floor for a couple minutes. I try to get out at lunch just to escape my desk sometimes too.
catsAreCool* August 1, 2015 at 1:08 am I read recently that focusing on physical sensations – what you see, hear, the way the desk feels to your fingers, etc. can help get a person out of the panic mode.
JMegan* July 31, 2015 at 12:17 pm Happy long weekend to (most of) my fellow Canadians! I have a question that is similar to one we discussed earlier this week, but from the employee point of view. Remember the manager who was looking to get more interaction between members of her team? I’m on a team like that, and I’m really feeling siloed and out of the loop on a lot of things. There are three of us, just my colleague (a peer), myself, and our manager. I’ve been here less than a year, my colleague has been here for two years, and my manager has been here forever. My manager recently took an extended LOA, and my colleague was sorta kinda unoffically acting in her place. So he took on a lot of things that I didn’t know about until he mentioned them to our manager this week, or that I heard about from third parties, etc. And my manager has traditionally operated in much the same way, by just doing her thing without necessarily keeping her team in the loop. I have no problem with either my manager or my colleague doing work that I’m not involved in. But it feels odd to me that I don’t even know some of the things that are happening on my team. For example, there was a major teapot incident a few weeks ago that my colleague handled, but didn’t mention to me. There was no operational need for me to be involved, as my colleague has both the expertise and the role to manage it, but I would have liked to have known about it from a “this is what my team is working on” standpoint. Similarly, when my manager was off, there was a minor incident that turned into a Very Big Incident, to the point that the CEO was involved, but nobody told me about it until we were in a meeting with a third party, and I had to ask for the background of what had happened. So I have two questions here, I guess. First, is it reasonable for me to want to know about these type of things, even if I’m not directly working on them? Or should I just let it go and continue working in my own silo? And second, if I do decide to speak up about it, what do I say? I don’t want to throw my colleague under the bus, so I’m certainly not going to go to the manager and complain that Fergus doesn’t tell me anything. And remember that the manager operates like this as well, so I’m dealing with an established culture here. I’m both the new person and the junior person on a team that has been operating like this for quite some time. Any thoughts are appreciated!
Swarley* July 31, 2015 at 12:32 pm I’ve been in this boat before. I can understand the preference for wanting to be in the loop, but I started asking myself how not knowing impacted my ability to do my job. If knowing about project X meant I would have held off on sending the teapot report in, then yes, I need to be in the know. But it sounds like these things aren’t keeping you from making decisions or impacting your work negatively. I might let it go unless and until it starts to have a negative impact. And then I would just address it as more of a “what kinds of thing should I be more aware of so this incident doesn’t happen again” stance.
JMegan* July 31, 2015 at 1:09 pm Thanks, that’s a good point. The actual impact on my work is minimal, but it does make me feel like I’m not really part of the team. And it can’t look good for us as a group, when my colleague and I are meeting with a third party, and the third party says “So, about that Very Big Incident that your CEO was involved in last month,” and I have to turn to my colleague and say “Um, which incident was this?” But you’re right, if it’s not a problem for anyone else – and it doesn’t seem to be – then that’s useful information about how things are done around here.
Shell* July 31, 2015 at 12:25 pm Grumpy rant: There’s a bug in my inventory manager software. On the last day of every month (as shown by June and July) it seems unable to access transaction history, which makes determining what to order about 10000% harder. Now I have to go look up each individual item on a different screen rather than have the software tabulate everything. The software geniuses need to fix this and fast. -_- Bright side: Installed a keyboard tray at work yesterday afternoon. My back and legs already feel about 5x better. I should’ve done this ages ago. I continue to be baffled that the majority of the population seem to be able to use their keyboards at heights and angles utterly impossible for me. Lots are even as short as I am, so it’s not just a side effect of being short!
Apollo Warbucks* July 31, 2015 at 1:52 pm Until they fix the bug they should be able to run a report for you to show the data you need.
Shell* July 31, 2015 at 3:43 pm The computer wizards have fixed it! Hurrah! There are reports we can run, but one way or another it’s not as convenient as the inventory manager because the information isn’t presented in as convenient a way, usually because I have to compute or analyze the data in one way or another. So I’m very glad the fix was so quick!
Biff* July 31, 2015 at 12:27 pm Some context here — I’m looking to get out of my current industry because of its well-deserved reputation for over-the-top office politics and ‘pump and dump’ attitude towards non-star players. To that end, I’m trying to do the best research I can regarding the industry I’m considering pursuing. I’m looking a DOL Stats, I’m talking to companies local to where I want to live and work and trying to feel them out, I’m also looking at openings in the same area — it’s this last step where I’m struggling. I’m SURE these job ads have weasel words. But because it isn’t my industry, I’m not sure what they mean. I’m looking at blue-collar trade work. Can anyone help me understand what these words mean in that context? “Competitive Pay” when no salary/wage is listed. (In the area where I am searching, these are ‘hot’ jobs, so I’m thinking the companies are not listing salaries on account of not wanting to end up in a very public bidding war.) “Full Benefits” ??? No idea. “Entry Level” and then they list experience as a requirement? Does that mean experience in lieu of degree/tech certificate is acceptable? My favorite so far: “Have well developed interpersonal and business partnering skills, with the ability to quickly adapt to, be accepted by, and interrelate with the organization at all levels.” — I take this as “you will be treated rather poorly by a a total chowderhead of a boss, and we will blame you when you, like every other candidate, crater and have a nervous breakdown on the floor. Also, you will be on a PIP against your personality for the forseeable future.” Would love some help. Thanks!
Biff* July 31, 2015 at 2:13 pm Well, maybe. However, I checked Glassdoor on the last one (where I presumed a chowderhead of a boss) and the reviews said that was EXACTLY on target and that they were badly understaffed to boot. So it seems I am recognizing some yellow flags here, even if I’m not going to always translate them correctly.
Gem* July 31, 2015 at 12:27 pm I’ve had a week. We hired a new tester to the QA team about 3 weeks ago (bringing us from 3 to 4). I took him under my wing as my work is easiest to handover. Background: he is a friend of dev here, who put his CV forward. Monday: New tester calls in eventually to say he’s got childcare issues, takes PTO, no harm no foul, should’ve rung in earlier in the day, but whatever. Tuesday and Wednesday: No show. No call. No nothing. We try to contact him. Nothing. We ask the dev who knows him to try contacting him. Thursday: We find out from dev that tester’s ex went to his house as everyone was worried about him, and he’s just completely shut down – locked himself in the house and turned all forms of communication off. Not sure what triggered it but we’re glad he’s physically ok (we had visions of him being in a ditch somewhere), and hope he can now get the help he needs. However: We’ve not officially heard from him. Its still job abandonment. I’m not sure what we’ll be doing, but I also know the company has been sympathetic to these things in the past, when the affected employee has approached a manager. Which hasn’t happened here. So this week I’ve had to take his work and manage it between us. And its just all a bit up in the air and I’m not sure what’s happening. (we’re in the UK, hence CV. Not sure what happens with job abandonment over here, or even in this specific case :/)
Ashley the Nonprofit Exec* July 31, 2015 at 12:36 pm If you can, I would wait to hear from him before you decide how to proceed. You can probably make his employment end retro-actively if you need to (back to the last day he came to work, or whatever your policy is). Sounds like he is having a terrible time – hope he’s okay in the end.
Gem* July 31, 2015 at 6:45 pm Not my decision to make, unfortunately. Our immediate line manager is sympathetic, but I’m unsure how the higher ups will react. We’re understaffed at the moment but not enough for two people, so not sure if they’ll be willing to keep his job open and hire someone else. I’m hoping we can come to an arrangement with him but he has to actually contact us first as we have no idea if he’d even want to come back, you know? I do hope he’s getting the support and help he needs right now, I didn’t know him long but he’s a nice guy (and mental health issues always suck).
Apollo Warbucks* July 31, 2015 at 12:41 pm Check over the employment contract or have an employee handbook? There should be something in there about it. Normally it’s defined as a certain number of unexplained absences. Failing that as a new hire so is almost certain still on probation, but I do hope the managers will be able to work with him and let him come back to work.
Anonsie* July 31, 2015 at 4:45 pm Yeah, I would put this as a serious emergency and not your garden variety failure to check in.
Gem* July 31, 2015 at 6:49 pm Yeah, I’m really hoping we can actually get in contact with him when he’s up to it so we can work with him, but we’re hearing this third hand at the moment :/
Hermoine Granger* July 31, 2015 at 12:28 pm So…I’ve been job searching for about a year now. I’ve had a number of interviews so assumed that my resume and cover letter were fine. However, I’ve been having difficulty attracting the interest of the larger / great companies that I really want to work for. I’ve realized within the last week that the problem is most likely that my resume and cover letter have too much information. My accomplishments and the relevance of my experience work for email or smaller application systems but wouldn’t be picked up by an ATS. I was a bit disappointed at first because I’ve missed out on a lot of opportunities due to this oversight on my part. However, I’ve caught a bit of a second wind because the problem is something that I can fix. I’m feeling pretty optimistic and hope things work out over time. I’ve worked on making my resume visually easier to digest and now I’m working on punching up my accomplishments and simplifying my cover letter. I’ve also found a few tools that are useful for figuring out keywords to include for customizing my resume. Fingers crossed!
Swarley* July 31, 2015 at 12:30 pm I’ve been in this boat before. I can understand the preference for wanting to be in the loop, but I started asking myself how not knowing impacted my ability to do my job. If knowing about project X meant I would have held off on sending the teapot report in, then yes, I need to be in the know. But it sounds like these things aren’t keeping you from making decisions or impacting your work negatively. I might let it go unless and until it starts to have a negative impact. And then I would just address it as more of a “what kinds of thing should I be more aware of so this incident doesn’t happen again” stance.
Anoninterviewer* July 31, 2015 at 12:32 pm How not to interview: 1. When asked what value you can bring to the team, don’t say “I don’t think I can bring any value.” 2. When asked to explain what something means on your resume, don’t respond with a question similar to “What do you think teapot spout dynamics means?” 3. Do not complain about the commute 4. Do not say that if someone came to you with a question that you would tell them to “just google it”. 4a. Especially do not indicate you would give the same answer your manager! I’m sure other people could add to this list.
Tagg* July 31, 2015 at 1:29 pm Really? “I don’t think I can bring any value”?? Which basically just means, “I shouldn’t be hired by you.” Why even show up to the interview at that point?
afiendishthingy* July 31, 2015 at 9:00 pm Our online application asks something like “Describe why you are an ideal candidate for this position.” One response started with “I am a 20-year-old college student with no idea what I want to do with my life…” I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life when I was a 20-year-old college student either, but I did know not to write that on a job application.
Apollo Warbucks* July 31, 2015 at 1:43 pm Ha ha that’s hilarious, did the person not want the job or something.
Anoninterviewer* July 31, 2015 at 7:20 pm It gets weirder. After totally throwing the interview with the HM she apparently had a sudden change of heart and was very anxious to speak to the HM again after she finished with the last person. She seemed very excited about the job then.
TheLazyB (UK)* July 31, 2015 at 3:04 pm Someone who has to go to a certain number of interviews to get their dole (unemployment) I would bet.
Anoninterviewer* July 31, 2015 at 7:25 pm She indicated on her resume she is currently employed. It wouldn’t have been so perplexing if I thought she was getting unemployment!
AnonymousFish* July 31, 2015 at 12:34 pm I guess I’m cheating, but this is “work-related” because I’m really not getting any work done while this situation plays out. My son is home from college for the summer. It’s been going well (I thought): he has a summer job that he likes, plus he’s been taking a make-up class in the evening at the local community college. Sad to say, this is his second time for the class, he failed it on first try. He had an exam yesterday, spent all day studying. To make a long story short, when he left to take the exam, he went to a computer gaming parlor and not to the campus. I confronted him about this, and he tells me that he’s taking an online class. He waited too long and couldn’t get into the “classroom” class, so he signed up for the online class. And decided to not tell us about it. The “exam” yesterday is actually August 10th – I have no idea why he made up that he had to take an exam yesterday. He says he just wanted to get out of the house. I’ll point out that we bought him a car and he knows that he can just say “I want to go to the coffee shop” and go study or hang out with friends. I was angry when I found out about this, and angrier still that he is very close to failing this online class (he somehow missed taking one of the exams). Without going into a lot of detail, I’ll add that he has a history of doing stuff like this (lying about things, especially school-related). For the record, as angry as I was, I did not strike him. Yelled at him, yes. Then we got down to seeing if he could indeed pass the class. This kind of “last-minute academic crisis” is also a thing that has been occurring for a number of years, too. And yes, I know it is not a good thing. He’s been tested for ADHD and learning disabilities, and came up clean. I’m very unsure of what to do (if anything), and feeling very, very alone. This morning, as in the past when this kind of thing happens, my wife tends try to ignore the issue and instead focuses on all of the things that I’ve done wrong. It is very strange and difficult to describe, but she tells me that I’m angry because I “always have to be right” and I “don’t trust anyone” and other stuff that I don’t believe is accurate but more importantly does not seem relevant to the matter at hand, which is that our son is lying to us and flunking his class. Both my wife and my son seem to push on this “trust” thing, and that I’m bad and wrong because I don’t trust my son. On the positive side, he finished up his freshman year with a B average, and he doesn’t use drugs or alcohol. If he’s got a “problem”, it’s that he likes video and computer games a bit too much. So maybe I just needed to vent. Advice would be welcome, too. I just want my son to grow into a happy, prosperous man. Instead, I keep seeing him turn out like Tom Hulce’s character in the movie Parenthood.
Amber Rose* July 31, 2015 at 12:45 pm Feels like a good time to remind them that trust isn’t a right, it’s a privilege you have to earn, and that lying takes away that trust. I’d also look into marriage counseling, since I can’t see how any of this is conducive to a healthy relationship. Quite frankly I’d be livid at both of them and would probably tell them where to go and what to do when they got there, but lying is a major red button for me.
AnonymousFish* July 31, 2015 at 3:43 pm > I’d be livid … Thank you for that. I do find myself wondering if I acted appropriately. It is good to know that I am not the only person who would be upset over this.
Bekx* July 31, 2015 at 1:03 pm “For the record, as angry as I was, I did not strike him. Yelled at him, yes. ” Do you usually react to these situations by striking him? I had friends when I was growing up that would lie to their parents like this because they were afraid of the consequences for telling the truth. You mentioned that he lies a lot, and I know when I and my friends would behave like that…it was because we were fearful of consequences or disappointing our parents. At his age though, I don’t think there’s a magic phrase or thing you could to do motivate him. He’s old enough to be motivated on his own, and it’s up to him ultimately if he decides to put forth the work. I’d maybe consider talking to him, or having someone talk to him, about stress/anxiety/depression if you think that could potentially be the cause. I second counseling for you and your wife, and perhaps the family as a whole. The not trusting thing sounds like a larger problem.
AnonymousFish* July 31, 2015 at 1:09 pm Thank you (both of you) for your thoughts. For the record: no, I never strike him (or her).
some1* July 31, 2015 at 2:04 pm Do you mind if I ask why you included it? I can’t speak for anyone else but I never would have suspected from your post that hitting was a part of your confrontation.
AnonymousFish* July 31, 2015 at 3:31 pm No, I don’t mind. Ironically enough, I yelled at my son, and I figured that if I mentioned that, that people might wonder if I hit him or did anything abusive. So I put in the part about not hitting him. Oh well. But no, I’ve never hit him. I’m not a violent person at all. I was very angry at my son, but I feel like my anger was at an appropriate level based on the circumstances (although that is admittedly a tough thing to call).
Sadsack* July 31, 2015 at 1:05 pm I’ll say it is difficult to trust someone who’s known for lying, particularly when it has just come to light again. I mean, basically you are right not to trust him. Not sure what you can do, he is the one screwing up his education. Maybe he is not mature enough for college right now? Is he really interested in it, or is he being pushed to do it? Ever consider individual or family counseling? I realize that does not solve the immediate issue of your son’s education, but in the long run it may help.
Sadsack* July 31, 2015 at 1:19 pm Thinking about it some more, he may be trying to hide the amount of gaming he’s actually doing. He made up a class so he could go gaming every time without you knowing. He may have much more of a problem with it than you realize. He did not make up the story for no reason, and the reason he gave doesn’t make sense. This is just speculation, of course, but worth considering.
AnonymousFish* July 31, 2015 at 3:58 pm An interesting point you raise. I do not know what is going on with him, but you are right that he made up a story, and the reason makes no sense. At home he has an MBP, his iPhone, a gaming machine he built, an Xbox one that he bought with funds from his new job, a PS 3, and an Xbox 360. So why is he out at a game parlor? I don’t know. When I encountered him there, he did not appear to be hanging out with friends. The only restriction I give him on gaming at home is that I don’t want him doing it when he should be studying. And I don’t want him waking up at 2pm and playing games until 4am – I don’t feel that is a healthy lifestyle. This latter has been less of an issue since he got a job.
afiendishthingy* July 31, 2015 at 10:42 pm “And I don’t want him waking up at 2pm and playing games until 4am – I don’t feel that is a healthy lifestyle.” I’ve gotta say I think this is fairly typical behavior for a college-aged boy. It’s certainly understandable that while he’s living in your house you want him to be working (which he is), and it’s reasonable to ask him to pitch in around the house. But if the sleep habits aren’t interfering with that stuff, and he’s not waking you up playing games in the middle of the night, I think you should let it go because it’s his lifestyle, not yours. My instinct is he’s leaving the house to game not because he’s hiding a Major Video Game Problem, but because he doesn’t want to hear another lecture about his typical-for-his-demographic gaming/sleep habits. I don’t mean to pile on you here because I know you mean well, but it just seems like in your mind you son is still in middle school. He’s not a fully autonomous adult yet, but he’s been away from home for a year now and like you said, he has a B average, a summer job, and he’s not drinking or using drugs, so stop treating him like he needs constant supervision. You’ll make yourself crazy because you can’t force him to make different decisions, and he’ll just lie more to avoid being yelled at for normal college kid stuff.
MsM* July 31, 2015 at 1:09 pm Unfortunately, I don’t think this is even a matter of you effectively “managing” your son. It’s a marital issue. If my kid had done this, of course I wouldn’t trust him. We could focus on how to handle it better next time, as you’ve done, and I could do some personal reflecting on what I might have done to make him feel like he couldn’t just tell me. But I’d also expect him to understand that it’s going to take me a little while to stop being skeptical when he says he’s going out to study, because that’s what happens when you lie to people, even if you think you have really good reasons for doing it. That your wife thinks this is your fault, or at least that’s what you’re hearing her say, tells me that you two need counseling. The whole family might.
The Cosmic Avenger* July 31, 2015 at 1:13 pm I don’t want to criticize you too much, Anonymous Fish, I am trying to point out what might be potential communication issues between you and your son, so I apologize in advance if it feels that I am criticizing. OK, first, see what I did there? I’m letting you know that I’m trying to help. That should be a given among family, but especially if you’re getting upset, it might help you both to start there. Second, maybe this was rhetoric, but I was a little concerned by the remark “For the record, as angry as I was, I did not strike him.” If that was even a remote possibility, I can understand why he might be hiding stuff, too, because physical or verbal abuse or threats of such can often make people lie or do anything else to avoid those outcomes. I know that is often why I hid stuff from my parents when I was growing up. In order for him to trust you more with these issues, he may need to feel safe. Not from consequences, but that the consequences won’t involve abuse. As for the trust thing, I am not clear on the point your wife is trying to make, it does seem unrelated, but at this point in his life you do have to trust your son somewhat because he is old enough to make his own choices. You and she need to decide what choices you two are going to make, such as under what conditions you will or will not pay for your son’s car or tuition. And then let him know that those are the conditions, and that it’s up to him to meet them, and that you might be willing to help with certain parts if he would like help. For example, paying for summer school or tutors. (Although I’m quiet, I’m a hardass, too, and I’d probably insist that my daughter pay for half of a makeup/summer school course, but not for tutors.) My overall tl;dr take is 1) you’re taking this too personally, and 2) it’s not that bad. I had a GPA below 2.0 after my freshman year, but I pulled it up to the low to mid 3’s by the time I graduated. Lots of people have trouble adjusting to being a semi-autonomous adult.
Not helpful* July 31, 2015 at 1:45 pm We made daughter pay for the second class when she dropped out of it the first time after we couldn’t get any money back. And we made very clear early on to all the children that they have an expiration date. They can not just come home and live with us for ever and must have a job or be in school.
Biff* July 31, 2015 at 2:15 pm Sounds like a marital issue to me — your wife and you appear to have vastly different parenting styles. She appears to be ready and willing to rescue your son for the rest of her life. You’d prefer he fly the nest and make it on his own. That’s a tough one to navigate.
AnonymousFish* July 31, 2015 at 4:08 pm I’m not really sure what is on my wife’s mind – I almost feel like she cannot bear to see any criticism of her son. But you are right that I want him to make it on his own.
Amtelope* July 31, 2015 at 2:40 pm I know this may not be what you want to hear, but … I think you need to take a step back from managing your son’s academic career. When you say “Then we got down to seeing if he could indeed pass the class,” you’re making yourself partly responsible for whether he passes. It’s his job to figure out how to pass. Or not. If he doesn’t pass the class, what effect will that have on his GPA? Will he wind up on academic probation or flunking out of school? What is his plan if that happens? It may be time to step back and let him figure out the answers to those questions. I know that’s stressful, but flunking a class is not the end of the world. Never developing the coping skills to handle situations like this on his own — that’s a much worse problem in the long run.
TheLazyB (UK)* July 31, 2015 at 3:19 pm Yeah. My parents pushed for me to be put straight through to my second year when I should have had resits. Let’s just say it turned out badly. I had no sense of consequences.
AnonymousFish* July 31, 2015 at 4:39 pm These are all good questions, Antelope, but I do not know their answers. I do not think failing this class will get him kicked out of college. But he may need to take it a 3rd time. I am afraid it is not going to look good on his transcript.
Elizabeth West* July 31, 2015 at 5:19 pm Weeeeeellll, that’s kind of his problem. You’re perfectly within your rights to insist he do the work on time if you’re paying for the class, and pull back on paying it if he doesn’t. But if he’s college age, it’s time for him to learn how to handle deadlines, etc. on his own. If he won’t, then he has to live with the consequences. That’s what adults do. I got into a slump my first time in college (too much partying) and ended up not finishing. In hindsight, I should have taken a break before I went. But I didn’t. Failure was on me, and my parents stayed out of it for the most part. I also didn’t live at home during that time, which meant they had no idea until I quit what was going on. If you talk to him about this, make sure you do it at a time when everybody is calm. And don’t rise to the bait if he gets whiny. If you’re paying for this, maybe make it a condition that he needs to pass it or you can’t pay for the retake. It’s too expensive.
Ad Astra* July 31, 2015 at 5:41 pm I agree that the son’s academic career needs to be solely his own responsibility. It can be hard to watch your kid make bad decisions, but at this age you just have to let him. Now, if AnonymousFish and his wife are paying for their son’s tuition or living expenses, they may want to set some requirements for the son to keep receiving the help he’s getting, and that’s fine. Maybe you don’t want to pay for makeup classes. Or maybe you’ll only commit to paying for four years whether he graduates or not. Or maybe you’ll only pay for college if he maintains a 3.0 GPA. You can tell him what you will and won’t pay for, but you can’t keep telling him what to do.
