an employee we fired is making “inspirational” LinkedIn posts about it, grand jury duty will eat up 15% of my pay for the year, and more

by Alison Green on July 17, 2024

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

1. An employee we fired keeps making “inspirational” posts about it on LinkedIn

About four months ago, I had to fire an employee due to performance issues. She was a generally nice person, but unfortunately fell short of expectations so we had to let her go. We gave her severance and allowed her three months to quietly transition out of her role. We allowed her to announce her departure to the rest of the team as if it were a normal resignation.

However, a couple weeks after she left, I was shocked to see a post of hers on LinkedIn. She publicly announced that she had been let go from our organization and that she was looking for work. I was baffled as to why someone would announce that so publicly. However, I decided to ignore it, because what could I do? Unfortunately, the posts continued, documenting her job search journey, and how every day was about exercising “resilience” and “dealing with challenges.”

My concern is that this will affect morale among my staff. I don’t want them to think that they will be affected by mass layoffs, but I also don’t want to compromise my former employee’s privacy. What is the best way to address this issue with my team? And is it a possibility to ask my former employee to no longer mention the organization in her posts?

Leave it alone. Your team isn’t going to worry about mass layoffs just because they learn one person was fired. It’s going to be clear to them that you allowed her an exit with dignity, which if anything they’re likely to appreciate.

Let your former employee do whatever she’s going to do. Definitely don’t ask her to stop mentioning your organization; that will come across as heavy-handed and will cause more drama if she starts telling people that.

If most of your employees know you to be a generally reasonable person who doesn’t fire people punitively, this won’t be a big deal. But get involved, and it will start looking weirder.

2. Coworker escalated a problem with how I use my Outlook calendar to our VP

My colleague and I are both licensed engineers who have to alternate weeks where we work overnight on a large project (9pm-4am). On weeks where we are not working overnight, we schedule daytime site visits and catch up with our respective project management teams. Site visits generally last 2-4 hours. We each work with two teams almost exclusively. Two junior level engineers also work with two teams, but they have us check their work before finalizing anything.

Last week, Ann, a project manager from one of the teams that work with a junior engineer decided to bypass her by putting a morning site visit on my calendar for a week that I would be working overnight. She then sent me a message about it, citing budget reasons for cutting out the project engineer. I informed her that I would not be able to make it because I work nights that week, but the project engineer could attend and review with me in the afternoon.

She became frustrated and said that wouldn’t be possible because her budget won’t allow for two engineers to be duplicating work. She went on to tell me that my colleague and I should have put our rotating night shifts in our Outlook calendars so she could coordinate with us. I ignored this message because it didn’t seem productive.

Today, my colleague and I received a message from our company’s executive VP, telling us that we had to update our calendars and specifically stated that Ann was trying to schedule a site visit with one of us but our calendars don’t accurately reflect our availability. I asked my colleague if Ann had reached out to him and he said she had not. We both told the VP that we would update our calendars and left it at that.

However, I am not happy with Ann or how the VP handled this escalation. When my colleague and I originally took on these shifts, we had a discussion with the VP and other managers about the project duration (over a year) and everyone acknowledged that this would impose greatly on our regular work, as well as our personal lives. We worked out an arrangement where we have a standing notification of our modified availability for the project duration on our messaging platform, as well as a change to our working hours on Outlook. In addition to this, we have an open line of communication with the teams we work with and are very responsive to them. They don’t really use the calendar as a communication tool and also prefer direct messages, calls, and texts. They know what weeks we are on or off and schedule things accordingly, so we never felt the need to input our alternating shifts on our calendar. I understand that coworkers outside of these groups may need me, but in those cases they always chose to send me a message asking when I had time.

I feel that it’s disrespectful for someone on a team that is not connected to us can dictate how we organize our calendars, but I feel unable to draw and enforce a boundary if the VP has been made aware of the situation and ultimately sided with Ann.

It’s not unreasonable to say that your calendar should accurately reflect your availability.

I think you’re frustrated because Ann could have avoided all of this by just communicating with you directly, and you feel like you have a system that works for you and the people who work with most often — and you’re already carrying the burden of having these overnight shifts for a year! But “please make sure your calendar accurately reflects your availability so people you don’t work with as frequently are in the loop too” is really pretty reasonable. It’s not so much someone outside your team (Ann) dictating your work habits as it is a VP in your management chain saying, “Hey, this isn’t working as broadly as it needs to so please change it.”

3. I’ve been called for grand jury duty — and it would eat up 15% of my pay for the year

I have been in my job as an executive assistant for almost 2.5 years. I work for the president of the division and am happy. But I just received a jury summons, not for regular jury duty, but for grand jury duty. It’s scheduled for 1-3 days per month for the next 18 months and the summons lists the specific days per month. And it’s not even my local county court, it’s federal district court in a city 80 miles away. I have no issue in general with serving jury duty, and would have no problem with serving a regular jury summons, but the time commitment on this summons is egregious. Not to mention the time and costs of driving 80 miles one way three days per month. (The court would pay mileage and parking, plus $50 per day.) It’s potentially 54 days over the next year and a half. The jury duty policy at my job covers five paid days and I assume I’d be expected to take the remaining 49 days unpaid or use vacation to cover it. Not to mention the fact that my work would suffer and I would not be able to take a real vacation for the next 18 months, as I would be using all of my vacation days for the jury duty.

I submitted a hardship request to the court online and was told that having a job isn’t an excuse and I need to come to court the first day and plead my case to the judge. If I am unable to get out of this duty, and I am stuck missing 54 days of work, what recourse do I have to fight against the five-day paid policy in place at my job? Not being paid for 54 or even 49 days equals around 15% of my salary — it’s not a small amount that I can just forgo. Is there language I can use to ask my HR to rewrite the policy?

My boss told me he would have the head of HR write me a letter to assist when I go to court to try to get me out of it, but the head of HR offered no other assistance, other than pointing me to the policy. In a very brief conversation with one of the lower ranking HR members, she said she didn’t think anyone at the company had ever been summoned for grand jury duty and she imagined they’d have to rewrite the policy if I ended up having to serve. So what can I do? My summons date is August 20 and I’m not sure if I should force a conversation with HR before that day, especially since I am hoping to get out of it. But in case I am unlucky enough to not get out of it, I don’t want to be stuck losing part of my salary through no fault of my own.

In most states, you’ll be able to appeal to the judge to be excused based on financial hardship; explaining the situation (that your job won’t pay you for more than five days off, this will be 15% of your salary for the year, and you’d have to drive 80 miles each way every day) should give you a good shot at being excused. However, be careful about what your company puts in that letter; it being inconvenient for them will be much less compelling than documenting the fact that they will only pay you for five of the days off. (In fact, some courts won’t even accept letters from employers pleading hardship at all; they’re focused on the hardship to prospective jurors, not to their employers.)

If for some reason you’re not excused, you — and ideally some of your coworkers, who could also be affected by this if they’re summoned in the future — should lobby your company for a change to their policy. Many companies pay the difference between the jury pay and your normal pay; it’s not an outlandish thing to request, particularly in a situation like yours.

Some potentially helpful legal info: Some states require employers to pay you for all or part of jury duty. To find out if yours does, search the name of your state and “jury duty employer pay” (no quotes). Also, if you are exempt, you must receive your full salary for the workweek if you work any part of it (although they could still require you to use paid vacation time for it, which isn’t really what you want).

Read an update to this letter. 

4. My boss’s boss’s boss saw me wearing shorts to work

I tried to circumvent the cardinal rule of men’s dresswear: don’t wear shorts. I figured that it was the summer, hot, and I was walking to work.

However, this is the day that my great-grandboss happened to be in. Do I excuse myself when I next see him?

Eh. Is he someone you talk to regularly? And someone who’s likely to care? If so, sure, when you next see him you could mention it. But if you don’t talk to him regularly and/or don’t have a specific reason to think he’d even remember, it would be overkill.

The better move is just not to wear things to work that you’ll feel uncomfortable being seen in by a higher-up. I’m sympathetic to walking to work in the heat, but you could change when you arrive, a la generations of women and footwear.

Related:
why can’t I wear shorts to work?

5. Why do people say “longer hours”?

Why do people say “longer hours” as in “we have to work longer hours”? Shouldn’t they say “more hours”? Unless we’re redefining an hour to be, say, 63 minutes and now you get your hourly rate every 63 minutes you work, which seems very illegal, you’re not working longer hours. You’re working more hours.

Because they’re using “hours” to mean “the totality of my work week” and language evolves to includes lots of shorthand that doesn’t strictly make sense.

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{ 663 comments }

{ 663 comments… read them below }

  1. Viki*

    2: keep your calendar up to date. It’s not that hard. I work around time zones, and everyone in the team blocks their off time in outlook. It’s a bare minimum request. You can do it in 5 minutes

    1. Cold and Tired*

      Outlook even let’s you do recurring holds so if you have a set schedule you might even be able to do it in less than 5 minutes.

      Honestly, Ive worked internationally for years (both with international clients while based in the US and while based overseas myself), and I work with hospitals so I’ve worked some weird hours in a variety of time zones. It’s common sense to just make your hours clear and publicly available (and have them do the same) so life is easier for everyone. It’s a little weird to jump up to the VP level for this but honestly it shouldn’t have been something to push back on in the first place, so just set it up in outlook and be done with it.

      1. Brownstag*

        It sounded like the working hours are updated in the LW’s outlook but nothing additional blocked during their off hours to alert folks that they can’t take meetings during their non-working hours. To me this seems equivalent to the idea that I don’t have have to block my nighttime sleep on my Outlook as “busy” or “out of office” so that overseas colleagues don’t put meetings during my off hours.

        1. Brain the Brian*

          I’m going to agree here. At my company, we work across something like ten time zones, and there’s a lot of travel that goes on. None of us block off our “sleeping” hours as unavailable; we just adjust the “working hours” in Outlook and set an away message reminding people when we’re traveling. That a VP got involved in something this minor when the LW had already done that seems egregious to me, but I suppose the LW has to listen to management and block off their sleeping time every day…

          1. Awkwardness*

            That’s where I fall too. If the working hours are adjusted, it already is in Outlook. A notification on the messaging platform alone would not be OK for me
            It is a minor thing to be angry about and I would adjust as requested. But it still feels a bit like a powerplay to go directly to the VP, so I would shoot a quick message to Ann that Outlook is adjusted as required and scheduling hopefully is easier for her now, but that it would be appreciated if she reached out to you two in the first place if there are similar problems in the future. Drop it afterwards.

            1. sarah*

              Ann did try to though: “She went on to tell me that my colleague and I should have put our rotating night shifts in our Outlook calendars so she could coordinate with us. I ignored this message because it didn’t seem productive.”

              1. Awkwardness*

                I find out really hard to tell to which extent it was in the system. You can have some information visible or extra visible. And I want to believe OP when they say it was visible, but maybe not visible-visible.
                But I do not involve my manager if I unsuccessfully tried to request information/action from somebody only once. They have other things to do.

                1. Miette*

                  If you put the hours you are working in Outlook, it’s visible and apparent to anyone that you won’t be there–on mine, the time is greyed out and the key indicates it as “outside working hours.” Ann doesn’t know how Outlook works.

                2. Spencer Hastings*

                  Miette — I just checked my Outlook settings, out of curiosity, and I can only set each day of the week. That is, I can only have a single setting for “work hours” for Monday, one for Tuesday, and so on. That works for me, because my hours don’t change from week to week, but since the LW has this alternating schedule, setting her work hours for the current week will make the following week look incorrect. Or maybe this is a setting that the company controls and mine just hasn’t turned on the ability to make more granular changes?

                3. Hastily Blessed Fritos*

                  Spencer Hastings, it takes what, a minute to set the working hours? LW could easily reset it weekly if she isn’t already.

                4. Spencer Hastings*

                  but since the LW has this alternating schedule, setting her work hours for the current week will make the following week look incorrect.

                5. Harrowhark*

                  Assuming no one is scheduling meetings with the OP during the overnight shifts, OP can set Outlook to reflect their normal working hours, then set up a recurring “Out of Office” blocking all the daytime hours every other week.

                  If people *are* scheduling meetings during the overnight shift, then OP can choose to not specify working hours at all, and set up two recurring blocks on their calendar: All non-night shift hours for Weeks 1, 3, 5, etc., and all non day-shift hours for Weeks 2, 4, 6, etc. (So block 4am-9pm on weeks when working the night shit, then block 6pm-8am on weeks when working the day shift.)

              2. Brain the Brian*

                Maybe the LW should have acknowledged Ann’s last message, but I think it’s also pretty normal to just… do what Ann’s asking and not bother her again with another message. How often are we commenters complaining that our inboxes are overloaded with annoying loop-closing “thank-you”s? Going to a VP over something this minor does feel like a power play to me. But that’s culture-dependent, and I could be misreading the situation.

                I do also appreciate everyone noting that the LW might be tired from their constantly shifting schedule and might not have phrased things as kindly as possible as a result. That’s very possible and could have set the conversation off on the wrong note to begin with.

                1. Seashell*

                  It sounded to me like LW didn’t acknowledge the message and didn’t do what Ann asked. Not surprising that she escalated the matter after being ignored.

                2. Sloanicota*

                  Yeah, I concur with Seashell. I don’t know why OP is thinking “Ann should have just talked to me about this” when it sounds like Ann did that first, and was ignored with no change. A simple “let me talk about this with (my boss) and we’ll find a solution for you” might have cut this off.

              3. Learn ALL the things?*

                Agreed. Part of the reason that this happened is because LW wasn’t communicating with Ann or working with her to find a solution. She didn’t really have a choice at that point, she has a problem that needs to be fixed and the person who can help her fix it isn’t replying to her request. I’d go up a level in management in that case too.

              4. jasmine*

                I feel like we’re missing exactly how Ann phrased her request.

                Asking for calendars to be up-to-date it fine, but I suspect the real thing annoying OP is Ann and how she handled everything.

              5. Zephy*

                My question is why Ann couldn’t just schedule the site visit with the other engineer?? What is she talking about her budget won’t allow two engineers to double work? Who is doubling work, if OP isn’t working at that time?

                1. Another Jen*

                  OP’s suggestion was to have the junior engineer handle the visit, and then OP would review. Those are the two engineers. But I have a hard time believing that it would be 2x the cost.

                2. Yorick*

                  And how is it better for the budget to have the senior engineer do it than the junior engineer?

            2. Michelle Smith*

              I’ve used Outlook for over a decade across three different jobs and this is the first time I’ve ever heard about setting work hours in Outlook. I just went through the settings and apparently my “work time” starts at 12 am and ends at 5 pm. I also don’t know how to view work time outside of settings or how to see other people’s. I think OP should just take the extra time to set up their calendar so that the times they are unavailable are blocked off or explain to Ann how she can quickly find the information. She could be like me and just completely oblivious to the fact that these settings exist or how they work.

              I’m also immediately changing my work hours…

          2. Allonge*

            For me the difference is how much it’s expected to have wildly different ‘sleeping hours’. If everyone is travelling all the time and working with other time zones all the time, it’s more part of a shared consciousness to pay attention to working hours in addition to time blocks..

        2. Leenie*

          I think the LW’s schedule changing every other week adds an extra level of complexity. It’s simpler to just keep the Outlook calendar updated, instead of relying on peripheral teams’ ability to remember the LW’s alternating schedule or to correctly interpret what the LW’s hours will be next week.

          1. GythaOgden*

            Agreed. It needs to be obvious to outsiders what’s going on. The best way to do that is a clear appointment in Outlook for the night shift.

            As I’m finding now I’m in a more sophisticated job, having overlap between calendar blocks is preferable to people having to guess when you’re available.

            1. LarryFromOregon*

              Yes. It’s unfortunate that Outlook can’t be set to automatically show everything outside of “working hours” as blocked, but it makes more sense

              (A) for employees with unusual shifts to create those “blocks” as recurring appointments (5 minutes, as stated in other comments)

              than

              (B) for everyone trying to schedule a meeting to have to BOTH check for potential meeting/appointment conflicts AND check “working hours” (potentially 5 minutes or more FOR EACH MEETING being scheduled).

              Engineers should be more attuned to process efficiency than LW appears to be.

              1. Zelda*

                I mean, ideally B would be baked into the software– it would be great if, when you tried to schedule a meeting with someone outside their working hours, a warning popped up, “are you sure you want to do that?” No idea if Outlook does that/can be made to do that.

                1. dulcinea47*

                  when you schedule a meeting you can tell it who is required to be there (by email address) and it will show times when everyone is available and tell you if some attendees are unavailable. It’s not intuitive (outlook sucks) but it also takes about two minutes to learn how.

                2. AngryOctopus*

                  We are east coast/west coast/Switzerland in my job, and if you try to schedule a meeting at say 1pm our time with all three, Outlook will warn you that it’s outside Switzerland’s working hours. Not sure if that’s default or something the company set up, but it can happen.

              2. Aardvark*

                Rather than setting working hours as open, you can set up non-working hours as a recurring appointment and mark it as out-of-office. To anyone else looking at your calendar it has the same effect

            2. Escapee from Corporate Management*

              That happened to me when I was frequently doing international travel. I made sure to block out my out of office times based on where I would be that week. Made clear when I was available in each time zone. I don’t understand why OP2 cannot do that.

          2. Six for the truth over solace in lies*

            Yes. I can remember that so-and-so is in Toronto, or Hong Kong, or Berlin pretty easily. Remembering that their schedule alternates and having to do the mental math to figure out whether this is an “on” week or an “off” week…? Let’s just say that I still have to check the schedule online to remember whether it’s the right week to put out my own recycling.

          3. Turquoisecow*

            Yeah if OP was working nights all the time that would be one thing but people who don’t work closely with them aren’t going to remember if this is the week OP is on nights or their coworker. Easier to just block off the time so no one can schedule meetings or get annoyed about emails not being responded to immediately.

          4. Dust Bunny*

            This. It sounds like the LW told their closest coworker and thinks, well, everyone has been told. But it’s not reasonable to expect everyone to remember that on top of all their own stuff, especially if they don’t work closely with you on a regular basis. Just put it in your calendar.

        3. learnedthehardway*

          If your off hours are during most people’s normal working hours, it makes a heck of a lot of sense to block those hours off – otherwise, you’ll be having random people like Ann think you’re available for meetings, and then being annoyed to find out that you aren’t and didn’t bother to make that obvious.

          This is pretty much no-brainer – block off the hours and have a note in your email signature saying what your hours are. If it is possible, have an auto reply to anyone sending you invites as to what your working hours actually are.

          1. Allonge*

            I agree – this is the kind of information that needs to be shared via all possible channels, and certainly the ones where people who don’t work with you closely would look for your availability – Outlook calendar is a no-brainer.

            Yes, it’s a bit of a pain if this is not what you use on a daily basis, but if the schedule is known in advance, putting it in your calendar for the whole year will not take longer than 10 minutes, even if there are no patterns.

          2. r..*

            Assuming that working hours are maintained in the calendar then it should be pretty obvious, at least to people whose job it is to coordinate.

            If you have project managers that don’t look at people’s working hours while scheduling meetings then you have other problems.

            Office hours are also pretty much the only way to properly handle people in wildly divergent timezones without going mad in the process.

            1. LarryFromOregon*

              Wrong. It is NOT “ pretty much the only way”—blocking nonworking hours is another way. And it’s a better way, since it takes so little time for each individual to set up their blocks, and helps so much to avoid conflicts!

          3. EngineeringFun*

            Agreed. I work my hours so I can have Friday afternoon free. I block my calendar for Friday afternoon and label it “ask OP”. This way if it’s really important I will come in but otherwise I’m going skiing!

          4. I Have RBF*

            Yeah, if I have a week of night work, I would block off the daytime hours for that week in the shared calendar, with a subject of “RBF working nights” and showing Busy/Out Of Office for the daytime hours.

            You can make it recurring by making five appointments, one for each day of the week, with a recurrence of “Every other week” and have it end when the project is due to end. Then when Ann tried to schedule a meeting during the day, Outlook would show the time as unavailable.

            My job has people in multiple time zones, including in Australia. We manage by being aware of time zones.

        4. amoeba*

          Yeah, that’s why I’m actually a little confused – if the working hours are adjusted, Outlook does correctly reflect the availability! I probably just would have replied to Ann “oh, there appears to have been a problem – my working hours should be up to date in Outlook, does it not show up for you?” and, idk, sent her a screenshot of where it shows the working hours. I assume she just didn’t notice and thought it wasn’t in Outlook at all?

          1. Emmy Noether*

            I think a lot of people aren’t aware at all that Outlook shows working hours. At least in the way it shows in my Outlook, it’s not very eye-catching, so you kind of have to know it’s there.

            1. House On The Rock*

              I think this is true, unfortunately. I start a little early and end a little early and my working hours in Outlook reflect that, but I do it more as a CYA if I do need/want to decline a meeting at 4:30. Most people don’t pay attention, especially when working with multiple calendars, and I don’t believe Outlook warns you if you schedule outside someone’s stated hours. For times I really can’t be available I block it as out of office.

          2. biobotb*

            Yeah, it seems like LW was rude to just ignore Ann. They could have just politely noted that their working hours were up to date in Outlook and that they don’t take meetings outside those hours.

            The budget problem also seems confusing. Has budgeting changed? Why hasn’t this been a problem before? Surely someone made the decision to have senior engineers check junior engineers’ work, so could the LW have directed Ann to whoever made that decision and can weigh in on how it impacts budgeting?

            1. coffee*

              I wonder if that was part of the reason it got escalated to the VP level? Just as an example of how the funding problem was impacting the project.

        5. Snow Globe*

          “we have a standing notification of our modified availability for the project duration on our messaging platform, as well as a change to our working hours on Outlook. ”

          The way I read that, the change to working hours was part of the notification – ie, not a change to the visible working hours, but an OOO message that is automatically sent telling people the change to the hours. This is much less likely to be noticed.

        6. Pocket Mouse*

          The problem is that it’s on a rotating basis. Their Outlook hours were updated once (not clear to what—maybe afternoon hours that they’d be working both types of weeks?) but their actual availability changes each week outside of that but during the standard workday. I don’t believe Outlook allows for “my hours are X and Y on alternating weeks”.

          1. ecnaseener*

            Yeah, good point — if OP goes in and sets their working hours every rotation, then it’ll be correct for that rotation, but if someone wants to schedule something further out I don’t think there’s any way for that to be reflected in the working-hours setting.

            1. Stella*

              Exactly! Outlook only shows 1 set of working hours, and it sounds like the OP’s working hours alternate weekly, so setting working hours in Outlook could possibly confuse things more.

        7. Global Cat Herder*

          I have my nighttime and weekend hours blocked off. Otherwise, even with working hours set to display, people would send an invite at 9am their time for a 9:30am meeting their time and get REALLY REALLY MAD that I “blew off the meeting” that was 3:30am my time and sent at 3am.

          Just block off the time that you’re not available. Takes about 5 minutes to set up a handful of recurring appointments.

          1. Great Frogs of Literature*

            I feel like getting mad that someone “blew off” a meeting scheduled with 30 minutes notice is a weird response. I don’t consider a meeting definite until the other person confirms, even if they’re junior to me. (Not to say that I’m tracking it, but if it’s three minutes into the scheduled time and I’m sitting in an empty zoom, I’ll check the calendar event for confirmation and then ping them to ask if the time works for them, not get mad. Mind you, if they confirmed, I just wait maybe five minutes and then ping; getting mad in general seems like an overreaction.)

        8. Shannan A*

          That’s what it sounds like to me as well. The calendar is correctly up to date with the LW’s work hours, and Ann is whinging because she wants to schedule something outside of that clearly marked availability.

      1. I've got the shrimp!*

        If you’ve been doing one week on, one week off night shift for a year as a favour you’d probably be cranky too.

        I read it as OP is a bit cranky/tired and it seems obvious to them so why couldn’t Ann work it out and why did she escalate it and now the molehill from Ann’s perspective is a frustrating mountain for OP.

        1. Myrin*

          It also sounds like it’s never been a problem before so there’s probably also a dash of “Why is this suddenly coming up now after it’s worked just fine for [time]?!”.

          1. GythaOgden*

            Because it works fine for OP until that one time they have to coordinate with someone outside their department, at which point the weakness of their plan is revealed.

            1. General von Klinkerhoffen*

              But it would have worked fine if Ann had gone through the junior engineer like she’s supposed to.

              1. MK*

                It wouldn’t have worked fine for Ann, since her budget can’t afford the junior engineer.

                1. RIP Pillowfort*

                  Ann couldn’t afford 2 engineers. And frankly I think Ann is being obtuse which is why OP is frustrated.

                  As someone who works with this kind of set up all the time- you don’t have to pay for 2 engineers. You just work with the junior engineer who is typically lowest pay rate and in your assigned work line. You’re not paying for 2 engineers- the QA of junior work is typically built into the scope. Bypassing to the more senior engineer is honestly the problem and Ann probably didn’t give the VP the whole story about that. Just that she didn’t know OP’s availability.

                  The VP does have a legitimate point. People outside their core work group need to know they’re working nights some weeks. If only so people that are attentive to calendars won’t bother them. I’ve had that issue calling people and finding out they just got off an overnight shift I didn’t know they were working.

                4. Covert Copier Whisperer*

                  In addition to what RIP Pillowfort said, Ann not thinking she has the budget for standard protocol and so trying to cut corners isn’t a calendar issue, it’s an Ann project management issue (and possibly a leadership issue).
                  From the outside, it looks like both Ann and LW ended up getting frustrated over the calendar issue and how it was handled instead of addressing the larger issue of what SHOULD Ann do in this case, or what should she know that she doesn’t about the budget for engineers.
                  (Meanwhile, yeah, it may feel redundant if you’ve set working hours, but blocking Outlook is a thing you have control over; asking everyone else to be Outlook-savvy is outside your control.)

                5. Happy*

                  I completely agree, RIP Pillowfort. The real problem here (from OP’s perspective) is that the rules don’t apply to Ann. And okay, that’s the VP’s perogative to support, but it’s pretty easy to see why OP would be frustrated!

                6. MigraineMonth*

                  I agree with RIP Pillowfort that the real source of the problem is that Ann is not following procedure. Ann seems to have decided unilaterally to elevate her project’s priority by removing the junior engineer from the project and insisting the senior engineer take over. That would not fly in any workplace where I’ve worked.

                  LW1, it seems like you tried to use your schedule to justify refusing that arrangement and later just stopped communicating with Ann. Given her oversteps up to that point, I’m not surprised that she escalated to the VP. My advice would be to let the calendar thing go (it’s a red herring) and instead raise the issue with your manager that Ann is trying to rearrange your team’s work without any discussion.

        2. Allonge*

          Sure, but the schedule is not Ann’s fault. Which is not necessarily helpful, I know, but it’s a good idea to keep in mind who you are really cranky at.

        3. Yellow rainbow*

          But it’s not a favour to do night shift – it’s her job!

          It’s really not clear to me that LW is sharing her work hours in a way Ann can see them. At least – when I set working hours they are for all time, not week-to-week. I manage unavailability outside that by blocking time. If I have a late night event I do block time on my calendar so I can sleep in. If I’ve an overnight event I block time to sleep beforehand and after. If I was working shift I would block all not work time to just be really obvious about things cause people won’t remember my shift pattern.

