my mom called the CEO when I broke my ankle, I’m drowning in informational interviews, and more

by Alison Green on August 20, 2024

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

1. When I broke my ankle, my mom called my boss’s boss

I broke my ankle pretty severely earlier this year (three bones and a dislocation). I was out of it to the point that I didn’t feel in pain; I was cracking jokes with the ambulance workers and my lawnmower guy (who thankfully happened to arrive just after I fell, as I didn’t have my phone on me at the time). My mum left her job early to come and see how I was and then called my company’s CEO (who is also my boss’ boss) to say that I wouldn’t be in for a while because of the accident.

I have to admit I lost it at her a bit after finding out because I feel that it was extremely unprofessional that she called the CEO on my behalf. My mother’s opinion was that I was in no state to call myself (possibly true, but I wasn’t working until the next day so had time to become more coherent and functional – the accident happened mid-morning) and the CEO wouldn’t mind (also ended up being true, but not the point). I know it worked out in my particular situation, but I’m curious as to — in a general situation — would you think that this is okay or should I have made the call myself?

If you were expected at work that day (or if your mom thought you were), it’s reasonable that she called on your behalf. You describe yourself as out of it; that’s a point where it’s okay for someone else to alert your employer that you won’t be in because of a medical emergency.

The thing that makes it an overstep is that you weren’t working that day and thus your employer didn’t need an immediate notification. Your mom could have just left it to you to handle however you wanted once you were more capable of doing it (or could have asked you later that day if you wanted her to, or assessed for herself later that day whether you’d be able to field it with reasonable lucidity or not).

That said, I wouldn’t call it “extremely unprofessional.” It was unnecessary and a bit too much mom-ing from your mom, but it’s not the sort of thing that you should worry an employer would judge. (That said, if your mom has a pattern of overstepping and not respecting your agency as an adult, I can see why you’d be more pissed off.)

Related:
when you’re sick, can you have someone else call your office on your behalf?

2. I’m drowning in informational interview requests

I am drowning in informational interview requests. I’m filled with dread when I think about opening LinkedIn and seeing the next batch of them. My job sounds cooler than it actually is (biotech venture capital), and I’ve also worked in pharma business development and have a PhD. As a result, I get requests from anyone touching this background: students looking to learn what biotech VC is, graduating PhDs or MDs seeking advice on how to break into the field, people a few years into biotech careers looking to make a switch, advice for how to get a job in pharma.

I turn down requests where I can come up with a clear reason why (for example, someone coming from undergrad or from an MBA, I recommend they reach out to someone with a more similar background). But otherwise, I feel like a jerk saying I’m too busy to talk! Many people donated their time when I reached out for interviews, and I want to pay it forward. I also always feel a bit bad taking the call knowing they want me to give them some secret to getting the job of their dreams, but the reality is, I was lucky and I don’t have any secrets.

Are there any ways to make this more manageable? Could I host something like “office hours” for an hour each month and invite anyone who wants to join to drop in on Zoom? I’d be super grateful for any advice you could provide on how to maintain my sanity while continuing to support young folks in their careers.

Well, first, you’re allowed to say no just because you’re too busy. I get that you want to pay back the help you were given, which is great, but that doesn’t mean you need to turn your life over to it or do it when it will be a strain. During times when you’re particularly busy, or where the thought of doing it makes you internally groan, it’s fine to say, “I’m in a particularly busy period for me and unfortunately I’m having to be be disciplined about not adding anything else on my calendar.”

You can also decide you’ll do these calls one week a month (or whatever frequency works for you; it’s fine it it’s less than that) and that you’ll say yes to the first three people who want to book for that time period.

You also absolutely can do something like your “office hours” idea and say, “I hold a monthly Zoom for anyone who wants to drop in to talk about this stuff. Here’s the info for this month.” I actually love that idea; you’ll get it all out of the way in one call per month, and people will learn from each other’s questions. It will also help weed out the people whose sole motivation is “maybe I’ll magically come out of this conversation with a job.” In fact, I worked with an organization that got so many prospective job candidates asking for one-on-one conversations before applying that we set up a monthly drop-in call exactly like this. It gave us somewhere to funnel the many incoming requests, made the time commitment more manageable, and allowed us to say “yes” in a way that worked for our calendars.

3. Different teams are held to different standards

I have been promoted to a senior role, which means that I now do some supervisory work across multiple teams. Each team is headed by a senior manager. Doing this has made me aware that the standards that are considered acceptable by the different managers are wildly different: on one team, higher quality workers are put down and their work isn’t considered good enough so they end up being micromanaged, while worse workers from the other teams are deemed fine and are allowed to act without supervision. To me this seems fundamentally wrong. I don’t expect every team leader to act identically, but it feels like wrong to keep saying one team’s work is not good enough when far worse quality work is routine for the other team.

I have quite a fixed view of right and wrong and am struggling to accept this approach to the point that I don’t know if I can continue at the firm, but maybe this is normal, acceptable behavior and I’d encounter it at any firm? When I have raised the point, the main comment I get back is that I shouldn’t compare others people’s work and look for errors, but part of my job requires that I see the work and I can’t help but notice the major errors being missed in one team, while even work that is fine is still having to be checked in the other.

It’s fairly common for different managers to hold their teams to different standards. Sometimes the differences are minor (but can still grate to those on the teams in the question) and sometimes they’re more significant. Ideally organizations should set a culture of high performance across the board — without being unrealistically demanding — and should hire and manage managers through that lens, but a lot of organizations aren’t well-managed enough to do that. So what you’re seeing isn’t necessarily that uncommon, although that depends on the extent of the differences (how bad the worse work is, and how unrealistic the expectations on the higher-performing team).

Whether or not you have standing to do anything about it is a different question. It’s possible your job is one that does give you standing — particularly if the work from the weaker team isn’t at the standard needed, but also if the better team is being managed in a way you can see is unsustainable (since that will mean burn-out and turnover). It’s also possible that your job doesn’t give you that standing; it depends entirely on the nature of your role, the outcomes you’re charged with meeting, how much seniority and influence you have in your organization, and how the internal politics work there.

4. Removing the dates of your work history on your resume

My wife has been job hunting for six months without an offer, and we’re open to trying just about anything to get her resume through the initial screening process. She has written it, re-written it, paid other people to rewrite it, and asked multiple HR professionals for their feedback during resume reviews at job fairs. She has gotten some good advice, and she has gotten some that sounds very strange.

Just today, an HR professional told her that she should refrain from including anything like dates of employment on her resume, and instead list her tenure there, rounded to the year. For context, she has spent her time since the beginning of the pandemic working remotely for startup tech companies, and this has led to a little more company-hopping than she’d like. They said that instead of writing, for instance, “May 2020-Feb 2022,” she should write “two years” without including the actual months or years. This person’s argument was also that it makes it easier to rearrange your roles according to what fits the position you’re applying for best, rather than showing any chronological information.

This feels like a dicey gamble to me, and runs counter to just about everything I’ve ever heard about resume writing. It certainly won’t work for any website that requires employment date information in your application profile. In my experience, resumes tend to be a very conservative medium, but maybe things are changing! Before I dismiss this particular piece of advice, is this something you’ve run across before?

She absolutely should not do this. It will look like she’s trying to hide something and has no familiarity with how resumes work, and 99% of employers will toss the resume rather than trying to parse it out. She’d have to be a staggeringly extraordinary candidate for most hiring managers to keep looking after seeing a resume written that way (and if she’s not getting bites after six months of a resume with normal dates, she’s definitely not going to get bites after weakening the way she presents). It’s truly terrible advice.

Employers want to know how recent your job experience is, and they want you to adhere to basic resume conventions like, you know, years so that piecing together your work history isn’t a mystery project.

5. How do I give notice at a job I’m passionate about?

I took my current job a year ago. I was hired to build a program and, while we have made excellent progress, I would say the program is about 60% built out.

I wasn’t looking for other opportunities, but I have been headhunted by a company I’m familiar with in the same industry. The role would be less high-profile but would suit my skills, pay more, and offer more opportunity for advancement. I am still in the interview process but I feel I’m going to be offered the job. And I’m so stressed about how to tell my boss if in fact I need to give notice.

My reasons for wanting to leave have much less to do with the core work of my role, which I am passionate about, and more about surrounding circumstances (like lack of support for our work, lack of structure and process because my current company is small, and the isolation of working on a small team without other senior people to bond with). The role I’m interviewing for will solve these things — bigger company, established in the work, more folks at my level. Plus it will pay a lot more.

If I am offered the role, how do I tell my boss? I really enjoy working with her and remain passionate about the work we are doing. I know making the move is the right one for me, but I can’t help feeling like I’m letting down the folks who hired me. If this opportunity had come in six or eight more months, I might not feel so bad. But it’s only been a year and this was definitely a passion project for me.

“This fell in my lap — I wasn’t looking but they approached me and it’s too good an offer to pass up.” If you want, you can add, “I’ve loved working with you and I’m passionate about the project, but I can’t turn this down.”

That’s it! That’s the truth of it (although frankly you could say it even if it wasn’t), and this is normal thing to happen. Other opportunities come along, and some of them will be better for you than whatever you’re doing currently.

I think you’re looking at leaving as somehow being a sign that you don’t care about the project as much as they might believe. But none of that is in play; you get to leave work you like and managers you like if something else comes along that’s better suited to you.

And it’s not like you’re not leaving after two months. You’re leaving after a year, because someone made an offer that you can’t responsibly refuse. It’s fine.

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{ 212 comments }

{ 212 comments… read them below }

  1. Daria grace*

    #4, to leave off the dates seems like especially a bad idea for tech companies where relevant technology and market trends move so quickly that it really will matter to recruiters whether the year of experience finished 6 months or 6 years ago.

    1. Gatomon*

      Oh absolutely. 6 years ago I was hearing rumblings of the big things that exist today; 4 years ago I was figuring out how to deploy them. It’s old news now.

      I think the person who suggested that is misunderstanding some advice I’ve seen where you just include the years instead of the year and month. “2020 – 2022” instead of “May 2020 – Feb 2022,” basically. If I just saw “2 years,” my first thought would be: and which 2 years would those be??

      I don’t mind leaving dates off for older work history or lengthier terms. For example, I don’t think “2016 – Present” and “Jan 2016 – Present” are materially different on my resume. But if I started in Jan 2023, the month is critical because it would show I have nearly two years in the position, versus possibly less than 1.

      2. TheBunny*

        Same.

