Ask a Manager

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

1. Do I have to give notice when my boss is an abusive jerk?

I have worked at my current job over three years. I am in the legal field and, because of the small geographic area, most of the people in this field know each other. My employer has had a very high turnover rate for such a small office. I am now the only paralegal left. My boss is so toxic and plays so many games that most quit. I have developed hives (I break out every Sunday from stress before going into work on Monday) and an ulcer. I keep up with the old paralegals and one has been diagnosed with PTSD from being there six months. Another has tremors now. We formed a prior and current employee support group with two more paralegals to help people get through the experience. Whenever there is a new hire, we try to pull them aside and give them the tools to just survive. We can’t warn people ahead of time to not apply because we signed a non-disclosure agreement.

My manager has already threatened to fire me several times. She gives the same canned speech to all of the employees whether you have made a mistake or are doing spectacularly well under the circumstances because she likes to see people cry and be flustered. It’s a game to her. She also hides items that are needed like client files, changes dates on the calendar without telling anyone, changes passwords that we need and says she hasn’t, and gaslights like you wouldn’t believe.

When the other staff quit one by one, once they gave notice she treated them even worse for that two weeks (as if that was possible). I don’t want to go through that. I am also hesitant because this woman belongs to all of these legal committees and organizations and volunteers her time to legal charities (this is all a mask to generate business, not because she is a good person), and I am sure she will drag my name through the mud in legal circles. I have finally secured another job and can now escape. But I am not sure what to do about notice given her behavior. I also don’t know if I can take any more abuse, especially an added layer because I tell her I am quitting.

You don’t need to stay the two weeks. You can have a health condition that you need to attend to immediately that unfortunately makes it impossible for you work your notice period. (This sounds like it wouldn’t even be untrue.)

I hear you that you’re worried that she’ll badmouth you in your small field — but isn’t she going to do that no matter what? If she’s going to trash-talk you either way, there’s no point in staying and being abused for two more weeks. If I’m wrong about that and she doesn’t trash people once they’re gone as long as they leave professionally … well, you still don’t need to work your notice period. You can still have a health issue that makes it impossible for you to stay, or if she’s abusive you can tell her that today will be your last day if that continues. Or maybe you’re someone who can handle a final two weeks since you know that you’ll be gone at the end of them and can let her bad behavior roll off you because she’ll never have access to you again. If so, great. But if not, then really, skip the notice period and cite a health emergency; you’re sorry but need to leave immediately to attend to it.

And then run that non-disclosure agreement by a lawyer because there’s a decent chance it’s written in a way that would be unenforceable in regard to the specific things you’d want to share with others.

Related:
can I leave before my notice period is up if my boss is being a jerk?

2. Vendors keep sending unhealthy food

I’m writing on behalf of my brother, who works at a small in-patient healthcare facility. Based on the nature of the facility, they have a lot of vendors, other organizations looking for them to make referrals to their patients, etc. Because of this, they get a lot of people “courting” them with little branded swag gifts, as well as bags of candy, meals, cookies, donuts, etc. While it would personally annoy me to have so many pens and pads of paper and coffee cups floating around, the bags of swag gifts are not that big of a concern. But what he and some of his coworkers are starting to have an issue with is the pretty constant barrage of unhealthy treats. This week alone they’ve gotten three big boxes of cookies for the office, smaller individual boxes of cookies for each manager, several bags of candy, and a catered breakfast.

My brother has been struggling with some pretty severe health issues including trying to lose a significant amount of weight. While it’s obviously not anyone else’s responsibility to help him with that, he is not the only employee who is finding the constant presence of sweets and food to be hard to resist. Do you have any advice for how they could ask for healthier options or to politely decline them altogether? Although at least a few of his coworkers have expressed the same sentiments that my brother has, he also doesn’t want to disrupt something that some people may be perfectly happy with.

Having had similar issues in the past, I know that these vendor companies have budgets for this type of thing and their higher-ups are expecting that they spend the money and spread the goodwill. None of them have any objections to the occasional treat coming their way but it is almost every day at this point.

If all of his coworkers want to put a stop to it,  whoever’s in contact with the vendors could say to them, “Thanks so much for thinking of us with the bin of candy you sent over. We’ve got a lot of people here trying to eat healthier so if you can put us on a no-sweets list, we’d all be grateful.” They could add, “No obligation to send anything at all, of course, but if you’re looking for something the staff would love, fruit or veggies would be a huge hit.” This is a little awkward because you normally shouldn’t dictate what gift someone gives you — but this is business, they have a budget to spend courting your facility, and they’d probably appreciate knowing what would help them generate more good will rather than less.