          Ann’s request really was quite reasonable – I need to see your availability to send meeting requests. But even if it wasn’t reasonable LW choosing to ignore the request means Ann had to escalate to get a response. I understand a client needing action on a major project and being ignored by the senior engineer escalating to the VP. Maybe if LW doesn’t want people going over her head sure should engage with clients.

          Now if LW doesn’t think she should be at the meeting she can decline or delegate. And if Ann disagrees she can raise it with the VP and the VP can decide how the company wants things done.

          1. Not Tom, Just Petty*

            That is my question. Does OP have the night shift marked on the calendar? All the words in the letter point to “every knows our alternate weeks.” Well, not everyone.
            Supporters of OP write that the days after night shifts should not have to be marked as OOO. Fair. But then the nights do.
            And again, it doesn’t seem like they are.
            Whether Ann is running a game about bypassing engineers, or pretending to plan to bypass engineers to create this situation where she can go to the VP and have him tell OP, “put the nights you work on the calendar for the coming year, please,” is irrelevant.
            Put your night shifts on the calendar, please and thank you.

          2. Dawn*

            It is, but it was also explicitly acknowledged by everyone involved that the alternating night shifts were a huge imposition on their engineers and majorly disruptive to them; it’s usually understood in cases like this that if you need someone to work multiple shifts which are significantly outside the scope of what they agreed to when hired (which it sounds like,) and which are going to significantly impact that person’s quality of life (given,) that you are going to make every attempt to ease the burden caused by it. Both because that’s the right thing to do in that situation, and because someone with a title like Senior Engineer almost certainly has other options and your project budget will absolutely be impacted should they choose to exercise them.

            I think only a very short-sighted manager would say, “whatever, it’s your job,” in that situation.

            1. Dawn*

              Note that I don’t necessarily agree with OP on all of this – just that I don’t think “it’s your job” is the right take here. It’s unnecessarily adversarial.

        4. Cnoocy*

          If I was a manager of two people who worked from 9pm to 4am every other week, I would be very angry with anyone who made their lives more difficult in any way.

          1. Not Tom, Just Petty*

            But because they are alternating* if they are not informing their coworkers which weeks they are on night shift, they are creating a situation where they are inconvenienced and upset. Put the weeks on the calendar. If they do this and Ann can’t/won’t read the calendar, then that’s a different letter.
            *(this is awful. They must feel like they have flu year round)

          3. Escapee from Corporate Management*

            As someone who has managed people with alternative schedules, I would have been annoyed at how OP2 communicated to Ann. When you’re working a nonstandard schedule or change time zones, it’s on you to let people know your availability when asked. I would have done exactly what OP2’s VP did—remind them to keep their calendar up to date.

            1. Not Tom, Just Petty*

              Yes, this is what I’ve been trying to put into words. “Everyone who needs to know, knows our schedule for the next year.”
              First of all, the myopia of thinking everyone is going to remember your schedule for a year. If I take a week’s vacation, I’m not going to guarantee that I come back and think, oh, yes, OP is this week.
              And second, what about your vacation? You are NEVER going to switch weeks?
              And third, nobody you work with will leave or be replaced in a year?
              Just put it on the calendar.

              1. rebelwithmouseyhair*

                And clearly, not everyone who needs to know knows their schedule, because Ann needed to know and didn’t! OP seems to be pretty dismissive of Ann’s needs.

          4. Allonge*

            Putting the availability in the calendar is such a non-issue though. OP most likely spent more time drafting their message to Alison than it would take to have their calendar very visibly blocked on the days they sleep because they had a night shift before.

            Alternatively, Outlook has delegations: OP can grant access to their calendar management to an admin or whoever boss assigns to support them in this.

        5. MCMonkeyBean*

          Yeah, Ann seems like kind of a pain to work with so I think OP is just annoyed at her in general. And taking this straight to the VP without even asking OP and the other person directly first is so over-the-top. But the request itself is super reasonable.

          1. rebelwithmouseyhair*

            Ann did ask OP and OP didn’t do what she asked.
            Ann asked OP to show when she was available and OP was like “but it’s obvious and everyone who needs to know has the schedule” as if Ann trying to make an appointment at the wrong time didn’t show that Ann needed that information and clearly didn’t have it.

      2. Nocturna*

        Given that the situation came about in the first place because Ann was trying to bypass established work lines and using the calendar in a way that’s not typical for their workplace,* I suspect a lot of the frustration is actually due to feeling like the VP didn’t have LW’s back in enforcing workplace norms/who is supposed to be working with whom on the project.

        *From the letter: “We each work with two teams almost exclusively. Two junior level engineers also work with two teams … Ann, a project manager from one of the teams that work with a junior engineer decided to bypass her by putting a morning site visit on my calendar … [Other coworkers outside the LW’s normal two teams] always chose to send me a message asking when I had time.” — In other words, to my understanding, Ann should have been scheduling with the junior engineer based on existing assignments and it’s typical in that workplace to schedule meetings by asking for availability rather than by adding a meeting to someone’s calendar.

        2. General von Klinkerhoffen*

          Yes! It must be very hard to be told your system doesn’t work when it has worked just fine for a year and trouble only arose when someone disregarded the established process.

          1. Sable*

            This! There’s a system that Ann bypassed and she could have easily talked to the OP. It’s obnoxious to do something random and then blame another person because your choice that doesnt follow normal protocol doesn’t work for them.

        3. Cinn*

          This caught my attention too. Like she’s making a big deal over the Outlook thing so people forget she’s trying to bypass the engineer assigned to her team. Maybe she has a good reason to bypass the junior engineer (she cited budget reasons, the LW doesn’t comment on the reasoning so I’m assuming it’s legit, though they did push back to get her to include assigned engineer), but the way she went about it felt off to me.

          As to the Outlook thing itself… If the work hours are already input and set correctly for the year to show overnight shifts, then that probably should’ve been enough. But also an automated repeating block to say “on nights” isn’t that hard to set up and far clearer for everyone. But also the LW is working nights and so is already dealing with enough.

          1. sparkle emoji*

            Agreed. Ann is asking for something unusual and that’s the real issue that needs to be addressed. The Outlook nitpicking is a distraction.

            1. Happy*

              Completely agree!

              If the rules don’t apply to Ann, then okay, but it’s easy to see why OP is frustrated.

            2. I Have RBF*

              Yeah, after what Ann pulled, I would block off the daytime hours on weeks I worked nights, and slow walk all of her process bypass attempts.

              Ann knew the process, decided that she didn’t like it and only wanted the senior engineer to work on her project, so she threw a site visit on the senior engineer’s calendar without so much as a by your leave. When that didn’t work for the senior engineer, she went crying to the VP about his calendar, not mentioning that she was bypassing the usual process of “junior does the work, senior does the QA” (which, by the way, is actually cheaper than “senior does all of the work”. )

              I’ve done consulting with junior and senior engineers. The way these projects are budgeted, a junior engineer might have 200 hours at (nominal) $150/hr, and 20 hours of a senior at $300/hour for QA. So the engineering bucket is $36,000. If the senior does all the work, they only have 120 hours allocated, and if it actually needs all 200 hours of on-site engineering work, Ann has just blown her budget.

              IMO, Ann is an idiot and a bad project manager, who tries to cover her incompetence and arrogance by complaining to the VP about petty shit.

          2. Allonge*

            And if that is the case, that needs to be addressed separately, but making it visible in Outlook when someone is not available is not that much of a request.

            1. Cinn*

              This is true enough. I guess I just don’t want to judge the LW too harshly because they say their working hours are up to date in Outlook. So if someone was using Scheduling Assistant they’d show as grey rather than purple. But you’re right, availability should be clear in whatever calendar software is used.

              …or just set up an auto reply/out of office type email that says (in professional speak) “working nights this week, will get back to you as soon as I can” for the week.

        4. r..*

          Additionally, it kind of does feel like Ann is trying to bypass a more junior resource assigned, and instead tap a more senior resource that is under heavy contention, all while operating under strict budget concerns.

          The following sentence is quite instructive: “She became frustrated and said that wouldn’t be possible because her budget won’t allow for two engineers to be duplicating work. ”

          That’s not how I read what LW actually proposed. I read it that LW proposed the more junior engineer that is assigned to her project does the work, and has the work checked by LW. That is not duplicating work, that is a standard “junior does work, senior reviews it” checkup.

          And if that’s not in Ann’s budget then LW themselves, as a more senior resource, doing the work themselves is *also* not in her budget. The opportunity costs imposed by having a senior resource time do all the work will almost always make true cost of tasking a senior directly larger than a “junior does the work, senior reviews it” — though of course the way project accounting works at LW’s company may not adequalty cover those types of costs, and rely on an overly simple hourly rate model.

          1. Myrin*

            That stood out to me as well. I was wondering if I’d missed something because to me “junior engineer does work – and on Ann’s proposed schedule, no less! – and senior engineer only joins to review said work” doesn’t read as as “duplicating work” – both actual work- and budget-wise.

          2. bamcheeks*

            It’s also possible that it is technically cheaper for a senior engineer to do the work once, but that it is set up this way because it’s a good development opportunity for the junior engineer and the company is taking the long-term view. If the way Ann bills internally for this doesn’t support that– or it does but Ann doesn’t realise that– that’s a structural issue that LW might also need to get on the VP’s radar.

          3. MK*

            Eh, no? As far as I can tell, Ann can either have OP do the work and pay them, or have the junior engineer do it and OP check it, in which case she has to pay both. It seems like an unreasonable system to me, especially since Ann works for the same company, but Ann isn’t being unreasonable trying to limit costs for her department. The opportunity cost should be for the company to consider.

            1. r..*

              In most cases, if a senior checks the work of a junior, the senior will require much less time to check the work of the junior, compared to the amount of time it took the junior to do the work in the first place.

              True, a lack of proper cost accounting itself is on the company, but quite frankly I’d also expect a projectmanager to not just look at the costs of her own department, but also at the externalities they impose on the rest of the company.

            2. bamcheeks*

              It’s a very normal system in anything like medicine, law or engineering where the work itself is routine and not necessarily complex, but it needs to checked and signed of by someone with regulatory authority or a qualification / licence which means they can be held liable for mistakes. If Ann’s not familiar with doing things that way and/or it incurs higher costs for her project, that’s a pretty significant problem that LW probably needs to address separately.

            3. Spencer Hastings*

              I’m not an engineer, I’m an accountant, but I would assume that if the LW did the work, some *other* senior person would need to review it.

          4. RIP Pillowfort*

            This 100%.

            I deal with engineering budgets and engineering work like this and Ann’s logic does not pass the smell test. You do not jump to the higher pay rate engineer to do work that can be done by a lower pay rate. There’s generally a vast pay difference.

            In all of our budgets we have separate line item hours for those checks by senior engineers. It’s far cheaper and more efficient to have them be the QA than to have them do all the work at their significantly higher pay rates. And it’s not duplicating work. I get frustrated just hearing that! And from a practical standpoint those junior engineers will never become senior if they’re not allowed to work and learn.

            This is all separate from the VP’s point which is practical and I think wouldn’t be as much of an issue if it was separate from Ann.

            1. r..*

              No real way of knowing without further information, but I do kind of wonder if that issue isn’t closer to the reason why LW was miffed, and LW simply got hung up on a different aspect of it (the caldendering). Or perhaps mistakingly thought that this point got a better traction.

              (I too am a professional cat herder ;-). Which is to say I manage engineers and engineering orgs. I can totally see many of them making this sort of mistake, even senior ones.)

              1. RIP Pillowfort*

                Oh very much. And I’m just as guilty of focusing on the Iranian yogurt when the issues is not the Iranian yogurt.

            2. Pastor Petty Labelle*

              Two things can be true. Ann is out of her gourd trying to do things her way and only her way, using budget as an excuse AND OP needs to be clearer on the calendar.

              Notice Ann did not go to OP’s supervisor, she skipped right up to VP to complain.

              1. I Have RBF*

                Yeah, that alone would get Ann on my shit list as an engineer. Plus her logic for why she wanted the senior engineer to do the site visit is bunk.

          5. MollyRingwald*

            That OP identified themselves and their peer as *licensed* engineers, versus the two junior ones whose work they review, is very telling of a lot of things. It may vary in the States to a degree, but in Canada only fully licensed engineers are able to stamp and sign off on many engineering documents. The profession is regulated for a good reason. The junior engineers may be perfectly competent and capable of the work, but they’re not licensed, and so OP and their peer need to give it the final approval before it’s put into practice.

            1. I Have RBF*

              This is very common.

              In project costing, a junior engineer operating under the QA/supervision of a licensed senior might bill out at $150/hour, but the licensed senior bills out at $300/hour. So in practice, the junior does the work, and the senior reviews it and signs off on it. This allows competitive bidding and gets the junior hours toward their licensing requirements.

        5. bamcheeks*

          Right! I don’t think being required to put your availability in your calendar is an unreasonable request, but the way this went down would definitely leave me narked at Ann, and the VP. There are so many more constructive ways this request could have gone down.

        6. House On The Rock*

          Yes, I think the calendar kerfuffle is a bit of a red herring. I do wonder why the VP didn’t ask Ann why it was necessary for her to meet with OP outside the normal process and lines of communication and oversight. To me, that’s where the real fault may be – the VP shouldn’t have made a blanket statement about how staff should manage calendars, they should have done some digging into why this all became an issue in the first place. And, even if VP was in agreement that a change should be made, it would have been best to discuss with OP and the other engineers to get their take.

          1. Retired Vulcan Raises 1 Grey Eyebrow*

            The VP is allowed to make policy tht everyone in their organisation must keep their calendar up to date.

            She is also allowed to say that OP can’t just ignore requests she doesn’t like – the OP was very foolish to just ignore Ann, because that probably was what irritated Ann enough to make her go to the VP.

            1. Shannan A*

              It wasn’t a disliked request, it was an unproductive whinge that wouldn’t have been productive to take the time to respond to.

            2. Yellerdog*

              VPs are naturally allowed to make policy, but unilaterally making a policy about how meetings should be scheduled without consulting the teams involved would be very bad leadership.

        7. M*

          Yup, this seems like pretty important context. Ideally, LW would have replied letting Ann know that they could do a meeting with her team the next week, but because of the night shift coverage arrangements, teams assigned to the Junior Engineers need to email to set those up, rather than just adding them to the calendar. Instead, it looks like they got into a bit of an escalating cycle of grumpiness – LW tried to push Ann back onto JunEng without finding out why Ann wanted to escalate, Ann got grumpy about the calendar rather than finding a different time that worked, and so on.

          That said, depending on how many people on Ann’s team needed to attend that meeting, why she was escalating it past JunEng in the first place, and how urgent the agenda was, it might actually have been entirely reasonable for Ann to be getting grumpy about the additional roadblocks – or it might be completely unreasonable. It’s hard to tell without more information.

          1. sparkle emoji*

            Might just be my reading, but it seems like the OP may have been pushing Ann to talk to the other Sr. engineer who was on the day shift that week. OP mentions checking with the other Sr. engineer and finding out Ann hadn’t contacted them about the issue. It doesn’t seem like they were understanding each other, which was still an issue, but I think telling Ann to speak with OP’s equivalent counterpart should have been an acceptable compromise.

        8. biobotb*

          I am curious as to why the LW didn’t escalate Ann’s complaint about budget and duplicate work to whomever decided on the workflow of senior engineers checking the work of junior engineers. Either there is budget for it and Ann needs this explained to her, or something else is wrong and someone higher up needs to make different decisions about workflow and budgeting.

        9. Yellerdog*

          Thank you for pointing this out. I read the letter, and immediately thought that the issue here is not having to adjust Outlook settings. The issue here is that Ann shouldn’t be putting this meeting on LW’s calendar in the first place.

          Ann is effectively using the Outlook calendar to circumvent the fact that she’s supposed to be working with someone else. Even if she needs LW for some specific reason, she should be asking them if they can schedule a meeting – not just sticking it on their calendar.

          And calendar conventions vary. At many places I’ve worked, you do not send meeting requests until you’ve asked someone (via email or verbally) if you can schedule the meeting and explained what it’s for. Sending a calendar invite out of the blue would be seen as very disrespectful, particularly from someone on an outside team. Obviously that’s not the culture everywhere, but LW’s reaction and the context they gave made me wonder if it was the culture for their team, if not the larger org.

    3. Seeking Second Childhood*

      I’d like to point out that if OP &coworker schedule “appointments” for the night shifts, it will NOT block someone from scheduling them for a meeting during those days.

      It sounds to me like they DO have their working hours displaying — does Outlook have a way to auto-decline meetings outside working hours?

      1. Spencer Hastings*

        I think what people are suggesting is to have an Outlook item for when they’re actually working (“on night shift”, show as available) and another one to show that they’re OOO during the day. That wouldn’t stop people from sending calendar invites completely, but it might make it easier to notice.

    4. Amy*

      Site visits can complicate accurate calendars.

      On days I’m in the office, my calendar is perfect. Days I’m visiting clients 25 miles away?

      It’s always going to have significant variation based on weather, traffic, how long the meeting goes, deciding to take the client to lunch etc. It’s quite different than a day of Teams meetings.

      1. English Teacher*

        But the weeks they are doing site visits are not the weeks they are doing overnights. The overnights (and ensuing days off) are regular and easy to put on a calendar.

    5. 'nother prof*

      It *is* that hard for some of us, in part because this isn’t about keeping a calendar up to date so much as keeping a specific type of calendar up to date. I do not use an electronic calendar and have an awfully variable schedule of potential availability, so keeping an electronic calendar up to date means adding a good 20-30 minutes of work to my week… and only a small number of the people I might meet with would even potentially use that calendar. It’s easy to underestimate a system’s ease-of-use (and overestimate its utility) for others when we ourselves already use it regularly.

      I’ve also noticed that once you put one thing on an Outlook/Google calendar, the people who do use them tend to assume that *everything* is on that calendar. That can generate confusion, like in this situation, as people develop different ways of using Outlook/Google. Ann sounds like she just wants everyone to do things her way, but her standards shouldn’t be rolled out to everyone offhandedly like this.

    6. Orange You Glad*

      I’m always of the mind that it’s better to overcommunicate availability than not. I keep my personal outlook calendar updated (even blocking out personal calls, lunches, etc. – anything I don’t want someone to schedule over), I also keep a shared department calendar that I add my days/times out of office for visibility, update my status messages, and verbally remind anyone I work with regularly if I am out for a full day or more or have some sort of alternate schedule.

      My company covers all of the US so we have different time zones but also plently of folks have special work schedules that are outside of 9-5 business hours, plus travel, vacation, etc. Calling back to a previous letter – I’d rather have my calendar be 1000% up to date with no ambiguity and let others schedule around me.

    7. Gregor Samsa*

      I would also be annoyed about the social/ management implications of this situation, and a lot of commenters have excellent insight about cost structures, reporting, etc. I’m wholly on LW2’s side emotionally. But as engineers, we seek solutions, even inelegant ones, and especially ones that work around human error. Outlook’s “work hours” feature is stupidly limiting in this case (which we can add to the list of other stupid things about New Outlook – why does the To Do view in desktop Outlook show an incomplete task list vs. the To Do web app??!). The easier solution is to make a recurring appointment for every other M-F to block out normal daytime working hours so no one can schedule site visits there.

    8. fhqwhgads*

      OP2 said their working hours in Outlook were already updated. So adding in a block to say OOO or whatever is actually double-entry. If the person checking the calendar only looks at busy/avail during her own hours, and not the hours labeled as working hours in Outlook for the other people she’s checking, that’s not really OP’s fault. It already says they work nights, just not in an appointment kind of way. Not that different than someone who works 6a-3p. They don’t need an OOO for 3p-6p daily. “Working hours” covers it.
      Also the letter reads like she already updated the calendar the way you’re saying, too. She’s just annoyed about the way the coworker went about this. But she already complied.

    9. English Teacher*

      Just what I was thinking! It’s an ongoing, biweekly schedule where you’re unavailable. Not difficult to put in Outlook. Block off the time you’re sleeping during the day, too!

      But I also want to thank LW3 and just say, I LOVE these kind of crunchy, nitty-gritty questions about unusual job situations. I love knowing the details of what people do during their day(/night). More please!

  2. soontoberetired*

    Ah, #4. Our new very relaxed dress code is shorts are okay! So lots of people are wearing shorts on their mandated days in the office now. and no one cares, the one big advantage of most people still working from home.

    1. Hastily Blessed Fritos*

      I’ve been talking about this with my wife during the heat wave we’ve been having – office dress codes need to catch up to the new reality. It would also mean offices don’t need to be so ridiculously over-airconditioned.

      1. Fatima*

        I agree. I didn’t think my office has a dress code (I should probably check), but people on my team (of almost all men) generally dress less casually than people in other departments. So I had a hell of a time figuring out what to wear yesterday. It was over 95°F and very humid. It worked out OK, but I don’t have a closet full of permanent-heat-wave, office appropriate clothing.

        Plus, one of the tunnels is closed until early August, which doubles my commute as everyone now uses the other tunnel, and my alternate plan of taking public transportation and then walking 30 minutes isn’t going to work in this heat.

        I decided to work from home until the weather cools down or the tunnel opens. Fortunately I have the flexibility to do this!

        1. AngryOctopus*

          Hello fellow Bostonian :)
          I actually commute to work in shorts and sandals, and change when I get here. I do work in a lab so our “dress code” (so to speak) is pretty strict in terms of safety, but I think as a general rule changing when you get into work is pretty normal. Walking 30′ in this heat does change the calculus though!

        2. mayflower*

          Another Bostonian here! Our HVAC system in the office has gone haywire and people keep making jokes about it but it’s becoming an actual safety hazard in my opinion. Luckily I can also work from home until the heat wave is over but I feel for my coworkers who are still receiving clients in the office. We’ll have to start lobbying HR for shorts lol.

          Last year when the tunnel was closed the blue line was free and parking was reduced, so I would drive to a parking lot, pay two bucks, and ride the train for free and that cut out the walking in the heat! Are there any lots near you you could park at?

      2. Velawciraptor*

        Don’t forget the option of kilts, gentlemen. Traditionally masculine, can be worn up and down the level of formality of dress code, and just as cool as shorts.

        Not saying you need to go full Braveheart with woad face paint and whatnot, but there are other creative sartorial options.

        1. Fatima*

          A former neighbor wears kilts, even in the winter. When it’s cold, he wears heavy knee socks and work boots (I assume he wears lighter-weight kilts in the summer). Everyone seems to take it in stride. But, of course, you could make a big deal about it if you wanted to.

    2. Miette*

      …unless the shorts in question were Tom-Selleck-in-Magnum-PI levels of short, in which case… maybe not LOL

    3. softcastle*

      I just started a new job for a small business owner and was shocked at first when I realized she wears literal daisy dukes to work every day. Very, very different than my old corporate atmosphere!

    4. Just me*

      I’m very heat intolerant, so if I had to commute to an office I would be wearing what would be best for me, because that is more important to my health than what is perceived by other people. We have proven in the last 4 plus years that dress codes mean NOTHING in terms of work output, so why is this even a thing now?

    5. Morgan Proctor*

      I used to live and work in one of the hottest regions in the world (literally). I worked for an art museum. Because it was such a hot place, the dress code specifically said that shorts were ok for men and women alike. No one cared, the museum didn’t collapse, work still got done. Similarly, the place I now work has basically no dress code, and lots of people wear shorts to work. No one cares, the building hasn’t collapsed, work still gets done. If we’re insisting on making our planet incompatible with human life, then we should let people wear shorts.

      2. WindmillArms*

        >If we’re insisting on making our planet incompatible with human life, then we should let people wear shorts.

        This! Priorities, people.

        1. rebelwithmouseyhair*

          Personally I would say to let everyone wear what they want while they all focus hard on making the planet compatible with human life.

  3. Caramel & Cheddar*

    LW 1, what your former employee is doing is so wildly common on LinkedIn that I wouldn’t have even noticed let alone taken it as seriously as you seem to have. I see a post like that at least once a week; they’re 50% letting your network know you’re looking for work (the point of LinkedIn!) and 50% weird business content creation where everything that happens to you can be spun into some sort of business learning opportunity that you *must* share in case it impresses someone who loves that sort of thing. There are even memes about it now elsewhere online (e.g. “What this team’s loss in the Superbowl taught me about resilience in the workplace”).

    I think this is a big overreaction, to be honest.

    1. Brain the Brian*

      Hard agree. LW1, this person doesn’t work for you anymore. Put it out of your mind unless someone on your team raises it — and even then, a casual “Oh yeah, I saw that she’s putting herself out there on LinkedIn” is about all I’d recommend. You’d look weirdly controlling and petty to your remaining employees if you mentioned it pre-emptively.

      1. el l*

        Right. Responding would be a good example of the Streisand Effect – raising its profile vastly and completely against intention.

        I get that it’s a little embarrassing, but you did right by her. What she does from this point on is on her, not you, and thankfully will generally be seen that way.

          1. Brain the Brian*

            Frankly, it’s only embarrassing if you’re embarrassed that you fired her.

          2. NotAnotherManager!*

            Me, neither. The employee wasn’t performing, and the employer gave her far more runway to find a new job than most people get. They also allowed her to control her own narrative, and this is how she’s choosing to exercise that control. It’s her story, she doesn’t work for LW1 anymore, and I’d recommend LW1 just remove the former employee from their connections and move on with life.

            Unless there is something horribly dysfunctional about the rest of the team, this will not incite fear of mass layoffs. Teams usually know who their underperformers are and are often glad not to have the dead weight on the team.

    2. Myrin*

      Even with everything I know about LinkeIn coming solely from this here website, I… don’t understand the problem in #1.

      The employee states that she is out of work and it’s been challenging to find something new.

      Okay, so? How is that going to affect the morale of literally anyone else?

      The former coworkers either believed her when she said she resigned – meaning they wouldn’t fear layoffs or similar – or they’d worked closely enough to suspect she was fired because of performance issues – meaning, again, that they wouldn’t fear layoffs or similar.

      1. Allonge*

        Not to mention that going from ‘this person was fired’ to ‘layoffs are coming for all of us’ is a bit of a leap already. Understandable (lots of people worry about their jobs, me included), but still a leap.

      2. Nocturna*

        The LW said that the former employee stated that she was “let go”, and since the LW didn’t tell anyone it was a firing, I think the LW is worried that their employees might come to the conclusion that the employee was laid off and thus think that more layoffs might be coming. However, I think Alison is right that any current employees will most likely be able to figure out that the former employee was fired, not laid off.

        1. Myrin*

          Ah, you’re right, I was focusing on “We allowed her to announce her departure to the rest of the team as if it were a normal resignation.” and not on the fact that in the post itself, she says she was let go. Still, how likely is that leap, really (not asking you, of course, but just generally and the OP in particular)?

          1. Brain the Brian*

            It’s not a likely leap at all. Half of LinkedIn doesn’t know the difference between a comma and a period, let alone the real (legal) difference between being fired, being laid off, and voluntarily resigning. People say weird things on there all the time, and most people know that and act accordingly when they read posts.

