our head of DEI outed me to 800 people, do clients think I’m a nepo baby, and more

by Alison Green on February 4, 2025

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

1. My company’s head of DEI outed me to 800 people

I’m a nonbinary trans person working in sales for a multinational company. I’m out-ish at work. I’ve told my direct team I’m nonbinary, I have they/them pronouns in my email signature, and I wear a mixed wardrobe. I’ve not told anyone I’m trans directly, but I wouldn’t deny it if it came up. That said, the industry is conservative. Most colleagues assume I’m a man regardless of what I wear and everyone still get my pronouns wrong, even those who’ve asked. I mention this to say that I’m open but cautious about declaring my status at work.

Our leadership has spoken up a lot about working on DEI in the last few years. Part of the plan to improve culture has been roundtables between senior leadership, the DEI team, and volunteer employees on their experiences with the company and where there have been struggles (think “improving the work environment for neurodivergent staff,” that sort of thing). I’d taken part in several of these before (as someone with ADHD) and found them a positive experience.

Because of this, I didn’t think anything of it when our head of DEI asked if I would be comfortable speaking with the DEI team on my experience as a trans person in the workplace. She knew I was trans as I’d spoken to her previously about problems with our benefit system (a whole other story, but if you’re in charge of benefits, maybe don’t assume all your staff are cis and lock your healthcare options accordingly?). I assumed this invitation was more of the same and accepted.

It was not more of the same. Four days later, I get an email invite to an all-staff Zoom panel for Pride Month. I’m named as one of the three speakers about “navigating changes to the industry while trans” and it explicitly outs me in the description. The Zoom panel is scheduled for the next day. The invite has gone out to all 800+ employees across the country. I immediately emailed the head of DEI, said this wasn’t what I expected and I didn’t appreciate being put on the spot this way, and pulled out of the panel.

Was this a huge error on her part or just a miscommunication? I was probably at least partly to blame for not checking what exactly she was asking of me, but her original email just said “speaking with the DEI team,” not “speaking with the DEI team in front of all of your colleagues.” But it’s weighed on my mind since and I can’t help but wonder if being outed this way has impacted my career opportunities. It’s definitely made me feel less safe speaking with HR.

It was absolutely a huge error on her part. This was different than what she had invited you to participate in previously, and she should have spelled out what she meant — and if the wording in your letter about how she approached you (“asked if I would be comfortable speaking with the DEI team on my experience”) is the wording she used with you, her wording wasn’t at all in sync with what the event actually was. This isn’t on you — it’s on her.

I’m curious how she handled it once you pointed out what had happened. Your company sounds like they’ve tried to invest in safety and inclusion, so unless she was profoundly apologetic and has talked to you about what will change as a result, you could consider speaking to someone above her about what happened.

Related:
a VP wants me to out myself at work and won’t take no for an answer

2. My coworker keeps interfering with my work

I am having problems with a coworker who repeatedly oversteps onto my tasks. She and I have the same role, me being three years her senior. We used to be on the same team but after a recent reorganization, she moved to another team under the same department. I have never been very fond of her working style: she is very diligent and proactive but tends to act first and ask later, causing unnecessary friction and sometimes overstepping onto other people’s work.

Since she changed teams, she has been “suggesting improvements” or inserting herself in tasks that are under my scope and outside of hers. She tends to bypass me and my team — she goes straight to the client to propose her solutions although I am the person who has to implement them, and I am either not interested or have already identified and documented the same solutions. I am getting more and more upset at this because I feel that, at the very least, she needs to communicate with my team before going to the client. I have explained this to her, her manager, and my manager. She just reacts to my messages with a thumbs-up, her manager promises to work with her to improve the miscommunication, and my manager sides with me. However, the situation is still the same and I am at my wits end. Is there anything else I can do to resolve this problem?

It sounds like you’ve just been messaging her about it (“she reacts to my messages with a thumbs-up”). Since that hasn’t solved the problem, it’s time to move to an in-person meeting with her about it (or Zoom, if you’re remote), ideally with your manager and her manager there, where you can lay out the pattern, why it’s a problem, and what you need her to do differently. As part of that conversation, ask why this keeps happening when you’ve asked her multiple times to stop — is something getting lost in translation? Is she getting conflicting direction from someone else? Does she think every instance is different and she needs to extrapolate “don’t do X” to a broader variety of situations? Sometimes this kind of meeting will surface that there really was some sort of misunderstanding or miscommunication. Other times, it’ll just drive home to the person that they need to take it more seriously, it’s a big deal if they don’t, and they can’t continue being cavalier about it.

