employer wants us to “volunteer” for groundskeeping, snubbed by a mentee, and more

by Alison Green on August 13, 2024

It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…

1. My employer wants us to “volunteer” for groundskeeping and cleaning

I work in a faculty position at a private university that is struggling with all the challenges that higher education is facing right now, including declining enrollment. We have not had raises in years, and positions are only replaced if they are determined to be absolutely necessary. Even though housekeeping and groundskeeping are deemed necessary, they are having trouble filling those positions because they either can’t or won’t pay a competitive wage for the area.

Recently the administration sent out an email asking all employees to participate in a voluntary workday to make the campus beautiful before students arrive. Staff who would be working that day can count it toward time worked, but faculty, who would typically not be working that day, are expected to do it with no additional compensation. Tasks include power washing buildings, planting flowers and laying mulch, and cleaning. I had planned to use that day to prepare for my fall semester classes. Part of the reason they are asking for help is because they don’t have an adequate number of groundskeeping and housekeeping staff, although the email didn’t say that. I do not think it is my responsibility to do tasks outside of what I was hired to do because the university failed to hire people to do them.

I’m planning to not sign up for a time slot, but do you think this is something that we should push back on? Also, do you think that those who don’t participate could face backlash for failing to be a team player?

Yes, it’s something you should push back on. It’s bad enough that you’re being asked to pick up extra work from unfilled jobs similar to your own (for no additional compensation), but now you’re supposed to “volunteer” for manual labor that has nothing to do with your job at all? No. If they want to cut positions, they need to deal with the consequences of cutting those positions — not add power washing and cleaning onto your already full plates so that you’re the ones shouldering those consequences.

Will you face backlash for “not being a team player”? Maybe! But the more of you who decline to sign up, the less feasible that will be — so encourage your colleagues to sit this out.

2. People ask if my hair color is natural

I’m a woman in my late thirties and I work for a company of approximately 600 people. My role has me connecting with people across many departments. I have found my hair to be a frequent topic of conversation at work and I’m looking for a script to politely shut people down.

My hair was dark blond most of my life, but I started going gray early. I think gray hair looks lovely on many people, but it made me look washed out and ill so I had fun trying out lots of different hair colors. For the last five-ish years, I’ve dyed my hair red (Cowboy Copper, to be precise). It’s bright, but not outside the realm of natural hair colors.

My problem is that I get asked approximately once a week if my hair color is natural. I think it’s rude and would never ask someone whether they dye their hair. I’ve tried different answers — a joke, the truth, lying and saying it’s natural, and they always respond with compliments, but every exchange leaves me uncomfortable. I don’t think the people asking mean to be rude (they all legitimately seem to like the color) but I never know how to respond. How do I politely shut these people down?

Yes, it’s rude. Welcome to life as a redhead! People constantly ask redheads if our hair is real. A friend’s mom once poked around in my hair looking for roots because she didn’t believe it was real. I’m pretty sure adults asked me if it was real when I was a child.

That said, most people who ask are just interested because it’s unusual. You certainly don’t need to tell them it’s dyed if you don’t want to, but it’s also not a shameful secret and you could simply respond, “No, I just like it.” But if you don’t want to answer on principle, some options for you:

* “Why do you ask?”
* “I don’t think you’re supposed to ask people that.”
* “That’s between me and my hairdresser.”

Still, “No, I just like it” is likely to make it less of a big deal.

3. I was snubbed by a mentee I’ve given countless hours of my time to

I am a seasoned professional in a niche spot in my field. Early on in my career, I spent some time talking to my alma mater classes about my niche area of work, and took to mentoring a student who was interested in my field.

I have spent hours over nearly a decade giving advice to this person, editing his resume, and providing extraordinary amounts of input for which positions would be a good fit.

Recently I had a question for this mentee. He had accepted a job at an agency I cross paths with very infrequently, and I thought he could provide me very general information on a topic. Instead, he immediately discussed billing my agency for work over 30 minutes, and even mentioned an unwarranted inspection of my facility. I was floored. I told him to forget about it, reached out to a consultant, and worked out the question on my own.

I do not plan to give my time to this person ever again. Should I tell him how disrespectful he was, and why I plan to separate myself from his future advice needs? He contacts me only when he needs career advice. He has stolen countless hours from me and gave nothing as a show of thanks.

Nah, there’s no point. You’re right to be unavailable to him in the future now that he’s shown his interest in the relationship is so one-sided, but there’s little to be gained by spelling it out for him. (And really, you’ve already invested a ton of time in coaching him! You don’t need to do this final bit of it on your way out the door.)

For what it’s worth, though, I don’t think it’s useful to look at this as him stealing your time. You presumably mentored him voluntarily. And sure, you assumed the relationship would be a two-way one, but he didn’t engage with you under false pretenses. He’s just selfish and apparently sucks at networking. Now you know!

4. How do I reject a qualified former coworker?

I am the senior director for a small firm. We are in the process of hiring a new lead engineer in a very niche field where the applicant pool is tiny in our region. We recently received an outstanding resume from somebody with 30+ years of experience, a master’s in our field, and a ton of awesome project work that lines up with exactly what we need. Great news; our months’ long search is over! Only one catch: this person used to be my boss, left on overall good terms with our organization, but also left a bad taste in the mouths of a number of current team members. He resigned 10 years ago to take a high level director position at a neighboring company.

The word is that he left his director role in an acrimonious fashion last year (forced resignation). He is currently at another company as a chief engineer, which is two steps below director but two steps above our position. Our location would save him almost an hour commuting each day and I am guessing that is at least part of why he wants to come back. But beyond the personnel issues if he were to return (people are already freaking out about the possibility), the position he applied for requires a lot of desk time and actual crunching numbers type of engineering work, with no supervisory requirements. My experience with him as my boss was that he was a super delegator — to the point of asking senior engineers to draft emails on his behalf to send to vendors, prepare his presentations for conferences, do the annual cap ex budget for him (!), etc.

We have a handful of junior engineers and my gut is telling me he will pass his work on to them even though they don’t report to the senior engineer. He also has 15 years more experience than the manager he would report to — they have very different management styles and I believe he would question/go around him constantly. HR is trying to do everything by the book and although I have relayed all of this to them, they are insisting, based on his qualifications, that we have to offer him an interview. He will ace the interview and I am sure he will outshine the other candidates we have (he’s a very good politician and is very sharp). Is there anything else I can do to convince HR to not bring him in for the interview? Or if we must interview him, how can we justifiably turn him down? I also want to maintain a professional relationship with him, as we still occasionally cross paths at industry events.

First of all, what exactly does “the senior director” mean here? If you’re in charge of the firm, HR should be working to support you, not laying down edicts that they can’t defend. Yes, they’re charged with ensuring the company complies with the law and minimizes risk, but there’s no legal requirement that you interview everyone who’s qualified on paper. If you’ve worked with the candidate in the past and know they’re wrong for the role based on that experience, you do not need to interview out of a sense of fairness. So first, push back on HR and ask them to explain exactly why they think you should ignore firsthand experience working closely with a candidate.

Second, are you in charge of hiring for this position? If so, and you’re pushed into interviewing him, you can name your concern pretty explicitly in the interview: “This is an individual contributor position that doesn’t manage anyone, and about 80% of your time will be spent doing XYZ personally, not supervising others in doing it. I know that’s different than the role you had when we worked together, so I hoped you would speak to your interest in making that kind of move and what appeals to you about it.” Who knows, maybe you’ll hear something that changes your mind. But assuming you don’t, you can simply decline to hire him based on your experience working together in the past and your knowledge of the needs of the role. And if you’re not the decision-maker, you should share your experience and concerns very candidly with whoever is.

5. Can you take back your resignation?

This is a hypothetical, but it’s made me curious: Is there any way to pull back a resignation within the notice period? I had a wild dream where I quit a job I liked a lot for a reason I regretted, and found myself having to try to un-quit. I didn’t actually do this, but now I can’t stop thinking about it! Is there a script for changing your mind gracefully?

Sure, you can always try. If they valued you and haven’t already hired someone else, they might leap at the chance to keep you — although on the manager side of that, I’d want to make sure I understood what led you to quit in the first place and why you’d changed your mind, and I’d want to feel confident that whatever led to your quitting wasn’t going to put us in the same spot a few months down the road. And of course, if they weren’t terribly sad about you leaving, you might hear, “We appreciate the offer, but we’ve already planned for the transition and are pretty far into hiring for your replacement.”

As for how to say it, you need to explain why you’ve changed your mind. For example: “I’ve been thinking a lot about this, and I’d be interested in staying if it’s not too late to change course. I’d been concerned that my job was moving to more of an X focus, but you were so responsive when we talked about it and I can see that with Jane joining our team, those projects won’t fall as heavily to my role for much longer. If you’re open to me staying, I’m looking at a lot of this differently now.” (But that’s a reason that makes sense! If it’s just “oops, I acted too hastily / in the heat of the moment,” you still might be able to reverse it, but you should expect a fair amount of concern about what happened and whether you can really be happy there or not.)

Related:
employee resigned but now wants to stay

You may also like:
{ 438 comments }

{ 438 comments… read them below }

  1. Daria grace*

    #1: perhaps also worth including in your pushback that there’s safety risks in asking untrained, unskilled people to do the work. It’s possible to do some pretty serious damage with power washing equipment. Even just the bending in gardening poses risks to people not used to it

    1. RedinSC*

      Right? I can honestly see the worker’s comp claims come piling in. (if in the US, don’t know if that’s a thing in other countries).

      BUT an increase in workers comp claims could really seriously disrupt their insurance budgeting. BY A LOT

    2. coffee*

      Oh man, reading this made me think about how wildly unskilled I would be at that kind of work, and how my body would not handle it well.

      Also – pay people for their labour! None of this “work for free” business. Grossly unethical, bad for society, theft on a mass scale. Ugh.

        1. Artemesia*

          If they are this broke, the next step will be closing the college. Many around the country are doing so. A day of power washing isn’t going to prevent that though if things are this bad.

          It is routine in colleges for people to do unpaid labor as in participating in various activities to support students outside the classroom. I can imagine a first year student/parents breakfast served by faculty for example. And there are lots of welcome activities faculty get conscripted to participate in. But this is all more or less in their service to students. Groundskeeping? No.

          1. Kt*

            Agree. Many folks are saying, “what nerve!” But the reality is that it’s desperation. There is nothing left to do. Lots of small colleges going under.

            1. Jeanine*

              They are going under because no one can afford the high tuition anymore! And student loans, forget it you are paying for the rest of your life. Enrollment would be up and they could pay their people better if they lowered tuition, I guarantee it.

              1. DJ Abbott*

                I wonder if this is a market correction from the last 25 years of colleges convincing everyone (and their parents) they had to have a degree to get a good job. It followed on from employers requiring degrees for jobs that didn’t actually need them, as a way of discriminating against people who didn’t get a good start in life.
                As a person who didn’t finish a degree, I hope it is a market correction that will lead to more honesty in requirements for jobs and less student loan debt. It took way too long!

              2. Beka Cooper*

                It’s because of the “Enrollment Cliff.” Basically just demographically there are not enough high school seniors graduating to fill all the colleges.

                1. Quill*

                  Not to mention that when colleges come into a lot of money, they tend to spend it on big ticket purchases that need future maintenance (building a new stadium, for example) that end up stretching the future budget. (Some of the time this is because donations are earmarked for specific projects / departments.)

              3. Nicole Maria*

                My college lowered tuition significantly after I left, I don’t have the exact numbers off the top of my head, but it went from around 50k annual tuition to 30k, but they still ended up closing.

                I think it’s generally safe to assume that if there is an “obvious” solution to you as an outsider, that the people who work on this issue for their full-time jobs have at least considered it.

          2. VVex*

            I agree. I’m in higher ed administration at an Ivy League. Faculty here (and the president, provost, deans, etc.) are invited to help for an hour with move-in. It’s a ceremonial photo op. That’s not what this is.

            If you’re at a small college with this degree of financial pain displayed in public–I’d strongly advise you to get on the job market this fall. Your tenure won’t help you if the college folds.

            1. Anon4this1*

              This. Honestly many universities including Ivy ones are cutting costs where they can.

              I would job search Lw1 or do what you can to get enrollment #s up. Is your class interesting? Are you engaging? If admissions/ enrollment management ask you to attend a zoom or do a video or attend an event for prospective students do you say yes or, “that’s not my job?”

              A close friend works in admissions at a top Ivy for a particular (well-known) school within the university and faculty are asked (and sometimes given things for doing it that go toward sabbatical, etc) to go to events/ be in a brochure/ attend a zoom for those interested in attending the university. Many faculty say no or say yes then cancel at the last minute and it’s really frustrating. There are some faculty who always say yes, but having the same people at the same events, on calls, in brochures, doesn’t look great either. If you want to help ask them how you can within your actual job to get more people apply or come is what is important. IMHO the above only qualifies if this is a degree that actually will get someone a good job. I think spending tens or hundreds of thousands and go into debt for a humanities degree from a non name brand university isn’t a great idea. Does your university have good career outcomes?

              My friend who works at the Ivy has been told to do more with less in the coming year and they have a great budget and large endowment, but that is what is happening all around. Tenure track roles are hard to come by and very competitive, so if I were you I would apply for other jobs, start doing more research or write a new article and get yourself out there so if you need a new role you’re desirable in a tough market.

              1. a clockwork lemon*

                IMHO the above only qualifies if this is a degree that actually will get someone a good job. I think spending tens or hundreds of thousands and go into debt for a humanities degree from a non name brand university isn’t a great idea. Does your university have good career outcomes?

                I want to push back on this a bit. Plenty of universities and small no-name colleges offer extremely high quality education, and there’s a ton of value in the skills you learn during a humanities program. My BA is in the world’s must useless subject (religious studies), but the research and writing skills I developed while I was getting that degree are the literal backbone of everything I do in my day-to-day work at a globally significant financial institution.

                Plenty of people get degrees from “non-name brand” institutions and go on to have very successful careers and happy lives. Plenty of people also get Ivy League educations and end up doing whatever random work they fell into after they didn’t get hired at prestigious companies.

                2. Zephy*

                  +1000, and also: a bachelor’s degree is no longer a Magic Job Ticket, no matter what discipline you choose. Even for quote-unquote “useful” degrees. The degree is not the thing that gets you the job.

                3. DJ Abbott*

                  @Zephy – it wasn’t in the 90s, and isn’t now. It was all a myth colleges cooked up to ride along with employers requiring degrees for positions that didn’t need one. Employers were doing this to discriminate against people who didn’t get a good start in life.
                  Here we are 30 years later, a lot of people with degrees that have done nothing to help their career, and our economy damaged by heavy student loan debt.

              2. DJ Abbott*

                “many universities including Ivy ones are cutting costs where they can.”
                Universities and colleges are just like corporations – they’ll take any excuse to pinch pennies.

            2. zuzu*

              I’m at an Ivy and we’re being asked to take our garbage and recycling to a receptacle in a common area because of cutbacks in janitorial services; they’re not coming into offices to empty individual receptacles anymore.

              I’ve also worked at a place that had at least three rounds of layoffs and lowered its admissions standards during the law school admissions crunch in the early 2010s. That place is still hanging on, but it had to make a lot of changes that were not very pleasant.

              Of course, administrations will cut back on janitorial services and groundskeeping, and they will even cut back on entire programs, even if those programs make money, but they will never cut back on administrative bloat or stop paying for consultants that tell them to add layers of administration and take away tenured positions in favor of more adjunctification.

          3. Madame Desmortes*

            I came here to say exactly this. OP1, your school is circling the drain and is unlikely to survive for more than another couple-three years. You urgently need to make plans for yourself (and your family, if you’re not solo) around that.

            If you are extremely lucky, your school will merge with another, though even that isn’t a guarantee for you specifically. Chances that you’re that lucky are… not large.

            Please prepare.

        2. Ravenmistress*

          They’ll continue to pay seven-figure salaries to football coaches so that they can teach students how to more efficiently batter their brains into CTE while maintaining that they just don’t have the money for groundskeeping and maintenance staff or for raises for the professors. As usual!

      2. JustMe*

        Exactly! In the early 90s I worked at a small private consulting company. When times got tough, the CEO/owner omitted contract cleaning services. Then they announced that every Friday afternoon at 3 p.m., all project work would stop and everyone would clean offices, kitchen, bathrooms, etc. The support staff (mostly women) did as requested. The professionals and technicians (mostly men) suddenly had site visits to go to or simply went to lunch and weren’t seen again till Monday morning. The arrangement didn’t last long, and neither did I. I found another job, and not too long afterward the company went out of business in a storm of lawsuits. Sometimes the writing is on the (bathroom) wall!

      3. goddessoftransitory*

        PLUS the damage likely incurred to the equipment, buildings and classrooms when completely untrained people try to powerwash buildings and run riding mowers! I can already see the blown out windows, ruined shrubbery and sidewalks, etc.

        1. Wolf*

          I’d be tempted to set the lawnmower to super-low and basically plough the lawn, just to make sure they don’t ask me to do that again.

    3. RLC*

      First thought that popped into my head, if this is in the US, would OSHA regulations apply? Training, PPE, all sorts of possible safety and health concerns.

      2. 1LFTW*

        My shoulders went up around my ears thinking of the health and safety problems with this scheme. Throwing a bunch of untrained people at a bunch of landscaping tasks, complete with power tools? No thank you.

    4. thedoctor*

      This!! My mother-in-law was very seriously injured by a pressure washer. She’s okay now but I am now very wary of being around pressure washers and other equipment I haven’t been trained to use. It very much seems a liability risk.

      1. librarian*

        replying to #1: i am laughing so hard. i was a faculty-level librarian at a failing small college in my 20’s. select things i remember doing include painting a bathroom stall, spreading a ton of gravel in a flowerbed, changing light bulbs in dorm stairwells in advance of weekend admissions tours…

        i left before the payroll checks began to bounce, but for whatever reason i look back on this time kind of fondly.

      2. Ashley*

        From having volunteered with places like Habitat for Humanity, it isn’t just you needing know how to use tools safely. A huge risk is unskilled people being around while you are working. I love using my pressure washer. It is not something I will use near multiple people because of lack of trust that they will stay away from me, the spray, and machine. An accidental bump can be a major issue.
        Higher ed jobs are harder and harder to come by, but unless they have a plan to turn around finances and enrollment I would be looking for a new job because the odds of the school staying open are decreasing daily.

        1. Elizabeth*

          Pressure washing also can seriously and easily damage buildings if done without skill. Water intrusion is no joke.

          I used to run maintenance/ops at a struggling college and did these sorts of workdays, and we were in dire straits, but we kept this to HR/EH&S approved activities and it was very much optional and limited to landscaping, at least.