            1. Johanna Cabal*

              Companies will also lay someone off in lieu of firing them. I suspect this happened to me in 2009 since I was the employee with the least tenure involved in a project that failed. The financial crisis was just an excuse (the other team members involved were slowly “laid off” over the next few months).

          2. Sloanicota*

            The company could have been a bit more forthcoming or just asked the employee if they wanted to conceal the firing this way. Maybe you proceeded the way you would have it had been you, which isn’t the worst instinct, but clearly this employee has no problem being open and seeking help and support, which … isn’t really the worst thing in the world. It’s just a different approach.

        2. ferrina*

          Usually current employees are aware when one of their teammates isn’t meeting expectations. If one person isn’t doing their share, that means someone else is doing it, and usually that’s their teammates. So most of the time I’ve seen someone fired for performance, everyone knows it was a performance issue (even though HR/the manager never actually says that). The most common reaction I’ve seen from other employees is relief.

          In the very unlikely scenario that:
          1) this employee was able to hide their performance well enough that no one realized it was an issue, and
          2) the other employees are following this person on LinkedIn
          you still have to add
          3) the other employees must assume that a single person being let got means other layoffs are imminent.
          Yes, it usually makes other employees a little jittery when they see that a colleague was let go and they don’t know why. It’s usually a gossip point for a month. But unless there are other underlying concerns at the company, it passes by within a month, maybe two.

        3. AngryOctopus*

          Also, when one person is “laid off”, most people recognize that it’s more of a face-saving maneuver than anything else.

      3. juliebulie*

        Yes, that was my thought. Lots of unemployed people post to various websites/blogs about losing their job and looking for a new one. For some people, it is even an important part of networking. OP is way out of line for wanting to shut this down and potentially interfering with that.

      4. fhqwhgads*

        I read it as indicating the LI posts themselves suggest “layoff” rather than firing, so that’s in theory where the coworkers would get it from. But I agree in general her posting this stuff is sort of a nothingburger.

    3. Awkwardness*

      And why would something, that a former employee is doing on their private LinkedIn account, affect staff morale?
      Do so many even have LinkedIn for themselves and do they use it regularly?

      I guess OP is more uncomfortable with the fact that somebody they did fire is vocal about it thus reminding OP again and again of the situation.

      1. For the record*

        This last sentence here. OP is feeling uncomfortable being called out as having fired someone and is spinning it up into “but how will it affect my team?”

      2. Smithy*

        I agree with this. I have personal acquaintances that I’m connected to on LinkedIn – and personally I would never post in the style or frequency that they do. However, we’re in different fields and what a connection of mine chooses to do that’s not truly awful, illegal or wildly unprofessional really doesn’t reflect on me.

        However, to the point of the OP – I do think it is likely beneficial to have a better core set thinking around how to talk to their team about someone going. This is one of those times where HR may genuinely be useful in providing scripts around what to say. Because if the OP thought their approach was going to offer this person an out that they’d take quietly and with privacy, and it would never be a situation they’d need to discuss with their team – that’s not something you can always rely on. Lots of people don’t take the very private option out, and being prepared for your team to hear stories (true, embellished, or fake) – being prepared and aware of how to respond is likely just smart.

      3. Pastor Petty Labelle*

        Well there is a really simple solution to this — disconnect with the person on LinkedIn.

        I’m serious. OP why on earth are you following what this person is doing on LinkedIn so closely? You are way to invested in what this former employee is doing. Disconnect and move on with your life. As this person is trying to do.

      4. Expelliarmus*

        My guess is that OP worries that if even one person sees this post, they will gossip about it and spread the fear like wildfire, but that’s definitely a stretch.

    4. learnedthehardway*

      Agreeing – the employee is making the best of the situation and trying to illustrate to the world at large that she has learned something from the experience and that she is resilient. It might be total BS, but it’s not hurting your company or your employee morale that she’s making inspirational posts on LinkedIn.

      If she were saying untrue things – like that she was illegally discriminated against or that the company had wronged her, then it would make sense to ask your corporate counsel to review the posts and advise on a response (which likely would be a cease & desist letter). If she is saying that she reported to a horrible manager who made her life a living hell and that the person is the devil incarnate, then that would be worth speaking to your own lawyers about as a case of defamation.

      But it doesn’t sound like she’s doing that. And your team will know that she was the weakest link, so her self-aggrandizing posting isn’t going to shift them to being demoralized that she’s gone.

      I would leave the whole situation strictly alone. That will say more than trying to refute her statements on the forum – which would come across as kind of mean, honestly, if she’s just saying she has learned and is looking forward. I mean, what are you going to say? “No, Ingrid, you weren’t a great employee and you didn’t learn. You did the bare minimum and got fired for it!” That’s not going to look good on you or your employer. That would definitely validate her and cause outsiders to think that perhaps the employee was hard done by.

    5. General von Klinkerhoffen*

      Very much agree. I had to scroll back up to check that this was indeed on LinkedIn (which is what it’s for) rather than Facebook, Twitter or Instagram (where naming the company would be less common).

      Even if she just said she was looking for a new job, it would take one click to work out what company she had left.

    6. Hyaline*

      Yeah, the Internet is full of curated vulnerability like this. It’s a form of capital in a way, and it draws attention. “Look at this difficult thing I am facing (with perfect make up) and here’s some platitudes about it that hopefully make me look good.” Whether the employee is doing it well and whether it should even be a thing (honestly I hate it) is another question entirely, but it’s super common.

      1. Radioactive Cyborg Llama*

        Oooh, I like “curated vulnerability” as a term to describe this. I get that people need to process stuff and feelings come up about all kinds of things, but it still doesn’t make (eg) getting your teeth whitened a “journey.”

        1. londonedit*

          Yeah, it’s like the ‘Come with me to [do some incredibly mundane task]’ videos that seem to be all over Instagram.

    7. Learn ALL the things?*

      Yeah, this sounds like a very normal LinkedIn behavior. It’s not as if the former employee is writing stuff like “Former Company are big meanie heads who fired me for no reason at all and now I’m left to roam the city like a Dickensian street waif.” It sounds more like your standard wannabe influencer stuff about overcoming a hard situation in an attempt to get people to think she’s resilient or something else they may find desirable in a potential employee.

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

      I agree. And the employee’s probably know that she wasn’t doing the best job and understand that you let her go because of that.

      1. rebelwithmouseyhair*

        That, I’ve learned here, is less than glaringly obvious to a lot of employees, given the number of times managers have reported them to be “blindsided” by a PIP or firing.

    9. 2 Cents*

      Yeah, OP, this is so normal for LinkedIn that I wouldn’t give it a second thought. Lots of people spin their layoff/firing/out of work status in this way.

    10. MigraineMonth*

      The reddit thread r/LinkedInLunatics documents the weirdest fringes of people talking about their “resilience journey”, exploiting other people’s tragedies for influence/business, bragging about how hard they hustle, “breaking the stigma” by talking about various not-safe-for-work topics in a work networking site, bragging about how humble they are…

      Posting repeatedly about searching for a job after being let go seems to be the LEAST weird thing on LinkedIn these days.

    11. MCMonkeyBean*

      Yeah I thought the posts were going to be way more dramatic and badmouthing the previous employer or something based on the letter title. “I lost my job and now I need a new one” is literally why LinkedIn was invented lol. Posting about the job hunt process may be more detail than I personally would go into but is still such a normal and common thing to do on that particular website.

      Asking a previous employee to stop talking about your company on a networking website where you are specifically supposed to show your previous work experience would be wildly out of line!

    12. CubeFarmer*

      Totally agree. There’s a school of thought that says everything is an opportunity.

      The number of people in my LinkedIn feed who post something like, “So grateful that I attended [boring conference] in Omaha and got to meet the amazing [big name in your field] as though it was some kind of spiritual awakening is comical.

    13. Cinnamon Stick*

      Compared to some of the nonsense I’ve seen on r/linkedinlunatics, this is mild and not unusual.

      A lot of career counselors are big on telling you how to use your LI presence to “market your brand” and get the attention of potential employers.

      1. MigraineMonth*

        Did you see the one where someone posted under the Education section:

        Harvard College – received pamphlet

    14. Mademoiselle Sugar Lump*

      Yes, I see this ALL the time. I was part of a very large layoff from a company who continues to have layoffs plus people leaving because the culture has changed, and so many of them post things like this, for the reasons you cite.

  4. MsM*

    LW1: If the firing was justified, everyone already knows the “resignation” was at best a mutual agreement things weren’t working out. You’re not going to keep morale up pretending otherwise.

    1. Archi-detect*

      It also seems like one of those awkward situations where talking about it just digs a hole for yourself. I would address it in broad strokes if someone asked, but otherwise not worth doing

    2. Elly*

      I agree with this. I worked in the financial industry at a small company back in the late 00’s. When things were bad, the partners told us they would do everything the could to make sure no one lost their job. Then a couple of months later, someone was let go. We all freaked out a bit at first, but then when we learned it was due to performance issues (which we did suspect) we felt better.

    3. Trout 'Waver*

      Yeah, this. OP#1, what are you looking for here? You fired someone and now you’re concerned that they’re telling people you fired them. That’s what happened. She’s allowed to tell people the truth.

    4. Rex Libris*

      The idea that nobody ever gets fired won’t keep morale up for any of the people you actually want to keep, anyway. The idea that problems are actually dealt with will.

    5. CheezeWhizz*

      Yep. LW1 you don’t get to “allow” your former employees to do things anymore. Why are you frequently checking her LinkedIn, anyway? That’s odd behaviour on your part.

      1. Expelliarmus*

        Okay, I know LW1 has some odd expectations here, but let’s not act like seeing someone’s LinkedIn post is necessarily overbearing. They are probably connected on there for normal networking reasons, and the employee’s post likely showed up in the LW’s home feed.

  5. STEM Admin*

    We have “casual Fridays” and many people dress in jeans or otherwise relax their look. I rarely took advantage of the option. One of the few times I did, I ended up in an emergency meeting in the C-Suite. I was the only person at the table not dressed in formal business attire. I was pretty mortified and never risked it again. Now I only wear jeans if I go into the office on the weekend or a holiday.

      1. RVA Cat*

        This, or at least keep a neutral blazer or cardigan around, with the bonus of helping if you get cold.

        1. starsaphire*

          I don’t think I know anyone above Manager level who doesn’t have an emergency sports jacket or blazer-and-scarf setup stashed in their office somewhere. Or, for that matter, an entire suit hanging on the coat rack; I’ve seen that before too.

          Plus the pair of nicer shoes tucked into the bottom desk drawer. :)

    2. howdoyousolveaproblem*

      I work in environments with both serious emergencies and themed dress-up days. When it comes to costumes at work, I think about things that can be removed (like an accessory), easily covered up, or are within the realm of normal for our work. If it’s not possible, I skip it, even as someone who likes to participate in fun things. Otherwise, you’ll find yourself dealing with a high level crisis in face paint or spandex (I’ve seen both situations happen to colleagues).

    3. Lizzianna*

      Years ago, when I was working in DC, our office was shut down for over a week during a blizzard. This was when blackberries weren’t common for low-level fed employees like me, and our email could only be accessed from a government computer, and my office was still transitioning to laptops, I still had a desktop. So situational telework wasn’t a thing, when we were closed, we were CLOSED.

      When we finally reopened, I hiked through the slush and the metro in jeans and snow boots, with tennis shoes in my bag. Lo and behold, a meeting at an office in the White House complex had been scheduled by the people who had continued to have access to the network. My boss needed me to accompany her because I was running point on the project and I hadn’t had time to brief her (again, said blizzard). The vast majority of people in that meeting were important enough that they a parking spot attached to the complex, so were just dressed for a normal day in the office. And then I was there in snowboots and jeans. That’s when I learned to keep a suit and dress shoes at my desk.

  6. Mags*

    The Outlook one, it’s about feeling like she ran to a higher up and the higher up didn’t have their back or “talk” to them about it so much as they ordered the calendar change yet when they needed the engineers to take up extra work they had an inclusive conversation about it. It’s a fair ask but feels disrespectful and power play-ish which could ruin morale and team dynamics. Do it and revisit after a month; you’ll have seen how it positively or negatively impacts your work by then.

    1. EllenD*

      I worked in central Government, and we could be relaxed in dressing, especially if Parliament wasn’t sitting. Several of my colleagues kept shoes, trousers, shirt & tie in the office, in case they unexpectedly got called into a meeting with Ministers. I had another who wore Doc Marten’s, black jeans, and a lumberjack shirt, who simply wore a formal jacket, when she had meeting’s with senior officers, or Ministers.

  7. Nia*

    3. Is that how all grand jury summons work? If so why would it be set up that way and how does anyone afford to do it? From a brief search it looks like only three states require the full jury duty to be paid, all the others only require the first couple of days.

    1. Martin Blackwood*

      Well, i imagine part of it is that for many people, losing a day of pay each pay period (on average, assuming a two week pay period) is more financially feasible than going up to ten weeks without pay, even if on paper its the same amount of money.

      1. Martin Blackwood*

        That is, people who arent paycheck to paycheck, can afford it. I misread your comment a bit. I could, maybe, but itd be tight.

        1. Samwise*

          My uncle has served on a number of grand juries. He’s retired with a very nice pension. Keeps him busy.

          1. Just me*

            Then grand juries should focus on people in that kind of situation, that can afford to go and they won’t lose pay over it. Anyone working at a retail job, or call center would lose their job because no one cares how anyone is affected by these things. Yeah I’ll serve now that I’m jobless and homeless! sheesh.

                1. Spencer Hastings*

                  But you don’t want to actively preclude them from being unbiased from the start…

              2. Jamjari*

                Agreed. You’re only getting a specific subset of the population then. That said, if we want diverse juries, we should make it less of a hardship to serve.

            2. Dek*

              That’s not a good idea. You don’t only want to be pulling jury folks in from a specific demographic (especially, say, specifically a wealthy/well-off/comfortable demographic)

              The answer is better laws protecting jobs/reimbursement for folks called to jury duty.

              1. Anonymouse*

                Yes – came here to say exactly this. I was asked to be a part of grand jury and was lucky to have a build up of PTO time so it didn’t financially impact me. I was the only member of the jury under the age of 45 (I was in my 20’s). There were multiple sexual assault cases that would not have been indicted because “she did lead him on,” or “should have known better.” I was able to push back in those cases and change some minds but it was horrifying to think about what would have happened if it had been a full group of retirees.

            3. B*

              You probably couldn’t fill a jury pool with people who are retired or can afford not to work, and it certainly wouldn’t be a jury of your peers.

              1. Peter the Bubblehead*

                A Grand Jury is very different from a trial jury. A Grand Jury is not a “jury of your peers.”
                A Grand Jury is typically only addressed by the Prosecutor presenting evidence in the case to obtain an indictment which then formally charges the defendant. Once indicted, the defendant than goes on trial or pleads guilty to the charges.
                More often than not, there is no defense attorney and no defense is presented to the Grand Jury. Their sole purpose is to determine if enough evidence exists to indicate a crime has been committed and – if they agree one has – issue an indictment.
                It is a long-running joke on Law & Order that a decent prosecutor could get a ham sandwich indicted.
                Likewise, rather than handling a single case, a Grand Jury is seated for an extended period and will hear evidence of numerous cases. Their only job is to confirm that a crime has been committed based on the evidence the prosecutor – and only the prosecutor presents. A Grand Jury – depending on location – could be seated for 6 weeks, 6 months, or like in this example, 18 months.

                1. B*

                  Yes. I am an attorney. Like trial juries, grand juries must be composed of representative cross-sections of the community.

              2. Festively Dressed Earl*

                I honestly think it’s a Sixth Amendment issue that our jury system de facto excludes lower-income citizens from serving. The only fix I can think of is to require businesses to cover juror’s pay (maybe in exchange for a tax break), but that’ll never happen.

                1. sara*

                  My personal take would be that the state needs to cover people’s lost wages, period. It should not be on the business to cover it — a big corporation can easily cover it, but for a small business it could be a serious expense, expecially if they have small margins. If we’re serious about a wide cross section serving, then taxpayer money should cover the cost just like we pay for the full salary of the judge, baliff, prosecutor, etc.

                2. MigraineMonth*

                  The government should pay for mandatory government service, in my opinion, and it should pay well, not $50/day plus gas money. (Giving a business a tax break is just the government paying with extra steps and disadvantages unemployed people.)

                  Jurors with higher incomes are in a better position to either take a financial hit or negotiate with their employers to get paid the difference with their usual salary.

    2. Brain the Brian*

      Generally, yes. Grand juries are impaneled for a few days each month over several months to hear the evidence for multiple cases and decide whether it’s strong enough to go to trial, essentially. It has nothing to do with pay schedules; it’s just how the US legal system works.

        1. Brain the Brian*

          Because that’s what the law says about impaneling grand juries. It saves the court time by not requiring that they select a new grand jury for every case when they don’t even know yet whether the evidence is sufficient to have a trial.

          1. Allonge*

            Genuine question – was this law drafted in a time when only independently wealthy people were eligible for (grand) jury duty?

            I am paid a lot, have a lot of leave, but taking three days a month for a year and a half would be quite an imposition still.

            1. Brain the Brian*

              Generally, yes — a lot of these laws originated when only wealthy men could serve in such a capacity — and that’s a problem that we could correct if we had the political will, but I kind of doubt we do; sadly, we seem to be heading in the other direction, if anything. It works for the courts, and that’s all that the people who write laws really care about. Many employers — mine included — allow employees to use a separate pool of “admin leave” or something similar for the full length of jury duty and pay out the full salary (sometimes minus court-provided jury compensation) because they recognize that it’s a unique situation fully outside the employee’s control.

              If I were the LW in this case and the court eventually denied my request to be excused, I would focus on that aspect to my employee, especially since HR has already said that might need to revise the policy to accommodate this circumstance. Most regular jury duty is only a day or two in length, and the employer here clearly hasn’t thought about grant jury exceptions to the normal jury duty rule before. The evidence presented to juries and grand juries is often traumatizing, and a good employer would want their employee to have their full pool of vacation available to rest and recharge after reviewing it — and they certainly wouldn’t want an employee already coming off of jury duty to also be unusually stressed about finances. That’s just a recipe for poor focus at work.

              1. Runaway jury*

                Well, the problem is that the company may not be able to pay full-time wages an employee who is available only 3/4 time.

                If OP can’t get the hardship waiver, she should just start talking about jury nullification or that everyone accused is guilty.

                2. Cthulhu's Librarian*

                  Grand juries do not render verdicts. They are a set of the population which determines if it is worth charging someone with a crime or pursuing an investigation.

                  They actually have a massive amount of ability to question prosecutors, investigators, and others about their decisions, but sadly often just rubber stamp what is put in front of them.

                3. Lady_Lessa*

                  While that might work for a normal jury, I wonder if it pertains to the grand jury situation.

                  FYI, I once got out of being an alternate (normal case) by saying honestly that I didn’t believe in scientific evidence. (Because an analytical test is ONLY as good as the person running it and that the calibration was recent. not said, but thought)

                4. londonedit*

                  Thanks Cthulhu’s Librarian – I wasn’t sure what a grand jury was. Assumed it was one on a big criminal trial or something. We don’t have that here – the CPS (Crown Prosecution Service) decides which cases should be prosecuted.

                5. Pastor Petty Labelle*

                  That would be a really terrible way to handle it. It could even get the OP jailed for contempt. So let’s not act out because the company might have a terrible jury pay problem.

                  The best solution is to work with the company to get a grand jury summons policy since the time committment is generally very different from regular jury duty. Although I always wonder how the OJ jury did it — a year long jury trial (although I don’t think they sat every single day).

                6. Phony Genius*

                  Also, grand jury decisions don’t have to be unanimous, so it’s hard for one person to have much of an impact.

                7. Spencer Hastings*

                  There is no voir dire for grand juries — you show up and you’re either picked out of the pool or not.

                8. ItsAllFunAndGamesUntil*

                  Judges and Jury staff are wise to the “imma gonna claim to be racist” or “imma gonna say hang em’ all” tricks to try to weasel out of jury duty, and usually all that is going to get you is admonished at best.

              2. Sloanicota*

                To be fair, it may still be possible to assemble a full, diverse, reasonably representative panel without people like OP who wouldn’t be able to do it. There may be people between employment, retirees, and people with flexible work/caregiving responsibilities that would be reasonably happy to do it for $50 a day. I had times in my life where that would have worked for me and times when it wouldn’t.

                1. doreen*

                  I think the issue is that that they won’t be representative if certain groups are exempt from jury service and non-representative may not be fair . You would be leaving out entire groups of people altogether – the flip side of “only independently wealthy people were eligible for (grand) jury duty” is “everyone who can’t afford to serve is exempt”. Would be way better to solve most of the problem by requiring jurors to get their regular pay either from their employer or the government – but that’s unlikely to happen.

                2. Guacamole Bob*

                  What the law says about the composition of juries and what a statistician or even a layperson would consider representative are wildly different things.

              3. Jack Russell Terrier*

                A lot of states for petit juror it’s two weeks of phone in the evening before to see if you’re needed the next day. That’s also for Federal Court. I was summoned there once.

                DC is 1 day or 1 trial. We are eligible every two years. I’ve served on 2 juries since I moved here in the mid-Nineties. Last time, I was in the juror pool for a homicide. Luckily they empaneled the jury before my voir dire. I’m freelance, so it does have an impact on my income.

            2. Seeking Second Childhood*

              Also the economy used to be much more agriculture – the schedule worked better for a small independent farmer than shutting him (historically yes him) down for more time at once.

              The 80 mile radius on jury pool was probably smaller before automobiles.

              1. MsM*

                And you also didn’t have judges available at all times of the year – we still call them “circuits” because there used to be a lot more traveling involved (without the benefits of modern transportation), and they’d hear all the cases at once when they were in a particular area.

                2. Jennifer in FL*

                  This is still the case in many rural/less populated areas of the country, and much more common than most people would think. I lived in a county that was fairly rural that butted a county that was just as rural but much more populated. The county seats were only a few miles apart, distance wise. The hearing/trial/etc times between the two counties varied wildly because one country sat a grand jury every month (I think) and the other every three months (I think), plus my county only had one judge to try cases, whereas the other county had several.

                3. linger*

                  Hence also the Middle English word eyre for a traveling judge’s circuit (derived from Latin iter “journey”).
                  So Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre is literally “the journey of” its narrator Jane. (Also why, when Susanna Hoffs loosely adapted the main plotline for This Bird Has Flown, she named her narrator “Jane Start”.)

            3. Georgia Carolyn Mason*

              Yeah, I couldn’t pull it off due to third-party deadlines, even if I could make it work financially.

        2. doreen*

          Sometimes it kind of does need to work that way – there are some grand juries where multiple unrelated cases are presented each day and those might met every day or every other day for a week or two. But there are others that involve one investigation with multiple defendants and that will take multiple weeks whether it’s one day every week for 15 weeks or three straight weeks and there are pros and cons for each schedule. I once almost ended up on one that was going to be one weeknight a month for six months or so and while it would have been easier financially than going without pay for the equivalent number of weeks ( 7 or so) it meant a much longer time in which I couldn’t take a weeklong vacation.

          But no one is going to be able to excuse the LW other than the judge. Other court personnel might be able to postpone service for a vacation or excuse someone for an automatic reason (last jury service was a year ago , etc)

          1. Guacamole Bob*

            Yes to your second paragraph – it’s stressful, but ultimately OP won’t really know more until she shows up and finds out what things are like for this particular court and judge. Sometimes there are large jury pools and people get excused for all sorts of things and financial hardship is easy to argue, sometimes there’s very little flexibility in who serves, in which case OP should be going to their employer to talk about whether it’s possible to change their policy.

            And until she shows up she won’t know how much flexibility there is around those 54 scheduled days. With some kinds of grand juries you need the exact same people there every day to hear evidence across multiple parts of the same case, which with others you are hearing different cases each day and there can be more flexibility for people to miss now and then. And grand juries don’t always use all the days they schedule for, but that varies a lot, too.

            1. Brain the Brian*

              Absolutely correct. You can’t know until your first day at the court what your situation will be.

            2. Been There*

              Does the court website have information about their definition of hardship? When this happened to me, I had to dig through the site, but I found that the court considered a commute of more than 90 minutes a hardship. For the letter writer the 80 mile commute might gain more traction than the financial argument. In my case, I had to walk past the much closer courthouse on my way home from my one day of jury duty.

    3. Bilateralrope*

      Jury duty is a job you have very little choice in taking. Meaning very little ability to negotiate any part of the job. So it’s no surprise that the pay is very little. Unless they can get someone else to pay the jury duty employees.

      I live outside the US, and jury duty here pays below minimum wage.

      1. ScruffyInternHerder*

        Live in the USA, my last (local, circuit court) jury duty paid me $35 plus 26 cents a mile from my street address to the courthouse and back. That was for a full day served. ($35 for an 8 hour day…that was minimum wage in the early 1990s, not now)

        I’m pretty lucky in that my job has a reasonable JD policy and I received my whole day’s pay, with no PTO taken.

        2. Orange You Glad*

          My local jury duty (large US city) is pennies per hour – I last served for a week and got a check for $11. If anyone drove they got a discount on parking, and we all got a discount at the nearby food hall for lunch. Luckily my job doesn’t require me to log any PTO or anything for my time out serving.

        3. NobodyHasTimeForThis*

          Where I live (US) if your employer will pay you when you have Jury Duty, then you do not get paid by the court except for mileage and parking. They asked if I wanted to waive my mileage and parking and nope, they had to mail me a check for $3.

      2. Johanna Cabal*

        There have actually been cases where holdout jurors have broken down and agreed to a verdict they don’t agree with because of financial and childcare concerns. And unfortunately this is rarely grounds for a new trial.

      3. Meep*

        Its real easy to get out of jury duty here. I was recently summoned for the first time in 11 years. I told them I was pregnant and in my first trimester with morning sickness. Within an hour of submitting the form, I got an email telling me that I had been dismissed. My own family hadn’t even known at that point.

    4. Emmy Noether*

      I’d also assume that the judges have to be very reticent with the financial hardship dismissals, because only keeping people who are very well paid or independently wealthy and/or have no dependents and thus can afford it (or are currently out of work anyway) makes for a not very diverse jury.

      If I could, I’d switch with the letter writer. There is no jury duty here, and I think it would be fascinating to me.

      1. HG*

        A family member was on one of those COVID-era grand juries that met for unusually long because everything about the courts was strange then.

        He couldn’t tell me much about his experiences, obviously, but I gather that a lot of it was fascinating, some of it was boring, and some of it was deeply, deeply upsetting.

      2. Dog momma*

        A couple of days on jury duty is one thing. Grand jury is something else. People can be sequestered for weeks.. or longer depending on the case. and no TV, radio or newspaper/equivalent so not to be biased. which means your & the rest of your peers MAY be living in a hotel under supervision.. again depending on the case..
        what was described, ongoing 1 case vs multiple v
        vases over 18 mo…not sure how that part works, or maybe LW misunderstood something

        1. Magpie*

          Grand juries are the juries who hear the initial evidence to decide whether charges will be brought against someone and which charges the prosecution is allowed to pursue. There’s no sequestering of Grand juries.

          1. Brain the Brian*

            There’s also very little sequestering of *regular* juries these days, although that’s beside the point here.