But if other people there enjoy the gifts, your brother can’t really do that. In that case, he could look for ways to manage temptation once the food arrives — like asking to store it all in a designated area he doesn’t go in often but which other people know to check if they want it.

3. My colleague has no poker face

You’ve answered questions from people who don’t have a poker face, but my issue is with a colleague who doesn’t have a poker face.

She’s very good at controlling her expressions in meetings with clients or managers, but outside of that … all of her emotions are on full display. We work very closely and have a warm rapport, so I think it’s great that she feels comfortable with me. But, whenever I say anything she disagrees with, she visibly grimaces. The nature of our work involves a lot of dialogue and reconciling of different points of view and competing priorities. I absolutely expect and welcome push back. Once I’m done speaking and she shares her perspective, we’re always able to quickly reach a solution without drama. But the grimaces really irritate me. They throw me off when I’m talking, and I find myself pivoting in the middle of a sentence because I worry that I must sound very incompetent to provoke such a strong reaction. Lately, I’ve found myself speaking up less in meetings when she is present.

When she’s grimacing at me, should I pretend I don’t see it? Call it out on the spot? (If I’m leading a team meeting, I’ll call on her to share her opinion when I see a grimace.) Avoid looking at her entirely? Or is it on me to reframe the situation in my mind?

I’m a fan of naming it on the spot because (a) people don’t always realize how visible it is, (b) calling it out can convey “you are doing something noticeable enough that people are thrown off by it,” which in turn can limit how often she does it, and (c) she’s being rude and you’re not obligated to pretend you don’t see it. She is deliberately communicating something with her face (or at least deliberately not stopping it as she does with others) and it’s okay to respond to that.

So the next time she grimaces: “You grimaced when I said that. What’s up?” or “Your face looks like you really disagree.” Say that a few times and see if she starts doing it less frequently. If not and you have to work with her a lot, at some point it might be worth saying, “I don’t know if you realize how often you grimace when I say something you disagree with. You don’t do it around managers or clients so I’m guessing it’s not uncontrollable, and it really throws me off when I see it.”

4. Is it normal to ask your current manager for a reference?

A few years ago, I had a coworker reach out to me in a panic to ask if I could give a reference for a job she was applying for. She said she was asking me because she’d already asked our manager and our HR director (also a partner in our small company), and they had freaked out. Apparently, they were blindsided because she hadn’t said anything about being unhappy at work or job hunting, they called her disloyal, how dare she, etc. They both refused to give references.

When she told me all this, I was shocked. I would never ever ask someone at my current employer for a reference outside a few very, very specific cases (e.g., a trusted same-level coworker). The risk is too high! Case in point: in my coworker’s case, now our manager and HR were mad at her, and if she didn’t get the job, they might make her life difficult or fire her. Luckily, she did get the job.

When I mentioned to her that asking a current employer for a reference was a very unusual thing to do, my coworker said she’d done it before and her family members hadn’t seen an issue when she asked them. Is this any way this is a thing that’s considered normal, maybe in certain industries? Or was I right in being baffled?

No, it’s not normally done! A decent manager won’t freak out at someone for job-searching, but (a) not all managers are decent — yours being a case in point and (b) even when a manager doesn’t freak out, it’s not in your interest to tip your hand that you’re searching until you’ve accepted another job and are ready to give notice. Otherwise you risk being moved off of high-profile projects that would help your resume or even pushed out earlier than you wanted to go (which doesn’t necessarily need to be malicious — it can just be something like they need to cut two roles from the team and figure you’ve got one foot out the door already anyway).

There are exceptions to this like times when you trust your boss to know you’re looking without having any repercussions, but those are the exception to the rule.

Related:
my interviewer wants a reference from my current boss

5. How to get better at double-checking my work

I just had my first performance review at my new job and overall it was good, but there was one criticism: I need to doublecheck my work more. This is something I have heard before but the thing is, I do doublecheck! I reread and reread but it’s like my brain and eyes refuse to see the errors, it just fills in with what’s supposed to be there. It’s easier to spot errors in other people’s work, or if I can take a break for a few hours, but that’s usually not possible. I have been criticized for taking too long doublechecking things before as well. What are some effective and efficient methods of checking one’s own work?

