updates: is my preferred name too cringy, banning money collections, and more

by Alison Green on December 18, 2024

It’s “where are you now?” month at Ask a Manager, and all December I’m running updates from people who had their letters here answered in the past. Here are three updates from past letter-writers.

1. Is my preferred name too cringy to get interviews? (#3 at the link)

I did take the advice I saw from others and changed my resume to show my legal name, and then subtly place my preferred name somewhere else, but I still haven’t found a paying job. However, I did get an internship through my school, and I’m now in the work-based learning program! I’m not going by my preferred name there, but I did tell my boss about it, and she said it was “unprofessional,” which I understood and told her the name I would like to go by (middle name), and she seemed happy with that. I haven’t told my coworkers though, and I’m honestly not 100% sure if I should. I doubt they would care, but I feel like it would be better if it were mentioned in passing by a friend coming in while I’m working or something and calling me my preferred name.

Please make sure to tell everyone that I appreciate all the helpful comments! I loved the support and ideas to make sure people still knew I did go by a different name

2. Should I ban money collections on our team? (#4 at the link)

It’s been more than a year since I’ve been a manager. I wrote in wanting to streamline birthdays and other occasions at work. I had the first department meeting with my team and included this in an overall talk about my expectations.

Basically, that we were all there to make money and they did not need to feel pressured to give to buy gifts for others. That they did not ever need to buy me anything. I did not want them soliciting co-workers for anything: social causes, birthdays, showers, weddings, etc. I would buy a cake and card if anyone wanted to have their birthday acknowledged. (And set up a clipboard to sign up for this.)

The look of relief on most of my team was encouraging. I told them if they had any concerns they could speak to me privately. The only person with a problem was the secretary who had been handling this. She was upset as “giving gifts was her love language” and no one had complained before. (Gifts with other peoples’ money.)

I told her people who aren’t getting gifts may feel slighted. Others can’t afford to keep contributing but may not feel comfortable saying anything. She was teary. I told her she wasn’t doing anything wrong, but I was in charge now, and going forward this is how we’re proceeding.

She wanted to do a Secret Santa so I wanted to be fair and let people vote anonymously on it — and most people said no. I took them all out for a holiday lunch instead.

3. We’re switching to unlimited PTO and I feel cheated (#4 at the link)

I wrote in that my company decided to switch to open PTO and only gave us three weeks’ notice.

The policy is officially “open PTO” and that means it is no longer separated by sick time, vacation time, personal time, etc. I wrote unlimited interchangeably because I think most people understand what unlimited PTO is versus open PTO. I am sorry for the confusion.

Our fiscal year ended on Sept 30 (which was a Monday) and the staff meeting we had to “discuss” the issue was on Sept 10 (a Tuesday). We got the email about the change late the day before. In the meeting, I specifically asked about compensation since, thanks to AAM, I know it was a FY24 expense. I think it never occurred to anyone to pay out the up-to-40 hours for any and all employees. I left the meeting and immediately looked at my schedule to see how many of my remaining hours I was able to take off. I only lost 8 hours at the end.

The update is not that exciting. We did not push back on the timing. I am not sure if any of my colleagues took more time off in September. My company is setting a minimum of 15 days, 5 of which must be consecutive. Many are worried about the line between taking time and abuse, and it was suggested to just take as many as we would have gotten had we been given a set number. I therefore gave myself a raise in my time off, and several others have as well. As long as the work gets done, no one seems to be concerned about too much time abuse. They did clearly state that this does not get paid out if you leave the company. Some of the commenters mentioned that. There are many sucky things about this situation but I think most of us have just accepted it and moved on. It would have been nice to have more of a heads up about the situation. I know they probably didn’t have things confirmed, but even a simple “Hey, we are considering this change to be effective in October so use your days” in July would have been nice. The only other issue I have is that our company wide winter break is not happening. HR acknowledged that there will probably be a lot of PTO being used that week–and that is okay–but as one of the few customer-facing roles, it was nice that everyone was off at the same time, and not just me because I feel like it.

The silver lining for me is that my spouse’s time off schedule is January to December (which is one reason I rolled over 5 days), so at least with it being open, I don’t have to deal with managing our vacation time on two schedules. And when my water meter had to be changed last week, I just took the day off rather than do data entry from home, because it’s not like I needed to work to save a vacation day for an actual vacation.