    5. Also-ADHD*

      Yeah, I’m AudHD with dyspraxia so clumsy AF and could probably raise a disability claim (which I have before when in K12 and a principal attempted something like this, though not grounds, and I both filed a union grievance with a group and a disability claim—in that case, the additional duties were shut down for me immediately by the disability and for all by the union grievance within an expedited claim period of a week, with a fine and some OT pay for those who had been forced to participate). But anyone who is just a little older, out of shape, or trying to use equipment they’re not familiar with could absolutely get hurt!

      1. Mentally Spicy*

        Hello, friend, you and I share the exact flavour of mental spiciness! And you’re absolutely correct that a pressure washer in my hands practically guarantees that either me or someone else is getting horrifically maimed.

        (I also have a side order of unexplained joint and muscle pain, so I’m even more clumsy and uncoordinated than I was previously. Yay for aging!)

    6. Seeking Second Childhood*

      Power washers can dig holes in brick and concrete, blow gardens across the lawn, and injure people. I’m amazed they want the liability.

      1. Falling Diphthong*

        Yeah, this is kind of akin to “So we’re going to give each of you a chainsaw…”

        1. Dry Cleaning Enthusiast*

          I would watch the movie where a bunch of faculty are given chainsaws and let loose.

      2. Mockingjay*

        The people who are “organizing” this event have never actually used any of this equipment and likely have never done gardening other than a small flowerbed. I doubt liability ever crossed their minds. The only concern they have is that the campus look pretty for the parents (read: tuition paying and potential donors) of students.

        1. Antilles*

          It’s this. I am confident that whoever sent the email is thinking of it as a fairly minor request akin to normal home maintenance – digging holes like at your home garden, operating a lawnmower like you do every 7-14 days, spraying some pesticide like you would in your backyard, washing windows, etc. All the tasks that yes, it is likely that someone old enough to be faculty at a university either has done in the past and/or could muddle through well enough.
          The problem of course is that at work, there’s all sorts of liability, health and safety concerns, and etc. If I’m working at home and something goes wrong with my “it’s just a shovel, who needs gloves” attitude, well, it’s all on me. The exact same event happening at work causes an OSHA reportable or a worker’s comp report or an insurance claim or etc.

    7. Desk Dragon*

      This was my immediate thought, as well; even non-powered tools can be a hazard! My company used to do a “volunteer day” (paid by the company) where we’d all do a charity project, and one involved helping clear invasive species out of a park. I had to find a tactful way of telling someone senior to me to please give me the handsaw before we needed an ambulance (he was bracing his foot against the root he was trying to cut through and pulling the saw directly toward it). This was over a decade ago and it still makes me shudder to think about it.

      1. KnittingattheBaseballGame*

        I participated in a very similar paid volunteer day as a young professional. I contracted a case of poison ivy so bad it required prescription steroids. The company never again allowed employees to participate in that kind of volunteer labor.

    8. Nicosloanica*

      I guess I didn’t think this one was as egregious as others do – *provided* it’s truly voluntary and there’s no pushback on OP for not going. If there are hourly workers who are happy to mix it up for one day and plant flowers instead of answer emails (and I would be), for pay, I think it’s okay to ask if they want to do that. It sounds like they don’t have zero groundskeeping staff, just not enough, so perhaps they can focus those professionals on the jobs that require training and knowledge and the office staff can do some less-skilled outdoors work, planting flowers etc. Maybe my perspective is skewed because I work in a small nonprofit where staff are often called upon to do random duties here and there – I’ve worked coat check at events (and bartender!) and had to come in for office clean-outs, moving days, kitchen upgrades etc. And no, as a salaried worker I didn’t make extra money for doing it.

      1. Nocturna*

        The issue isn’t really the staff (year-round job) who will be paid to do this (though there’s still a liability issues). The issue is the faculty (usually only paid for a certain number of months in the year, often 10) who are not yet back in their paid period being asked to do this–their employer is asking them to work unpaid.

    9. Am I old in the United States of America?*

      It may depend on the situation? If you are in the US and are aware of HBCUs….

      There were couple of cases where big name athletic coachers were bought on staff and publicly criticized the universities for asking them to do so. As I recall, the coaches were criticized for 2 things.

      1 Publicly criticizing the universities for asking
      2 Not being willing to do the work

    10. RIP Pillowfort*

      Back in 2008 recession they cut the outsourced cleaning staff where I work. I work in public service and we had to pick up the slack by cleaning common areas. The labs were already staff cleaned because of the complicated nature of the testing we do. Bagging trash and taking it to the dumpster wasn’t a big deal but we had to have a organized effort for things like cleaning floors, offices, bathrooms, etc. with education and instruction.

      Specifically because we didn’t want people mixing cleaning supplies that should not be mixed. The proper way to handle and dispose of cleaning supplies.

      My situation wasn’t one we could push back on. It was just reality for a short while but it wasn’t taken lightly by our management. If we were going to do it, it was going to be done safely and well.

    11. Juicebox Hero*

      Not just tools. Industrial strength cleaners are dangerous if you don’t know what you’re doing, not to mention needing the right protective equipment, ventilation, etc. They can damage surfaces and plumbing, and there’s always the danger of mixing two that will react and make everyone very sick or even kill them.

      1. Nonanon*

        Not even just “industrial strength” cleaners; the more I learn about what household bleach can react with, the more I think it shouldn’t be a household cleaning product.

        1. DJ Abbott*

          I have not used household bleach in decades. It smells bad and makes me wheeze. And, like you, the more I learn about the health hazards, the less I want to use it.
          I use a disinfectant I make with alcohol and vinegar. In a 12 to 16 ounce bottle, put 1/4 cup isopropyl alcohol, 1/2 cup white vinegar, and fill with water.
          Alcohol is non-toxic and has no fumes or odor. IMO it should be used everywhere. Bleach has done so much damage to our health and environment, someone should be sued.

          1. Lewis*

            I want to push back a bit on this as someone who has worked with isopropyl both full and diluted in a manufacturing situation – it does have fumes, is flammable in concentrated doses, and is an eye/skin irritant, and can cause dizziness if inhaled (leading to unconsciousness in large doses) and should not be used without ventilation. Fortunately it does evaporate quickly, but I wouldn’t ingest it or refer to it as non-toxic. It can also damage certain plastics. However it is very effective at disinfecting!

            1. DJ Abbott*

              It’s not as toxic as bleach, though. If a person accidentally ingests a little or gets it on their eyes or skin, it’s easily remedied. It does not make me wheeze, and the very faint odor is pleasant. I can’t imagine a situation where a person would inhale enough fumes to become unconscious.
              What I love about it is I can use it in the kitchen around food without worrying about chemicals in my food. If a few little drops get into the food, it’s no big deal.
              I used to have cats, and another thing I loved was I didn’t have to worry about them getting poisoned by it.

              1. Lewis*

                Oh yes, in comparison with bleach (especially using bleach in a bathroom setting – no no) rubbing/isopropyl alcohol is easier to handle. These days I handle most of the cleaning with dish soap, laundry soap, and vinegar, but fortunately I don’t have a lot of biohazards to scrub up after in the house.

        2. Ari Flynn*

          Wait ’til you hear about Tylenol! We use a lot of things today that came into common use in the 19th century and linger mostly because “everybody knows” how to be careful with them. I doubt we can get them banned until we get to a point where that’s no longer true.

          1. Lewis*

            Gas (as in vehicles, combustion engines) too! Car owners dispensing flammable, hazardous, highly refined petrochemicals into machinery in outdoor environments, without PPE or formal training? If they invented gas stations now, you’d have to be certified to work at one and people without training would not be allowed to fill their cars. It’d be similar to how we handle propane. We’re just so used to it, though.

    12. AnotherLibrarian*

      This 100% sounds like the small, struggling college I used to work for! What made the requests to help with campus clean up even more galling was that several years ago the college outsourced housekeeping and groundskeeping. The company wouldn’t pay a competitive wage and had lots of turnover. So faculty were supposed to volunteer free work for a private company I guess.

      2. Reluctant Mezzo*

        Sounds like when the Grinch wanted to turn school kids (but only poor ones) into janitors. Yeah, that will work out fine…not.

    13. The Rafters*

      My spouse did a great deal of grounds work during COVID b/c he & coworkers couldn’t perform their usual tasks. He was the only one allowed to use the tractor b/c one other guy who wanted to just wasn’t capable. Spouse was the only one with years of (home) experience. They all did beautiful work on upgrading the grounds. Oh, and they were all PAID.

    14. Pair of Does*

      Yeah, that’s some Evermore-level bs. Totally inappropriate to ask of staff- and for free!

    15. Ama*

      Yeah this would not even be allowed at the university I previously worked at — I once moved four desks down in my office there and was told that under no circumstances was I allowed to move my own computer or monitor, I had to wait for the facilities staff to move it (granted this was back when everyone still had CRT monitors and desktop towers but they weren’t THAT heavy and I was in very good shape).

      And yes I highly encourage pushing back — universities have been shifting the admin load to faculty for over a decade now, now this school wants to shift facilities work to them as well?

    16. goddessoftransitory*

      The second I read “power washing” I was oh HELL NO. That equipment is dangerous if you don’t know what you’re doing! But the rest of this is ridiculous as well, LW.

    17. Admin 22*

      Ref: 1. My employer wants us to “volunteer” for groundskeeping and cleaning

      I used to process accident reports while working in higher education. If you get injured while doing something outside your job description; even if your employer requested it of you; your Workman’s Comp claims can be denied. Over the years, slip and falls are being denied right off the bat and have to appealed. It depends on which company your employer is using for Workman’s Comp Insurance. If your employer is so stretched that they are asking faculty and staff to do manual labor, etc.; it’s possible they dropped their workman’s comp insurance coverage. I’m not sure if they would be honest about that or not if you asked.

  2. Blu*

    LW 3 – Only you know the specifics but for what it’s worth, I notice that all your hours of mentorship focused on growing this specific individual and providing guidance about his career in general, but you indicate you were looking for something specific to his job. I could definitely see how that could be putting him in a tough spot especially when we are talking about government agencies. Your comment about your question potentially triggering an inspection makes me wonder if whatever topic you broached may have meant he couldn’t be a casual advisor to you in this case. If you’ve had and otherwise good relationship it may be worth considering his pov on this.

    1. Katie Impact*

      I was thinking along the same lines. If you previously had an apparently good relationship with him, his response is such a sharp turn that there may be something specific prompting it that was out of his hands.

      1. Nicosloanica*

        Yeah, I once tried to network a bit with someone over a project we had in common and they gave me an answer like that and then I remembered lawyers are very conservative, government people tend to be conservative and risk averse, and also that guy was a bit humorless at the best of times. But I didn’t assume he disrespected our relationship, just that this was not a good topic to network around with him. I’m sorry this was the first time OP needed something from the mentee but I wouldn’t ascribe so much to his reaction.

    2. Alz*

      Yup, or…maybe a young/dumb mistake? When I first started as a consultant I was super excited at the idea of bringing in work so when a former mentor reached out I thought it was an extension of the advice that they had previously provided. I am very appreciative that when I quoted prices they spelled out that they were now approaching me as a peer not as a mentor. It was super embarrassing (for both of us) so you are in no way obligated to give them this lesson- but I know I appreciated it!

      1. bamcheeks*

        If they’ve been mentoring him for over a decade, having started when the mentee was at college, they are presumably mid-career by now.

        To be honest, I’m kind of confused by a mentoring relationship as long and one-sided as this– a decade is a LONG time to be mentoring someone, especially since LW says it started when they were “early in their career” and therefore presumably only a few years ahead of the mentee. Usually that kind of relationship transitions to something much more reciprocal after 2-3 years! I am sure there are mentor-mentee relationships which last that long but in that case I’d expect them to have a much larger experience-gap of more like 20-30 years. I am mid-40s and I’d think of anyone I mentored 6+ years ago as a peer now, even if I’m ten or fifteen years older than them or in a higher-level role on paper (and lots of people I was senior to ten years ago are now senior to me!)

        LW, I think if you look back, you’ll probably see other signs of how one-sided this relationship was, and I am genuinely wondering why you poured so much time over such a long period into a non-reciprocal. I think it’s totally fine to end the relationship now, but I would also ask yourself whether there were other signs that this was one-sided that you breezed past, and what they were.

    3. Captain dddd-cccc-ddWdd*

      This is where I landed on it as well, and I disagree with the answer. OP has put the time into mentoring him for his own career purposes, but has made this request for a work-related reason associated with their own agency – which I suspect there must be some official process for (probably involving one agency cross-charging the other, as his response suggests); OP has tried to use the mentoring relationship to do something by the back door. This isn’t a “snub” at all, it’s (sounds like) doing things by the book, which is important in government-type agencies of course.

    4. Insert Clever Name Here*

      Eh, if OP asked for something the mentee was prohibited from providing they could have just said “that’s not information I’m able to give you — sorry!”

      1. Juniper*

        I would imagine it was less a case of “prohibited from providing” than something they didn’t feel like they could toss out without a contract, an NDA, or some other formalized agreement for the service being rendered. Especially if he is new to his field or company, he’s probably especially cautious about offering up what could be valuable information. Maybe he could have been more polite, but considering that this was a peer-to-peer request, I don’t think it was outlandish of him at all.

        1. Insert Clever Name Here*

          I was responding specifically to the idea that OP’s question was somehow inappropriate and put Mentee in a tough space so Mentee responded the only way he could. Having spent my entire career dealing with information that can’t be shared with most people and telling people that, Mentee’s response just feels off to me. But then again, could be that Mentee was like “sure, I can answer that but we have to do X, Y, and Z before I can send you the information; let me know if you want to start that process” and OP feels entitled to skipping official processes because of their relationship. Who knows!

    5. Also-ADHD*

      While that might be true, it doesn’t sound like he approached it with any appreciation or consideration and raised that as an issue, so I’m guessing “selfish” is right as Alison notes. If he’d said something like, “I’m not sure my employer would be okay with me consulting on this without billing, I’m sorry” or something, that might be different.

    6. TooTiredToThink*

      Ok, I’m glad a lot of us landed on this same side of – the mentoree may have seen this specific question as different and falling under the consulting fee that they may be required to ask for potentially privilaged information. While only the LW knows if this might be the case, I’d encourage them to take their immediate emotions out of it, try to look at it from the other’s perspective (and job requirements) and then make a decision.

    7. Mockingjay*

      I work as a contractor for a government agency that does most of its work for and with other government agencies. In this day of scant funding, every single request for information or work – formal or informal – has to be looked at for scope and payment – does the request fall under existing funded tasks or is this a new request? I get similar requests from other contractor companies (sometimes government reps, too) and I am not allowed to respond at my level; all I can do is gather info and run the request up the management chain to look at the same factors: is this in the scope of our current contract? Does my company have an existing partnership with this company? What are the agency’s obligations in this matter? And so on.

      Give your former mentee some slack; you caught him off guard. My guess is that he has constraints in what he is allowed to say on behalf of his agency.

    8. AvonLady Barksdale*

      Even if it’s not a government agency, this still could fall into “I can’t give you that info for free.” For example, I used to do work that gave me access to large databases with important pieces of data. Per our contract with the database company, I was only allowed to share information with certain groups– there were a bunch of limitations that were actually pretty straightforward. If a friend had called me and said, “Hey, I’m doing some desk research, can you send me the info for X?”, I would have had to say no or risk losing my job. Or, in another job working with the same info, I would have had to charge for it.

      The fact that this “general question” needed to be answered by a consultant makes me think this is proprietary info and the mentee was not at liberty to share without consequences. There are favors (“Can you introduce me to the Marketing Director at your agency?”) and there are… under-the-table favors. The first? Absolutely, I would even say the mentee owes you. The second? That’s not fair.

    9. OP3*

      It was a very general question on an over reaching topic applying to any other industry. It was not an issue he had to respond to in that way. I’ve been in the regulatory field for 20 years, and very well know the boundaries, and he is brand new, first position. His response was intense and not what I’ve experienced from other people in similar or higher positions. Understand your point though, I was within a reasonable question.

      1. Plate of Wings*

        This is good context, thank you for updating in the comments! I’m in a regulated field myself and one of the first things everyone learns is how to respond to inquiries with tact if you can’t share anything.

        But if this is general knowledge, like knowledge about an outside governing body or about what happens in what region, declining with tact doesn’t even apply.

  3. AnotherLibrarian*

    #1: I used to work at a higher ed institution, which shall remain nameless, who had cut their custodial staff to the point where they required a “cleaning day” each semester to be done by faculty, staff and students in our building. My boss refused to have her staff participate and I am sure faced blow-back, but protected us from it. Needless to say, I still respect that former boss and have slowly lost respect for the institution in question, as I have come to understand what was really happening. (I was new to the field at the time and very “always trying to be helpful” without realizing the consequences of such behavior. I’ve become much more cynical since then.)

    The fact is your institution will take from you everything it can and the job market for faculty is grim enough, that it can be impossible to not feel as though you have no other options should you leave your current school. I would, however, encourage you and your colleagues to refuse and support the staff around you who refuse as well. (Staff/faculty divide can be used by administration to really harm collective organizing on campuses.) Of course, there maybe political costs to all this, so be aware and alert for that.

    2. Tip Tap Type*

      Absolutely this. Hopefully there can be some sort of group push-back failure to participate.

      I work with facility management professionals in higher education. They’re able to advocate for additional staff/better compensation based on the fact that not enough staff = buildings and grounds suffering. Handing power washers to faculty does not seem helpful there.

    3. LaurCha*

      I also used to work in higher ed. I was a professor, and we were asked to help students move into the dorms. Like, carry heavy stuff up and down stairs, unload cars, etc. I did not do that. They also used to ask us to “serve breakfast” when the cafeteria did a late night breakfast thing during finals. As. If. I was GRADING during finals. I also did not do that. My university was not in financial straits, they just thought it would be cute for us to go dish up scrambled eggs at midnight.

      Guess who was perceived as “not a team player”? Guess who has abandoned higher ed due to so much toxic bullshit like this (and worse)? Yeah. I spent so many years and so much money for that PhD, but higher ed is an absolute shit show.

      1. Isn't that normal?*

        Isn’t the faculty & staff helping with move in normal? Not in a “we need your help” way, but more of a “we want all the new students to see welcoming faces” way. We have two small private universities in my town, a junior college, and a tech school with dorms…all of them do this and make it a big welcome day.

        1. Bumblebee*

          Yes, totally normal, and resenting it is definitely a way to be seen as not a team player (my source: I’m the one who asks people to do this kind of stuff). Generally everyone who moves in picks up a big wheelie-bin (a Taggabox) and they or their parents push it, while volunteer staff the info tents, the recycling tent (my fave, you get to have lots of good conversations with parents and students), etc. Being asked to be a housekeeper for free is entirely different, though.