        2. sparkle emoji*

          The 18 month time frame for a few days at a time would be typical for grand juries, they aren’t a jury in the sense you’re thinking that decides one case, they take more of an arbiter role to decide what cases should go to trial. It’s very unlikely they would be sequestered. I think you may be confusing “grand jury” to mean jury for an important/high profile case(like the OJ Simpson trial), which is a common misunderstanding.

          1. NobodyHasTimeForThis*

            I think in my local Grand juries are only empaneled for 6 months at a time. 18 months seems like an unreasonable commitment. You can be asked to continue to serve after the 6 months, but I think it is optional at that point.

            1. Another Jen*

              6 months is so much more reasonable for the jurors, and it seems like the inconvenience for the courts to have to select grand juries 3 times as often would be well worth it.

        3. RussianInTexas*

          That is not how grand jury works. No one ever sequestering grand jury (no one really sequestering the petit jury either nowadays), and the grand jury does not hear one case. In fact, they don’t hear cases to decide on guilt at all. They simply overlook the evidence presented by the state to decide if the criminal charge needs to be made. They go through multiple cases during service.

      3. Filosofickle*

        Last year when I was called in, the judge said he would not grant financial hardship exemptions without major cause. He said only if you could honestly claim you had zero capability to cover lost wages and the wages were absolutely critical for survival — if there are any assets or savings, or the ability to make it up in other ways, even if it’s really hard, then you need to serve. Ouch. I was granted a financial hardship on a prior summons, a 6 week asbestos trial, because it would have cost me the freelance contract I was on and potentially tanked future contracts with that client. By the other judge’s rules I might not have gotten that exemption — losing that income would have hurt but it wouldn’t have put me on the streets.

        I did serve on a jury once, and it was a fascinating experience. I am glad I did it once, but am not eager to do it again because it is a financial hit. On that jury I may have been the only one not getting paid to be there — a couple were retired and most worked for the state government and utilities, which pay. It doesn’t seem like it’s in an employer’s financial interest to pay for jury duty, as it would increase the odds of their people staying in the jury pool when others can get out on hardship claims.

        1. PennylaneTX*

          Replying here as all of these are great comments. I did much of what is discussed here when I was called for federal grand jury duty in DC–my boss wrote a letter saying it would harm the business as I was the only person who did what I did. The judge read it and told me to tell my boss she read it, but that jury duty is inconvenient for companies and they must bear it. The only people i KNOW were excused were students and teachers. That being said, I can see a financial hardship excuse being allowed. Also, each jury that was empaneled had more than 20 jurors, but only 14 or so had to be present, so it allowed for absences/vacations/illness.

    5. MrsThePlague*

      I’m not American or in America, so please forgive my ignorance here! How can people be compelled to participate in jury duty even if they will lose significant income, and neither the employer nor the courts are required to compensate them? Are jurors really just SOL? Is there sort of an unspoken rule that employers will make up the difference? What if the juror has to pay rent and is now short and loses their home?

      As another commenter said above, a lot of jurors are going to be regular people who can’t afford to miss work, right? So if that’s the case, the courts will probably be very restrictive on those who they dismiss due to financial hardships, otherwise very few people would be left to serve. Also, doesn’t this basically mean that jurors are paying to be jurors? I feel like I’m missing something…

      1. Ask a Manager* Post author

        I’m by no means an expert on this, but you can be excused for financial hardship … but that can also end up meaning that jury pools aren’t as representative of the communities they serve as they’re supposed to be.

        1. MrsThePlague*

          That makes sense, and also is fascinating in a way.

          I’d be really curious how many people are actually excused, how many aren’t, and how this impacts the people who are close enough to hardship to apply but not close enough to be excused. It’s really adding another layer of understanding to why people hate jury duty – I didn’t realize how financially burdensome it was.

          1. metadata minion*

            Grand jury duty is significantly more time than most trial jury requirements.

          2. darlingpants*

            I’ve only had jury duty once, but they called about 200 people for 1 normal jury so they excused almost 95% of us. I got out it because I needed to drive my sister to another state that week. My impression was that if you really don’t want to be there, they also don’t want you to be there because you’ll probably do a bad job, so it was pretty easy to get excused. It’s possible that was just that judge or that state though and others are stricter.

            1. Charlotte Lucas*

              In every state I’ve lived in, there are certain things that can keep you from even having to show up (for example, being a full-time student). But you can also defer jury duty if you have something unmovable going on that week. They just reschedule you.

              1. darsynia*

                They’re tenacious on rescheduling, too! I was called when I was the sole caregiver for an infant, they deferred for 2 years, but then I was breastfeeding a newborn, so they deferred for 12 months, was still breastfeeding, they deferred, and when they called me up again I was pregnant. I thought sure they’d send me away but I was chosen for that jury, heh. Being chosen was almost a relief because the clerk was getting REALLY frustrated, and I felt like for all the work they went through trying to get me in there, at least it was worth it!

                They call up every 6 years, and I was so excited when I got the next summons (I actually really wanted to serve, I was just, ya know, very unavailable the first many times)!

                It was for April of 2020.

                1. Meep*

                  That’s interesting. I got dismissed because I was in my first trimester and had morning sickness. Must of gotten a male clerk who couldn’t handle basic bodily functions. lol.

              2. darlingpants*

                I got dismissed, not rescheduled! My experience has been that if you don’t have to show up in person at the courthouse you get put back in the pool, but when you show up, even if it’s just for 2 or so hours that counts. But again, judges/jurisdictions have so much individual discretion that it might not be the norm.

                My husband got called once for a week and every single day they dismissed them like 20 minutes before anything was supposed to start. Luckily for him we lived literally across the street from the courthouse at that point, and his office was 5 blocks away so it didn’t totally destroy his week.

            2. Turquoisecow*

              I was called for jury duty and they went through a list of reasons people might be excused and asked people to raise their hand and explain their situation if they thought that reason applied to them. One woman raised her hand for literally every single reason, and at first the judge was like “no, that doesn’t apply,” but after like the tenth time he was clearly frustrated and was like “obviously you don’t want to be here and you’re annoying and I don’t want to deal with you anymore, so leave,” and they got out of it. I don’t think I’d advise taking that stance, but plenty of people got dismissed for similar reasons.

          3. anon24*

            I worked at a company that did not cover pay for jury duty. One of my co-workers got called for jury duty, denied the financial hardship excuse, and ended up stuck on a 2 month long trial in a major city 100 miles away. He was paid $7/day with no transportation/parking reimbursement. When he came back he told me that he drained all his savings and had to take a few thousand in loans out to survive. Jury duty literally set him back years.

          4. Guacamole Bob*

            One thing that probably makes little sense to non-Americans (it makes little sense to Americans, too): all of these factors vary wildly depending on the type of court, the type of jury, the community, the judge, etc.

            We have juries at both the state and federal level, with state courts often administered locally (so local jury duty may vary a lot within the state). The number of cases that go to a jury trial or that need to go before a grand jury varies within that based on state law and other factors (I live adjacent to Washington DC and the local population gets pulled into more federal juries than average because of the number of federal cases that are conducted here). Some jurisdictions call people infrequently with a small pool and are very strict about the reasons they accept for excuses, and some call large pools and expect to dismiss lots of people. Sometimes they routinely call large pools and how many jurors they need that day varies depending on case load so they can be stricter or more relaxed day by day. Sometimes it’s up to a specific judge how they handle it.

            When they’re seating a jury for a trial the lawyers for each side are often able to exclude certain jurors but the exact rules vary depending on state law and the type of case and, to some extent, the judge hearing the case.

            1. Clisby*

              And in a federal trial, rules on how lawyers can exclude jurors would not be decided state-by-state. There would be federal laws in place.

            2. Hillary*

              One thing to add – it also varies based on the population. Rolls are usually managed with drivers license registrations, which means they don’t know if someone is actually eligible (you have to be a citizen).

              Plus some places have much higher response rates than others. That could be because someone moved – last time I was summoned I’d moved to a different county the week before and hadn’t changed my license yet. And some people just ignore the summons.

              1. Cat*

                Does that mean that anyone who doesn’t have a licence (e.g. some disabled people) will never be called anyway?

          5. I can read anything except the room*

            Well, do keep in mind that grand jury service is incredibly uncommon and most people will never be called up for it, so the reasons people hate jury duty aren’t really based on the amount of time that grand jury service requires. It’s still something many perceive as a hassle or boring, and it’s absolutely still something that might impact someone’s income, but it’s much more typical to be able to minimize the income impact of regular jury duty by planning shift work around it, and for salaried jobs to offer fully paid jury duty service days for the much smaller numbers of days that’s typical.

            I’ve actually been called up for the jury service cattle call a half a dozen times and sent home the same day every time without being placed on a jury.

            1. Aggretsuko*

              I LIKE jury duty, but I wasn’t happy about being called for federal, especially since I didn’t drive at the time. I live a half hour away from the capital of the state so that wasn’t too bad and I could have taken the train, but that situation could have been worse. They also said I had to call and check in every week for a month and then dragged it out to six weeks, at which point I was going to go to Hawaii and wasn’t too thrilled about it.

            2. NotAnotherManager!*

              It really depends on your jurisdiction. DC residents tend to get called for both jury and grand jury duty more frequently than pretty much any other jurisdiction. I feel like I always have someone out on one or the other (we provide five paid leave days and then pay the delta between jury pay and salary for those called to serve – you just have to send HR the paperwork the court gives you with the details of your service on it).

              DC just has a very high volume of both “state” (district) and federal cases and a relatively smaller number of qualified residents. They will also allow attorneys to sit on juries because excluding them would exacerbate the problem. An attorney I used to work for was the foreperson on a murder trial once.

              1. I can read anything except the room*

                I’m actually based in DC. Even being more common here it still seems very uncommon to be impaneled on a grand jury. In my office we have about 150 employees, and I work regularly enough with at least 50 or 60 of them to be informed when someone is working greatly reduced hours for several months. In my 12 years here there have been 2 people that I know of who were impaneled for a grand jury.

                Local jury duty is a different story, the DC residents get called up pretty much annually like clockwork. And I do think that even 2 out of 50 in 12 years for the grand jury is probably a much higher than average rate than anywhere else – but it’s not so high that the average person’s feelings about jury duty are coming from the kinds of service obligations for grand juries.

          6. 2 Cents*

            My spouse is a teacher and loves jury duty because of an interest in the legal system. If it’s in the summer, they’ll sign up for the whole duration, since they’re off anyway :D

            1. ampersand*

              It’s interesting to me that there are people who enthusiastically want to serve on juries (my husband is one of them and was so disappointed when he was called for jury duty but dismissed). I…don’t, for a variety of reasons, even though I promise I’m an involved (US) citizen in other ways. I’m glad there’s an enthusiastic contingent that exists!

              1. Clisby*

                I’ve served on a couple of juries and would love to serve again. I’m retired, so there are no work complications, though.

              2. Another Jen*

                I love being called for jury duty! Usually it’s just a day where I get to sit in a quiet waiting room and read a book. But the last time, I got to actually serve on a jury, which was pretty interesting.

            2. NotAnotherManager!*

              My persuasion and rhetoric professor in college really ,really wanted to sit on a jury, and she was dismissed every single time she was called as soon as they got to the “what do you do” portion of the event.

          7. Orv*

            How many people get excused depends on how big the jury pool is where you live, and how heavy the case load is. If you happen to get called up during a time when there aren’t many cases coming to trial, you may be excused for pretty minor reasons — I was once excused because I had nonrefundable tickets for an after-hours Disneyland event! But if they really need jurors and people aren’t showing up, or the judge is in a bad mood, you may be out of luck.

            1. NotAnotherManager!*

              The reasons for being excused also vary A LOT by jurisdiction. Virginia has an exception for farmers (because, for example, your crops will rot in the field if you aren’t there during harvest) and other hardship. Maryland pretty much won’t excuse you except for serious health issues. DC will hunt you down and does not care if you are at college 500 miles away or are the only person who can do your job – and you can pretty much be guarantee to be called every two years in DC.

          8. Random Biter*

            My significant other had dialysis three days a week, and he was in a wheelchair. I was his only way to get to and from his appointments (this was before Uber or Lyft, and even if they were around they’d have had to be able to do wheelchair transport) . Even with a letter from his dialysis doctor the clerk of courts was being a total hardcase and *denying* my request to be excused! I was ready to go to jail when the judge finally stepped in and excused me.

          9. NobodyHasTimeForThis*

            The sad fact is that for many cases it is not a representative jury. There is a higher rate of dismissal for people who hold certain jobs because they are seen as less likely to be swayed by a good lawyer.

            My last jury call involved a 50 page questionnaire that asked most of the questions that they wanted to ask during jury selection and they did a lot of the elimination off the top before bringing people back for selection. I think that was great, it took about an hour to complete in the jury room and it did mean that they called more people for the initial process than usual, but once they proceeded, they had the jury seated in a day for a capital trial.

        2. Runaway jury*

          The standard for juries is that they be a fair cross section of the community, not that they be “diverse”.

        3. Box of Kittens*

          I had to serve on a grand jury a few years ago and this is exactly what happened in my case. The judge presiding actually asked for volunteers from the pool who was summoned and got super close to filling the jury panel that way, and he was very lenient about people in situations similar to the LW, but that also meant that the grand jury ended up being composed of mostly older white folks who had the time and political interest to want to do it.

        4. Former grand juror*

          I was on a grand jury about 15 years ago in a place where the grand jury is full time for 4 weeks, over half the people called for it were excused for some sort of hardship. The people on the grand jury were unemployed, students between terms, retired, or had employers who paid for jury duty time.

      2. GovSysadmin*

        It also apparently completely depends on the policies of your employer. When I had jury duty a few years ago, the way it worked was that my employer paid my regular salary for the days I was out, and in return, I signed over the check I got from my county for jury duty pay. Since my regular pay was significantly higher than the jury duty pay, my employer essentially paid the difference for the days I was out. In my opinion, that’s the right way to do it.

        1. Lab Boss*

          My company did it that way for some time, and it always seemed reasonable. Then, literally about a month before I got called up for jury duty, they announced that they’d no longer be clawing back your jury pay and you just got to keep both it and your full paycheck. Turns out the time spent on dealing with shuffling jury checks around wasn’t worth the amount of money pulled back, and (for once) they decided to just make it easier for everyone at the cost of some cash. Lucky me!

          1. ScruffyInternHerder*

            Similarly (I posted above about my $35 for a day) I got to keep mine. It basically covered my parking and my lunch, as city-center parking is always spendy and we were not permitted to bring our own lunches into the building.

          2. Quill*

            My employer wanted to have me sign over the jury pay check and when it turned out to be five dollars he told me nevermind, it would cost him more than that to figure it out at tax season.

        2. Great Frogs of Literature*

          This is how my employer does it — take the jury pay (maybe only if it’s over a certain $ amount?) and give you your regular salary. We have an office in Washington DC, so have had a couple different folks out on grand juries (pretty senior people, too). Having those people out a few days every week or two is a massive pain, but it’s way better for the company than having them gone for weeks or months in a row.

          I think the coworkers who did it thought it was kind of a hassle, but not an outrageous hardship, since they were still getting their regular pay and just needed to rearrange their schedules and accept that they wouldn’t get as much work done.

        3. TimeExpectations*

          This has been standard at every place I’ve worked, but it’s usually limited to 3 or 5 days (and legally you cannot be called more than once every 3 years here). You’re expected to use other time off or make arrangements with your boss to make up the time if you need more than that. I don’t know what would have happened for a grand jury summons.

        4. Clisby*

          That’s how my company did it the first time I was called. (I think that court, in Ohio, offered a parking voucher, but since I lived within walking distance of the courthouse, I didn’t bother.

        5. Foila*

          Yeah, that’s how it went for me when I was on a federal jury for nearly a month. I did get to keep the mileage allowance, which iirc was comparable to the daily pay.

        6. fhqwhgads*

          If we check the box that we’ll be paid by our employer for any jury service, there is no jury duty pay. So nothing to swap out. But also the day rate is super low, like $15. So probably not worth the paperwork.

      3. NoMoreFirstTimeCommenter*

        Countries can order their citizens to do all sorts of difficult or unpleasant things. My country doesn’t have jury duty but we have military service.

      4. Brain the Brian*

        Penalties depend on your state, but in most states, you can be fined not-massive-but-also-not-insignificant amounts or sent to prison for several days if you don’t show up for jury duty.

      5. Ms. Norbury*

        Yeah, I’m not American or in the US either, and I have to admit I was a bit shocked by this question. I don’t want to start the whole discussion about work conditions in the US (not productive, and I don’t have much to add anyway) but where I am it’s national law that anyone formally employed serving jury duty gets paid a full work day.

        1. SnackAttack*

          For regular jury duty, that’s the case in most places. The majority of corporate jobs will pay you your regular wage if you’re called to serve. The issue is that this is a grand jury, which works differently.

    6. lefteye*

      it really sucks because jury duty should be an honor and not a burden. it’s a huge civic responsibility, and one of the few political actions you can undertake that actually has a direct and massive effect on your immediate community/people’s actual lives.

      and yet all you hear are people complaining about it and trying to get out of it.

      i don’t blame LW3, or anyone else for whom money is on the line, but also it’s so crappy that this system ends up meaning poor people can’t afford to be represented in a jury which definitely effects who gets to actually have a “jury of peers”. I wish LW3’s company was required to cover all the expenses for this so they could serve.

      1. I should really pick a name*

        If the government is compelling people to participate, they should pay, not the employer.

        1. jasmine*

          But there’s also the matter of PTO. If the government is paying but you lose all your vacation days to jury duty, that’s a really impactful loss.

        2. len*

          Why? Seems logistically unrealistic to fully cover an employee’s normal income (salaries vary), and why shouldn’t an employer have to contribute to a civic duty as well?

        3. NotAnotherManager!*

          If corporations are “people” entitled to unlimited dollars of “free speech”, then they can assume duties of citizenship along with the rights. Enough of my tax dollars go to corporate welfare, I’m not reimbursing their executives for jury duty, too.

      2. Hyaline*

        It also is a frustrating burden when you have to account for childcare—I bet parents would be much less grumpy about participating if the court provided free, on-site care! But as it stands I have to coordinate alternative care for my kids if I get summoned and frankly it’s a pain.

        1. Turquoisecow*

          I’m not sure the specifics but last time I was called I had a small child (I think she was under a year?) and there was an online form if you had a qualifying excuse. I checked the box for “primary caregiver of a small child,” was excused, and never got any pushback. My mom also would put something similar when she was a stay at home mom, especially because my autistic brother really needed supervision, and I don’t remember her serving or even having to go to court to make her excuse for my entire childhood (though maybe she just was never called). Obviously different states do it differently.

          1. NobodyHasTimeForThis*

            I did the online form when I was nursing a newborn and had a toddler and did not get excused and showed up with the baby. I had found childcare for the toddler for the day, but my baby would not take a bottle. I got threatened by the person doing the check in, but then the judge’s clerk walked out, saw the situation, and came back with a stamp and dismissed me

        2. Guacamole Bob*

          When I was summoned for our local court system a couple years back, they asked that everyone show up at the courthouse (inconveniently located for me) at like 7:30 a.m., plus allowing time for difficult parking. Luckily my spouse could handle kid drop off, but I was really surprised that even the initial summons was structured in a way that would be deeply inconvenient for many people.

          1. Great Frogs of Literature*

            I would’ve had to leave at 5:30 or 6am to catch multiple buses to get the the courthouse I was summoned to, which was way out in the boonies. Thankfully I was able to claim hardship for that and get it rescheduled to somewhere that in long walk/one bus range.

          2. Another Jen*

            Oh, that’s a really good point! Just because full-time child care accommodates your work hours doesn’t mean that it will accommodate the non-standard jury duty hours (plus possible extra commute time)

        3. RussianInTexas*

          At least in my state, if you are providing childcare to your child under the age of 12, you are excused from the jury duty.

        4. Jacqueline*

          Montgomery county, PA has (had?) childcare available for people with business at the court, which included jury duty.

          1. Guacamole Bob*

            On the one hand, great! On the other, if they use that to argue that anyone with child care responsibilities shouldn’t be excused, I’d be pretty upset.

            Breastfeeding infants, kids with special needs, school-age kids who need to be dropped off or picked up from school at specific hours, kids who have regular medical appointments… there are a lot of instances where “well, there’s child care provided” isn’t really addressing the issue.

      3. Aggretsuko*

        People are trying to get out of it because it may very well screw with their work lives and money.

        I haven’t been called at my new job yet, but judges LOVED to have people from my old employer get called because they knew we’d get paid and didn’t have the issues a lot of other people had.

    7. Pam Adams*

      In California, state employees must be paid their regular salary for all days of jury duty. We don’t get to keep the $15 daily fee.

      1. Bilateralrope*

        What about unemployed people ?

        Because jury duty, and especially serving on a grand jury, sounds like it will get in the way of job searching.

        2. Emmy Noether*

          Do you mean getting in the way of the searching itself (in which case I’d think that a few days a months gets less in the way than many other things do), or do you mean the prior commitment could put off potential employers? Does one even have to disclose it? Surely employers aren’t supposed to be able to discriminate for it.

    8. baseballfan*

      I had a grand jury summons last year. Didn’t end up getting picked, but they stated the obligation was for 3 days a week for 3 months.

      That’s more than half a person’s working life, which is egregious in my opinion. I have no issue with fulfilling my civic duty, but it would have been a considerable hardship. And I would have even gotten paid! I’m fairly certain my employer would have paid me for all the days I was out, but I would still have to arrange coverage for my work. I’m a manager in client service and responsible for my own clients and deliverables.

      A few people requested to be excused due to employment and were denied as expected.

      I do find it interesting that a valid excuse is being the primary caregiver for a child under 18. Shouldn’t it be under, say, 5? Any child from 5-18 would be in school assuming it’s not a summer or holiday break.

      1. ScruffyInternHerder*

        Where I live, the following are true:

        1. There are school districts where there is no busing available, period. You either walk (which doesn’t work in some cases) or you get dropped off by a parent or other adult.
        2. Our schools release several hours before court sessions wrap.
        3. Minimum unescorted driving age in my state is 16. This does not address all of the factors that you actually need to deal with prior to a full license, just stating that the minimum age that anyone can do some driving on their own sans parent is 16.
        4. Even school-sponsored extracurricular activities do not provide transportation in all cases.
        5. There is no public transit option where I live.
        6. Local cab companies will not pick up a minor child. (Uber and Lyft, unknown.)

        I understand the 18 year stipulation. Teenagers require a different type of caretaking than a toddler, but they still need it.

      2. bamcheeks*

        But school days are short, and jury days aren’t necessarily. If I have to drop off a child at school at 8:45am and pick them up at 3:15pm, and then travel to court an hour away, I’d have barely 4 hours at court. Even with after-school club, I need to be back to pick them up at 5.30pm.

      3. Clisby*

        That differs from state to state (and federal vs. state).

        Federal exemption for childcare is for a child under 10.
        South Carolina state court exemption is for a child under 7.
        I know when I lived in Atlanta, I got an exemption in Georgia for my child who was not even 1. I kind of think the rule was for under 6, but I can’t swear to that.

    9. Hastily Blessed Fritos*

      Yes. The flip side is that grand jury summons are rare; most people will be called for regular jury duty a few times, but I only know one person who served grand jury duty. (My mom, a teacher, and the term overlapped the summer.) I was called for grand jury once, but it was April 2020 and I was excused for not having childcare available.

    10. Denise*

      It depends on the type of court, but, yes, grand juries take up a lot of time. I was on a grand jury that was daily for over a month. On that jury, there weren’t really any breaks given for hardship requests — there were people on the jury whose employers didn’t pay them, so they ended up working nights after jury duty was done for the day. How willing the court is to honor hardship appeals also depends to some extent on how many potential jurors are available at a particular time.

    11. Autumn*

      I did regular Grand Jury, a few years ago. It was once a week for three months in a rural county. Mostly DUI and drug cases.

      Federal grand jury is a little more difficult to manage. Unless you live in commuting distance to the federal district court in your state it can be quite a burden. It’s also super rare. So I imagine many HR policies are written to cover jury trials which are usually quite short. When they’ve longer they’re often notorious in the city they’re taking place in.

      If I had to serve in a federal grand jury I would have to drive 120 miles each way and would wind up staying 2 nights or more in a hotel to make it work. I am not employed full time but it would cost me more than jury duty typically pays. At least if I were called for a federal trial I would be there for a week or so and only make the drive once. The kicker? The neighboring states Federal court is maybe 65-70 miles away and wouldn’t require a hotel stay for me.

      One thing to think about, you wouldn’t want a jury pool reduced to one “in commuting distance” because that might make it harder to pull a diverse and impartial jury, as federal cases that require one will possibly be rather notorious in that city.

    12. Sally Sue*

      My husband was on a Federal Grand Jury about ten years ago and it can be a hardship for sure. He was a pretty well paid exempt employee and was fortunate to have enough flexibility with his employer that it wasn’t a big hit financially. That would not necessarily be the case for someone who was living paycheck to paycheck though especially if they were 80 miles away. (We were fortunate to live literally 5 minutes from the Federal courthouse.) I am fairly confident that the judge will take OP’s situation into consideration and they will more than likely be excused. One of the problems with the system is (and I’m not proposing any solutions–that’s another conversation), that a large percentage of the population simply can’t afford to serve on juries–grand juries or otherwise. Those lines are usually drawn between socio-economic classes (which often affects gender, race, education level, etc.) which means that many juries are not a diverse representation of the community of peers. Many juries are heavy on wealthier, white retirees because that is the demo of people who can afford (both time and money) to serve.

    13. Clisby*

      LW says this is federal court, so that should be uniform across all states.

      In SC, they’re called for 1-3 days a month for a 12-18 month term. The hardship form does not list general “financial hardship.” The closest thing is:

      “Any person whose services are so essential to the operation of a business, commercial, or agricultural enterprise that the enterprise must close if such person were required to perform jury service.”

      There’s also a way to request a postponement, but it doesn’t sound like that would help in this case. I think that’s for things like “I have major surgery scheduled for 2 months into the grand jury term and will be out of action for 6 weeks after.”

    14. My Useless Two Cents*

      I don’t know if its the same for all grand jury summons but my mom was selected for grand jury duty with the same 3 days a month for 18 months verbiage. But she only had to go in twice in those 18 months, and it was only a day each time. They have to warn you of the time it may take but 99% of the time it is only a small fraction of what you end up doing. Kind of like a normal jury duty assignment that may warn you of a two week trial but they settle after day one and you’re done.

    15. Jack Straw from Wichita*

      When I got mine, it started with one week left in the school year. Otherwise I’d have tried to get out of it–it was to my benefit though, I got paid my teaching salary + the grand jury pay. Super interesting experience if you can afford to do it!

