Ask a Manager

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

1. My employee got hit on while staying in a coworker’s home

I have an employee, Andrea, who works remotely, but came into our office for a week of training. Originally she said she would not need a hotel as she would be staying with a fellow employee, Boris (not same department), who had a guest room. Their private lives are their own, and I didn’t think anything of it. Halfway through the week, Andrea came to me and said she needed to move to a hotel because Boris gave her an “I have feelings for you” talk. She spoke with HR and told me and HR that she has taken care of speaking to him and doesn’t want HR to do anything about it, because she doesn’t want to make it more awkward because our office is small.

I understand Andrea’s wishes, but when I was getting things sorted out with the hotel, the employee helping me handle the booking wasn’t surprised and said this wasn’t the first time Boris has hit on people he’s met through work. I have now reported everything to Boris’s manager, and I want to make sure this never happens again, but HR says that saying anything will definitely implicate Andrea. I am personally furious at Boris for putting Andrea in this position, and I worry that is clouding my judgment.

Yeah, Boris sucks — not simply for declaring his feelings to Andrea, but for doing it while she was staying in his house and thus was in a more vulnerable situation. And if he has a pattern of hitting on colleagues, it might indeed be that it’s time for someone (his manager or HR) to speak to him about it.

However, you don’t really have standing to be the one to do it, particularly when Andrea and HR have both told you not to. That said, you could make the case to HR that if this is a known pattern, it needs to be addressed (and that whoever addresses it would also need to make it clear to Boris that he won’t be permitted to make things weird for Andrea). Similarly, someone could explain to Andrea that the company needs to address Boris’s pattern of behavior toward colleagues, not just his behavior with her. But you shouldn’t overrule the two of them on your own (and if you’re tempted to anyway, keep in mind that you don’t have the power needed to ensure Boris doesn’t make life weirder for Andrea; that’s part of why someone with official standing to handle it needs to do it).

2. My coworkers keep joking about a short team member’s height

My colleague, Kate, is relatively small (about 4’8″) and other members of my team regularly make comments and jokes about her height. This includes our manager and people who are senior to Kate (I am the joint most junior person in the team). The jokes are sometimes to her face, but mostly behind her back. When Kate hears them, she reacts by smiling, but has told me that she hates them and feels they undermine her professionalism.

The jokes aren’t intended to be cruel, but no one else in the team is on the receiving end of so many comments about their appearance. Other than the height jokes, my colleagues are actually very nice people, and the team has a great dynamic. Kate has told me the reason she hasn’t addressed it with the others is because she has an otherwise good relationship with everyone and doesn’t want to have an awkward conversation about it. But Kate doesn’t even know that most of the jokes are happening behind her back.

I hate hearing these comments and I think that as the team are genuinely nice people they would stop immediately if they knew she disliked it. But I can’t work out the best way to address it. Saying something in the moment is the obvious choice but it feels excruciating with senior team members. An email afterwards feels overly dramatic.

You can speak up because it bothers you to hear it, without speaking for Kate or divulging anything she’s said to you. For example: “It really bugs me to hear people joking about someone else’s body. Can we stop?” And if necessary after that: “Kate is polite about it, but this is so unkind to keep joking about. We’d never do this about someone’s weight. Why is this okay?” (I realize a lot of the people doing this are senior to you, but if the team really is otherwise great, you should have standing to say this. If you feel like it would go over badly, modify accordingly — but it’s a reasonable thing to say.)

3. My job expected me to work 10-hour days, but didn’t tell me

I recently left my job due to a conflict with my manager, the CEO, regarding my work hours. I worked as an executive assistant at a high-pressure startup. During the interview, I asked about work-life balance, and the CEO assured me they didn’t routinely require late hours, except in critical situations. I was hired as a remote exempt employee and was told to start work by 9 am daily. Initially, I worked from 9 am to at least 5:30 pm, but eventually, I often worked until 6:30 pm or later, and late evening Zoom check-ins with my boss were a daily occurrence. After a year, the company had a RIF in which our event manager was laid off and I was tasked with taking on their role in addition to my own for several months while they figured out who could take on these duties long-term. For several months, I worked at least 52 hours a week to make sure I was successful in both positions. I became stressed and started attending yoga twice a week, signing off on those days at 5:45 and communicating that to the CEO via Slack or text daily.