          1. Plate of Wings*

            I work at a regular company now but I pitched in at the university and it was the easiest way to get team player points! Now there’s no one to mingle with to get that easy recognition lmao.

            I certainly wouldn’t die on this hill because this is a common ritual at US colleges and universities. And it IS a ritual. Not like groundskeeping before the semester!

        2. Tango*

          I used to work in finance for a student accommodation company. 4 weekends a year half the team came in to the office to answer phones (a lot were finance queries) and the other half went to the buildings to help move students in. It was considered normal and kinda fun!

      2. Powercycle*

        Many years ago I was a computer technician in a community college. Facilities was chronically understaffed. We basically became responsible for any piece of furniture that happened to have a computer equipment on it. So we frequently would modify and repair the desks ourselves. At least we had lots of power tools at our disposal to get these jobs done.

      3. Plate of Wings*

        The breakfast sounds like abysmal timing for professors, but both the move-in and the meal serving (at some meaningful time, usually end or beginning of term) are classic activities at many US colleges and universities where professors go to show their faces. I’m sure some profs never went, but plenty just show up to make conversation and be friendly and welcoming, but not actually lift a thing. They’re kind of like photo ops for politicians and soooo common in higher ed.

        Most of your colleagues who went probably just mingled, and only some did more manual labor. In fact, if everyone buckled down to work and no one mingled or chatted the whole time, the event would be considered a bit of a failure!

  4. judyjudyjudy*

    LW1, this is pretty bogus and you should cheerfully decline to volunteer. Weirdly, my former company would do the same thing, every spring. The difference was, everyone got to do this on company time, and volunteers got to take extra plants and bulbs home. Most of the participants were avid gardeners themselves, who relished the chance to get out of their labs and offices for a few hours to play in the dirt. I did not volunteer.

    1. Lily*

      I had a similar situation working for a small business when I was in my 20s – the boss wanted us to spend the weekend cleaning our new offices before we moved in. Unpaid. But with a bbq lunch!
      At the time, I was spending every weekend I could in our state capital (about three hours drive away) to visit with a friend who was terminally ill. So I flatly declined to attend.
      The boss was FLABBERGASTED that I said no. (And yes, she knew what I was doing on my weekends)
      I look back at my younger self with great pride. I need to bring that energy to my current job.

    2. Ready for the weekend*

      My example is different but my first company’s owner mandated our staff help set up and decorate tables and chairs for a nonprofit’s fundraising event. He was on the board. No pay, no recognition, nothing. One department boss stepped in and went for us so we didn’t have to. Others didn’t go. My boss forced me to go; I didn’t have any choice. :(

  5. Nodramalama*

    LW1 this seems… Ridiculous?! It would be one thing if it was like, looking for green thumbs on the faculty who would like to volunteer their time maintaining the garden. Our organisation does that and people who love gardening help out.

    This… This is unhinged. Expecting faculty to take time out of their work day to clean and power wash buildings is ridiculous. And then not paying them for it?

  6. MsM*

    LW2: Can confirm, even kid redheads aren’t safe from questions about hair dye. I also got asked if I had a perm. (I suppose I should be grateful it got browner as I got older, but I do miss it sometimes.)

    1. Filosofickle*

      Blonde kids aren’t always safe either — in elementary school people would ask me if I bleached my hair! It happened multiple times. I mean, my hair was a gorgeous shade but who thinks anyone is peroxiding a 10 year old’s head? Strange.

      I think I got fewer questions later in life when I was dying my hair red lol. Lots of compliments, but they rarely asked directly if it was dyed. How I envy natural redheads!

      1. Arrietty*

        Same, I had very light blonde hair and dark eyebrows as a child and someone’s mum got extremely worked up about how inappropriate it was to bleach a 7 year old’s hair. It wasn’t bleached! It just grew out of my head that way!

        2. Charlotte Lucas*

          I was a towhead, and the questions! (One kid has to be told to stop touching my hair in grade school.)

          Now I am a streaky strawberry blonde, and people don’t ask as much, but when I said something about only dying my hair once in my life (and not to look natural), a coworker’s reaction made me realize that she just assumed I dyed!

      2. Nonsense*

        Or brunettes! I have what I affectionately call mottled brown – it’s a mix of several shades of brown, red, and blonde, far more than the usual variation in hair. People were absolutely convinced my hair had to dyed, even when I was a little kid, to the point that a few adults judged my mom for supposedly dying my hair. I learned from my mom to raise an eyebrow and say, in the flattest tone I can muster, “I have better things to spend my money on.”

        Which is no judgement about dyeing hair! But for people who are getting pushy and judgy, it sure gets the point across.

      3. sparkle emoji*

        I did actually have some friends in grade school whose mom’s began bleaching their hair around 8-10 years old. Jojo Siwa’s mother infamously started bleaching Jojo’s hair at 3. Still wouldn’t ask a child if their hair is natural or dyed, obviously.

        1. Sweet Fancy Pancakes*

          Several years ago my sister worked as a counselor at a day camp and one of the kids, 8 or 9 at the time, said something about getting her mom wanting to bleach her (the kid’s) hair that weekend. My sister asked why her mom thought she needed to bleach her hair, and the girl said “so my roots don’t show!”. I wonder what that poor kid’s hair looks like now after years of bleaching.

      4. A Simple Narwhal*

        My cousin is platinum blond and has been since he was born. My aunt told me a story once of someone approaching her and asking how she managed to get him to let her dye his hair. He was a toddler at the time! The worst part is that the question seemed to be asked in a “teach me so my kid will let me dye his hair” sort of way!

        Now my toddler also has platinum blond hair but I fortunately haven’t received the same question – possibly because I’m also blonde (though a much more subdued color) so maybe it seems more believably natural(?) whereas my aunt is brunette?

        People are weird.

      5. Katie*

        Heck I remember in high school in some home ec like class my classmates said I dyed my hair. I denied it and they would not believe me. It so happened a hair dresser was there that day and backed me up or they would not believe me.

      6. Flor*

        Yep, my sister had white blonde hair when she was a child and people would ask if she bleached it. AT EIGHT. She’s an adult now and her hair has darkened to the colour of Dany’s in GOT.

        Meanwhile, when I was an adult and hennaed my (naturally mousy, dirty blonde) hair ginger for five years, most people assumed it was my natural colour. Even when I had 1″ of ashy blonde-brown roots. Even people who had known me as a child with blonde hair.

        1. Charlotte Lucas*

          Blonde hair can turn red and vice versa, depending on your genes. Ask me how I know.

    2. Myrin*

      I seem to be an outlier in this – I absolutely got that question, even as a child (so stupid), but it was… if I had to guess, maybe thirty times in my life (I’m 33)? Definitely less than fifty.
      Maybe it’s because, as my mum used to say, I have a very specific type of red which would basically be impossible to dye and people somehow realised that subconsciously, maybe it’s the same thing which makes it so that I don’t get catcalled, maybe it’s because all of my other visible body hair is clearly also red, I don’t know, but yeah, I’m definitely glad it happened so sparsely (once a week! I can’t even fathom that!).

      1. bamcheeks*

        I genuinely never minded being asked if I’d dyed my hair, but every now and then I remember being about fourteen and being asked by men “if the curtains and the carpet match”, and then I am furious. (Even more so when I realise my 10yo is approximately four years away from being asked the same thing.)

        3. Gross Men Are Gross*

          Gross.

          Thankfully, I never got such gross questions (just catcalled on the streets at 11, so yeah).

          My current answer to that question: “it’s a hardwood floor,” and let them figure out wtf it means.

    3. RedinSC*

      The question my mom always got when I was a kid was “Where did you get your red hair from” as both of my parents were brunette. My mom would look at them and say, “The Milkman”. and then walk away.

      I am still asked if I dye my hair, mostly because I don’t really have grays yet.

          1. DaisyGJ*

            My parents had a decorator in getting things ready for my birth and he was a redhead – according to the jokes that’s where my red hair comes from!

            I’ve also had a lot of comments asking if my hair is dyed. When I was a teen, a neighbour was very cold to my family because we wouldn’t tell her what hair dye I used to get that shade.

            1. PhyllisB*

              Yep. I was a blonde growing up and in my teens got asked a lot if I dyed my hair. When I worked at the phone company one lady got really huffy at me because I “wouldn’t tell her ” what type of hair color and told me there’s “no shame” in admitting that you color your hair and told me what she used on her hair. The funny thing about this is she was about 62 and had plantium blonde hair that she had always insisted was “totally natural ” that she was just “blessed” to have naturally blonde hair.
              When I told someone I worked with what transpired, they cracked up and said she must have been really desperate to actually admit that she bleached her hair.
              The funny thing is, when I got to the age where my blonde turned muddy I started coloring it red. Not one person asked me if it was dyed.

          2. Redhead Mama*

            My toddler son has bright orange hair (and matching eye brows) and we (two very brunette parents) are still shocked at all the comments we’ve gotten since he was born. I never knew how popular the hair color was, but people adore it.

            When people ask us where he gets his hair color from we tell him our dog, a cavalier who is almost an exact match.

            1. PhyllisB*

              My son was a blond like me all his life, but when got in his thirties it turned red. I’ve never seen that happen before.

              1. Deborah Vance, Vance Refrigeration*

                I had dirty blonde hair as a child, but it slowly turned into a rusty tone somewhere between blonde and red. I’ve also never heard about it before, but it definitely happens.

                1. Charlotte Lucas*

                  Happened to my dad! Mine did the same, but it’s lighter. (I was born with dark red hair that turned blonde. Now it’s a little of both, and redder in the cooler months when there’s less sun.)

                2. Admin 22*

                  When I was born I was a carrot top but when I lost the baby hair it was a pale blond that kept getting darker as I got older with a some red in it.

            3. sometimeswhy*

              My eldest had cornsilk-white hair as a child. The sort that comes with invisible eyebrows and sci-fi/fantasy blue eyes. I? Have medium-to-dark brown hair that turns red in the summer and look young for my age. The number people who asked if I was the nanny and how gorgeous the child’s parents must be was almost enough to drive me to violence.

          3. Georgia Carolyn Mason*

            Ha, not hair color but my high school biology teacher accidentally got it backwards and said two brown-eyed parents can’t have a blue-eyed child. He then threw in a tacky joke about “if your eyes are blue and your parents’ are brown, ask your mom about the mailman.” I’m glad I’d done the reading so I knew he said it wrong, or I’m sure (as a 14-year-old pain in the ass at the time) I definitely would’ve interrogated my mom!

            1. Employee of the Bearimy*

              My husband made a joke along those lines while I was pregnant with my oldest, something like “If this kid comes out with blue eyes, we’ll need to have a conversation.” I then explained recessive genes and did the math on the odds that we (both brown-eyed with blue-eyed mothers) would have a blue-eyed kid. And sure enough, the oldest has blue eyes.

        2. Keymaster of Gozer (she/her)*

          My hair is naturally black (as is my mother’s), my sister is naturally strawberry blonde. The amount of times my mum used that milkman joke was impressive!

          (She’s also got a lighter skin tone than the rest of us and a different blood group. Genetics are FUN!)

        3. Pastor Petty Labelle*

          About twenty years I heard a comedian make a joke about the mailman/milkman comments — he basically said thanks for implying my mom cheated on my dad.

          I haven’t made that joke since then. Honestly its just rude to comment on someone’s looks like that. Compliments, of the non-creepy kind, fine. But skip the part before the compliment.

          1. bamcheeks*

            There were people who thought that joke WASN’T about that? What did they think it was about?!

            2. Lil Grasshopper*

              exactly! I’m not a redhead but I am ethnically ambiguous due to my mixed heritage. got black hair from my mom and inherited the fine silky texture of my dad’s hair. SO many people thinking I was Asian and I could deal with that, but once had the mom of a friend try to convince me I’m Asian even though I explained my dad is white and my mom is Hispanic and that’s what have me my unique look that I don’t really think looks Asian if you pay attention but people are just dumb about thinking glasses and black hair = Asian. this lady said nope I was definitely Asian and I just didn’t know it! I understood the implications of that and was NOT impressed. showed her pictures of my parents and she went “oh” and left the room.

        4. jen hen*

          My father, who was also a redhead, would use the line about the milkman. His brother was a milkman – who also had red hair.

      2. Coverage Associate*

        My dad got that question too! Same story. Natural redhead, brunette parents. I was very shy as a child, but for years the words I would say to strangers were, “from my grandma,” as one of my grandmothers had hair that matched mine. She had kept some, so not a family legend or white lie.
        Interesting about Myrin’s experience too. I also seemed to get cat called and hit on less than my peers, and my red is pretty unusual. Definitely not a Viking red.

      3. Nodramalama*

        I think this conversation has happened on this sub before, but I reckon part of this is because people don’t really get how recessive genes work. Like they learn that red hair is recessive gene, but that makes them think that that means your parents must be red heads.

        1. bamcheeks*

          Yea, it was me! Everyone remembers “recessive gene” as “both your parents have to have red hair”, rather than “you have to inherit it from both parents, but either or both parents can be a carrier of the gene without having red hair”.

          (Plus, it’s completely possible to have the gene from both sides and the ABILITY to produce red pigment, but not have red hair. Source: my children and also most of Scotland.)

          1. amoeba*

            Yeah, while it’s actually the other way round – if it’s a dominant gene, then it must also be expressed in either of the parents (because if they have even one copy, it’ll show).
            And also, hair colour isn’t as simple as that, anyway, it’s a combination of many different genes interacting… I mean, which makes sense, because there are obviously more than four different hair colours in the world, right?

            1. Charlotte Lucas*

              And dark vs. light makes a difference! I realized I carry a gene for dark red hair and one for light blonde. Equally dominant/recessive. So they’ve now been fighting it out for decades!

            1. Beth**

              Me too. The only other blue eyed person in the family is one paternal aunt. I am very confident that my parents are my genetic parents.

          3. Nonanon*

            MOST genes are actually not as simple as high school Punnet squares would have us believe, and there ARE rare instances where a “dominant” gene can be expressed from two “recessive” individuals.

            That won’t stop anyone from my VERY Mediterranean looking family teasing my “inexplicably” blonde blue eyed uncle (including himself), but, y’know… genes are weird.

            1. PhyllisB*

              My sister in law and her husband are both dark eyed brunettes and both of their children have dark blonde hair and grey eyes.

        2. Seeking Second Childhood*

          Yep. My husband &I both had at least one red-headed great-grandparent. I was born with a full head of red hair that fell out and grew back brown. My dark brown haired husband had red in his beard when he let it go all ZZTop in high school.
          Our son got the brown only.

        3. Artemesia*

          I knew a family that blew up when a blue eyed child was born to a couple with brown and blue eyes. His family insisted that the wife must have cheated because ‘brown is dominant, so if our son were the father then the kids would have to have brown eyes’. The exact opposite of how recessive and dominant work.

          My brother and his wife both have brown eyes and two of their kids are blue eyed and one green eyed. My husband and I both have recessive blues but both our kids were brown eyed. It is simple mendelian genetics — we had a one in four chance of having a blue eyed kid each time just as my brother and his wife did and the dice rolled differently for each of us.

      4. Turquoisecow*

        My mom’s hair relaxed a lot after my little brother was born so a lot of people would wonder where I got my curls from and be surprised when she said, “from me!”

      5. Anon4this1*

        My child has blonde hair and my spouse and I have dark hair. People ask me all the time why my child is blonde. I find it offensive and one person even asked me if I was the nanny while another asked if I used a donor egg! My spouse had blonde hair as a child until maybe age 8 when they went very dark whereas my mom’s side of the family are mostly strawberry blondes, so it clearly is genetic!

        1. Polly*

          Plus, a lot of kids have a different color hair in childhood than they do as adults. Both of my parents had blond hair as children, which still boggles my mind when I see the photos because they have dark hair as adults.

          1. MigraineMonth*

            I have light brown straight hair and my sister has dark-brown very curly hair. We are indistinguishable in pictures between the ages of 3 and 6, where we both had bright red straight hair.

      6. learnedthehardway*

        That absolutely enrages me when people comment about my youngest’s red hair. He got it from his grandfather, who got it from HIS paternal grandmother. (I had always thought it came by way of my dad’s mother, but it turns out she dyed her hair that particular shade of red her whole life, lol).

        Anyway, NO, I wasn’t cheating on my spouse, TYVM. But thanks for implying that.

        (DH got ripped up one side and down the other when he made a comment once – I point blank asked if he really wanted to have a discussion about marital fidelity and divorce. His eyes got pretty wide at that, and the subject was not brought up again.)

        It’s not a joke, esp. not to a child.

      7. MA Dad*

        The Milkman thing just unlocked a memory for me. No one else in my family, as distant as we are aware, has ever had red hair but I got it somehow.

    4. Polly*

      As I read Alison’s answer, I thought, “oh THAT’S why people used to ask me if my hair was natural or dyed!” It was dyed because I love red hair. I always feel a bit offended/defensive when people ask me about it.

      I am jealous of my family members who have red hair growing out of their heads. I was even appalled when my cousin dyed her red hair brown for a while. Maybe she was tired of all the comments about her hair color.

      1. ThatOtherClare*

        It depends on the person. If their minds work anything like mine they might be hoping that you’ll tell them who your hairdresser is or what brand of dye you’re using. That said, I’ve never been rude enough to let the words out of my mouth, but if your hair is a beautiful colour you bet I’ll be wishing I could think of a considerate way to ask if you’re a fellow dye fan. Alas.

        1. Seeking Second Childhood*

          To the redheads out there, how would this fly?

          “Your hair is beautiful. I wish mine were that color.”

          My thought is that’s a compliment whether it’s natural or not. If it is dyed, it leaves open the option to promote their favorite salon.

          1. Sola Lingua Bona Lingua Mortua Est*

            It’d depend on the day I’m having. On a good day, I might shrug it off as a compliment. My crown of fire has been a crown of thorns often enough that it’s not my first reaction, but I’d try.

            On a bad day, it’s going to remind me that faux redheads can eat their cake and have it to by not opting into the other traits that are correlated with red hair (fair/pale skin, freckles, Vitamin D deficiencies, etc).

            It’d be like telling a bald person that you envy their perceived ease-of-maintenance. You might mean it well, but many would think that they’d trade for your full head of hair in a heartbeat.

            1. sookie st james*

              feel like this is a pretty extreme reaction to a compliment about hair colour – I understand your frustrations with your own correlated traits, but most people giving a compliment like this are really just trying to be nice about aesthetics

                1. Ask a Manager* Post author

                  I think it’s probably different for men and women, but it sounded extreme to me too! I do sometimes think that people who say they’ve always wanted that color have no idea of the downsides for natural redheads, which they conveniently would not be (sun wants to kill us, most colors clash with it so wardrobe-limiting, can’t be anonymous in a crowd, can’t dye it other colors because roots coming in will look weird AF*) but most people are just saying something nice about a color they like.