If that doesn’t work, you need to escalate it to both your managers each time it happens. Be the squeaky wheel if necessary — but start with a real conversation with her, not just a message.

3. We have to choose between a building with no heat or a building without equipment

Where I work, we have two buildings about one mile apart from each other. I have worked out of the original building (#1) most of my time with this company. In 2020, we all transitioned to WFH. Two years ago, we went to one day in the office as a group as mandated from above. However, this entire time we were all coming into the office more often; our group has always done better than most at closing profitable projects, mainly because of our constant contact.

This past spring, my group was relocated to a new area in the new building (#2). Both buildings removed our large desks and replaced them with small desks. All these desks were to be used for hot-desking and were supposed to have dual monitors with keyboards and mice at each one. The original space in building #1 did not get set up for a long time, and there are many desks without anything on them because they ran out of monitors and keyboards and are not getting more in from, what we are told.

We now have a mandate from above that we must be in the office three days a week and, according to rumors, it can be grounds for termination if not followed. However, the new office area in building #2 is without heat due to a problem with the heating system and it will be for several more weeks (months?). We are in the mid-Atlantic area and it gets below 0 at times. The coldest I saw it in the office was 60 degrees one day (it was below 0 outside). 60 doesn’t sound that cold but it is if all you are doing is sitting at a computer. Our manager has said he will not enforce the mandatory three days a week, but I am worried because our big boss demanded it. Should we continue to go to our new office and freeze, go to the old office and suffer low productivity due to not having a proper computer setup, or continue to work from home and only come in as needed and risk repercussions from upper management?

That’s ridiculous. OSHA doesn’t require specific temperatures, but they do recommend temperatures of 68-76° F.

Your manager needs to go to his management and explain that until either (a) the heat is fixed or (b) building #1 is given enough equipment, your team can’t come in three days a week — that you’ll be happy to as soon as one of those is remedied, but until then there’s no feasible way to meet the mandate. It’s absurd to expect you to work without heat in the middle of winter or without monitors and keyboards. But your manager needs to spell that out to someone above him (and you should ask him to do that if he hasn’t yet).

4. New employee is billing more time than he works

I am a project manager and oversee a team of five. One of my direct reports, “Marty,” was hired in October and has proven to be a quick learner and generally a good employee. However, there’s a recurring issue with his timekeeping.

Marty has been routinely not working a full eight hours but is still billing for all eight. He typically arrives around 8:15 am, leaves at 4:30 pm, and takes an hour for lunch, effectively billing about 45 extra minutes each day. While I was deciding how best to address this, another team member, “Hamilton,” who can be a bit nosy but means well, stopped by my office to point out the discrepancy with Marty’s timesheet.

I spoke to Marty, explaining that while it’s okay to work outside the standard 8-5 hours, he needs to inform me beforehand. I also asked if this was a workload issue, which he assured me it was not. I thought the conversation went well and he seemed to understand. Cue post holidays and Marty has pinged me every day this week at 4:30 pm, notifying me he is signing off, even though he continues to arrive after 8 am.

Given that the job requires billing clients in 15-minute increments, transparency about hours worked is crucial. I am also concerned about potential animosity among team members who might feel that Marty is receiving special treatment. How should I handle this situation to ensure fairness and maintain team morale?

It sounds like when you talked to him, you just told him to let you know if he works non-standard hours — but that’s not what the real issue is. The real issue is that he’s billing more hours than he’s working, so you need to go back to him now and clarify that. Since the message somehow got muddled the first time, be very, very clear now: “You have been working less than eight hours a day but billing for eight. We need to make sure your billing matches your hours worked exactly, because ____.”

There are some workplaces that tell exempt employees to just bill a straight eight hours per day, regardless of the exact hours they actually worked (typically when it’s for internal purposes and not client billing) and it’s possible he came from one of those. Or maybe he’s sloppy or deliberately deceptive, who knows. But the first step is to tell him clearly what he needs to do differently. If that doesn’t solve it, you’d need a more serious conversation — but so far it doesn’t sound like you’ve clearly told him what needs to change.