Soon after, the CEO’s attitude changed, and she accused me of “stealing time” but did not provide examples. This confused and upset me as I have never been accused of this in 25 years. I was very unhappy with the situation and the relationship was fraught, so I quit for a position elsewhere. On my last day, I learned from the head of people ops that the company had expected my work hours to be 8:30-6:30 daily, which I had never been informed of. Apparently, the “stealing time” was about me leaving for yoga twice a week. I explained that I was unaware of this expectation and would not have accepted the job if that had been explained up-front. I cautioned them to make sure they had realistic expectations around hours for my replacement.

A few months later, my replacement contacted me under the pretense of having a work-related question for which the CEO had given her my number. The actual purpose of the call seemed to be for her to vent as she had just learned, two months into the role, that they wanted her to work 8:30-6:30, and she was frustrated by that and thinking of quitting.

Can a company can legally require daily 10-hour days for exempt employees? I’m open to extra hours when necessary, but this seems excessive. I’d like to avoid this situation in the future, and I feel like my former employer was out of line. However, I’m wondering if that is the expectation now for remote employees, and if I need to change my own expectations around work hours.

Yes, a company can legally require 10-hour days for exempt employees (or non-exempt ones, for that matter, although then overtime pay could come into play). Federal law doesn’t limit the number of hours that adults can be required to work, although some states require employees to have a certain number of hours off in between shifts or during a work week.

But that doesn’t make it a reasonable expectation within our work culture, particularly in fields where it’s not the norm for actual work-related reasons or outside of something like a 4/10 schedule (four 10-hour days instead of five eight-hour days). It’s also particularly bizarre that your former employer apparently expects that schedule but doesn’t bother to tell people until they’ve already been on the job a few months. It should be discussed explicitly during the hiring process; it’s not something you spring on people after they’re already working there (and it’s definitely not something you accuse them of “stealing time” for after you didn’t bother to tell them).

Your former employer is terrible; don’t read anything more into it than that.

4. My boss wants me to work evenings for two weeks … and is even saying she’ll drive me

My boss needs me to cover a shift outside my regular scheduled hours. I share a vehicle with my husband. I work during the day, and he works nights. This is our routine. It’s a struggle — we barely see each other, but we make it work. We have a quick meal together at the end of my day/start of his day.

My boss is aware that I do not have a vehicle and therefore not able to work most evenings. They are suggesting they come and pick me up/take me home so this shift can be covered. I live almost one hour away (one way) from my place of work. My workplace is short-staffed as it is. One coworker is on a medical leave, with the return date a big question mark. The shift needs coverage because a different coworker is going away on a two-week vacation. My other coworker has already said they are unavailable because they have a course starting on these particular dates and have prior commitments in the evenings, so they have told our boss that they will take my normal day shifts and so I can work every evening shift for these two weeks. (I’m the office manager, most of my responsibilities can only be completed during daytime hours and this coworker isn’t trained in these.) I’m a morning person and take medication for ADHD and I struggle to focus at night (medication has worn off by then).

I’m uncomfortable with this idea because it brings up many questions, like if work is discussed on these drives with my boss, am I still “on the clock” and being paid? Or if I have to wait around after the end of the shift for my boss to wrap up their day, is this paid time? If my boss is this desperate to go out of their way to do this, is this the time to discuss my value and worth/compensation? This just seems like a big “ask.” Why isn’t my current schedule/known availability reason enough for them to accept I am not available? Why are they assuming I am willing to work this shift if all I need is for them to drive me to and from work? I don’t like this at all.

It doesn’t sounds like you’ve said no yet! Say no. You can say it this way: “I’m not able to do that because of my own commitments during those hours.” If your boss pushes anyway, it’s perfectly reasonable (and true) to say, “There are medical reasons why that schedule wouldn’t work for me. It’s really not possible.”

Getting someone to cover that shift isn’t your problem to solve; it’s your boss’s. You just need to be clear that you are not available during the hours she’s hoping you will be (just as your coworker has done).

5. What the deal with “stay interviews”?

Have you ever heard of “stay interviews,” a counterpart to exit interviews? My organization has just announced they will be conducting them and will be talking to current employees about their job satisfaction. I’ve just been invited to participate in one.