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{ 37 comments }

{ 37 comments… read them below or add one }

  1. Spicy Tuna*

    Ugh, Ugh UGH, 5 days in a row would KILL me! I would be completely out of the groove and it would be impossible to get back into work mode. Glad it worked out for the OP though

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    2. Beth**

      My UK employer has a soft requirement that we take 10 consecutive work days off each leave year. (“Soft” in the sense that it’s required for certain specific roles and encouraged for the rest of us.) Feeling that you can’t take a full week off therefore feels very odd to me.

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    3. Goldfeesh*

      In a lot of financial companies, think stock trading, you are required to take at least 5 days off once a year to basically screw you up in case you were in on an illegal trading scheme. It would be harder to manipulate things if you were gone.

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      1. Strive to Excel*

        Not just in financial companies. It’s a recommended policy in a lot of finance positions across multiple industries. The NIST recommendation is actually at least 2 work weeks.

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    4. The Unspeakable Queen Lisa*

      That’s extremely melodramatic and obviously untrue. In fact, based on your OTT reaction, I’d say you definitely need to take a week (or more) off to see that the world does not end.

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    5. Retired Vulcan Raises 1 Grey Eyebrow*

      At FinalJob at least 10 consecutive days was compulsory. We were engineering/manufacturing (in Germany), not finance so I think it was mostly for health and work/life balance reasons.
      However, it would have probably also uncovered anyone who was e.g. doing very substandard work or not following required procedures & docu.

      Most people took 3 weeks plus a few shorter vacations (not unlimited PTO, but we had 32 days vacation+ 6 weeks sick per incident) Some took 6 weeks vacation over the winter holiday season. No drama and the work got done.
      Eeveryone seemed back in work mode by the end of their 1st day back without noticeable problems.

      Reply ↓
    8. Trixie melodian*

      So you’ve never taken any kind of proper overseas trip? I’ve just got back from 3 weeks in Italy and I’m squirreling away the remainder of my leave and public holidays to get 2 weeks at Christmas (when our team pretty much shuts down).

      Being unable to take a week off speaks to me of serious stress and burnout.

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  2. I should really pick a name*

    and then subtly place my preferred name somewhere else

    I’d love to know the details of how one does this.

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      1. Prefer my furballs*

        100%

        This is not going from everyone knowing you as Susan while preferring Suzie.

        Honestly this name is so far out there (not to mention inconveniently long) that if I heard a friend call a coworker that I would assume it was some sort of inside-joke related nickname not a preferred name. I’m pretty nonchalant about names & preferred names (I don’t blink at the entire family I know who are all named for berries, using names from other cultures, weird spellings, or even my coworker whose name is very “my parents were hippies of the disney variety” though I did ask the latter if she preferred to go by her given name or a nickname & she leapt at a chance to have me help share her preferred nickname)
        This particular chosen name… I would not expect to see it as a preferred name anywhere except music or film industries. If it makes them happy, I’d learn to roll with it but still… oof.

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    3. But Of Course*

      You don’t. You either announce “I would prefer to be called X” (seems bad when your boss has already called your main-character-energy name unprofessional) or you create a situation where your coworkers think you invited your fellow furry or ww2 losing-side enthusiast to meet you at work, in front of them, and call you by an over-the-top nickname, which a) is going to come off as weird, and b) isn’t going to convey to them that they should immediately adopt a name many of them are not going to see as a name. There is nothing about this plan that would work, and I would probably be most mortified personally if I hatched a plan that required a friend to come talk to me in front of my coworkers instead of just saying “call me X” and took the consequences of that choice.

      I think it’s worth noting that many people (maybe most people?) censor parts of themselves for the work world. A lot of the oddest missteps that stand out to me over years of reading AAM are the ones where someone is DETERMINED to bring their whole self to work … and force their coworkers to call their partner “master”, use unusual neopronouns in work correspondence, decide they no longer have a name, or engage in constant proselytizing or emotional control. While issues of identity are important and everyone has a right to self-identify, there’s merit to deciding that you’re fine with going by Wolf professionally at this point in time but your close friendships are with people who will call you Wolfskull Shadow Bones.

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        1. Trixie melodian*

          Yea, Wolf/Wolfgang is a not uncommon European name. You could definitely get away with Wolf.

          Wolfskull on the other hand…

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    1. Storytime*

      Late in the day…working from home due to COVID ended the policy of collecting money for events. LW noted some of the problems.

      Let me add what happened at my shop. Staff (spearheaded by the group admin) gave funds for Boss’s Day for a person who (you guessed it!) was often unpleasant and parsimonious. Staff collected for the Boss’s birthday as well, also spearheaded by the group admin. As luck would have it Boss’s Day and Boss’s Birthday are very close on the calendar.