        My resume was:

        2012-2018
        2018-2023

        I started a new job in September 2023 and started looking in April 2024.

        I changed to months on my resume so I could have the 4 months in 2023 as part of my tenure.

        1. T.*

          #4, keep job dates but not Ed dates. I work in HR. My mom was looking for work after her job closed. Looked for a year, without even an interview. I had her take the Ed dates off and she had 3 offers in a week. Don’t have more than 10 -15 years experience on there either unless it’s all in one job. People inherently suck and unconscious bias is real even when we try to identify it and balance how we weed through the resumes. 10 years experience and I don’t know if your 30 or 60 but from your grad dates, I can venture a guess, especially if the BA is over a decade earlier than a MA. Women over 40 get screwed no matter how much we try to make sure they don’t. (A good leader will be trying to diversify the team across many areas, for example, age diversity is actually helpful, when you have an aging team, you do need to bring in some young people to train but you have to keep an open mind about all candidates and measure their ability and what they bring to the table). Sorry for the long anecdote. Hope this helps.

          1. Freya*

            But: Keep the Ed dates in if it involves tax and you have more recent things that speak to you keeping up to date in a fast moving field with significant consequences

            (my 20 year old qualifications count for Recognition of Prior Learning for everything except the tax subjects – but I have current qualifications in the accounting packages I use and in lodging paperwork with the Australian Tax Office)

      3. Sloanicota*

        Well, I think the advice might be based around the idea that the job-hopping is hurting the wife, and obscuring the dates might make it less obvious. I don’t think the specific advice is correct because it will just look like a cover-up, but perhaps the wife could drop some short-term jobs or something to the same effect?

        1. EngineeringFun*

          Job hopper here: it’s all about the story on why you chose to hop. I’m an engineer in tech so I talk about the new tech or new management style that each position created. I’ve had 15 jobs over that last decade! Companies need gen x ers to manage people with diverse experiences

      4. sparkle emoji*

        I thought this was what the letter was about at first. I agree that it wouldn’t help LW’s wife, given that this type of date listing for short time frames can read as trying to deliberately obscure how short a role was. If something could read as fudging the truth, it’s probably not helpful. This HR person might just have some idiosyncratic preferences, and should be taken with many grains of salt.

    2. Peanut Hamper*

      This was the very first thing I thought of, as well. Tech can move really fast, and if you say you have experience with Application X, but it was ten years ago, then you really don’t have experience with it as it stands now.

      1. Antilles*

        The same holds true even outside tech too. Even if the skill itself is unchanged, people forget things over time if you’re not using it. Foreign languages are an obvious example here, as anybody who took a language in high school but can’t put together a fluent sentence now can attest.

    3. 2 Cents*

      I’ve had two different contract roles since I was laid off in November 2023 and not one recruiter has batted an eyelash at that. I had longer stints before that, but my career otherwise makes sense — it’s all in the same vein. I explain that I’m taking time finding my next role and contracting allows me flexibility and remote work, now that many companies are pulling back on remote.

    4. Orv*

      It sounded to me like a clever but doomed attempt to avoid age discrimination, which is usually rampant at companies like that. I hate having to put the year I graduated college down, for the same reason.

    5. learnedthehardway*

      Agreeing – I would NOT choose to interview a candidate who omitted their dates of employment / jobs from their resume. Sure, go ahead and do a mixed functional / chronological resume, if you want, but have the dates of employment in there. I (as a recruiter) NEED to know whether your experience is current, whether you really have the duration of work experience you are claiming, and I will need to ask some questions about your career progression (particularly if there are a lot of short term stints in there).

      I can’t put a candidate forward to the hiring manager without that information, and the only time I am going to waste my time fishing for it is if a) I don’t have any other viable candidates (generally unlikely) or b) your experience looks so absolutely perfectly suited to the role, that I’m willing to put with having to pull a chronology out of you to. In either case, the first thing I am likely to do is to tell you to provide me a proper resume, BEFORE I engage with you further. And if neither a) nor b) pertain, I am far more likely to reject your candidacy than to spend my time chasing you for information that you should have known to give me.

      1. learnedthehardway*

        ETA – if you’re attempting to avoid age discrimination – take the dates off your education and limit your resume to the past 10-15 years. That will help a lot. It won’t do much if your first job on your resume was an executive role – nobody walks into an exec role right out of school – but if your first job was an individual contributor or just a manager role, it won’t be evident that you must have had many years of experience before that position.

    6. Sleeve McQueen*

      I’ve actually heard this from a couple of people who are very senior and were having difficulty getting interviews after contract roles wound up. They said it worked quite effectively for getting interviews (although correlation doesn’t equal causation). It was position as a tool to circumvent ageist perceptions. The difference in what I heard was that you still traditionally listed your more recent roles, but anything else relevant was listed in terms of tenure. Obviously, people could work out how old you are if they really wanted to, but it doesn’t jump out as much as having 2003 or whatever on your CV. Don’t know whether I believe it but I found it interesting

  2. AcademiaNut*

    LW2 – I love the idea of the monthly Zoom open house. It opens up the opportunity to more people than you can handle on your own, and it also helps make it clear that talking to you isn’t a secret path to getting an interview or a job.

    It might also be worth preparing a FAQ that you can send along with the information that covers some of the common questions people ask, so the question and answer part can (hopefully) concentrate more on specific details.

    1. RedinSC*

      Ooo, I like the FAQ idea along with the office hour. I agree that this will let people focus on the more specific questions they have.

    2. Jellybeans*

      Agreed. I’m a screenwriter and author (as my full time job) and everyone I know is constantly asked for these kinds of favours, so a group of us have effectively joined forces to pool resources to help aspiring writers. That includes running regular Zoom and in-person sessions. My friend (who wrote Succession!) created the Zoom sessions but lots of other people in the group step in to host, so the work on one person is less.

      Doing one Zoom a month sounds great, but is there any way LW can join forces with others in their industry who are passionate about mentoring/encouraging others, to share this workload a bit? I’m just wondering how many other people these LinkedIn job-hunters are contacting. If someone messages 12 people asking for an information interview, they don’t need 12 interviews, so is there a better way to use resources?

      1. call me wheels*

        That’s really awesome you and your friends do that! Would you be able to point me in the direction of those zoom sessions or anything similar? No worries if not, just thought I would ask :)

    3. Madame Arcati*

      My suggestion as first Q on the FAQ would be to nip in the bud those people who think, “a zoom? Ok cool but I’ll ask for a 1-2-1 as well, that will give me more of an advantage”.
      Something like,

      Q: I’ve attended your zoom and it was great but I’d really like an informational interview just with you, can I arrange that?
      A: I get a large volume of these requests and individual interviews started taking up a disproportionate amount of my time; so the zoom is all I can offer. I hope it helps!

      1. Pastor Petty Labelle*

        Definitely this. Because people will ask for a 1:1 thinking that’s the real secret to getting into the field.

    4. bamcheeks*

      Another way to formalise it would be to work with your professional organisation or a local college or university and participate in networking events and careers activities with them. Depending on the institution, this can also help you make the profession visible to people who are members of marginalised or less privileged groups if that’s a priority for you.

      Note, LW, you do not have to do any of these things! These are just suggestions if you want to pay it forward without it becoming an unmanageable burden, and you can pick whichever format fits with your work style and other commitments and feel OK about not doing the other stuff.

    5. Snow Globe*

      And if the LW is really overwhelmed, offering to send just a FAQ and no zoom meeting is also an option. This is a favor to people, you aren’t required to do more than you can handle comfortably.

      1. Sloanicota*

        True, I think I’ve read that advice here before, that maybe you can take the time *once* to type up the most common Q&A, put it in a template email, and send that to everyone if you can’t keep up with even the zoom. What I like about the zoom is it might put seekers in touch with each other, creating some cohorts in the field who can help each other or at least network. Most people start by networking with people at their same level – and then as you all move up, voila, you have a network – even though of course the dream is to “network” your way into getting a cool job by connecting with someone higher up like OP (but I never found that dream to be particularly realistic).

        1. Venus*

          Alison has definitely provided that advice before, and I’m surprised she didn’t link to it in her answer! I’m awful at finding something in the archives, so hopefully someone else has better luck and can link it somewhere in the comments.

      2. this-is-fine.jpeg*

        Yep not even just an FAQ, how about a blog post (or series of posts?). I have a friend who’s an author and she gets asked for writing advice / publishing advice all the time and she’s built up a series of “this is not advice but this is my journey” posts that I know she directs people to constantly! Saves her tons of time responding to messages.

    6. Lauren*

      I think a monthly zoom is a great idea. I am a big fan of something that takes a little effort from the other party to make it happen. My team handles special requests across our organization and often people we have helped in the past want to refer people they know who need help to us. This is great, we’re happy to help! But we do require that those who are referred call us to initiate a request- we don’t call them. I would say about 10 % of people who a referred to us never call. Which is fine! Maybe the situation resolved on its own. But I do think this one very little hurdle sorts out people who either don’t really need us or wouldn’t be active partners in finding a solution to their issue. I imagine a zoom call would act similarly for you. “Oh, this months zoom doesn’t work for your schedule? Well, it’s the same date/time every month so hopefully next month you can work your schedule around it.” Then if there is someone who asks for a 1:1 still, you’ll have a sense from the zoom if they are worth your time and vice versa!

      1. LW2*

        Hi – It’s LW2. Thanks! That’s a great point and a good way of using some slight screening to help ensure that we’re both getting value.

  3. Certaintroublemaker*

    LW4, it is true that rearranging your roles according to fit the position you’re applying for is a plus. That’s what the cover letter is for.

    “I had two years experience doing VWX and discovered I really enjoyed it. Then working on XYZ for three years in another position exposed me to another aspect of the field I really excelled in. I’d very much like to hear more about the WXY your position involves, as it very much speaks to my strengths and interests.”

    No years, and the hiring manager can pick out those jobs on the resume as ones to focus on. (Of course, be more descriptive of those jobs on the resume, versus the jobs unrelated to the potential position.)

  4. Nodramalama*

    Yeah I think the answer to one LW1 is highly dependent on 1. How out of it LW was, and 2. How much your mother knew/could reasonably know/could easily get out of you.

    Because if she knew you werent working the next day and was comfortable you’d be on the mend enough to email your boss the next day, then yeah it’s an over step.

    On the other hand, if you were so out of it that she couldn’t get a clear answer on when your next shift was, and/or it wasn’t clear if you were going to need surgery/be on strong pain meds, it makes more sense that she’d think she needed to let someone know.