5. I’m worried clients think I’m a nepo baby, but I’m not!

I have a fairly common last name, and I recently started working at a small company where my boss has the same name as my dad. We are not related at all. I would be less worried if it was a bigger company, but since it’s so small (and if anyone were to look at socials, they would see my dad has the same name), it feels like people might assume a familial connection instead of a coincidence. It’s been fine so far, but I’m starting to shift to a more client-facing role, so I’ve been thinking about how I’m being perceived and how to build my reputation in our field. Is there a chance of my reputation being harmed if people think I got my job through nepotism, or is this something where it’s weirder to address it?

Since it’s a common last name, I wouldn’t worry — people will know it’s a common last name, and they’re unlikely to know what your dad’s first name is. That said, if you want to be extra sure, you can always introduce yourself by saying, “Tangerina Murphy (no relation to Percival on our team).”

You may also like:
{ 37 comments }

{ 37 comments… read them below or add one }

  1. Commentariat*

    #5: I worked on a team with two people with the same common surname who WERE related, and it literally took me NEARLY A YEAR to realise. I think you’re fine!

    Reply ↓
    1. allathian*

      Yeah, it’s happened to me, too. It’s also taken me years to realize some employees were married. They were totally professional at work and didn’t have the same last name. We also had a pair of siblings with the same fairly uncommon last name, she was married but he wasn’t, who had to constantly tell people that no, they weren’t a couple. They also worked in a fairly niche field so they were on the same team, but neither supervised the other. Couples working in the same field isn’t exactly rare, my parents did it until they retired, but siblings doing the same is less common. Sure, there are families of doctors and lawyers, etc. But they’re professions with a wide range of specializations rather than niche fields.

      Reply ↓
      1. KateM*

        And when the children of the couples working in the same field get together, you get someone like my kids who have both parents and all four grandparents in the same (wide, not niche) field. Sometimes I feel like we were doing some purposeful breeding of [field] people with my husband.

        Reply ↓
    2. GammaGirl1908*

      Not only that, but you are allowed to actually BE related to the person. Even if you did get your job through family connections, the way to resolve any related issues is to be excellent at the job and not to lean on the relationship.

      The quibble about nepotism is when unqualified family members get jobs or opportunities or whatever over people without those advantages, and then manage to keep them despite being mediocre. Being qualified and good at the job shuts people up.

      Reply ↓
      1. KateM*

        As AAM has repeatedly pointed out, it is not necessarily about actual advantages but also perceived ones. Will the others know you are not leaning on the relationship at all? Would they dare to tell your boss if you messed up something?

        Reply ↓
    3. Cats Ate My Croissant*

      I see your ‘working with related people’ and raise you ‘obliviously teaching identical twins’! (They were in different classes, even I’m not quite that clueless.) In my tenuous defence, I only taught Twin 2’s class one lesson per week, which I took over partway through the year, but STILL. They had similar cheeky-but-not-really-naughty personalities and it wasn’t until I gave Twin 2 an exasperated “for goodness sake, Twin 1….” that the penny dropped.

      Reply ↓
      1. Smurfette*

        LMAO – you thought they were the same person? That’s comedy gold!

        I had identical twins in my class at school, and we could only tell them apart because one had a fringe (bangs) and the other didn’t.

        Reply ↓
  2. Daria grace*

    #1: you are not to blame at all for what happened. On any topic but ESPECIALLY one as potentially sensitive and personal as this, you shouldn’t have to check if the event has changed to an entirely different format and audience to what you originally agreed to. That kind of thing shouldn’t be changed without very clear communication and informed consent of participants. Even if you knew this was going to be an 800 person all staff event the organiser still should have confirmed with you how you were okay with your identity and experiences being described.

    Reply ↓
    1. Nat20*

      About letter #2, I’d just emphasize the part in Alison’s great advice about how this conversation with your coworker should identify the *pattern*, explain why it’s unacceptable on principle, and make it clear it’s not just about particular instances. (It might be that you’ve already done that, but it’s worth mentioning.) Especially since her thumbs-up reaction could indicate that she thinks you’re just talking about individual clients/circumstances and not the broader issue, it’s worth really making it clear that this is not a one-off or occasional problem you have with this. If that ultra-clarity still doesn’t change anything, then like Alison says, you then have even more standing to (continue to) go over her head about it.