                  * at least that’s my list of complaints, personally

                2. Sola Lingua Bona Lingua Mortua Est*

                  Okay, and I agree with all that (except maybe the dying part… never felt the want to dye my hair), but how is “it’d be a mixed blessing on a good day and bum me out even more on a bad day” an extreme reaction?

                  Seeking Second Childhood* asked an inoffensive question in bona fide; is (s)he not entitled to an honest answer?

                3. Annie*

                  I’m another redhead, I also find Sola Lingua’s reaction to be a bit much. I guess I don’t find the “downsides” of red hair to be in any way analogous to being bald…!

                  People comment on my hair all the time. If you make it a simple passing compliment and don’t dwell or insist on asking a bunch of questions, you’re fine.

              1. 1LFTW*

                Same. The family genetics resulted in my brother being a true redhead, and me being a brunette that starts to burn after ten minutes in the sun.

            3. Coverage Associate*

              I know we have less choice about our hair than our handbags, but I don’t feel the example is that different than, “That purse is a great color. I wish I could find one with a handle like that.” Maybe the purse is too small or too big for the owner. Maybe it was overpriced and is falling apart. Maybe they feel the handle gets in the way. Maybe it was a gift from their mother in law and they hate it, but it was the only one their baby hadn’t spit up in. There’s lots of reasons a compliment could be upsetting, but they’re still polite. (Natural curly redhead also looking to replace a handbag with a strap that is in the process of ripping off)

          2. Hroethvitnir*

            A random comment no one will see: I have absolutely told people with red hair their hair is beautiful, because it is. I’m sure it gets old, but it’s basically valued for its rarity and I’d generally only comment as a form of small talk. I wouldn’t comment about wanting it or anything and would be unlikely to mistake natural red for dyed as someone who has had all flavours of red from strawberry blonde to natural red to fire engine red (naturally *very* dark brown).

            Being extremely pale and vulnerable to the sun etc also happens to people without red hair (I’m aware is genetically unique but the lived experience of very white people is similar), so I find the idea it’s a curse… odd, though I support being frustrated by it sometimes!

            There are pros and cons to most phenotypes, and I’m not generally inclined to compare (apart from the obviously next-level bullsh-t of having Black hair in the USA, for example).

      2. Ellis Bell*

        The question is usually a compliment, so much so that I can get away with sometimes only acknowledging the compliment and ignoring the question. So someone says: “Oh, do you dye your hair?” and you respond with “Oh thank you, I like it too” or even “Well, I do like it, a bit too much; I never get to change the colour because it suits me so well” then they blink a little bit at the non sequitur, but there’s like a 50 per cent chance they’ll take the hint and not follow up and get the answer to their question.

        1. MigraineMonth*

          I really like responding to it with “Oh, thank you!” It’s a polite response that assumes good intent (surely you meant it as a compliment, right?). It would be doubly boorish to insist on a real answer after being given such a graceful out.

    5. WS*

      Same, my hair was red as a kid and my cousin’s was flaming orange (and still is). Even her eyebrows are orange. She got a lot more questions than I did, but we both got them. And this was back in the 80s and 90s when kids didn’t get to dye their hair for fun. If I’m in sunlight my light brown hair looks red and I get the question even though I have large chunks of grey.

      1. KaciHall*

        My sister has had bright orange hair her whole life. Our middle school had a strict policy of no unnatural hair colors. I was an evil big sister, and I told her it was a shame that she would have to dye her hair brown for middle school because it was so orange. I don’t know if other people had asked if she used hair dye at that point, but I assume they did because she instantly believed me (and believed me all summer.)

    6. Waving not Drowning*

      Natural curly haired originally brunette but now mostly gray/white. I’m in my early 50’s, started going gray in my early 40’s – curse my mothers genes – not my dad, who was actually a milkman, but I digress.

      Once a year I splurge on a colour – on the reddish spectrum. I get SO. MANY. COMMENTS. Usually along the lines of it makes me look somewhere between 5-10 years younger which has its own set of issues, but I ignore. However, there was one former manager who when she saw my new colour the first time, put her head to the side, screwed up her nose, and asked if I’d MEANT it to be that colour? I told her yes, it was my usual colour…..”oh…it doesn’t really suit you”. Thankfully after a hellish couple of years, she’s my former manager!

    7. Agent Diane*

      Former redhead here. And my favourite red was not vaguely natural but was very obviously fake. I was told to tone it down if I wanted to get a job in the 1990s. I didn’t. I kept it for 30 years, and many promotions. I think of the acceptance of vibrant hair, visible piercings and tats as a Gen X achievement for future workplace generations.

      You’re going to get comments. All of Alison’s shutdowns are great. But embrace the power of your redheadedness. You’re Lucille Ball telling your company that it is going to commission Star Trek. You’re Special Agent Dana Katherine Scully rolling her eyes at Fox Mulder. You’re Katherine Hepburn fast-talking her way into or out of trouble with an arched eyebrow. You don’t need to justify your choices to anyone.

      1. Charlotte Lucas*

        Fun fact: Lucille Ball was a natural blonde. She dyed her hair because “redheads are funnier.”

    8. Hotdog not dog*

      I started out with dark brown hair with red highlights, and was often asked if I colored it. (Nope, I was a child and was barely interested in brushing it.) In my 20s it started going gray, so I colored it brown. Zero questions about my hair color. In my early 50s I decided to let it be whatever color it wanted, which ended up being a lovely silver with both highlights and lowlights. About once a week someone asks me if I color it.
      It’s weird that the only time my color wasn’t questioned was when it was actually dyed! Also notable, my son has the same brown/red, and the only comment he’s gotten about his color is to ask which side of the family he got it from.

    9. Turquoisecow*

      I have brown hair but it’s super curly and as a kid people definitely asked if I’d gotten a perm. My mom was like first off do you think I could get this three year old to sit still this long and second do you think I’m paying all that money for a three year old to get a *perm*?!

    10. Justme, The OG*

      Someone asked me if I permed my kid’s hair when she was a baby. No, she had (and still does as a teenager) curly hair.

    11. Miette*

      Oh wow, welcome to the club. I too am a curly girl with dyed red hair (it is naturally a dark, mousy blonde I hate with a passion). I am asked all the time if it’s natural, because I also have red eyebrows that I must draw on daily with pencil (my natural brows are quite sparse and pale blonde).

      I’m asked whether my hair’s curl is natural all the time as well as if the color is natural. People not believing I have the hair texture I have is more galling than the color tbh, but at my age I’ve just grown a thicker skin about it. And some better comebacks, delivered with good natured humor as if it’s all a joke and they’re not asking personal questions:

      “It’s chemically enhanced.”
      “Such impertinence! What about yours?”
      “Why, it’s dyed, just like yours.”
      “It’s naturally curly, I have the baby pics to prove it.”
      “Nope, I’m just a Carrot Top stan.”

    12. Elk*

      As identical red headed twins my sister and I used to get allllll the comments from adults, but I remember being deeply mystified by the woman at the grocery store who told us her red hair “came out of a bottle.”

      1. MigraineMonth*

        I didn’t understand the phrase “bottle blonde” for the longest time. I assumed her job had something to do with pouring wine or similar.

    13. Birdie*

      I have a redhead child; my husband has flaming red hair but long ago started balding and shaved it off, while I have a hint of red in otherwise brown hair.

      When baby was all of 6 weeks old, we went out for pizza. This otherwise sweet older woman goes “oh, what a cute redhead! Is it real?” I…..was stunned. Is it real? Do you think I dye my newborn’s hair?! I know she meant no harm and simply wasn’t thinking when she asked, but it was a real WTF moment.

      1. Almost Empty Nester*

        I’m sorry, but I’m sure I would have answered something along the lines of “Yep, birthed him myself!”

    14. Achtung, Baby*

      I’m a natural brunette with some faint reddish tones, but I have blue eyes and light brows/lashes, so I look fairly natural with both dark blonde and reddish-blonde or reddish-brown hair. I’ve been dying my hair medium reddish blonde (not far off from Cowboy Copper, I suppose) for over a decade. And it’s funny, I get asked occasionally if it’s natural, but most people seem to have a hard time believing it’s NOT.

    15. Patty*

      It’s been years since anyone asked me so I had forgotten, but yes, as a natural redhead I got this question a lot as a teen and a young adult! I’m a little sad thinking about it now, because it occurs to me that my hair used to be a much richer shade of red, it’s lightened to strawberry blonde now that I’m middle-aged. Or maybe people no longer ask because I just don’t look like a person who would be bothered to dye their hair LOL.

    16. toolegittoresign*

      My hair has been blonde, pink, purple, auburn, etc. The only color where people asked if it was natural was any redhead/copper shade. People are just fascinated by a natural redhead. I didn’t mind those questions but would get super annoyed when people would ask “are you Irish? Scottish?” because asking about people’s ethnicity based on their looks is just SO rude.

        2. Coverage Associate*

          I was told growing up that redheads don’t have to wear green on St Patrick’s Day, though somehow wearing orange wasn’t an acceptable alternative. /s

      2. Coverage Associate*

        I am not really interested in genealogy, but I am grateful to the cousin who did the research and found no Irish ancestry, so I could be certain when people assumed that I was Irish. My Irish American friends (and I have a lot after 12 years of convent school) could always tell I wasn’t Irish by looking at me.

    17. Red Reader the Adulting Fairy*

      I’ve been asked if my red hair was natural since I was five.

      I’ve also been dyeing part of it purple and green since 2012, and I get asked if THAT is natural too. :P (Or sometimes people just walk up to me and go “Your hair is purple!” and I go “Holy shit, how did that happen?!”)

      1. I Have RBF*

        I often dye my hair purple. Back in 2005, I got a hysterectomy. One night the night shift nurse came for my vitals at midnight, then came back the next morning and was like “Oh! Your hair is purple! I just thought it was dark. Where do you get it done?” I told it was DIY, with a blend of dyes. But yeah, she was surprised at a middle aged person rocking purple hair.

    18. Slap Bet Commissioner*

      I have naturally red curly hair. I have had a lifetime of people asking if the curls and color are real. But that doesn’t bother me because even worse are the total strangers that reach out to touch it. Since I was little, everyone wants to touch my hair and it is maddening. I cut it very short a few years ago, and that has helped a lot but it hasn’t stopped complexly.

      1. Birdie*

        We were recently at a restaurant in Oakland’s Chinatown, and I felt like half employees wanted to touch my kid’s hair. Lots of comments, and I even saw some kitchen staff peak around the corner to look at him. He usually loves his unique hair, but he was pretty well over it that night.

    19. zuzu*

      Weirdly, when I was dyeing my hair auburn in the 90s, I got a ton of people who assumed the hair was real but my (blue) eyes were fake, when it was quite the opposite. And that was when colored contacts were new and super easy to clock. My eyes are not even a spectacular shade of blue, like my brother’s are (aqua, damn him).

      I’ve since developed a sensitivity to permanent hair dye, so my redhead days are behind me. Henna just proved too hard to keep up with when my gray came in, and the bleach required to keep up fantasy colors was too hard on my hair. I miss my pink hair most of all. I do like my gray, though.

    20. ranga*

      I’ve got red hair and it didn’t occur to me until I read question #2 that getting asked if it was my natural hair colour all the time was unusual!

    21. Dragon_Dreamer*

      My 104 year old great aunt was accused of dying her hair by the nursing home staff. It was a natural blazing scarlet until the day she died! The nurses were flummoxed that they could never find her “hidden stash” of box dye.

  7. TheBunny*

    LW#5

    Allowing an employee to take back a resignation and issuing a counter offer to an employee after they have resigned live in the same world for me.

    The world of absolutely not.

    Once an employee has gotten to the resignation stage, they have had one foot out the door for at least the amount of time it takes to apply, interview, and land a new job (or get their finances into shape to allow them to resign without a new position.)

    Fair or not, I just don’t believe an employee with one foot out the door can ever place both feet back into the position they were looking to leave.

    And to be honest I’m trying to think of scenarios in which I wouldn’t feel this way… and I can’t. I’m also trying to think of people in companies I’ve been with who have either rescinded a resignation or accepted a counter offer who have stayed for longer than 6 months…and I can’t personally think of any.

    1. MK*

      The only situation I can think of is if the employee quit for personal reasons that no longer exist.

      1. Emmy Noether*

        I’m currently in a job that I quit! Had to move for family reasons, resigned and got offered to stay on fully remote, which I accepted. It’s been more than 6 months.

        1. TheBunny*

          Ok. This one passes the smell test. But that’s a work situation change that makes sense why you would stay. I hope it continues to be perfect for you and that the family reasons are all good now.

        2. Clisby*

          I’m retired, but the last 17-18 years was working for the company I quit so my husband could take a job elsewhere. Our daughter was 7 months old, so I took a year off to look after her and scope out childcare. When I decided to start applying for jobs again, I emailed a couple of former manager and asked if I could list them as references. They said sure. A couple of days later they called to see if I wanted to come back to work at the company I had left, working remotely. I did, and stayed there until I retired. It turned out great.

      2. Also-ADHD*

        Yes, I’ve worked with someone great who rescinded notice and was welcomed to stay (notice/separation stopped), but it was because her husband was originally based at a U.S. military base, was going to ship overseas, and she originally planned to move back to where her parents were but stayed near the local base instead when her parents offered to move to the area. The notice was months in advance and just a necessity with childcare to have help etc. But we were happy to keep her on/had not filled the position! And it was a totally understandable situation everyone was sympathetic to.

      3. Lab Boss*

        I had an employee give ~6 weeks notice because he’d been accepted into a PhD program. A couple weeks later he found out there had been a paperwork error and, while his acceptance stood, all of his funding was going to be delayed for a full academic year. He didn’t exactly “withdraw” his notice, but he requested (and we successfully lobbied to upper management) to push back his end date by a full year. It was a win all around- we got an extra year of good work, we had a ton of advance notice to find and train his replacement, and it just felt good to be able to help him out after such disappointing news from the program.

        1. Hroethvitnir*

          That’s such a nice story (and such a frustrating situation!) Starting your PhD with industry experience is sooo helpful too.

    2. WS*

      I had this happen – an employee resigned because her elderly mother was seriously ill and lived in the opposite direction from our workplace (and the hospital was even further), and she couldn’t handle the double commute anymore. But her mother unexpectedly recovered enough to go into aged care (and lived over another decade!) so she asked for her job back. We were still interviewing people and none of them were as good as her so we immediately agreed. She’s still with us now. So if there’s reasons external to the workplace I can see this happening, but not if the issues are internal and haven’t changed.

      1. EvilQueenRegina*

        My current manager had got as far as giving notice because of childcare and scheduling issues for the children he and his wife foster, but really didn’t want to leave – it ended up with his manager working out some adjustments to his schedule so that he didn’t have to. This only happened a couple of months ago so still early days, but working so far.

    3. Sleve*

      I have seen it go well for a business in certain circumstances. A colleague accepted a counteroffer which was accompanied by a lot of “Wait, come back, when you kept saying these things were a problem we didn’t think you meant it!”. It didn’t go all that well for the employee, the changes lasted less than a year and they ended up leaving anyway, but it was great for the employer as they’d finished up a major project in that time. The employee was a classic people pleaser. So it can work out excellently for some employers – mostly the unethical ones. Hmmm, I wonder if they’re the same ones going around telling everyone that counteroffers are a great idea?

      1. Ellis Bell*

        Yeah I don’t think it’s the same because of the power balance. An employer has a lot of power to change an employee’s circumstances, and they also have the power to walk it back and say ‘never mind’. I think there are definitely many situations where an employee is just not happy in the role, and never will be, but if it’s a fixable change, the power to make the changes reside with the employer a lot of the time.

    4. Adam*

      From the other side, I’m currently reading Andy Grove’s management book, and he devotes half a chapter to how to convince someone who is leaving to stay. Because why should you let a competitor get the benefits of a skilled employee that already works for you? The easiest thing for them is to keep working for you, so you should put some effort into trying to get that to happen.

      1. Lab Boss*

        From a strictly logical standpoint I see it, but as a manager I would much rather put in the work in advance to make my employees not want to leave in the first place, rather than wait until they’ve got the door open and then try to convince them to change their mind and stay. Winning the employees over with their everyday treatment is less stressful than fighting battle after battle when they want to leave is less stressful, plus it’s just better to treat people well rather than letting them get to their breaking point and then treating them just well enough to not actually leave.

      2. 2 and a Possible*

        This sounds ick.

        But I understand, and do not agree, with that business perspective.

    5. WoodswomanWrites*

      I got a counter offer to stay, and I worked there another two years. I was clear in my conversation with my manager that my reason for accepting the new role was financial and I’d rather not leave. She managed to match the salary by the end of the day, which I remain grateful for years later. I recognize that’s a different situation than wanting to leave and then changing your mind.

      1. Employee of the Bearimy*

        I saw something similar happen at a previous job. A manager on another team applied to a position that would have been a step up elsewhere, and used the offer to get a similar counteroffer. She stayed for years after that, so it was a win all around.

    6. bamcheeks*

      I don’t come from a culture which penalises people for looking for another job, and I’m honestly so baffled by this mindset. It’s a job, not a romantic relationship! To me it’s just so wild to be so invested in how someone *feels* about a job, rather than whether they are actually performing successfully.

      1. Emmy Noether*

        I agree with you (there’s no infidelity in business), but there’s a rational argument to be made that:
        – if someone quit, there’s a reason for that
        – can that reason be fixed?
        – if it can be fixed, why did it take the threat of leaving to fix it?

        There are situations where the reason had nothing to do with work itself and resolved on its own, or it had to do with work but coincidentally resolved at that moment due to outside factors (funding coming through, boss quitting also,…). Or maybe the employee didn’t think to ask (like me not thinking remote was possible, see my other comment). In those cases, it can work out to everyone’s satisfaction.

        If the employer only fixes problems or gives raises under threat of leaving, or if the employee gets talked into continuing to accept something that was worth quitting over, then that’s probably not sustainable.

        1. Green great dragon*

          Sometimes the reason is just they got a better offer. And if that offer falls through, or turns out not to be better, or there’s a counteroffer that is better still, why not let them stay? Sure, you now know they’ll leave if a better still offer appears, but isn’t that the case with most employees, most of the time?

          1. Lab Boss*

            I think inertia plays a big part- it may be true that most employees might leave for a better offer, but my hunch is that MOST employees never actually see a better offer, because they aren’t getting any offers, because they aren’t job hunting, because it’s easier to just stay where you’re at.

            I also think that too many employers/companies get into the mindset that employment is a favor they do to their employees, and while “it’s just business” is a perfectly fine and rational (if unfortunate) reason for layoffs and pay cuts from the corporate side, employees should feel an innate sense of loyalty to the company beyond “Just business.” An employee who has shown they might consider leaving then comes off as “disloyal” and to be pushed out.