If I were having my exit interview, I would definitely keep my feedback fairly neutral, for reasons you’ve covered in the past. However, in holding these conversations, the organization is making a gesture to ostensibly help with employee retention. So might it be worth it to be a bit more honest? I have been at this organization for almost a decade and seen other similar initiatives fizzle out, so I’m not optimistic.

Yes, stay interviews are a thing! The idea is that you shouldn’t wait until people are walking out the door to ask the kinds of questions that get asked in exit interviews; you should be talking to current employees about what’s going well, what’s not going well, what they’d like to see change, and what it would help retain your best people. Having a structured time for those conversations helps ensure they actually happen.

Of course, how useful stay interviews are — and how honest people will be, and how honest you should be — depends on how healthy the work environment is: how feedback is handled, much groundwork the company has done to elicit honesty from people, and whether anything ever comes of the feedback people supply. If stay interviews turn into a bureaucratic exercise that never leads to any meaningful change, people will quickly get cynical about them and they won’t be useful.

Related:
do you conduct entry interviews?

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

1. A senior coworker keeps calling me my manager’s “girlfriend”

Over the past year, I’ve made a great connection with one of my managers, Lucas. He and I have a similar work ethic, our senses of humor mesh, we get along, and shifts with him go smoothly and fast. As single people in our late 30s who both have never been married and don’t have or want kids, this has aided in my developing a crush on him. But while we are friendly and can be a little flirty, there is nothing between us other than friends and coworkers. (Our company has policies against management dating employees, regardless.)

Recently another manager (Jane, who is senior to me) was there when I brought Lucas beverages. Ever since, Jane watches our interactions non-stop and teases us. She’s constantly calling him my boyfriend in front of my coworkers and telling him that he needs to learn to control his girlfriend when I ask her questions. He hasn’t said anything to me about it because I know his approach when people are trying to get a rise out of him is to not indulge it. I know these are middle school bully actions, but they are stressing me out. How do I approach such a person, especially in management, and tell them so? Also instead should I tell Lucas how her comments are making me feel (while leaving out my feelings for him) and let him handle it instead since she is a fellow manager?

What the hell! Lucas needs to shut this down. He should have already shut this down. Aside the ridiculously juvenile idea that men and women who get along well must be dating, characterizing your relationship that way at work is borderline harassment. It also risks people thinking you’re getting special treatment from Lucas, which could undermine both of you professionally (but particularly you). And “control your girlfriend” is a disgusting thing to say in any context, and is even more wildly inappropriate in a work one.

So yes, please do talk to Lucas. Tell him Jane’s comments are making you deeply uncomfortable and feel like harassment and, given the power dynamics, you’re asking him to be the one to shut it down. If he doesn’t put a stop to it immediately, talk to HR and ask them to shut it down; they should. (In fact, HR might be the better bet, although since you have a good relationship with Lucas it’s not unreasonable to start with him.)

Separately, though, you need to stop the flirtiness, however mild; it’s out of place for your relationship with your boss and it’s really likely to make your coworkers uncomfortable.

2. What’s up with my coworker’s constant use of double question marks??

A low-stakes question: When is it appropriate to use double question marks in email communications at work? A colleague (my peer; we’re both in middle management) has a habit of including them in her messages. In varying contexts, they range from:

A.) Making total sense, conveying a sense of urgency for an answer to a time-sensitive question: “Did we want a stand-up chat about this while we’re all in the office today??” (Sent towards the end of the day, as a follow-up to a suggestion earlier in the day. The topic of discussion was getting pretty tangled via email, and a stand-up chat was a good solution.)

B.) Unnecessary, but only mildly annoying: “Are we doing any llama grooming panels at next year’s conference??” (Sent while forwarding an idle inquiry from a third party, nothing urgent or earth-shattering.) Or “Just a thought …??” (At the end of an email where she suggests something — a good idea that we can’t implement, but not an urgent topic.)

C.) Downright accusatory: “Did you tell the Alpaca Department we don’t need to borrow their shampoo??” (This was sent to my direct report. We did, in fact, need to borrow the shampoo. It was an error that created extra work for my colleague, but it wasn’t a catastrophe that would sink the company. My direct report apologized, and everything’s fine now.)