    16. RAC*

      I just got off a federal grand jury service last Fall, after 18 months. While the schedule was officially 3 days every four weeks, we typically met for 2 days, and often two half-days each period. Some weeks it was only for one day, but occasionally we would be there for all three days. We would find out the week before how many and which days we would be in service. For me, the federal courthouse was 90 miles away, so the court paid the daily jury wage ($50), mileage, downtown parking, and hotel reimbursement (typical IRS per diem + Meals & Incidentals rate as a lump sum) for one or two nights when I had to go for jury service.
      My employer, thankfully, does not have ‘jury service’ days nor did they make me take vacation days when I had to be at the courthouse. I’m a salaried exempt IT worker, and often I would work in the evenings from the hotel.
      Our jury summons did not even specify that it was for grand jury; we found out after everyone was let into the courtroom. The administrative judge selected 26 people (22 and 6 alternates) to serve for the 18-month period. That was 26 out of 68 that were called. We only ended up needing to pull one alternate about 10 months after we started, because one of the jury members was moving out of state.
      During the jury call, we actually had two high school band directors who ended up getting excused due to upcoming band competition schedules. The administrative judge will consider hardships but it’s completely up to the judge what they choose to accept as valid reasons to be excused.

      2. grandjurytoo*

        This was the same for me in Northern California. Up to 3 days a month for the same 18 month period but I didn’t really serve 18 months. The way it was set up, you went in a day in February for the selection. Then you did a day of training in March/April. The actual court cases were a single week day every other week from June to June (1 year) and then you were done. Of the scheduled times, I think we only had a full day a handful of times and most of the sessions were half days. The hardship for OP is that 80 mile drive is going to turn the half day into a full day.

        Another detail because of the scheduling and how the grand jury is set up, they expect people to miss days and call in sick (just like with a normal job). Of the 22 jurists, we were typically missing a few every session.

    17. Ash*

      I had a boss who served on a Federal Grand Jury in a former job and felt it ultimately cost her job because she could never catch up; illegal of course but difficult to prove up. An 18 month time frame is hell for both the employee and a small employer.

    18. Quill*

      Pay scale for juries was set several inflations ago, also they never really cared too much that it would necessarily introduce a demographic bias (people who can afford it) into the jury selection process.

    19. DJ*

      In NSW Aust haven’t heard of grand jury. But jury service pays less than most jobs but does reimburse travel expenses and provides lunch. May even be left overs some can take home for dinner. And it’s usually at the closest relevant court to home.
      Some jobs will do make up pay, public servants keep getting paid their usual pay but forfeit jury payments.
      I did bring a letter from my employer and was able to get on a short case. In the end the jury ended up being dismissed meaning half a day then being taken off being called up to be on the jury list for 3 years. It means I may never be called up to be on the list again. Especially as it took 40 years to be called up.

  8. An Omynous*

    #3 Ohh, that’s rough. My regular jury duty was all over the place (2 weeks in length but spread out over a month), and my work paid me like, $40 for 3 days or something? Then I also got taxed on my jury duty “earnings” (above $300 iirc), so yeah, financial hardship would be the way to go. :( Good luck!

    1. Jill Swinburne*

      Normally where I live your work pays you normally, then you pay them the paltry crumbs you get for being on the jury – so effectively they’re topping you up. Easier for payroll I guess. It is almost certainly different in the US, but I’m surprised there hasn’t been a suggestion of having the employer write a letter to say they have a business need for you to be there, and having you out for that long would cause them hardship.

      1. TechWorker*

        I mean Alison mentions that in her response by saying it’s not generally considered a valid reason if it causes the employer hardship..

        1. Guacamole Bob*

          This can vary based on the judge, the size of the jury pool, the type of jury, etc. They’re much less inclined to consider employer hardship for a larger company than for a sole proprietor or very small business. I’ve heard of teachers being excused because there’s a clear direct impact on students from the absence.

          We had a VP at our large local government agency who was on a federal grand jury that met once a week for six months. She was able to request that she not be considered for the one that met a certain day of the week where she had a standing conflict with our Board meetings, but a general “I’m busy at work and my employer needs me” is not considered a valid reason not to serve.

        2. Clisby*

          The federal court guidelines I mentioned above do say the judge can excuse “Any person whose services are so essential to the operation of a business, commercial, or agricultural enterprise that the enterprise must close if such person were required to perform jury service.”

          But that wouldn’t be the case with LW.

        3. NotRealAnonForThis*

          It very much depends on the state, too. My spouse received a deferment for jury duty because “he is the only employee we have on this time sensitive contract with the correct credentials and overarching knowledge of the project that cannot be handed off in a matter of a month, and we will be facing liquidated damages if he is unavailable during this timeframe that is spelled out in our contract. The timeframe matches the proposed jury duty for this employee.”

          There was a very explicit contract in play though, and jury duty for him would have put his employer potentially in breach. It was a enough to get local jury duty deferred.

        1. Inkhorn*

          That strategy works in Australia. My company keeps a form letter ready to personalise for summonsed employees, which basically says “[Name] is essential to the operation of the business, please excuse them”.

          In seven years I’ve never seen a colleague get drafted onto a jury, and have gotten off the hook myself twice.

          1. londonedit*

            It worked for my dad (in the UK) once – he wrote to the court saying he was essential to the running of the business (which he owned) and that he had several business trips booked for the same time frame as the jury service, and they excused him that time. Second time round he tried again, and they basically said no, you got out of it once so this time you’ve got to turn up. Fortunately for him he ended up just doing a couple of short trials and was only away for a couple of weeks – it would have been more difficult if he’d ended up on a longer trial.

            1. Mangled Metaphor*

              I had a similar issue (also in the UK). Was summoned in November, my boss at the time got HR to write a letter explaining how critical I was to the business during an audit – I wasn’t, she was just a useless manager who didn’t know one end of a spreadsheet from the other, and the audit would have been finished by October. But it worked, and I was deferred to June – just in time for the next audit…

            2. Media Monkey*

              a friend of mine (also UK) got called up during our university finals. that’s not considered exemption-worthy and she would have lost the job she had lined up (as they didn’t allow resits which she would have had to take in the november). she ended up not being called up but it was so stressful for her!

              1. doreen*

                In my jurisdiction , finals wouldn’t get you an automatic exemption , but anyone can get one postponement without needing proof.

          2. Dog momma*

            That worked in the US for hospital doctors and nurses for many years, until they couldn’t get enough people to serve. No exemption now for us.

            1. Irish Teacher.*

              In Ireland, there is a huge list of people who can be excused – teachers (with a letter from the principal saying the school needs them, all kinds of medical professionals, those in religious orders, those over 65, those caring for young children, people with illnesses, full time students… (some are automatically excused – teachers, medical professionals, etc and others like those with young children, have to apply).

              It’s really not that hard to get excused here anyway, to the point that there’s a joke about “would you trust your freedom to 12 people who can’t even get out of jury service?”

              Also, if you serve on a jury, the judge will often grant those who served an exemption from being called again for the next three years.

            2. Autumn*

              My husband was able to avoid jury duty because he was key to his parent’s small business. (Primary full charge books)

              Lots of times they do not want some health professionals on juries, depending on the nature of the case.

      3. Pastor Petty Labelle*

        Solo attorney — meaning if I am not working, my cases don’t get worked, my clients don’t get answers, and I don’t have any money to top up from jury pay. Guess who STILL doesn’t get excused. Not that I would get picked anyway, but I still have to go hang out for a day at the courthouse.

      4. NotAnotherManager!*

        Not all jurisdictions offer a business hardship exemption. One of my employees, who is the only person who does what they do in a very niche, highly specialized field ended up on a weeks-long criminal trial, and their state court would not accept a letter attesting to that because there was no juror exemption on the books for it.

      5. fhqwhgads*

        That’s the harder hardship to be excused for. Unless OP’s the owner, the place won’t fall over without them. On the other hand claiming a personal financial hardship due to the service being unpaid could potentially apply, if say you have no savings and can show you won’t make rent+utilities without the pay for those days you’d not be working – and that you can’t make up the hours some other way to get the pay.

    2. WeirdChemist*

      In between school and starting work, I had to move back in with my parents in another state. During this few months, my parents decided to close out a joint account with me and give me the money fully, which meant I had to pay taxes in that state for the few months I was there. This apparently got me put on some sort of list, because after I moved my parents received 4 different jury duty summons for me at varying court levels! Luckily 3 of them let me fill out the “I’ve moved to the other side of the country” excuse online, but for some reason one of the courts said that the “I don’t live here anymore” excuse could only be given *in person*. How does that make sense? That seems like the one you would *most* need the online form for??? After a LOT of calls to the court they finally agreed that I could have a relative go in an give proof for me as a proxy, but we were close to making me fly all the way back (a 6hr flight) just for this!

      So much of the court/jury system in the US is really illogical and inconvenient for regular citizens!

      1. Sloanicota*

        Having been involved in the court system (as the victim), I can tell you it’s like this all the way down. I couldn’t believe how illogical it was, as if it was designed specifically to be as intrusive and impossible to manage as possible.

        1. Retired Now*

          I was once called for (not grand) jury duty. The judge was not taking any excuse as the jury would be transported to another county and sequestered for a trial of a kid being tried as an adult for shooting his school bus driver. He had several single parents in tears because they had no one to take their kids.

          I was so surprised when he dismissed me after I told him that I had a medical issue that could require emergency surgery at any moment. Surprisingly, he didn’t ask for proof.

          A doctor’s note might be worth a shot.

          1. Lab Boss*

            When I was put on a jury we had one Very Important Businessman who didn’t want to be there, so when he was interviewed he just announced that yes, he’d read about the arrest in the paper, had decided the defendant must be guilty, and nothing he heard in court would change his mind as he was smarter than the lawyers. He got a talking-to, but it wasn’t illegal and he got his dismissal.

            We all thought he was a pretty big jerk and I would normally never condone blatantly lying to get around a civic duty. Were I a single parent facing long-term sequestration with nobody to watch my child, though, I might have to change my mind.

            1. Bast*

              Considering there are plenty of people who have probably heard about the crime (especially now with social media being what it is) and have formed their own opinions, this wouldn’t be surprising. You also have folks that have very black and white thinking that is 100% genuine who go in there and say something in unequivocally right/wrong and they will not change their mind for anything, not because they necessarily want to get out of anything, but because it is they really believe it. I think this is more common than people realize.

      2. alldogsarepuppies*

        My favorite story…from years ago….was someone who’s cat had a People Name was called for Jury Duty and they didn’t allow “this is a feline, not a human” get them out of it unless they brought the cat in person.

        1. NotAnotherManager!*

          That seems silly and would be traumatizing for my high-strung cat (with a people name). Imagine trying to explain it at security right next to the “no animals except service dogs” sign. Surely a vet record with the home address and pet’s name should suffice.

          Plus, how would bringing the cat help? Mine are fully indoor and do not wear collars, don’t have photo ID, and neither speaks English at all.

        2. Avian Avatar*

          if it’s the story I think it is then they tried to excuse the cat because it didn’t speak english. when that failed they got a letter from the vet which also didn’t work

    3. el l*

      Your company has to know that their current policy is going to mean losing you (someday) if they don’t revise it.

      Or losing someone else someday who they really don’t want to lose.

      I think if you have to serve and your company doesn’t revise their policy – start looking for another job. Saying “it’s our policy” is not an excuse – they’ll have failed you.

  9. Foright kelp*

    My manager is very hands-off and flexible about most things, but even he has specific instructions for how we need to block time in Outlook. Your Outlook calendar is as much a communication tool as it is a way for you to keep track of your schedule.

    1. Archi-detect*

      Also, it annoys me greatly that many people don’t accept/tenative/decline things- one it gives the organizer an idea of who is planning to come (sick leave etc aside) and two it makes it clear you are unavailable on s block when you accept something

      1. Foright kelp*

        I once worked with a senior teammate who did that very consistently, and I thought of that experience as well in the context of this letter. Until I figured out what was going on, I’d schedule a meeting with him over some tentative time on his calendar, he wouldn’t decline, but he also wouldn’t show up, since he was at the other meeting that had shown as tentative. When I let him know the confusion this was creating, he said he just didn’t have time to manage his calendar and I’d have to learn to work around it. I know this is not exactly what the letter writer was doing, but the whole situation really impressed upon me how much my calendar management could potentially affect others.

        1. Emmy Noether*

          People who don’t take the two seconds to accept/decline meetings are really annoying. I’m also unconvinced that it saves them time, because it only has to lead to confusion every hundredth time or so to lose time on clearing up the confusion.

          On the other hand, whether you can schedule over someone’s tentative calendar entry is very culture dependent. Tentative could mean “I’ll be there unless something more important comes up”. It can also mean “I already have other commitments, but maybe I can juggle them to be there”. It can mean “this is a recurring event and I tentatively accepted the series, I’ll be there sometimes”. Or it can mean “I forgot to accept”. I always ask first before scheduling over one.

          1. sb51*

            The thing that drives me up the wall about Outlook is that if you accept but choose not to email, it doesn’t show you as accepted.

            I didn’t know that for years and was always carefully selecting “and do not email…” because I wanted to be polite and not spam people, but instead I just looked like a flake who wasn’t bothering to update her calendar.

            2. Lore*

              The other thing that is maddening is that if you mark an hourlong appointment or meeting, the scheduling assistant automatically shows you as unavailable, but for an all-day appointment (as in, time off), you also need to manually select the “out of office” status or you still show as available for meetings in the scheduling tool. I kept having this happen with my boss and was getting so annoyed that she was scheduling crucial meetings when I was out until we figured out where the disconnect was.

              1. Emmy Noether*

                I have this issue with my grandboss, who likes to use the daylong appointments to make notes of things like “John at location”. With our calendar settings we can’t see the content of her appointments, just the block.
                So her calendar always has multiple simultaneous multi-day blocks with “free” status, and I never know which of those are notes and which are actual appointments where she forgot to set the status. I just ignore them now.

            3. londonedit*

              I also only discovered this thanks to reading here. I’d been merrily clicking on the ‘Accept – do not send a response’ option because I thought the person organising the meeting wouldn’t want umpteen emails from people. I assumed any of the ‘Accept’ options would list me as ‘attending’. But nope, you have to do the one that says ‘send a response now’.

              1. Baela Targaryen*

                This is not correct – the organizer is able to check acceptances through “Tracking.”

            4. Baela Targaryen*

              The organizer can check in “tracking” even if you don’t send their inbox a response. You’re good, and as someone who schedules a lot of 500+ attendee meetings, thank you for being considerate :)

              1. Leenie*

                No, they’re right. If you don’t opt to send an email, the tracking feature shows as no response, even if you’ve accepted. It’s a real problem.

                2. Spencer Hastings*

                  But they can look at your calendar, right? Accepting without a response shows it as solid when I look at my own calendar, so I expect it must look that way to anyone else who can see my calendar (and similarly for declining/removing the meeting from calendar).

                3. Happy*

                  Spencer, that works if the other person has shared meeting information on their calendar with you, but if not you’d only know that they accepted *a* meeting at that time, not *your* meeting.

                4. Leenie*

                  Exactly, Happy. It also doesn’t help if it’s someone from outside of your organization and you can’t see their calendar at all. Unfortunately, you have to be annoying and let the system send the email, if it’s important that people know if you can make it or not.

              2. Leenie*

                Baela – Yes, it’s very weird. I had no idea it was an issue until a colleague noticed it and asked me to help her test it out. Sure enough, when I accepted but didn’t email, she saw “None” as my response in her tracking.

                The official response from Microsoft to an online question about the issue in 2023 was: “After thorough research and consulting, it has been determined that when a participant accepts the meeting and chooses “Do Not Send a Response”, you can’t see whether the participant accepts the meeting through the meeting tracker, the option (Do not send a response) does not notify organizer, so the attendee’s response remains as “None” in the organizer’s tracking list.”

                It’s an unfortunate bit of chaos that no one needs. As far as I know, Microsoft hasn’t actually fixed the issue. It’s great if your system management has found a way around that.

        2. Ganymede*

          I had a colleague who used to do that. he said it was “to keep his options open” as he often was invited to multiple meetings. It was infuriating to always have to chase him for confirmations. The extra workload on his colleagues just didn’t seem to compute for him. I had to escalate to his manager eventually.

        3. EvilQueenRegina*

          I see you worked with my now retired coworker! I just ended up avoiding booking anything over a tentative time, unless there was a reason I knew he wouldn’t be at whatever it was.

      2. Salty Caramel*

        Oh my yes. A way I got around that was canceling meetings, “since nobody confirmed they were available.” After a few rounds of that, it got better. That may not work for some places, though.

    2. Aggretsuko*

      Last week we had a meeting scheduled and it turns out the other department just doesn’t use/update their calendars, so they looked free but were all in some training at the time of the meeting. SUPER AWKWARD.

  10. CompletelyNormal*

    OP1, it is completely normal for someone who is looking for work to post about it online. Some do it publicly, some lock down their posts a bit, but almost everyone I know – including me – has been doing it to some extent or another for the last 15-20 years. It can be a coping mechanism, a record to look back on later, a way to evaluate what is and is not working from a distance, and a way to keep friends and family up to date.

    Frankly, it is beyond weird that you care unless part of your agreement with your former employer was that they couldn’t tell anyone they were let go.

    1. AnonForThisOne*

      I just commented more fully on this, but absolutely.

      I’ve done it. LinkedIn really is for thos sort of thing.

    2. Sparkles McFadden*

      It was good to give the employee a graceful way out of the company, but there’s nothing wrong with the employee saying “I got fired and I need a job.” Those are just facts.

  12. RCB*

    Regarding the grand jury, please correct me if I am wrong, but I THINK that the 54 days is a maximum number of days that you’ll be required, not a guaranteed number. I think they set aside those days as “on call” days in case you are needed but most of the time you aren’t and don’t need to go in. But again, I don’t know for sure so someone who knows more can weigh in, or this can be something to clarify at the court when you go in, you may be worrying about a situation that won’t actually happen.

    1. Jinni*

      Given the 80 mile one way, this could well be the case. If this were a major metropolitan area…entirely different level of commitment. Disclaimer: I’ve only practiced law in big cities.

    2. Seeking Second Childhood*

      Grand Jury is different. For regular jury duty you wait to get selected for a trial or not. Grand Jury, you go in and do the decision making of whether or not there’s enough to send a case to trial.

      2. doreen*

        You do- but in some jurisdictions you are told something like the “the grand jury will meet up to 2 days a week for 26 weeks” and then it ends up being fewer days because there aren’t enough cases for two days every single week. Not going to happen in a big city

        1. Kesnit*

          LW says they were called for a federal grand jury, which likely means the jurisdictions covered are more than just a “big city.” I live in a rural part of the state, but the federal district covers about 1/3 of the state and the city where the district is based is about 90 minutes from my house.

          A federal grand jury could mean different things. It could be a grand jury that will hear evidence on a lot of cases from all over the district. Or it could be a special grand jury that is investigating one (or a small number of) specific event(s). Whichever it is, there is likely enough going on for LW to have to go in most every day.

          1. doreen*

            I’m not saying that the OP will only have to serve 10 days out of the 54 – but it might be 30 or 40 days out of the 54 especially if it’s the sort of grand jury that hears multiple cases. It’s hard to predict exactly how many days will be needed 18 months in advance and it’s way better to say 54 days total and then need people for 30 rather than vice-versa.

            1. Allonge*

              I don’t quite know how to feel about that – of course, looking back it would be good to say it was only 10 days instead of 54 or whatever, but as long as we don’t know in advance, that day still needs to be counted as a day blocked out: no work, no school events etc.

              The uncertainty does not help much.

        2. Guacamole Bob*

          I have had multiple colleagues and acquaintances serve on federal grand juries in the last couple of years (we’re in DC and federal grand juries have been busy), and this is how it worked. Each was scheduled for one day a week for six months or more, but I’d say they each had to show up about 3/4 of the time in the end. If the court didn’t have at least a full morning of cases on the docket they wouldn’t sit that day.

          The other thing was that they had something like 25 jurors and needed more like 14 each day in order to actually hear cases (I don’t remember the exact numbers), so there was some flexibility to specify days that you had conflicts. If you just decided to blow off the commitment regularly they could send the US Marshals after you, but if you had a specific work conflict or doctor’s appointment or something there were options.

          1. JustaTech*

            My mom served on a grand jury back in the 90’s (DC-adjacent area) and as I remember it was like every Tuesday or every other Tuesday for most of the school year. Honestly I remember liking it because it meant my mom drove me to school and we would get bagels rather than having to ride with my dad and little brother.

            She worked for a small engineering consulting firm at the time so I don’t know what her work did about it – they probably just paid her because what are you going to do about jury duty?

    3. Once too Often*

      Grand jury duty was 5 days/week for 2 months. We were paid $10/day, parking cost $5/day. This was 5 years ago, 5 more til my name is back in the eligible pool.

    4. Maestra*

      A colleague of mine had to do grand jury duty in NY State (we work in a town on the CT border where most of us actually live). We are private school teachers with no sub pool and others in my department had to cover her classes on the days she had to go in. The tough part about it was that she often didn’t know until the day before if she had to go. But I only ended up covering her classes 3 times in a 2 month period, so it seems likely that someone wouldn’t have to go all of the possible days.

      Meanwhile that same school year, I was summoned to jury duty in CT and had to report. They asked if anyone in the jury pool had a conflict that would prevent them from serving. I told them that they could decide if it was a conflict or not, but that if I were on the jury, my colleagues would have to cover for me. I was dismissed.

      1. Hush42*

        One of my friends got called for Grand Jury in NY State. I think it was our counties Grand Jury. She ended up having to go in pretty sporadically. I think she went multiple times per week but it was frustrating for her because often she would be only going in for 2-3 hours at a time. She still had to pay for a full days parking so it would have been nicer all around had they had them doing 1 full day a week instead of multiple short windows throughout the week. She ended up getting excused toward the end though because she got pregnant and had terrible morning sickness that made it difficult to sit to hear the cases.

  13. Stoli*

    I served on a jury that reached a verdict. A year later I was about to be put on a murder case in a trial lasting at least a month. I liked being on the jury and my employer paid, but I was having family and stress problems and could not mentally take a gruesome murder trial. My doctor gave me a note for six months off jury duty. Is the stress affecting you physically or mentally?

    1. 1LFTW*

      It’s wild how much jury calls can vary between jurisdictions. My father has never been called. My mother was called once, to an aggravated assault (I think) trial that lasted two days.

      Whereas I receive summons every year or two, same as everyone else in my jurisdiction. In spite of the short film that assures us that most trials last less than a week, all the cases summoned for were expected to last more than a month. Also, each trial involved multiple violent felonies. I definitely plead hardship for all of them, citing PTSD, and offering to produce a medical note. It’s always been accepted without question.

      Which sucks, because I would actually like to serve on a jury… just not one that involves graphic depictions of torture and attempted murder.

      1. Jaydee*

        My husband has been summoned federally (didn’t have to show up in the end) but never by the state. I’ve been summoned three or four times by the state but never by the feds. I had to show up twice, and one of those times I nearly ended up on the jury for a civil trial that ended up lasting weeks. I was struck at the very last minute and am thankful for that. Missing 3 days of work would have been fine, but 3 weeks would have been really challenging. But I’m also sad because I really would like to serve on a jury and realize that it’s unlikely to happen since I’m a lawyer myself.

      2. londonedit*

        Every year or two? That’s a lot! I’ve no real idea how it works in the UK but I’m in my 40s and have never been asked to do jury service. Don’t think my sister has either. My mum’s done it once, and my dad twice, and they’re in their 70s.

        1. Irish Teacher.*

          Yeah, it seems to be similar to you in Ireland. I am also in my 40s and have never been called, neither has my brother. My mother, who is in her 70s, was called once, but got out of it. As far as I know my dad who would be nearly 90 now, except he died six years ago, was never called.

        2. doreen*

          It varies a lot in the US – if I actually show up for jury duty, I’m exempt for 8 years from state courts, two years from Federal. But that doesn’t mean I get called every two years- that’s very random. I’ve done it three times, my husband once and my three siblings have never actually served, although they have been on telephone stand-by.

        3. OaDC*

          It can vary a lot based on state and local, as always. Where I live jury duty is by county. There are 800,000 people in my county. I’ve been called (and served) once in thirty years, and I’d set the over/under for times called at one. Other states have much smaller jurisdictions and people can get called much more frequently.

        4. Filosofickle*

          I live in California and have been called every 12 months like clockwork, for the last 20 years. Where the other 3 states I’ve been an adult in never summoned me. I read that my previous county has a super low response rate, like a quarter of the people summoned show up, which contributes to them needing to send lots of summonses to fill juries :(

        5. Lexi Vipond*

          I’ve been called 5 times, I think – once I had to keep phoning and eventually they said not to come, once I went in for a morning but wasn’t chosen, once I served for a week, and twice since then I’ve still been inside the exempt period after serving (you’d think they could check…)

          I suspect people in Edinburgh must be called more often than in other parts of Scotland – the case I was on the jury for was heard in the High Court and had taken place in Dundee, but the jury were local to the court.

      3. Lady_Lessa*

        I once heard a rape case, and I will do everything in my power to avoid another one. I suspect that I am out of danger due to age, though.

        In the same state, but earlier and in a different county, I was called no one was seated, but the judge swore us all in, so that we were free from jury duty for a period.

      4. Prosecutor's Daughter*

        Wow–I’ve only been called for jury duty twice. The first time I was in my early 20s and it was in the same county where my dad worked as an assistant district attorney. I was dismissed when I disclosed who I was. As it should have been. It would have been a conflict of interest for me to have served on a jury in that county when I knew all the prosecutors.

        The second time was 12 years ago in a different county. I spent the morning waiting in the jury room, was sent home that afternoon, and didn’t have to go back the rest of the week. We were told plea deals had been reached on a lot of cases, so they dismissed the jury pool I was grouped with.

        1. I Have RBF*

          Yep. One time when I went in for jury duty, they reached a plea deal as the group of potential jurors was waiting outside the courtroom. We were all dismissed.

      5. sara*

        I was called to serve on a jury but ultimately was never called up for voir dire. But this judge was forcing people to publicly disclose details of childhood sexual assault to get excused (the case dealt with an accusation of sexual assault of children). I thought it was really gross and showed zero concern for the mental health of potential jurors — there were literally people in tears recounting these details in a room full of total strangers. I get wanting a fair cross section of the community but the system needs to have some consideration for the mental health of potential jurors too — it seems very wrong to make re-traumatizing people just a part of the process and treated with zero care and concern.

        1. Filosofickle*

          The last voir dire I sat through wasn’t quite this bad but was asking people about situations where they needed a restraining order. Yikes.

          One thing that people aren’t necessarily aware of is you can ask to answer voir dire questions privately in chambers. It excruciatingly drags out the process — because once one person does it many people follow and it takes forever — but if you don’t want to announce all your personal info in public, you don’t have to.

    2. Seashell*

      Interesting how things vary. I did jury duty (just sat there and never got questioned or picked), and that got me out of it for years after.

    3. LTR*

      I served on a jury for a violent crime and I know when I get my next summons I’m going to tell whatever judge I end up in front of that I’m not up for it mentally. I don’t regret serving (my employer also paid me my full salary for the duration) but it was a traumatic experience and I don’t think people realize that it can be traumatic until they get on a case and by then it’s too late. During jury selection they ask if you have served previously and what kind of case and what was the outcome and would it have an effect on your ability in this new case. Someone on mine said she didn’t think she was ready to serve again and the judge let her go.