    Obviously you know your mother better than any of us, but from just the info in the letter it seems like it was a pretty bad situation and your mother might have been struggling to get clear answers to guide her decision making.

    1. MissBaudelaire*

      My Mom would have done something similar to cover bases/ask what paperwork needs to be sent in for a doctor’s excuse/to have them call her with questions if I was likely to be unreachable for some reason.

      I would have been annoyed about it, although I can see why OPs mom did it

        1. Nodramalama*

          I mean I can’t speak for MissBaudelaire, but at the very least it’s a bit embarrassing for your mother to call your CEO to say you’re going to be absent. It would make you feel like a child with your mother calling the principal to say you’re going to miss class for the day

          1. Observer*

            but at the very least it’s a bit embarrassing for your mother to call your CEO to say you’re going to be absent.

            That’s a bit of a problem, though. Don’t get me wrong – under normal circumstances, you should DEFINITELY call yourself, and family (whether spouse, parent, room mate, or whoever) should stay out of it. But when someone is heading off in an ambulance, that changes things. No reasonable boss should get bent out of shape or even blink that their employee didn’t call themself from the ambulance, er, etc.

            1. zuzu*

              Well, they need to know about the ambulance.

              I just had a similar situation happen to me! I walked off the bus on my way into work on Thursday morning and suddenly could not catch my breath. Like, just walking into the building was almost more than I could deal with. I managed to get inside, parked myself on the bench just inside the door until my heart stopped racing quite so much, then went up to my office. I walked up to my boss’s assistant and asked him if I looked as bad as I felt, and he told me he was taking me to the ER. By the time I’d dropped my lunchbag in the office fridge, I was breathing so hard he insisted on calling an ambulance.

              He was very discreet about the whole thing, and I wound up spending several days in the hospital (I’m fine now). But on Friday, when I tried to send an OOO Teams message from the hospital, it didn’t go through because of the hospital’s lousy wifi, and I didn’t realize it until after my boss texted me offering me any help she could. She hadn’t been in the office Thursday or Friday, so I think the only reason she knew I’d been ill was that my absence and lack of OOO was noticed, and she asked her assistant about it. He must have told her about the ambulance.

              So, basically – your boss needs to know you’ve been in the ambulance/hospital in order for you to be excused. If you’re unable to provide that info, someone else may have to be the one to do it. But hopefully not to the CEO.

          2. londonedit*

            I think it’s one of those things that feels like more of a big deal than it is. Like there have been letters here before from people who are writing in absolutely mortified because they had to leave work in an ambulance, and they’re worried about what people will think when they go back to work and they’re cringing about all the fuss, etc. When in fact 99.9% of the time all people are worried about is whether you’re feeling better and you’re genuinely ready to come back to work. Yes there might be a bit of ‘We were so worried about you!’ or ‘That must have been scary!’ but it soon goes away and people move on. Same thing here – most people will not be thinking ‘OMG, LW1 is such a child, can you believe their mum called in sick for them’. They’ll be thinking ‘OMG how awful that LW1 has broken their leg, that sounds so painful, I really hope they’re on the mend soon’.

          3. MK*

            Ok, but can we just acknowledge that it’s a completely emotional response? Your mother calling your employer to inform them of your absence isn’t any different from your sibling doing it, but your brother calling doesn’t have the same cringe factor.

          4. biobotb*

            Then maybe think of it as your emergency contact communicating with your employer. If your mom communicating with your employer in an emergency situation feels infantilizing to you, make someone else your emergency contact.

        3. MissBaudelaire*

          Because I want to be the one who decides what gets said to my boss. There might be some things about my health or the situation I don’t want shared.

          Again, totally get why a Mom/spouse would do that! Would not be mad, would be annoyed.

    2. LW1*

      Good points, thank you (I’m LW1). To be fair I felt comfortable making the call myself later (several hours of waiting for a bed in hospital does wonders, lol), though I do know now I was on very strong pain meds at the time as well and needed several bouts of surgery. I agree in that she probably was acting as she thought was best in the moment. And she isn’t normally helicopter-y so I don’t think that was her intention.

      1. Nodramalama*

        I said this somewhere else but you might also be acting with the benefit of hindsight, knowing how it turned out and when you feel like you were able to make decisions and communicate with work. If your mum is not usually helicopter parent, it seems fair to assume that she had reasonable grounds to not think, or not be sure that you would be in a state to make those calls.

        1. Zelda*

          “benefit of hindsight”

          Excellent point. “On very strong pain meds” is not necessarily how many people make their best decisions, and for some of us, either “shocky from pain and trauma” or “medicated to the skies” is not how we ought to be calling in to work– *that* could’ve resulted in something unprofessional coming from the patient!

          LW, I think this is a “no wrong answers” situation. I see why you would’ve preferred to handle it yourself, and in the event you could have done so. But no one is going to think that your mommy was fighting your battles for you. Fully competent adults are still allowed to have a support system, and when you are hospitalized for shattered body parts is a reasonable time for it to step up.

          1. Caffeine Monkey*

            Yeah, it probably would have been best if my mum had taken my phone off me when I was on strong pain meds after a nasty injury. My manager really didn’t need to see a photo of the offending limb bent in ways it shouldn’t bend.

            1. HSE Compliance*

              I had a coworker previously that should have had it written somewhere in his chart to take away his work phone if he’s admitted into a hospital. He took calls *from his hospital bed*, full gown and all. With video. No one else had video on.

              It would have been much preferred if he would have either just texted one of us/HR to let us know where he’s at or if any family member would have called one of us. Not a single person would have batted an eye at all. Calling in from the hospital though – that raised a lot of eyebrows.

          2. londonedit*

            Yes, completely agree. I’ve only had to have someone call in sick for me once, and that was when my mum called work for me after I came down with the only bout of actual flu I’ve ever had in my life. It was awful, I was delirious with a high temperature and I could barely get out of bed to go to the loo. My mum happened to be staying with me at the time, and she rang work to let them know I wouldn’t be in for the rest of the week. I’m actually not sure what I would have done if she hadn’t been there, because I certainly wasn’t of sound enough mind to have made a coherent phone call myself!

            When I recovered a bit I did feel totally mortified, because it was fairly early in my career and I absolutely did feel like people would be thinking I needed my Mummy to do things for me. But firstly only my immediate boss knew that my mum had phoned, and secondly everyone was just concerned about me getting better. And I’m sure it’s the same in this case – a broken ankle requiring several rounds of surgery is a serious thing, and people will totally understand that you weren’t able to call yourself. If they even think about or know about it at all!

            1. bamcheeks*

              it was fairly early in my career and I absolutely did feel like people would be thinking I needed my Mummy to do things for me

              I was thinking that this is key, and it makes me wonder how old LW is. These things loom much larger when you’re still in the stage where you’re establishing yourself as an independent adult! In my 40s, I can’t imagine getting a flicker of embarrassment about it. “Family member called in because I was too ill” is actually pretty standard and not at all like “Me mum called because I’m basically a child”.

              1. londonedit*

                Definitely. In my 20s it would have seemed mortifying, but in my 40s it would be clear it was a case of ‘My mum had to ring work for me because I was too ill/injured’ rather than ‘I’m such a child that my mum still calls in sick for me’.

              2. Resident Catholicville, U.S.A.*

                I’m in my 40’s, live with my parents, and my company knows that. It wouldn’t be weird for my parents to call in for me if I were unable to; the company would know I was extremely sick.

                1. Humble Schoolmarm*

                  If it helps, I was in my early 30s when I got my mom to call in for me because I had a terrible case of laryngitis (middle school teacher, there’s only so far a ‘Whisper Day’ can get you). I didn’t feel particularly sick, no pain meds, but all I could do was whisper hiss and contacting managers by text wasn’t the norm at that school. If anyone thought less of me, they never said anything.

      2. General von Klinkerhoffen*

        For me, “calling work” was appropriate in the circumstances, especially if the call had been something like “I don’t know if LW is meant to be working today but she’s in the hospital and she’ll contact you when she can.”

        The part I don’t like is that she called the CEO. This is a message that just needs to go through the main switchboard and can then be passed on internally as necessary.

        1. Myrin*

          That was where I thought the letter was going to go just from reading the headline but since the letter seemed to take issue much more strongly with the call itself than with the fact that it went to the highest-ranking person in the company, I figured the workplace must be on the smaller side and/or the CEO can reasonably be assumed to know OP or be approachable enough to not mind.

          1. Sloanicota*

            Ha that was also my thought. My mom (who did not work a professional job) would have absolutely googled my company and then called, like, Jeff Bezos to try and tell him that Underling #1223 had broken an ankle doing yard work, Jeff!

        2. nodramalama*

          MM i thought that too, but Grand Boss is not as crazy as CEO, and we don’t know anything about the company

          1. bamcheeks*

            Yes, same. “called the CEO” definitely makes it sound like some multimillionaire was chilling on his yacht when he got a call from someone’s mum saying, “Hello! Julia in payroll won’t be in on Monday! You’d recognise her, she’s got curly hair!” But getting a call about someone a skip-level down because your number is easier to find or you were the first to pick up is very undramatic.

            1. Karo*

              I think it depends on the workplace, honestly. I work at a small company; the CEO knows me and my husband by name and will regularly chat with me about some of our common interests. But I’d still be uncomfortable with someone calling him to say I’d be out, in part because I don’t trust that he’d remember to pass the message along.

        3. londonedit*

          Yeah, that was the only bit that stood out to me, but I’m guessing it wasn’t too egregious in LW1’s workplace or they’d have mentioned it being so. Where I work if my mum tried to call the CEO on my behalf it’d probably just cause extreme confusion, because I’m fairly sure the CEO only has a vague idea of who I am and they’re definitely not the person I’d need to call if I had an accident. But it might be different in this case.

          Assuming, then, that it is the same as my mum calling my immediate boss, I don’t think LW1’s mum did much wrong. Based on the information she had, which was a) LW1 has what seems to be a severely broken ankle, b) LW1 is out of it on pain medication and in hospital, and c) LW1 will be expected to turn up at work at some point, I think it’s very sensible of her to have called on LW1’s behalf. Especially as she was there at the hospital. I think to me it would feel more overbearing if she’d called from afar without LW1’s permission, because you’d feel more like she probably doesn’t have the full picture, but if she was there and she could see how the situation was unfolding, I can completely understand why it would have made total sense for her to make the call.