University Girl* July 31, 2015 at 3:34 pm It might benefit your son more to let him do this on his own and fail if it comes to it. If you keep pushing him and pushing him, he will end up despising you and the classes he’s being forced to complete.
AnonymousFish* July 31, 2015 at 4:25 pm There may be truth to this. Although I’ll point out that we (his parents) are paying for his college, and we are not wealthy. So yes, we have a tendency to want to be involved if only for financial reasons.
Anonsie* July 31, 2015 at 4:51 pm You can cut him off after a certain point. My aunt had a rule that she would cover exactly x number of semesters of tuition and if they had to keep taking classes past that to get their undergrad degree, they were going to have to figure it out. My oldest cousin graduated on time, but the younger one changed her major too many times and had issues passing some classes and ended up needing to take another year or something like that. The cost of that was on her, and she knew that was going to be the case so she planned for it.
Treena* July 31, 2015 at 11:33 pm I was talking to a very wealthy parent about sending his kids to college. He’s super not happy that his daughter is choosing a theater major, so his plan is to force her to take out loans for each semester, and he’ll pay off the loans each semester she gets a B average or better. This way, you’re making it clear that they pay unless they do well, and it’s legally binding. And since he has to sign the papers for the loans, that’s his chance to say college is not for him. (now or at all)
LCL* July 31, 2015 at 5:36 pm This is just an opinion, from someone who is 45+ years old. Maybe this is just a generational thing, but, from what you wrote, you and wife are way too involved with the details of this kid’s college life. If you are financing his college, decide what the parameters are, like paying for X semesters, state them clearly to him, then step out. He’s never going to grow up into a functional adult with his folks micromanaging all these details. All of the yadda yadda yadda about his schedules and his gaming time and where he is supposed to be at what time-that is his to manage, not yours. Of course his mother may not agree, I have no solution for that. I know all this aggravation is coming from loving your son and wanting the best for him, but it’s not helping.
Anonsie* July 31, 2015 at 5:43 pm This is probably going to be an unpopular opinion, but you have got to let go of your son here. The thing that’s making me wonder here is why he felt the need to lie to you about the class in the first place. That tells me that you would have been upset with him for scheduling an online class instead of an in person one, or there would be some other consequences or penalties that he was trying to avoid. And that doesn’t really make sense; he’s in college, he’s old enough to schedule his own classes and work the way he wants and be in and out of the house without giving you guys timelines and updates. Even if he has issues with this, you have to let him make bad decisions and feel consequences from them at this point. This doesn’t have anything to do with doing him a favor or giving him a reward, either. This is something he has to be able to experience and learn to handle on his own, worrying about how he’s going to make it work for himself rather than what dad is going to say.
afiendishthingy* July 31, 2015 at 9:23 pm I agree. I think you need to take a step back for the sake of your relationship, AnonymousFish. Screwing up and (hopefully) learning from it is a huge part of being a young adult. As for the lying, there was a discussion here at some point about people lying to cover up mistakes. Those whose parents had told them when they were young the consequences would be much less if the kids owned up to their misdeeds than if they were caught lying, and the parents MEANT it, the children grew up to be much less likely to lie about things they’d done wrong. It sounds like you’re a loving father who cares a lot about your son, but if you have a history of getting angry and yelling when he does stuff wrong, it’s understandable that he might not be too forthcoming with you. I believe you that you’ve never been physically violent with your family, but my impression is that angry outbursts aren’t uncommon for you. I could be wrong about this. And yes, failing a class isn’t great, but you said yourself he has a B average. It’s really not the end of the world. Unless he’s planning on grad school nobody’s going to care much about his grades in college, and even if they are, if it’s a class unrelated to the grad school subject or his major it probably won’t hurt much. Of course you want the best for your son, and if you’re paying for his college you shouldn’t have to pay the price for his screwups. So be upfront with him about what could get the free ride revoked, and then let him figure out what he needs to do. It’s a weird transitional age, but he’s not going to respond well to micromanaging. Mistakes really are the best education, so let him learn from their natural consequences.
LisaLee* August 1, 2015 at 12:28 am I see two things here: 1) I think you need to separate the real problems from the things that annoy you. Problem: Failing the class. Not really a problem: Not telling you exactly where he was going (I feel like this is the sort of lie a lot of kids tell for no real reason other than getting away from mom and dad). Focus on the problems and don’t pile on him with the non-problems. 2) Your son is an adult. Have a serious, adult talk with him about college. Ask him if he’s actually ready for college and willing to put in the work (and be prepared to pull him out if he says no). Discuss if he needs to switch majors (if he’s just failing this class but getting a B average, maybe he’s just bad at whatever this subject is, which is a fixable problem). Most importantly, lay out ground rules. You’ll pay for college for X number of semesters as long as he keeps up Y grades. It’s up to him to independently meet those requirements, and if he doesn’t, there will be consequences (which might range from you pulling all support, to pulling tuition support, whatever). I think you need to impress upon him the seriousness of the situation.
Gwen* July 31, 2015 at 12:40 pm Where’s the best place to look for grant writing classes? And/or is there an online one you would recommend?
MsM* July 31, 2015 at 1:13 pm Is there a Foundation Center in your area? They have some great free training sessions if you’re just getting started, and some more advanced classes if you’re willing to pay. I think they have online versions of the latter, too.
it happens* July 31, 2015 at 4:28 pm The Foundation Center has online grants writing classes. They are very good.
AnonPi* July 31, 2015 at 2:00 pm Check with local universities/community colleges, sometimes they’ll offer them in their professional development courses (ie not-for-credit classes).
AdjunctGal* July 31, 2015 at 12:42 pm I may have a non teaching contract soon! I just need to pass the background check. I plan on quitting one teaching job as soon as the background check goes through. Even better, I will be learning new skills (I’ve been so bored), and at other teaching job, they are also giving me new stuff to do. Growth all around. So…the tricky part is, an acquaintance also tried for this contract, but didn’t get it. There had been a hiring freeze, so it’s been awhile since the process started. I should probably fill her in before I update my LinkedIn and all that, right? It’s just…awkward. Any thoughts as to how I should do this as tactfully as possible?
Knits and Giggles* July 31, 2015 at 12:44 pm Quick grammar question: I am currently in journalism but looking to leave the field. As a professional practitioner of Associated Press style, serial commas (aka Oxford commas) are a no-no, unless absolutely necessary for clarity. So serial commas are not on my current résumé. When applying to jobs that aren’t news organizations (for example, publishing houses or corporate communications offices), should I use serial commas on my résumé and cover letter? And what about my LinkedIn profile? I feel like I’d have no right to claim knowledge of AP style when I’ve got excessive commas there.
Anonymous Educator* July 31, 2015 at 12:54 pm I’d put in the serial commas. Just because you know AP style doesn’t mean you use it all the time. Also, isn’t AP style for AP… and not necessarily in every facet of your life? You don’t use AP style for blog posts or letters to friends, right? Why should you have to use it on your LinkedIn profile and for applying to places that don’t care about AP style?
Knits and Giggles* July 31, 2015 at 1:18 pm See, I use AP all the time. It would be nice to someday not have to write “sweatshirt” as two words, but until that day comes, I will send texts to my husband asking if he remembered to pack his “sweat shirt” (painful as it is to write out). Thanks – I’ll go ahead and serial-ize my LinkedIn profile. (And I’ll keep two separate résumés on my computer – one with serial commas and one without – so if I find myself applying to a position that calls for AP knowledge, I can send the appropriate one to them.)
Ad Astra* July 31, 2015 at 5:46 pm It took me a while to stop using AP in every situation, especially when it comes to the serial comma. You have virtually unlimited space on your LinkedIn profile, so the reason for omitting serial commas (space) isn’t relevant. And, frankly, serial commas maximize clarity. I’ve come to see AP’s stance on serial commas to be outdated, but that’s just me. Anyway, I don’t think most people will notice one way or the other. Just be consistent.
literateliz* July 31, 2015 at 1:21 pm This. I work in the managing editorial department at a publishing house, and I say use whatever style you want, just be consistent.
Elizabeth West* July 31, 2015 at 5:23 pm You’ll have to pry my Oxford comma from my cold, dead keyboard!
Charlotte Collins* July 31, 2015 at 5:59 pm You can have my Oxford comma when you pry it from my cold, dead, and lifeless hand. I don’t particularly care for AP style, but I agree that consistency should be your main concern. Also, spelling.
Nanc* July 31, 2015 at 1:24 pm As someone who deals with multiple style guides (why can’t all our clients just use AP?!) I would say it doesn’t matter as long as you are consistent–pick a style and stick to it. In my personal opinion, if you have to use a serial comma for clarity, see if you can make the phrases in the series shorter!
BRR* July 31, 2015 at 9:17 pm Second it doesn’t matter as long as your consistent (but using one is the best!).
HeyNonnyNonny* July 31, 2015 at 1:29 pm My resume says I know AP style, but I use serial commas because I like them. I don’t think anyone will write you off because of serial commas, since resumes tend to have a style of their own anyway– I mean, they’re usually just strings of fragments!
CanoeSeeMe* July 31, 2015 at 1:30 pm I work part-time as an editor, and I use Oxford commas the majority of the time. Your résumé is not an AP article and therefore does not need to be in AP style. Repeat: your résumé does not need to be in AP style for people to believe that you understand and have used AP style. Should you write a portion of your résumé in Italian to prove you speak it? Since (full disclosure) I am a big fan of the Oxford comma, I disagree about whether the extra commas are excessive-the point of using the Oxford comma is to make your writing as clear as possible (e.g., “I’d like to thank my parents, Jesus and Oprah.”). The AP is not They Who Set All Writing Standards, Hear and Obey!
AVP* July 31, 2015 at 1:43 pm marginally unsafe for work but… http://www.verbicidemagazine.com/2011/09/20/strippers-jfk-and-stalin-illustrate-why-you-should-use-the-serial-comma/
Karowen* July 31, 2015 at 3:37 pm I really hate this example. If you’re talking about JFK, Stalin and strippers, why in the world would you put the strippers first? By simply rearranging the sentence to put the strippers last you’re (a) focusing on the actually interesting part of the story – that JFK and Stalin are back to life and chilling with each other – and (b) eliminating confusion. (To be clear, this isn’t directed at you, AVP, just at my general frustration with this piece.)
Knits and Giggles* July 31, 2015 at 1:49 pm According to the career advice for journalists by Poynter (a journalism education and advocacy group), “Using serial commas is a dead giveaway that the applicant is not very conversant with AP style — despite the claim, elsewhere on the resume, that he or she is.” So there’s that.
Ad Astra* July 31, 2015 at 5:49 pm I think a lot of journalism people think that, and I think a lot of them are wrong about it. Journalists get really snotty about AP Style and it’s the weirdest thing, because AP Style isn’t the right style for everything. I do feel strongly about “11 a.m.” over “11:00 AM,” though.
Karowen* July 31, 2015 at 3:34 pm With LinkedIn you really do have to pick one and run with it, but for specific resumes/cover letters, could you check their site and see how they handle serial commas?
Case of the Mondays* July 31, 2015 at 12:50 pm Just want to vent about an awkward but understandable issue I just had at work. My office has a blog and one blog post was about problems with co-signing student loans. I wrote a blog post about refinancing student loans and how that is one way to get out of a co-signature arrangement. I asked my office manager if I could include my SoFi referral link. At the time, the person who used it got $100 and I did too. She said yes, it was a great idea and included it. I now have a new office manager. The SoFi program changed and I now would get $500 though the other person still gets $100. I emailed her to update the post with the new link. She was uncomfortable with referral links being on our blog at all and went to the head person here. He was very concerned because apparently old office manager hadn’t kept him in the loop about blogs at all, he absolutely didn’t want referral links on there (lest we look like we are endorsing a particular product) and wanted to speak with me personally so I’d understand. I do understand. I thought it could be problematic, which is why I asked before I did it. He said I should have asked him but I know normally all such questions go through the office manager. He just didn’t like her answer. While he handled so well, I can’t help but feel like I did something wrong. I don’t think anyone even used the link off our blog because the blog is not SEO and I doubt anyone ever sees it. Luckily, he’s still cool with me promoting it in my personal time but I just hate that something I did caused such an internal issue. Minor in the grand scheme of things I know. For anyone curious, the blog linked in my name is my personal refi story, not the one on my work blog, but it does contain the referral link at issue. My work blog post contained far less personal info since it was under my real name. Okay, vent over. I feel better. Though still feel a bit like a child caught with her hand in the cookie jar.
puddin* July 31, 2015 at 12:53 pm Ok – just a quickee update cuz I am excited… I Got The Dream Job I used advice from Alison and the community. Thank you for your help working through this grueling time! Oh man! I am over the moon.
Katie the Fed* July 31, 2015 at 12:53 pm Alison – How do you decide what letters get standalone treatment and which ones are part of the 5 letters in the morning?
Laurel Gray* July 31, 2015 at 3:07 pm I keep meaning to ask this question in the weekend open thread! I feel like there are certain letters that get lumped in with 4 others and the comments section only focuses on those and sometimes the other letters do not get enough attention. Today’s migraine letter is a perfect example.
Ask a Manager* Post authorJuly 31, 2015 at 5:13 pm Although with the migraine letter, 90% of the comments ending up being about treating migraines as opposed to the question about handling it with coworkers, which I probably should have foreseen.
Ask a Manager* Post authorJuly 31, 2015 at 9:31 pm Ha, well, sometimes I have a pretty good sense of where the comments on a letter will go and which will generate a lot of discussion … but other times I’m surprised. Usually when I’m surprised I realize in retrospect that I should have seen it coming, but not always!
Ask a Manager* Post authorJuly 31, 2015 at 5:11 pm If I feel like I can answer it with something fairly short / it doesn’t require a lengthy answer, then I put it in the 5-answers post. Or sometimes I do a letter as a stand-alone post even though the answer is only a paragraph or two, if I think it’s especially interesting/will generate lots of discussion. It can also depend on what I have slated for that week. Something could potentially fit in either category but get put in a 5-answers post because I already have enough standalone posts for that week but I still feel like writing an answer to it immediately rather than holding it for a future week. Or I might feel like a short-answer post is pretty mundane and needs something to add interest, to save it from just being questions about cover letters or whatever. Also, 10%-15% of the formula is just hazy instinct about the recent balance of letters.
Lisa* July 31, 2015 at 12:56 pm My review went really well today! I got a 3.5% raise when everyone else got only got 2%. They had good things to say, some bad, but I got the highest level I could. No one ever gets higher than that even though there is an option for it. Still overall not bad.
Ruffingit* July 31, 2015 at 12:59 pm Those of you who had or have toxic workplaces, tell your story! What makes I toxic, how long have you been there and how has it affected your life?
Anon For This Reply* July 31, 2015 at 1:27 pm I may tip my hand a little more than I should here, but I work for a small family business in the natural health industry. So I not only have to deal with weird family dynamics, I also have to deal with…interesting beliefs, which I have to listen to and regurgitate. I’ve been here over 4 years. I’ve thought a lot about what makes it toxic, and there are a lot of aspects, but for me, they fall under categories: 1-attitude towards others (stingy/suspicious: they don’t reward their employees, and employees can’t trust what they say); 2-insufficient planning (last minute and usually not researched); 3-family dynamics (plenty has been shared elsewhere here, and much of that applies in this case); 4-PTO policies (again, super stingy). The kicker is they talk a lot about ethics, honesty, etc. It has affected me in a lot of ways. I’m definitely more cynical, and I’m pretty sure I’m also depressed. My eating habits have changed; I stopped eating lunch a few years ago, and I generally don’t take care of myself physically like I should. I’ve been going out with friends less and less, to the point of practically never now. Every weekend, I dread going back to work–not because of the incredible demand, but because of the toxicity. I am genuinely afraid I will never be able to find a better job, as I’ve been looking almost since I started here. I’ve had a few nightmares about work. More recently, my drive at work has diminished. I still get everything done promptly, but I find it hard to stay focused, and if I have to do something requiring more mental engagement, I try to get by with as little effort as possible. I know I’m being taken advantage of, so I figure there’s no point in putting my best foot forward anymore. I’ve also stopped offering my opinion at work (again, no point). I checked out mentally a long time ago because I realized despite me proving myself and sticking around for so long, I’m still not really a core part of things here. I’m basically just a tool to make life easier, like a hammer. Or Siri.
AnonPi* July 31, 2015 at 1:40 pm “I checked out mentally a long time ago because I realized despite me proving myself and sticking around for so long, I’m still not really a core part of things here. I’m basically just a tool to make life easier, like a hammer. Or Siri.” Yeah, I had similar thought this week that I’m just a warm body where I’m at. Useful to have around when they need someone, otherwise they could care less.
Bekx* July 31, 2015 at 1:55 pm Wow, do you work for my old company? Your first and second paragraph could have been written by me. They are in the same industry too.
Amber Rose* July 31, 2015 at 1:52 pm I had one at my last job. It started when the owner of the company died in a plane crash. His daughter took over just after. At no point did we discuss morale or anything, we just tried to carry on. But it was obvious everyone was hurting. Problem one. The owner had like 40 years experience on the industry. His daughter had maybe 3. She was much slower, much more uncertain and drastically unprepared to run a company, especially while grieving. Problem 2. So what made it toxic? We collapsed under the workload. She couldn’t keep up. She couldn’t answer questions, but got mad when people made mistakes. Everyone worked weekends and 12 hour days. Everything jammed up so we turned on each other. Nobody smiled or laughed anymore. We all yelled and fought without achieving anything. The errors ramped up and lawyers started calling. We bled money. I became so afraid of being yelled at that I stopped sleeping. I’d stress about possible mistakes and drive out to the office at midnight to double check things. I became sick, I started throwing up all the time, I gained weight and started having panic attacks. The sound of whispering is now a trigger for me, because it always meant someone was talking bad about me behind my back. I stopped doing my work because I was going to get yelled at regardless. I played games all day instead. After a year I was demoted. I quit an hour later. I had nothing lined up, but there was no meaning in staying. I’d completely destroyed myself and any integrity I had. I hated myself, I hated my life and even my therapist was speechless in the face of the mess. I believed for a while i’d died without realizing it and ended up in hell. I found a great new job 3 days later. It’s been 6 months. I’m treated like a superstar and I’m not in therapy anymore. I’m still trying to recover my health and my anxiety is still bad. It’ll come with time.
Bekx* July 31, 2015 at 1:53 pm Oh God. I don’t even know where to begin. She yelled at everyone. Even if you followed her directions it was wrong. “I’m paying you the big bucks for a reason. You should be able to figure out what’s better on your own.” When you did propose a change to her, it was all about how idiotic the suggestion was. How could you even suggest that? I remember one time I had to order a bunch of catalogs from the printer. Last year we ordered 5000, but this upcoming year we were going to be attending more conference and will be using them more. The office manager and I decided that 7000 would be more appropriate. Boss took one look at us and told us to get out of her office, we’re “very smart” and should be able to figure this out without her. She was the manager and her job wasn’t to manage us, that’s what we were there for. She said she trusted our judgement. So we ordered 7000. The next day she asked the office manager how many we ordered and the OM said “7500.” Boss freaked out. “Are you TRYING to bankrupt my company? Why on EARTH would you order that many??” She was terrified of people somehow hacking our company. You know how in Outlook you type in a few letters in the search and it’ll start to filter your emails based on the letters? Well, her computer had a bit of a lag, so if she typed three letters in, she might see the email on letter 2 but then the computer would input letter 3 and she’d lose her place. Obviously someone was hacking her computer. Which brings me to the next point. She didn’t believe a word anyone said unless it came from the golden child of the company. I did email marketing for her. She got mad that the email she received from me asked for her to enable images (you know, that thing that all email clients do when you get an email with images?). She told me to figure out how to disable that on all of our customers browsers. I told her that was impossible, it was a security feature and all email systems did it. She glared at me and told me to figure it out or else. But when my supervisor, the golden child, told her it was a security feature it made absolute perfect sense! How smart of email! Now the part that made her the worst. So, obviously I was salary because the idea of paying someone overtime is ridiculous for her. I really shouldn’t have been salary, but that’s just another fun part of working there. So, she had me working until 8 pm every day one week because she kept changing the damn layout/content/images on 24 documents that needed to go to the printer the week before. Finally she approved them, but told me that 20 of the 24 documents will need to be printed and collated by hand tomorrow (Saturday) and I should expect to work a full day. Okay, whatever. This happened so often that I barely even blinked. On Saturday I mentioned something about music, and she and I briefly talked about a certain artist that I had been trying to win tickets for off the radio since he was my favorite at the time. The day before that concert, she called me into her office and gave me 4th row tickets as a thank you. It was crazy, like you abuse someone to the point of tears and then you reward them with something so they can’t be that mad at you. Then there was the other stuff I’ve mentioned. Like the time she took me to lunch to demand answers on why I was taking off two days for “medical reasons” and what was wrong with me that I needed to do that. Uh, hereditary colon cancer…I need colonoscopies every 2 years lady. This is where she offered probiotics as a cure for this. Okay. She would yell at scream with her husband down the hallways, scream at the office manager….scream at me. Call us idiotic. But then she’d bring in donuts the next day. She was super into the occult and homeopathic medicine. The amount of times she told me my chakras were being blocked, or that her grandmother used to curse people was insane. She’d also make sure to tell us that we should be so thankful that she is giving us Christmas off, since most companies don’t do that. Or that 5 vacation days was extremely generous and we should be so lucky that we get that, since so many people don’t have jobs. So I started in 2012. There were 15 people employed there when I left. 19 people have left the company since 2012. My position alone accounts for 7. I was the longest designer they had, and I only lasted a year and a half. When I left she told me that I would be bored at my new job, and would be begging for my job back. She told the office manager that they were lucky to have me for as long they did, since everyone knows that designers don’t stay at a job longer than 6 months (???). Needless to say, I don’t miss waking up sick every morning. Having that dropping feeling when I turned down the street our office was on. I don’t miss Sunday’s at 2 when you begin to panic. I don’t miss feeling that painful clutch around your heart when you see her name appear on your caller id. Most of all, I don’t miss her screaming.
Anon For This Reply* July 31, 2015 at 3:03 pm Haha, you’re right. It’s not everything, so I know it’s not the same place, but your description of your workplace is eerily similar to mine. You have my retroactive condolences. :) Just for fun, I’ve started keeping a running tally of people who have left since I started (including external staff). Currently, it’s sitting at 40. Outside of family, I’m the only one still here.
Bekx* July 31, 2015 at 3:07 pm I’m not going to lie, I have a weird enjoyment when I go for my monthly pedicures with my old-coworker/friend who’s still there and hear who left now and what craziness has happened since last month. 40 though….wow……nuts nuts nuts.
ACA* July 31, 2015 at 2:20 pm This might dox me, but: They brought in a “management consultant” to the in-bound call center where I worked who proceeded to fire all our managers, promote the employees who kissed up to her, and complete scrap our call center training program – I had three months of training before I was allowed to start taking calls on my own, and she was giving our new temps one week of training and then throwing them to the wolves. The reason they were all temps and not full hires is because she was planning on laying off the entire department and outsourcing the call center to one that was “more efficient” (i.e., graded on amount of the time on the phone vs. graded on best possible service). The new manager would send angry emails in all caps, 24 point font, bright red. She’d yell for people from her office instead of picking up the phone, and when we confronted her about it, she said, “I don’t yell, I BELLOW.” Morale went down the toilet. We’d go out on group happy hours 2-3 times a week and just get absolutely sh!tfaced because that was the only way we could survive. One memorable day someone brought in a bottle of vodka that we mixed with ginger ale and drank out of styrofoam cups at our desks. Another time I took a phone interview on my desk phone in the middle of the call center, because what were they going to do, fire me sooner? Obviously this is not professional behavior, and I cringe looking back on it. But that’s how utterly miserable we all were, and frankly it was a relief when I finally was handed my severance check and got to leave that place for good.
pony tailed wonder* July 31, 2015 at 3:35 pm This is from years ago in high school but I was a lifeguard who wasn’t in the ‘clique’ and got the worst shifts and least amount of hours. One of the other guards would repeatedly come to work and forget her swimsuit and would get up on the lifeguard stand in a dress and heels to work (one time it was 8 times in one pay period). I knew then if they were going to give that bozo a better schedule and hours than me, then there was nothing I could ever do to change that.