      Reply ↓
    2. Smurfette*

      Yeah this is awful OP, I’m sorry. And it’s entirely on the head of DEI who – given their role – should have known better. This is a gross dereliction of duty IMO.

      Reply ↓
  3. stratospherica*

    #1: DEI leader committed a grave error there. First of all, if the plan was to have you in a company-wide panel discussion, the words “company-wide panel discussion” need to be said. Frankly, DEI leader also committed a grave error by not passing questions to you ahead of the advertisement (and certainly sooner than a day before the event!!!), and by not asking you whether you’d be OK making your identity open in this event (or taking steps to anonymise you).

    This all feels like it’s so obvious for anyone with even a passing knowledge of DEI and ethics that I marvel at her ability to become a leader in DEI while having such a significant lapse of judgement.

    Reply ↓
    1. XF1013*

      if the plan was to have you in a company-wide panel discussion, the words “company-wide panel discussion” need to be said

      Yes, this is what I was thinking. The most innocent interpretation of what happened is that the DEI leader intended “speaking with the DEI team” to mean “public speaking with the DEI team.” But there’s a huge difference between a private conversation and a public speech, and there should have been more clarity. Take DEI out of it for a moment: Say OP1 is a graphic designer, and they agree when the head of marketing asks if they’d be comfortable speaking with the branding team about color schemes, and suddenly they’re announced as participating in a company-wide presentation on the subject. That alone would be really wrong — and when you add in the potentially very serious consequences of outing someone, it gets far worse, which anyone in a DEI leadership role should well know.

      Reply ↓
  4. CB212*

    #4: I’ve worked at a ton of places that just had us log a straight 9-6 on timesheets and as long as my work got done it didn’t matter. Nobody would have counted it as time theft if we were casual about the actual clock. There’s a fair probability the employee isn’t thinking of the timesheet as client billing and the suggested conversation will be eye-opening for them.

    Reply ↓
    1. Daria grace*

      Yes my workplace is like this. It causes more work for payroll reconciling things if we’re logging more hours some days and less others so as long as our total is correct for the week we just log the standard number of hours ever day

      Reply ↓
    2. RCB*

      Same here, I tell my staff to put 8 hours down for each day regardless of what they work, I think this is very common in any organization that isn’t professional services.

      Reply ↓
        1. Turkey Melt*

          As someone who has to file a timesheet for exactly 7.5-hour M-F days no matter how much I worked — I haven’t the foggiest, and nor does anyone I’ve asked.

          Reply ↓
        2. Nebula*

          Sometimes it’s because there is a part of the organisation or department where timelogging does matter, and the HR system isn’t set up to only have some people logging time and other people not. Where I used to work, I started out working across a number of projects where we had to log hours quite carefully because the funding was coming from different places, but then I moved on to a different role in the same department and just timelogged eight hours a day to a general code. Not very efficient but there we are.

          Reply ↓
    3. Metal Gru*

      Yes this seems like a situation where “use your words” will be enough to resolve it, because LW has already talked to Marty and Marty has changed his behavior in response (not in the way LW hoped, but I think that is just due to not being clear about time sheets and what they’re used for – especially if this is the first time Marty had worked in a “billable hours” environment).

      The other issue, not touched on in the answer, is why co-workers have access to each others’ time sheet? This strikes me as quite unusual as they normally just go to the manager, approver etc. Marty’s co-worker pointed this out (are you really sure they were well intentioned?) but why were they looking in there?

      Reply ↓
      1. KateM*

        I worked somewhere where the time sheet was just a shared excel file where everyone had their own tab to fill in. I as a new employee did look at other tabs because my manager told me to look how others do it so that I’d know how to fill in my own. Why a non-new would do it, I don’t really know.

        Reply ↓
        1. AnonForThis*

          This might not answer why non-new staff members would do this, but it’s an example of it happening. At my workplace we each have our own excel file to track our hours, but they’re in a shared folder along with everyone else’s. You’d be surprised how often someone goes and looks at other peoples hours and then goes to their manager to complain (and not even about people not doing enough hours). It’s always the same people, the site busybodies, and apparently it being a privacy issue isn’t enough to get them to stop.