        4. Olive*

          I think it’s less bad given that she was only two levels down from the CEO. I work for an international company with 1000s of employees and it would be a huge faux pas for my mother to try to call the CEO (trust me, she’s on an information diet for a reason), but earlier in my career, I worked for 20 person office, and calling in an accident directly to the company president would have been normal.

          1. amoeba*

            It would honestly be pretty funny if anybody tried that here (30k employees – I have actually met the CEO in person, but am 100% sure he has zero clue who I am!). But then his number is also very definitely not one you could easily find out to call him, so, well. Maybe an e-mail in case you know his name? But that’d probably also only ever be seen by his EA.

      3. Skynet*

        Small recurring theme here is the person who is on drugs/coming off anesthesia, and feels GREAT, and so they head into work and type ALL THE EMAILS OF BRILLIANCE until their boss wrestles their keyboard away and informs them that Pat will be driving them home, and they are to take the next couple of days off and recover.

        In my family (functional, boundaries, etc) in either direction this would have been “person A is out of it, person close to them is trying to figure out what needs to happen to take care of person A and ‘alert work A won’t be in’ is one of the things.” If there’s a pattern of the person rushing in to fix things for you it’s much more annoying than if the last time was 13 years ago.

        1. Jaydee*

          I had a coworker at my last job who was told by our boss that he wasn’t allowed to email while on pain meds anymore. He had logged on and sent the Emails of Brilliance, which weren’t anything bad, and I don’t think any of them were to outside parties (thank goodness). They were just decidedly not brilliant. Our boss was like “When you’re out, please trust that we’ve got it covered. No need to email about cases or work matters. You can send us an update on how you’re doing. But it’s also fine if your wife does that.”

        2. NotRealAnonForThis*

          There is a full week, post surgery and on decent medications, where I have HUGE gaps in my memory (due to medications) and did work that I had zero recollection of. This could have been bad. Thankfully it was not. It came to light when I received a copy of something I did. It was completely coherent, correct, timely, and otherwise not notable…other than I have zero recollection of doing it or submitting it.

        3. Festively Dressed Earl*

          There’s an anecdote around here somewhere about a woman in recovery from surgery who texted her boss that she was quitting to work at Hooters. Her husband didn’t realize she’d gotten her hands on the cell phone until it was too late.

      4. Lady Danbury*

        Definitely sounds like a situation where you should extend Mom some grace! Regardless of how serious it ended up being, I’m sure several bouts of surgery (not just one!) seemed pretty severe to her at the time, and in the moment it seemed completely reasonable to let your job know. If you trust her to exercise good judgment, it might be helpful to give her your boss’ contact information so that she knows who to contact if there is another emergency in the future (hopefully she won’t need it).

      5. Lisa*

        I have to say “On very strong pain meds” is an excellent time for someone else to step in and make calls on your behalf. Too much risk of either saying something stupid or not being coherent enough to get the message across. Maybe in this instance it could have waited, but it’s not like there was much chance she was wrong and you’d actually not need to call out.

        I hope you’re completely healed at this point!

      6. I strive to Excel*

        For some bonus information for you – I’ve acted as the person picking up family members from the doctor before. Specifically, I’ve picked up people after routine but anesthetized procedures. The aftercare instructions I get are that no important/legal decisions should be made for the next 18-24 hours. Both pickup trips also involved a seemingly lucid conversation with someone and then have them ask me the same question several times in a short span of time, not remembering that they’ve asked me before or what my answer was.

        All that to say – I can understand your frustration! You could probably preempt any further difficulties by working out a “communications plan” for the next time someone gets hurt; who calls work, when, for what severity, etc etc. But I would agree that your mom was making what felt for her to be a rational decision.

      7. GDUB*

        Most people have parents, and many people’s parents overstep from time to time. Your boss and your CEO probably have experienced more extreme examples of this.

    3. Jellybeans*

      This feels like a letter with so much missing context, as relationship letters tend to be. The whole thing depends on LW’s relationship with her mother and whether this is a pattern.

      1. Kat*

        I also think it’s a letter where the work itself would be helpful to know (not that I’m asking the LW to elaborate). If this is shift work, like in retail or manufacturing, then it’s good that someone called the employer and let them know that the LW may not be able to make their next shift, even if they weren’t working that day.

    4. Bookworm*

      I’d like to know how old LW #1 is! And two, why their mother felt the need to contact the CEO, instead of just her manager or HR?

      1. Kat*

        Considering that the CEO is only two levels up from the LW, this sounds like a pretty small business. The CEO may be the actual face of the company, with their name or contact information on the website or on a widely available business card.

        For comparison, I work for a Fortune 100 company, and our CEO is eight levels up from me.

      2. Margaret Cavendish*

        I assume she called the CEO because that’s the only number she could find!

        My husband doesn’t have contact info for my boss or HR, and I doubt he even knows my boss’ name at the moment. If I were in a position that he had to call into work on my behalf, he’d likely google the 1-800 number and get them to help figure it out.

        1. londonedit*

          Yeah, I’m guessing she called the main number. If the CEO is only the LW’s boss’s boss, rather than being several levels above and untouchable, then it’s not out of the ordinary that the LW’s mum would be able to speak to them.

          If I was in a similar situation and my mum couldn’t access my phone to get into my contacts and find my boss’s number, she’d probably have to Google and then call the main company number. She knows my immediate boss’s first name but I’m fairly sure she doesn’t know their surname, so she’d most likely have to call and tell the receptionist she’s looking for someone called [Mike] who works on [nature books] and they’d have to try to find the right person.

      3. Observer*

        Because the CEO is the LW’s GrandBoss 9ie only one level above their direct boss). So that makes sense.

      4. LW1*

        I’m mid 30s. And the business is pretty small. We don’t have a formal HR and my manager is, um, not overly helpful at times :) CEO gets stuff done. I had an accident the previous year and was hospitalised, hence why Mum had the CEO’s number.

    5. Observer*

      On the other hand, if you were so out of it that she couldn’t get a clear answer on when your next shift was, and/or it wasn’t clear if you were going to need surgery/be on strong pain meds, it makes more sense that she’d think she needed to let someone know.

      That was my first thought. The way the LW describes their behavior / reaction to the accident says that it might have been a reasonable reaction on Mom’s part.

    6. I'm just here for the cats!!*

      What I want to know is why the mom contacted the CEO and not the OP’s actual boss. I’m wondering if that’s partly why OP is frustrated at their mom, she didn’t just call into work, she called the CEO. I think that is what is odd. Like why?

      1. Margaret Cavendish*

        Like I said above, my husband wouldn’t have the first clue how to contact my boss in that situation. He’s have to call the 800-number and get them to figure it out – not because anyone at the contact centre knows me, but because that’s the number that comes up when you google “contact Margaret’s employer.”

        So I assume it’s the same with OP’s mom – she didn’t know a specific person to call, so she googled the company, and the CEO’s number was the one that came up.

        1. Spreadsheet Queen*

          I feel like I now need to put names & numbers & emails up on my fridge/in my wallet or something now. If something happened to me, I’m pretty sure nobody knows who to call (or even what company I work for unless they go to LinkedIn).

          This also goes into the “if I die, nobody knows what to do” bucket, which someday I will fix.

          LW – you’re fine. Your mom got to someone who knew who you were while you were in still in shock, and then you were on pain meds. No one would reasonably expect that YOU would be making the calls in that situation.

          1. GDUB*

            Yes, my family has contact information for my boss and our HR in case I fall ill and they need my benefits information.

        2. Tired Librarian*

          My partner had a colleague who was involved in a serious accident that would keep them off work for a while. The family member who was doing logistics had no idea who they needed to contact, and ended up finding and messaging a couple of colleagues on LinkedIn. Not a great option, and a long way around to get to the right people, but you have to work with what you have! (I’m pretty sure my partner and I could both successfully contact each other’s bosses, but not 100% sure…)

      2. run mad; don't faint*

        We don’t know if she directly called the CEO. She may have called the company main number and told whoever picked up the phone that she needed to let someone know that LW1 was in hospital. The CEO might have been the first person available or the receptionist may have thought CEO was the best person to handle it for some reason. We just don’t know the facts of what happened except that Mom called and Mom spoke to the CEO.

    7. Snoozing not schmoozing*

      In places where I’ve worked, it would be perfectly normal for a spouse or partner or parent or adult child to call in if an employee was incapacitated. The only thing that would cause comment (besides “Oh, I hope Esmerelda is okay!”) would be if Esmerelda herself called in from the hospital, there might be murmurs that poor Eamerelda has to go through a hospitalization with no family around.

  5. TheBunny*

    LW#4

    I’ve done a lot of resume screening and interviewing (enough, in fact, that my current job having NO recruiting was enough to get me to give up hybrid for in office 5 days) and I’ve seen a bunch of quirky resumes that I assume come from odd resume advice like this.

    I will at least give a glance to all but 2 types of real submissions: 1. Wall of text that looks like it’s a novel in which I can’t figure out what jobs they have held. 2. Resumes in which I can’t figure out the dates of employment or it’s confusing to try to figure them out.

    This truly terrible advice falls into the latter.

  6. MissBaudelaire*

    LW 5, I know it’s so so SO hard to leave a job you like, especially when there isn’t anything you could point to and say “This is why!”

    Ultimately, you don’t even need to give a reason. It’s a job, you’re not married to them. Moving on, even from jobs you love, happens. Sometimes it’s because of outside forces, like moving your family, and sometimes it’s because something better fell into your lap. It isn’t a count against your current company.

    1. Audrey Puffins*

      Yeah, maybe try reframing it from “leaving job A” to “taking up job B”. There doesn’t have to be anything wrong about job A for job B to be the better option

    2. DJ Abbott*

      Lack of support and lack of structure and process sounds like reasons to me. I would not do well without support.

  7. Captain dddd-cccc-ddWdd*

    OP1 (broken ankle) – this was an overstep, but I’d also challenge the idea that you wouldn’t need to call until the next day because you weren’t due at work until the next day. Knowing in advance that you won’t be there does make it a bit easier for managers to come up with a plan, e.g. if cover has to be arranged or project managers notified so they can adjust deadlines.

    1. Nodramalama*

      Id also add, with hindsight OP might have know they were fine to call the next day, but id say three breaks and a dislocation is likely bad enough that they might not have know if she’d be ok to call the next day

      2. WS*

        Yeah, especially if OP had needed surgery the next day. I had a colleague break their ankle in three places in 2021 and they ended up in hospital for a week waiting for surgery as more urgent cases kept coming in and COVID kept staff away. I broke my wrist earlier this year and I thought I was totally fine to go to work the next day. I’m still fixing the bizarre errors I made.