Anonymousterical* July 31, 2015 at 5:56 pm At my old job, a tiny law firm: mandatory Friday office lunches in the conference room, where the owner would berate/humiliate/yell at the secretary about all the tiny mistakes s/he’d made that week and how it could disastrously affect the firm. I was at that place for four years and, every day, wished someone would run a red light and send me to the hospital, before I got to work. It was horrible, every single day, and I’m still undoing a lot of the intense conditioning and impossible expectations I learned there. Bonus: one of the many associate attorneys I worked with answered the phone with “hey, Owner” and got reamed out for TWO HOURS for not answering the phone with a bubbly “Good morning, Owner! How are you?” We went through a lot of associates.
Ruffingit* July 31, 2015 at 11:14 pm I think I worked at that law firm. All of that sounds very familiar. I only lasted six months though and the owners have since skipped town and one of them has been disbarred so I’m guessing it’s not the same place, but I feel for you having experienced law firm horror and the wishing I was hospitalized bit too.
Oranges* July 31, 2015 at 6:27 pm To me a toxic work place comes down to blame. When your only mantra is please let me not get blamed for this. When you lie about your little everyday mistakes because admitting them will make your situation a million times worse. When the goal posts change and you’re blamed for not knowing. This usually stems from the boss’s feelings of narcissism and vindictiveness. Nothing that goes wrong could ever be their fault since they’re perfect and everyone around them not being perfect is just because they’re “lazy”. And we must blame who IS at fault so badly that they’ll never do it again! And as a warning to the others. I’ve never been in a toxic workplace that didn’t have this component. I’d be very interested if others have though!
Ruffingit* July 31, 2015 at 11:21 pm To me a toxic work place comes down to blame. When your only mantra is please let me not get blamed for this. When you lie about your little everyday mistakes because admitting them will make your situation a million times worse. When the goal posts change and you’re blamed for not knowing. This. So very much this. I’ve had this experience many times and in my current workplace now. Owning up to one’s mistakes is generally a good idea, but in a toxic workplace, it’s not worth it. Better to lie and take cover.
Elkay* July 31, 2015 at 6:37 pm The worst thing about mine was I was part of the toxic team, we were all massively co-dependent while stabbing each other in the back. Thankfully another member of the team and I got on well together and they made me see just how bad it was. The problem then is you know it’s toxic and in some ways ignorance is bliss. I got to the point where I flip flopping between doing nothing all day, taking two hour lunches and feeling like the entire output of the department was generated by me. I got to the point where I was waking up in the morning and thinking “I only have to get out of bed x more times then I get a two day break”.
A Definite Beta Guy* July 31, 2015 at 6:54 pm What makes I toxic Impossible workload. I have been employed for almost 3 years. Another guy (one of my Groomsmen) started around the same time as me. He has not taken a vacation. In 3 years. He has worked 50-60 hour weeks. In 3 years. He’s STILL not “Caught Up.” Let’s call him Larry Left Behind. Poor Larry. I don’t remember the last time we took a company paid half-day. Christmas Eve? I guess I left at 4 PM that day. Does that count? That’s on time, on time is early. Friday before Labor Day? It was 5PM, the databases crashed because we had too much data. I got yelled at by my account manager because I needed to have that project finished for some reason (????) even though our counterparties in other departments were already long gone. He “took over” the project next week, it crashed his computer for days, then he gave up, gave it back to me, told me to figure it out, and I sent smaller data chunks to our counterparty, and that vitally important project that absolutely had to get done and has never received any follow-up. Still waiting on that $250,000 check, guys. I mean, it’d be nice if we got credit. Larry and I received a Big Project last year, on direction from CFO, down through the various levels of management. This Big Project took 50% of our time, and we came in on weekends to finish our other work. We set up cots, we brought in food, and I actually set up a speaker system. I took my laptop to my best friend’s wedding to try to finish up some of this work. We did our best, but let’s say we only accomplished 90% of the work assigned to us. We were told at the end of the year that we had not met our goals for our Assigned Work and would receive the absolute bare minimum wage increases, and that our Big Project didn’t count for anything because it wasn’t listed on our goals (????). When it’s assigned by the CFO, it doesn’t count, you see? Because it’s not a Goal. Goals can’t change. Goals were assigned at the beginning of the year. God I loved Big Project. Our Account Manager didn’t like our comments on the Big Project Update Sheet, so he sat Larry and Me down at his desk, and revised our comments one by one, deriding us the entire time. At one point, Account Manager went back to a comment HE HAD ALREADY EDITED, said “this doesn’t make any sense, why would you write that?!” and edited the comment….again…”Much Better!” Everything is our fault, never anyone else’s. Account Manager sat me down once to review an email to our business partner, pointed out two sections he didn’t like, and said “these don’t make sense.” Those were the only two points our Business Partner responded to, and resolved. *Shrug* They say we are inefficient, Larry and I, so Account Manager sat down with us to review a few accounts. We spent 45 minutes addressing a $1,000 issue, and then next month spent another 45 minutes addressing it again because it hadn’t been resolved (it had been assigned to our outsourced accounting team). Did I mention my current receivable over 90 days is about $5.3 million? I forgot to mention that. There were a number of things I found in my 15 minute review before-hand I wanted to address, about $50,000 worth of things, but Account Manager disregarded all of that. This $1,000 issue was the One Thousand to Rule Them All, One Thousand to Find Them, and in the Darkness, Bind Them. (Lord of the Rings reference for those not following). Our Account Managers are convinced almost everything is an easy fix. At one point, for another project, we found a possible problem during a conference call with our internal partners, and Account Manager asked me if I knew how to query for the data to solve said problem. Of course, I knew getting 100% accurate data was impossible, but we could get a start, sample, and arrive at an estimate…I said I would have to take another look at our original queries. I was BERATED, shouted at loud enough for the entire floor to hear. “I know exactly what to do, come over after the call!” I came over after the call….he didn’t know what he was doing, and asked me to resolve the query for him. It took me 15 minutes, as promised, and we produced the best data possible. He looked at the data, saw it wasn’t 100% perfect, then called a Specialty Expert, who told him, point blank, that it wasn’t possible to get 100% perfect data. In fact, Specialty Expert has an entire department of fifty people to manually work this data, precisely because it cannot be resolved by a simple data query. There’s simply no prioritization, despite “priority” ranking #1 in our lexicon. We created an action-plan for our write-off review. 90% of items were assigned a High priority. Our Account Managers, realizing how ridiculous this was, then went back, and turned half the High Priority items into Very High priority items. Our Account Managers do not prioritize because they were not SELECTED for their ability to prioritize. See, while we do analysis, we have been assigned a lot of rote accounting work. Our Manager did not pick Account Managers on the basis of their analysis. They were picked on the basis of finishing rote accounting, and finished immediately. MUST DO EVERYTHING is Modus Operandi, and our newest Account Manager earned her position by regularly staying until 11PM on Friday nights performing manual journal entries. Why this is a GOOD thing, when we have an entire department in India for manual entries, I have no idea. But that’s what’s valued. And screw that. Our Account Managers answer “Yes” to everything, and Lie when needed. Big lies. Our business partners show up to our location unannounced to audit our business. Our business manager have told us this. Our Account Manager lies to our Manager’s face, and says this is not happening, because otherwise a HUGE can of worms will be opened. Plus, if our Business Partner does not announce their audit, and does not tell us about it, it is not that Account Manager’s problem, but my Account Manager’s problem, and then it rolls down to me. And I am wrong insisting we tell our Manager accurate information about our business partner breaching our contract and penalizing us hundreds of thousands of dollars. See Rule #4, I’m wrong about everything. I have never heard anyone tell our Manager no. Except once. Larry. Once. Exasperated, almost passing out, our Manager asked him if he were capable of performing an additional 30 reconciliations every month at 4 PM on a Friday. Larry almost flipped her desk over. how has it affected your life I love Whiskey, and the Liquor Store loves me. And love fixes everything.
zora* July 31, 2015 at 8:00 pm Being in politics, I’ve worked with some legitimately wacky people and situations, but ExJob got so much worse and more debilitating than I ever would have predicted. First, bait and switch on the job. The task I actually gave as my ‘weakness’ in my interview ended up being about 80% of the job, as in they described the job as a project manager of assembling teapots, and the job was actually designing pretty designs for the boxes for the teapots, and I am not good at designing pretty designs and it makes me miserable. And no matter how much I tried to talk about that or explain or ask for more help with the designing, they continuously just told me ‘oh, it’s fine, just design pretty designs.’ Second, really weird culture/set up. 90% of the (very small) staff had been there for like 8-15 years. In this industry that is completely unheard of. Because of that, everyone had shorthand for what they did, were terrible at communication with each other much less explaining anything to me as the new person. Plus, all of the supervisors had started with this org in college and had gotten promoted straight up the line to be the entire-director level of the organization, so most of them had never worked anywhere else. So there were all kinds of entrenched ways of doing things that were terrible. And people were horrible at managing people. Like lots of passive aggressive emails, sniping about people behind their backs, not knowing how to ask for something and then getting mad when you didn’t read their minds. 3.Also people had been there so long, people in most of the other departments would roll in at 11am, out at 4:30, work from home all the time, give endless excuses why they didn’t meet a deadline every week for 2 years, and nothing would ever happen to them. In fact, when the Dept Dir for another department would consistently be 30 min late or no show to senior staff meetings ,the ED, his boss, would complain TO US that Dept Dir was texting that he would be late again and would just rant and whine about it. And then when Dept Dir showed up, say absolutely nothing to his face. But if I needed time off for a doctor’s appt my boss would give me hell about every minute I was off the clock and how it was hurting my deadlines. 4. If I specifically asked for help or said I wasn’t sure what they wanted with something, or ask very specifically: Do you want me to go in direction A or direction B? I would get an answer like “oh, whichever you think.” and then if I picked B, and spent hours finishing it, as soon as I turned it in, they would say, “Nope, this isn’t right. I think this would have been better as A.” And I would have to literally go back to the drawing board and start over. Over the course of several 1:1s I explained to my boss I was really struggling with them not answering my questions when I first asked them. If I say, “which of these do you want me to do?” I really need you to give me an answer so that I can do it right the first time. No matter how many times she would agree to do that in the future, the same thing would happen again. 5. We had to travel often for work, and since there were only 3 of us on the road and my boss and i were the only women, we would have to share a hotel room. I discover the first trip that she Leaves The Light On All Night. As in, I would try to fall asleep, she would be reading. At midnight I would look over and realize she had fallen asleep, I would get up and turn off the light. 20 minutes later she would get up and Turn The Light Back On. So, I would get zero sleep, try to get up at 6am and spend 12 hours straight in super important meetings while completely freaking out because I could barely think straight. So, yeah, all of the above. But the no sleeping thing made me literally lose my mind. I started having such bad insomnia I barely slept through the night for a year before I finally went to a doctor and got anti-anxiety meds. It was horrible and has made me run from the entire industry I used to really love. Sigh.
NicoleK* August 1, 2015 at 12:31 am My current workplace is very toxic at the moment. Morale is very low among employees. Staff feel overworked and underpaid. This month alone, five employees resigned. There’s a lack of communication between employees and management. Boss is often out of the office. Sometimes boss will not show for scheduled meetings. She’s disorganized and not a very good leader. She hires the wrong people at times and won’t fire them. The last two months has been hell due to new coworker. The job was stressful to begin with and became unbearable with the ongoing conflict with new coworker. I would have to rate this as one of the most challenging experiences of my professional career.
shep* July 31, 2015 at 1:00 pm I spent a very brief couple of months as an employment specialist with a non-profit (I was hired into a different field shortly thereafter), and worked with individuals with IDD. Accommodations were necessary with all of my clients, and this was obvious to their prospective employers as well. That said, I still wanted to encourage best applicant practices among my clients, but my well-meaning supervisor (who had been removed from directly working with clients for at least a decade) was a huge proponent of cold-calling, walk-in applications, asking to speak to the hiring manager, etc. I realize that my very presence is a significant accommodation, and that employers would be immediately privy to the more non-traditional nature of the hire, but I still felt like I was putting my clients at a disadvantage by engaging in these more dated (and downright irritating) practices. I have no plans to go back into the social work field, but I do wonder what we could have done differently. Any thoughts?
BananaPants* July 31, 2015 at 1:02 pm I need suggestions for motivating our new hire. I am not his manager but he’s assigned to work on two projects for which I am the technical lead. It’s like pulling teeth to get him to do anything other than personal Internet surfing; I go to his desk to get a status update or discuss results and he’s on Reddit or Facebook or doing online shopping. Literally every time I go there, he’s not doing work. This includes when I’ve made it very clear that I need a response or answer from him to report to senior management! We are allowed reasonable social media and personal internet use at work but I feel like this is excessive for a new hire who has to be prodded repeatedly to get any kind of work out of him. He does the work as soon as asked but it’s like he expects to be told every single thing that I need him to do – so rather than, “Please do the chocolate teapot spout testing and write me a draft report by Friday” and then running with it somewhat independently, he expects me to outline each step for him as he goes. Previous new hires in this role have been very enthusiastic, eager to learn new things and to make a contribution, and are real self-starters and can do tasks in a self-directed way once trained. If they had free time they’d go to other engineers in the group and ask if they could get involved in other projects. I include other Millennials in this list (others were hired 1 and 2 years ago, respectively) and myself 10+ years ago, so I definitely don’t think this is a generational issue. We were specifically looking for these characteristics in interviewing and I had misgivings about this guy actually having those skills, versus putting on a good show for the interview. He’s never worked in an internship in our field and he recently graduated from college, so I’m trying to be charitable and assume that he’s just unaware of professional norms. I think he realizes it’s excessive because he now Alt-Tabs as soon as he hears someone at his cubicle, but I can see his screen regardless because of the direction I approach from. I want him to actually start taking some initiative because at this rate I’m just going to do the work myself.
Retail Lifer* July 31, 2015 at 1:16 pm This person doesn’t care and isn’t motivated. I’d start documenting and get your ducks in a row so you can cut him loose. It’s one thing to not be much of a self-starter; it’s completely another to completely screw around all day unless someone specifically tells you otherwise.
MsM* July 31, 2015 at 1:26 pm Have you discussed the problem with his manager? Or do you have the latitude as the technical lead to just say, “Joey, when I give you an assignment, I need it to be your top priority unless there’s something even more urgent you’re working on – and if that’s the case, I need you to tell me right away so I can find another solution. I shouldn’t have to keep coming over here to get status updates, and I definitely shouldn’t find you surfing the Internet every single time I do.” I think you may also have to resign yourself to spelling things out more (including additional and more specific deadlines for when you need stuff from him) and encouraging him to ask questions, at least initially. But this doesn’t sound like a professional norms or a motivation thing to me. It sounds like a guy who just doesn’t want to do any work.
BananaPants* July 31, 2015 at 4:20 pm We have the same manager who is not very managerial; he can get away with it because he has a team of very experienced individual contributors who are self-directed. There’s virtually no management of our day-to-day activities, we get long term projects and are expected to execute. Our newer hires usually take on a support role to an experienced engineer while they gain the technical chops needed to work solo (takes around 1-2 years for them to be ready for small projects). They’re just usually way more ambitious and driven than this guy; if they don’t know how to do something, they ask for help rather than waiting to be told how to do it. I’m trying to more clearly explain to the new hire the exact steps that he needs to take. There’s no sense of urgency from him, even when I state verbally and in writing (email) that a task is critical. These are simple things, too – picking up the phone to call someone or sending an email to another engineer. He does not need specialized knowledge to be able to do these tasks which is why I’m so frustrated. When I say to him, “I need you to call Jane now to check with her on the teapot spout test schedule so that I can report to Wakeen by noon”, I mean to do it right then – but he sits around and doesn’t get to it until I ask him three freaking times! When I get to his desk and see he’s on Reddit I just rage internally – I’m taking flak for these things not getting done and he’s on the damned Internet having fun! I’m going to clearly tell him, “Bob, when I ask you to do something by a certain time, I need you to do it and give me a status update by that time.” I can’t call him out for using the Internet but I can call him out for not meeting my expectations on milestones. I’ll also keep trying to break things up into discrete smaller steps with timeframes for completion. It was a red flag for me that a student with an extremely high GPA still didn’t have a job offer a week before graduation and had only retail work experience. I’m starting to think there may have been a reason.
afiendishthingy* July 31, 2015 at 6:40 pm I don’t think not having a job offer a week before graduation is a red flag. Tons of students don’t. As for your non-managerial manager, have you specifically said to him “I am having a lot of issues completing my own work because Redditor needs constant prompting in order to complete his own parts of the project. Any ideas on how we can ensure projects don’t get stalled on his end?” If you (politely) bug the manager enough, will it be easier for him to just deal with Redditor than take your complaints every day?
A. Nonny Mouse* August 1, 2015 at 4:59 am “It was a red flag for me that a student with an extremely high GPA still didn’t have a job offer a week before graduation and had only retail work experience. I’m starting to think there may have been a reason.” As a recent grad in almost this EXACT situation (now a few months out from graduation), this statement scares the bejesus out of me, and now I’m really anxious/hoping no one is looking at me like this. I graduated with a 4.0, lots of awards and had a great internship but they didn’t have the funding to hire anyone on (grant-funded university entity) so they couldn’t offer me a job as much as they wanted to. I’m not a bad person or a bad worker, all of my retail-related references have nothing but praise for me. I just can’t get anyone to give me the time of day.
NicoleK* August 1, 2015 at 11:48 am Sorry, I don’t have any suggestions. I can only sympathize. New coworker only works on reports, proposals, and her pet projects. Everything else, especially tasks that I need her to work on, sits on her master task list; no start or end dates assigned. I was beyond frustrated with her. She obviously doesn’t care. Our boss doesn’t seem to care. So now, I don’t care. I’m going to start documenting to cover my ass.
Golden Yeti* July 31, 2015 at 1:05 pm Question: Do any of you guys use computer glasses? I’d definitely like to avoid Gunnars. I wouldn’t mind Gamma Ray, but I would pay as much to ship them as I would for the product. Any other alternatives? Could I even just find some yellow sunglasses and get a similar effect? Mr. Yeti even suggested the 3D theater glasses could help. On an unrelated note, I was able to pull off an insane deadline this week–pretty much 30 minutes notice, and 8 hour deadline to turnaround (thank God for WordPress import/export). (I’m wondering if I should somehow incorporate this on my resume?) I felt a lot of satisfaction in getting it done, and I was happier than I had been in a long time for 2 reasons: 1-Everyone left me the hell alone because they all knew about the deadline. So I was able to listen to music, and just focus on the task at hand and let everything else fall by the way. No diving for the phones or dealing with a random “honey do” list. 2-I really like problem solving. This was a great reminder of that. I like figuring out the issue and saving the day. :) Maybe it’s a clue as to what I should be doing. Now it’s just a matter of finding that thing and landing a gig.
HeyNonnyNonny* July 31, 2015 at 1:41 pm I bought some no-brand yellow “computer” glasses for 10-20 bucks online because I didn’t want to invest in Gunnars if they didn’t work for me. I don’t use them all the time, but they work well enough when I need them to head off the computer headache.
Clever Name* August 1, 2015 at 1:12 am On the deadline thing, yeah, I spat out a report in 5 hours that normally takes 20. I just worry people will expect emergency turnaround time all the time. :/
PhoenixBurn* July 31, 2015 at 1:06 pm Whew…busy week. I’m dealing with a huge case of imposter syndrome right now – I made a proposal to change our payroll/timekeeping/HRIS system and it was accepted by the executive team. We signed the dotted line with the new vendor yesterday, and now we’re in a rush to get started. In the meantime, other ideas/proposals I’ve put out (teleworking, employee relations stuff) has been approved and I’ve been given the green light to work on preparing policies, tax credit forms, the whole nine yards. I’m sitting here in a daze – proud that my work is being valued, glad that the executive team sees value in it, and absolutely *terrified* that I’m going to fail at it all! Does this ever go away? (I’ve been in HR for 10+ years, in a leadership role for at least 4 of those. New position with a new company this February, and they brought me in because they recognized they needed to move their HR department forward to be competitive.)
Steve G* July 31, 2015 at 3:11 pm It sounds like you know what you’re doing. I think 3/4 of the battle is knowing WHAT needs to get done, not necessarily HOW to do it. You seem to have the whats down; no one is born knowing the “hows,” and the “hows” change over time anyway.
Tara* July 31, 2015 at 1:19 pm So the two slacker interns had their last day. Yay, right? Except… I feel like my own work habits are starting to slip! Watching everyone do nothing all the time with not only tolerance, but almost encouragement from management, is leaving me feeling very little desire to do anything myself. I find myself justifying my lack of productivity with the hours-readjusting and unpaid overtime (thinking, well, they got me to work four hours unpaid overtime so I’m technically owed two hours so if I sit here typing this post on AAM I’m still technically a good worker…). Yikes. How do I kick myself back into gear? How do you stay motivated when no one even cares about whether you do anything or not?
Tagg* July 31, 2015 at 1:20 pm I have a meeting next week with career services for my company. I’m looking to see what my next role could be since 1. I’m sick of being in reception and 2. I do not, under any circumstances, want to be a manager. I’m excited and nervous at the same time. My manager has been super awesome, making sure to always let me know that she’ll help in any way when it comes to moving on from my current position. She’s told me in my most recent annual review that I’m basically being wasted in this role and could be doing so much more. So I’m excited to see what those opportunities might be. At the same time, this is the first non-toxic workplace I’ve ever worked at. She’s the first manager that’s actually advocated for me and supported me. I’m terrified that if I leave for greener grass, I’m just going to fall back into the toxic sludge that was my career up to this point. (And yes, one of those toxic jobs was for the company I currently work for, just in a different branch). So we’ll see how it goes! I’m meeting the career guy on Tuesday, so hopefully by the next open thread I’ll have something good to report :)
GOG11* July 31, 2015 at 1:30 pm Is it reasonable for a manager to make arrangements if someone is out sick unexpectedly? Currently, taking a sick day involves me emailing my bosses. Then, I email the teams I work with to let them know I’ll be out. Then I email another Department to let them know how to handle the opening and closing functions of the department. I’m not always near a computer (for example, when an immediate relative was in a car accident and I spent the night in the hospital with them), so it makes it difficult to get all this done and sometimes I try to do it on my smart phone, but our email doesn’t play super well with it. Is it reasonable to ask my manager if I can just call in/email in and she can send the other notifications/requests? Are there simpler, more stream-lined ways of doing all this that I am overlooking?
MsM* July 31, 2015 at 1:58 pm You have to document the opening/closing functions every single time? That’s a lot. Can you write them up and train someone (or multiple someones), and then just send one email to everyone simultaneously, with a request for Designated Department Backup to handle opening/closing?