Am I off-base in feeling annoyed by C? Is punctuation an appropriate way to signal “you shouldn’t have done that” or “I am upset by this”?

For the record, I’ve only seen her use double question marks in communications with her peers and people below us in our company structure; I don’t know if she uses them in emails to our boss. I doubt it, because double question marks would be inappropriate to include in messages to your boss regardless of the context, right?

My colleague has worked here a long time and has been resistant to changes in the past few years. She’s also a self-described “Type A” and sometimes seems frustrated that the rest of us are more relaxed. I think the double question marks contribute to that impression. However, she is overall pleasant, professional, and does her job well. This is simply one quirk that privately annoys me and my direct report, and I’m just curious if we’re being too sensitive or need to reframe our thinking. We have no plans to raise it as an issue.

I think you’re reading too much into it! It’s true that double question marks have traditionally meant shock or extra emphasis, but your coworker uses them in so many different situations that it’s just the way she writes. It makes sense that she doesn’t do it when emailing higher-ups because it’s a less formal way of writing; it’s not aggression with you and non-aggression with them, but rather informal with you and more formal with them.

Think of it like other weird writing habits, like excessive uses of ellipses (“hi…”) or maybe the abandonment of periods in texts (that one’s generational but I inexplicably adore it, whereas the pregnant pauses of all those ellipses irk me). Ignore it! Or be amused by it, an equally good alternative.

3. Company is making us work the holiday week they promised we would have off

In an effort to offer more competitive benefits, a little over a year ago my company announced the company would be closed from Christmas Day through New Year’s Day (paid time for all). This was a significant improvement, as the company ranks average to below average in terms of overall benefits. Since then, we’ve hired more than five people into our group. Again, the pay has been not-even-close-to-competitive entry-level wages; often a selling point for these folks has been this week at the end of the year off.

Leadership is now considering requiring my group to work that week. We are not performing work critical to the business. Working from home is not an option for our work. A final decision still has not been communicated; the timeline for a firm answer is another few weeks out. Most of the people this will impact do not know there’s a question around what they’re assuming is a week of paid time away.

From my view, this will have catastrophic impacts on morale, retention, and productivity (with the way this has been handled, who thinks work is going to get done that week?). Outside of that, I have an international trip planned that I’ve meticulously saved PTO for and am planning to leverage the week of holiday time. That’s been in the works for over a year, which my manager was made aware of months ago. I imagine I am not the only person with a trip planned that week.

While I understand the business need to require us to keep things moving that week, I do not think reneging on it at this point in the year will yield successful outcomes, especially with short notice and for the people we sold these jobs to with this promise within the last four months. Is there anything productive I can do with this angst to try to help myself and the others this will impact?

You can certainly point it out, if you haven’t already! It’s particularly egregious that they’re dragging their feet on telling employees, since people will be buying plane tickets and making other plans, and it’s also egregious that they used this as a selling point when hiring so recently. If there’s truly a business need for staff to be there that week, it’s worth asking whether everyone needs to be there; could one or two people cover what needs to be covered? And if they do need employees there — whether one or two or all of you — this will go over far better if they make it worth people’s while financially — extra pay or bonuses, an equivalent amount of time off later, etc.

It’s one thing to say, “We’re so sorry, we recognize what a hardship this is after our previous promises, it’s necessary because of X, and we’re going to do Y to make you whole.” It’s another to just be cavalier about it. If they choose the latter, people are likely to feel really screwed over, and this the kind of thing people leave jobs over — not necessarily immediately, but in time.

4. Former employee’s LinkedIn says he still works here

I am a manager working in tech for a Fortune 100 company. My team’s work is very trendy right now and between that and the company’s reputation, we look good on a resume.

I have an ex-employee who separated from the company and took a new role six months ago but hasn’t updated his Linked In profile to reflect it. This is getting on my nerves because it feels like he’s riding our coattails (and he wasn’t very good while in the role anyway). His job here has been backfilled and the new person has the same title on LinkedIn now. Is there anything I can do? Should I just ignore it or let it go? I am not in touch with him any longer, this just pops up on my feed every now and then.

Let it go. Maybe it’s a deliberate attempt to appear like he’s still employed by your company, but maybe he just doesn’t use LinkedIn very often and so hasn’t bothered to update it. Either way, asking him to change it would look weird and be an overstep.