    2. Rebecca*

      Yep. I’m a teacher – kids need to be supervised, coverage is not an option. The sooner my boss knows to look for a sub the easier it’s going to be for everyone. In my job, everyone would have appreciated this call and gotten over the awkwardness of it being my mum. I’m sure there are a lot of jobs like that.

    3. Zelda*

      “Knowing in advance that you won’t be there does make it a bit easier for managers to come up with a plan”

      Another excellent point.

    4. londonedit*

      Yes, I think assuming the accident happened during a working day (i.e. when other people/the boss were at work, but the OP wasn’t) then it makes sense to call in immediately and say ‘LW1 has broken their ankle and is currently in hospital awaiting surgery – we’re not sure how long the whole process will be, but they won’t be able to work for the next [week] at least – we’ll let you know more as soon as we’re able to’. That way the bosses and the rest of the team have a heads-up and they can start working around it. You don’t know how long it’ll be before the surgery can happen – I’ve had friends who have broken their ankles and often you have to wait a few days for the swelling to go down before they can operate, so you’re just stuck in hospital waiting. Or a major emergency comes in and you get bumped down the list, or whatever. It’s a good idea for the boss to have as much notice as possible, especially as it’s the sort of thing where someone’s likely to be off work for some time.

      1. RadiationFun*

        I had to wait four days after breaking my ankle in two places, it was so badly swollen the surgeon explained they worry they can’t close up properly after surgery if they don’t wait.

    5. Observer*

      this was an overstep

      Why? The call needed to be made, the LW was in no condition to make the call and at the time no one could know if they would be in any condition to make the call in a timely fashion.

      The LW’s confirmation that they wound up needing several surgeries, and that they were on strong medication, shows that it was a reasonable concern.

      As for the rest, I totally agree with you.

  8. Lily Potter*

    LW2, I’ve seen it suggested here before you have a templated response at the ready for informational interviews. The response should ask the requestor to state what topics they want to cover in the informational interview. Remarkably, some won’t respond to this simple request and will be off your radar immediately. Others will reply that they’re just interested in an “in” while applying at your company, and you can reply “Sorry, but I don’t have any pull with HR here” or whatever. Anyone who replies generically that they’re “just interested in breaking into the field” can be directed to your office hour Zoom time.

    The trick is to have a templated process that works for your situation that “culls the herd”. A fair number of your requests will disappear if the requestor has to put in any kind of effort beyond the initial ask.

    1. Guacamole Bob*

      Alison has recommended this strategy before and I was a little surprised she didn’t include it here. Asking for a list of questions in advance is an easy first step that will take a good number of people out of the process entirely, let you redirect others, and let you focus your energy on the ones who are going to use your time thoughtfully.

  9. also-broken*

    I had the same injury as LW1 (down to the dislocation!) and sent a scattered text to my supervisor while I was still in the ambulance. I absolutely could have waited to send the message, but I remember feeling *so* relieved that I could cross one thing off of my mental to-do list, even when everything else was uncertain.

    People behave in funny ways during an emergency, but based on my experience, LW1’s mom’s actions seem fairly reasonable to me. It was a major medical emergency, and the mom made a safe decision based on the information that she had available at the time. As the child, I might be slightly annoyed, but it’s definitely not wildly unprofessional.

    1. LW1*

      My first reaction was basically “I’m going to lose my job for this!” That, to be fair, could have been the pain meds.
      I hope your ankle healed well! I’m still having some issues with mine even now, unfortunately :( (Accident was mid-Feb)

      1. Nobby Nobbs*

        Even if it was an overstep, it wasn’t your overstep! No reasonable person would hold it against you.

      2. I’ve Seen Things*

        You’re fine. Your ceo, if human, gets it (if not, then you have other issues). I’d be so annoyed with my mom, though. So VERY annoyed.

        1. amoeba*

          Yeah, I mean… like, if I was conscious and communicating, I’d definitely be really annoyed she didn’t ask me first! Like, great, very nice of you to do that task for me, but maybe ask me which way I’d prefer? I’d probably just have told people the e-mail address of my manager and told them to mail them.

          Now, calling whoever you can find based on your own best judgement – sure, absolutely understandable, *if* I’m at that point actually not available. But this situation does indeed sound like there would have clearly been an opportunity later that day to ask “hey, you want me to notify work for you? Should I just google the phone number or would you prefer something else?”

          Good thing is, the employer doesn’t actually know that, do they? So for them, it looks reasonable in any case. Worst case they think you were even worse off than you actually were (as in, unconscious/delirious).

          1. Observer*

            But this situation does indeed sound like there would have clearly been an opportunity later that day to ask “hey, you want me to notify work for you? Should I just google the phone number or would you prefer something else?”

            Given what the LW says, I think their mother was wise to not ask. The LW was clearly not in any state to respond reasonably. It’s easy to say “well, if I were asked I would say x, y and z”. But you don’t actually know that because most people don’t react in their typical fashion under such circumstance.

            Worst case they think you were even worse off than you actually were (as in, unconscious/delirious)

            Someone does not need to be delirious for it to be reasonable for another person to call in for them. Being in the immediate aftermath of a fairly serious accident (before any treatment) or on strong medications are both situations where it is completely reasonable. If you would ding an employee for “allowing” someone to call in for them under those circumstances, that’s a you problem, not a problem with the behavior.

      3. Not your trauma bucket*

        I’m six years out from a tri-malleolar Weber C fracture (similarly brutal ankle break) and it still gives me fits occasionally, but it’s very manageable. Be patient with yourself. Ankles are ridiculously fragile for such an important joint.

      4. Observer*

        My first reaction was basically “I’m going to lose my job for this!”

        Yeah, that’s not a reasonable take. I *hope* it was the meds. Otherwise I would be wondering if you’re working for a bad employer.

        I’m still having some issues with mine even now, unfortunately :( (Accident was mid-Feb)

        Oh, wow! That sounds rough! I hope things completely heal, and quickly.

        PS It validates your Mom’s decision – that sounds like it was a *massive* mess.

    2. Venus*

      I think it’s important to remember the LW1’s mom was also in an emotional situation, worrying about LW1, and otherwise she might have behaved quite differently. It doesn’t excuse that she should have checked first, especially since LW1 didn’t need to be at work that day, but it could explain her decision.

  10. Yoli*

    L3, I was in your shoes when I started at my current job. In my case, what ended up helping was having some really clear data points and coming back to them strategically. For example, in my end-of-year report I talked about the root causes on the underperforming team and how that would impact hiring. (I didn’t phrase it like this, but our managers of low-performing team hire on vibes imo. I pointed out that it wasn’t an ideal or attractive place for an outside candidate to come in and was creating a pattern in which none of the internal folks were being prepared for leadership roles, hence the heavy emphasis on outside hires, including me.)

    The data also showed such a large disparity in output (and I always quantify relative to the org average and relative to prior years) that senior leadership brought in an outside consulting firm to help evaluate and create a new strategic plan, including minimum specifications for each priority. It’s not all sunshine and roses, but it has narrowed the scope of “minimally acceptable ways to operate and keep your job.”

    1. Melisande*

      #LW3 great advice from Yoli

      Also
      – is there any regular meeting/forum for team leaders and if not, could you initiate one? A chance for them to talk about what works, what doesn’t, how each team can learn from others.
      – is there a chance to shake up team memberships, maybe transfer one or two people from team to team each year. That could get the top performers a fresh opportunity to shine and the under performers a chance to shape up.

    2. el l*

      I’d say it’s worth delving into a line about micromanagement that was mentioned and then left alone: “…on one team, higher quality workers are put down and their work isn’t considered good enough so they end up being micromanaged, while worse workers from the other teams are deemed fine and are allowed to act without supervision.”

      Because this situation isn’t just about “What is company standard work?” You can’t answer that question without also answering “How much latitude do our people have to do their work?” In some work situations, you can’t do good work with no latitude.

      Plus, more importantly, count me skeptical that it really works for people to be micromanaged. In my experience, that’ll end up being a bad outcome even if the product is good. (People don’t develop well when being micromanaged)

      And look, ultimately, the question in this situation is, “How much discretion do you have to bend managers to your will and intervene in individual teams?” Right now, seems like it’s company policy that everything is left to the individual manager’s discretion. Doubt you’re really empowered to change that. And if that means you can’t do your job, then ask for another role.

      1. Antilles*

        Agreed on the point about latitude. It also matters the specific tasks each group is working on. OP says it’s “fundamentally wrong” for teams to have different standards but that’s perfectly normal if their roles are different. The standard of quality needed for a final report submitted to government regulators is MUCH higher than the standard of quality needed for an interim report used only for internal project discussions. And it doesn’t make sense to spend time, effort, and money holding them both to the same standard.
        It’s also certainly possible that the less performing groups bring other things to the table that OP isn’t aware of. Maybe their reports require more review time, but they’re great at talking with customers, so the company is accepting B- caliber technical writing in exchange for the A+ sales skills.

        *But of course, as you note, the real question is whether OP actually has the power and authority to do anything here. The fact that OP explicitly says she tried to raise this point and was been told “you shouldn’t be comparing people like this” makes me suspect she doesn’t.

    3. Mockingjay*

      It was unclear from the letter whether LW3 is managing the managers, the tasks, or both. From what they wrote, I’m going to assume their role is managing tasks and productivity. So from that standpoint, it’s going to be about establishing benchmarks for each team and/or for the entire group and measuring/evaluating against those: timeliness, accuracy, units produced, quality metrics, etc. [As Yoli beautifully noted, “minimum specifications for each priority.”]

      If LW3 is also managing the managers, those evaluation results will naturally lead into conversations about why/why not the teams are meeting benchmarks, and what can be done to sustain performance or improve it – training, cross-training, process changes, different ways or times to check on progress, etc.

      The goal is not to solve everything at once. Break the issue(s) into small pieces and have a plan to work each piece.

  11. Friday Hopeful*

    LW#4 if your wife’s “job hopping” since the pandemic has all been in the same or similar roles but for multiple companies, is it possible she can lump them into one entry? Put the job and maybe name the companies, saying they were temporary assignments? Like “Job Title. – Jan 202 to May 2024 – temporary assignments at the following agencies.” I’m sure there is better wording than what I just put though.