OfficePrincess* July 31, 2015 at 2:19 pm That’s pretty similar to what I do. I have a trained backup that I’ll shoot a heads up to if I’m feeling up to it (if I’m totally down with a migraine or something telling my boss is all I can manage, then he passes the word along). In case something were to happen and my backup was also down, I have documentation of everything I do in both a physical folder at my desk and in a shared drive that my boss has access to. It’s not ideal, but processes are spelled out clearly enough that most people could follow along.
GOG11* July 31, 2015 at 2:54 pm I thought this through before, but I’m not sure it would work. The department that has to do the opening/closing stuff services the entire campus of our organization. What they do depends on the day of the week as well as the schedule that the dept is following, and that schedule changes three times a year. The other complicating factor is that the person who does the stuff isn’t the one who would be notified. So, person A would have to be notified that I’m out and they would have to make the determination on what to do based on the criteria (day and schedule in effect) and then relay that to person B to do. Sorry this is rather cryptic, I’m trying not to give away a ton of info.
WorkingFromCafeInCA* July 31, 2015 at 2:25 pm That seems like a reasonable request to me, especially when you back it up with the specific examples of how sometimes you’re not able to access a computer. If there are detailed procedures that people need to follow to cover for you, can you put those together in advance and just ask your boss to share file X or link X with the other department?
LCL* July 31, 2015 at 2:39 pm It’s totally reasonable to ask your manager to figure out a better way to handle this. You should be able to call in sick based on 1 call. Be prepared before you talk to the manager by thinking about how this will work.
It's me but I don't want my name on* July 31, 2015 at 1:31 pm I have a question re disability surveys. This might be something AAM already covered, but I thought I’d ask anyway. My company sent out an email asking for employees with disabilities to self-identify. It’s completely voluntary and has to do with federal compliance regulations. I’ve spoken about my dyscalculia before, and it’s not really a secret per se–I’ve discussed it with coworkers when we were talking about related subjects. I don’t want to create a stigma around it like it’s this untouchable thing, but I’m not sure I want it documented with the company either. Hardly anyone knows what it is, anyway, and people tend to dismiss it with stuff like “I can teach you math,” or “You could just take a class or use a program,” etc. I’ve lived with this my whole life and I’m pretty solid with what my limitations are. It definitely has an impact on my making moves within the company. For example, I can’t do accounting stuff or budget stuff–if I make a mistake (and I will), it would be completely invisible to me. My employer is really big on being inclusive, and they make a huge deal about diversity training when you sign on. Could this hurt me? I’m thinking it might help in future if my job responsibilities changed significantly. I’m not sure whether I should ask my boss about this either. I’ve mentioned I don’t math, but I don’t think I actually came out and said, “Hey, I have a documented disability” in writing or anything. Should I do it?
AnonMarketing* July 31, 2015 at 1:36 pm I’m always SO wary of self-identifying, and here’s why—as much as federal regulations say that they can’t discriminate based on disability, if say, your manager finds out, they can fire you for a different reason (whether this reason holds up in court is a matter of how related it was after you announced the disability and how good your lawyer is). I personally wouldn’t announce until you’ve been solid in your company for years. Is there a reason you would like to document now? As for me, my manager knows I am HOH, but I still haven’t reported it to HR to list it for needed and reasonable accommodation…yet.
It's me but I don't want my name on* July 31, 2015 at 7:57 pm I’m pretty confident my manager would never fire me unless I REALLY screwed up, but our department just went from one division to another and we have a new GM and my boss has a new manager. It’s unlikely my job will change much at this point, but if it did, or if I reached a ceiling of skill sets in it and ever wanted to make a lateral move, I wondered if that could be an issue. What worried me was if the new execs started reorganizing job duties and I suddenly had to do more math-y things that I could not do. I wouldn’t want to pull it out of the hat at that point, for fear they would think I was just digging in on a task I didn’t want to do. If it’s documented, then my boss could say, “Hey, It’s me has this difficulty–see, right here–and I don’t think she’s the best person for this task.”
PhoenixBurn* July 31, 2015 at 2:30 pm Who is maintaining the information? Is it HR only, or will managers have access? Ideally, this information should be kept by HR on a need-to-know only basis, as any other medical information you may turn in. If that’s the case, then self-identifying can’t hurt and can only help if something comes up in the future (as in, you want to make a move, didn’t realize the math involved, now have poor performance, but there’s already a record of your disability and it’s not something that you’ve “just made up” as many bad managers would posit. However, if it’s being held, or even passed through/disseminated out to managers, then it could potentially lead to issues – even though it shouldn’t. Unfortunately, not all managers are good at controlling bias or even recognizing when they may be doing something they shouldn’t – with either completely good intentions or bad. If you’re confident it’s not an issue that will arise in the future, and it doesn’t impact your day-to-day work, then I’d say skip if you don’t feel comfortable (just as you can decline to ID your race/veteran status).
It's me but I don't want my name on* July 31, 2015 at 8:02 pm HR–it’s for the Affirmative Action program. Like I said, my company is very big on diversity and inclusiveness. It’s also on a list of best places to work. I don’t know how that kind of thing works, though. which is why I wondered.
Anx* July 31, 2015 at 1:32 pm I’m most definitely overthinking this, but I’m applying to a job with an ATS, and two of the questions ask: “Are you related by blood, marriage, or other close personal relationship to any person(s) currently employed at Public University.” “* If yes, please list the name(s), nature of the relationship(s), and department(s) If no, please enter N/A: ” My live-in boyfriend is a graduate student at this school and is paid a stipend for his work. Should I answer that Yes, I do have a close personal relationship? I would think that I should, but something about talking about a “boyfriend” on an application seems slightly unprofessional; I can’t put my finger on why exactly it doesn’t seem right. I am not even sure why I’m posting this. Maybe I just need a littler confirmation that it’s fine to mention boyfriends on applications when they’re the ones that brought it up.
HeyNonnyNonny* July 31, 2015 at 1:44 pm I get it; the term ‘boyfriend’ is often viewed as immature, though I don’t know why. Can you just say something about being in a “committed relationship” instead?
GOG11* July 31, 2015 at 1:48 pm If it’s the wording, I’d say use “significant other” instead of boyfriend. If you’re not sure if your relationship rises to the level of what they’re asking about, I am less sure. I can’t think of a reason why it wouldn’t be okay to list it, but I wouldn’t want to not list it and then find out it is something they would have wanted to know and then worry that it looks like I didn’t disclose something I should have. But I’m a bit of a risk-averse catastrophizer.
Calla* July 31, 2015 at 1:48 pm On questions like that, before we got married, I would put “significant other.” “Girlfriend” was too immature sounding and I hate “partner,” so that’s how I solved that!
HigherEd Admin* July 31, 2015 at 3:42 pm I would stick to “significant other” or “partner” in this case.
Anx* July 31, 2015 at 4:25 pm Thank you all! I am probably going to go with one of the alternatives. (also crossing my fingers that this question is being used for disclosure and won’t subtly affect my chances) [at first I wasn’t even sure our relationship warranted it, but from a disclosure standpoint it totally does. our finances are co-mingled]
Cocoa Puffs* July 31, 2015 at 1:42 pm I started a new job a few months ago and quickly realized there were some problem. One was that I was paid on salary and not compensated for overtime hours worked, which would be fine, except that I made less than the minimum annual salary for an employee to be classified as exempt from minimum wage and overtime laws. I brought this up with my boss on multiple occasions, clearly explaining how this violated federal labor laws and she just could not muster up an expletive to give. Also, there are important safety regulations specific to our industry that were just blatantly ignored. Again I brought this up to my boss several times, and she just did not seem to care. (This is in child care, so I feel very strongly that it is important to follow safety rules not only to avoid being shut down, but mostly because I don’t want to be placed in a situation where there are too many children with one teacher, because it could easily become an unsafe situation). I just left to go back to my previous job and am trying to figure out whether or not to file a complaint with the DOL and report them to the agency that licenses child care centers in our state. I am concerned that if I do nothing, nothing will change, but that if I report them they could be shut down, putting all of the employees out of work and causing significant hardship to the families that rely on the center for child care. I also have some vague worries that someone will do something bad to me if I report them. I’d love to get some outside opinions on the pros and cons of filing either of these complaints. And if it matters, I worked somewhere that is part of a national, very, very well-known organization.
Biff* July 31, 2015 at 2:21 pm Small children appear to be in danger — you need to report this. In fact, you might be a mandatory reporter.
Cocoa Puffs* July 31, 2015 at 2:37 pm I am a mandatory reporter, if it was a clear cut case of child endangerment I definitely would have reported it already. When I worked there I was with children 3 and up who are required to have a maximum ratio of 1 teacher to 10 children. Every day for usually 30-40 minutes I would be over ratio. This definitely violates safety regulations and has the potential to become dangerous (which, really so does one adult and 10 kids for that matter), but it wasn’t quite clear-cut neglect/ endangerment. I will look into this a little more actually, I wonder if I do have a legal obligation to report this situation. I was just trying to figure out what my competing moral/ethical obligations were.
Biff* July 31, 2015 at 2:44 pm I know that where I used to live, the Mandatory Reporter stuff was a huge grey area — it wasn’t always clear who was and was not one when they weren’t a school or federal employee.
Cocoa Puffs* July 31, 2015 at 2:51 pm No I was definitely a mandatory reporter. Just didn’t think of it as neglect per se, since a group of 14 preschoolers could be under the care of one adult for half an hour in another setting and it wouldn’t automatically be abuse or neglect, but it certainly violates state regulations for a licensed child care center.
HigherEd Admin* July 31, 2015 at 3:41 pm I’m a mandatory reporter at my job. It was made clear to me that if I am even vaguely waffling about reporting something, I should report it — and that the authority that I was reporting it to would determine if it was actually worth reporting. Better safe than sorry.
Cocoa Puffs* July 31, 2015 at 4:12 pm To clarify, this is not a case where I have any suspicion of abuse or neglect. I am considering reporting them to the agency that licenses daycares due to violations of regulations, not CYS, the agency that investigates child abuse.
Headachey* July 31, 2015 at 4:42 pm That sounds like an appropriate course of action – and separate from your wage complaint, which should go to your state’s DOL.
TheLazyB (UK)* July 31, 2015 at 3:33 pm If something happened to one of the kids because the ratio was out, and you hadn’t said anything, you would feel awful. I know that’s unlikely, but please report. My four year old is in childcare. I would be gutted, incredulous and panicked if it closed, but also relieved that someone spoke up before Something Bad Happened.
Creag an Tuire* July 31, 2015 at 4:10 pm As someone with some experience in regulations (not childcare specifically, but other regulated industries) — it’s actually pretty rare for a regulatory violation to result in an instant “YOU ARE CLOSED” (and if it is, it’s bad enough that you shouldn’t feel even a little guilty about reporting it). Typically, the agency is required to develop a plan to correct the violation, and must later demonstrate that it has enacted this plan (think of it as a regulatory PIP, if you will). The rules exist for a reason, report them.
Cocoa Puffs* July 31, 2015 at 4:15 pm Thank you. This is very helpful to know! A lot of the people working there are good, poorly-paid but hard-working people whose families would be in very bad situations if they were suddenly out of work, so that was one of my major concerns.
Cajun2core* July 31, 2015 at 1:46 pm Long version (short version below): I work at a University. I had my performance review about 2 months ago. In the review were my supervisor, the Assistant Dean, and the Dean. The Dean has only been here about a year and while the assistant dean has been here for years, she only moved into the Assistant Dean position a couple or so months ago. During this review, my rating on a scale of 1-4 (1 Needs Immediate Improvement; 2 Needs Improvement, 3 – Meets expectations, 4 – Exceeds Expectation) was a 3 (Meets Expectations). We have a very simple review form which does not ask for ratings on individual areas but only has a few areas for comments and allows for only an overall rating (1 though 4). During my performance review, I received a 3 (meets expectations) which is basically what everyone gets. However, this morning I was asked to sign a copy of my performance review (I had not done it before). When looking at it, I saw that the Dean had changed my rating from a 3 to essentially a 2.5. In addition she basically included her own written performance review of me which included a substantial area for “needs improvement”. Technically there is no 2.5. She left in the rating of the 3 but also filled in the box to indicate a rating of 2 and drew a line between the two. In her notes she said that my boss had previously discussed things that she had labeled “needs improvement” but my boss had not discussed this things with me within the past year. Short version: After my performance review which included Boss and BigBoss, she (BigBoss) made changes to my performance review document changing my rating from a 3 (meets expectations) to a 2 (needs improvement). She also wrote her own mini-review which included an significant area of “needs improvement.” Question: Have others had the experience where after your performance review with Boss, the BigBoss comes in and significantly changes the review? I am quite frustrated by this. I may be buying one of Alison’s books on finding a new job.
Magpie* July 31, 2015 at 1:46 pm Never posted here but I love reading this community and could use some advice/commiseration. This is primarily a vent. I’ve been with my company for a while and as a result of some successful networking/collaboration about a year ago I started working closely with a second team in a different departmenty. I love the new program I work with and have become one of the directors righthand people over the last year. I’ve gradually taken on more work with this new team with the support and position of my original manager, or so I thought. However, my main boss informed me yesterday that he is happy for me to work with this new team right now because we have budget issues but in a few months he wants me to cut back. My skill set has been increasingly in demand from team 2 and I am loving the work. I feel really stuck. Manager of the new team seems to want me to move over to that team but is wary of being seen to have poached me, and I am so over my own boss’s lack of leadership. He wants me back because I help make his life easier, but I’m sick of doing that and not being recognized for it. Might have to leave the company entirely because I just don’t know how much more I can take if I have to go back to my original team full time. I am by no means irreplaceable, but I have a lot of institutional knowledge that my boss can’t be bothered to figure out. Sorry if that was incoherent. He dropped this on me but no decisions can even be made for a few months while budgeting decisions finalized so all I can do is sit and worry about what the future is going to bring.
Boogles* July 31, 2015 at 2:47 pm Talk to the manager of team 2 and explain the sitaution. Then, with their guidance, I would talk to your boss and tell him that the work you’re doing for team 2 is more in line with your career goals and tell him you’d like to transfer. If there is a need for you on team 2, I don’t think he’d be able to stop you especially if you reassure him that you’ll happily train your replacement, make a smooth transition, etc…
Intrepid Intern* July 31, 2015 at 1:47 pm Does anyone have tips for buckling down and working during burnout? Or mild depression? I am extremely exhausted, having basically spent the last five years on overdrive, but I also don’t have a job– so I need to self-motivate to get through as many cover letters as it takes, and I’m just having difficulty getting myself to focus.
Malissa* July 31, 2015 at 2:12 pm Small goals, big rewards! If I do this cover letter than I can play WOW for an hour. Things like that.
Intrepid Intern* July 31, 2015 at 4:05 pm Big rewards, you say? I suppose I could try that… in all seriousness, though, I usually go with “big goals, tiny rewards,” so the reminder to, you know, treat m’self is helpful.
Brooke* July 31, 2015 at 2:17 pm Sleep. For me, the biggest thing I can do during times like this is get enough sleep.
Dasha* July 31, 2015 at 2:35 pm Lists – make a giant to do list of all your major projects, a daily project list, and then also write down what you accomplished today. For instance, I make a daily project list but I don’t always get everything done because something more urgent may come up so I write down everything I did do that day. Exercise. Patience and love for yourself.
Intrepid Intern* July 31, 2015 at 4:34 pm Do you ever have things that just ride through list drafts, galloping through weeks of un-doneness? I find that the biggest fault of my to-do lists is that I don’t have much energy, so anything without a hard due-date seems to just float from list to list, and then I’ll realize that I’ve been meaning to email that old mentor for three months, and how beat myself up about it. Do/did you ever find things slipping through the cracks like that? How did you deal with it?
jesicka309* July 31, 2015 at 9:48 pm To do lists are my savior when I’m in the throws of depression or burn out. I find that if there is something on my to do this that just never gets done, I use the five D’s: Do it now, do it later, do it next week, delegate it, dump it. If it’s urgent (eg. phone bill! Shower!) do it the second you finish that list. If it’s not so urgent (finish cover letter, go for a walk), pick a time that day and schedule it in. If it’s a nice to have, but not necessary (I’d put emailing your mentor into this category) schedule a time to do it the next week. Is it something you can delegate to someone else to help you? (eg. husband, can you pick up groceries on your way home? Mum, can you please help organise cousin Judy’s birthday present?) If it’s something that is just following you on your lists from day to day, neither urgent enough to be done in the next week or two, and so unimportant that you’ve been surviving this long without doing it, really rethink whether you need it on your list. There is something liberating about dumping things off your to do list, especially if they don’t actually need to be done in a specific time frame, and it gives you more headspace to focus on the actually urgent activities. Eg. no point stressing that my linen cupboard could do with reorganisation, or that my skirting boards are a bit dusty, as that steals headspace for actual important tasks like phone bills, cover letters, cooking dinner, exercise, whatever you need to do to do to be functioning, happy & healthy.
Trixie* July 31, 2015 at 9:54 pm First, don’t beat yourself up about it. What’s done is done and there’s no benefit to lingering on it. I keep an ongoing list but depending on day/mood maybe just get to one thing or two. If its easier to ignore the soft date items, have you tried giving them a hard date just to get it done? And maybe not tackle the whole thing, just one part of it like breaking down a project into phases. As far as the old mentor, is there a deeper issue as far as why you wouldn’t want to get back in touch?
Treena* July 31, 2015 at 11:01 pm I keep all my lists on the app wunderlist (it’s a website too) and then each day, I put my things in one of those tiny, tiny notebooks. I restrict my list to the front of the sheet and my true goal is to completely finish that list. It almost never happens, but it’s great when I can see 80+% crossed off, so it reminds me of how much I accomplished. I also put things like shave my legs, make dinner, and read for an hour because those things do fall by the wayside when I’m either particularly unmotivated or motivated. I either can’t manage the energy or I’m so busy getting stuff done I forget basic life tasks. For those floating items that never seem to get done, I identify them and force myself to do only one of them per day. It’s the first thing on my list and my goal is to complete the list in order. If you do the “hardest” thing first, it’ll be much easier to get to the “easier” things. And after a week or two, you can clear those floaters. For example, with your write an email to your mentor, I find it easier to break down into tasks. First step is find an article that you’re going to send them (if that’s the type of email you’re sending). You do that on Monday. Tuesday, you write an outline of what you want to say. Wednesday you write a rough draft. Thursday you edit with fresh eyes. Friday you re-read it and click send. Breaking it down into tiny, tiny steps makes less overwhelming to start (I don’t have to write the damn thing, I just need to jot down some ideas, I can handle that!) And you also get to feel good about check 5 boxes off your list instead of one. Also, if hard deadlines help, you can create them yourself, but I’m the type of person who knows they’re not a real deadline, so I ignore them. In wunderlist, you can basically set it to remind you every single day until you check the box off.
PhoenixBurn* July 31, 2015 at 2:35 pm What Malissa said. Figure out a solid rewards system for yourself, and stick to it. Also, if it works for you – try journaling. Use it to get the “meh” out, and to focus on positive things. As someone with chronic depression, making a gratitude journal helped me – I wrote about one thing (sometimes no longer than a sentence) that I was grateful for every day. In my never-ending job hunt to get out of a miserable position, it helped to be able to really focus on one positive thing. (I recognize journaling isn’t for everyone, but hey – hopefully it will inspire something similar in a method that works for you.)
Anx* July 31, 2015 at 4:39 pm Go smaller. I’m underemployed and have been so for the majority of the past 7 years. I think it exacerbates my sleep issues because I never feel as though I’ve accomplished enough in a day (even on days that I’m quite productive). When you’re unemployed, it’s hard to rest knowing that there’s theoretically more you could be doing to get a job. If you in the US or another culture where there’s a lot of stigma and not a lot of support for those out of work, it can be even tougher. But those feelings aren’t helpful and can hinder rather than help your job search. Of course you have a lot of power in the matter of finding a job, but there are external factors, too. So if you do a reasonable amount of work in a day, I’d try to relax. For me it was difficult to reward myself when I wasn’t working (at least not working for an employer) so I didn’t really feel as though I deserved to feel relax or at peace or to have fun. But not only are you worth feeling good even when you’re unemployed, but living a totally ascetic lifestyle may actually make it harder to feel connected to the ‘real world.’ So I’d try to allow yourself give reasonable standards for what you want to get down in a week or a day, let yourself sleep, indulge in some rewarding activities and try not to beat yourself up.
Girasol* July 31, 2015 at 8:42 pm Imagine that you have two half-time jobs, finding a job and morale officer – for yourself! And take that second job seriously.
Delyssia* July 31, 2015 at 10:18 pm This is something that I struggle with, though in different circumstances (I’m employed, but I still struggle with motivation, especially when feeling burnt out or fighting off depression). Here are a bunch of random thoughts that might be helpful in some way. Set up some form of external accountability. Maybe post on your blog or some sort of social media or something about how many jobs you applied to in a given day or week. Or set it up with a friend that you’ll “report” to that person about what you’ve done. Make sure you’re taking care of yourself. Sleep, good food, and exercise are all big ones, but also, be sure to do some things you really enjoy, and spend time with people you care about, and give your time to causes you care about. Break your list up into smaller pieces. No, smaller than that. If writing An. Entire. Cover. Letter. is just too much, give yourself permission to write for five minutes, or maybe just one sentence, and then stop–though if you’ve hit your stride, you don’t have to stop! You could also try tackling things 20-30 minutes at a time. Pomodoro technique is probably best-known in the work realm, but in other areas 20/10s (20 productive minutes followed by a 10 minute break) or other splits are popular. You can do this.
Sara* July 31, 2015 at 1:51 pm What would you choose — dream job in mediocre location or meh job in your dream location?
Katie the Fed* July 31, 2015 at 1:58 pm No such thing as a dream job :) But all things considered I’d gladly take a lower-paying job if it would allow me to live well in an amazing city like Istanbul.
super anon* July 31, 2015 at 2:10 pm meh job in dream location. where you live has a huge bearing on your happiness. ex: i hate cold and snow, it makes me really depressed and my quality of life decreases exponentially the longer winter is. even if i could get an incredibly job say, in toronto, i wouldn’t take it because i’d rather make less money and be warm and happy.
AVP* July 31, 2015 at 2:18 pm Same. I’d rather be less happy at work if it meant being happier for all of the non-working hours.
AVP* July 31, 2015 at 2:18 pm Plus once you’re working in a dream location you can use that to get a better job there! Rather than feeling stuck.
overeducated and underemployed* July 31, 2015 at 2:31 pm Last month I turned down a “dream job” in a difficult location, and I’m happy to remain in “meh job” in my current, preferred location, while looking for “slightly better job.” So that’s my answer.
katamia* July 31, 2015 at 2:45 pm Dream location. I went to college in a town I loathed so much I graduated a year early just so I wouldn’t have to go back. I will never do anything like that again. If I can’t stand the location, I don’t care how good the job is because I know I’ll be miserable.
GOG11* July 31, 2015 at 2:58 pm I am currently in a meh job in a dream location (unless there’s a terribly boring job somewhere in the Bahamas with my name on it…). I would put up with a commute (though I don’t know about moving) for a job I’d be really passionate about and fulfilled by.
Steve G* July 31, 2015 at 3:06 pm Dream job in a mediocre location. Spoken as a NYer, where people might thing Wall St. = dream location, when it is really not “all that” to commute to. I’d have fun driving to some industrial park at this point on the side of a highway, just for the change.