          Reply ↓
          1. Archi-detect*

            That would stop immediately if managers refused to talk about the time issue and just focused on the privacy issue.

            Reply ↓
            1. AnonForThis*

              Thankfully my boss sort of has by basically telling us to move our team’s files citing data privacy. Why the busybodies keep getting away with this, I don’t know. I guess because they somehow argue that they’re monitoring time keeping policy and are managerial level? We have sister sites in other countries where I know they’d be out of the door if they even contemplated it.

              Reply ↓
    4. GammaGirl1908*

      A lot of places are less concerned about butt-in-seat time as long as your work is done. I’ve passed by places like law firms that say things like, if you do so much as think about a case while you’re at home, charge the client for 15 minutes. If Marty’s doing anything off the clock, he might be counting that time toward his work time.

      It’s not clear, just how much Marty is shaving off, but if it’s less than 15 minutes or so, and if he’s doing anything off the clock, this might fall in the nickel-and-diming category.

      Reply ↓
      1. Myrin*

        It’s not clear, just how much Marty is shaving off, but if it’s less than 15 minutes or so, and if he’s doing anything off the clock, this might fall in the nickel-and-diming category.

        OP says Marty is “effectively billing about 45 extra minutes each day”.

        Reply ↓
  5. JJ*

    #1. Clearly the DEI rep mishandled this one. It doesn’t matter if it was about being trans or owning cats, talking to just the DEI team vs the whole company is completely different, and requires a different comfort level.
    But it sounds like you are upset you were ‘outed’ itself. Given that you felt comfortable enough to have they/them pronouns in your signature and wear a mixed wardrobe, how is one to know that you are only out in the immediate team? Is one supposed to never mention that an acquaintance is out to a third party, unless they give you explicit permission? How would I handle a question from a seemingly well-meaning colleague, asking “is so-and-so trans”? Do I say, “ask them directly”, even if I think it’s pretty clear? And is asking if someone is trans, fundamentally rude?

    Reply ↓
    1. Ellis Bell*

      Because they’re the DEI rep? Someone in that position should know that “being out on a personal level with people I’ve vetted” and “being out to my entire company (and therefore industry) on a public platform” are different levels of vulnerability. You can’t really compare something on this scale to mentioning someone being out to an acquaintance, but I would say if someone comes out to you, you should ask if they’re out to everyone generally, or if you need to be discreet, or what they’d want support to look like.

      Reply ↓
      1. OP#1*

        I didn’t include this in the letter to keep things short, but we’re fully remote and my team only see each other in person once a month. The nature of my work means I have very little face-to-face contact with people outside my department besides clients (where I can dress more conservatively on Zoom), and the distance has made me more comfortable being out to my immediate coworkers and wearing what I like in our weekly team calls.

        The DEI leader is (in her own words) a cis woman with she/they in her email signature, so there’s a perception from the wider company that anyone using ‘they’ is signalling their allyship instead of declaring anything about themselves. It’s not always worth using my capital or getting into uncomfortable discussions to correct people like my grand boss who reverted immediately to calling me ‘he’ in the next sentence after I introduce myself as ‘they’ wearing a dress.

        Reply ↓
        2. Notbot*

          Ug, goes without saying that a better show of allyship than the pronouns would be to not out you to 800 people.

          I’m sorry this happened to you, OP.

          Reply ↓
    2. Notbot*

      There’s a big difference between confirming something when directly asked by one person and emailing it to 800 people.

      Reply ↓
    3. Smurfette*

      > How would I handle a question from a seemingly well-meaning colleague, asking “is so-and-so trans”? Do I say, “ask them directly”, even if I think it’s pretty clear?

      Yes, you do say that. Or you say “why are you asking me, shouldn’t you be asking them?”

      It’s not for you to disclose someone else’s personal information or speculate on your colleague’s private lives. Is Andy pregnant? Why doesn’t Kim bring a partner to the office party? Is Mike in rehab again? Does James have a prosthetic leg? Does Martha have breast implants? None of those are your questions to answer. Nobody should be asking them either.