5. Employer refused to give me my past performance reviews

One of my requests of HR when I was laid off was that I get my recently completed performance reviews to take and learn from for my next role. I remained on payroll for a couple of weeks in between when I was informed of the layoff and my official last day, so I was still an “active” employee in the system. Instead of saying “I can’t share those with you since you are no longer employed,” the leader I made the request to said, “I’ll look into it,” then waited until after my official last day, when I was marked as terminated in the system (and therefore my reviews were archived) to tell me “I can’t access those.”

Why wasn’t the leader just honest with me about why they couldn’t share my reviews? I know it was probably a legal thing, but between feeling blindsided by the layoff then lied to about why I couldn’t have my year-end reviews, I am having a hard time wanting to go back into HR or, frankly, trust anyone in HR to tell the truth.

I wouldn’t assume they deliberately lied to run out the clock. It’s fully possible that they figured, “I’ll get those for her in a while” and then by the time they went to do it, they no longer could access them. If it’s just their policy not to give them to you, they could have easily just told you that. Maybe they lied anyway, but I don’t think there’s anything conclusive here.

For what it’s worth, some states do require employees to be able to access their personnel files (unfortunately your state, which you gave me, isn’t one of them). Also, this doesn’t help you now, but in the future it’s a good idea to keep copies of evaluations and anything else you might want down the road, rather than assuming you’ll be able to retrieve it from your employer. Keep your own copies and then you won’t be dependent on them to supply them!

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

1. My new coworker invited everyone to her wedding but me

I’ve been reading through your archives and came across this question, which reminded me of something that happened to me many years ago.

Another coworker, Heather, and I had started at a new job about the same time (no more than one month apart), although I started first (which is relevant). We were both on phones for a small nonprofit, and our team had our desks in a small call center. Besides the two of us, there were three more representatives in the call center and our manager, Veronica.

Heather’s wedding was scheduled for just a few weeks after she started the job. Naturally, the upcoming nuptials became the talk of the room. At one point though, one of the team members made the mistake of talking about attending the wedding in my presence and Veronica shushed her. It turned out that Heather had invited every single person in that room, including Veronica. Except me. It wasn’t a matter of Heather inviting everyone before I started the job. She came on after I was already there.

I tried to “go high” and not let it bother me. But I’ve often wondered about the propriety of what happened and what Veronica ought to have done. She knew what happened, shushed talk about it, but accepted the invitation and attended the wedding. In retrospect, I wish that Veronica had declined to attend, knowing the situation, but I don’t know if that is an unreasonable expectation. What do you think?

Yeah, generally the etiquette rule for weddings and work is that you don’t have to invite everyone (and of course, it’s totally fine to invite no one from work) but if you’re going to invite some people from your team, you shouldn’t leave just one person out.

But the timing here is so odd — Heather started a new job, got married a few weeks later, and somehow in those few weeks decided she liked her coworkers and manager enough to invite them but disliked another coworker enough to leave them out? That’s such a short period of time that it makes me think the explanation is something less hurtful than it might seem — like maybe she and the other four were at lunch and she spontaneously invited them, rather then intentionally excluding you (and then if it did occur to her, maybe they were short on space … especially after adding four last-minute guests). If you pay attention to how Heather treated you outside of this, you probably have some idea how likely that kind of explanation is.

But Veronica … yes, ideally Veronica would have declined the invitation, because a manager attending a social event that a single person on her team was excluded from doesn’t look great. Even assuming there was no campaign to exclude you, it’s just the sort of the thing that will make a lot of people feel crappy and make them question how objective their boss is. But that also assumes a level of thoughtfulness and emotional intelligence that a lot of people don’t have, unfortunately — which I say not to insult Veronica, but because it’s likely that none of this was badly intended, even though it stung at the time.

2. Being told you were never hired — after you already worked a week

I came across this news story about a woman who relocated to another state for a job and worked seven days before being told she had never actually been hired. While she admits she didn’t actually receive a contract or offer letter, she has emails from her would-be boss specifically offering her the job and saying that he would get her into the HR system. The employer did appear to pay her the relocation costs plus $100 (which seems like a small amount for seven days of work) but I’m wondering if she would have any legal recourse for being paid the full agreed upon amount for her week of work (as well as extra for closing her lease in her previous state) without an official signed offer letter?