Be the Change* July 31, 2015 at 5:22 pm Dream job in mediocre location. I’m a total homebody. And, for the past too many years, my formerly sparkly, delightful husband has a less-than-meh job in our very nice location. And all his shine has been rubbed off. It’s heartbreaking.
Ad Astra* July 31, 2015 at 5:59 pm As long as the location is truly mediocre and not straight-up bad, I’d take the dream job.
It's me but I don't want my name on* July 31, 2015 at 8:08 pm Meh job in my dream location, assuming it paid enough for me to live there. (Bet you can’t guess where THAT is!) Besides, coworkers might be fun even if the work isn’t. :) I have a great job but I hate where I live, so my days are spent wishing I were somewhere else. Not a great feeling.
Kimmy Gibbler* July 31, 2015 at 9:43 pm I’m currently fighting this internal dilemma and leaning towards dream job in mediocre location. I love where I currently live, but job opportunities in my field are pretty limited here. I’m ready to make a career move, and I will likely need to move to a new area of the country to do that. Which I really don’t want to do, but it’s pretty much one or the other.
AnonPi* July 31, 2015 at 1:51 pm Have an interview Monday, which I’m rather torn about. Not really a job I want (sample tech), as its mostly field work and I’m getting to where I’m struggling do much of it any more. While this job sounds like it might be less physically demanding, but there’d be more of it. And honestly its just not what I want to do, it’d pretty much be taking a step (or two) back, and I’m afraid of taking it and having trouble finding work later on because of it. However I’m in a bad situation where I’m at (subcontractor, no job security and working in an increasingly toxic environment), and need a stable job that pays well (which from what I’ve heard they pay well and decent benefits). May not even get it (well overqualified, think they’re considering me because I’ve already done this type of work as part of my current position, and even have done it at their site location), but I’m already thinking about what to do if I am offered it. I feel like I can’t afford to turn it down. This is the first interview I’ve had in months, and I’m so tired of looking (have been applying off and on for the last several years, more so this past year), part of me would be relieved to be done with job hunting for awhile. Any advice/thoughts?
Mimmy* July 31, 2015 at 1:54 pm Piggy-backing off of yesterday’s post about the Subject Matter Expert track for those not interested in managing people: In general, what are some fields where SMEs are common? I’ve always loved the idea of having expertise in a particular topic However, my background is not technical (mainly nonprofit and human services), and I think those types of fields are where SMEs tend to be found (IT, engineering). Someone yesterday did mention publishing, I assume to check the accuracy of facts and other content.
AnotherFed* July 31, 2015 at 8:20 pm I’ve also seen it in manufacturing and support services-type roles like configuration management, training, and database/knowledge management. In those cases, the SMEs are people who have a lot of experience with how different places and projects have implemented processes and are the people you get involved when you’re setting up new projects or migrating things to new systems/techniques. I’m not sure what all fall under human services, but it’s probably got an analogous need for that sort of expertise.
NicoleK* August 1, 2015 at 12:15 pm If you’d like to remain in the non profit/human services sector, maybe look into consulting work? My organization has used consultants for marketing/public relations, grant writing, evaluation, and leadership training.
super anon* July 31, 2015 at 2:06 pm ugh, i had a terrible meeting yesterday and i need to rant about it. so, i’ve spent the last month and a half developing proposals for policy – which has entailed hours of research. plus, although i’m a recent graduate, i have 5 years working in this field (i worked during university and during the gap year between college and uni), and a year of work in this type of role, but with a different unit in the organization, tl;dr: i know what i’m talking about. i had a meeting yesterday with 2 people who have *very* different personalities and communications styles than mine. i expected to have 10 minutes at the start of the meeting to brief everyone on the policy i have drafted so far, explain it was a very rough working document so none of the text is anywhere near final (and a lot of it is placeholder to indicate something will go there, but is awaiting review – which was the point of the meeting , the rationalle for having certain things in the policy, etc. basically, bringing everyone up to speed. instead, the meeting had the other 2 people talking over each other, and talking over me! any time i tried to interject or explain the reasoning for something, the other people would interupt me and talk over me! this wasted so much time as the meeting wasn’t structured, both people essentially lectured me on things I already knew (and they would have known I knew if they let me speak!). i ended up becoming visibly frustrated as i hate wasting time, and i very much dislike being disrespected and talked over. i’m used to a communication style where one person talks, the other people listen, consider what was said, and then speak. not a free for all of raised voices where nothing gets done. one of the woman eventually asked me “why do you seem so frustrated with me?”, but i didn’t feel like i could openly say what the issue was, so i said that i was frustrated with the process of what we were doing, not her. it was even worse because there was suggestions of “just doing” things that may not be legal and not bothering to consult in-house counsel because i wouldn’t take the blame and they would just say no if i asked. this is especially annoying as if anything were to go wrong, it’s my directors who would take the blame – and, i already know the legal reasons for why we can’t do what they want to do because i did the research! ugh! the worst part is one of the women in the meeting afterward went to talk to other people in the dept and told them to be nice to me because i finally realize i was in “way over my head”, which isn’t true at all! i am not overwhelmed – i’m pissed at a lack of respect and frustrated with the communication issues. so now, god knows how many people in my dept think that the new girl (who is 20+ years younger than everyone else) is incompetent and unprepared for her job. i hate this! i need to find a way to come back from it and move on to be effective in my job, and find a way to stand up for myself next time. getting your feet under you as a new professional is difficult. :(
LCL* July 31, 2015 at 2:33 pm Do you have the authority to do what you are doing re policy? In other words, are these changes being done at your manager’s request, and manager will back you? If yes, then mention this at the start of the meeting, then present your plan. Spend much less time explaining. Don’t let people talk over you. Practice saying ‘this is the way it’s going to be, because this is what manager and I decided.’ Tell them to send you an email with any objections. Since these two people are the issue, either meet with them separately, which is not the best way. Or bring an ally with you to the next meeting, who has been briefed on what the toxic twins are up to, and who is willing to redirect the meeting when it becomes unproductive. The most helpful way to approach meetings that you call is for you to decide beforehand what the meeting is for. If the meeting is to decide things, that means to expect a lot of debate. If the meeting is to present a done deal, or what will be a done deal, then don’t allow too much debate but do allow them the option of contacting you with concerns.
super anon* July 31, 2015 at 2:44 pm “Spend much less time explaining.” the issue is i had no time to explain anything! i think that would have solved a lot of the problems because we all would have been on the same page – instead it was just assumption city. the meeting was a planning and development meeting, but my concern is that i was entirely ignored and talked over, and nothing really got done because there was no structure. at this point it isn’t a “this is how things will get done” fullstop situation – but it’s very difficult to even get the questions you need answered when no one listens to you or even allows time to be brought up to speed on what is happening now. i expected a lot of debate – but there was no debate at all. it was 2 women shouting their opinions and at each other and at me and trying to hammer me into agreeing, and that’s what i take issue with. the lack of respect and coherent communication is what frustrated me the most.
fposte* July 31, 2015 at 2:53 pm I think the more you look at this as an issue of respect, the harder it will be for you to get past this–and, ironically, the less likely you are to get respect. Instead, I’d recommending clarity on both strategy and tactics. What exactly do you need from these people? A signature on documents? Specific information? Championing your project back at their units? Did you fail completely to achieve those goals, or was it just not pleasant for you? Could you be more directive in setting up the meeting by asking them to come with an answer or a shared document relating to the questions at hand? Etc., etc., etc. This is the challenge of managing sideways :-). It’s a time to be creative as well as firm, and identify the difference between what you need and what you want.
fposte* July 31, 2015 at 3:17 pm Oh, and if genuinely this is just to get people up to speed, where there’s no place for their input, bail on the meeting format and send them a document.
super anon* July 31, 2015 at 4:19 pm you’re right, i think i’m just more sensitive to rudeness and respect than most people. i extend a great deal of respect to others that when the same courtesy isn’t extended to me i find it incredibly annoying. i need to get better at letting things go (#shakeitoff), but it can be hard when you’re the youngest in the office by decades and often don’t feel like people take you seriously. i’ve always worked with great teams and people and we all just meshed and got each other – but this is a new challenge for me. i’l have to find more aam articles on managing sideways and develop those skills too.
fposte* July 31, 2015 at 2:45 pm This is making me think a couple of things. One: if this is your meeting, you can boss your meeting more aggressively. Throw a hand up–really, physically, throw a hand up–and say “Whoa–that one’s genuinely illegal, so it’s not worth meeting time to consider it. Let’s move on to # 3.” Then ask a specific, not yes-or-no question on #3. Two, which is related to one: develop some skills with this communication style. Relax a bit with the rough and tumble. If somebody talks over you, *don’t stop talking.* Raise your voice, say “Hey, not done yet!” Remember that the way they are is quite likely valuable to the organization too, and that presumably they’re there to support the business and the project and not you specifically. Feel free to use the schedule as a blunt instrument: “Guys, this is fascinating, but I need an answer to #4 and #5 before we wrap up in 15 minutes–let’s get back to those, please.” Remember that for a lot of people like this the *process* is an important part, so they see the redundancy of telling you want you already know to be an acceptable side effect of a valuable way of doing things. It can be tough to negotiate, but you’ll manage it! Good luck.
A Nonny Miss* July 31, 2015 at 2:10 pm I’m so excited, I have to share! I was offered a promotion at work into a different branch of my department and it came along with a $12k raise. I actually asked the manager if she was sure she wanted to pay me that much.
WorkingFromCafeInCA* July 31, 2015 at 2:35 pm ha! that’s wonderful, congratulations!! Go celebrate tonight!
Anony-moose* July 31, 2015 at 2:15 pm Discussion about migraines this morning reminded me: This week my partner shared that they were having back luck with interviewees cancelling. One woman was all set to come in to interview and present some work but called in at the last moment with a migraine. The hiring manager didn’t offer her another interview (from what I can tell) and the general consensus was “that sucks that she’s sick but it’s an interview.” What think you? How should you handle it if you’re so sick you can’t make it to an interview? And with something like a migraine which can be “I have a bad headache” or can be “I’m puking into a trash can and will black out if I don’t go lie down” how do you communicate with interviewers?
Lunar* July 31, 2015 at 2:32 pm As someone who gets migraines that range from the “bad headache” kind to the “puking in a trash can” kind I think that the only thing to really do is be as up front as possible without being too graphic. It might even make sense to not mention a migraine (which far too many people do think of as “just a headache”) and just say that you are too sick to interview. I would be sure to mention that I understand that it is terrible timing and that I would not be cancelling unless it was really necessary and maybe suggest another time that week to interview instead. If I was in that woman’s position I would be pretty bummed if I didn’t get offered a different interview slot, but I would also think that it probably wouldn’t be a place I would want to work because they wouldn’t be very understanding if I had to leave early or call in sick due to a migraine.
fposte* July 31, 2015 at 3:03 pm I don’t think the two situations are really analogous, though. It’s not uncommon in hiring to have a hard end date for the process–they may not *have* another day. Work has another day. It’s not whether it’s a migraine, the flu, or a shingles outbreak–it’s that there’s a narrow window for interviewing in a way that there isn’t for working. I think most of the time hiring managers do have wiggle room to reschedule if somebody’s ill, so it’s certainly worth asking, but it’s not a statement about migraines if they don’t.
BRR* July 31, 2015 at 9:32 pm It can be difficult to line up every current employee in one day for an interview so I can see how there’s not really another shot.
Brooke* July 31, 2015 at 2:16 pm PIPs came up recently here and it’s led me to ask a more general question re: managing…. I’ve been in the workforce about 15 years and only the past few years have worked for a very large company which has PIPs. I didn’t realize the connection between the existence of PIPs and managers being unable to fire people (at least, lower-level managers) but that makes sense based on what I’ve seen while working at this (again, large) company. In my department (which I may at some point manage) there are plenty of problematic, low-level performers that have existed here for 15+ years in some cases because they haven’t done anything QUITE bad enough to merit firing. It’s annoying enough to be a peer (these people negatively impact morale, productivity, etc) but I think I’d smash my head against a wall trying to “manage” them if I couldn’t actually enforce consequences for actions. Which leads to me ask the question – as someone who may get promoted to a manager-level position of this department, am I setting myself up for sheer frustration? How do folks handle this?
Biff* July 31, 2015 at 2:37 pm I think managers are sometimes reluctant to rock the boat because of the enemy you know vrs. the potential punk you may hire. If you get promoted to management I’d do the following: 1. Announce that in order to get your bearings quickly, you’d like everyone to write their current job description and how they are meeting/exceeding that role, and then also ask them to write out a ‘realistically dreamy’ description and what steps they’d like to take to get to that position. You may find out a lot about how people are under-utilized or just plain in a poor fit in their job — or maybe think that their job isn’t what you think their job is. Some people even may want to go back to what they used to do and are in the position they occupy currently because of the dreaded Peter Principle. Have an open mind about why performance is crappy. 2. See what you can do to reorganize the work somewhat so that everyone has some desirable tasks on their plate. Mitigate any other issues that come up as morale suckers. 3. After a couple of months with new tasks in place, assess performance and make a realistic improvement goal — perhaps 5 or 10% more teapot designs assessed and slated for production by the end of next quarter, compared to last year. Talk to the team about this goal and stress what needs to happen to make this a reality. Have that written down, so that any time, an employee can reference it. 4. Midway through the quarter, let people know where they sit goal-wise. Be very clear about your expectations going forward. Make it clear that a PIP is the next step. 5. At the end of the quarter be willing to give Offical Verbal Warnings to underachievers. Look into how to write a good PIP, not just from the HR CYA perspective, but one that actually helps the employee. 6. At the next mid-quarter, be willing to give PIPs to underachievers. BUT, keep an open mind — some people really do shape up. So be willing to let them shape up. But also be willing to ship them out. For you own sanity, work with HR to determine what kind of ‘soft landing’ you can give people on their way out — can you pre-arrange that you won’t fight unemployement? How about a month’s severance pay? Can you hold onto their insurance for a couple months? That way you know that you can be generous at the end and that might make it easier to let go. I think you’ll have a lot better team at the end of the year if you do things like this.
Biff* July 31, 2015 at 2:46 pm Sorry — on number 4 — the part about a PIP being the next step should be part of #5! My bad!
Biff* July 31, 2015 at 3:27 pm I thought of another thing — my workplace management has a terrible tendency to think that certain tasks are always rewards, and others are always punishments, whereas individuals have very different views on these tasks. For example, at one job, I like cleaning the bathroom and the Terminally Gross Station. One manager always gave me those jobs, thinking I’d understand that I was being punished. I had no idea, because I liked it and those tasks HAD to get done. For another — there are jobs at my current work that basically never get handed out even thought they need doing because they are perceived as punishment — and therefore anyone with that task was being punished. I like doing those jobs, but it took me forever to talk someone into letting me get them done. Always ask for volunteers. You might find out that Lady-like Linda adores talking to clients who haven’t paid up and is a complete boss at getting overdue invoices cleared up. You might also find that Macho Bob hates talking sports with one of your distributors, but adores doing design rejections (which everyone else hates) because he appreciates art and genuinely enjoys giving designers feedback and can always soften the blow or help them change the design to one that better suits the company design needs.
GOG11* July 31, 2015 at 3:09 pm “Look into how to write a good PIP, not just from the HR CYA perspective, but one that actually helps the employee.” Do you have any recommendations on resources or where to look for writing a good PIP?
Biff* July 31, 2015 at 3:13 pm I think Allison does. I think some of the industry blogs do as well. It is somewhat industry dependent, I think.
GOG11* July 31, 2015 at 3:18 pm I googled “Management Center PIP” and found some good stuff. Thank you!
Biff* July 31, 2015 at 3:52 pm I think PIPs tend to fail on the soft-skills section. It’s easy to say “okay, Carlos, I need you to make 2 more design qualitifications a day to be on par with your faster coworkers.” It’s a lot harder to explain “okay Carlos, I need you to be a better team-mate to Ron.” What does “better team-mate” mean? It’s better, IMO, to define what a good team-mate is, and then use things that ACTUALLY HAPPENED to explain where Carlos fell short. E.g: “A good team mate helps new people with onboarding activities.” “Carlos, when Eunice came on the team, you disparaged our benefits package and also told Eunice to figure out the HR website on their own. I want you to demonstrate the website when Donna comes on board. I also want you to be responsive when she asks for help. You also need to focus on the facts of the benefits package.” However, I think it’s good to also ‘sleep on’ the PIP for a few days. Personally, were I handing one out, I would want to review it and ask myself some devil’s advocate questions. E.g.: Do I have an employee that seems to always be on the periphery of interpersonal events? Is it possible they are pushing buttons and pulling strings? Does the soft-skills of the PIP seem to focus on interactions between Carlos and one other employee? If so, does that other Employee need to also be on a PIP? Is it possible that Carlos is a ‘canary in a coal mine?’ Is it possible that what I’m asking of Carlos is unfair because I have an advantage he doesn’t? E.g., I grew up with an Indian grandmother and therefore find Radeep’s accent very easy to decipher. Carlos is speaking english as a second language and cannot make heads or tails of it. When doing this, I think it’s important to have an open mind that it’s possible that I will come out with a very different PIP or maybe no PIP at all. I may need to actually get on someone else’s case and stop chewing on Carlos (there’s a tendency in management to blame whomever is already in trouble for all subsequent trouble. This is how you end up with people getting fired for events they weren’t even present for.)
fposte* July 31, 2015 at 3:55 pm This is really valuable stuff, Biff–thanks for posting it. Articulating soft skills–and understanding why they might be a challenge–is important in a lot of managing aside from PIPs, too.
Biff* July 31, 2015 at 4:25 pm I’m glad you like, fposte. I’m pretty opinionated about how management should convey goals and desires to employees because my own organization is so bad at it. We would all do so much better if they would just write down what they want!
katamia* July 31, 2015 at 2:17 pm Even though I haven’t even started my new job yet, I’m already thinking about what I want to do in the long run, and this isn’t it–I think 2-3 years as an academic editor will be enough, and then I think I’ll want to switch to a different kind of editing (most companies who do this service want people with master’s degrees in STEM, which I don’t have and have no interest in getting, so my long-term opportunities are limited). So I’m thinking of, in addition to this job, trying to find either a paid or volunteer position (remote/online only, since I’m moving to another country) to edit something that’s a little more in my wheelhouse (humanities or a nonprofit or even some sort of journalism/news site, though that wouldn’t be my first choice). Anyone have any advice on where to look for something like this? I’m half tempted to just start my own online litmag or something, but I don’t want to do all the other work that would go along with that. However, I also don’t want to go 2 or 3 years just having academic experience because that’s not what I want to do in the long run and I don’t want to get stuck in an area where I can’t advance.
Preaction* July 31, 2015 at 2:22 pm I am ostensibly, but not according to the org-tree, a team leader, in that I have been asked by my boss to make strategy decisions and delegate to my teammates and support staff. I’ve been having disagreements with another team lead about strategy decisions, since our two teams are closely-related in our larger group of 4 teams. Since I am disagreeing with the leader of another team, I have brought it up to my boss to weigh in, who has told me to figure it out with the other team’s lead. The other party has now stopped answering most of my questions, and started saying my tone is aggressive (which, after discussing with my boss and other co-workers, does not seem to be the case) and I am creating tension by continuing to ask questions I am not getting answers to. Since this team lead has lied in the past about conversations we’ve had, I’ve asked him to keep things in the open and on the record so everyone knows what’s going on, but he is treating that request as “harsh”. I just got out of a meeting with my boss where I discussed the tone policing and being punished for wanting to keep things on the record, and I was accused of being paranoid and as a result uncooperative. Can I salvage this situation?
JMegan* July 31, 2015 at 2:50 pm Good grief, that sounds awful. I have no suggestions, but I hope things improve for you soon!
fposte* July 31, 2015 at 4:04 pm So your boss wants you to do stuff but won’t even officially authorize you, let alone back you? That’s not a great sign there. You might be stuck. You can’t get things done the way you want without ruffling the team leader’s feathers, and you’ve heard from your boss that you shouldn’t be doing that. Can you back off, let go, and let things happen the way the other team leader wants?
Preaction* July 31, 2015 at 11:06 pm I can back off, and I have before in this situation. but unfortunately, at the meeting where the boss called me paranoid (“if you can’t even go get coffee with [the other team lead]…”), he also confirmed that we are still on the path to combining the teams into one cohesive unit, which is absolutely the right decision to make as they’re all just making different-colored teapots. What makes this particular instance different is that it was a major shift from a decision made 12 months ago, which I did a month’s worth of work to implement, and the other team’s lead is now denying that any conversations took place, and what I did was never part of the strategic plan. The boss was part of those conversations, but seems happy enough to just change the strategic plan to match the other team lead’s desires. … And the more and more I talk and think about this, the less good it looks…
Brooke* July 31, 2015 at 2:22 pm I’ve been thinking a lot about mentorship lately, and I’m super happy that I’ve just recently (yesterday, in fact) found a semi-formal mentor. In tandem, I’d like to offer up myself as a potential mentor for someone earlier in their career. I’m a graphic designer with 15 years of experience and I’d love to give potential guidance to someone earlier in a similar career. Probably mainly by email. Just throwing this out there in case someone’s reading and could use someone like me :)
zora* July 31, 2015 at 2:31 pm Job-hunting and it’s not going well at. all. I feel like there are so many different aspects of what is going wrong, though, so it’s super overwhelming and I don’t even know where to start! I’m working a 9-5 temp job, which is really not a sustainable solution for the long-term, but it makes it so hard to send out lots of job applications. I got 4 out last Sunday, but none during the week. So, I guess two questions: 1) how many job applications is a reasonable amount to send out per week when working full-time? I am mentally exhausted when I get home at night and I haven’t succeeded in being productive in the evenings. and 2) how do you figure out what is going wrong and how to fix it when it feels like Everything Is The Worst and everything needs a complete overhaul? Thanks everyone, you’re the best!
Ashley the Nonprofit Exec* July 31, 2015 at 2:35 pm I would focus less on the number and more on making sure your applications are really strong – write a customized cover letter, focus your resume as needed, etc. If you send out one or two solid apps a week, your chances are better than if you are so exhausted that you send out 20 that are identical (or contain errors)
zora* July 31, 2015 at 8:05 pm I then stress out that 1 isn’t enough per week. And that I’m going to miss out on something that I didn’t get in before the deadline. The 4 per weekend is what I am getting done when I do a personalized cover letter and resume for each one. That takes me a long time, but if they are sort of similar jobs I can get 3-4 done on one Sunday working straight through. I guess my other worry right now is that my base letter and resume that I have right now is not cutting it and I should scrap everything and start from scratch. Or even that my plan for the jobs I’m looking for is off-base and I need to look at a completely different career path. But all of that will take WAY more time than I have. So, how do I figure out where to start? This temp job is also going to end soon, so I’m kind of in desperate freakout OMG I need a job or I’m going to die mode which is not helping. :o(
Dang* July 31, 2015 at 3:42 pm Focus on quality, not quantity- both of the job you’re applying for and your applications. When I was temping, I’d sometimes scroll through job ads and email them to myself, and collect a few for the weekend for when I had more mental energy. I ended up pretty negligent about it, but I eventually did find a permanent job. Just remember the negativity can feed itself. this is a frustrating process, just try to be kind to yourself and not make it worse than it has to be.