      Reply ↓
  6. Viette*

    LW#4 – this is a great letter because I can absolutely see how the LW thought they were straightforwardly addressing the issue, but then, when written up to send to AAM, it is quite clear that they did not actually mention the thing that they wanted to see change.

    The advice is correct: you must go and have a conversation in which you state the problem clearly, but you may even want to state that you meant to be talking about this before, too. “At our previous discussion about billing your time, I asked that you inform me if you work outside of normal hours, and asked after your workload. That was prompted by my concern that you are regularly in the office for fewer hours than you bill each day. Can you tell me more about that?”

    It depends on your relationship and management style, but it may be a natural lead-in to connect the dots. It also establishes that you’ve noticed this for a while, and have not just now changed your mind about what’s okay.

    Reply ↓
  7. Metal Gru*

    Letter 2 – co-worker keeps interfering in LW’s work. I think there are 2 problems here.

    The first one is that she keeps doing this and her manager isn’t doing anything about it (which means that the manager is OK with it happening; why is that? Is there a lack of trust in your team that the “correct” solution will be proposed to clients?)

    The second is that the organizational structure seems a mess. There are multiple teams of people, with the same roles on them and different management, but sermingly no clear direction from upper management about who is “allocated” to which clients (not stated but I’ve inferred from how I’ve seen this kind of situation happen many times!). Even if it is just something simple like the client likes working with her as they worked with her before she moved team – this probably needs solving at higher levels. Does she do it across the board or is there a pattern with specific types of work or specific clients- that may give a clue.

    Reply ↓
  8. Smurfette*

    OP2 – this is so frustrating.

    >Since she changed teams, she has been “suggesting improvements” or inserting herself in tasks that are under my scope and outside of hers

    Is there a way to keep her out of the loop about what you are working on? It’s not a long-term solution but might at least give you some breathing room while you get this resolved.

    >She tends to bypass me and my team — she goes straight to the client to propose her solutions although I am the person who has to implement them

    I assume this has consequences for the company – she’s communicating with someone else’s clients (yours), proposing solutions that aren’t feasible, and leaving you to clean up the mess. Have you tried framing it this way to your manager? And if you are the client’s primary contact, are they not confused about why she’s contacting them with solutions?

    Can you raise this in internal status meetings? “We are busy with requirements gathering for Bob’s Biscuits, but had a slight hiccup when Gwenda sent the client a proposal directly without consulting me. I had to spend some time clarifying things with them and this caused a week’s delay”.

    >She just reacts to my messages with a thumbs-up

    She has zero intention of changing her behavior, the thumbs-up is basically a middle finger.

    > her manager promises to work with her to improve the miscommunication, and my manager sides with me

    Is your manager actually doing anything about it though? Siding with you is not very helpful in getting the issue resolved. And her manager is clearly doing nothing about it.

    Reply ↓
  9. Anony*

    There can be an element of time travel in jobs that involve billable time. OP says they bill in 15-minute increments. If the employee does six tasks at the beginning of the day that each take only 5 minutes to complete, such as answering an email, but he’s supposed to bill a different project for each of these tasks, he’s now billed on paper 1.5 hours for thirty minutes of actual work. Often, the non-billable time that it takes to switch between tasks and do necessary non-billable work fills in those gaps. Some employers with billing requirements tell employees to take care that this type of time travel isn’t noticeable when it’s recorded in the billing software. Is the employee spending a lot of their day on these smaller tasks? Are larger projects that require larger chunks of time not being done, and is that a problem? Is the employee supposed to bill the 15-minute minimum for every small task, or is time only billed if it hits the 15-minute mark? It definitely sounds like OP needs to have a conversation with his employee about the company’s billing policies. But as someone who bills my day in 6-minute increments, I can also easily see how you can end up with time for a long lunch everyday if you’re billing smaller tasks in 15-minute increments.

    Reply ↓
  10. Sick of it*

    When will we get a post about the recent scourge of DEI pilots crashing helicopters into planes and planes into heavily populated residential areas?

    Reply ↓

Leave a Comment

Before you comment: Please be kind, stay on-topic, and follow the site's commenting rules.
You can report an ad, tech, or typo issue here.

Subscribe to all comments on this post by RSS