    4. My Useless Two Cents*

      I’ve always wanted to serve on a jury. I think it would be interesting. But I swear the county has some kind of spooky power of knowing when it would be super inconvenient and only sends summons at those times.

      The one time I had to sit for questions and was told I would be excused for jury duty for the next year even though I wasn’t selected for the jury. Super relieved as I was going thru some health stuff at the time. I received another jury summons the very next week!

      1. Orange You Glad*

        I always wish they would let us “reschedule” for another date. I get federal jury duty summons every 2 years like clockwork, but they have all overlapped with pre-planned vacations/trips out of town (which I have already purchased plane/train tickets) so I’ve been excused. I have no problem coming, and I could come the following week if they need people but they aren’t interested in that.

  14. lefteye*

    i firmly believe dress codes that fly in the face of the natural environment are incredibly stupid and need to go.

    it’s 199 degrees outside, it’s absolutely insane to expect people to wear overly hot formal clothes to work, and then on top of that these places crank the a/c like crazy to compensate.

    hi, our planet is on fire and that is not helping. let people wear shorts and tank tops to office jobs when there’s a heatwave, try to keep your dress codes at least semi in line with reality please my god.

    1. Seashell*

      My husband wore shorts to work for the first time ever yesterday. It was nearly record setting heat.

    2. bamcheeks*

      NO, everyone must dress in roughly what was suitable for a Northern European climate two centuries ago, forever!

      (From the depths of a British summer, it is absolutely wild to me that people with temperatures in the 30s are still being required to dress as if it’s about 16-18 degrees.)

      1. Clisby*

        My husband almost always wears shorts to work, even in the winter. Several times a year he takes a pair of khaki pants and a button-down shirt to change into – this is when people from the main office are visiting.

      2. Forest Hag*

        Some guys at my last job wore kilts when it was hot out, because shorts were banned. So wouldn’t that still fall in line? :D

        1. Cat Tree*

          When the topic of skirt equality first came up years ago, the follow-on question was whether men should be socially expected to shave their legs to wear a skirt-like garment. Essentially, would men have to put in the same amount of effort as women to gain the same benefit as women. (Side note: plenty of women, myself included, have more leg hair than plenty of men.)

          I don’t think the question was ever really answered. It would be better if women *didn’t* have to shave, and I think we’re moving in that direction but slowly.

          1. lefteye*

            I had no idea that was an expectation actually. I don’t work in formal environment so no where I’ve ever worked has had a rule about leg hair for any gender, and I’ve definitely had coworkers of every gender rep leg hair enough to know it’s not an issue (/my own leg hair on display)

    3. Hastily Blessed Fritos*

      Maybe not tank tops, but if a short-sleeved shirt is OK with pants (US usage, obviously) it should be OK with shorts.

      1. Lab Boss*

        My arms are pretty average, but my calves and shins are FAR too sexy and distracting to be exposed in a professional environment :D

        1. Juicebox Hero*

          Well, if you’re in a lab, your magnificent shanks should be covered up for safety reasons anyway :D

          1. Lab Boss*

            I’ve worked in the lab so long my skin is now immune to heat, broken glass, and all your major organics and corrosives.

            1. Lady_Lessa*

              And I can argue that skirts and bare legs are easier to get the nasty chemicals off of your skin. (of course with a lot of metal/glass fragments, I would change my argument to decent weight slacks.)

              (also a long time lab worker)

              1. Lab Boss*

                In all seriousness, I had a PI who was a big proponent of working barehanded with pathogen samples (not major human risks, to be clear). His logic was if you got a tiny dot of culture on your glove you could contaminate multiple additional test tubes, but you’d feel even a very slight amount of liquid on your finger and could easily wash and sanitize your hand right away.

    4. Person from the Resume*

      Dress codes and standards have never been about comfort.

      It has been hot for the summer months in the southern parts of the US for 100s of years. The dress code was different, but long pants and a coat wasn’t comfortable even 100/200 years.

    5. I edit everything*

      Or nice flowing robes, like desert dwellers. That can often be cooler and more comfortable than a tank top, and we don’t have to worry about bras showing through tank-top gaps.

      1. bamcheeks*

        Tunics and light trousers! Shirts and sarongs! There are so many great options from tropical and warm climates across the world and it’s so bonkers how the corporate world requires such incredibly narrow and Eurocentric forms of dress.

        1. allathian*

          I had a loose suit when I was an intern in Spain that looked a lot like shalwar kameez, except that the shirt wasn’t quite as long even if it covered my butt. The dress code was informal enough to accommodate shorts for all, a necessity when it was 40 C/100 F and no A/C. Thankfully this was in the mountains, so the cool nights ensured that the heat dissipated at night.

      2. Forest Hag*

        Robes would also be great for those of us who don’t like tight waistbands across our bellies. :) I’m down with this idea!

    7. Cat Tree*

      Unfortunately for me, it’s one million degrees outside but zero degrees inside my building at work. So I melt outside and freeze into an ice cube inside. I wear long pants, heavy socks, and a long-sleeved shirt most days, plus I keep a heavy sweatshirt in my backpack for when I’m inside. I go outside periodically to warm up, so I averages out to a comfortable temperature over the course of the day, while being actively uncomfortable at any given minute.

      1. JustaTech*

        Ah, so you’re in my building?
        It’s so bad we got a bunch of thermometers and discovered that the labs are about 71F, my area of the office is about 69F (feels much colder), and my boss’s office two floors up is 79 by the early afternoon.
        I’m just about to put on leggings because I’m freezing, but I know I’ll roast on my commute home if I wore jeans.

        We keep complaining to the building managers that it is a huge waste of energy to freeze the lower floors like this.

      2. Grenelda Thurber*

        When I worked in an office I invested in a small thermometer for my desk. It always read about 65F winter or summer. Got no use out of my summer wardrobe at all. I eventually picked up some cotton gloves and cut the fingertips off so I could type without my fingers turning blue. I never understood it.

  15. Sability*

    I work at multiple locations on call and refuse to share my calendar. I’m lucky that what I do is in demand right now. It feels like such torture to have other people dictate my time, especially because my weeks vary greatly and the locations have different distances…by having final say I can make sure it will work for me and I’ll do a good job instead of being a slave to a calendar.

    1. The Bunny*

      There’s a difference in sharing your calendar and keeping it up to date.

      Sharing allows others to see details. Keeping it up to date allows people to see when you are busy and when you are free.

      Also… if you work for the same company, anyone can see the busy/free info by merely adding your name into scheduling assistant.

      1. Sable*

        They can’t it’s my private calendar, I work for multiple companies with different emails from work vs my private email and I do not allow people to see it. I have one company where I have a calendar and my availability is for a couple of hours once a week and then they can call me for further availability. I hate the idea of someone looking at my calendar and just popping something on it. That may be different if you’re working in an office. But when working off site at multiple place there are a number of factors to deal with and it feels very infantilizing to have someone decide my day. The way workers are treated sucks. And some things are automated that shouldn’t be automated and can easily be figured out with a text. They can ask me if I can come in that day but I would never allow someone to just pop it on my calendar and then if I didn’t see it it was my fault for not perfectly maintaining my calendar.

        1. AvonLady Barksdale*

          I hope you realize that your situation is entirely different from the LW’s. If a person works for a company and has a company email address and a company calendar, keeping said calendar up to date is a pretty normal expectation. No one is dictating the LW’s calendar or deciding how she spends her day. Personally, I believe that keeping my calendar up to date gives ME more control in that I can block off time I don’t want to do certain things. My calendar settings are private– other people can see that the time is blocked but not what it’s for. This is all so normal.

          Also, if someone puts a meeting on my calendar, I’m perfectly within my rights to reach out and say, “Hey, sorry, I realize my calendar wasn’t blocked but I can’t make it.” That’s also normal. In a typical setting, having a meeting pop up on your calendar isn’t an adversarial act, it’s just planning. Sometimes it’s poor planning, but it’s not a malicious act.

        2. ecnaseener*

          Having your availability visible doesn’t mean you can’t decline meeting invites though. No one’s just popping things in without you needing to RSVP.

          1. NotAnotherManager!*

            This. If I get an invite for a time that is not convenient for me, I decline it and propose a new time. Our current Outlook also has a schedule polling option where you can check multiple attendees’ calendars and let them vote on which mutually free times work best for them and then sends an invite automatically once everyone’s responded.

            I loathe having to exchange multiple messages about what time everyone is free – I don’t care if it’s email, text, IM, voice, etc., it makes the process more difficult and creates a lot of traffic over something that could be done much more easily. I’m certainly not doing it because it suits a single person’s preferences – it’s rude to the other however many people involved to make them work around the holdout. Fortunately, my boss is a my-calendar-is-up-to-date person and requires everyone in our department to keep theirs as well. This can’t be imposed upon contractors because they work more autonomously, but it is a requirement for direct employees.

        3. metadata minion*

          It sounds like you’ve set up a system that works very well for you, and I’m glad! But many, many people are sincerely fine with other people being able to book meetings with them. The way workers are treated does indeed suck in many ways, but this is really not one of them. People can put things on my calendar, and I can put things on theirs. If there’s a problem, we discuss it. Office work generally involves a lot of meetings, many of which are actually necessary regardless of how much we like to complain about them, and it would be far more annoying to try to talk to each person individually when setting up a meeting.

          1. Sable*

            You all seem to only work in office. The letter writer does not only work in office. They work in the office and in the field and they have a system that the other team member circumvented. I’ve had locations try to lock down my time and I wont work at those locations. You also have set hours. I do not have set hours, I choose my hours and how they contact me. Having calendar invites on top of texts/emails/calls would ad layer of complication that isn’t necessary. If you’re always by your computer it’s fine but I’m not always by my computer or checking my email. The OP is working nights and has a variable schedule where they are in and out of office work, people just popping stuff on their calendar is frustrating especially when the work isn’t supposed to go to them. I find it pretty big brothery to have someone know where I am and what I’m doing at all times.

            1. Sable*

              And the OP because of their crappy schedule is having to share a whole lot more of their time with their work and I wonder if that’s park of why there frustrated.

            2. I can read anything except the room*

              Having calendar invites on top of texts/emails/calls would ad layer of complication that isn’t necessary.

              A calendar invite is just an email that has a calendar attachment. It’s not on top of email, it is email. Instead of replying with the words, “yes I can be there” or “no I can’t,” you accept or decline the invite. It’s functionally identical.

              1. sara*

                Well, they TRIED to decline the calendar email and this person both pushed back against it and then went way over their head to the VP. I feel like the issue here isn’t necessarily about a calendar policy but about this asshole person who doesn’t even interact with the LW very much being petty and controlling. It sounds like the system has functioned well except for this one person who could not take no for an answer.

            3. A Person*

              Using a calendar doesn’t have to mean everyone knows where you are and what you’re doing at all times – you can set it up so that event details are private except to the participants, and you’re just shown as “busy” to everyone else.

              I find having the calendar actually reduces the amount of texts/emails/calls I get, because I can block out times I’m not available (if I know I’m not going to be by my computer or in the office, for example). It means people can see I’m busy and don’t expect me to meet with them or respond immediately during those times.

              A lot of people at my organisation will also set aside “focus time” on their calendar where they don’t want to be interrupted so they can do work that requires intense concentration, like a kind of digital “do not disturb” sign.

        4. sara*

          Fully agree with you. I am luckily in a job where I am able to resist sharing my calendar and I plan to continue to do so. If people really need to schedule with me, they can contact me and have a conversation! If it’s not important enough to do that…it probably wasn’t important enough to waste my time.

    2. Baela Targaryen*

      As an admin…..yeah, I can’t say what I’d really think of this kind of attitude without immediately getting banned from the site. You’re making other people’s jobs harder, cut it out.

      1. Tippy*

        Yep. I worked with a guy like this one. He still refused even after his boss’s boss said to share it with me. Finally the CEO got so annoyed (note I was the only one who need it and was asking for it) that they just had IT change the setting for the guy.

        1. EvilQueenRegina*

          My ex-ex-ex-manager also refused to share her calendar – her argument was that she didn’t want things like child protection conferences she’d minuted ages ago in her old role to be available to her team. Her team’s argument was that nobody was going to be actively looking at meetings from ages ago in her calendar, they wanted to know her current availability, and if anyone did end up on a meeting from ages ago by mistake it would be “oops wrong date” and then looking at the one they actually wanted. (Plus, information about said conferences was available on a system we all had access to, so if anyone did ever have a genuine work reason to need to know it, we could have found it out that way, it wasn’t restricted from us).

          1. Orv*

            Most calendaring systems allow you to share free/busy info without sharing the details of appointments.

            1. NotAnotherManager!*

              This is how we manage it. There are a lot of confidentiality considerations in my line of work, so it’s preferable not to see details, only NAM! is free from 10 AM to noon but booked from 1 to 5 PM. Then only person who can see the specifics of my calendar is our department admin.

      2. The Bunny*

        This. Stop making other people’s jobs harder because you’ve decided a common work courtesy is (inexplicably) infantalizing.

  16. D*

    For what it’s worth, Alison, what a state court might accept as evidence of hardship and what the federal court (as in the LW’s situation) aren’t going to have anything to do with each other. They might align, they might not.

    I had federal jury duty last year; fortunately not a grand jury situation like this) They made a point to tell us the state police would not come after us for jury evasion; the US Marshals would. Yay?

    And hey, LW, you might not get asked to serve just by chance even if they don’t dismiss you for financial hardships.

    Frankly, the HR person’s comment that they might need to rewrite the jury duty policy *if* you serve means they should be rewriting it *now* to cover situations like this *before* they come up.

    1. Autumn*

      In NYS (not the City) it’ll be the county sheriff who’ll come looking.

      Many years ago my mom was serving on a murder trial. We lived maybe 20 miles from the county seat, one other juror’s car failed and the judge sent the Sheriff and then turned around and asked my mom to drive the hapless juror to and from court. My mom accepted, but was secretly annoyed.

      1. Clisby*

        I was once called for city court (Charleston, SC) – the first day to report had seen epic flooding the night before, and the intersections I’d need to go through to get to court were impassable. I went back home, called the court clerk, and said I was willing to serve, but if they needed me they had to send a police officer for me – no way I was driving through the water. They told me to just come in the next day. When I did, other jurors said people were still straggling in at 3 p.m. the previous day – I have no idea why they didn’t just call off court for one day.

    2. Miss Muffet*

      It’s really bonkers to me that companies don’t just cover jury duty leave 100% . You have zero control over whether you get called, chosen, or how long you have to serve. It’s not something you can specifically seek out, if you were trying to “scam the system” (by what, the $50/day?) and it’s your civic duty! It would make juries better if people didn’t have to worry about juggling jobs that only provide 5 days or whatever.

      1. NotAnotherManager!*

        When I worked in legal, some of my peers at other firms were not fully paid for jury service, which always struck us as incredibly ironic. (My firm paid the difference between jury pay and your regular salary.)

  17. D*

    LW 1: your letter comes off a little like you’re looking for a reason to talk to your employees about it. It doesn’t make sense to me from the details provided why “mass layoffs” would be on any of your employees radar unless the fired employee was saying something along those lines (or you work in tech, maybe?).

    So it feels a little like, “I want to gossip about this absurd thing this person is doing, but obviously that’s not a good reason to bring it up to my employees who actually know this person, so I need to think of one.”

    To be clear, I don’t think this is happening to you consciously. But it might be what your brain is doing in the background below your notice to make it seem like this is something that needs to be brought up at all.

    I think in this situation it’s best to keep your agog comments about it to your friends.

    1. juliebulie*

      Yes! OP wants to control the narrative, but beyond the very first piece of it (“resignation”) it is not their narrative to control.

    2. Sparkles McFadden*

      I think the LW doesn’t want to be the boss who fired someone, and figured the employee would be happy to go along with that script (to avoid being The Person Who Got Fired). It’s like “Hey, I gave you such a good cover story and you’re blowing it. Now everyone knows I fired you after I told everyone you resigned.”

      I’m sure the other people at the company already knew the person got fired and why, so forget about it and move on, LW.

  18. mabel pines*

    I had to be on a 5 week jury trial and it was so difficult for me AND my family AND my job. My boss was sympathetic because *she* had been called for a grand jury a few years earlier and had to report something like once a week for a year. In her case I believe she ended up getting a note from her psychologist to be excused because the details of the cases she was asked to consider were so gruesome that it was affecting her mental health.

    I found being on a jury to be fascinating and it restored a lot of my faith in humanity at the time (a random group of citizens with very different backgrounds coming together to weigh evidence and proceed with fairness) but there is a huge difference between a week of jury duty and jury duty that completely upends your life for months at a time.

    1. BellaStella*

      Thank you for serving! Interesting on the note of your boss’s doc – I have never done jury duty but yeah I do not have the ability to read, see, hear of, etc a lot of bad bad stuff so it is good to know for her mental health she was excused.

    2. Lab Boss*

      Interesting you say it restored your faith in humanity. I hear a lot of people who find the grim details disheartening (and yeah, I served on a murder case and a lot of the people involved seemed to have been determined to act as terribly as possible on the night in question), but overall it did give me some reassurance in the system. We had one juror who wanted to blow off deliberations because “he’s obviously guilty let’s just call it and go home,” but he was immediately and firmly shut down so we could be very meticulous before reaching a verdict.

    3. Scarlet ribbons in her hair*

      When I was on a jury trial for someone accused of being a drug dealer, it did NOT restore my faith in humanity. Nine of the twelve of us voted guilty, because we really thought that the defendant was guilty, based on the evidence. FWIW the defendant, when asked what his profession was, announced that he was an “amateur dope dealer” and grinned proudly. The three jurors who vote not guilty said that it was because the self-proclaimed amateur dope dealer hadn’t been convicted of a crime previously, and they didn’t want to be responsible for giving him his first conviction. Some of the jurors who thought the defendant was guilty screamed and screamed at those three until they agreed to vote that the defendant was guilty. That did not restore any of my faith in humanity. It just told me that the way to get what you want (to reach a verdict so that the jurors can go home) is to scream and scream and scream.

      1. Heather*

        Those three jurors who voted not guilty violated their oath to the Court that they would apply the facts to the law without prejudice for or against the defendant.

        1. Scarlet ribbons in her hair*

          You’re absolutely right! And when I talk about this situation, I always say that we were instructed to pay attention to the facts, and that we were told that there is a difference between “beyond a reasonable doubt” and “beyond a shadow of a doubt” and that the judge never said anything like the following: If you are convinced that the defendant is guilty, but you are reluctant to give him his first conviction, then you are allowed to vote that he is not guilty.

          I’m just glad that nine of us voted not guilty. What if it had been the other way around – that three of us voted guilty, but nine of us voted not guilty so as not to give him his first conviction? I don’t know how long I could have held up if some of the jurors screamed and screamed at me to change my vote. I guess I could have gotten a message passed to the judge that three of us were being harassed, but if the nine all stuck together and denied that they had screamed at us, I don’t know what would have happened.

      2. mabel pines*

        Yikes. In our case we 1) had been together for 5 weeks, so we knew each other fairly well at that point, at least in terms of our home lives and interests, and 2) the case was very technical and business-focused, no bodily harm involved, so perhaps passions weren’t so inflamed. I don’t know what I would have done if people had been so abusive.

      3. OaDC*

        When I was on jury duty I honestly believed that everyone was doing their best, but not everyone’s best was all that good.

  19. Isben Takes Tea*

    OP5: Consider it in the context of “What hours do you work?” “9 to 5.” In that exchange, people aren’t really discussing (or at least focusing on) the number of hours worked so much as the duration (or start/stop) of the workday. Duration can lengthen or shorten, so use of “longer” makes sense in that context. It’s also similar to the colloquial “long day” that is more about the proportion of the day worked (or amount of labor extended) than the number of hours in the day.

    Of course, counting by number of hours (with more or fewer) can make sense, especially if the discussion revolves around shift work that is scheduled by hours per week rather than salaried jobs that tend to have a set daily schedule. I’ve had retail and food service conversations about trying to “get more hours” on the schedule, “long hours” conversations in salaried office jobs, and long days in both!

    1. Rooby*

      Yeah and in retail and other service jobs it’s standard to say you “had your hours cut” or “picked up more hours”. I don’t even count this as an instance of language having non-literal meanings; it’s more a colloquial dropping of the full sentence. “I’ve been working long hours” is short conceptually for “I’ve been working a long group/set of hours.”

  20. Juror*

    #3 – Grand Jury duty: I served on a federal grand jury for 18 months. Some weeks we met for 1 day, some weeks for 2 days, and some weeks we did not meet at all. Towards the end of the 18 months they were bumping up against the statute of limitations and we had to go in a lot to get the indictments out before it was too late. However in the end we met for a total of far fewer days over the 18 months than they had warned us to expect. And yes, some people lived very far away and had to drive into a major metro area during rush hour. For some people that was 2 hours each way because of the traffic. Some of them ended up staying in hotels the weeks we were meeting for more than 2 days just to avoid the very long commutes. I don’t know how they afforded it. In my case, I was very very lucky — I live nearby and am a federal employee, so my salary continued to paid. (Having said that, I went into the office to make up my work at night or on weekends — just because my salary was paid and I was on a jury didn’t mean I didn’t have work to do!)

    1. BellaStella*

      Thanks for serving! I have never had jury duty of any kind. This is fascinating to me.

    2. Heidi*

      So is it the same group of people meeting over and over again throughout the year? It seems like it would be a very different experience if you get to know these people.

      2. Juror*

        Yes, all the same people I did get to know some of them. I’ve also served on regular juries — three of them! And I’m a lawyer! Go figure.

  21. nodandsmile*

    LW5: I had never thought about “longer hours” before, but now I will…thanks!
    I’ve always wondered why people “fix” dinner. How did dinner get broken?

    1. The Bunny*

      I know this, LOL

      It’s German. Fix in German means to prepare or make ready. The word made it’s way here but now oddly is really more common in the South.

      1. Myrin*

        It’s not. “Fix” in German is an adjective and means either “fast, quick” or “fixed” as “constant, unchangeable”, the same as in “fixed costs” (there is a verb “fixen” which means “doing drugs” and it’s also sometimes used in an IT/technology meaning, but in the latter case at least, it’s simply taken from English “to fix” and got the German suffix added on).
        There was a Reddit post years ago claiming exactly what you said here and they explained their answer by saying they’d seen “fix” all the time in grocery stores in German on packages of pre-prepared meals. Well. Yes. Because it means “fast”. It’s there to indicate that it’s fast food in the most literal sense.

      2. katydid*

        yeah we have the expression “fixing to” (“finna”) which makes that meaning pretty clear here in the south

        1. Audrey Puffins*

          I’m clearly far too online, I assumed “finna” was a typo for “gonna” that gained traction from frequency. Thank you for the explanation!

      3. Emmy Noether*

        It’s not German. “Fixen” exists in modern German, but it’s actually a loanword from American-English (according to the Duden dictionary) and means either to take drugs or to fix a software bug.

        It may be some other language you’re thinking of?

        1. Myrin*

          I wrote a longer reply that’s currently stuck in moderation where I also mentioned this, but: I remember – and just looked it up, even though I can’t actually access it via my work computer – a post on Reddit where someone, well, just guessed that answer because they saw “fix” on a ton of pre-packaged meals when they were in grocery stores in Germany. As in “Knorr fix” or “fix hergerichtet” or whatever. Yeah.

          It seems to have become some sort of folk etymology I see referenced every once in a while – it’s also the first Google result – and it has been driving me bananas for a decade because it was clearly made by someone who just figured “ah yes that could be it”. Like, maybe don’t go around claiming things if you clearly have no knowledge of the language in question? Makes me want to gnaw on drywall, regarding anything linguistic, especially if it’s quite easily verifiable.

          1. Emmy Noether*

            Ah yes, fix as an adverb or adjective can also mean either quick or fixed (as in attached) in German. Language is weird. I guess we got all the different meanings on different etymological paths from Latin in this case.

        2. Waiting on the bus*

          I assume The Bunny is talking about “fixieren” rather than “fixen”. Not sure where the connection to preparing things comes in, but I could see it used in a metaphorical way for putting dinner (“attaching it”) on the table. Or “locking it down”.

          1. Emmy Noether*

            Didn’t think of that, because that would be very weird as a Metaphor in German (“fixieren” implies permanence, which would be strange for dinner).

            If it does come from the “attach” meaning, I’d think it more likely to have come into English from French or directly from Latin. While changes in meaning do happen when words jump languages, there’s no reason to think it’s from German specifically.

      5. Kloe*

        I have never heard it used like that in German. It’s used as either doing drugs or solving an issue. And I checked the Duden that lists the origin as American English.

    2. metadata minion*

      “Fix” started out meaning “to fasten/make firm” (see “affix” or “fixate”), and the meaning of “repair” is actually somewhat later, historically.

      1. Peanut Hamper*

        Yes, this.

        I’m a recovering English major (among other things) and I’m usually a stickler for language, although I always let it go in the course of daily life: language is a living thing that has to breathe and evolve. But I’ve never really noticed that “longer hours” could be taken in this way. Interesting.

        I was very glad when my local grocery store put up a couple of “12 items or fewer” lines about a dozen years ago, though.

    4. Lou*

      @nodandsmile

      To be clear, “longer hours” is perfectly correct. It’s just a meaning of “hour” that LW5 was unfamiliar with. I’m a bit surprised that LW5 didn’t check in a dictionary before writing to Alison.

      “Hour” doesn’t just mean a 60 mn period.

      Think of expressions like one’s “hour of need”, “keeping late hours”, being the “hero of the hour”, “office hours” or “business hours”, or in this case, “working hours”.

      As for “fix dinner”, one of the many meanings of “fix” is to get (something) ready or to prepare.

    5. Cat Tree*

      Language changes over time; that’s why the world has multiple languages in the first place.

      There are all kinds of linguistic shifts. The etymology of “arrive” is essentially “to the shore” (so it is a cognate of “river”).

      If you’re interested in linguistics, I’ll plug my favorite pop linguist, John McWhorter. He has tons of books but also used to do podcasts that might still be available.

  22. Bat*

    YIKES on jury duty – just checked my state and it pays $15 a day and only requires employers to give you UNpaid time off. Good luck, OP – please let us know what happens!

    1. Retail Dalliance*

      Yeah I agree with the yikes. I so feel for OP. How incredibly stressful! This is a legislative problem—federal law needs to mandate that employers make employees whole for the duration of jury duty, OR it needs to mandate that either the federal govt or states themselves will do it. Passing along the financial burden to jurors themselves feels unconscionable to me.

      1. Clisby*

        I suppose they could do that for federal courts, but I don’t see how the federal government has any authority to tell states how state court jurors should be paid.

      2. Ace in the Hole*

        A good first step would be mandating that jurors get paid at least the local minimum wage plus reimbursement for travel both ways to/from the court.

        I don’t think it should be about making employees whole, because that would bias the system against people who don’t have jobs but have other obligations. A stay-at-home caregiver may need to pay for a babysitter, or have a family member take unpaid time off to cover caregiving needs. Someone currently unemployed will be delayed in their job search. People who have non-traditional or sporadic sources of income miss out on opportunities to earn money. Etc.