Cruciatus* July 31, 2015 at 10:09 pm Four in one day, let alone 1 week, is a lot for me! I totally get the struggle, but I agree with the other posters–quality, not quantity. When I was job searching (and I was until only last week, when I was finally given an offer) I would only apply to the jobs I really thought I’d like (though I live in a smaller city so there weren’t as many job postings anyway). I’d print/save the job postings I liked during the week and then only applied on the weekends. For me, that meant usually only 2. Sometimes more, sometimes less (as in zero). But there is no “right” number–so don’t beat yourself up that you’re not doing enough! Follow Alison’s advice about cover letters/resumes (if you haven’t already) and you’ll get on the right track. One bit of advice that helped me was to write my cover letter like I was telling a friend why I would be a good fit for the job (without rehashing my resume). It helped me loosen up my writing voice and insert a little personality into it. I didn’t get an offer right away, but I did at least get a bit more interest (HR check in here, phone interview there, etc.) But then I finally starting getting interviews and even offers. Eventually it all came together. Do you have a trusted friend that you could stand potentially hearing some criticism from if they read over your application materials? They might be able to see something you can’t because you’re too close to it. Good luck!
Dynamic Beige* July 31, 2015 at 2:42 pm Hi everyone, I need some help with setting prices. I’ve been freelance for a long time and all my work comes through repeat business or referrals. Which is great, but also not great. I recently thought up an idea for how to market my services (which I have never done before) as packages rather than the hourly way that I’ve always worked, but I’m having trouble trying to figure out how to set the price. The main problem is that working with the agencies I’ve worked with over the years, it’s like I am a wholesaler. All I ever hear is “we have no money for this”/”there is no budget” and everyone wants everything as fast and cheap as possible, but I have no clue what they are then turning around and charging their clients. And it’s not like I can ask, either. So I’m wondering if there is some sort of formula for that? If it takes on average X hours at Y rate it should be doubled? X 1.5? Some other number? Also, wondering what people’s opinions are of offering discounts or sales. I have done some research on what other people charge for similar services (there wasn’t much info out there, very little) and was surprised at the prices they were charging. What I’m considering doing is putting the basic info for the 3 packages on a postcard with prices and then using that as a business card at networking events. If someone immediately is all “ugh, that is too much money!” ask them why they feel that way and then I would have the opportunity (if I felt like it) to offer them a discount right there, in writing — one time only — right on the card (and make a note on their business card of what I did). Ugh. I am just not naturally gifted at this stuff. :/
kkm* July 31, 2015 at 2:45 pm So I was a temp at a non profit and got hired on after about 6 months. It will be a year in October. I’ve been making some basic grammar and spelling mistakes lately due to the workload and the onset of migranes over the past week or so which I’ve never had before so I had no idea what to do while I was not able to see clearly and had a light throbbing in my head. Now my manager wants to talk to me about the problems I’ve been having over the past few days. No, I have not told her about the migraines yet as I’ve just found out what was going on with me very recently. We’ve talked about my previous mistakes which are the result of going to fast in proofreading things like the weekly newsletter (what I write goes to my manager anyway before it gets sent out to so she can make edits) and being distracted by the wavy lines in my vision and throbbing head. I have some ideas of what I can do including printing out my work so I can proofread better and maybe leaving the desk when I get a migraine. I am just worried I’m going to be fired. I haven’t had this talk with my manager but have talked about my concerns with a coworker who works in the same office as me and who think I am doing fine and wont be fired. I started to have an anxiety attack at the prospect of being fired.
fposte* July 31, 2015 at 4:25 pm I’m sorry; that sounds legitimately anxiety-provoking. I’m having a little trouble following, because you haven’t talked to your manager about the problems with your migraine week, but then you *have* talked to her about “being distracted by the wavy lines in my vision and throbbing head,” which sounds like migraines. However, either way I’d be inclined to let her know about having migraines. (BTW, working as a temp at an organization *does* count toward your FMLA hours, apparently, so you may be covered under FMLA now.) I think also coming with notes about how to improve your proofreading is also a good idea. The fact that she’s in dialogue with you is good, and if you’re saying that your performance was particularly poor last week because of this, she’s quite likely to be interested to know that there was a reason and that it’s one you can work around.
A* July 31, 2015 at 4:34 pm First of all: yikes! Migraines are the worst. I really hope you’re in a position to see someone about it and that it either gets better or becomes manageable soon! I would just be straightforward about it. Let her know that you’re aware of the mistakes and that it’s an issue with migraines. Tell her that you’re looking at treatment options (if you are, that is) so that it doesn’t further have an adverse effect on your work and let her know about the in-the-meantime solutions you’ve come up with to see if she might have any suggestions. I really don’t think you’re going to be fired as long as you’re sincere and non-deflecting about it.
Mockingjay* July 31, 2015 at 2:46 pm No Meeting Minutes again this week. Yay! Nearly everyone is on vacation (except me – I’m taking mine in the fall), so work is quiet. And onto other things…namely last week’s recruiter inquiry via LinkedIn. The phone screen with the HR Director went fabulously. I am scheduled for a formal interview next week with the Hiring Manager. I printed out Alison’s guide, “How to Prepare for an Interview,” and have been redlining it and making lots of notes. I am usually pretty good at pitching my qualifications in interviews, but I don’t always ask the right (if any) questions about the prospective work environment to ensure a good fit – for me, and for them. Alison’s suggestions in the guide in that area are very helpful. I selected a few and am tailoring them to the prospective company and the job description. This is the most prepared and confident I have been about an interview in a long time.
overeducated and underemployed* July 31, 2015 at 2:47 pm Any full time working mothers out there? I am working part time with an infant, and I’ve been searching for a full time gig, and suddenly now that I’m actually getting interviews, I’m really wondering whether I actually should just stick around in my part time job. Like, I’m feeling really emotionally torn up about it! The situation: I finished a grad program this spring, and I currently work 4 days a week, 10.5 hours away from the baby. This is a great arrangement. Right now I love that the kid is home with one of us 4 days of the week (one of my work days is my husband’s day off), and only with a group babysitter for 3 days. My hours will be decreasing in the late fall and ending for a few months in the winter due to the nature of the business, but I’m interviewing for another part time gig that would pay decently and be very flexible through the fall and spring. However, I feel like if I want to move forward in my career, I need to take on a full time, more independent or managerial position, so I’ve been applying lazily for a few months and then really working hard for the last month. I’ve gotten requests for phone or in-person interviews for 25% of the applications I put in in July so far, and I’m pleasantly surprised with that response rate, though one of the jobs would be less pay for more hours, so no thank you. But I’m also starting to get nervous. If I got a full time job with standard hours, the baby would be with a babysitter five days a week and only with us for two :( He always seems happy and active with the babysitter, but we can’t afford to put him in a more formal licensed day care center with more educational activities as he gets older, and…I’m afraid he just won’t bond with me as well if he only sees me for 3 hours a day, 5 days a week. So my question – what do you think of career “slow downs,” and what do you think of being a full time working mom? If I wait another year to spend more time with the kid, continuing to work in my part time job and maybe the other one I’m interviewing for next week, will I have the same employment chances I have as a recent grad now, or will I look “stagnant”? Also, if I do get a full time offer, should I just take anything I can get that matches my current rate of pay because I’m in a competitive field and it’s an employer’s market, and because it will be a stepping stone for the future, or should I hold out for something I’m actually excited about going to work for?
AnotherAlison* July 31, 2015 at 3:38 pm Full-time working mom here. I have one kid who will be 18 soon and one who is 11. The 18 year old was born when I was in undergrad, so I took 1 semester off and put him in daycare at 4 months. The 11 year old went to daycare at 7 weeks. Neither time was easy, but it was fine after a few weeks (for everyone). My 18 year old seems to have turned out just fine, despite having a working mom and some crappy baby sitters when we were really young and broke. All that is to say I would not worry about the affect on your kid. My personal pov is that this idea that women need to focus all their energy on raising 1-3 kids (avg.) is unusual in historical context. Sure, women weren’t going to offices until modern times, but they weren’t having play time with their kids all day, either. That said, if you want to slow down, that’s fine, too. I do think it would affect your future employment. Now is the prime time for you, based on your recent graduation. If you don’t have a work history before grad school, all your selling is that grad school trained you for X job. If you don’t progress much from that entry level position doing part-time work, your career will look a lot different in 5, 10 years than it would if you go full-time now. It’s going to be harder to find the same full-time offers in a few years. Also hard to predict market changes. Maybe it will be tighter, but maybe it will be easier to find a job because there are more of them in the future. You would have a better sense of that for your field.
AnotherAlison* July 31, 2015 at 3:39 pm (just adding that I’ve messed up your/you’re twice on here today. . .I do know the difference. . .tgif)
AnotherAlison* July 31, 2015 at 4:05 pm I also wanted to clarify that I do not believe SAHMs or part-time working moms are having play time all day. It doesn’t read quite how I meant it. I do think SAHMs do a lot of work at home during the day. What I meant is that the media-promoted view these days seems to be that we need to invest every spare ounce of our energy into our kids’ lives. If we aren’t doing flash cards with babies or reading to them 3x per day, we’ve failed. My grandma lived in a covered wagon as a small child. Her family was focused on surviving, not enriching the kids’ minds, and I believe that though out human history, a lot more families were like that than now where we focus on giving our kids every possible advantage for success.
over educated and underemployed* July 31, 2015 at 10:12 pm Thanks for replying. I am getting interviews based more on my work history during school (I’m 30, so worked before and part time during my program), but being a recent grad does help explain why I’m in a sense still starting out at this age. You may be right that this is a short window. Now if I can only find a full time job that pays more than my part time one, and doesn’t make me spend 2 to 3 hours a day commuting… I know I can’t be too picky, but I want a job that will be good for my career and OK for my life.
TheLazyB (UK)* July 31, 2015 at 3:48 pm My small boy is four, and I just started working full time again. It is SO HARD. I dunno about the rest, but if you don’t have to, I wouldn’t. Fwiw I got a full time permanent job offer less than two weeks after taking voluntary redundancy. I was quite, quite astonished.
Ragnelle* July 31, 2015 at 4:39 pm I’m a full-time working mom of a 17-month old. I stayed home with her for 11 weeks, then my SO stayed home with her for another 3 months (he’s in academia, and it was summer, so the timing worked out). My daughter is in daycare 5 days a week now. I think a big difference is that I had a good job I wanted to come back to, rather than trying to find a job with an infant at home. I also “only” work 40 hours a week (we don’t do overtime), and it takes me 5 minutes to drive from my workplace to my house. I’m not saying anyone else has to feel the same way, but here is what I think about being a working mom: -I was worried about the bonding thing when I went back to work, but I am still my daughter’s favorite person. I love spending time with her and try to pack as much time with her as possible in the evenings and on the weekend, and we seem to be doing just fine. -Once they reach a certain age (maybe 9 months or so), I think that mom actually “needs” the baby more than the baby needs mom. If you have competent childcare, your child will be fine. I realized this when I went to pick mine up from daycare early one day when I had the afternoon off; she was playing outside with the other children, and she was a bit upset at having to leave before her usual time. -If I was looking at your resume, I wouldn’t bat an eye an a year spent with a young child, but I don’t think that’s the case with every potential place of employment. It may have a negative effect on your career, and you may need to decide if your personal family finances can handle that (in both the long and short term). -Even if you have great childcare, you have to make peace with the idea that you won’t be 100% in control of your child’s well-being. Sometimes my daughter displays new behaviors she must have picked up at daycare (nothing bad, just not anything she would have seen modeled at home), which is a little weird for me. My biggest worry right now is that they aren’t feeding them healthy enough (Honeybuns are NOT breakfast foods!)–but despite this, I know she is doing well. It’ll just depend on you and your spouse, your child and your childcare options, and your job prospects and your field, but if you do decide to work full-time, everything will probably be just fine.
over educated and underemployed* July 31, 2015 at 6:51 pm How did you know my kid’s about 9 months? :) I was happy to go back to my part time job for 32 hours a week, my ambivalence has a lot to do with a) the likelihood than any of the full time jobs I’m in the running for will have 45-90 min commutes, which is a ton of time and likely to conflict with day care logistics, and b) the feeling that I should settle for whatever I’m offered because I’m so early in my career. I don’t really want to be gone 50+ hours a week for “good enough,” you know?
Moonpie* July 31, 2015 at 8:05 pm Full-time working mom with a 2 year-old. I stayed home with her 12 weeks before going back to work. She had private babysitters until 9 months and has been in daycare since then. I’m older, so I’d already been working 20 years when I had her. I love my work, which is fortunate, because I don’t really have a choice – we have to have my income. But in my dream world, with no financial pressure, I’d work part-time. I miss my daughter terribly when I’m away from her, but if I was always home I think I’d miss the fullfilment I’m accustomed to from the work I do. If the choice was all work vs all home, though (no money issues), I’d stay home until she was in school. Some days it’s all good and some days it’s all hard. But it’s generally balanced for me and I think that’s the goal.
Observer* August 2, 2015 at 5:46 pm and…I’m afraid he just won’t bond with me as well if he only sees me for 3 hours a day, 5 days a week. You’ll be home on the weekends, no? What do you think other working mothers do? Do you really think that none of their kids bond well with mom? If you have good childcare, you don’t need to worry about formal daycare with educational activities. Seriously. If you are willing to do things like read to your kid as he grows, and taking to places like the park and zoo (assuming you have decent ones where you live), and your his baby sitter is willing to actually spend some time with him, he’ll do fine. Play, coloring reading with mom / dad / care taker and similar activities are what a child needs in order to develop necessary skills. The one thing I would recommend avoiding is videos and TV. At best, the don’t give a child much, and at worst they present a problem. For some women / families it makes sense to take the hit of a career slow-down. For others, it doesn’t. But, unless there is something unusual going on, there is no reason to believe that taking a 40 hour a week job with typical hours is going to do grave harm to your child or your relationship. The one thing you want to make sure is that you find a job that has some flexibility and allows for some balance.
Sophia in the DM* August 2, 2015 at 8:11 pm Full time working mom in academia. Long commute so days I teach, I don’t see my 13 month old except when she’s asleep. It’s not ideal, but I do it, in part bc I love what I do. I have a lot of ambitious plans for my career. Kid will be fine in daycare or with a group sitter one more day. And like someone else said, you have the weekends with them.
Beancounter in Texas* July 31, 2015 at 3:03 pm I interviewed for a job early this month and yesterday was informed that someone else was offered the job & hired. I am somewhat relieved, to be honest, because while the company sounded awesome and had many of my Dream Job Requirements, my gut said “no” and I was dreading being forced to make a final decision. I went to Glassdoor to file interview feedback and as I was referencing my notes that were written when the interview was fresh on my mind, I realized that the apparent hiring manager, who was the position’s direct report, was barely in the interview for fifteen minutes of the hour long interview. She was running around the office trying to meet a 5pm deadline when I arrived for for 3:30pm interview, (forecasted to last an hour and a half), apparently popping in and out of another meeting that was simultaneous to my interview (while I spoke with others) and then when I handed her a copy of my resume, it seemed that she had never even glanced over the copy forwarded with my cover letter! To boot, the other two people with whom I spent the majority of the interview didn’t really ask me questions, as much as just rave about great the company is for a CPA firm, and how wonderfully management cares about their employees. On one hand, I kind of feel that I’ve been shorted, if the apparent hiring manager was the ultimate decision maker, but they also did a shallow interview and I wonder what other parts of the company are not looked at very deeply. I will count this as a Tragedy Averted, even though it wasn’t my decision.
FurnitureLady* July 31, 2015 at 4:16 pm Sounds like everything worked out even if it wasn’t a great situation overall!
Sara* July 31, 2015 at 3:09 pm I have a [very strong] verbal offer! I interviewed for another role with this employer about six weeks ago and made it through three rounds of interviews (including a skills test, which is typically the final step for hiring in my field) before they dropped off the face of the earth – no response whatsoever to my inquiries about their timeline. Whatever, I got over it – I was very excited about the employer but not as excited about the role itself. This week, I got a call from the hiring manager I’d been communicating with saying yeah, we filled that other position (no kidding), but we have another role we’d like to talk to you about. I was skeptical, assuming they were most likely to offer me a lateral move from my current job, or a certain hard-to-fill position that I don’t consider myself well-qualified for. Nope! Instead, they want me for a position doing the same kind of work I do now, but at a higher level and for way, way more money. This still has to go through several layers of bureaucracy before I get a written offer, so it’s certainly not a done deal (and so I’m still going in for a second interview with another employer on Monday), but both the hiring manager and the Big Boss emphasized in phone conversations (3 in total!) over the past two days that they want ME in this role and aren’t planning to interview or put forward any other candidates. So stay strong, fellow job-hunters of AAM: sometimes when employers say they’ll keep you in mind for future openings, things do work out!
voluptuousfire* August 1, 2015 at 5:48 pm That means you gave them a positive impression in the previous interviews with them. Awesome!
Ewome* July 31, 2015 at 3:15 pm Does anyone know of a training website that is similar to AAM? I am looking for a similar place to find Q&A about the training profession. Thanks!
Charlotte Collins* July 31, 2015 at 6:14 pm If you’re in the US, try the Association for Training and Development (ATD) – they might have a local chapter in your area. The one in my area does regular events, and they’re very responsive to people who have questions.
Ad Astra* July 31, 2015 at 3:15 pm I’m presenting a new communications plan to a bunch of executives in my company, and my boss thinks I should draw up a diagram to show everyone what’s changing. Like a figure showing all the different ways information comes to me and all the different ways the information will be distributed from me. (I have a pretty good understanding of what he’s asking for, even if my description here doesn’t make the most sense.) This is fine, and I think it’s a good idea, but I’m extremely verbal and have a hard time with projects that are extremely visual. Short of drawing the diagram out by hand, does anyone have suggestions about how to create a professional-looking diagram like this? I would love either some software/tool recommendations or just suggestions about how to think more visually and less verbally. (I tinkered in Word a little bit today but I’m already getting frustrated.)
GOG11* July 31, 2015 at 3:22 pm I have a ridiculous obsession with infographics, diagrams, charts, etc., but I have little design skill and I use Word or Publisher, but I don’t use their charting tools. I draw a box, type what I want, and draw lines. I’m not sure if that qualifies as hand-drawing or not. If I had to use the actual charting or diagraming tools I’d probably get really annoyed. I don’t know how I’d get in touch with you, but I’d be happy to send some examples and some notes on how I put them together.
GOG11* July 31, 2015 at 3:24 pm Grrr, I have the attention span of a gnat. I meant to also say that I created a chart similar to the one you’re describing that way. I was the “hub” and various connections were made through me.
HigherEd Admin* July 31, 2015 at 3:33 pm Try Canva.com! You can use their icons and graphics, most of which are free of charge, to create whatever kind of diagram you’re looking for.
Camellia* July 31, 2015 at 3:34 pm Option 1: Don’t know what version of Word you have, but find the “Insert” tab or function, find “Shapes”, and look for the ones labeled “Flowchart”. Just click the square box and drop it into the Word doc near the top. Put in one square for each source of incoming info. Put one square in the middle to represent you. Then put squares at the bottom for each way you distribute information. Then select the Arrow shape and use it to connect the boxes. You can double-click each box and type the labels inside them. Option 2: Use PowerPoint to create a similar diagram. Option 3: If you have Word and PowerPoint, check to see if you have Visio on your computer. It comes with some flowchart templates that you can play around with. Option 4: If there is an IT person where you work, they would/should be able to create this diagram for you very quickly and they probably have Visio or a similar tool with which to do it. Becoming more visual: Honestly, finding a simple tool to use, like Visio, and playing around with it and getting comfortable with it is a big first step in that direction. There are probably open-source tools that you could find if you don’t have Visio. Again, make friends with an IT person and they could help you with this. Above all, hang in there! This is a skill you can learn.
fposte* July 31, 2015 at 3:52 pm To add to the daunting number of possibilities, would Piktochart work for you? It’s a free website, and it’s great.
GOG11* July 31, 2015 at 4:06 pm Thinking on this a bit more, try taking a look at Information is Beautiful . net. He does some really awesome stuff with data and it helped open my mind to what’s possible. It provides a lot of good examples of concepts that can be conveyed through good visuals.
katamia* July 31, 2015 at 5:46 pm I sympathize. Graphic organizers always mystified me in school (and still kinda do, honestly). One thing that might help is drawing out a practice run on a piece of paper so you know exactly what you want the finished product to look like beforehand, which will minimize the fiddling you’ll need to do to create a neater and more professional-looking version using one of the many programs others have recommended.
Tiffany* July 31, 2015 at 3:27 pm I’ve been in my first post-college job for 2 months. It’s at a startup that is sort of related to my field (I studied non-profit, they’re a for-profit that does really great work in my area of interest) and I got it through networking (there was never even an application process). It’s a brand new position and I knew when I took it, that it would potentially not remain a full-time thing. 2 months later and I’ve been informed that it’s going to be reduced to part-time. Obviously, I’m going to have to find something else. It sucks, but there’s a whole list of issues with this job and at the end of the day, I’m really happy to have an out. I was prepared to suck it up and deal with it for at least a year. Knowing I don’t have to do that is tremendous for my sanity and mental health. However, I’ve got some concerns. It can’t possibly look good to potential employers that I’ve only been at my 1st post-grad job for only 2 months before I’m already looking for something else. I will be staying with the company until that happens, but still. I did have an amazing internship in my field for over a year and it ended right before starting this job. I’ve consistently worked throughout college (my last job ended in March but I was there for almost 4 years, though it was just call-center work). Is my experience prior to this job enough that an employer will be likely to look past the 2 month job stint. I’ve built up a decent list of accomplishments in this 2 months and I’m relatively known in my town, but there is a chance I end up leaving early and it may not result in a positive reference (not because of anything I’ve done but because of a salary dispute). My boss’ status in this town generally means no one wants to burn bridges with him.
fposte* July 31, 2015 at 3:40 pm “The job was reduced to part time” is a total no-blamer for leaving; nobody sane is going to have a problem with that. It’s trickier if you also can’t get a reference from it, because that doesn’t match the departure narrative. Are you sure there’s no possibility of a good reference (and how small a town is this if none of the non-profits will hire you if he’s unhappy?)? I’d consider just leaving it off the resume in that case.
fposte* July 31, 2015 at 3:51 pm Second thought: I think it’s okay to list prior employers with whom you had longer experience as references instead, now that I consider it, and note that the shortness of your full-time tenure there made you want to go with prior supervisors.
Sprocket* August 1, 2015 at 11:55 am Also the context that it’s a startup makes this easier to understand the 2 month stay and them reducing you to part time. Clearly there’s a financial concern, not a you concern.
GOG11* July 31, 2015 at 3:40 pm I think the terms of your employment changing is a pretty reasonable/understandable reason to leave your job, even if you were only there for a few months. If you were hired on for a full-time job but are only being given part-time hours that wouldn’t raise any eyebrows, IMO. If you were hired on for a full-time job with the understanding that you’d have X months of full-time work and then you’d be transitioned to PT, I don’t think you should use that as an out.
Hazel Asperg* July 31, 2015 at 3:32 pm My three months’ probation is up, and they’re keeping me! And I’m keeping them. Now that the underlying anxiety of ‘will they/won’t they keep me’ has gone, my mind has cleared a lot. It’s so much easier to get on with tasks, to take charge of my work, and to try to develop my skills and my role. I submitted some work earlier today and got genuine impressed noises, which was really heartening. Yay, good news all round!