    1. metadata minion*

      If I saw that on a resume, I would assume the jobs were posted as 1-year (or whatever) temporary positions and would be annoyed if I found out that they were intended to be long-term on the employer’s side. “Temporary position” is…not a legal term, as far as I know, but it’s a well-understood phrase that doesn’t mean “left after 1 year to find something better”.

    2. londonedit*

      Yeah, I think she could only really do that if it was legitimate temp work through an actual agency, or if the jobs were legitimately short-term contracts. Otherwise it looks even more like she’s trying to cover something up.

    3. Friday Hopeful*

      I king of thought the way he said she was working for start up companies that maybe these were just temporary gigs. Like they gave her one project and she did it and moved on etc.
      If they were full time jobs and she actually did job-hop a bit then yeah idk how she could fix that.

  12. Peanut Hamper*

    LW#2: You probably need a FAQ somewhere. I’m not sure if you can attach something like to Zoom the way you can do it in Teams, but if you can, you can just have a form response that says something like “I have a list of Frequently Asked Questions at link. I also hold a monthly office hours for anyone who wants to ask questions I don’t have answered there. The information is in the FAQ.”

    1. Ama*

      Yes, I like the FAQ idea but I will say that in my experience (I spent a decade running a grant program for PHDs that make up a similar group to the ones contacting the OP), when we transitioned from a PDF with all the FAQ questions and answers on it to a webpage where users clicked on the questions to see the full answer, the amount of emails I got asking things answered in the FAQs went down considerably. People aren’t good at scanning really long text documents, but set it up so questions are in categories and easy to scan for the question the reader has and they seem to be more likely to make use of them.

      1. Peanut Hamper*

        That’s interesting. I normally hate those kinds of things because I want all the information right there in front of me, but I know my brain doesn’t work the way other people’s brains do. UX/UI for the win!

  13. Dr. Rebecca*

    I’m confused about so many things about #1, but mostly how she knew the CEO’s number. I work at a university, so it’d be comparable to calling one of our EVPs, and their numbers are locked up tighter than Fort Knox.

    1. run mad; don't faint*

      It depends on how large the office is, I suppose. I worked for a small non-profit. If my partner had to make a similar call for me and my boss wasn’t in, it was very possible the admin would have decided to rope in the CEO so all of the relevant info would have reached someone responsible.

      1. Dust Bunny*

        I do, too, and it would not be that hard for someone to call our ED by mistake. Nobody here is that hard to reach.

    2. londonedit*

      Yeah, I think it depends on the size and hierarchy of the company. Maybe she didn’t have the CEO’s direct line, but she called the main number and asked to speak to him. I can imagine if LW1’s mum didn’t know the name of their immediate line manager, but she’d heard of Fred Smith as ‘the boss’, she might have called and asked for Fred Smith because that was the only name she had. In some companies that would be the equivalent of trying to get Bill Gates on the phone, but in others it’d be far more usual. LW1 says the CEO is their ‘boss’s boss’, which in my case would be someone a good few levels below the CEO, but in smaller companies the CEO might have a lot more everyday interaction with staff.

      1. kalli*

        If someone called the main line and got put through to the CEO instead of reception taking a message and passing it to that person’s direct manager, there might be a receptionist on a final warning suddenly looking for a new job!

      2. Shift Work*

        Agreed, I think we hear CEO and think Big Company. But I worked for a group at one point where the Owner/CEO sat in an open office space with 3 other employees. He was 10 feet from the office phone and often answered it. Context certainly matters in LW’s scenario.

        1. londonedit*

          Yep, in my time in publishing I’ve worked for massive companies where the CEO wouldn’t have a clue who the individual editors working on individual imprints were, and for tiny companies where the CEO/owner sat in the same room as everyone else and often answered the phone. In that case if someone had called in sick they might well have ended up speaking directly to the CEO (who would simply have then said ‘Oh, Sally – that was Joe on the phone, he’s going to be off sick today’, because Sally would have been sitting 10 feet away).

    3. A Cat named Brian*

      Depends on the size of the town too. I live in a medium size town and am part of the Rotary club. Alot of CEOs and EDs in the club. If something happened to my daughter and my daughter was working for one of them, I could easily call one of them. Also the daughter could be 17 or 18 and working for one of Mom’s friends.

    4. Ginger Cat Lady*

      In a small enough company, she could have called the main line and just said she needed to talk to “someone in charge about an emergency with one of the employees” and been transferred to the CEO. My daughter works at a company of about 75 employees with no HR and while I’ve never called the company, I could totally see that happening there.
      A couple years ago I went to pick my daughter up after work a few times when she was on crutches and driving was hard. I went inside to carry her things for her and the CEO walked over and introduced himself to me. And has said hi to me and called me by name all three times he’s seen me since, including once at the airport! If tomorrow my daughter had a medical emergency and wasn’t able to call (or asked me to call), I do know my daughter’s direct supervisors name so that is who I would ask for. But if she wasn’t available when I called, I might ask to talk with the friendly CEO instead.

    5. NotRealAnonForThis*

      If you were to google my company, you’d find the main line. Chances are really good that the only name my parents could easily come up with at the switchboard might be the name of the CEO. From the LW’s comments upthreads stating that this is really not a “typical helicopter” moment on Mom’s part, I’ll give it grace.

    6. LW1*

      I mentioned it above but I was hospitalised after an injury that occurred at work the previous year, so Mum had the CEO’s number. It’s a fairly small business.

  14. Bosslady*

    #2 – I am in a niche role with a lot of promotion due to serving on a national board and I get LinkedIn messages and emails constantly. I used to take calls or meetings but they are such time sucks. Instead I developed a nice response email/message addressing the top 10 pieces of advice and answers to common questions with links to helpful resources. When someone messages me now I copy and paste that in my response. It takes one min and I have very rarely had pushback that someone needed even MORE info or advice than that!

    1. Biotech Mentor*

      I was going to say something similar – if you find yourself giving the same advice over and over again, write it down! If you’re comfortable creating a public LinkedIn post or blog post on the subject, it can even be seen as ‘thought leadership’ in your field (cringe). I also did an interview with a student publication at my grad school alma mater about my career journey, so I link people to that article as a way for them to learn how I got my job(s). People are happy to receive a response and occasionally have follow-up questions, but most of the time I can be helpful to early-career folks without having to schedule a 1:1 call.

  15. Not your typical admin*

    Mom here – and I could totally see myself doing exactly what the mom in the letter did. My thought process would have been that it’s better to give notice as early as possible, and with surgery and pain meds there would be no telling when my child was able to make that call. Plus, (selfishly) whenever there is a crisis and you feel out of control doing “something”‘regardless of how big or rational brings back at least a sense of control. I recently had a situation where I had to wait through the weekend on lab results for my son that could have possibly meant a very bad diagnosis. Thankfully it wound up being nothing, but I spent the whole weekend stress cleaning and meal prepping in case we wound up in the hospital for a lengthy time.

    1. PhyllisB*

      I think the mom did the right thing calling in but the question is, did she specifically ask for the CEO, or did he just happen to answer the phone? in a small company I can see the CEO picking up the call.

      1. Lily Potter*

        Right on above. I haven’t read all the comments, but we don’t have enough info from LW1’s letter to determine the size of their company. A company where LW1 is the “grandchild” of the CEO is either a) pretty small or if not that, b) the “grandchild” is pretty high up on the corporate latter if they’re reporting to someone who reports directly to the CEO. In either situation, it wasn’t out of line for someone to call the CEO and loop them in on LW1’s medical emergency. It would have been better if Mom had called LW1’s direct boss instead of the CEO but c’est la vie. The difference is not likely substantial here.

        I have the feeling that LW1 is more concerned about Mom being the one to make the the call rather than that Mom called the CEO. I wonder if LW1 would be second guessing it if their roommate had called he CEO instead? Or is it a “Mom” thing, as in “I don’t want to be seen as immature and having a parent call in to work for me”?

      2. Ginger Cat Lady*

        She could have been routed to the CEO by the receptionist, for all we know. If the company is too small to have an HR department, I could see that happening. Especially if the receptionist didn’t actually know who was OP1’s direct manager.

    2. Cacofonix*

      I disagree. Unless Mom had her adult child’s permission, a prior pattern of interfering that was normal for the relationship, or the adult child was going to be incapacitated until the next day, Mom is way overstepping. And that’s just about the family relationship. The act alone, once, shouldn’t hurt professionally with most bosses but the pattern of interfering absolutely would.

      1. Observer*

        or the adult child was going to be incapacitated until the next day,

        Well, the LW actually was incapacitated then next day, and beyond. If someone is being loaded into an ambulance after an accident like that, you know that the likelihood of that person being at work the next day are about zero. The sooner their workplace knows that the better.

        And Mom had good reason to consider the high likelihood that LW would still be in no condition to make the call the next day. Which turns out to have been accurate, based on the LW’s comment about waiting for surgery and being on strong medications.

  16. Alicent*

    Does anyone else just ignore 99% of LinkedIn requests they get? Mine are mostly recruiters and people who seem extremely out of touch about what I do to the point they sound like bots.

    1. bamcheeks*

      In my experience, most people do, which is why people like LW who try to get back to everyone end up getting swamped. It’s standard for both people in professional sales/recruitment roles to send out 50+ requests when you only need one yes because you know the vast majority of people won’t check or won’t respond even if they check!

      1. Lily Potter*

        Welcome to the electronic age. Throw a bunch of garbage into the electronic realm and hope something sticks. Unfortunately, this has also extended into the world of job applications. Everyone CAN easily apply for anything and everything, so people apply for positions they know they probably won’t get – “but hey, can’t hurt to apply, right?” – and employers get overwhelmed with applications. Then employers have to set up ATS systems to handle the overload, and legitimate applicants bemoan the fact that real humans don’t review their resumes. So applicants turn to LinkedIn and bomb everyone at the company trying to get one person there to respond to them, and the whole process repeats. Sure wish there was a better way.

    2. ScruffyInternHerder*

      Yup.

      When they go on about “chocolate teapot creation” as being such a great skill to have mastered….and in reality I’m a “master level llama groomer”…..::click::

    3. Sillysaurus*

      I’m sure I would completely ignore LinkedIn if I had an account; that’s why I’ve never made one! I read that letter and just thought “Delete your account, OP. So simple.”

    4. Keep it Simple*

      Yes. It is 99.99% garbage, especially when I have “only open to remote opportunities” checked, and I get spam for jobs that are 100% on site. Nope, no, go away. I think once I got a message for a legitimate job that I was interested in, but I had already known about it from a former colleague.

  17. Dust Bunny*

    LW5: You just do it.