You can be officially hired without a contract or offer letter. Most U.S. workers don’t have contracts at all, and loads of employers don’t use formal offer letters; they just extend the offer over the phone or email, you accept, you show up and start working, and they pay you. An employer can’t backtrack after a week and say, “Oops, you were never really hired so we’re not going to pay you for the work you did.” The law says that if an employer “suffers or permits” a person to work, they owe them wages for that time. In this case, it certainly appears they permitted her to work; they also gave her a start date and assigned her tasks.

It sounds like there was some sort of miscommunication between the person who hired her and the school’s HR — but that’s something they need to make right, not leave her to clean up. They can’t be forced to keep her on, but they do need to pay her the agreed-upon wages for the days she worked, and if they have any decency whatsoever, they’d also cover her expenses to move back home, plus severance for the massive wrench they threw into her life. But if they’re only paying $100 for the work she did (!), it doesn’t sound like they have any intention of making it right.

3. Are my ouija board earrings offensive?

I wore some small ouija board earrings on an all-hands video call with approximately 200 other people. Later my manager told me word got back to them that someone was offended by them. (For context, I was not presenting on the call, I was just one of the masses listening.) I don’t have the energy to burn capital on something so low-stakes, so I just inwardly rolled my eyes and agreed not to wear them again.

I understand some very conservative Christian people might see these as problematic, but was I wrong to wear them? Are they inherently offensive? To me they’re just kitschy seasonal accessories.

You didn’t do anything wrong by wearing them. Whoever complained overstepped … and the idea that they were that bothered by tiny earrings worn by one participant on a 200-person video calls is A Lot.

Also, I realize this isn’t an angle you’re going to pursue, but for the record: your manager overstepped by asking you not to wear them again! While you only wore them as kitsch, she had no way of knowing that; if ouija boards were part of your faith, this would have been similar to asking an employee to stop wearing a cross — i.e., a violation of the federal law that protects your religious beliefs in the workplace.

(Note that this is different from the letter-writer who was creeped out by a ouija board mousepad at their shared workspace, since in that case they were being asked to use the item themselves.)

4. Asking a candidate about odd, pushy behavior when they applied

I am recruiting for a relatively early-career position in a prestigious, highly skilled field. A candidate reached out to me ahead of submitting their application in a way that was a bit weird: emailing a one-line message asking me to “tell them more about the job,” then again several times to ask for information that was already clearly written out in the job announcement. They are very impressive in terms of profile and experience, so it looks like someone I would probably want to interview – but communication skills, independence, and being easy to work with are also essential.

How can I deal with this in an interview? It seems confrontational to ask, “Why did you ask me for information that you already had?” or “Why did you send such a general, broad question?” but I would like to know if this is someone who will take up my time with those kinds of questions if they come work here, or if something else is behind the behavior (like bad career advice). How can I ask it in a way that gives me useful information rather than just conveying criticism?

If they weren’t early-career, I’d say to consider their behavior useful data and not dismiss it. But because they’re early-career, chances are high that they got bad advice (“connect with the hiring manager by asking questions before you apply!”) or just don’t have any idea what they’re doing. Given that, it makes sense to interview them and just pay a lot of attention to what else you see. I don’t think you need to specifically ask about it; you’ll have plenty of opportunities to observe how they handle themselves through the rest of the hiring process.

That said, if you really want to, the best wording I can come up with is, “I noticed that before you applied, you sent me a few messages asking for information that was already laid out in the job posting. You’d need to function pretty independently and resourcefully in this role, so I’m curious about the story with those messages.” But even just writing that out feels like a gotcha and I don’t like it. Of course, if not asking means you’d otherwise just reject the person, then I suppose you could go ahead and ask … but it’s likely to make most early-career candidates (as well as some more experienced people) feel nervous and a bit crappy. I’d be more inclined to write it off to inexperience and then make sure you have other opportunities in your hiring process to see how well they function independently, spot detail, etc. (In particular, if you’re not already using a short hiring exercise with all your finalists that lets you see how they’d actually approach the work, this would be a good time to incorporate one.)