Camellia* July 31, 2015 at 3:44 pm Congrats! It’s amazing how much “static” anxiety can create, and we often don’t realize it until it goes away!
Hazel Asperg* July 31, 2015 at 4:58 pm Great phrase! Absolutely. I can stop worrying about how I’m doing my job and just do much job the best I can.
Dang* July 31, 2015 at 3:38 pm Late to the party but hoping someone has some advice. How do you deal with a superior (who is not your direct supervisor) who attempts to control everything? Examples: 1. Hoards important documents on her own computer, refuses to add them to the server so we have to basically ask for permission to get the information. 2. Thinks she’s being impressive by following up but is extremely preemptive and has opened cans of worms 3. Will do things that are supposed to be my role because she is cc’ed on emails
Dang* July 31, 2015 at 4:05 pm Nothing. I don’t think she realizes the first is happening, but I know she has to realize 2 and 3. I’ve only been here 4 months (and she started two weeks before me), and most of the time I’ve noticed these things but thought I was being too sensitive to it. It seems this past week or two they’ve gotten worse, or I’m less patient.
fposte* July 31, 2015 at 4:46 pm I really mean “What has your manager said about this when you’ve brought it up to her that this is a problem?” The answer seems to be that you haven’t done that, so I’d say that’s your next step.
Dang* July 31, 2015 at 4:49 pm Okay thanks! I kept getting stuck in thinking I should try to talk with the coworker first, but I wasn’t sure.
fposte* July 31, 2015 at 7:20 pm Okay, I thought you’d already talked to the co-worker :-). However: 1) doesn’t bother me that much–it’s a PITA but a low priority if she is willing to share with you via email or whatever. 3) you can ask her about directly (“Jane, I appreciate the willingness, but I really want to do my job–can you check with me before you take on any Teapot Scullery tasks mentioned in emails?”). 2) is probably going to be manager-level from the get-go, because you’re going to need more authority to ignore her or push down response to her. 3) is going to end up as part of the discussion with the manager, because talking to Jane isn’t going to convince her to let anything go–she is the Person Who Is On It, dammit. So really this is a conversation about the best strategies for encouraging Jane to release her grip on all the work ever and let other people do their jobs too. Realize this is quite possibly a long-term process, so stay philosophical in the meantime and work around her as best as you can. “That’s Jane being Jane,” you say calmly to yourself with a slight shrug.
GOG11* July 31, 2015 at 4:01 pm I think you should take 1 and 3 to your manager for advice/for him or her to address. Not sure about 2… 1. Something like, “The process guides for the teapot QA procedures and the glaze ingredient ratios are currently stored on Lucinda’s computer and having to go through her delays our work (by days if she’s sick or on vacation, by hours, whatever’s the case). Is there a way we could get it moved onto the server so we can all access it as we’re working?” (security and the risk of having it stored on a computer without a proper backup could also be addressed) 3. “I really appreciate Lucinda’s willingness to pitch in, but when she responded to Percival’s request for the handle report, she sent one of my earlier drafts that contained misinformation/info that’s no longer relevant/phased out policies/what-have-you. Lucinda doesn’t always have the information she needs to respond to these types of requests, but I don’t feel comfortable asking her not to respond to them. What are your thoughts?”
Dang* July 31, 2015 at 4:15 pm I REALLY like this wording, thank you! For 3, I think generally it’s more an annoyance than anything… so far. I could definitely see something out of date getting sent, or wires getting crossed somewhere, so I think it’s a good idea to think of some examples where that might happen. Thanks!
Jill 2* July 31, 2015 at 3:38 pm Is there any good way to combat perception from younger staff that you aren’t “deserving” of your work environment or opportunities? These are peer colleagues and not any staff that report to me. One of the younger analysts at my org has made repeated comments about how lucky I am that I have an office, and that I’m lucky to be going to a big conference in a few weeks. There’s always this undertone that I’m just a peon like him and shouldn’t get these perks. The thing is, though, I’ve been in the workforce for almost a decade, and this is his first job after college. He’s an analyst, but I’m the one who taught him how to use pivot tables; he was doing everything manual until he had a meeting with me. I am not an analyst by title like he is, but I am the most analytical person in my department, and am my team’s go-to data person for quick stats in a pinch. He’s also made comments about how I, “Always leave work at 5, right?” when I think I can count on one hand how many times that’s happened in the past YEAR, and have been pulling 60-80 hour weeks recently. I know I should let this roll off my back, but I have definitely felt this undertone from more than a few people. It bugs me, because I’ll be honest — I DON’T know why I got an office. I AM the most junior person in our building who has one. I am experience issues with feeling like I’m not empowered or don’t have any authority despite seemingly positioned to be so. Still. This rankles. Is there anything I can say to this guy to shut him up or prove him otherwise?
fposte* July 31, 2015 at 3:48 pm The best way to shut him up is by not caring what noise he makes. If you defend against this, you’re accepting his right to question it. Do not get baited into a discussion of your performance vs. his. There are all manner of ways to respond to it, depending on you and him and the alignment of the stars. Genuine puzzlement: “Was I supposed to get you something that I didn’t, Bob?” Raised eyebrow puzzlement: “Bob, you’ve mentioned this is a few times–is there a reason?” Quick joke: “Yeah, in Bob’s Fantasy World.” Verbal shrug: “Dunno, Bob, ask the CEO.”
Shell* July 31, 2015 at 3:59 pm I wouldn’t respond re: the office because that was assigned to you and you don’t have to defend yourself against it. Re: the hours…this one’s easier to defend against, if you feel like it. If you’re pulling 60-80 hour weeks either you’re coming in way before the gossips or you’re staying late but said gossips are just blind, in which case something like “Well, I’ve been here since 6 am/actually, I leave at 8 pm; did you need me for something but couldn’t find me?“. (Delivered neutrally, of course; the italic is just to stress the importance here!) The latter part turns your sentence from an unnecessary defense into a a professional, work-related inquiry (see how professional you are being!), and forces the complainers to reveal if they actually had a legit reason to comment on your comings and goings (or they have to make up a legit reason on the spot). If they don’t have a legit reason, the polite pointedness forces them to shut up–or should, at least.
MyFakeNameIsLaura* July 31, 2015 at 3:42 pm In the vein of “what can’t you not do?” I recently realized that I’ve long had a knack for finding business opportunities for small business owners and indie makers or artists wherever I am (A recent example would be discovering a vendor at a farmer’s market, hearing a point of pain for them and giving them a referral to another local business owner who can help). A friend pointed out that the fancy business verbiage for what I do falls under “business development”, so my question is: how do I get started in that field? I’m not sure I want to run my own consulting business, but would love to take my knack and develop more professionally in the field.
CoffeeLover* July 31, 2015 at 9:39 pm Business development can be hard to get into. In larger organizations, it’s typically occupied by finance people with experience in investment banking. It usually involves the analytical assessment of various growth opportunities. While I’m unfamiliar with small business, I would assume they would probably go to a one-stop shop that would help them with business development, business planning, capital generation, etc. I’m not saying you can’t get into this, or that the skills you mentioned aren’t valuable, but it’s not as simple as that. I would say you would likely need a business degree to do it (preferably in finance, accounting or possibly entrepreneurialism). You could then focus on finding a job in financial organizations that provide support to small businesses.
MyFakeNameIsLaura* August 1, 2015 at 2:02 am Thank you for the input. I do have a business degree (marketing), and you’re right that there are small business development resources I could look into.
Billybob* July 31, 2015 at 3:54 pm I have a question about handshake etiquette with coworkers after work! Recently, a coworker arranged a 10 yr reunion after work at a restaurant for my intern graduation class. He mentioned it to my supervisor and the program officer for my organization (I guess he might be considered my boss’s boss, but not quite), and they both show up. They end up standing nearby and talking to each other, because most of the rest of the former interns are strangers to them, plus we planned on eating and they were only there for 1 beer. After they finish their beers, the big boss goes around shaking everyone’s hands and clapping people on their backs. That includes me, and it’s all very natural. Then my immediate supervisor goes around shaking everyone’s hands as well….until he gets to me. I’m the last person, and instead of shaking my hand, he stops! I must have twitched and made an aborted motion with my arm because after a pause, he says “do you want to shake?” and I go “Yes!!”, afterwhich we have a nice handshake, they leave, and I spend the rest of the evening facepalming myself internally. To give context, I was the only female. And not sure if it matters, but I am in my early 30s, and my supervisor is 2 yrs older. I know when I hang out with other females, we never shake and only wave or hug to say goodbye. From what I can see with guys, it’s hit or miss whether they shake hands with each other. At work, I only shake hands with visitors/new people and never with people I know, and generally, it seems like most people operate that way (though again, males tend to shake hands more often at the end of meetings, but usually only with briefings with higher ups or with offsite workers. It never happens at day-to-day meetings). Was what happened weird? Is it because I’m a girl? Or is my boss being overly wary about initiating handshakes with girls because of all the sexual harrassment trainings we’ve been getting lately?
Elkay* July 31, 2015 at 6:22 pm I had a similar thing this week! One guy shook everyone’s hand then did the sort of handshake that you see guys do when they hug (kind of clasped hands) to me. What was worse was my hand was in handshake mode and I was reaching over the person sitting next to me (I was in a corner). I bet in social situations they would hug/kiss a female friend of your age so they had a brain freeze moment.
Elsajeni* August 1, 2015 at 7:18 pm Agh, that is weird! I have two theories. First, he might have defaulted to formal social etiquette for handshakes, which is that a man shaking hands with a woman is supposed to wait for the woman to initiate, and not try to shake hands if she doesn’t. Second, you said the other interns were mostly strangers to him; maybe, like you, he usually only shakes hands with new people and visitors, so it felt natural to shake hands with a bunch of guys he’d just met but weird to shake hands with you, who he sees every day. Either way, I don’t think it’s a big deal, just mildly awkward.
Billybob* August 3, 2015 at 9:24 am Haha, yeah, I’m thinking it’s the woman-initiates-first thing. My boss shook my coworker Nick’s hand, so it couldn’t be the latter.
FJ* July 31, 2015 at 3:59 pm Exciting news! And a question! I posted a few weeks ago that my current remote position is being relocated to our main office. I’ve been offered a new position in a different side of our organization where I can stay remote. I’m excited for something new and it comes with a 15-20% pay raise, which is great. I am pretty excited about doing something different and being bigger picture and longer term focused, rather than the detailed work in doing now. I’m pretty sure I was offered this as a way to keep me in the company for a while, but I don’t see many long term working remote possibilities at the company. Is it wrong to keep looking for other jobs at other companies with better long term possibility, or should I commit to this internal promotion for a while?
CoffeeLover* July 31, 2015 at 9:26 pm I don’t really understand your predicament. You’ve been offered a position with higher pay and better experience. Something you would look for in another employer. While I understand there are few long-term possibilities in your current employer, it’s not like you would get a job with another company and advance immediately. Take the internal position, stay there for a couple of years, and then you can look outside your company for advancement. You would have to stay in the position you accepted at the other company for a couple of years at least before being able to advance anyways. Besides, you don’t even have another offer at this point.
Cruciatus* July 31, 2015 at 9:29 pm Hmm, it sounds like you’d be happy for a while though, right? Though I remember asking here years ago about whether it was horrible that I was looking for another job 6 months after getting an internal “promotion” at work and being told that it wasn’t the same as job hopping if I left less than a year in since I had stayed with the same employer (in the end it took another 2 years to get out of here-but I WANT out). But with that said, do you think you could stick it out a year? Would taking the position be a boost for the future? Would you be relatively happy in that time? This is just my own opinion (obviously), but I’d stick with the internal job for at least a year if you’ve already accepted. You never know what may open up down the line (or maybe what contacts you’ll make), and worst case scenario, you add more time working for your current employer, you gain experience, you earn more money. Then maybe in a year you can reassess the situation.
FJ* August 1, 2015 at 4:31 pm Yeah, the new job will definitely be great experience in a different part of my industry. I’m going into marketing after being in engineering, so I’ll get to see both sides of our product. And it’s true that I don’t have another offer right now. I’ve been at this company for about 7 years, so I’m certainly not job hopping. I think it’s a bit of special situation, because I think the managers in my group knew they were going to lose me if it weren’t for this new internal position. So, I don’t think anyone will be surprised if/when I move on to another company. But I think you guys are right, I’ll stop actively searching for now and see if other opportunities come along in the future.
The IT Manager* July 31, 2015 at 4:10 pm So I took the afternoon off because I have been unmotivated to work and work is slow so no harm, no foul, but I have been off for two hours and have done nothing fun or productive. I should probably amend that first sentence to say I have been unmotivated to do much of anything the last couple of weeks (except surf the internet). It feels almost wasted PTO even there’s slightly less guilt when I waste away my afternoon for myself instead of work.
LCL* July 31, 2015 at 5:15 pm Well if you have to feel productive, think of reading AAM as career development. I look at it more as PTO is never wasted, it is good for your mental health to get away. Not every second has to be spent in productive activity.
Elizabeth West* July 31, 2015 at 8:20 pm This. I’ve been spending a lot of time on the internet when I’m not at the office–work has been really busy, and Secret Book is on hiatus. I think about it all the time; I call it “cooking the book.” Sometimes writing doesn’t look like writing. :) Plus, I think I may be about to get my critique back soon, and hopefully, I’ll have a bunch of work to do with that. The only thing I feel guilty about not doing is painting the inside of my house.
FurnitureLady* July 31, 2015 at 4:12 pm I’m sure many people here can relate – waiting to hear from a potential employer is AGONY! I’ve been through 5 rounds of interviews and I know they checked my references and did a background check late last week…still nothing. It’s between me and another person, so it’s hard not to think the worst, especially since they said they’d be getting back to me last week. (No reply to my follow up email sent this week either) It’s so hard to take Alison’s (very good) advice to turn the page and move on – especially when you’re making a huge investment of time and energy in their process. Sigh.
Anonymoustache* July 31, 2015 at 4:22 pm My references are being checked for a pretty great position, but the person checking them seems really miffed that they’re not immediately returning the call for references. They’re both connected to a university (one from a paid position and one from an internship), and I know they’ll give me very positive references, but I also know that late July/early August are very busy for both of them. I let the person checking them know that this is a very busy time so they might be slow to respond, but she’s sent me two e-mails in three days asking me to tell them to call her back. I’ve left messages for both of them (after the first request) but I think asking again so soon would be excessive on my part with both of these people. I’m not sure how this is going to look and I’m afraid it’s going to cost me the job — a job that pays well, has good benefits and which I really need right now. Aaaaaaargh.
fposte* July 31, 2015 at 4:44 pm I think asking again is better than not, though. “Sorry, I’m hearing from Possible Job that they’ve got a very short window for this and are relying on a much faster than usual turnaround–I’d really appreciate it, if you get this message, if you could contact them ASAP as I think they were hoping to get answers by the end of July.” It’s not just you being annoying, it’s a genuine reference need, and it’s just one more message.
ReanaZ* July 31, 2015 at 4:31 pm So someone made a rape joke in the middle of a business meeting I was in this week. That was exciting. Sigh.
FurnitureLady* July 31, 2015 at 6:12 pm That’s just gross – so sorry you had to hear that. I mean, who thinks that is okay??
ReanaZ* July 31, 2015 at 8:00 pm Yeah. He’s the douchebag manplainer type generally. Because having breasts means I can’t have any technical knowledge, amirite, ladies? But to date, it’s always been in pretty minor, micro-aggressive ways. He once spent 10+ minutes to me what a file extension is. Also he says my name a LOT. Like a creepy amount. He does not do this to anyone else on my team. (Spoiler: The other 20 members of the department are all dudes.) But there are not great ways to complain about microagressions without sounding like an over-sensitive drama maker, so I just ignore him mostly. tl;dr–It appears the type of person who thinks this is okay is the type who is generally dismissive of women in professional environments in general (and probably outside of them as well).
Freelance Newbie* July 31, 2015 at 4:33 pm I’m an entry-level worker and was recently contacted by an organization asking if I’d do some off the clock data work for them (using their data) using a method I developed at my current job. My current job is fine with this, but I have no idea what hourly rate to ask for. I will be doing some of the work myself and then training and answering questions from 1-2 people from the other company (the work is time sensitive and I can’t do it all myself). I was thinking $20/hr when I was planning to do it all myself, but don’t know if that’s too much/how much to increase it in light of training new people and being the person who answers questions/has the final word on any judgment calls. Advice? Or any other general freelancing advice?
katamia* July 31, 2015 at 4:53 pm Remember when you’re freelancing that, unlike when you’re an employee, you have to pay for both your share and what would otherwise be the employer’s share of Social Security too, so that should affect what you charge. I can’t comment on the specific rate because all the freelancing work I’ve done measured time differently. Also, do up a sample invoice and keep the template in your program of choice (I used Excel for one freelancing position and Word for another; it just depends on your preference) now so when it comes time to do up invoices you don’t have to make a new one every single time.
Regina* July 31, 2015 at 4:50 pm This is a sad time for me. A year ago, my partner and I moved to what we thought was our dream city, for a job in my field. He hasn’t found a job since we got here. The cost of living is high and my pay is low, even though the job was a step up for me from my previous position. Our lease is ending in the middle of next month, and rent is going up, and we already can’t afford it, and we’ve given this place a shot for a year, so we decided to move back to where our families are from. We haven’t lived near family for 5 years, since we graduated college. We lived in another city for 4 years while I went to grad school, then moved here for a year. The cost of living in our hometown is low, but there aren’t many jobs in my field at all. I’m really bummed that we have to leave here after only one year, but it feels impossible to stay here since we’ve been living off savings all year. It will be nice to see family, that’s the biggest perk. To make leaving worse though, my job all year has been 30 hours a week and when I put in my notice, my employer offered to make me full time to get me to stay. It would be a great thing to accept if my partner had a job, but it’s still not enough to support us both, and unemployment for this long with no end in sight has been really hard on him. It was hard turning down the full time position and made me even more sad than I already was. Any advice from readers who have been in similar situations before?
Dang* July 31, 2015 at 5:01 pm Is there a reason you’re going back to your hometown specifically? I understand your predicament- but it might be just as hard if you’re in a lower cost area with fewer jobs and both unemployed. I’m sure you’ve thought this through and made the best (although obviously very hard) decision. I was in a similar position a few years ago- in some ways- and I moved back to my hometown as well. I was dreading it because while I wanted to live closer to family, I really didn’t want to live in my hometown. Now, I think it was absolutely the right move. Sometimes I wonder if I would have been better off moving directly somewhere else and making it work- but for various reasons I needed to be near family, at least temporarily, and now I can’t imagine myself moving again. Things will work out in the end, promise!
Regina* July 31, 2015 at 5:19 pm Well, we’re going back to our hometown because we can live with family for a few months (hopefully it’s short) while job searching. Potentially we can live with them while searching and expand the search outward and move to another city or state if finding a job requires that, but while we’re staying with family, we won’t have to pay rent, and we won’t have many other bills, so it’s the best (/only) option financially. We also haven’t gotten to see them much over the past few years (1-2 times per year) and it will be really nice to be near them. We’ve also realized through moving to our “dream city” which turned out to be the most difficult year of our lives, that such a place doesn’t really exist and that being close to people we love will make us happier than any specific location can. We like our hometown (pop. about 200,000), I’m just worried about job opportunities. I’m sure I’ll find something, because my skills are versatile and marketable to other types of work, but I’ve worked so hard to move up in the field I’m currently in, it’s hard to think about doing something else. I’m glad to hear that things worked out for you!
SF* July 31, 2015 at 5:00 pm I’m the marketing director of a midsize company that was acquired by a large company two months ago. We are in discussions about me becoming the marketing director of the new company… which has never had a marketing director/department before. By every measure (number of sales reps, sales, assets, locations) the new company is 7-10x the size of the old one. I think (ie, research tells me for a company this size) the position at the new company would be worth at least 200% of my current salary, and that’s what I went in asking for. They’re putting together an offer over the weekend but his initial offer was a 5% raise “for now” with some sort of bonus system TBD. Am I totally crazy asking for the market rate at the new company? Truth be told I prefer smaller companies to larger ones and am willing to walk away and return to freelancing/take another job with a competitor (I don’t have a noncompete) if they want to stick so close to what I make now.
The Cosmic Avenger* July 31, 2015 at 5:50 pm Sounds about right to me. A doubling in size isn’t a doubling in effort, but with a huge increase in size, plus having to create social media presence and strategy for the larger company, that’s easily worth two to three times what you’d get paid at a smaller company. And I agree, smaller projects can be more fun.
SF* July 31, 2015 at 8:37 pm Thanks for the feedback. Starting everything from nothing is exciting, but a lot of work and expertise.
Wakeen's Teapots Ltd.* July 31, 2015 at 9:24 pm You’re not crazy in asking. Now let me give you the other side of it. If I were the decision maker, this is how I’d think about it. Say you’re making 45k now and your ask is 90k. I’d think, well for 90k, let me do a search and see what we can find for people who are already experienced, track record, running a department this size. What happens next should be interesting because I can’t guess where they are going to come in. The part where they have never had a marketing dept before means they don’t have a frame of reference for salary OR expectations. It was bold to set the bar that high for salary. I hope this works out for you!
bearing* July 31, 2015 at 5:07 pm A new grocery store is opening in our urban neighborhood within walking distance from our house, and they’re having a job fair in a couple of weeks for positions at the store. I’m thinking of making my 15-year-old son, my oldest, go to the job fair and find out about the jobs there. I have no idea if they’re planning on hiring teens or not, especially under-16 teens (who are subject to more hour restrictions), but I figure it couldn’t hurt and the store will still be there in a year when he’s 16. Any suggestions for what goals or specific instructions I can give him so that going to the job fair would be a learning experience, even if he doesn’t wind up applying for a job this year?
CoffeeLover* July 31, 2015 at 5:42 pm It really depends on him. At 15 I already had 3 jobs, all of which I found myself and held on to responsibly. I was self-motivated and I have never really struggled with professional norms. While “get a job” is the real goal (and the one that would really give him a learning experience), you could also tell him to find out and apply for x number of jobs. The first step in that, is to have him write a resume and bring copies to the fair. Talk to him about making a good first impressions. Tell him to dress professionally (not a suit, but also not sweatpants), to talk respectfully, and discuss questions he could ask those at the fair. You could even do a mock interview with him to prepare him.
Charlotte Collins* July 31, 2015 at 6:22 pm Also, practice his handshake. It will make a good first impression, and gives him instant maturity. Even if they aren’t hiring 15YOs, he can ask questions about opportunities for when he is old enough to work there and for potential summer work.
AnotherFed* July 31, 2015 at 7:07 pm Sorry if this is a dumb question, but what does a 15 year old have to put on a resume? I’d also have him prepare references and bring the info with him in case they have applications at the job fair.
Aardvark* July 31, 2015 at 7:16 pm Volunteer experience, babysitting, lawn mowing, …? My first resume (at 15 or so) had the first two, I think. (But it’s been *coughcoughcough* years since then so the details are hazy…)
katamia* July 31, 2015 at 5:42 pm You could do up a small worksheet with information he needs to find out, like per-hour wage, average number of hours per week, if there’s any sort of employee discount, age limit for employees of course, etc. They may not be making all the information public at that point (I know when I worked retail I didn’t get concrete wage information until I was actually offered a job), but even if the store doesn’t turn out to be a good fit for him, it’ll be something he can refer back to when he’s looking at other jobs in the future. You could even put it in a Google Doc or something so you and he and other members of your family can add to it and it can become a larger resource for him and your other kids when they first start looking for jobs.