    One of my coworkers just left for another job. My current/his now-former workplace is a really great place to work and nobody leaves unless they find something else they absolutely cannot pass up. We’re not mad; it’s not personal. People have to do try things in life.

  18. DramaQ*

    LW#1 I had my husband call my boss when I went into labor. I could have made the call myself but I wasn’t sure when exactly the show was going to get started and I didn’t want to announce that down the phone to my supervisor. My supervisor was surprised that my husband was calling but he didn’t consider it unprofessional. It was a situation where yeah in hindsight I could have likely called myself but we decided it was more prudent at the time for my emergency contact to reach out and tell my manager I was going to be out for the day. Since the CEO was cool with it he probably viewed it the same way it was a judgement call in the heat of the moment. That is partly why employers want emergency contacts on file so there is someone who can get ahold of them or vice versa in situations where you may not be capable of doing it yourself. I think it’s an extra layer of embarrassment in hindsight because it was your mom but I’d look at it more as since she was with you at the hospital she counted as your EC and your EC did what they are supposed to do. Better safe than sorry IMO because there are employers out there who wouldn’t be understanding and what if it turned out you needed to be out for several days? Calling in advance let him know what was going on and left the door open for you to elaborate once you were in a better state.

  19. DE*

    I don’t think there was any overstep in number 1. I think just a single day is often insufficient time to find quality coverage in many jobs. It makes sense to let someone know as soon as you know you won’t be in. Presumably OP would want as much time as possible were they in the opposite position.

    1. mreasy*

      It’s weird that the mom didn’t wait until OP was coherent and ask for their boss’s number. Presumably this puts notifying OP’s boss about the need for coverage on the CEO’s plate, which is not really efficient. OP’s mom doesn’t need to worry about whether their workplace can find a shift cover. This was an emergency.

      1. amoeba*

        I mean, to me it also sounds as if LW was, indeed, coherent?

        “I was cracking jokes with the ambulance workers and my lawnmower guy (who thankfully happened to arrive just after I fell, as I didn’t have my phone on me at the time).”

        Unless they actually broke down afterwards, that’s what would annoy me in their place – hey, I’m here, I’m awake, please just talk to me first? To me it reads as if she was making the call while the LW was away, waiting for a doctor to see them or whatever. And yeeeeah, it’s not that urgent that you can’t wait for an hour until you can ask me which way is best…

        1. Observer*

          I mean, to me it also sounds as if LW was, indeed, coherent?

          That kind of “coherent” is often a sign of the same lack of judgement that people refer to above what talking about “calls of brilliance” that are markedly not “brilliant.”

          It sounds like the LW would have insisted that there is no need to call and that they would “get to it tomorrow”, and would not have been a useful or reasonable response.

  20. I’ve Seen Things*

    Calling into the CEO: do people not use slack or, in an emergency, text (to their direct manager) for these things? Email? Did this person’s mother just pick up the phone and make a voice call??

    Look, if I were the CEO here, I’d totally get it, and it wouldn’t reflect badly on the employee (as long as it happened ONCE), but man would I be pissed at my mom for engaging with my work life in any way whatsoever, much less calling the CEO!!

    Resume: good lord, no. Put the dates, indicate what is contract work. You’re fine. Putting “2 years” will get your resume rejected (unless you’re, like, Oprah or something) – I even hate when people leave the months off (eg 2020-2021, Head Llama Counter at Llamas R Us); it feels slippery.

    If you’re not getting traction, it’s because there are a LOT of people on the market right now. Network, get yourself out there, and keep at it (and since this person said their wife is the one with the issue, thank your lucky stars that you have a partner to fall back on – not all of us do). It SUCKS out there.

    1. londonedit*

      If I was compos mentis, and I had my phone to hand, then yes I’d text my immediate line manager if I was ill/I’d had an accident and wouldn’t be able to come to work. But the point is that LW1 wasn’t compos mentis, they were out of it on painkillers and had a severely broken ankle. Their mum might not have had access to LW1’s phone, and might not have had their immediate boss’s mobile number. I really don’t think it’s an issue that she picked up the phone and called LW1’s workplace – that’s a pretty normal thing to do in my world, even these days! There’s a difference between unnecessary interfering and acting in an emergency – and the LW’s mother was doing the latter. She could see it was a serious situation, didn’t know when the LW would be available or able to call into work (out of it on painkillers and waiting for/recovering from surgery are not ideal times to be thinking making phone calls or sending messages) and wanted to let the LW’s boss know. Is that really so awful?

    2. Zelda*

      “man would I be pissed at my mom for engaging with my work life in any way whatsoever”

      I think that says more about your individual relationship with your mother than it does about LW1’s professional situation. In the LW’s case, it eventually transpired that they *were* in a condition to call, but it wasn’t necessarily going to turn out that way. If, hypothetically, you were injured in such a way that you were *not* able to call work, would you think it was better for your employer to hear nothing for a couple of days than for your mother to call?

    3. bamcheeks*

      do people not use slack or, in an emergency, text (to their direct manager) for these things? Email?

      Actually it’s been the rule that you have to phone and speak to someone to call in sick in most offices I’ve worked in! Most of the time I have had a way of contacting my manager on their personal mobile, but that’s really for informal contact and calling in sick means they need a work-approved record. And emails are non-synchronous and might get missed for a few hours. So it’s usually required to phone either your direct manager or something like the reception desk to make sure the message is passed on immediately and any appointments etc can be cancelled.

      1. londonedit*

        Yep, technically that’s the rule where I work, too. In practice we’re such a small team that we just have a WhatsApp group chat and we message there if we’re off sick, and then we do the official bit to log the absence on the system when we’re back. But according to the letter of the company handbook I am meant to phone my boss, or the main company number if I can’t get hold of my boss, to notify them ASAP if I’m ill.

    4. Ginger Cat Lady*

      Generally moms are not included in the slack for their kids’ work. (Can you imagine if they were!?!?! Chaos!) Nor do moms generally have the cell number of their kids’ managers. So if mom needed to do it, a voice call was the best option.
      Whether or not mom needed to do it is the issue, not the mode of communication.

      1. amoeba*

        Eh, it could have been e-mail as well, for us it would be – I don’t even have anybody’s phone number, not even work phone, as we do 100% of things either by mail or by Teams! And Teams is obviously not available for non-employees.

        But yeah, if you don’t know, you might assume that calling in is indeed required.

        1. JustaTech*

          The genuine advantage of calling is that you know if you have spoken to someone or not. A text or an email may or may not have been seen and acknowledged, whereas you know if you’ve talked to a live person.

          It won’t work in all situations, but here it makes sense.

    5. Keep it Simple*

      My husband would have absolutely no idea how to contact my work except by telephone if I got hit by a bus. He has no idea of my grandboss’s name, let alone her email or how to g-chat her. (We do not use Slack, thank god.) He would know how to find XX University’s main telephone number, and get connected to my department. The idea that someone’s emergency contact would know an email of a boss, or how to get onto a company Slack channel (really?? ) is unrealistic.

  21. Caramel & Cheddar*

    LW 1 – I think the overstep was calling the CEO (!), not calling in general. There’s no reason to call your grandboss, unless your actual boss was unavailable (which isn’t mentioned in the letter). I can see why she let your workplace know if you weren’t in a place to do so, but I’d be super annoyed if my mom called our CEO on an attendance matter when the CEO probably isn’t really equipped to do much about it. They’re certainly not going to do anything except forward that info to my actual boss, in which case why add an extra opportunity to play broken telephone?

    1. LW1*

      It’s a small company. The CEO certainly knows both my mother and I better than my actual boss does.

  22. Hastily Blessed Fritos*

    LW 1, why does your mom even *have* your boss’s boss’s (I think “CEO” here is a bit overdramatic, since anyone who doesn’t work at a very small company is going to assume that’s a big step up) phone number? Obviously she overstepped here in contacting them, but it seems like it could have been averted if she didn’t have that information.

    1. Cacofonix*

      Exactly. If I had a helicopter mom lacking in professional judgement like this, she wouldn’t get any concrete details about my workplace, never mind the CEO’s phone number.

      1. JustaTech*

        So, LW1 says upthread that their mom isn’t a helicopter mom, so we can put that line of thought to bed.

        It’s entirely possible that the mom called the main line and asked for or was put through to the CEO as the closest appropriate person, which might make complete sense depending on the size of the company.

        1. LW1*

          I mentioned above but I had an extended hospital visit the previous year which needed to be discussed and the CEO was the one that wanted to hear about it. (She’s great but can be a bit of a control freak at times). Mum kept her number from that convo and called her when the ankle incident happened.

  23. bob*

    LW5 reminds me of a lot of letters here or on reddit. I wonder how many people in the US have held intentionally themselves back in their own careers because they feel bad for the company, the manager, or the team. Whatever “team & mission” tactics these places are using to build this feeling seem to work well unfortunately”.

  24. Carol*

    LW 2 – One of my friends turns down informational interviews unless its for a first gen student, someone from the local college, or a POC. So your guidelines are not that restrictive at all.

    1. April*

      I agree with this. I’ve basically stopped doing informational interviews because people think I have the BEST JOB EVER (it is not and can be extremely problematic and abusive) and don’t want to hear anything to the contrary. I only make exceptions for people already in my broader industry who want to make a change to my specific sector and less advantaged undergrad students since most of my industry is at least moderately wealthy white people.

  25. HumblePye*

    I read the overstep as being the fact that LW1’s mom called the CEO vs the person’s manager. I’d be mortified if my parent went over my head to a big big boss whose time is valuable vs my manager whose job it would be to assess whether or not it needed to be shared up the line. The mom should have checked with LW1 if possible, but if not, the person to inform would be a manager vs CEO.

  26. SansaStark*

    LW5, one thing I did when I left a job/boss that I loved was to give them some extra notice over the standard 2 weeks. Beyond just being able to finish up a couple of big things, I think the gesture went a long way to say that I was only leaving because this opportunity was so amazing and not because of anything wrong with my current job/boss. New job didn’t mind the extra wait for me to start and it really helped preserve the relationship.

  27. Varthema*

    #5 could be a former coworker of mine (is that you??). We were super bummed when she left, both for interpersonal reasons (I miss her!) and for the project, but it was totally understandable and we didn’t blame her a bit. And to be honest, our company still somehow thinks it’s got a competitive offer, so every additional data point to the contrary is helpful to support our case. :-| Best of luck with the new job!!