      Finally, Boss had a birthday policy for everyone else. If you wanted birthday acknowledgement, you had to purchase the cake, cupcake or whatever and bring it to work to share. Sometimes people bought in cakes, but would really resent it when Boss would help themselves to the food.

      Working from home due to Covid put a stop to all this. We are now hybrid. A co-worker hired on during Covid inquired about acknowledging Boss’s birthday. They said Boss put them up to it. I told them no and provided the backstory. Unsure about the professional wisdom, but not it cannot start again.

      The group now acknowledges birthdays and Boss’s Day via email. I am very happy about that.

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    2. Just Another Cog*

      I second this! I sure wish you, OP #2 was my boss at my last job! The constant fundraising for “occasions” was awful. I got so sick of being informed that my share was $20(!), that I did say that it was starting to get expensive for me, which got me eyerolls. When I mentioned it to our manager in private, she agreed that it was getting excessive, but never did a thing about it. We had two in the office who did the shopping on their own and it got more and more expensive as the years wore on. Last I heard, those two had both moved on.

      Reply ↓
  4. Miss Chanandler Bong*

    We have flexible PTO at my office. I have found it largely depends on the company, manager, and role, but it works very, very well for my company. They declared a day off for my department that wasn’t an official day off, but we could all take it. I got sick right after starting and didn’t have to worry about time off. There are specific times you can’t take off with my role anyway, and then we have lulls in workload where we take off. I took over a week off in October and I’m off again for a week in January. I also have the luxury of taking a day if I need it if we’ve been in a stressful period.

    My advice is to ask about what other time is provided off. My company also provides generous time off for holidays and parental leave, as well as your birthday off, so this was a good indicator of how their culture is surrounding flexible PTO.

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    1. Lexi*

      One thing that people at my company have found is that bosses seem to think unlimited time off is roughly equivalent to the amount of time off you had when unlimited went into effect.

      Problem is that if you’ve been there for years and would have moved to a higher time off band on the old policy, they don’t mentally make that adjustment.

      I recommend that if your company is making this switch to unlimited, grab a copy of the old policy as backup in case you ever need to drop into a conversation that in the old days, you had enough tenure for an extra week off.

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  5. Always Tired*

    Wolfskull Shadow Bones C! Thank you for the update. I have to agree with the boss that it isn’t the most professional name, but think of it as a larger part of code switching from work to social. (plenty of us do it in more subtle ways, I know a gal by Sam, but she is only every Samantha at work, a Beth Anne who is Beth at work and Anne to friends, etc.) Who I am at work is not who I am outside of work, and that’s pretty normal to an extent. By day I’m a friendly but no nonsense HR lady, and by night I am a glammed up metalhead who will never pass the opportunity for a dirty joke and curses enough to make a sailor blush.

    Also, as other speculated, I fear still having the full preferred name on the resume, even if it isn’t at the top, may come across as too precious.

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    1. Retired Vulcan Raises 1 Grey Eyebrow*

      Yes, a resume with even a “subtle” (?) inclusion of “Wolfskull Shadow Bones C” as your name would be binned by almost any prospective employer.

      If you genuinely want a job then I recommend rejoicing in your preferred name in your private/social life and sticking to something conventional for your job applications and work life.

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      1. Zona the Great*

        I’m confused about this because it does appear that this person gave out their real name. Unless someone went out and made an IG profile with this name.

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    2. Strive to Excel*

      In fairness, the job market right now is terrible for people with the whitest of white bread names and impeccable resumes. I agree that there could be some steps taken to make the name more professional, but sometimes it takes time.

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  7. Three Flowers*

    #1, please know I want to say this really kindly and I apologize if it doesn’t come across that way. I think it’s great that you are known at work by a different name, and I hope that (based on your first letter) that doesn’t cause any dysphoria for you! But you should know that when your boss says your preferred name seems unprofessional, part of what she means is it sounds really, really immature. I’m not goth so I don’t know how it reads in the subculture, but as a person who’s probably close to your boss’s age or maybe a little younger, my first impression is, and this is harsh but honest, 1990s fanfiction.net username of a 16-year-old. (Which tells you something about me, and is totally fine…on the internet! At an open mic! But not at work!) So yes, using a different name at work probably is going to help you be taken seriously…but you may want to keep an open mind about using a more conventional name in other settings too. Buying a car/getting a car loan, signing a lease, getting a doctor to believe your symptoms (which, depending on your gender and racial presentation, may be challenging anyway), etc are all things where you lead with your name and you very much need to come across as a mature adult. And yes, you will have better luck in your job search.