        The system as-is handles the issue by exempting jurors if service would cause them financial hardship. But, for starters, hardship exemptions are left up to the judgment of the court and may not match actual need. And for seconds, this means juror pools are inherently skewed to exclude lower income people…. which is a HUGE justice problem.

      1. Jinni*

        The first county and state I practiced law in has not updated reimbursements NOR appointed counsel fees in 30 years….

    3. Boof*

      I’ve come up 3x and yeah it’s wild, I was a college student and a medical resident I think, then a physician, but I only needed to sit a trial the first time (when I was in college) and it was about a week long trial.
      I do consider it my “duty” and didn’t try to wiggle out of it, but it also wouldn’t have been an extreme hardship for me the way the OP is describing.

    4. Scarlet ribbons in her hair*

      My state pays only five dollars a day. That’s how much they paid the first time I served in 1976, and I guess they think that it’s plenty. I’m retired now, so I don’t have to worry about my employer paying me if I should have to serve again, but I don’t drive nowadays, and the cost to get to the courthouse and back would be way more than five dollars per day, and I’d wind up losing money by serving. And I’m on a fixed income. I’m counting the days until I turn 75, so that I won’t have to worry about being summoned.

    5. Ace in the Hole*

      Same in my state. $15 per day plus milage…. one way. We’re a rural area, so it’s not uncommon for the other half of milage to cost more than the $15 compensation, meaning you actually have to PAY to be a juror.

      On the plus side all public agencies here are required to pay full wages for all time spent on jury duty. Unsurprisingly the majority of jurors are either retired or county employees.

  23. Brain the Brian*

    An amusing flip-side to #4. One time mid-pandemic when my entire company was strictly WFH except in limited circumstances with pre-approval, I went into the office to pick up some supplies I needed. I dutifully dressed up in the usual pre-pandemic business attire in case I ran into anyone… and who should I see in the hallway into but our most senior VP, dressed in shorts, boat shoes, and a Hawaiian shirt (we are not located in Hawaii). It was a good chuckle.

    LW4, don’t worry about this at all unless someone else brings it up.

  24. Warrior Princess Xena*

    It’s unclear if LW #4 was seen entering work with shorts on after having walked, or if he was working through the day with shorts on. If your grand-boss sees you with shorts as you enter the building, no reasonable human should complain about that.

    Maybe don’t wear them to client meetings though.

  25. Anonym*

    I feel like #2 is less about the Outlook calendar and more about the fact that the site manager wanted to make a large change to the previously agreed upon workflow and when LW didn’t immediately agree to that change, she went way up the command chain to get what she wanted.

    1. Peanut Hamper*

      Yes, somebody had their cheese moved and they didn’t like it.

      Nevertheless, you should keep an accurate calendar. An inaccurate calendar and a sack are worth the price of the sack.

    2. theletter*

      yes, it’s hard to tell if it’s an outlook-request-is-end-of-conversation-or-start-of-conversation debacle or if the site manager felt that they should be able to select people and times that best met their budgets and got told otherwise, with having the LW1 getting told to keep the outlook calendar more transparent as a negotiated final compromise.

      LW, if all you need to do is a little outlook jujitsu to make it very clear what days you are not available, you might consider that a little win. No one’s going to try that site manager’s stunt again.

  26. Sparrow*

    LW #5 made me realize for the first time that, at least in circles I run in, I hear people use “more hours” and “longer hours” to mean two different things. With the hopefully obvious disclaimer that this is just my experience and others may differ, I think the difference is:

    “More hours” generally means “working more days a week”, e.g. someone who had worked Saturday/Sunday/Monday and then also got Tuesday and Wednesday added to their schedule. I mostly hear this with regards to part time jobs and generally in a positive way, like “My boss just approved me for more hours!”

    “Longer hours” generally means “working more hours in a day”, e.g. someone who had worked 9am-5pm and then got told they had to start coming in at 7am and staying until 6pm (whether explicitly or simply through getting a higher workload). I mostly hear this in a neutral or negative way, like “We’re in the busy season at work right now, so I’ll be working longer hours for at least the next month.”

    1. doreen*

      In my experience , it’s slightly different. “More hours” is something I generally hear from people working part-time and hourly . It might mean more days or not – sometimes I’m working more hours means they’ve gone from two days to three, and sometimes they’ve gone from 4 hour shifts to 8 hour shifts. “Longer hours” is something I usually hear about full time jobs and businesses – I might go to dry cleaner A rather than B because A has longer hours, that sort of thing.

    2. Hastily Blessed Fritos*

      I think it’s simpler than that. “More hours” is for hourly workers – more time means more money. “Longer hours” is for salaried workers – more time but no additional money to show for it.

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

        I would add that “longer hours” could also mean mandatory overtime. I had a job where we had to either come in or stay later by at least 1 hour a day. In that case it was longer hours, meaning a longer shift than normal.

      2. Ace in the Hole*

        Hourly workers with also use “longer hours” if they are working more hours in a row.

        For example, as an hourly employee, my schedule is usually 8am-5pm. During a busy season I might be asked to stay late and work 8-6:30pm, which I would describe as “working longer hours.” Or if a coworker is out sick so I’m coming in early this week to cover half his shift, I might say I’m “working longer hours this week.”

        On the other hand, if I had been working 4 days per week (32 hours) and now work 5 days per week (40 hours), I’d say I got more hours – but not that I got longer hours.

        It’s an all squares are rectangles thing. If someone is working longer hours, they’re definitely working more hours. But the reverse isn’t always true.

    3. Lab Boss*

      I don’t think I realized I was doing it, but agreed- when my schedule switched from 5×8 hours a week to 4×10 hours a week I referred to it as “longer hours, but fewer days.” I wouldn’t have referred to it as “more hours” because I was still doing 40 hour weeks.

    4. londonedit*

      Yes, I’d use ‘longer hours’ as shorthand for ‘longer working hours’, as in ‘a longer working day’.

    5. Spencer Hastings*

      Yep, this is basically how I understand it as well. Turns out that when prescriptivists get big mad about things, there is usually a logical explanation.

  27. BellaStella*

    OP2, for others to perceive you well (tho am so sorry on the vp getting looped in), just update your calendar and do it regularly please. I have a colleague who has never in four years plus ever sent a meeting request. He does not keep his calendar updated, only things on there are meetings other people schedule. He never has it updated in the HR system when on holiday except after being asked about it, etc. Honestly I have tried but he is the boss’ favourite and training him to use tools like outlook an excel when he is a senior manager just seems ridiculous so I do not.

  28. AnonForThisOne*

    LW3 I did something similar-ish on LinkedIn when I left a position with an employer who was notorious (at least in industry circles) for people just disappearing and no one really knowing what happened… if they were fired, quit, forced to resign, abducted by aliens, etc.

    When I gave notice after 6 years I asked them when I would be able to tell people. Crickets.

    They really wanted me to wait until my last day and just go “poof”. I said, with respect to their goofy practice, I wasn’t OK I with just disappearing after 6 years and saying nothing to people, some of whom I’d worked with for quite a while, and told them I would speak about it to people at the end of the week.

    They reluctantly agreed and said they would send out an announcement and once that happened it was OK for me to speak about my resignation.

    Once the email announcement went out, I did post about it on LinkedIn because this is where you share these sorts of things and because it’s good to keep that network fresh but it’s also good to either make it clear you left in your own terms or you learned something from the experience.

    FWIW the world seems to be split between hiring managers who never look at LinkedIn and those who think not having a 100% up to date profile on there means you aren’t serious about looking for a job, which is one of the reasons I keep mine up to date… you just never know what may happen and just in case I interview in the future with one of the latter types, I’m good to go.

    As an aside, the email announcement of my resignation had the subject line (I did not write it, my boss did) “Farewell to Our Esteemed Colleague, My Name” and it made it sound like I died…which was amusing in and of itself.

    1. Retired Vulcan Raises 1 Grey Eyebrow*

      Blimey, after that announcement I’d be asking your coworkers when the funeral is to be held, so wandering over there and suddenly seeing you/your ghost haunting them ….

      1. MsM*

        Show up for the holiday party in chains and warn management they’re about to be visited by three spirits.

    2. Scout Finch*

      I laughed out loud at this! Reminded me of something that confused my mother back in the 70s.

      When my mother asked a coworkerA why coworkerB was missing from their sewing table (t-shirt factory), she was told “she got called home” – which in the rural US South is often a Christian euphemism for dying. My mother was relieved to learn that coworkerB was needed at her house for a child-related issue.

      1. AnonForThisOne*

        Hah! Very similar.

        The manager was new-ish to being a manager and I run in the effort to send a meaningful email unintentionally sent my death notice.

  29. BellaStella*

    About Linkedin – a question for commenters – I use it regularly to post jobs at my work and in my network, and results of stuff I work on. recently I have had to block a couple of people (over 15 years I blocked a total of maybe 5 or 6 people). These people were being creepy. Have you blocked people too?

    For OP1, you do not have to block this person but I think there is a setting to hid their posts. Why not do that and forget about them? I strongly agree with the advice given, and also will note most people do not spend hours a week on LI, so would not see this most likely? Your employees will thank you for acting on a problem and solving this problem, too, I think.

    1. The Bunny*

      I block people all the time and on all social media.

      In general I find it to be rather toxic and if you are creepy, super aggressive, rude, etc I’m going to block you. It’s my small way of trying to keep what I do see when I’m logged on as mostly positive.

      I also tend to block (or restrict to public posts only) my current boss and coworkers. Hilariously, I was trying to share something in FB with a former boss of a job I left more than 6 months ago (I’ve remained friends with this person) and we couldn’t find one another on there.

      It occurred to me I’d probably blocked her, which I told her and she laughed because it’s funny and so something I would do…and I then had to go figure out how to UN-block someone.

      1. BellaStella*

        Yes on the restricting social media posts esp LI to a set of people not incl current coworkers and boss. I have not done this but it is interesting. I block people on FB too and honestly need to log in and disable the account as have not opened it in 2 months.

        My social media is LI, FB (sort of) and instagram which I have locked down and heavily curate again to be only positives so glad to read you do the positives too.

        1. AnonForThisOne*

          I occasionally post frustrations…but minor ones…such as ordering a boba drink and them not sending a boba straw… so not life and death but actually kind of funny.

          1. AnonForThisOne*

            Anon on this one as I literally posted this earlier today and would like to at least maintain plausible deniability that I’m also on this forum. :)

        2. The Bunny*

          I’m not sure if you can lock down LinkedIn. I’m slightly less worried about that one as I keep posts there to a minimum and only work related.

          I don’t connect with coworkers on FB or IG because I just don’t even though my feed is pretty much travel and cat pics.

  30. nodramalama*

    LW2 i would never bother going to the VP about it, but I am a bit confused why the response to Ann was to ignore her?! Is it really so hard to just block out your outlook? It might seem silly to you but obviously saves time for at least one other person and it takes maybe 2 minutes of your time

    1. Cthulhu's Librarian*

      I get why Anne did what she did. I might have done the same. It sounds like her organization has an ongoing relationship with the LW’s firm, and the LW decided to just ignore her communications. If I need to parcel out work and you start ignoring me, of course I’m escalating.

      I understand the LW’s frustration, but “nah nah nah, can’t hear you” when some asks for something you don’t want to do is the literal definition of childish behavior.

      1. Spencer Hastings*

        I thought she worked for the LW’s company too, just in a different department? Also, she was supposed to schedule with the other person on LW’s team, the junior person.

    2. Retired Vulcan Raises 1 Grey Eyebrow*

      If someone who is supposed to do wok fo me just ignores my communications, then of couse I’m going to escalate this up her management chain until someone tells her to repsond and do the work.

    4. Ginger Cat Lady*

      My thoughts exactly. If you don’t want someone to escalate something, do not *choose to ignore her* – deal with the issue. The issue that came up because you think you’re too high and mighty to keep your calendar updated because you assume “everyone knows”
      Clearly they don’t. It caused a problem. That’s on the OP, not Anne.

    5. Nocturna*

      I think that from the LW’s perspective, Ann wasn’t supposed to be scheduling with them at all (she should have been scheduling with the other engineer) and that had already been communicated, so there was no point to responding to a message about how to make it easier for Ann to schedule with LW.

      1. biobotb*

        I wonder why the LW didn’t escalate, actually. Ann’s pestering the wrong person for a meeting, why didn’t the LW kick this up to whomever made the decisions about engineer workflows and budgeting to ask them to handle Ann?

        1. I Have RBF*

          This. Ann will actually screw her budget by insisting on having the senior engineer do all of the work, instead of just doing QA for the juniors.

    6. sara*

      If I’m reading it right, the initial communication was not ignored. OP told Ann that they were not available, and then she just didn’t like that answer! I feel like it’s reasonable to ignore people when they are refusing to accept that you literally are not going to be at work at the time they requested. Regardless how she found out that information — OP is probably sleeping that time if they work nights! It’s not an option. She needed to move on and follow the correct procedure, not keep harassing OP about it.

    7. K-Chai*

      It doesn’t sound like Ann needed a reply though. According to the letter, it basically went:
      Ann: [made meeting and sent message about bypassing the project engineer]
      LW2: I work nights that week and can’t make it, but you can actually just invite the project engineer and I’ll get with them later.
      Ann: That’s frustrating to me, I don’t want to invite the project engineer. You should’ve updated your calendar.

      Ann didn’t necessarily communicate she wanted to continue rescheduling– the LW had already provided one option; it sounds like Ann wanted the LW to offer a solution but didn’t really say that–to the LW it was just hearing her say “I find this inconvenient,” which seems reasonable to not reply, honestly. And even if she was waiting for the LW to respond, it would have been better to follow up again with LW (or her colleague) and actually say that outright: “Hey, I can’t have the PE involved for XYZ reasons and need to meet with you, is your calendar updated [or just asking for meeting times].”

      By not following up and jumping up the chain for a minor issue, Ann looks pretty reactive and immature. Especially because not every workplace uses shared calendars religiously–or not at every level. If LW’s workplace generally gets along *without* doing so and it’s normal and expected to coordinate via communication at the LW’s general level, then Ann’s actions also go against norms and add to the rudeness–I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s more normal for the VP’s level to use calendars heavily; in my office the director’s calendar is up to date because they have more outside meetings, but the rest of us have an internal page we post our schedules and coordinate meetings via email before sending invitations once details are decided. If someone started trying to use all our calendars to schedule meetings without having actual conversations about them first, that would be pretty out of step, and then complaining about it to higher-ups *without* having conversations first would be really aggressive.

      So I disagree a bit with Alison’s reply–it’s not certain that this is a thing broadly not working, or if it’s a thing one single person found inconvenient once and complained to someone somewhat removed who agreed with that opinion.

  31. Apex Mountain*

    Things may have changed, and it also may differ by state/region, but I was on a grand jury for three months back in the 90s, and if you were chosen, there was no getting out of it. A bank president, a nurse, the mother of a city council member – all were there for the whole three months.

    For me, it was perfect b/c I just graduated college and didn’t have a job yet so it was like a paid three month internship – and it was great b/c they’d pay you the same whether you were there for the whole day or just a few hours

  32. Irish Teacher.*

    LW1, you fired her. I don’t mean this as a criticism or anything; it sounds like it was justified, but it does mean she has absolutely no obligation to you and may, understandably, bear some resentment towards your company. I have my doubts that she would be willing to do you a favour, because that is what it would be, by agreeing not to mention your organisation any more.

    I realise that you treated her fairly by giving severence and giving her time to find another job but she has the right to post factual information and her opinions as she pleases. If she was saying something inaccurate about the experience, like claiming you had her perpwalked out because of something she hadn’t done, then it might be different, but you would be essentially asking her to hide information or at least avoid publicising it to make your company, which fired her, look better. I can’t see any incentive for her to do that.

    Now, personally, I would not want to publicise the fact I had been fired because I think it would make the person fired look bad, but…that is her decision.

    I also wouldn’t address it with your team at all. Unless there are other reasons for concern, I doubt anybody will think, “one person got fired/laid off; therefore the company must be planning mass layoffs.” That would be a really strange assumption unless there is other information that would cause concern for employees.

    1. londonedit*

      Completely agree with all of this. The OP did the decent thing in allowing the employee to work for another three months and save face with her colleagues by telling them she’d resigned, and I get the feeling they think the employee somehow owes them for that, and should be keeping up the facade. But the employee doesn’t work for the OP anymore, and she’s free to make whatever decisions she wants to make about what she puts on LinkedIn (as long as it’s not defamatory, which this isn’t – it’s fact). If she wants to present it as a ‘follow my journey from getting fired to getting a new job’ then that’s up to her. I agree, it seems an odd decision to me (if I was given the chance to carry on passing off a firing as an ordinary resignation, I absolutely would) but it’s her choice. And I definitely don’t think the OP’s team will worry about it.

    2. Ganymede*

      Exactly. She owns her story. She owns what happened to her, and how she chooses to react to it, and how she chooses to talk about all those things. Some people believe in radical transparency. If that’s her preference, that’s the end of it.

  33. I should really pick a name*

    #2

    I ignored this message because it didn’t seem productive.

    You ignored your coworker so they went over your head. That seems reasonable.

    1. Peanut Hamper*

      I was wondering about this as well. How is not having an updated calendar productive?

      1. Baela Targaryen*

        Agreed. This is a big part of my job and it’s the only way to get something on the calendar when someone isn’t being helpful/isn’t offering availability. Why did we bother updating the Scheduler function to reduce back and forth emails if we’re not gonna use it properly???

  34. radish*

    All I’ll say is, my grandmother once got out of jury duty by enthusiastically telling them she was a big fan of the death penalty. Poor judgement (or the appearance of it) can preclude you from serving.

    1. Random Bystander*

      That wouldn’t really apply to grand juries, though, since they don’t have anything to do with penalties, only whether or not the case could go to trial (or whether they no-bill because there is not enough evidence).

    2. Retired Vulcan Raises 1 Grey Eyebrow*

      For any kind of unpaid / low paid jury duty, maybe state that you are totally opposed to the capitalist criminal legal system which oppresses ordinary people for the benefit of the ruling class (create your own SJW rhetoric)

      If then asked could you deal with a case fairly, answer “I don’t think so”

      You don’t actually have to believe all that, other than to believe that it should be mandatory for jury duty to be paid in full at your normal salary.

    3. Garret*

      I absolutely could not serve regular jury duty one time because of work obligations. Would have been catastrophic. I said drunk driving was sometimes justified and that cops lie regularly. You could tell the prosecutor knew what I was doing but he let me go.

    4. Having a Scrummy Week*

      I have relatives who are high-level police officers so that is usually my “get out of jail free” card. That is a recipe for bias, despite my best efforts to remain neutral.

    5. Spencer Hastings*

      That’s only for a trial jury. Prospective trial jurors get interviewed so that the attorneys can disqualify them for various reasons. For a grand jury, there is no such step (since grand juries are assembled to hear multiple cases, not just the one). You can be excused for certain reasons (disability, primary caregiver of small children, etc.), but after that, selection is totally random from among everyone who’s still there.

    6. Orv*

      For regular trial juries expressing detailed opinions about the meaning of “a reasonable doubt” seems to work pretty well. For grand juries that’s unlikely to work because the purpose of a grand jury is not to pass judgement, but rather to decide if an indictment is justified by the evidence. The standard is pretty different.

  35. Peanut Hamper*

    I get where LW #1 is coming from. It feels weird because it is weird, but social media encourages people to do weird things.

    It’s weird right now, but it’s weird on the former employee’s side. Don’t make it weird on your side by doing anything about it. Let it go. It’s LinkedIn, which is generally just a bizarre place in a lot of ways.

    1. Spencer Hastings*

      Yes, the fact that she’s a #LinkedInLunatic would affect my opinion of how good her judgment is. But I wouldn’t say anything.

      1. The Bunny*

        I’m not sure it’s that weird. People often post about losing positions or leaving jobs.

        I don’t think there’s something wrong with doing so, honestly. And if I saw someone post this I wouldn’t question their judgment.

        40 years ago being terminated or laid off was a black mark and I can see keeping it quiet. But now? With all the layoffs that have happened, short term jobs people took due to COVID, etc. it’s becoming more common.

        I think seeing posting about losing a job being seen as bad is a holdover to seeing losing a job as BAD and something you never admit to having been through.

        1. Spencer Hastings*

          I wouldn’t see a problem with factual updates about being let go and looking for work — I mean the “documenting her job search journey, and how every day was about exercising ‘resilience’ and ‘dealing with challenges’”.

          1. NotAnotherManager!*

            Same. The first part is factual and related to job searching/networking, which was supposed to be the point of LinkedIn. It’s since devolved into the latter and is more akin to Facebook or a personal blog these days.

  36. RIP Pillowfort*

    OP#2- Sounds like you’re civil engineers and trust me I get where your frustration is coming from. I’ve dealt with very similar situations where your normal workflows are bypassed and very simple issues get escalated when you’re already dealing with a difficult schedule. That’s a recipe for frustration.

    I think you need to separate your VP’s feedback from Ann. They’re right you should put scheduled night work on your calendar just so people who use Outlook to schedule with you know when you’re working. I work with engineering firms and while they may have a separate internal communication structure- we use Outlook exclusively and our bosses require that we schedule through that. So we need to know their availability to schedule TEAMS meetings and things like site visits. Being able to see it on their calendar makes it easier for me to coordinate if they’re off/working nights/etc.

  37. Suzannah*

    LW1 – I believe you are sincere in saying you took pains to allow your employee to leave with dignity after she was let go. But it also sounds like you resent the fact that she’s *not* humiliated by it.
    So she’s sharing her struggles with job-seeking online. So what? It might make her feel better; it might connect her with people who want to help. The fact that she did not work out at your workplace doesn’t mean she is unemployable, anywhere, in any kind of job.
    And why can’t she say where she worked? it’s not a lie. She’s not saying she was wrongly dismissed, from what you’ve told Alison here.
    Is it that you fear the company will look bad for firing an employee (even if the firing was warranted)? it happened! And it was worse for her than for the company – even though it was necessary.
    I actually admire her approach here, to be up-front about being let go from a job and determined to find another one. It would be awfully tempting to slink away with tail between one’s legs, afraid of being seen.

    1. Ginger Cat Lady*

      I agree. LW1 doesn’t seem to grasp that this employee gets to share about her life. And sometimes, that might not be the most flattering for other people, like LW1 and the company, but still this person can be open about what happened to her.
      Expecting people to shut up so you don’t look bad, after you FIRED them, is a way worse look than her talking about losing her job and keeping a positive outlook about it.

  39. Gustavo*

    LW #1 needs to let it go! It’s factual information anyway and well within their right to share as they please. Your org did the best it could to allow them to leave with dignity, so continue to do so by letting them live their life now. Trying to control how they choose to share what happened to THEM on their own social media is ridiculous.

  40. I edit everything*

    I just started working for a university, and one of my perks is being able to take classes essentially for free. I’ve been trying to decide where to start, and all the conversations about “longer” vs “more” and “fix dinner,” etc., has given me my answer. Linguistics it is! I love this community.

    1. HQB*

      #3 – if you get 5 paid jury days, is that per calendar year? Starting in August would mean the 18-month period would run over 3 calendar years, so maybe you would get 12 – 15 paid days from your company? I know that’s still a far cry from 54, but it’s better than 5.

    2. AnonLinguist for this*

      Excellent choice! ;) Sorry if you already know this stuff, but …

      – For the low-down on how different social groups use language in different ways, look for a course in sociolinguistics or language variation

      – To get into how languages change over time / how to “reconstruct” (=make hypotheses about) non-attested ancestors of known languages, look for a course in historical linguistics

      – My favorite entry point (I teach this kind of course!): To geek out over patterns in language, how to express them, and what it means for understanding human cognition, look for a course in general or theoretical linguistics (might be called Ling 101 at a lot of schools). Things like: Which English words have the plural in an “s” sound vs. a “z” sound? Why do little kids who used to say “I went” just fine go through a phase where they say “I goed”? Why does the order of words in sentences in Japanese end up almost backward from how words are ordered in English? A great type of course for people who like language and also enjoy solving things like logic puzzles and Sudoku.

      Also, for awesome resources aimed at the interested public, check out any blog, podcast, or book involving Gretchen McCulloch.

  41. Fluffy Fish*

    I’m starting to think we need a blanket – LinkedIn is less important than you think and you cannot control what other people are doing there.

    2. Peanut Hamper*

      LinkedIn Caveats:

      1) LinkedIn is not as important as you think it is, or as it thinks it is.
      2) It’s social media, so people get really weird on there sometimes.
      3) It’s social media, so feel perfectly free to block people as appropriate.
      4) It’s social media, and too many people on there are desperately trying to be influencers. Take their “advice” with a huge grain of salt.
      5) LinkedIn needs you, but you do not need LinkedIn.

      1. Orv*

        I got an account because I got the impression it was becoming mandatory in tech fields (some job apps actually ask for a linkedin URL), but as far as I know it’s never actually helped me get a job.

        1. The Bunny*

          I worked with a hiring manager who always looked at LI profiles for candidates sent to them. It got to the point that if I didn’t see a current LI that matched the resume I didn’t even bother sending them to the manager

  42. Incandescence*

    I’m still exceptionally angry about getting a talking-to from my boss about wearing shorts walking across the parking lot into work. It was 90 degrees, I have never violated dress code in the office or lab (unlike the male members of my team who wear shorts in the lab pretty regularly), and from what he told me, a group of extremely senior people saw and started making jokes and ‘comments’ about it.

    Readers, I was working as a student employee, *on a college campus*. To this day, I just… what?

      1. Incandescence*

        Yep, that was it!

        Sadly, not shaving so that they look more like men’s legs (the old ‘if I wear the right black pants, no one can tell that they’re actually stretchy’ trick) did not help.

  43. ecnaseener*

    LW4, if you really felt you needed to acknowledge the shorts, the time to do so was in the moment. Bringing it up days (or more?) later would make it much more of A Thing.

  44. Jenga*

    #1 You fired the employee, you no longer have a say in anything they do. And they are allowed to do whatever they feel they need to do to find a new job.

    1. Peanut Hamper*

      Part of me is thinking that LW is a really nice person (they gave this employee a lot of grace, after all) and it seems like former employee is kind of shooting themselves in the foot with this approach.

      But yep, totally not something they should even worry about.

  45. Garlic Microwaver*

    LW 3- I have never heard of a company forcing you to deplete your PTO for jury duty. It’s your civic duty! Going unpaid after a certain allotted amount, yes, but not putting you into negative PTO. Double check that. That would be horrid. There’s your argument right there.

    But I say, if you can make it work and it doesn’t end up being a hardship, it’s an honor IMO to serve. So many people I know try to get out of jury duty because it’s an inconvenience, when I really think in most cases, it’s an eye opening experience.

    My boss almost got called to serve on the Michelle Traconis case. That would have been 12 weeks, 4 days a week, capital murder so big deal. They let the potential jurors know upfront to check their companies’ jury duty policies ASAP- I thought that was nice. In my state, we only get 5 days paid for jury duty. But each company can create their own policy.

    1. I don't work in this van*

      It’s common to have to deplete your paid time off before taking unpaid leave for any reason (except FMLA and whatever the state may require for parental leave, if there is any).