  28. I should really pick a name*

    My wife has been job hunting for six months without an offer, and we’re open to trying just about anything to get her resume through the initial screening process

    Is the wife just not getting offers, or not getting interviews?
    If she’s getting interviews, then the focus shouldn’t be on the resume.

    2. 2 Cents*

      Honestly, in this job market, six months is not a long time.

      I assume she’s reached out to her LinkedIn network, optimized her LinkedIn profile, posted her profile on other job boards like Indeed, Dice and other industry-specific ones, and applied for jobs on places other than LinkedIn.

      I was laid off in November 2023, and my track record is the best with places where I know someone who’s working there already or the recruiter reaches out to me.

  29. I should really pick a name*

    I don’t see anything wrong with what #1’s mother did, regardless of whether they were scheduled to work that day or the next day.

    The LW definitely isn’t going in to work, they’re not in a good mental state, and they’ve suffered a significant injury.

    Better to deal with the work situation sooner rather than later. Why wait until the next day to provide shorter notice?

    The mother calling in this situation is not going to reflect poorly on the LW.

  30. Mermaid of the Lunacy*

    LW#1: In stressful situations, many people who are on the sidelines and feel helpless just look for ANYTHING they can do to help. Women especially – we are hard-wired to take care of everyone and everything. When the way to help isn’t immediately obvious, we make things up! Ask me how I know (cleaning out my in-laws’ fridge and cleaning the house top to bottom when my MIL was in the hospital.)

    1. Elsewise*

      That was my thought too- Mom might have been panicking a bit. I’ve had to call my mom in an emergency before, and her reaction is to immediately do ANYTHING to help, regardless of whether it’s actually helpful or needed. (One time my house burned down and my parents drove two hours to pick me, my partner, and our rabbit up and take us to their place. Helpful! My aunt was staying with them at the time and when we arrived had lined up all of the napkins, paper towels, and towels in the house in size order in case we needed to clean ourselves up. Slightly less helpful, but still appreciated.)

      Even today, I guarantee you that if I called my mom to tell her I broke my ankle she would be reacting from a place of “child is hurt, must protect the baby” rather than “my 30-something adult professional daughter has her own health insurance and doctor and local emergency contacts and has this in hand.”

    2. Not your typical admin*

      Yes! There is a strong desire to do “something”, not matter what. When my best friends young son broke his arm and wound up having to have surgery I went and brought enough food for days to her house even though between her, her husband, and 18 year old son they would have been perfectly capable of taking care of themselves. Sometimes we want to do anything to relieve any kind of burden.

  31. Panda (she/her)*

    LW 2 – I had much the same thing happening on LinkedIn and now get a lot of internal people looking for informational interviews or coffee chats because they want to move to my team. I don’t have time for 1:1s consistently, so I tried the office hours thing…and realized that most people who wanted coffee chats with me didn’t actually show up. Which tells me that either they wanted to try and finagle a job out of me, or they didn’t actually want to put any effort into showing up. What it did give me was a great way of weeding out the people who were actually curious and those who just wanted to get the inside scoop on jobs.

    1. Aspiring Chicken Lady*

      I have also used follow up questions to weed folks out — “What specifically would you like to talk about during the meeting? How far have you gotten in your research of [my subject area of interest]? What is your goal for the meeting/what would you like to learn?”

    2. Lily Potter*

      I often see written advice given to new grads about requesting informational interviews/coffee chats, particularly through my alma matter. The world sometimes does a great disservice to new grads – their college mentors and alumni support make it sound like if the grad can just get in front of someone, the new job will flow right to them! I think that some of them think of coffee chats as pseudo job interviews, where the new grad will answer questions about themselves and come out with a job offer. They don’t realize that they’re supposed to be learning in the interview, not interviewing for a job. It’s pretty telling if they won’t bother to articulate ahead of time what their goals are for the coffee chat, beyond “I need a job.”

  32. nnn*

    Reading between the lines here, but if LW#1 (or anyone else in their position) feels the need to apologize for or mitigate their mother’s actions, a useful script might be something like “I apologize for my mother overstepping – she didn’t realize I wasn’t expected in to work that day, and didn’t know which of the contact in my phone was the right person to call.” (Possibly, if true and/or sufficiently plausible, “…used the contact in my phone that had the company name in it.”)

    Reasoning: this feels so mortifying because a lot of people perceive having a mother who’s over-involved in one’s employment as unprofessional and/or not very grown up.

    So framing it this way positions it as your mother making the decisions she did precisely because she’s not over-involved in your employment, e.g. didn’t know that you weren’t working today, didn’t know who your boss is, etc.

  33. spiffi*

    LW#5 – one of my colleagues had an amazing opportunity fall into his lap about 10 years ago – he told us that he was offered his “dream job” – and while we were really sad to lose him, we understood!

    And then – as it turned out – a couple of years later, he came back to say “you know, the dream job…wasn’t?” and we were able to hire him back!

  34. Cacofonix*

    OP#1, unlike the prevailing opinion, I think Mom calling was 100% undermining the OP full stop. It was completely unnecessary and unprofessional especially given these circumstances. The only way I could see it as acceptable is if Mom asked OP if she would like her to call on her behalf first. If so, to whom she should call and what to say. OP was out of it temporarily, not incapacitated.

    It could have been a text or email Mom could help compose from OP to her boss. No question Mom deserved a rebuke in this case. That said, if I were the boss, or even grand boss, and this was a one time thing, it wouldn’t bother me. Fine, judgement sometimes goes out the door with parents when they are worried about their kid. But if Mom intervened more than that in non urgent situations, I’d take that as a data point about my employee’s maturity.

    1. I strive to Excel*

      I don’t know if that’s entirely fair. If Mom is calling about non-urgent situations, sure, that’s not a good look. But having one’s parent be one’s emergency contact is very normal and I certainly wouldn’t consider it odd for the parent to be the one calling in to report a medical emergency.

    2. Ginger Cat Lady*

      It wasn’t “unprofessional” for the mom because the mom isn’t the one working there or subject to any professional norms with that company.
      It wasn’t “unprofessional” for the injured person, because she’s not the one to make the phone call.
      It’s ridiculous to call this “unprofessional” and your answer is really harsh. You’re making assumptions that this is a pattern when OP says elsewhere in this thread that it is not a pattern at all.

      1. LW1*

        Thank you – it’s absolutely not a sign of my mother. She is a gem and I know she means the best for me; just this particular incident bothered me so I sought opinions. She does not make a habit of this – I do not live with her – and she only came over because my lawn mower man called her saying “err, I think she needs an ambulance”. The only times she’s intervened (again with the CEO as my manager isn’t always available) is when I’ve been hospitalised.

  35. NobodyHasTimeForThis*

    I think the overall takeaway from the first letter is whoever your medical emergency contact is should be given an appropriate work contact. Appropriate is your discretion.

    My best friend at my last job had a mom who was very helicoptery so despite the fact that I was nowhere in her chain, I was the number that she gave her mom as the work contact. Friend trusted me to filter appropriately the information mom would call in. (No her boss did not need to know she needed to take it easy for a few days because of cramps. Yes her boss did need to know about the car accident that put her in the ICU)

  36. heyella*

    LW 4: I work in an aspect of the hiring process and leaving dates off might be okay for some roles but would totally backfire for my organization, where we are oftentimes seeing how many years of work experience has post-degree. If we cannot verify that within materials and we already have a strong pool, we mark the application as incomplete.

  37. Rock*

    Re #4: the same applies for rental applications. I left off that I lived with family friends for three months once, and my eventual landlord asked me about the gap in dates more out of concern than anything. I told him that I was not unhoused, but I wasn’t paying rent so didn’t think it was applicable. Lesson learned.
    (I miss that landlord. He was good. The roommates ended up stabbing me in the back).

  38. NotARealManager*

    LW1,

    You had a major injury and were hospitalized. Even if you seemed coherent and told your mom you didn’t need to work that day, it’s reasonable she wouldn’t trust that information and that she inform your workplace.

    From the employer side, it wouldn’t be weird at all to hear from someone’s friend/family member that an employee was hospitalized for an undetermined amount of time even if I wasn’t expecting them on that day.

  39. Dog momma*

    #1. I’d rather have someone call in & not wait bc
    if its family, they might have to get your prescriptions, have you stay with them etc. Esp since it’s a bad break. It could possibly got forgotten. Now you’re on PTO & your pay will be correct.
    of course if you pulled this on me( did you even talk to your mom? ), you could be on your own next time.
    Someone does something nice for you, someone cares, & that’s your attitude. SMH.

      1. LW1*

        And yes, my Mum and I are extremely close. I was just wondering if this was the “normal thing” or if it was strange, because I have nothing to compare it to. I can assure you – whether you believe it or not is your call – I have needed and absolutely appreciated her help. So yeah, don’t SMH me. Thanks.

  40. Cosmo*

    LW #3 hit a note with me.

    While sometimes standards differ between teams. Sometimes it can just be the managers style. I was chatting with a peer manager the other day. We have similar approaches to getting work done, but our management styles couldn’t be more different. He’s a more traditional “here’s the work, here’s what I expect, get it done.” I’m more collaborative and more of a coach and cheerleader. Somethings that would be unacceptable on his team (like missing staff meetings) were things I chose not to stress about and likewise things that were 100% mandatory in my team (like weekly status reports) were optional for him.

    It could also be that some folks are held to a higher standard because of their experience or career goals or even personalities. I’ve managed folks who are great performers who asked me to give more critical feedback. I’ve also been harder on folks who I’m preparing for promotions or other career moves. Their work may be acceptable for their current role, but I’m pushing them to grow their skills so they can move up.

  41. Texas Teacher*

    In May during my lunch break, I was dragged off my feet by the neighbor’s dog and broke my pelvis. My sister found my Team Lead’s phone number in my phone can called then texted her that I was being taken from a stand alone er to a hospital.

    Yes I apologized to my team lead about my sister’s repeated attempts to get in touch with her. Sis did not know my team lead was on vacation. Sis did know that I was going to be on painkillers and that given my medical history of reactions to both pain killers and sedatives I was going to be orbiting Pluto.

    The thing that really ticked me off was even though I was in a hospital then a physical rehab facility and on FMLA. I had to wake up each moring at 6 am and call in, until they got all the paperwork figured out. That happened the day before I came back to work.

  42. Bruce*

    LW1: as a manager I’d say that if someone has suffered an accident I’m not going to hold it against them if a family member contacts me to let me know.
    Texas Teacher: OUCH! wow, and having to call in at 6 AM each day? Sheesh!

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