    7. Green great dragon*

      Happened to me once. I was looking for something a bit more stretching, my current company offered a change to my job which worked for me, been here ever since.

      My emotional attachment is to doing a good job in the job I’m in rather than to any particular company. I don’t think keeping an eye out for something that would suit me better impacts how well I do my work day-to-day.

    8. Seeking Second Childhood*

      I knew someone who retired and then her husband was diagnosed with terminal cancer. She tried to un-retire but a replacement was already hired. (Yes, an unusually efficient hiring manager.)

      1. Artemesia*

        Sometimes a business is also thrilled when someone resigns as they for various reasons find it hard to fire people.

    9. Daisy-dog*

      I’ve seen in a few instances where someone resigns and their role is eliminated. They either reconfigure it to be something completely different (with different requirements) or offload tasks to others/utilize a new system. So rescinding the resignation wouldn’t work – the job doesn’t exist anymore! If your business is one that is currently undergoing changes (particularly if they are considering layoffs), then watch out.

    10. Me*

      I posted in open thread when I quit a few years back: I wasn’t considered for a job promotion I deserved, and someone with zero experience was hired instead(political reasons). Just under six months later the owner called and said they had made a mistake, and offered the job to me. I told him to fire the guy, show me the money, bonuses and the vacation time. He did, I returned, and it has been two years.

    11. BVS*

      I actually DID allow an employee, Aiden, to rescind his resignation. He went on to work for me for an additional 4 years before I left the organization and earned two promotions – the last elevating him to manager-level. Background is my company had merged with his. My company’s management took over and I became his VP and great grand-boss, inheriting Aiden and his direct supervisor, Brad. Brad had a senior staff title (one level below manager) and reported to the department’s director, Claire. Claire had been my right-hand person for years and we were based in another city about 2 hours away, but made 2-3 day visits to their location on a near weekly basis.

      Within a couple of weeks, it was apparent that Brad had pushed almost all of his responsibilities to Aiden and preferred to spend most of his time focused on what should have been a small area of his job. This had been going on for at least 3 years. Aiden had an entry-level department assistant title, was doing senior-level work on a daily basis, and had an absolutely wonderful attitude. He had no idea that Brad was taking advantage of him and the two got along well. Prior to the merger, Brad had also just… absorbed managerial-level authority for many areas throughout their offices (I manage the Accounting/Admin/HR functions) and their old executive team just let this happen rather than dealing with it. This also meant that Brad had never received honest feedback and only perfunctory “you’re doing a good job” performance evaluations were in the HR files.

      You can imagine Brad’s displeasure when, 4 weeks after our merger, Claire and I met with all staff functions to go over our plan for division of responsibilities, which were just some minor tweaks to accommodate our additional headcount. For most roles, the merger meant double the workload so the additional inherited headcount was very welcome. This meeting also made it very clear who did/did not have decision-making authority, expenditure authority, etc. (not Brad). The workflow design also made it clear that we expected Brad actually do his job, and it would be noticed if that did not happen. We purposely did this in a large meeting so everyone heard the same message, and it had the added benefit ensuring Brad couldn’t put his personal spin on things with lower-level staff and assume authority/delegation responsibilities he did not possess. We knew Brad would likely begin looking for a new role and his resignation would be submitted in a matter of weeks. Frankly, if he didn’t resign we would have moved toward letting him go with a small severance package.

      Brad concocted this idea that we would freak out if BOTH he and Aiden resigned. Only 2 weeks after our group meeting (6 weeks post-merger), he convinced Aiden to co-sign a resignation letter giving two weeks notice even through neither had other jobs lined up. His ego had him truly believing that I would wring my hands, beg them to stay, and give them raises/promotions. Their roles were not specialized and anyone with a B.S. degree in our field and 2-3 years of experience could do their jobs. They were replaceable, just like me and anyone else. The entire senior leadership could see that Aiden was placing his faith in the wrong person – which is understandable given that their former executive team was weak, vindictive, and had created a culture of fear. We had a lot of work to do with the company culture that was inherited, and this was just one of the manifestations that needed to be dealt with post-merger.

      The Friday after both had officially resigned, I met with Aiden and had a “plant the seed” discussion. I already could tell that he liked Claire and me… we were just hadn’t yet had the time to earn his trust as leaders. I basically said that I was sad to see him go and went into a bit of a ramble detailing our 1-2 year plans for his group, how our model is to provide opportunities for growth and backfill at the lower levels, etc. I also told him that he was doing work well above his current title and he should pursue roles that are the next step up the ladder. By Sunday, I received a message from him asking to rescind his resignation. I took a risk, followed my gut instead of my brain to be honest, and allowed him to stay. He was a star employee for years and we still keep in touch. He was actually raised in my city and wants to return to be close to family. I am hoping to have a role open up in my current company within a few months that aligns with his skillset. Who knows, I may soon end up having him on my team again!

    12. Meep*

      I did. But I quit because my grandboss was not taking some very extreme EEOC violations (including s*xual harassment, age,race, and gender discrimination practices) seriously until I quit and found a new job. She was out within 6 months and I am still here 2 years later.

    13. Butters*

      I have done this. I gave a 6 month notice for my employer to find someone to fill my subject matter expert role. I didn’t have anything else lined up, I was going to take 6 months off to recover from burnout and then try to find something else. At the 6 month mark they had made 5 offers with no acceptances and they asked me to stay one more month while they figured something out. I offered to stay on part time as a consultant and they accepted. I have no idea why they couldn’t fill the role as the pay is competitive, but I feel like it worked out well for both of us, I get a super flexible schedule but still get paid and they get to keep my expertise.

    14. learnedthehardway*

      I think it should depend on the circumstances. An employee who thought they needed to resign for family issues that resolved or a spouse’s job that entailed a relocation that fell through – sure, hire them back. They didn’t really want to leave in the first place. (Odds are the person they were leaving because of has actually died.)

      Someone leaving for career growth – well, unless you can offer them the same career growth, odds are they will leave in a year or so, anyways. But sometimes, it can make sense to rehire them, if it is difficult to find someone else. At least you can do a planned exit with them – in fact, it might work better to rehire them on a contract basis.

      Even for someone who left but who has discovered that the grass is NOT greener shortly after leaving – it may make sense to rehire them. But they’d have to be pretty convincing about why they wanted to return and make some commitments to staying – again, a contract might be a good way to deal with things.

  8. Ah, academia*

    It’s not uncommon in higher ed to be asked to volunteer for campus events. I work for a university, and receive emails every year seeking volunteers for commencement, move-in day, etc. My personal calculus is—is this a one day situation where they briefly need way more people than baseline for a special event, or is this need for volunteers coming from an ongoing labor shortage? I’m much more eager to help if it’s the former. LW1’s situation is definitely the latter, and I’d politely decline.

    1. Pam Adams*

      I volunteer for lots of campus events- weekend and evening advising, club support, welcoming new students, and Commencement help for the graduates. Power-washing is definitely a duty too far.

  9. Pam Adams*

    It’s a PRIVATE university- how much are those students being charged? If it’s a US school, it’s a lot.

    As professional staff, i would also say Hell No! to this. I wonder if Administration will also be out power-washing buildings, etc. (I also wonder about their salaries)

    Are you unionized? If not, it’s beyond time to get organizing.

    1. Artemesia*

      If the college is asking this, odds are very high it will soon be on the growing list of small colleges that are closing their doors.

      2. I spend more time thinking of a name than writing the comment.*

        This. I think the faculty is missing the forest for the trees here with their question. Whether or not to participate is not the question. The question is whether a university that cannot afford groundskeepers and custodial staff will be able to sustain itself much longer.

        1. UncleFrank*

          Exactly this. Who cares about the grounds? Say no and work on your job market materials!!

      3. Aggretsuko*

        Yeah, I thought “time for OP to job hunt if they have to talk the faculty into doing groundskeeping.”

    2. deesse877*

      My understanding is that it’s extremely difficult to organize at private universities. I don’t know of any such unions, just a few grad student unions at high-prestige schools.

      I agree that the request is egregious, and possibly indicative of financial failures serious enough to sink the ship. LW should get out.

      1. Union Rep*

        Tenure-stream faculty at private universities in the US are explicitly barred from organizing by an NLRB ruling that states they have supervisory responsibilities and therefore count as management. Contingent faculty, graduate students, and non-supervisory staff of all types can unionize. Organizing contingents is a slow, difficult grind, but it does happen and it’s accelerating as universities continue to adjunctify and conditions worsen.

    3. But wait, there's more!*

      Never mind if the LW is union, what about the people that are actually employed as groundskeepers and custodians? They could easily file a grievance because the university is taking away work that should be going to union employees and giving it to others.

  10. The Nest*

    Wow, I guess I’m not the only one who has bad dreams about accidentally quitting my job (which I love). Just had one saturday night!

    I’d always assumed getting a job back in that situation would be impossible, or at least inadvisable, since I’d quit basically on a whim and who’s to say it wouldn’t happen again? Luckily randomly quitting by accident isn’t a very realistic scenario outside dreamland!

  11. rudster*

    LW5 seems like an interesting way to earn yourself an “unemploymentcation” – quit a job you hate, even with nothing lined up, then take it back. If the company refuses to accept your take-back, or walks you out immediately, you’ve basically been fired and could try to claim unemployment compensation. I’m sure the employer would appeal, but it would be fun to see how it would play out.

    1. Ask a Manager* Post author

      Quitting would make you ineligible for unemployment; it doesn’t matter if you later try to walk it back. Their refusal to take you back wouldn’t be seen as a firing; it would be them declining to re-hire you.

    2. AcademiaNut*

      The most likely result is your attempt to claim UI would be challenged, you’d lose, you’d be out of work with no UI and no job lined up, and and you’d have soured what could have been a decent reference. And prospective employers will understandably wonder why you are unwilling to list your most recent job as a reference, and will assume you were fired, making it harder to get a new job. Doesn’t sound particularly fun to me.

      If you give two week’s notice and they walk you out immediately, you could claim UI for the two weeks, but that’s about it.

        1. AcademiaNut*

          Quitting a job is very normal. Immediately calling backsies on quitting is unusual, but happens sometimes. Doing so without giving any particular reason why is going to raise questions. Were you quitting in a fit of temper? Hoping the employer would beg you to stay? Subsequently challenging your employer on UI claiming that they actually fired you because they didn’t let you take back your resignation is the part that’s going to have the employer wondering about your basic judgement and honesty.

          1. bamcheeks*

            I think you’ve added the “without giving any particular reason” there, which wasn’t in the original letter or rudster’s comment. I agree that if you seem like someone who is going to quit and unquit without any particular reason, that’s going to dramatically alter your standing! But assuming there is a reason, like a change in personal circumstances or a job offer falling through, I can’t see why it would affect your standing or your ability to list your most recent job as a reference.

            1. bamcheeks*

              (Though on reflection, I think that even if there wasn’t a particular reason, letting it affect your view of the employee so much that you refused to give a reference for otherwise good work would be wildly and unnecessarily punitive. I would just assume that there was a good reason but for some reason the employee was unable or unwilling to share it.)

              1. AcademiaNut*

                I’m not talking about the quitting and trying to come back as the main problem – you could do that and remain on good terms unless you were really demanding. It’s the lying and saying you were fired to fraudulently claim UI that would trash the reference.

                1. bamcheeks*

                  Oh I see– my apologies, I was reading the rudster’s post differently. I thought it was “having resigned and then been turned down when you asked to be reinstated, you could try and qualify for unemployment insurance and see what happens”, not “resign with the intention of walking it back and then trying to claim UI”. I see where you’re coming from!

                2. Cmdrshprd*

                  ““having resigned and then been turned down when you asked to be reinstated, you could try and qualify for unemployment insurance and see what happens”

                  @Bamcheeks I think even in that instance it would sour the relationship due to filing what is almost certainly a fraudulent/unreasonable unemployment claim.

                  Even if employee quit with the best of intentions say starting a masters program, and the program/school fell through so the employee asked for their job back, and the employee was told no. If the employee filed for unemployment that would seem unreasonable/fraud because the employee should know/understand you were the one that quit, (employer didn’t fire you) so no you don’t get to claim unemployment when you quit, even if you regret it or had a change that made you ask for the job back.

        2. Irish Teacher.*

          I assume claiming you’d been fired when you actually resigned in a country where I think the company has to contribute to unemployment? It comes across kinda like you tried to pull a scam.

          I don’t think it’s offering to take back a resignation that would sour your reference so much as the specific situation that rudster describes where you then claim, “right, I was willing to stay, so that means you are firing me and I can claim benefits.”

      2. Falling Diphthong*

        That’s going to lead to an interesting “Why did you leave your last position?” tap dance at future interviews, especially if the interviewer intends to ask the company for their side.

      3. MigraineMonth*

        Although there are some exceptions to the rule that you cannot file for unemployment if you quit (e.g. constructive dismissal). I worked for a company that was infamous for putting intense pressure on their employees to resign rather than actually firing them. This was so well known that employees that they were forced to pay out unemployment even for employees who quit.

        Which was important, since you had to wait out the hellish non-compete *even if they’d pressured you to resign*.

  12. Language Lover*

    #5

    An employee could pull a Larry David* who quit SNL one day and just coming back the next work day as if it never happened.

    He wrote the event into a Seinfeld episode where George pulls a similar move.

    *Obviously kidding as a real tactic, although in a highly dysfunctional work place, it might work.

    1. Lab Boss*

      I worked a job with a guy who would pull a version of this- quitting, or threatening to, as part of tantrums to get his own way because he had a pretty tough-to-get certification that we needed someone to have. That worked right up until we realized there was another employee with the same certification (he had it prior to working with us and it just never came up that he had it). The next time tantrum guy “quit,” his resignation was accepted and the other certified employee got his job. I just regret not being in that day to see his final tantrum.

  13. Main dude for the Gig*

    LW4: You don’t want him to work at your company and you are pretty sure he will exploit your younger engineers, there is no point in interviewing him. Ignore what HR say, it sounds like it is your decision. Ask yourself, would you come into work happy knowing they are there? Bring on your best and most able current employee to fill the position, it may take a year or so but you’ve been looking for months already….

    1. Nicosloanica*

      There are probably a good amount of other letters from people who were rejected for being overqualified or hiring managers who were contemplating rejecting an overqualified applicant, if OP digs around. Use some of those reasons for this guy, since this role is apparently several levels beneath where he has been in his career. If he was asked to leave his last role that seems easy to point to also, so make sure to do a thorough reference check if it gets that far and document everything. Finally, are you sure you’re not too far apart on salary? Fingers crossed you are and he doesn’t even want this role.

  14. Not a bad guy once you get to know me*

    Regarding LW2, I remember girls in high school asking whether I wore eyeliner when I was in fact just exhausted from not getting enough sleep! I can’t say I ever worried about it—I never detected any hostility in the question and I was actually mildly flattered that they thought I put so much effort into my appearance.

  15. They've Gone to Plaid*

    My daughter was born with dark red hair and my son’s started out strawberry blonde and gradually deepened into a more classic red. But daughter’s hair color has always been a bit unique, and even when she was a toddler, at least once a weekend, someone would ask (admiringly, but ridiculously) if that was her real hair color. LOL. Ma’am. Do people really color toddlers’ hair?

    We would just smile and say yes, but… man, what a goofy question.

    1. Cat Tree*

      Right? I can’t even get my toddler to sit still to braid her hair. How could I possibly dye it?

    2. Dancing Otter*

      Think about the beauty pageants for children. Those parents do bizarre things to those poor children!

    3. Exhausted Trope*

      My nephew was born a tow head into a family with dark hair all around. I was asked if his mother bleached his hair!

  16. Melisande*

    #LW2 re unwanted hair color queries – you could always follow up your response by adding “How about yours?” People will hopefully soon realize how disconcerting the question is.

    2. PurplePeopleEater*

      Amongst people with obviously unnatural hair (say…purple), asking about dyeing is a bonding/asking about interests type of question. Bouncing the question back is a great strategy, but you may end up getting a long description of their dyeing routine.

    3. Dido*

      People asked me if my hair is dyed all the time and I’ve never been offended or put off by it? It’s an unusual color so it’s natural to be curious

      1. Captain Greenbeard*

        Yep. I think having an aspect of your appearance that is clearly not natural makes it clearer that mostly what people mean by these comments is basically just “your appearance is remarkable (so I am remarking on it).”

        I color my beard using temporary color, so I can change it up daily to match my outfit. That means that usually it’s a dramatically unnatural color, like green. But I’ve gotten pretty good at color-matching, so it can take a moment for people to realize it. And the most common remark, by far, is “Is your beard green?”

        And I’m pretty sure that’s not actually a question; I don’t think they’re doubting the evidence of their own senses. They’re just registering surprise. It’s the same as “wow, you’re tall”; the only sensible response is “yep.”

        I got similar comments when I had a handlebar mustache with tight curls. People would ask “how’d you get it to do that?” and the answer is “mustache wax,” but if I was in a mood, sometimes I’d say “sheer force of will!” That threw enough people off their stride that I came to realize that they didn’t really mean anything by it, it’s just that if something is unusual, it’s human nature to remark on it, and not everyone has the presence of mind to give a compliment or say nothing. It’s the same instinct that makes you say “cow!” when you’re driving along and see a cow.

      2. jasmine*

        I think if a group of people (in this case, redheads) say that an experience is unpleasant, we should take their word for it. There’s probably a reason, and we haven’t lived it.

        1. Troubadour*

          This, plus sometimes even if the question itself is unobjectionable, the sheer repetitiveness of it makes it increasingly irritating. There’s not even much point educating the askers about how annoying it is because each asker only asks once anyway – the problem is there are a hundred more askers waiting in the wings.

          A slightly-same-but-different scenario: I had a colleague who, every time she’d see me (generally in the tea room first thing in the morning when, frankly, I’m still waking up) would say something like “Oh you’re wearing another lovely hat!” The first time was fine, she likes my hat, great! The second time, okay, she’s noticed I have multiple hats, sure. The third time it’s like yes, we’ve had this conversation. The fourth, fifth, sixth time and so forth I could feel my irritation spiralling beyond reasonableness. What helped for me in this situation was to reframe it in my head: this is someone who doesn’t work with me much, she’s wanting to be friendly, she’s reaching for small talk topics and my hat’s just there. So next time it happened I had the perspective to respond as if it was any other meaningless small talk, and immediately redirected the small talk to how the weather was doing, and we then had a very friendly conversation about the weather. That seemed to perfectly fill her need to be friendly and was far less irritating to me because I don’t have to _think_ in order to talk about the weather.

          Of course this worked because it was just a single person so I knew the pattern of her conversations with me and could work with that accordingly. When it’s different people each time it’s not so predictable when the question’s going to be suddenly thrown at you so almost certainly not so easy to deal with.