    2. Fluffy Fish*

      its exceedingly normal for salaried employees. we can’t really take unpaid time – you have to be paid your salary regardless of hours – and employers generally do mandate you have to use leave to make up for days you are not working.

      hourly is a little different as they can legitimately take unpaid time, but still generally employers who offer leave can make you use it.

    3. ScruffyInternHerder*

      My own thought is that we need to figure out, as a society, how to do jury duty in a way that does not put one’s ability to earn a living in harm’s way. Its not “inconvenient” so much as “I can’t be laid off or lose paychecks over this, because the bills I need to pay don’t accept “laudits for civil service””.

      Even my reasonable company would have had an issue with the case you mention (12 weeks, 4 days a week). That’s pretty close to 25% of my working hours annually.

      1. Delta Delta*

        I think the way would be to raise everyone’s taxes so that our third co-equal branch of government gets funded adequately.

        1. Coverage Associate*

          It’s so tough. I agree it’s hard to burden employers with paying for a public good, and I could see perverse effects of making employers pay for all jury duty (like encouraging employees not to register to vote). But if the government makes up the lost pay, it raises so many issues, especially when we consider how stingy our attitudes are for government employees. What about high salaried people who get called? Are some jurors going to be the highest paid government “employees” in the state? What about the unemployed? They aren’t missing work, but they are missing the time to look for work? If we just raise juror pay to minimum wage, it’s only less of a problem. People who make much more than minimum wage will still avoid jury duty.

    4. Ginger Cat Lady*

      Companies force employees to deplete their PTO for whatever reason is really, really common. Surprised you never heard of it before. Happens to women taking paternity leave every singe day. Happens to people taking medical leave every day. Happens to people who have a company that shuts down between Christmas and New Years and you take PTO that week whether you like it or not. I’ve known someone who *got in trouble* at work for using all her PTO and not having enough in her bank to cover that week. Grandboss wanted to fire her, her immediate boss threatened to quit if they did so they kept her, but put a formal disciplinary letter in her file. Over that.
      Companies do ridiculous things all the time. Making them use PTO for jury duty is par for the course.

  46. Art3mis*

    #3 – A close friend of mine was summoned for federal grand jury duty a few years ago. And sad to say, you are not going to get out of it. When she went the only person who got out of it was someone who was a very specialized doctor and people could literally have died if she missed work. Everyone else was not excused and plenty had fairly decent reasons. You’re probably better off getting your work to pay you for the time you miss rather than having to use your PTO.

  47. Poison I.V. drip*

    LW1: This supposedly underperforming person was given *3 months* to “transition out?” What kind of firing is that? If someone needs to be fired, you don’t let them keep working for 3 more weeks.

    1. Varthema*

      Eh, I kind of get it. There are times when someone is doing their job okay but you need someone stronger in the role. A longer transition time provides the employee with a chance to not have a gap in their employment/income and also allows the company the chance to try to backfill the position without a knowledge gap. Long notices (on both sides) are fairly common elsewhere in the world; I don’t understand the US insistence that personnel changes need to happen RIGHT NOW EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY.

    2. Yoli*

      If the work is cyclical it might just work out that way. I had a colleague get fired (similar to this story, she told me even though the job let her frame it as a resignation), and she stayed on a few months because we worked for a school. People who resign or get fired nearly always stay until the end of the school year and then their replacement starts late July/early August.

  48. Lacey*

    LW1: This post probably isn’t about my former coworker – but it could be.

    When she was let go, everyone understood why.
    She was nice, but not particularly effective in the role.

    And yeah, now she’s posting a lot about the layoff on linkedin. She’s trying to attract attention to get another job.

    She’s a nice person, I wish her the best. But it never occurred to me to worry that one perfectly understandable firing would be the precursor to mass layoffs.

    In fact, several other people have been fired since then and… I’m still not worried.
    Because they’re scattered throughout the year and clearly in response to performance or attitude issues.

    Just be normal. It will all be ok.

    1. Irish Teacher.*

      Honestly, this may be cultural, but I think I’d be more worried if my boss started saying stuff like, “you might have seen ex-employees posts on LinkedIn. I obviously can’t talk about individual situations but I just want to reassure you that there are no more layoffs or firings being planned right now.”

      That would sound a bit like they were “protesting too much”. I don’t think I’d even consider that one employee mentioning they were fired might signify mass layoffs, but if a manager started reassuring us, yeah, I’d probably start wondering then, both because I’d wonder was there something else the employee had posted suggesting such plans that I hadn’t seen and also because…well, denials that come out of the blue always strike me as suspicious.

      Again, this may be partly cultural. Back in the ’90s, the media announcing “there’s no flu in Ireland” was always a reason to feel certain that yup, cases of flu had been found in Ireland.

      1. londonedit*

        Or in English football circles, you know as soon as a club says the manager has the ‘full backing of the board’ they’re on their way out of the door!

        I agree, I think it would be very weird if a boss suddenly started making vague statements about ex-colleagues’ LinkedIn posts. I barely ever look at LinkedIn (it’s not massively widely used in my industry) and I’d definitely start wondering what on earth was up.

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

    I did a search and found that only 10 states require employers to pay employees who are called for jury duty and 18 have rules prohibiting employers from requiring employees to use any PTO for their jury duty.

    I will post the website in the comments

  50. Nancy*

    LW1: stop reading your former employee’s LinkedIn posts if they bother you so much. Your team is not going to assume massive layoffs because one person was fired, if they even care enough to read her social media posts. Most people I know ignore those.

    LW2: keeping your calendar updated for work is a productive used of time and does not take long.

    LW5: Language evolves.

  51. My Useless Two Cents*

    #2
    I don’t think the issue is the Outlook calendar. (BTW as someone who doesn’t use Outlook calendar much, I know it’s not difficult. However, if it’s not the default method in your organization for communicating availability, it is an annoyance when you have to update for 1 person who insists on using it as such.)

    The issue is that Ann is not following set procedures and practices by trying to go around the junior engineer and refusing to work with co-engineer and then escalating things to the VP when she is not getting her way. I would suggest a conversation with VP because she is going to do this again. If VP is reasonable, they will take more time to understand additional issues rather than just an “eh, it’s simple, just do it”. It is simple for Ann to talk to the engineer on days that week too!

    1. Retired Vulcan Raises 1 Grey Eyebrow*

      I disagee.
      Keeping the calendar updated may not be the norm for the OP and her coworker, but it is the norm in most organisations of any size and may be the norm – and planned mandatory – for the rest of her org.
      A special system that suits the 2 of them doesn’t work well when an outsider who doesn’t know the system needs to work with them.

      Also, I wonder if the other teams that work with them just put up with the inconvenience of having to call because they felt they didn’t have the authority to change it – maybe even the VP checked with them what they thought.
      It is probably a minor but irritating inconvenience for a lot of people to save these 2 engineers the minor inconvenience of maintaining their calendar.

      1. Czhorat*

        Agreed.

        I also said in my comment that OP gave up control of the discussion by simply ignoring Ann’s request because they didn’t like it. If they’d offered some other way to confirm availability that could have changed the entire discussion.

        Instead by ignoring what is on the surface a reasonable request they insured that it would be escalated, and the VP who got the escalation would not be on their side.

        1. My Useless Two Cents*

          Disagree. OP ignored Ann’s demand to change how they’ve been using Outlook with no problems until then, not their request for a meeting. They responded that they were working nights that week and the meeting time would not work well for them and suggested an alternative which Ann did not like. Ann then got pissy and went to VP. Changing how something is being done to accommodate one persons preference is not a reasonable request to me.

          1. Retired Vulcan Raises 1 Grey Eyebrow*

            Keeping your calendar updated is the business norm, not just one person’s preference. The OP & her coengineer have trained the teams around them to do something outside the norm, but their unusual system is inconvenient for those like Ann who don’t normally work with the OP.

            As for “getting pissy”: if someone just ignored my work request and wouldn’t update their calendar so I could schedule a meeting with them, then I’d escalate too.

    2. TT*

      Yep, what Ann is really mad about is not getting her way in bypassing the engineering workflow that she doesn’t understand and she’d probably be just as mad if OP’s calendar was correct.

      However! The incorrect calendar gave Ann an opening to complain about something legitimate. And she spoke up first, before OP said anything.

      My advice for OP2 with Ann would be to talk to your superiors about what Ann is trying to do, and then CYA in every interaction with her, including by doing what she/VP says and update your calendar. Don’t give her another opening.

  52. QueenFrstine06*

    For LW3, hopefully you see this and it gives you a little hope:

    I was in your same situation a few years back. I was called for State Grand Jury that was once a week for 20 weeks in Trenton, which is about 65 miles from where I lived at the time. (And it was winter, and it can snow here…so terrible.)

    At the time, my company only paid for 3 days of jury service, so I would have either had to use most of my PTO for the year or take essentially a full pay period unpaid. And my job was legal-related, so it was even sillier/funnier — they of all people should know you can’t just say no to jury duty!

    I took it upon myself to make a (polite) stink about it, and ended up chatting with our CEO at the time, who was a really nice and reasonable guy. The company ended up changing the policy to pay for all jury service regardless of length (the only correct policy, imo!) without too much fuss once they heard what was going on.

    (As an added note, I had my lunch packed and my car keys in hand ready to leave the house on the first day of the grand jury service and I got an absolutely FRANTIC call from a woman at the courthouse: “I was supposed to send you a postcard telling you we didn’t need you after all and I just found it buried under a pile of papers on my desk! Please don’t come!” So it was the best of all worlds :)

  53. Czhorat*

    For OP2, this is what jumped out at me:

    “”She went on to tell me that my colleague and I should have put our rotating night shifts in our Outlook calendars so she could coordinate with us. I ignored this message because it didn’t seem productive.””

    A project manager has the responsibility for scheduling team members for their projects; if your calendar isn’t a viable option for her to see your availability (it should be) you need to at least answer her and give some other way she can do her job. Just pretending she didn’t send it because you didn’t like the request can be viewed as more hostile than you probably intend, and is almsot certainly what lead to the escalation. Also, if Ann said “I made this reasonable request and he ignored me. How should we handle this going forward?” the VP is going to be annoyed at getting dragged into this, and will specificially be annoyed with you for the perception that you caused the issue.

    Sometimes even if you don’t think a request is the right way to do things you need to either be flexible or at least be seen trying to make some accommodation in order to give the appearance (and actuality!) of being a team player.

    1. Antilles*

      Also, if Ann said “I made this reasonable request and he ignored me. How should we handle this going forward?” the VP is going to be annoyed at getting dragged into this, and will specificially be annoyed with you for the perception that you caused the issue.
      Agreed.
      I’ll guess that OP’s non-responsiveness is a large part of the reason why he “sided with Ann”. If OP had responded to the email even with a brief response (sorry about being unable to do the morning site visit, but it’s hard to put the rotating night shifts into the calendar because they vary quite a bit), there’s a solid chance the VP either sides with OP, suggests a viable third alternative, or just stays out of it altogether.

    2. Fluffy Fish*

      “the request can be viewed as more hostile than you probably intend”

      while i dont think OP is the devil incarnate, i do think they did intend it to stick it to Ann. their letter to me comes across very much as Ann’s not important and they’re not going to answer to her.

      1. Czhorat*

        I’m giving benefit of the doubt; It’s clear that OP doesn’t *like* Ann, but I don’t think it follows that open hostility was intended.

        1. Ginger Cat Lady*

          I disagree. Choosing to ignore her is pretty hostile. He’s just mad it came back around and bit him in the butt.

          1. Fluffy Fish*

            Exactly – ignoring a colleague is an aggressive move. if nothing else it says “i don’t respect you”. Followed with OP being mad because the VP asked them to do something totally reasonable and more focused on “was it Ann” then – hey I ignored a colleague so they reasonable went over my head – i should learn from that.

  54. Sneaky Squirrel*

    #4 – It’s the cardinal rule of men’s dresswear but was it actually a violation of the company’s dress code? If so, you played with fire by making a choice that you knew broke a rule. But it sounds like no one actually called it out, so I would leave it. If your great-grandboss didn’t leave with much of an impression with you then, you’re just making it a thing.

  55. Software Engineer*

    LW4: Me wearing shorts created a stir at the office a couple years ago (despite falling within established dress code), which caused me to stop wearing them. I’m 6’3”, 230lbs, work out daily, and have a body temp that runs hot all the time. Recently, poor in-office AC paired with 90-degree temps caused me to overheat and get sick from heat exhaustion.

    So, I wear shorts now with pride. They’re new, clean, without holes. and look like something a middle-aged golfer would wear in a Walmart ad. I feel much more comfortable now and if anyone brings it up, my response is to bring up my heat sensitivity.

  56. AnniePorter*

    OP#3: Mention “jury nullification” if you are unable to get out for a hardship reason. They really, really, really don’t like that. ;)

    1. NerdyKris*

      It’s not a magic word that causes them to flee. It’s saying that you won’t follow the directions. And it’s not some great thing that is only ever used for good results. It’s what happens when a rapist gets off because they don’t want to ruin his life. Or when a lynch mob isn’t convicted because “he needed killin”.

      Jury nullification is not a good thing. It’s saying “forget the laws, we’re ruling by an oligarchy. It is far more likely that it’s used to deny justice to victims than it is to legalize pot or whatever.

      1. Antilles*

        Also, for OP in particular, it’s completely irrelevant since this is a Grand Jury. Grand juries aren’t responsible for determining guilt or innocence, simply whether there’s enough evidence to indict. The entire concept of “I fundamentally disagree putting drug offenders in prison so I will guaranteed vote no” isn’t really a concern since that’s not actually what you’re voting on.
        Also, a grand jury vote typically doesn’t need to be unanimous (in the US, it’s a simple majority of 12 of the 23 grand jury panel members), which further reduces the impact of any one juror even if you truly are fundamentally opposed to a certain section of the law.

        1. Apex Mountain*

          The whole Grand jury process is pretty weird, having served on one a long time ago. It’s almost literally a rubber stamp since all you’re hearing from is the prosecution, and all you need to do is find a preponderance of the evidence to send it to trial, not reasonable doubt

      2. Coverage Associate*

        Refusal or inability to follow directions will almost always result in dismissal. If OP could honestly say worries about work or finances would be too big a distraction to pay attention to the jury’s work, that could be grounds for dismissal, for example, no politics or tricks or anything.

    2. Filosofickle*

      Throughout my life I’ve heard lots of advice on what to say or do to get kicked out of jury pools. But I’ve sat through a handful of voir dires, and judges around me are NOT playing. They know many are trying to get out of it and they hold prospective jurors’ feet to the fire! If the person was willing to double down and reiterate that they simply cannot judge a case objectively because of their beliefs, or they refuse to uphold the rules, or can’t speak English well enough, or that they will be literally homeless if they lose this income — the judge would let them go. But I have seen them push very hard. Personally, I do want to get out of jury duty and freely state the things I think may disqualify me but I’ll definitely flinch first in a staring contest with a judge rather than say “nope, I can’t be a reasonable and fair person”.

  57. Baela Targaryen*

    Idiot proof your calendar & keep it updated with blocks of time. Most people don’t know that grey = non working hours vs. blue = blocked off time, not available

  58. kiki*

    I think your employees and coworkers would only be concerned about a mass layoff if there has been more than one person let go and all in somewhat quick succession. Seeing that one or two colleagues have been let go is a really normal part of working.

    Trying to run any type of interference on your former employee’s linkedin updates or mentioning it to folks at work is what will make it seem weirder

  59. Czech Mate*

    LW 1 – this is one of my BIGGEST pet peeves, but at the same time…….if I had been fired and wanted to find a way to spin it in a way that would make me attractive to new potential employers, I could see doing something similar. (I wouldn’t, but I get why people do.) She’s already out of work and probably not going to get any positive references from your company, so she may feel that this is her way of getting ahead of the narrative a bit for what might otherwise be an up-hill battle to find work again.

  60. Retired Vulcan Raises 1 Grey Eyebrow*

    #4 I nearly always wear unisex clothing, so at FinalJob I dressed like the guys (I’m female).
    In summer that was knee-length cargo shorts, graphic T/tank, hiking sandals/sneakers. Cool, comfortable and so handy having all those pockets. My legs were no more comment-worthy than those of the guys.

    One of several reasons I stayed 30 years there was that the only dress rules were: dress for your day, always cover your private parts & chest, no offensive slogans. No gender-based rules, which I could not have tolerated.

    1. Retired Vulcan Raises 1 Grey Eyebrow*

      Any organisation that forbids shorts or has other dress rules “just because we say so”, rather than being necessary for work, is being needlessly authoritarian.

    1. Baela Targaryen*

      Apparently that line is based on something that actually happened to James Gandolfini. Amazing.

  62. Just Thinkin' Here*

    LW 1 – so.. you fired your employee and now you are upset they are openly looking for a new job? What did you expect them to do in response to losing their position with your company? Of course they are going to reach out to their network looking for work, that’s what LinkedIn is for.

  63. CubeFarmer*

    LW#2, you spent more time writing this letter than it would have taken you to set up your alternating availability in your Outlook calendar. Heck, I’m probably spending more time writing this comment. This is basic workplace courtesy, and if I were dragged into this as a supervisor, I would be annoyed.

    This kind of reminds me of an issue I have with one of my colleagues, whose job it is to manage our publications. He always, always, always has a reason why we shouldn’t want something done. He spends more time arguing why, for example, we shouldn’t want a page rearranged than just doing it. We spend more time justifying our ideas to him (he’s not program staff) than it would take to just do the work. So, we end up having to loop in our bosses all. the. time. I have no idea why that’s acceptable to the bosses, but it’s the only thing that works, so, there we are.

  64. I went to school with only 1 Jennifer*

    LW #1: Read your whole letter, but substitute “Facebook” for “LinkedIn”, and see how you feel about it. LinkedIn is not some official thing, it’s just social media that focuses on the workplace.

  65. Acolyte gonna ack*

    I think Letter 5 might be proof that acceptance of nerds has maybe gone a little too far and some of us nerds should go back to being shoved into lockers for a bit, because good lord.

  66. The Gollux, Not a Mere Device*

    I served on a New York “special narcotics grand jury,” half days for a month, an endless sequence of “plainclothes officer #nnnnn offered to buy small amount of drugs and then arrested the would-be seller.” I voted against indicting all those people, both because it felt next door to entrapment, and because I don’t think possession of marijuana–much less “illegal posession of Xanax in the fourth degree”–should be a crime. I did vote to indict someone who, in the course of the routine buy-and-bust, turned out to have a submachine gun.

    When I got another summons for the same kind of grand jury, I wrote back and asked them to put me back in the regular jury pool, unless they really wanted me to come vote against dozens more drug indictments. That worked, and I don’t know whether an unexplained request to be put back in the regular jury pool would.

    Being a registered voter in Manhattan meant I was called as frequently as they were allowed, I think because there are both a bunch of Wall Street cases and federal cases that wind up in that district, and a lot of residents who aren’t US citizens and therefore aren’t eligible.

  67. Andrew*

    re: the shorts – when I’ve worked in offices, I keep a pair of pants and a nice shirt/tie in a closet for the occasions when I want to walk to work and it’s a nice day. I just change once I’m there. But as an events person, I’m routinely pulled into meetings that I didn’t know I’d be having that day so I also keep a blazer so that I can *suddenly* scale up in my appearance when needed.

    1. Orv*

      I’ve known lawyers who kept a blazer in their car at all times for that reason. They never knew when they’d be called into court, and judges do not take well to dress code violations.

  68. Cat Executive Officer*

    #1: You can always unfollow people on LinkedIn without removing them as a connection. I’ve done this for some connections who post frequently, but I have no interest in viewing their stuff. This person has every right to post (I agree with Alison et al that you shouldn’t reach out to this person at all!) But I understand why you don’t want to be subjected to their posts constantly.

    #4: I don’t see why professional summer business shorts can’t be a thing, honestly………

  69. JustaTech*

    Fun fact for LW5: back in the middle ages through the Renaissance people did actually work longer hours in the summer, as in, in the summer, daytime hours were longer! The Rule of St Benedict said that each day had 12 hours of night and 12 hours of day, and as you get farther from the equator that means that at the very height of summer the daytime hours would be much longer than the nighttime hours, in order to get 12 to fit in the periods of light and dark.
    (This was only really relevant to people working in and around monasteries, because no one else really had a lot of use for “hours”.)

  71. One HR Opinion*

    What really needs to happen in my opinion is that the various jurisdictions need to actually pay jurors. When I was on jury duty (not grand jury), I got $12 per day. If they want a truly representative sample of the population for jury duty, the government needs to be willing to pay more than $2/hour!

  72. Jim*

    LW3: When I was called for Federal grand jury duty in Los Angeles in the summer of 2001, here’s what happened: the initial reporting date was just an orientation that was held in a packed auditorium, and they gave everyone who wouldn’t be able to serve the opportunity to line up and talk to one of the judges who was sitting behind a table on the stage. I didn’t have a letter from my employer or anything, I just said to the judge, “my employer won’t pay for that many days,” and their response was that they would put me in the pool for regular Federal jury duty instead – it was about a 15-second conversation.

    That was indeed the case, and I ended up serving in September 2001 on a civil trial that only took five days.

  73. Katie*

    Interesting. I have lived in a state that requires employers to pay me during jury duty and assumed all states did. I don’t work in all that worker friendly of a state and now am curious why my state does but states like California don’t!

  74. merida*

    OP #3 – Ugh, I’m so sorry, OP. Please, make some waves over this. I wish you all the luck!!

    I don’t know really anything about grand jury duty, but I recently served on standard county jury duty (first time) and I’ve been thinking a lot about how it must be a financial hardship for many, if not most, people who are summoned. I was paid $20 a day plus mileage ($30 total for me). I got off easy because I only reported for one day and my employer also paid me for my normal hours (though they don’t have to by law in my state). That same week, a different jury trial was going on week 6 in my same county. Can you imagine six weeks or more of $20 a day, if your employer doesn’t pay you? Who can afford to live on $120 a week? Oh, they also “kindly” reimbursed for childcare – between $20-50 daily depending on if it was non-licensed or licensed care, regardless of how many children you have in day care. I don’t have kids but even I know childcare is more expensive than that. Clearly the court is assuming you have savings to cover the rest of your living expenses during a prolonged trial, but that’s not reality for everyone, and even if it were realistic, the ethics of forcing jury members to hemorrhage money even if they can technically afford it seem unethical. Both because we shouldn’t *have* to rely on well-off people to make sure our justice system works, and because excluding lower-paid workers with less savings is not going to result in a jury pool that accurately represents the full community.

    I didn’t realize until I was summoned how bad juror pay is – I guess I always naively assumed it’d be a meager but still fair wage. I’m ready to raise some noise about this.

  75. SusieQQ*

    It seems to be glossed over that Ann did directly ask LW2 to update their schedule, and they admittedly ignored her. It seems reasonable to me that Ann escalated things since direct communication didn’t work. If LW2 didn’t want it escalated, they shouldn’t have ignored Ann! Even if they disagreed with her, it’s rude.

  76. Captain dddd-cccc-ddWdd*

    OP3 (jury duty) – the financial hardship is part of it, but that is also going to be really difficult for the employer in many companies. Knock on effects like someone else’s pre-planned vacation now has to be cancelled so they can cover these dates, etc. Workloads are planned on the basis of 20 (or whatever) days off in a year. Whether it’s paid or unpaid actually makes less difference to the employer than the disruption factor of the absence itself. I would be trying to get out of it, but if this wasn’t fruitful I would be looking to whether I could mitigate it by making up some of the time (e.g. evenings/weekends) in order to be paid for it, and to keep up with workload.

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

    OP3 I haven’t been called to a Grand Jury, but I was called for regular jury duty for an anticipated 5-month-long gang-related murder trial and almost everyone out of my 50-person pool was excused — we were the third pool called to report according to the judge. The judge usually asks person-by-person for their reason for excuse but it goes very quickly. I was surprised that he and the court clerk also have a database of employers in the region and how many days each one offers. I was excused for financial hardship since my employer only offered 10 paid days per calendar year, and even PTO wouldn’t cover the time. Financial hardship is not the only excuse — other reasons for pretty much immediate excusal… 6-month-pregnant woman would be due to give birth during trial… primary care-giver for child/elderly/disabled and no one else to take responsibility… chronic illness or disability (for example: kidney disease that would require dialysis or cancer patient going to chemo)… not fluent in English

    not excused… public school teachers or pretty much any state employee, people with planned vacations

  78. Coverage Associate*

    Has no one else seen those “how to get away with murder” stupid articles that say federal juries have to be impaneled from within 50 miles of the courthouse?

    Anyway, I think it’s 50 miles in the Central District of California, but google tells me it could be 80 miles in the Southern District. So OP may get out if OP is on the outside of the 80 miles. It looks like some federal districts may also cover a hotel if the drive is long and the reporting time is early.

    Here in California, prosecutions for state crimes don’t use grand juries. The legal term is “by information.” We still have grand juries, but they are volunteer based and investigate civil matters, like the effectiveness of government programs.

  79. 653-CXK*

    I was called for regular jury duty twice – both in 2011 and 2015.

    In both cases, my company paid me for the first three days, and then paid me the difference between the per-day court fee ($50 in MA) and my daily salary. I had to turn over my Jury Service form to my company, plus endorse the check they gave me. The 2011 trial lasted about four days (thus received a $50 check), while the 2015 trial lasted about 8 (3 days + 5 additional days @ $50).

  80. Roja*

    18 months! That’s wild. My mom did grand jury duty a few years ago and it was only a period of four months. I thought that was bad enough.

    I’m so sorry you’re going through this. I love the idea of a jury of peers and would love to serve on one someday, but the hardship of actually doing it is real, and I get pretty frustrated that people are expected to magically find childcare and lose income for months on end for, like, $30/day. Sure, sure, I’ll just pay a couple of thousand dollars, no problem. It’s such a systemic issue and I hate it.

  81. Kathy*

    Concerning jury duty. When I was a section head at an aerospace company a member of my section was placed on a federal Grand Jury for 18 months. He had the same problem as the OP. Officially our company allowed 10 days for jury duty, but. when I enquired about the issue to our management it was discovered that there was an exception for long trials and Grand Juries. The employee served his 18 months, 3 or 4 days a month, and received full pay, and did not use PTO. Keep asking both HR and upper management, they can fix it.

  82. rebelwithmouseyhair*

    OP2, I just had a quiet laugh at your post. I agree with Ann, your calendar should reflect whether or not you are available, people can’t be expected to remember which of two people is doing nights on any particular week. I mean, it’s hard enough keeping track of which day it is for some people!

    That said, I’m just getting flashbacks to the year I was doing a few classes at uni for my Master’s. I only had four 1-hr classes and at first I managed to schedule them all for the same day. Since I worked four days a week, I just asked for the day off to be the day I had to go to uni. Unfortunately the schedule changed every six weeks and soon I had to trundle in at different times four days a week. I showed this schedule to the boss, who said, OK, keep your calendar up to date so the PMs know when you’re here, maintain the same level of productivity, and we’ll trust you to do your hours.” (The fact that I was the most productive translator probably helped at this point).
    During that year, I don’t think any of the PMs as much as glanced at my schedule, because I only had to walk out the office for an urgent email or message to come in.
    (I did keep up my productivity, and I even managed the worst of interns during that time)

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