    Also, don’t try to subtly work in your name in your application materials if it’s not the name on your resume and the one you use at work. People will be confused at best, and at worst, they’ll think you copy-pasted a cover letter and forgot to even fix your own name.

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    1. FricketyFrack*

      I’m glad I’m not the only one who thought “fanfic name” with that – it wouldn’t be out of place in My Immortal, and like it or not, it just won’t go over well with the vast majority of people. There are plenty of goth-leaning names that aren’t so over the top. Wolf? A little unusual but totally fine. Shadow? Eh, maybe the parents were just a little out there. Bones? Probably not a great idea. Wolfskull Shadow Bones C? I would assume that person is A Lot, especially with the added context of it being a chosen name.

      I appreciate you adding other settings where that name is likely to be a hindrance. Obviously this is a place to focus on work, but there are a lot of areas where, like it or not, people will judge and make it a problem.

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      1. Three Flowers*

        I also thought of My Immortal but went with a slightly less niche comparison! (Somehow I actually got through the late 90s/early 00s on ffnet without reading it and I’m sure it’s beyond obscure now. Fellow commenters, if you’re wondering what we’re talking about, it is arguably the most legendarily bananapants fanfic ever written. Google with care and hold onto your butt.)

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  8. Retired Vulcan Raises 1 Grey Eyebrow*

    #1 I think this is an example of where you should NOT bring your whole self to work, just the sanitised professional version
    e.g. I am a naturist but I never turned up at work in the noddy – or turned up nude to a job interview.

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    1. mcdonalds grimace*

      I have a lot of warm feelings towards you Wolfskull and think its really cool that you’ve picked something that feels right for you – but, yes, as someone who is queer & ND & a bunch of other stuff, unfortunately the ‘bring your whole self to work’ is for a very few number of people. The rest of us, well, we need money to live too.
      While I do think its important to be honest on your resume & cover letter, it is also a marketing tool, and you are conveying to your employer ‘I am good at what I do and my work would be an asset to the business and I will make my team’s workload and work life easier’.
      So anything that would be considered ‘quirky’ needs to smoothed out a little. A little dash of personality but not too much! It’s very difficult to strike this balance, however.
      I do think there’s something to be said for name-based discrimination (we assume a lot of things about people based on their names – their gender, their race, their background and class, and by extension how good they’ll be at their job) so it is unfortunately normal for people who have ordinary names, to choose a slightly different name for their resume.

      Overall – unless you are blessed enough to not really need a job – I would probably leave your chosen name off your resume.

      Reply ↓
  9. Yes Anastasia*

    I suggest that the LW from the first update use their middle name on their resume. LW, your middle name is a name you are happy using at work, so there’s no need to confuse the matter and put the burden on your boss and coworkers to decide which of three different names they should call you.

    (If you are concerned about job references recognizing your name, you can include your first initial – for instance, E. Allan Poe, perhaps with a note accompanying your references that you’ve previously gone by Edgar.)

    If you ever find yourself in a job where the vibes are right, you can let people know you also go by Wolfskull – but very few workplaces will fit this criteria.

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  10. Anonymous White Collar 420 Enthusiast*

    OP1: I am a big ol’ stoner and I leave my pot leaf earrings for the weekend. I am able to share info on knowledgeable and helpful local medical dispensaries with folks at work when appropriate (read: when someone asks if I know anything about medical use I tell them Bernie’s Bud has a reputation for great education and Genna’s Greenery has a reputation for really helpful staff but Farrah’s 420 aren’t known to be very welcoming, they don’t need to know how I know).

    But do I hang “my drug of choice is Jesus, oh wait it’s weed” cross stitch on my office wall? No. Do I take bong rips with clients? Holy bananas, no. There are some parts of myself that are just for me and my off the clock world. I also don’t provide my professional services off the clock! Same idea, just in reverse.

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  11. Brooklynlite*

    Depending on the state, you might not be able to make Wolfskull Shadow Bones C a legal name change. I think that’s a huge part of what separates it from an unusual but still “professional” name. I do wonder if slipping it into your applications is actually hurting you. Maybe run your materials by Alison privately.

    Reply ↓
  12. Elio*

    OP#2 you rule! I am not in favor of pressure to donate money at work, so I’m glad you policy is to not allow it.

    I am not surprised one of the people has a “love language” of giving gifts with other people’s money.

    Reply ↓

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