  17. Oldsbone*

    LW#3- I’m guessing your HR is trying to protect you from an age related discrimination claim (unless your former colleague also happens to be a minority that’s very visibly underrepresented in your company). But remember, it’s illegal to discriminate against Fergus because he’s old, black, or gay. It’s*not* illegal to discriminate against him because he’s Fergus. You just need to be able to articulate and defend why you’ve chosen to not hire him if he does take action. But if he left you for a lower job and then left them for an even lower job again in your company, that’s a huge red flag unto itself.

    2. musical chairs*

      In the U.S., laws around discrimination center around protected classes, not protected characteristics, with the exception of age discrimination which kicks in at 40. It’s illegal to discriminate against him on the basis of him being white or straight as well. The former colleague sharing some characteristics with the candidate do not inoculate the team from discrimination claims. Everyone is within a protected class and anyone (regardless of their race, gender, orientation, etc.) can engage in discriminatory practices. It’s just more likely that it’s gonna be against the usual characters due to history and systematic racism, systematic sexism, systematic homophobia, etc.

      If he’s applying for senior engineering roles, he’s likely in the candidate pool with other people of similar experience levels, or at least folks over 40. If LW’s team was to hire someone younger, they’d just need to explain why that person was a better candidate. I agree with you that the LW just needs to be able to articulate why they chose not the hire him in the event that they’re asked.

  18. Mad_Bear_Lady*

    No. 2, I feel ya! My hair is light blonde naturally, and people don’t even ask – they assume. I’ve even had a colleague ask me if the carpet matches the drapes (!?)

    People are bored, just try and enjoy your beautiful hair and keep them wondering.

  20. Justin*

    Taking back a resignation will never not remind me of the Seinfeld episode where George tries to un-quit because Larry David once actually did that.

  21. Nonsense*

    OP1, if the college is struggling with enrollment now, wait until the students find out that 1) they refuse to pay groundskeepers a living wage and 2) they’re making faculty do the work instead. The young adults now entering college and the workforce have some very decided views on required free labor and poor compensation and they’re more than happy to raise a ruckus over it. I’m rather excited to see how they start changing the shape of academia.

    1. Red_Coat*

      True fact. There was a push for unionization at my college before I started, and some people who were here during it said the students were some of the loudest voices.

  22. Gritter*

    LW4: Is it worth bringing him in for an interview anyway and bring this up with them directly? You do seem to be basing many of your assumptions on his managerial style when he worked there previously, but that was 10 years ago. That’s a long time and people do change.

    1. Artemesia*

      And then he snows the rest of the panel and you end up hiring him. People do what they do. Talking to them about how this is ‘different’ and you can’t do what you do here is feckless. Hire him and he will do what he does. I have seen this happen more than once. I remember hiring someone whom another department wanted us to hire so she could also work with them; I didn’t see it as a good fit and said so. The committee said but ‘she COULD do this and that for us’; I said ‘she has never done that, it isn’t what she does.’ They hired her under political pressure from the other department and of course she never did do the thing we needed her to do.

      This is one that needs to be nipped in the bud. ‘I have worked with him and know he is not a good fit for what we need here.’

      1. RIP Pillowfort*

        Yeah and OP would have heard about if this guy had changed. They travel in the same industry circles.

        I get all sorts of updates about former engineers and how they’re doing in new roles or how they’re continuing the same struggles they had with us. I know we like to give people the benefit of the doubt but not at the expense of current employees freaking out because this guy could come back. That should tell HR all they need to know and frankly I don’t get why they’re pushing back when people are telling them no.

        1. Polaris*

          Currently dealing with “this guy” because he was hired based on what he could do.

          He can’t be arsed to do anything. He tries to delegate EVERYTHING and that’s not what he’s supposed to be doing. He has no authority to manage others or assign work….but he’s attempting to

          Don’t. Freaking. Interview. This. Guy.

    2. Fiona-a-a-a*

      I personally think it’s OK to let people’s bridges stay burnt.

      Actions are allowed to have consequences.

  23. Percysowner*

    LW2 Many years ago there was a commercial for one of the home hair dying kits. The slogan was “Is it real or is it [product]? Only her hairdresser knows for sure”. You could break that out.

  24. Ellis Bell*

    OP2, It’s rude regardless, but I wonder if when you say “It’s bright, but not outside the realm of natural hair colors” you’re interpreting the question as “That doesn’t look natural”. If so, it’s usually a compliment about red colours being unusually natural. I was a natural redhead before I was a dyed redhead, and people were sincerely bummed out when I used to tell them it was my own hair colour: “Oh no, it looks so natural but unique that I really wanted to know where you got it”. Nowadays they’re still disappointed because I don’t use a boxed, named colour they can easily pick up, but I go to an expensive colourist. People seem to be on the hunt for an easy, cheap, self applied, natural but vibrant red … and good luck to them with that. IME people just want to know if it’s a colour they can have or recommend to someone. If you don’t want to say you dye your hair, or give away your colour, it’s fine to lie about your personal routines and products. I would probably go with saying you use henna to condition, or you use a coloured conditioner and if you get pressed for details just say you don’t recall the colour or your hairdresser does it for you. I remember my grandmother using Auburn hair spray to give herself a more pronounced tint.

  25. Giant space pickle*

    1. Maybe the (assuming) highly paid leadership could “volunteer” to help get the grounds in better shape. After all, good leadership should be willing to get their hands (and fancy suits) dirty to show their employees how it’s done! Unless of course they’re just greedy bean counters too cheap to hire staff and believe productive labour is below them.

    1. Lab Boss*

      In the corporate world I’ve been part of various leadership brainstorms and trainings about “what boss have you been willing to work the hardest for? What did they do that made you so willing?” and I’ve always said I only worked 24 hour shifts for one guy, who in his 40s would physically out-work every single one of the employees in their teens and 20s. I was happy to do whatever job he asked because I knew he was working the hardest of any of us.

      1. Plate of Wings*

        I love this! I’m going to bring this question up to my new manager friend, though he might already know about it.

        In my industry (tech) it might come off as setting an unrealistic/high-pressure precedent for the boss to work like this on certain things or on a regular schedule. But for a big project or deadline? Yes, it feels amazing when I am in the trenches at 1 am monitoring some system before a big deal upgrade/release/migration and my boss messages me about what he/she is covering. We are collaborating on the same goal and it feels good to put in the extra work for someone that would happily do the whole thing if I decided I needed to sleep.

        If it feels good to take something off your boss’s plate, they’re doing something right.

  26. Blondie*

    My daughter has natural platinum blond hair. I’ve been asked many times if I dye it. I finally starting asking people if they honestly think I bleach an 8 year olds hair. She gets comments everywhere she goes. It’s unfortunately life with an uncommon hair colours, or if you’re really tall etc. people typically won’t comment on features they find unattractive so maybe take it as an (annoying) compliment?

    1. Indolent Libertine*

      Sadly, there probably are plenty of pageant moms who *do* dye their 8-year-old’s hair.

    2. Ginger Cat Lady*

      As a plus size person, people absolutely DO comment on things they find unattractive. My friend with burn scars on her arm will tell you the same.
      People will comment and pass judgement on stuff they don’t like all the time, because how dare people exist in public if they don’t meet the criteria of being attractive.

  27. Keymaster of Gozer (she/her)*

    1. As someone with a spinal injury incurred at work definitely do NOT volunteer for anything you’ve not been properly trained to do safely.

    5. I once worked with someone who did that – in protest over a very minor disagreement at work he actually put a signed letter on the boss’ desk saying he was resigning. Boss asked if he was sure and he was ‘yeah, had enough of you lot’. The week after he comes in and says that he wanted to take back what he’d said.
    Long and the short of it he wasn’t able to walk it back. The paperwork had already started. If he’d been a bit less of an arse around the office in general (and a creepy dude) maybe they’d have reconsidered. His leaving party wasn’t well attended let’s say.

  28. Hello!*

    #3 I’m so sorry you’re going through thIs situation. I’m ticked off for you. You seem to be handling things as professionally as can be.

    Ps. For my own selfish gossipy reasons, I’d love an update on this when the mentee needs help again.

    1. Artemesia*

      I don’t think we know enough here. Is the request for actual work that is somewhat technical or is for some advice that could be accomplished in a conversation? I would not expect a mentee to program something, or write something, or teach a class or review an architectural drawing. I would expect him to give me some insight or perhaps do a guest lecture.

      1. Hello!*

        I understand your point of view. I, however, interpreted op having helped mentee over the years and now op needs a 10 minute phone call. IF my scenario is correct, I feel mentee burned a bridge the will regret. I was curious for an update when mentee has that what did I do moment and how op would handle things

        1. Blu*

          OP hired a paid consultant to do what she was asking her mentee for. That sounds like way more than 10 mins of effort.

        2. Nonym*

          We know the ex-mentee didn’t refuse a 10 mn call though because they mentioned charging specifically for work over 30 mn.

          They also seemed to think a facility inspection might be necessary, which obviously would take more time and/or resources than a 10 mn call. The LW seemed shocked by the mention of an inspection, which makes me suspect that there could be a misunderstanding on either part or both parts about what the LW was asking and what it would take.

          The LW did end up needing to hire a consultant to do whatever task they wanted from their mentee.

    2. The Rafters*

      I have a sneaking suspicion that the info OP wanted was protected in some way and that mentee’s agency has as an iron-clad rule not to share. I had a colleague who repeatedly tried to get me to break certain iron-clad rules. She was well aware of those rules and wouldn’t disregard them herself but had no problem asking me to. I told her to send an email to whomever was in charge of the issue, then have that person forward their approval to me. She still tried to argue with me, but I simply rinsed & repeated.

      1. Plate of Wings*

        Haha this is the best strategy! I work in an industry with iron-clad rules and I have ONCE gotten someone to actually get the official approval from the powers that be and send it to me. Just once. And now I like working with that person because they took my concerns seriously.

        Fortunately it’s now common in my sub-field to get training on how to say no to these requests. The legal department’s catchphrase is “blame me! Make me the bad guy if you have even a shadow of a doubt!”.

    3. Katydid*

      For all the folks who are suggesting the OP was asking for something the mentee could not provide, OP3 said this above:

      “OP3*
      August 13, 2024 at 4:22 pm

      It was a very general question on an over reaching topic applying to any other industry. It was not an issue he had to respond to in that way. I’ve been in the regulatory field for 20 years, and very well know the boundaries, and he is brand new, first position. His response was intense and not what I’ve experienced from other people in similar or higher positions. Understand your point though, I was within a reasonable question.”

  29. Pocket Mouse*

    LW 1: “… faculty, who would typically not be working that day, are expected to do it with no additional compensation. […] I had planned to use that day to prepare for my fall semester classes.”

    I know this is very normal in your field, and the actual situation you asked about in your letter is Not Okay, but just pointing out you are doing unpaid labor for your employer—or at least you are working on days you are considered to be “not working”—already.

      1. The Unspeakable Queen Lisa*

        Indeed, that’s why Pocket Mouse said, “I know this is very normal in your field”. Did you have something meaningful to add? Because “It’s accepted practice to overwork people in this field” is not a response.

        Saying the quiet part out loud is one way to remind people they don’t have to accept something just because it’s standard practice.

    2. Artemesia*

      Preparing for classes is part of your paid job; faculty are not paid by the hour. Prep is VERY arduous and time consuming especially in the early years and for new courses, but it us bit ‘unpaid labor’. Requiring faculty to do physical labor means that this prep work gets pushed back to their personal time. They are two different things.

      1. Pocket Mouse*

        You’re thiiiiis close to getting my point!

        To spell it out: prep days should be considered working days and compensated accordingly. Otherwise, prep days are already on faculty’s personal time. To pretend teaching requires no time to prepare is disingenuous and lowers the real wages of those who teach. In the vast majority of jobs, including other salaried jobs, it’s truly not expected that a person work (including work that is preparation for another type of work) on days they are considered to be not working. I’m curious if you consider teaching prep to be de facto work, because I feel like that should frame it in a pretty clear light!

        1. Hyaline*

          I know this is strange but faculty don’t exactly have “working” days vs “personal” days. You have a responsibility to be in the classroom and available to your students in scheduled labs/office hours/study sessions, but beyond that you’re not contracted for particular days. You’re on the hook for doing all the work necessary for teaching the course/s you’re contracted for, but when and how is completely up to you. It’s paid work regardless of how and when you complete that work. It’s an incredible amount of flexibility that cuts both ways, but suffice to say yes, you’re compensated for prep and grading but no, it’s not tied to any specific hours or even days.

    3. Ellis Bell*

      Higher ed is like high school teaching, your salary and workload expects you to work on “days off”, especially in the summer. A colleague of mine I met for lunch the other day was just griping about a relative’s jealousy that she “has six weeks off”.

    4. Hyaline*

      It’s not exactly unpaid labor. At every faculty job I’ve had my contract is to teach coursework for next semester. So all of the work that goes into teaching that course is contracted for an agreed-upon bulk sum that is then broken down over Y number of pay periods. It’s not quite the same as a job in which you are paid hourly or even paid a salary for an understood number of hours per week.

      I agree that it’s beyond the pale to ask faculty to do work completely outside their scope, but whether it is unpaid because it’s on a day they wouldn’t be teaching anyway it’s kind of beside the point.

      1. Pocket Mouse*

        If prep work isn’t compensated with a greater amount of money when it is universally expected to take more time (in the early years of teaching or when teaching a new course, as Artemesia describes above) it’s going to be hard to convince me prep work *as work* is in fact taken into account beyond a hand wave/general market adjustment when determining the amount someone will be paid. Do you get paid more for classes that require more prep work?

  30. Katie*

    I once put in a very long notice because I thought I was going to move. They hired someone else. I trained new person. I was given some projects before my move. The move never happened and eventually I told my company that I wasn’t resigning. 5 years later I am still with the same company.

    I think what helped me was I was in really good standing with the company and they wanted to keep me as long as possible. Plus the person who replaced me went on a double maternity leave.

      1. Not like a regular teacher*

        I assume they had two kids close together. In Canada mat leave can be up to 18 months, so it’s totally plausible to have a second child by the end of the first mat leave. Even if you took a year off, it’s possible.

        1. Dahlia*

          You can’t have back to back mat leave in Canada. You need to work 600 hours to be eligible for a second one.

          1. Sir Nose d'Voidoffunk*

            It’s still probably what happened, though. I’m in the U.S. (in a right to work state, even), and my corporate brother-in-law had so much paternity leave with his youngest that he had to go back and then take the rest of it six months later. While I know he’s glad they didn’t have another one while he was at home, I’m sure it happens!

  31. Tiredofit all*

    LW1 — do what you want but obviously do not do anything you can hurt yourself or others.

    I would be asking (only to myself, as I am chicken) are the top admin people taking pay cuts? I will admit, I do not work at a college, but it seems that there could be cuts in admin. I realize students do need more services than decades ago (computer labs, etc), but it seems to me that admin do not want to cut the people they sit near. That needs to change.

    A lot of private universities are going to close in the coming years. I am sorry.

    1. GythaOgden*

      I watched a documentary on Oregon Trail and MECC the other night and heard how few students were at Carleton in Minneapolis. I was racking my brains trying to work out just how that university could support itself on so few students, particularly in terms offering the range of subjects taught on an average US liberal arts course. (In the UK we specialise at 18 so e.g. my LSE course on Literature and Society borrowed a guy from King’s to take the tiny cohort of students on the course.)

      As a facilities and estates organisation (public sector/government owned business catering to the NHS) we also do corporate social responsibility projects where we go in and yeah, do a bit of manual labour/groundskeeping for a charitable project like a homeless shelter or care home. We get two paid days a year and a team as a whole is actually ‘graded’ on whether they achieve that, so we’re looking at ways to expand outwards to be more inclusive both for people with mobility problems and issues with manual labour and frontline colleagues who work odd hours or can’t get away from their work area for more than an hour or two without SLAs being under threat due to lack of coverage. So we’re pivoting towards fundraising and other ideas rather than purely groundskeeping, and we’d never be asked to do it for the sites we actually manage.

      Maybe it’s efficiency and budgeting that’s the probem. But if you can’t afford the labour costs which may be rising at a higher rate than income coming in…then yeah, the colleges have to close. Some of our universities over here have separate campuses though — the place I did my Masters at was actually affiliated with Oxford University before it split off, and some other unis such as De Montfort, a Leicester institution with a significant educationalist faculty has taken over smaller colleges. This is market forces; universities are generally public sector in the UK but they have to be run on the basis of income and outgoings just like many other commercial businesses. So maybe you’ll end up with mergers and different universities pooling their resources — but unfortunately, this is a kind of side effect of paying people better wages.

      1. Hastily Blessed Fritos*

        Carleton isn’t in Minneapolis! (My brother went there.) It’s in Northfield MN, home of colleges and Malt-O-Meal. It’s a typical small liberal arts school, there are a million of them in the US.

  32. Union Rep*

    LW1, your employer is in a death spiral and is almost certainly going to close. You and all your colleagues need to be aggressively job searching. Yes, even if you’re just a few years from retirement – if you couldn’t retire comfortably next week, you need a Plan B. Yes, even if you’re going up for tenure this year with an excellent file. Look at what just happened at University of the Arts. If admin is willing to be this desperate in open communication, the financials are almost certainly worse than you think.

    1. Amsonia*

      As an academic, I want to strongly second this comment. We know the job market is terrible for you, but your future at this institution is non-existent. Sooner or a little less soon, it will close, and it may well fire you before that, in a desperate attempt to forestall the inevitable. If you read Inside Higher Ed, you know how many colleges and universities are closing and how many more are shutting down departments that would have been considered untouchable a few years ago. Measures like what you described in your letter are a tell. Start searching, and formulate a plan B (outside academe). When your institution closes, the entire remaining faculty will be on the market at once. I’m sorry this is happening to you and to so many others.

      1. academic fashion*

        Also an academic, and yes, definitely. Small private universities are especially at risk and declining enrollment + no budget to pay for groundskeeping = bad signs. In some ways, your employer has done you a favor by tipping their hand at the start of the academic year, so you have months to job search, in and outside of higher education.

      1. Tip Tap Type*

        It’s really brutal right now. So many people facing losing their jobs, often on top of years of being underpaid due to financial struggles.

    4. Artemesia*

      I got recommended for tenure about 6 weeks before the college announced it was merging with another institution and cutting all but three departments completely — mine was one of those.

    5. Elizabeth*

      Yes to this. I left my previous position at a small, cash strapped school where the President *did* show for these sorts of workdays, so the culture was a little better, but there was no staff union and a lot of magical thinking and generally I saw the school didn’t have the resources to treat everyone fairly. Both budget cycles since I left have involved massive layoffs, and the latest restructuring seems bonkers. I’m so glad I left even though it meant relocating to a less desirable area. The FAFSA debacle is going to be the last straw for a lot of struggling schools.