Cruciatus* July 31, 2015 at 5:53 pm This is just what I was thinking. Have him go to ask specific questions or suggest other information he needs to find out (though probably not about benefits yet!). But maybe he could ask if they have plans to hire teens, if so, what sort of jobs might they do, what is the culture like (though maybe it’s too early to know that). What sort of references might they use for someone with little experience? Would he have any say in scheduling? Or whatever questions that would be important to him. And as CoffeeLover said, he should go well dressed. And I’ll bet just being there he’ll learn something by observing the other job seekers and those running the job fair.
Jillociraptor* July 31, 2015 at 5:34 pm What do you do when someone else makes an error that affects your work? I had a situation this week where a colleague’s mistake got me in some hot water. They made changes to something that had been marked final, and others took action on those changes, leading to things getting off track. I caught the issue in time, but purely by accident when I was copied on an email. As I talked with my manager about what happened, I was finding it really hard to strike a balance between taking responsibility for things that I am on the hook for, and being clear that I had done everything I knew of/everything that’s typical to prevent the issue. I don’t want to throw the colleague under the bus or appear not to take personal responsibility for my work, but I also don’t want my boss to think I’m just letting stuff like this slide by. How do you strike that balance?
TotesMaGoats* July 31, 2015 at 5:46 pm While ti might sound like throwing someone under the bus, I don’t think there is anything wrong with diplomatically exonerating yourself in situations like these. If you did everything you could to prevent something like this happening and someone else screwed up despite all of that and their errors caused problems, there is very little blame you can actually take.
Cruella DaBoss* July 31, 2015 at 5:56 pm Hey Mrs Gold Digger, Your blog is closed. I love reading it. How can I contact you?
Elkay* July 31, 2015 at 6:16 pm Gold digger mentioned last week that someone ID-ed her IRL from her blog and used it to cause trouble so she’s closed down for a while. Sunday’s open thread might be a better place to ask.
Ask a Manager* Post authorJuly 31, 2015 at 8:25 pm She left instructions here: https://www.askamanager.org/2015/07/food-gift-etiquette-do-interviewers-decide-whether-to-hire-you-in-90-seconds-and-more.html#comment-821817
NightShift* July 31, 2015 at 6:05 pm I find myself getting really annoyed by the shift vs shift that is happening at my workplace. Third shift- day shift does nothing. Mid shift- nobody does anything. First shift- night shift obviously did nothing last night. Each shift stands alone from the other, with bordering hostility if one of the *others* fails to do something. Am I doomed to suffer this as long as I am a shift worker? And just to add I’ve worked all three shifts, and it is amazing (read: frustrating!) how little each shift sympathizes with other shift problems they may not encounter.
Raia* July 31, 2015 at 6:08 pm Anyone used to be in the arts (art, music, theatre, dance, etc.)? What jobs/fields did you move into and excel at? I used to be music, and have an office job, but am struggling to see what job field I would excel in.
Regina* July 31, 2015 at 7:25 pm I’m in the same boat. I have an MFA in studio art and am about to be moving somewhere with very few art jobs. I’d love to hear other answers. I’m really interested in working for a non-profit or college doing other work, because those are two types of organizations I’ve held art related jobs in, and I would feel comfortable with the culture.
it happens* August 1, 2015 at 10:47 am I think it depends on what you did in the arts. I started out in the performing arts and after deciding that arts-based poverty was not ennobling I went to grad school for management. The truly useful skills I use daily I developed while working in the arts – project management (including time management, human resource management and risk identification), public speaking, pitching in wherever needed and managing by influence not authority. These are all industry agnostic. I think the challenge for any individual is to identify base skills as applied to the art – for example, the persistence of a musician to practice a difficult piece until it is perfect, the team work of an orchestra member, the analytical skill of a person translating a script into a public performance, etc. and find their analog in business. And then the additional challenge of finding a sympathetic hiring manager who can understand the translation…
InterviewFreeZone* July 31, 2015 at 7:03 pm Is anyone else out there experiencing a drought in responses to job applications? Before anyone asks, yes I have absolutely checked out every single last post from Alison on cover letters, interviews, resume tips, etc. I have tried referrals, informational interviews to get more info on organizations that I haven’t been able to break into. I have not had a single interview since April. Historically my response rates have always been pretty good. I have never gone this long without an interview or without someone reaching out to me on LinkedIn about a position. I’m experiencing serious anxiety about this since my organization is not doing well financially and I’m not certain we’ll make it to the end of the year. Perhaps this is a summer thing? Anyone else in NYC experiencing this as well?
Relosa* August 1, 2015 at 2:44 am it happens to about 90% of the apps I send out. You’re not alone. I’m not even in NYC.
voluptuousfire* August 1, 2015 at 5:12 pm Last July I had very few interview requests. I had a drought from the beginning of April to the second week of May this year as well. It may be a summer thing. Lots of people are on vacation and things get pushed back/rerouted.
YourOwnPersonalCheeses* July 31, 2015 at 8:14 pm What’s the difference between a firing and a layoff? I’ve always thought that if you lose your job because you did something wrong (like poor performance or a bad attitude), that means you got fired, but if you lose your job through no fault of your own (like there’s no budget to keep you on payroll), that means you got laid off. But my dad says a layoff means the company intends to hire you back, and if they don’t intend to, it means you got fired, even if you did nothing wrong. So who’s right?
MaryMary* July 31, 2015 at 9:15 pm Layoff versus terminate does matter in some industries, especially those with a large union population. Particularly if the employer is hiring from a union hall, it matters because the union wouldn’t send the temporarily idle workers to another job, or only would reassign them after a certain amount of time. I used to have a client where temp layoff meant they intended to hire the person back, perm layoff meant the employee lost their job due to a reduction in force, and terminated meant the employee either quit or was fired. The different statuses impacted benefits eligiblity, severence pay, etc. It was a mess because some people coded as temp layoff were never rehired, some perm layoff or terminated people were rehired, and some people were coded as perm layoff when they really had been fired. Generally, however, white or pink collar jobs use layoff when a position was eliminated, fire when the employee was asked to leave due to poor performance, and terminate when the employee leaves for any other reason. Points to you and dad!
CoffeeLover* July 31, 2015 at 9:16 pm You’re right. Your dad may be referring to something that’s in Canadian law (I know nothing of US employment law, but maybe it’s in there too). Basically, if an employer lays someone off, they aren’t allowed to hire a new person in that position. The position truly needs to be eliminated. There are also laws that say an employer has to rehire layed off people before hiring new people if a small amount of time has passed between the lay offs and hiring (this is seen more in seasonal industries).
YourOwnPersonalCheeses* July 31, 2015 at 9:40 pm Well, we are Canadian, so maybe that is the kind of thing he meant. :)
CoffeeLover* August 1, 2015 at 12:15 am If you want to look into it more: In Canada, you’re either terminated with cause or terminated without cause. There are a lot of laws surrounding both (yay for employee protection and job security). If you’re layed-off, your employment is Terminated Without Cause. If you’re fired, your employment is Terminated With Cause.
stellanor* July 31, 2015 at 8:16 pm My team is being switched from half-wall cubicles to high-density seating, which actually made me seriously consider applying for different jobs.
SF* July 31, 2015 at 8:42 pm I don’t think it would be unreasonable to leave over that. (Personally I’d be almost incapable of working with that many people around.) If you have a good relationship with your manager I suggest talking to her to make known how this would affect you. Perhaps you could be moved somewhere else? If not, another job will be better.
stellanor* July 31, 2015 at 10:02 pm My manager knows exactly how it would affect all of us but the decision is coming down from WAY above her head, and there isn’t really an alternative (we’ve outgrown our building, all teams are now high-density seating; mine is one of the last to get changed over). I work in tech and I still have a while before my stock vests so I’m committed for a while longer, but this is definitely a big mark in the “cons” column re: my current job!
hermit crab* August 1, 2015 at 10:36 am Ouch, yeah. We’re doing the same thing. I’m personally kind of looking forward to it because the physical space of our new office is going to be SO much better than what we have now, but I do think it’s going to be hard on everyone. On a lighter note, do you know the Dilbert cartoon about this? It’s been on our office fridge for ages (ironically). The boss says, “Productivity went down when we moved the engineers from private offices to cubicles. Productivity went down again when we tried the open office plan.” The CEO says, “Have we tried putting all of them in one clown car?” and the boss says, “No, but I don’t see why that wouldn’t work.” :)
Shaking My Head* July 31, 2015 at 9:03 pm Apparently my pointy haired boss bricked her personal laptop by downloading something, and seemed miffed when I told her I couldn’t help her fix it today because I had work to do, as in the work the company pays me to do. But all is well, since she took off with it and went someplace else to get on their free wifi so she could get some sort of remote support to fix it. She was gone for hours. It was awesome.
onnellinen* July 31, 2015 at 9:09 pm I had an informal call today about a position that I’m interested in applying to – through a connection at the organization, I was able to get in touch with the hiring manager, and he answered a few questions about the role. He mentioned that he is planning to start looking at resumes late next week, so I should target getting my material submitted next week if I am interested (the position is advertised as ‘open until filled’, rather than having a deadline for application). Should I send him a note when I submit my material to the online HR portal? I may be overthinking it, but what should I say?
Biff* July 31, 2015 at 9:11 pm I think I’d sent them a note that thanks them for their time, says something about how their input helped you see how the job could benefit both your and the company and that you went ahead and applied. Something like that.
Jill* July 31, 2015 at 11:22 pm Hi all! Left a toxic job with nothing lined up, because I couldn’t work 60+ hour weeks without losing it. I have been interviewing and may receive an offer from one job- the problem is, it’s over 2 hours away. I don’t drive and I live in New York so the weather often adds another half hour or so. The neighborhood is also not the safest and there have been crimes and things stolen. But the company is amazing and the job seems good, though it does seem like a lot of work. Any thoughts? After a not so great experience, I want a good fit…
Jill* July 31, 2015 at 11:27 pm By a lot of work, I mean a lot of the same tasks I had at my old job. I don’t know how much I will learn here…
CoffeeLover* August 1, 2015 at 12:00 am Can you move closer to your job? If not, then I wouldn’t take it (if I could afford not to). 2hours each way means 4 hours a day, which means 20hours a week. If you’re working 40hours a week (do people still do that?), you’re back up to 60hour weeks. Of course, you might be ok with commuting and fill your time with lovely rides on the metro where you read many, many books. I think commuting is soul-sucking and am moving closer to my job next month so I don’t have to do a 1hour commute.
Cruciatus* August 1, 2015 at 1:56 pm Agreed. This week I turned down a 5 minute commute for one that will be 10-15 minutes longer than my current one, ending up at about 35 minutes. This is pushing it for me (I live in the suburbs of a small city) and I’m already looking to move closer to this new job (the opportunity was way better than the short commute job). If the job sounds amazing, it might be worth it if you’re willing to move closer, but otherwise I think you might regret it. That’s a lot of time to give up doing what you want to do back home. And beyond that, it sounds like it might not be the best fit if you’re not going to take on new responsibilities. But only you know if you can withstand that commute or need the money. I’m guessing this company doesn’t have a division in your city? If you knew that the long commute would be temporary and you could eventually transfer that might be one thing but otherwise? In your shoes I’d probably keep looking closer to home. I hope you figure it out.
CoffeeLover* August 1, 2015 at 12:29 am I don’t like when companies drink the personality-test Kool-Aid. I had to complete one recently for work that will be used in discussion for a training/development day. While I understand it gets us to think about our different communication styles and working with people who have different motivations, I don’t like being lumped into a category. People’s personalities are so much more diverse than that. Just because I’m an introvert, doesn’t mean I shy away from open communication (or whatever). I don’t like being asked what my results are by coworkers as if that gives the other person real information on how to interact with me. I feel like we might as well be talking about our zodiacs.
Anxious Adult* August 1, 2015 at 1:30 am I just got started on my new job this week. However, I must say, the first few days at the new job seemed rather rough. First, I have experience a lot of anxiety from anticipating on my new job, and therefore, experienced a shorter hours of sleep. This led to my feeling more easily tired as I worked. Second, I have mortifying moments of quick forgetfulness. I have been given a lot of work to do by my colleagues because part of my job was to take over on some (and eventually) all of the client accounts that they had been working on. Analyzing the accounts required more energy and focus that I anticipated. When my manager explained to me instructions for one software component, I ended up forgetting the entire instructions after spending almost half and hour analyzing a client account. This has happened twice. Third, I don’t know how to respond when I just forget something that my supervisor or coworker just explained to be half an hour ago. I felt silent and apologized when I forgot what my manager was referring to when she explained something that we were working an hour ago. Forth, I sometimes tend to say the wrong things at the wrong time. In one instance, I ask my coworker about a transaction that I do not understand. My coworker analyzed the transaction using our department software and discovered a mistake. I told my manager about the transaction and my manager thanked me for catching it. But after my manager thanked me, I mentioned that the mistake was caught because coworker checked the client in the software. But my manager still express that it was good that I ask my coworker about the transaction. I am thinking if I should of responded more acceptingly when my manager thanked me. Despite the blunders, I was able to complete some of the work assigned to me. And I did started to remember some of the software instructions. But I hope I won’t be as forgetful as I am this week.
Cruciatus* August 1, 2015 at 1:37 pm When you first start a new job it can be sooo overwhelming. Everything from where is the bathroom to who is this person to where do I eat lunch, let alone getting into starting the new work! So my question is, do you take notes? If you don’t, I would start doing that. I took notes on everything in the beginning. It’s funny to look back on the notes because they seem so “obvious” now, but back then it was all new to me. It took a little extra time to write it out while someone was explaining something, but then once they left I could refer to my notes and usually figure it out. If not, no biggie, but I’d be sure to get it the next time. And I think writing it helped cement the information into my brain. Even if it was a mundane task like “how to log into the system.” No one seemed to think it strange. And it’s going to help me while I write up a manual for the person who will replace me. I can see what I found tricky at the beginning and maybe my tips will help them out. And it was good you asked about the transaction. When your manager thanked you there was no need to say anything really, but it’s over and I doubt she’s still thinking about it. But if something like that happens again, next time you could always say “Thank you. I’m glad the mistake was spotted.”
Relosa* August 1, 2015 at 2:26 am Ok so, 1) yes I am finally working again, for now 2) I have discovered my talents/abilities as a general ~organizer~ are actually quite in demand in this city, so that’s great 3) got a lead on a job possibly as a travel agent, but in this state the licensure is strict, so I know it’s a long shot. But it’d be great fun and I’d love to do it! 4) I crankily updated about DreamJob that I Know Isn’t Supposed to Be DreamJob last week. Of course there have been no updates and I was just too upset/depressed to do anything. But I can’t stress just how precious roles like this are in my field, and so I drafted this tonight. Please let me know what you think, if I chose to send it (or if you have any suggestions) Hi Dreamjob Manager Person, I’m just checking in regarding the position we discussed back in June. While on the never-ending job hunt in the attractions field, I happened to notice the same position was re-posted. We both know how rare and treasured roles like these are in our field; so I hope you can forgive me poking my head in and checking up, just in case I happened to miss any updates (please take it as a form of flattery for the company – I’m hard to impress and you guys did that with flying colors!) Whether you have a new manager on your team or are still a few hands short, I won’t take up any more of your time – but if you have a moment to shed some light on the progress, or know of any other opportunities I may not be aware of, I’d be happy to hear. Thank you kindly either way! I hope summer has been kinder those of you on the beach than us in the city. –Relosa …yehhh…??? Yes/ no? I’m a lot less emotional than I was last week (sorry – things uh, came up without warning), but I give full disclaimer now that if it comes back as Bad News, wine and tears will be my only friends.
Relosa* August 1, 2015 at 2:28 am Welp and there you go – I missed a word to anonymize, which is why I never attached my name to my ID here lol.
Soupspoon McGee* August 1, 2015 at 2:48 pm I would not send it. I’d keep any requests for updates very brief, yet friendly, like this: “Jane, I enjoyed speaking with you about the teapot team travel analyst position we discussed in June. Do you have any updates on the hiring process? Relosa” You’re note above has the personal touch, but I think the tone is too much in your own head. Unless you know the hiring manager really really well, I would not go that direction, though I completely understand the desire to share your thoughts and be humble at the same time. If you absolutely must, add another line, in a separate paragraph so the update request does not get lost, that addresses a new trend or issue that directly affects that position: “I just learned that Teapots International is expanding to Singapore, where I’ve arranged many personal and business trips. I would love the opportunity to do so for you.”
NicoleK* August 1, 2015 at 2:48 am Has anyone worked in Child Protection Services? What is it like? What are the hours? 40 hours a week? More than 40 hours a week? What was the average caseload? There’s quite a few openings in my area and I’ve been thinking about submitting an application. However I’m afraid that I might be leaving one bad situation for another.
Lizzie* August 1, 2015 at 4:37 am This will really depend on what the system in your state is like but on average, you will be working 40 hours (if they’re strict about your work time) or more (if they’re not), swamped and overworked for very little pay. The case load goal in my state is ~15 per social worker; from what I am told by friends who are in that part of our field it’s closer to 30-35 depending on where you are and how understaffed your regional office it. I’m not trying to outright scare you, but I feel it necessary to be honest – the majority of my MSW cohort ended up with CPS/DCF in my state after graduation and most of them have already burned out and are desperate to leave, if they haven’t already. It can be very rewarding work if you’re not in it for the money and don’t mind being stretched to your absolute limit to try to do some real good, but it’s a position that is perpetually understaffed and overloaded. If you’re not up to that, I would suggest perhaps not applying, because a high turnover rate really only hurts the clients who are being juggled from one social worker to another on a rotating basis.
Sunshine Brite* August 1, 2015 at 7:15 am My area has tons of openings because it’s under hard scrutiny to improve. The department’s drastically changing. It will be 40 hrs a week where I work, unionized, but there’s still a culture of work all the time because that’s only been changing in the last handful of years. But you’ll be stretching every second out of those 40 hrs because there will be so much more to do than possible in 40. A lot of those hours won’t be standard business hours, caseloads are huge but they’re working to reduce them and there’s publicity and legislation on the side of finally changing some what people have been trying to address for years. I think a lot is the people involved too and the personalities and if they have clinical training or not, etc.
NicoleK* August 1, 2015 at 8:47 am I’m very proud of how I handled myself this week. New coworker has this obnoxious habit of giving suggestions. This behavior began on her first day and has not ceased. Unfortunately, the majority of her suggestions are neither workable or practical. Several weeks ago, I told her in a nice, polite, but indirect way that she should hold off on giving her suggestions until she was more familiar with the organization. That obviously didn’t work because the annoying behavior continued. This week I told my boss that her behavior was obnoxious, that I had already discussed it with her, and that my boss or some other neutral party needed to convey the message to her. After admitting that she tunes out new coworker when she starts offering up her suggestions, Boss agreed to provide feedback to her. I also told my boss that it’s difficult to sit through meetings with new coworker when she’s blabbing on about all that she can do for the organization but never follows through on. And lastly, I’ve decided that I’m no longer going to go out of my way to be helpful. She’ll ask for documents and information that were already emailed or communicated to her. She is either disorganize, lazy, or totally forgetful. I’m not her assistant. I’m not going to take my time to forward her materials that were forwarded to her previously.
Trainer* August 1, 2015 at 12:00 pm I have an awkward situation that I would love some input on. I work as a trainer at a call center. I am two weeks into a new class and one of my employees is homeless (he has informed me of this). He has permission from a religious organization to stay on their property so he doesn’t even have shelter or bathing facilities available to him. Consequently, he has an unpleasant odor. I have not discussed the odor with him because it doesn’t seem that he would really have any way to do anything about it until he can find housing (which I have tried to help him with by providing him our EAP information). He’s had some difficulty staying awake in class and my training assistant and I have been keeping a close watch on him to make sure that we wake him up anytime that he nods off. I’ve also had private conversations with him about how much I want him to be successful and giving him strategies for staying awake in class. He has improved over the last few days. He is also a few minutes late every day because of the bus schedule. Our tardiness policy requires that I write him up for any tardies over 5 minutes, which I have done according to policy. Yesterday I had one employee come up to me privately stating that members of the class feel that it’s unfair that he is getting away with these things (since discipline is handled privately, they are unaware that I’ve been addressing him about the issues). I advised her that personnel issues are private and that while I appreciate her concern, I would not discuss his status with her or anyone else. Two other employees went to HR and said that he sleeps all day (which is false) and complained that I’m not addressing him (again false) and complained about the odor. HR would like me to have a conversation about tolerance with the group before he arrives on Monday (they are satisfied with how I have been handling the situations) but I’m not sure what to say and HR had no useful advice. Any recommendations on how I can address this without singling him out too obviously or sharing his private information? While he has told me that he is homeless and I think others suspect it, it’s not information he is open about so I wouldn’t say anything about it.
Biff* August 1, 2015 at 1:27 pm Honestly, I think the problem isn’t tolerance. If this were a long-time employee being given some leeway, that would be one thing — but this is a brand-new, not-even-trained employee who is already getting a lot of special care and feeding. There are probably other students in your class that would benefit from a later start — for example, if they were allowed to come in just ten minutes late they might have a commute that is shorter by half if they are using public transit. There may also be students that would similarly benefit from being allowed to leave a little early. But they aren’t getting special treatment. You might even have other homeless students in your class that are holding it together better. Call centers are all about people functioning like little cogs. Half the time you aren’t even allowed to go to the restroom on your own schedule (color me livid over that one.) I would certainly have resented it if one student stayed on week after week of late arrivals, smelling like hell, and otherwise not really living up to the standard I KNOW I have to. It’s a morale problem when one person gets outsized benefits that would clearly be denied across the team AND that person hasn’t yet proven their worth.
Observer* August 2, 2015 at 5:17 pm You are going to need to share SOME information with them. Not too much, but make it clear that you ARE in fact handling the issues according to personnel policies in place. Also, point out that the fact that they don’t know the details is not due to the fact that no one is handling it, but because personnel matters are kept confidential – just as their matters would be kept confidential, if something came up. The odor issue is something that affects people directly, to some extent. But, you could point out that you are aware that it’s not because he’s a lazy slob, and, as it’s not a fireable offense, you are not going to come down on someone for something he can’t help, when he’s got enough on his place. As hard as it is for them, I think they would all want the same consideration. However, you really should try to do more than send him to your EAP. I think you need to talk to him about the odor and tell he needs to try to find a place to bath and clean his clothes periodically – hopefully your EAP should be able to help. But, you should also point him directly to some of the major social service agencies in your town / city. If your city has a 211 or 311 system, that’s a good place for him to start with. But, also the names of the major social service agencies in your area.
BRR* August 2, 2015 at 7:21 pm It doesn’t sound like you need to lecture people about tolerance. It sounds like you need your employees to mind their own business unless it’s impacting them. You and HR need to have the same answer ready about personnel matters are private and for them to stop tattling (this is one of the times where it’s tattling). It needs to be clear to your other employees how they should be acting as well. Tolerance would involve disclosing your employee’s situation which you should not do and he should not be forced to do. The odor is impacting the other employees though and you need to address it. Search askamanger body odor. You need to address the issues of staying awake and tardiness like any other performance issue. It will be hard because you know his situation but you can’t give him a lot more leeway than everybody else. It’s ok to treat employees differently but that doesn’t mean giving a new employee a lot of slack.