  33. Anon for This*

    Former redhead here. Redheads go gray early, so my go-to has always been “not anymore.” Usually confuses people who aren’t quite sure what you said and no one has ever pursued it.

    I also see age in #4 – given the senior level of the position you may get a good crop of people over 40, but if not, HR could be concerned about accusations of age discrimination.

    1. Sola Lingua Bona Lingua Mortua Est*

      That’s ironic; I have two cousin redheads and my paternal grandmother is a redhead; all four of us have been keeping our reds longer than our spouses. Instead of going grey, though, my grandmother’s hair went rose gold, then white. I was actually disappointed mine wouldn’t go silver when I was younger.

      Genes can certainly be quirky…

    2. Ginger Cat Lady*

      I’ve never heard that redheads go gray early, I’ve actually heard the opposite! And I’m mid-50s and have yet to find even a single gray hair.

      1. Ask a Manager* Post author

        Yep, my hair looks exactly like it has my whole life. I keep waiting to find out what’s going to happen and no one has been able to give me a definitive answer. Although I do hear it gets sandier at some point.

        1. Sola Lingua Bona Lingua Mortua Est*

          If you’re like my family, there’s rose gold in your future. IMWO, nothing quite compares!

      2. The Ginger Ginger*

        Same. I’m still exactly the same. I expect it to “fade” through blond to white eventually. But me and all the redheads I’ve known keep the color longer and don’t seem to gray strand by strand the same other hair colors do.

  34. musical chairs*

    I think a sentence or paragraph is missing from LW1?

    They say
    I do not think it is my responsibility to do tasks outside of what I was hired to do because the university failed to hire people to do them.

    But Alison says

    It’s bad enough that you’re being asked to pick up extra work from unfilled jobs similar to your own (for no additional compensation), but now you’re supposed to “volunteer” for manual labor that has nothing to do with your job at all?

    But I’m not seeing where they’re being asked to help fill other role similar to their current positionin the letter. Reason I am curious is because I wanted to caution the letter writer against making the crux of their argument that they’re being asked to do manual labor. If you’re willing to do other work outside of your job description, if the job that are similar enough, drawing the line at manual labor should be about the dissimilarity/lack of expertise on your end and not about the type of work. I can’t tell from the letter/response if you said yes before to other requests for volunteers.

    University clearly sees this as work that can be either trained very quickly or doesn’t require training (a conclusion I don’t think I would come to, myself), but you don’t have to buy into that as a group pushing back. The labor is skilled and you do not have those skills at a professional level.

  35. Edward Williams*

    #1 good answer. It may be medically unsafe or impossible for the writer and his/her colleagues to plant flowers or lift a heavy bag of mulch. It would be unsafe (indeed impossible) for me to do such work.

    1. BikeWalkBarb*

      The workplace injury potential is so high here. A bunch of people not trained in lifting heavy things or operating power tools or dealing with lawn chemicals? Someone didn’t think through all the ramifications.

      When I worked in higher ed (leadership side, not faculty) we had a clean-up day because the whole city was doing it as an Earth Day project or something like that. It was on a Saturday, it was voluntary, and our facilities director oversaw everything and made sure people were matched with jobs they could handle. I repainted some curbs with red no-parking paint. Worst thing that happened was getting paint on my favorite Levis that I couldn’t get out but I wouldn’t be able to wear them now anyway. Very very different from this “voluntold” scenario.

  36. Insert Pun Here*

    I’ve worked in higher ed, as staff, for multiple decades. I have been lucky to work with many faculty who are truly, game-changingly brilliant. I would not trust any of them with a power washer, not even for a second. Hedge clippers, maybe. MAYBE.

    1. HonorBox*

      Not to be that person, but I’d much rather put a power washer in a non-handy person’s hands than something that could cut off a finger. I’m not handy myself and trust myself far more cleaning my driveway than I do trimming bushes. :)

      1. Insert Pun Here*

        See, I was thinking effective range. With hedge clippers, you just gotta stay out of range. Power washers seem to have a much wider radius of destruction.

        1. HonorBox*

          That’s a fair point. And one can do damage to oneself with a power washer, too. Ask me how I know…

    2. DramaQ*

      OMG same. I almost took an average kitchen knife away from my director after watching him try to cut fruit with it.

      No way I’d hand him a power washer. Definitely no hedge clippers.

      I know so many brilliant people who I can’t figure out how they function in the day to day world.

      Book smarts and common sense often are polar opposites in academia.

      If the college is trying to save money generating workman’s comp claims and massive repair bills isn’t the way to go about it.

    3. Orange m&m*

      Friend with a PhD in Chemistry cut through the power cord for our hedge trimmer. Just sayin’

  37. I should really pick a name*

    #3
    It sounds like like you were expecting something in return for mentoring.
    That’s not typically how it works. Mentoring tends to be a pay it forward thing.

    1. Alan*

      Yes. I was looking for someone to say this. It’s also really easy to get overly invested in a mentoring relationship. It really sounds to me like the OP is making this personal where it doesn’t need to be. He can be proud of how well his mentee is doing but he’s not entitled to their time or help.

    2. Boof*

      I don’t know what industry they’re in but I’m in healthcare – and while for certain things I do have consultation fees that run in the $100s per hour it’d be quite a snub if I had a mentor and they reached out to me and I wouldn’t give them the time of day except to name my consulting rates! I would feel I’d owe them at least a quick chat and only bring up consulting if it seemed like they were asking for a substantial investment in my time and it didn’t make sense as a different sort of collaboration!

      1. I should really pick a name*

        It’s really not clear whether or not the mentor is asking for something that would normally be chargeable

        1. GythaOgden*

          ‘Inspect the facility’ sounds like it’s actually a significant ask that would require the use of equipment or other supplies rather than just a quick informational call.

          If we give business to another company — and we frequently engage contractors on a number of property management jobs — we have to have them go through an induction process to ensure they’re compliant with a range of laws and processes and know their stuff WRT health and safety because of concerns about liability if things go wrong. We would get into a lot of trouble if we didn’t have everything above board in such a business relationship — even a hint of something not gone quite right on one project resulted in a month-long investigation into potential impropriety.

          In order to satisfy the OP’s request, it sounds like there’s a lot of actual compliance to do before they can put her through their systems. My guess is she was expecting ‘mate’s rates’ for a service the mentee now provides, and he’s at the mercy of compliance (rightly) breathing down his neck.

          Having witnessed a terse conversation between a compliance officer and her predecessor who is now a delivery manager over the exact length of a ladder sited 100 miles away from both of them, some industries just have their moments and this is probably one of them.

      2. Cmdrshprd*

        ” if it seemed like they were asking for a substantial investment in my time and it didn’t make sense as a different sort of collaboration!”

        But it seems in this situation OP ended up speaking with a consultant (hiring/paying them?) to give them what they asked mentee about, so it seems the info they were requesting was not a quick chat. Specifically because mentee even mentioned billing the agency for time OVER 3o minutes. So idk about you but if it takes more than 30 minutes it is not a quick chat/ask.

        “Instead, he immediately discussed billing my agency for work OVER 30 minutes, and even mentioned an unwarranted inspection of my facility. I was floored. I told him to forget about it, REACHED out to a consultant, and worked out the question on my own.”

        Other people brought up a good point that mentee may have been prohibited to provide the kind of information OP was asking about without billing for it.

        1. Boof*

          The details are way too vague, but it sounds like the mentee didn’t chit chat at all with their mentor (big faux pas in my book, at least have a quick convo before launching into consulting rates, or at least qualify that in some way like “are you looking to hire me”? etc)
          The comment about the consultant was really unclear about whether it actually cost money, my read was that the consultant was willing to have the quick chat without extra charge, but it’s not explicitly spelled out either way. IDK, it just seems like if an old mentor contacts you, the norm is to spare them a few min chit chat to see what’s up, not immediately open up the itemized invoice negotiation.

  38. HonorBox*

    OP1 – While there are myriad other reasons that you could cite in declining to participate, the best one and the one that will resonate most loudly is the one you highlight in your letter. You’re preparing for your fall classes. Which is more important to school administration: Someone power washing a building or that same someone preparing everything for the students who are necessary to keeping the doors open? I’d love to see someone higher up try to tell a professor that they’d rather have the flower bed weeded than a syllabus finalized, especially when the professor is doing it on their own time.

    It is one thing to ask professors to be around and helping (or “helping”) on move-in day, or to come in early to serve breakfast to students on a special occasion day. It is another to ask them to clean, do lawn care, power wash buildings, etc. The difference is that the first two are unusual and special circumstance situations. The latter is regular work that is typically done by a specific department. That the college isn’t able to afford regular maintenance doesn’t make this a special circumstance. What’s next? Coaches have to get on a scissor lift and change the big halogen bulbs in the field house?

    1. JustKnope*

      The admin knows they have to prepare for their fall classes no matter what. The expectation is probably that the faculty will fit that in other times (or on personal time). They’d rather have a beautiful campus for students (and their parents) to make a good first impression vs faculty having sufficient prep time tbh.

      1. HonorBox*

        I’m just saying that because this is already personal time, I think the easy out is “class prep” because while the lawn needs to be mowed, almost anyone can mow the lawn. Only the professor can prep for her/his classes. I hear what you’re saying, but I think one of the thing we hear often on this site is taking action based on the business impact. If a professor isn’t sufficiently prepared to teach, that’s going to have a greater business impact than if a building is power washed.

        1. GythaOgden*

          And one final thing — not just anyone can mow the lawn on a commercial or non-domestic property. My boss would flip her lid if she saw any of us getting out a lawnmower to help the qualified groundskeeper. My friend used to work for the council in ‘industrial gardening’ — that is, keeping public parks and playgrounds etc looking respectable — and he’s very strict on who gets to use what equipment even in a domestic context. (I’m struggling as well with getting a lawnmower light enough for my lame legs to cope with but powerful to get through weeds and bushes that constantly threaten my own small lawn and often have to be hacked back by hand. (I suppose I should get a machete — or napalm — but long knives are illegal where I am and napalm gets //everywhere// and would take out the whole neighbourhood…)

          We have struggled with a shortage of groundskeepers recently and being UK public sector our hands are tied when it comes to pay, but for us we have the luxury of hospital buildings being a priority and groundskeeping being able to be pushed to one side and that may not be true of a university campus.

          But certainly, it’s not just that only professors can prepare classes; it’s that few people will be trained to deal with industrial gardening equipment and the university might just have to consider alternatives to high maintenance features such as grassy lawns.

  39. Juniper*

    I don’t think it’s fair to call the mentee in #3 selfish. He probably could have gone about it better, but there are so many other considerations that can factor in here. Is he dealing with proprietary information? Is he in an industry that expects fastidious billing? Is OP’s company one that his organization often deals with, where off-the-books advice would raise eyebrows? Could providing free information get him a slap on the wrist (or worse)?

    OP forgets that the power imbalance that makes a mentee/mentor relationship possible, naturally cannot continue when the relationship matures into one of peers. You asked him for infomation as a mentor, which was your first mistake. That he answered you as a peer should be proof to you that you did a good job mentoring him, and shouldn’t be in it for tit-for-tat.

    1. HonorBox*

      This is where I land too. We don’t know what rules may apply on the mentee’s side, and given that there might need to be some sort of inspection, I’m guessing there’s something in play that prompted the response. Maybe the request was innocuous enough, but there seems to be some type of evidence that made the mentee respond the way they did.

    2. Alan*

      “That he answered you as a peer should be proof to you that you did a good job mentoring him” YES!

  40. MicroManagered*

    OP2 I’m a natural redhead who has taken to dyeing it now that I’m getting more gray than red. I got asked, and even argued with, about whether my hair color was real my whole life. This truly truly IS more about red hair than dyed hair!!

    With that said, I get really self-conscious about the fact that I used to always answer “yes this is my natural hair color” and now that’s no longer an honest answer. The answer I’ve taken to is “Well, it’s a version of my natural color.” Which is true… but it’s technically true of any hair color… Feel free to borrow that answer!! :)

    1. Ellis Bell*

      Same boat and while I don’t mind saying the latest version is out of a bottle you might like a few of these responses; it was lighter when I was a toddler/I suit my own colour too well to go gray/I inherited it from my grandmother until I decided to get the same effect from Clairol….

  41. F.*

    LW #1

    I am a college professor, at a university with *growing* enrollment, and our entire faculty gets emails like this from time to time: please donate to the university; please volunteer to help students move in (and if you do volunteer, you’re asked to wear campus swag, and no we won’t provide it); etc.

    My advice is to delete, forget, and move on. If *you*, specifically, are asked to do something, then maybe… but an email addressed to all employees? Nope.

    A sad truth about academia is that those who always feel compelled to pitch in, who find it difficult to ignore a request for help, seem to have a rough time of it. I love my job, but sometimes I need to keep my blinders on to retain my sanity.

  42. Sarah*

    LW2:

    It’s the copper hair. It attracts attention and curiosity, no matter how natural it looks.

    I was born a redhead and have always been a redhead. My skin/eye coloring should also make it pretty obvious that I am a natural redhead.

    And yet…people have been asking me my whole life (all 50 years) if that’s my natural hair color. When I was a young kid visiting my aunt’s salon, women would ask their stylists to try to match my hair color. Now that I’m starting to have greys, I do cover them up, but I try to keep it as close a match to my natural shade as possible.

    I’d bet money that dying your hair any natural-looking shade of brown or blonde wouldn’t draw a fraction of the “is that your real color?” questions that dying your hair red/copper/auburn does.

    Keep the cowboy copper if you love it, of course! I’m just saying that the questions are a somewhat universal part of the redhead experience. Welcome to the club. ;)

  43. Juicebox Hero*

    #4 reminds me of that Are You Being Served episode where the old guy from the mens’ department resigns and then tries to take it back, so they give him an entry-level position in the toy department to teach him a lesson before reinstating him. Of course, Alison could probably get a months’ worth of columns out of bad management decisions in AYBS?

    That was the same show with Mrs. Slocombe, whose hair was a different rainbow color every episode and no one ever even commented on it. Real life is stranger than fiction sometimes.

  44. Hyaline*

    #1– I wouldn’t bother “pushing back,“ I just wouldn’t do it. But here’s the thing—from another person in higher ed, this is not a good sign. If they’re in that dire of straits, seriously be considering your options in terms of looking elsewhere. I have had one friend whose small university closed with zero warning and another whose department shuttered. That’s your real problem here—if your institution can’t even budget properly for maintenance workers, be considering how to protect yourself and pivot.

    1. CrashTestHuman*

      I came here to say this. Things like this are part of a spiral that is very hard to recover from (barring a massive injection of cash). Your institution is likely teetering on the edge of a cliff.

      I left my last job when I saw them pulling shenanigans with paying vendors, as I knew it was the beginning of the end.

    2. Dancing Otter*

      Adding to the chorus warning about the school potentially closing.

      My daughter works in the arts, and she now reviews every potential employer’s form 990 (“tax” return for non-profits) on the IRS website before interviewing. It doesn’t matter how much they offer to pay if the checks bounce.

      If the college library offers access, maybe check their credit rating, too.

      Or chat up someone in the accounting office about the accounts payable aging. I saw the writing on the wall at one ex-job when they were delaying routine invoice payments until second demands.

  45. PotsPansTeapots*

    LW2: Former bottle redhead here. People just like red hair and many have entertained notions about doing it themselves before dismissing it for being “too bold.” I always took questions about my red hair as people living vicariously through me a bit.

    This may not work for your hair, but I noticed far fewer comments when I went dark reddish-purple.

  46. dulcinea47*

    LW1, I feel for you…. I’m at a large public university where they’ve cut any kind of custodial work to a point where things are gross and some things never get cleaned or fixed. They haven’t asked us to do it in our spare time (!) but the reality is that mid range salaried people are spending their workday cleaning. It’s ridiculous and I don’t imagine they’re saving money. I hope you enjoy your planning day and the admin gets a poor response to their unreasonable request!

  47. PieAdmin*

    I read no. 3 as “I was snubbed by a manatee” and very quickly scrolled down to see what could have caused such a thing.

  48. Phony Genius*

    On #1, if the existing groundskeeping staff is unionized, I would expect them to push back. Not only against the school administration, but possibly against volunteers they perceive as “stealing” their work.

    1. General von Klinkerhoffen*

      Ooh now you mention it, I’m sure Alison has previously mentioned there being law against volunteers undertaking work instead of paid staff, but perhaps that’s a NPO thing.

    2. Indolent Libertine*

      As far as I understand it’s not legal at all for an employer to use “volunteers” to do work they otherwise pay people for doing (apart from student internships which have boatloads of restrictions) even in the absence of a union. But higher education is its own strange sphere where things often don’t work the way they do in any other field…

      1. dulcinea47*

        I think that that has to do with non-profit organizations, at least that’s how it was explained to me. I guess that would include many universities.

  49. LostCommenter*

    I’ve had bright blue hair for almost two decades now. I still get asked if it’s my natural hair colour.

  50. Lola*

    Lw #3
    You said you asked your former mentee about a very general topic… But when they refused, you hired a consultant to work on it – that doesn’t sound like a very general topic. Are you sure you correctly framed the investment (of time) when you asked him, and that it was something he could ethically work on if his agency supervises your industry?
    I also join the chorus of people that 10 years of mentoring is A LOT.

    1. Alan*

      And he said “hours” over 10 years. If it was just hours over 10 years, that doesn’t sound like a super close relationship. I typically spend dozens of hours a year.

  51. NMitford*

    #1 reminds me of a small, struggling, Catholic girls high school I worked at where I was the Director of Institutional Advancement and public relations fell under my leadership. It was astounding how many things the president of the school thought I should take care of because of their potential impact on public relations for the school.

    Too many dandelions on the lawn in front of the main building, leading to alumni questions and concerns about declining standards? I should organize a volunteer weed-pulling event and get folks out there to dig them up because our three-person janitorial staff/grounds crew didn’t have the bandwidth to do it (they could barely keep up with mowing). My suggestion was to put a sign on the lawn saying that the school was being kind to the environment by not using toxic chemicals on its turf, and it didn’t go any further.

    One of the three non-weed-pulling janitors has been arrested and put in jail with a set of campus master keys in his pocket? I should go down to the jail and retrieve the keys before parents and alumni found out and got upset. I bucked that one to Human Resources.

    The athletic department van broke down in front of, unfortunately, a fairly notorious gentleman’s establishment, leading to calls from alumni and parents asking what the van was doing parked at a strip club? I should get the keys from the coach and go wait for the tow truck. I wanted to ask some of the fathers who called to complain about just how they happened to be in that neighborhood and spotted the van, but I didn’t.

    It’s a wonder I was able to do my actual job, because I was so busy dealing with these shenanigans.

  52. Seth Kahn*

    LW #1: And when your university management tells you that you’re “hurting the students” or that you have to do it “for the students” or whatever, no. Management could staff the positions they need in order to get the work done. They don’t get to have it both ways–arguing it’s so crucial that you have to volunteer to help them do it, and also that it’s so unimportant they’re not going to hire anyone to do it. It’s nonsense.

    1. dulcinea47*

      I don’t think anyone here is arguing it’s not important, LW’s employer is being upfront about not having money to hire anyone.

  53. IFMHH*

    #5 – I’ve seen this happen in a union environment. The contract let folks take back their resignation if the end date hadn’t passed yet.

    I’ve seen this happen with regards to:
    – a change in school plans (i.e. were planning to go back to school, and then the beginning of covid changed things)
    – a change in life plans due to a parent’s illness

  54. HailRobonia*

    #1: I wonder… does the school have a labor union? I recall some school attempting to do the same but the regular grounds crew/facilities/etc. employees were unionized and they had leverage to prevent the university from bringing in “volunteers” that would replace their jobs.

  55. noncommittally anonymous*

    Ooof. Sympathies to LW #1. I was in a similar position once, at a small higher ed-adjacent organization. They decided that they needed a senior person on-site over the weekends, so wanted all senior personnel to “volunteer” to the the Weekend Officer and be there all day Saturday and Sunday once every 2-3 months or so. An increase in pay? Don’t be silly. They’d pay us in vacation time. Except, of course, NO ONE ever used all of their PTO given the demands of our regular roles, so it was essentially unpaid. There was a ton of pushback, and it never happened. (Part of the reason they needed a weekend person is that they had unreasonably decided that the guy who lived on site for free in return for being basically on call 24/7 now had to pay for his housing. He quit.)

    Shortly after I left, I heard that people were now being mandated to work 6 days/week. Being laid off from that place is still one of the best things that ever happened to me.

  56. Margaret Cavendish*

    #3, I’d be tempted to go scorched earth on this guy as well! That’s a pretty crappy way for him to behave, even if you hadn’t been his mentor. But Alison is probably right that there’s no point. You’re not going to contact him for anything else in the future, and you’re certainly not going to be mentoring him any more. Maybe he’ll change his behaviour once he sees how many bridges he’s burning, or maybe he won’t – but either way, he’s not your problem any more.

    But yeah, I would definitely have some things to say about this! If you want to write him a long angry letter about how disrespectful that was, that’s more than valid – just do it in a Word doc or somewhere else you’re not likely to actually send it to him.

  57. Ginger Cat Lady*

    As a redhead, I have been quizzed about whether my hair color is real so many times over the years. Once I was on a bus to work and this woman would not leave me alone or believe me that my hair color was real. She was demanding the name of my colorist. I kept saying it was real. Eventually she was yelling and berating me so loudly other passengers intervened, and finally the bus driver made her get off the bus.
    It was awful.
    But the worst is the men asking creepy questions about my body hair, too.

  58. Josephine Beth*

    LW 5:

    I have actually done this!

    About 10 years ago, I was considering a change in roles. I wasn’t necessarily unhappy in the current job, but felt like I wanted to expand my skills and get away from direct instruction (I was in an education-adjacent field). I interviewed, accepted a new job, signed the offer letter, and gave my notice. My colleagues were told about my impending departure, and I was winding down my projects.

    Then my child had a medical crisis, the idea of commuting to Major City (60 min each way) became unthinkable, and there were some potentially positive shake-ups happening in my current-soon-to-be-Old-Job. I went to my boss and said, look, I realize this is absolutely not ideal, and you’re well within your rights to say no, but I’d like to reconsider my resignation.

    We talked at length about what had made me look for other jobs, what I anticipated would happen if I stayed (ie the direct work would still be the bulk of my day), and what were the potential issues for re-entry. I un-resigned, and ended up staying with that team – eventually even earning a promotion – for eight more years. It was absolutely the right decision for me, and I don’t regret it at all, though I admit I burned a major bridge with the job I had accepted.

  59. Kate*

    LW#1: I agree with all the comments suggesting that you consider your options and prepare your job materials. I’m also happy to offer to look at your job materials if you do decide to go on the market. I’m in humanities at a top 100 R2 and earned tenure a couple years ago. I have helped friends with their materials who went on to get TT jobs, including someone whose institution closed their department while they were on the TT and was able to get a TT job somewhere else. If I can be of assistance please let me know and I’ll post a burner email.

  60. Bookworm*

    #3 – “Instead, he immediately discussed billing my agency for work over 30 minutes, and even mentioned an unwarranted inspection of my facility.”

    I deal with regulatory issues/govt agencies on the job daily. So the threatened unwarranted facility inspection by the agency raised a red flag with me. I would find out who the person’s supervisor is and file a complaint, or file one through the agency’s ombudsman or the like. In my experience, agencies want to know this kind of thing.

  61. Frosty*

    #2 – I saw a British etiquette coach give my new favourite answer to intrusive questions:

    “what a fantastic question – and when I know you better, I’ll be comfortable talking about that”

    I think it’s so funny and apt – hopefully they will be chagrined and silenced!

    2. Salty Caramel*

      I’ve used a variant of that, though it was a bit more blunt. Said with a smile, but my words were, “I don’t know you well enough to have that conversation.”

  62. Boof*

    LW1 – so yeah I’m one of the odd folks who might kind of love a day out and about working with the usual ground people to help get things nice for opening day; and even I think you should get out. It sounds like your org is in a deathspiral and the time to start searching for other options is yesterday
    (please consider looking outside academia; I am technically an academic myself and I think the whole thing is a bit of a bubble unless perhaps there’s a vocational component / a clear return on value for the investment on time and likely money – and I mean clear like the place can back up their career planning and institutional graduate stats, and what degrees mean what jobs; not just handwaving)

  63. CubeFarmer*

    LW#1: that is a cuckoo situation. I assume that you’re writing because you’re not tenured faculty. I assume that most tenured faculty took one look at that volunteer sheet and turned the other way.

  64. keu482*

    There could be union issues involved as well, if the cleaning staff are part of a different union then asking faculty to do their work could be a very big deal since it makes it possible for the university to continue to under pay their grounds keepers and cleaning staff.

      1. Chocolate Croissant*

        Nesting fails happen all the time. Don’t worry about it.

        Union issues is a good point to bring up, IMO.

        1. Missa Brevis*

          I bet if we did a word cloud of the entire history of the AAM comment section, ‘nesting fail’ would be one of the bigger entries

  65. HailRobonia*

    #1: If all else fails, there’s always “malicious compliance.” Asked to rake up leaves? Rake them into the wrong place. Asked to pick up trash? Spend so much time picking up every tiny fleck of scrap that you take forever. Powerwashing a building? There is plenty that can go wrong! (also seems like a safety issue)

    I’d suggest “creative” trimming of hedges etc. but I don’t condone cruelty to plants.

  66. BikeWalkBarb*

    LW4, I’m a director in a large public agency. We’re recognized as a great unit to work for in a field that people want to associate with and we routinely get applications from people who are wildly overqualified for the actual job requirements. We screen them out and don’t interview them. The screening process is intended to result in a list of people who are a good fit for the position, not only people who know a lot about the topic or skill.

    I’ve been through a situation in which a person complained they were being asked to do things that were beneath them when these things were clearly within the job’s responsibilities. It doesn’t end well and it saps everyone’s energy to deal with that.

    And people who already work there freaking out at the thought of this person coming back? That’s a hard no. Interviewing him would send a big signal to them and you’d have more openings to fill in the future.

    You mention a months-long search and this is a “finally, we found one!” moment so maybe it feels as if options are limited. If that’s the case I’m wondering what it would look like to invest in the more junior people to increase their skills and get them promotion-ready, if you can keep going without filling this position for a while. Can you do temporary internal “acting” appointments and rotate people through the open position? Give them a growth/stretch opportunity?

    1. EA*

      Agreed! OP4, it sounds like this person is pretty overqualified for the available role. That alone would be justification not to interview him, at least where I work. A large part of hiring is trying to find the right match for a role, not just the person with the most experience; if I see someone with years of experience in leadership or supervising a large team, I usually do not consider them for “lower level” individual contributor roles, unless they specifically address it in their cover letter.

      Also interested to know how so many people in the company know that he applied that they are actively freaking out about it?

      1. EA*

        Also, to satisfy HR, maybe you could tell them to save his CV in a file for future opportunities better suited to his many years of managerial experience?

        1. No names44*

          If you’re required to interview him, could you have him do a skills test? It sounds like he hasn’t done the work in a while himself and may not pass it.

  67. The Rafters*

    OP 4, repeating what others have said, do. not. hire. this. guy. If colleagues are already freaking out about the possibility, those same people will be out the door at their first opportunity. Ask HR if this is really worth losing that number of people in exchange for one problem employee.

  68. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain*

    #1 So, as bad as higher ed is going these days, and the way you describe your school, I think you should be preparing to find a new job ASAP — not spending time preparing for your fall classes that may or may not actually occur.

  69. The Rafters*

    OP1, I would seriously start looking for another job. College in my area was struggling, though not sure if they tried using faculty for grounds work. The college closed and while they did manage to transfer many students to other area colleges, they still were not the colleges the students chose to attend.

    1. The Rafters*

      Oh, forgot to mention all of the employees who didn’t have a clue the college was in so much trouble and ended up unemployed.

  70. Pita Chips*

    I’m sad the mentee was so rude. Since he was, he no longer deserves any space in your head, just a line on your resume saying you mentored someone.

  71. Thatredheadedgirl*

    LW2: Dyed redhead here for the last 20 years and I think it really is just the novelty of red hair. I have the coloring for a redhead but my real hair color is kind of a mousy brown. I’ve had every shade from strawberry blonde to deep red and I still am constantly asked if my hair is natural or dyed. If I say it’s dyed people weirdly seem disappointed? I am also asked most often if it’s natural when I have an inch of gray/brown roots and I never understand that.
    I look at it as people wish they had the color and I take it as a compliment whether they intend that or not LOL.

  72. Velawciraptor*

    LW 5: I actually dealt with this when I was in management.

    My organization is unionized and our collective bargaining agreement allows someone to rescind a resignation up to 3 days after they quit.

    I once had someone quit in a fit of pique when they received a disciplinary measure for something. By the third day, they’d calmed down and took back their resignation, but did not come in until the next day. There wound up being additional issues around the days they’d been out due to their rescinded resignation, but it all shook out.

    Where rescission isn’t a bargained for right, making sure you don’t burn your bridges in the way you quit makes it easier to rescind. Given the way my employee had done it (no notice, vitriolic resignation letter, shit talking to colleagues), I’m not sure I’d have let the employee take it back had the CBA not required it . And doing it sooner than later makes it more likely to be successful.

    If an employer doesn’t have a process for such a situation laid out, it’s not a bad idea to work it into the handbook. It makes the situation clearer and cleaner for everyone involved.

  73. Fluffy Orange Menace*

    Anyone else’s old blurry eyes think that the LW in number 43 was snubbed by a manatee at first?

  74. nnn*

    A response that’s sometimes useful in cases like #2 is to provide an answer of some sort, and then immediately say “Is yours?” (e.g. “No, my hairdresser is a genius! Is yours real?”)

    This may not work in every circumstance because a) you do need to provide some answer, b) not everyone is uncomfortable discussing their own hair colour so it might not return the awkwardness to sender, and c) it might give the impression that you’re comfortable discussing it.

    Nevertheless, it’s one of multiple tools to keep in your toolkit.

  75. Manatees4eva*

    I read the headline as “…snubbed by a MANATEE…” and was incredibly disappointed to find the story of a ill-mannered person, not an impudent sea cow

  76. Full time reader, part time commenter*

    Redheads, ah, yes. My husband’s youngest daughter was a fiery redhead with natural curls. While still a toddler, I was asked many times if her hair color and texture were natural. Every single time we were out, I was asked. When she was in college, we were checking out from the pharmacy , she was asked about her hair. Later, I inquired about this. She said it was exhausting, but she was used to it.

  77. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain*

    #5 I had a coworker who did that and it didn’t really work out for them in the long run. They resigned due to a family issue that ended up resolving suddenly. They were allowed to take it back and keep their job for several more years, but they were essentially rehired and therefore lost any benefits that had been grandfathered in over their time at the org, but no longer offered to new employees — for example how much PTO was accrued based on # of years seniority, and reimbursement for gym membership. They even lost a bit of their salary because they had worked their way up to the top of the pay scale and then were rehired at the mid-range. I can’t remember how long between the resignation and change of mind, but paperwork for ending their pay and benefits had already been processed. My coworker was a little bitter about it but too close to retirement to want to find a new job over it.

  78. Mr. Osetti*

    LW4; I have also had the pleasure of interviewing past supervisors I did not respect or even loathed. I think it’s becoming a trend, people who job hopped away and things didn’t play out the way they always had before. Because I work for a public institution I MUST interview the top paper candidates. It doesn’t matter if an entire IT department says they will walk off the job if Old Supervisor steps on-site; if I am given the resume, I need to meet them.

    What has worked for me is remembering their biggest weaknesses and letting them know these things will no.longrr fly. For example I made sure to tell the guy who shirked his client site visits that we have a strict rota now so he doesn’t have to be concerned about getting stuck with all client site, all the time. We really have gone from three admins to one in the past four years, so I can also point out that everyone does their own reports.

    If this guy has any self awareness at all, he won’t want the job once he learns there are no administrative subordinates and other team members work across projects.

  79. Catgirl*

    I got asked if my daughter’s red hair was natural when she was two years old. You think I’m dyeing a two year old’s hair?!?

    1. Orv*

      My mom got questions like that too, I and I think it was because only one of her kids had red hair and neither she nor my dad had it. You had to go back a couple generations to see where it came from.

  82. Emily*

    LW1: I strongly suggest you start polishing your resume and considering what kind of job you might do next. As I’m sure you know, higher ed is in a major contraction, and it doesn’t sound like your institution is on firm financial footing.

  83. Khai of the Fortress of the Winds*

    LW 2, yes, even natural redheads get asked that (all. the. time.). My go to response was a bewildered look and “why?” I started going grey at 24 and am now kind of a, well, rose gold color. It’s a little showy but I still miss the copper penny color. I still have all the sunburn and sensitive skin issues, those didn’t go away with the red. Interestingly, when I went to a high school reunion recently most of the other alums thought I was blonde in high school. Red hair isn’t as memorable as we think! Enjoy your hair. I personally have been thinking about getting purple streaks.

    1. Sola Lingua Bona Lingua Mortua Est*

      Ooooh; I think purple streaks in rose golden hair could turn out stunning. I hope it goes well if you decide to try it!

  84. Rock Prof*

    LW 1, my college (another small liberal arts school) has been doing a pre-semester start “campus clean-up” event involving students, faculty, etc pulling weeds and picking up trash for as long as anyone can remember. As a relatively new person here, I find it so weird and sketchy, but it’s one of those things that lots of people would find totally weird if you pushed back against it. I’ve never signed up for it, and luckily that’s never been a big deal.

  85. The Ginger Ginger*

    #2, as a redhead, can 100% confirm – I get asked this ALL THE TIME. I don’t hear it anywhere near as often put to people with other hair colors. When I was a literal toddler, people would ask my mother if she dyed my hair – A LITERAL TODDLER. The redder (less blond and closer to auburn) it is, the more frequent and aggressive the questions are. People frequently have follow up questions, like if anyone else in the family has it, where we’re “from”, if I sunburn easily, etc etc. I don’t know what it is about red hair, but people are super wacky about it.

    1. The Ginger Ginger*

      I do sometimes wonder if there are follow up questions for people who say it isn’t natural. Do they ask you where you get it done? How long you’ve been dying it? What dye you use? So strange.

      1. Dahlia*

        Yeah pretty much.

        I mean mine’s hot pink, so it’s a little different, but it goes, “I love your hair! Where did you get it done? When did you get it done? What did you use?”

        1. Betty Beep Boop*

          I used to jokingly say “yep, this is my real hair colour: it’s really that colour and I have the receipt.”

          I do my wife’s hair, and she likes very bold multicoloured hair; currently she has a full Pride rainbow, and she gets asked all of those too. (Splat. It’s Splat.)

  86. Orora*

    This practice is also very sketchy in terms of payment. In most cases, employees can’t “volunteer” to do work that is usually done by people paid to do the work. Higher ed is a little weird, because your school might be a 501c3, which is a non-profit. Non-profit rules are a little different; most charities are non-profits, which allow people to volunteer in various capacities. However, if there is backlash for not signing up for a work slot, then the work isn’t really “volunteer”, and that’s when you talk to your faculty union or senate.

  87. Anony8383*

    LW #3 I wouldn’t call it a “waste” that you mentored this person because at one point, you wanted, and were willingly doing it. That’s just what happens when you mentor Gen-Zers or newbies out of college. They do not know the rules of networking and professional etiquette yet. I would just ignore this person going forward and hopefully they look back one day and cringe at their behavior towards you.

  88. fenny*

    #5: I actually did this, successfully. I put in my notice (I gave 3 weeks), they hired my replacement, then I had a major change of life plans occur within the last week of my notice, asked for my job back. They said “we’ve already hired someone for your role, so you can train them, and then we will give you another role” – which was a promotion, $10k more, and I got my own office. It worked out insanely well and I am forever grateful to that company and my manager for making it happen!

  89. Beth**

    LW5, I had a friend/former colleague who tried to do this unsuccessfully. She had given notice (1 month, fairly standard in the UK) and a few days later discovered she was pregnant.

    UK law is structured so you only get statutory maternity leave if you were already employed by that employer when you conceived. Most employers that offer enhanced maternity benefits use the same definition. There is something called maternity allowance which you are eligible for if you can’t get maternity pay, but it’s more limited and more difficult to get.

    So she tried to revoke her resignation. I don’t know what she told them about why, buy I know she didn’t mention the pregnancy. They didn’t allow her to revoke the resignation.

    I think this was almost certainly the right thing from the employer’s perspective. she almost certainly would have started job searching again soon after the baby arrived (unless her dreaded boss left), so they would have paid the maternity pay without getting her back afterwards

  90. Jo-El*

    LW#3, It hasn’t been wasted time, even if it feels like that now. The BEST way to hone your skills is to teach/guide someone else. This is an EXTREMELY valuable skill to put on a resume. Lots of people can do, few can teach and businesses are always looking for people like that.

    What WILL happen is this guy will come back needing your assistance and won’t understand why you just aren’t giving it. This is your chance to give a final lesson on how networking works and how he failed. Just explain matter-of-factly why you are saying and doing what you’re doing. It’s not personal.

Comments are closed.