Things that often work for people:

1. Read your work out loud to yourself. The function that makes your brain gloss over errors doesn’t seem to kick in as much when you’re reading out loud.
2. Change the font. This is weird, but when the work doesn’t look as familiar to you, your brain may read it as more “new” than when it looks identical.
3. Hold a piece of paper up to your screen so you can only see one line at a time. This can slow down your brain and make sure you’re seeing what’s really there.
4. Print it out. If you’re used to reviewing work on a computer screen, printing it out can help you spot errors.
5. Look at past errors and see if you can find patterns in them. If you realize that you frequently miss X or miscalculate Y, you can build in a check for those things in particular.

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

1. How do I stop being so aggravated by a coworker?

I have a coworker who is a kind person with a lot of great qualities. They’re good at their job and an asset to the team. There is, of course, a big BUT: I find them to be a ton of emotional labor to deal with. I’m not looking to change their behavior; it’s pretty benign if exhausting, and definitely not causing any real work problems. I’m hoping for ways to respond, better framing, or personal mantras that will stop the slow creep into BEC territory.

They like to show enthusiasm by asking to participate — everything from “That looks good, you should bring me a bagel next time!” to “The complicated costume piece you’re making is so cool, make me one?” or “A picnic with your friends on the weekend sounds great, where should I meet you? Haha.” Logically I know they aren’t expecting a bagel, costume piece, or invitation to a picnic with my friends who they’ve never met, but I have no idea how to respond! I’ve tried deflecting with things like, “Oh, I’m never making another one!” or responding with a clear no or not responding and changing the subject. Mostly I’ve resorted to just sharing less to avoid it, which opened a can of worms of the “we never talk anymore, what’s up, are you okay?” variety. Clearly, I need to find a way to be okay with the interaction and move the conversation along.

They are also a big sharer, which I don’t have an issue with, I also like sharing what’s going on in my life as a way to connect with coworkers. The problem is that they start a conversation with a carousel of “Remember my weekend plans from three weeks ago? With Parker? Where we argued but I hadn’t talked to them since?” I probably remember the plans vaguely, but the details slip away quickly! I’m more than happy to have the conversation this is opening, or even listen to a “on the previous episode” recap, but the quiz makes me feel like a terrible person who doesn’t care about my coworkers.

They’ve self-disclosed with some neurodivergence and struggles with anxiety, and they interact this way with everyone at work. I just need to find a way to let it roll off my back like it does everybody else.

You are over-thinking it and making it harder than it has to be! From this point forward, when this coworker invites themselves to participate in future bagels/sewing projects/picnics/etc., your strategy will be to assume they aren’t serious and respond accordingly — which means much more lightly. You say that logically you know they’re not really inviting themselves along or making a claim on your bagels or sewing time, but you’re still responding as if you have the emotional burden of fending them off anyway. Give yourself the gift of treating it with less seriousness! So:

Coworker: “That looks good, you should bring me a bagel next time!”
You: “Ha, yeah, they’re good.”

Coworker: “Make me one of those costumes?
You: “Sure, just find me the 3,000 hours it takes to do them!”
or
You: “My favorite part of it was…” (In other words, you don’t need to engage with what you’re hearing as a request. You can take it as them just expressing interest and enthusiasm and continue as if they’d said, “Oh, cool!”)

Coworker: “A picnic with your friends on the weekend sounds great, where should I meet you? Haha.”
You: “Haha! Yeah, the weather is supposed to be nice. So (topic change)…”

Similarly, you don’t need to put so much weight on not remembering small details they shared previously. You can say, “I don’t remember — fill me in?” or “I think so? Tell me anyway.” You’re not a terrible person for not remembering everything and I doubt they think you are either; that’s something you’re putting on yourself. They clearly like you and aren’t offended; you’re borrowing trouble by wanting to ascribe negative meaning to it!

The whole theme of this answer is: lighter. Receive them with more lightness, and respond with more lightness. It’s only a big deal because you’re framing it as a big deal. You can choose not to.

2. My boss wanted me to share my LinkedIn login

Last week’s question “My company wants me to share its posts on my personal LinkedIn” reminded me of a situation I was in a few years ago, and I’m wondering if you have some thoughts on how I could have better managed it.

I was in a role that was sales-oriented: I would meet with prospects, pitch our company’s business, write proposals, etc., but the job description did not include prospecting for leads.

We had an outside group to generate leads for us. Their one and only lead generation tactic was leveraging LinkedIn. They asked me and other folks at my company for our personal LinkedIn account login credentials, so that they could pose as us and reach out to people via LinkedIn to see if they were interested in hiring our company.

I said absolutely not. My boss didn’t understand why, but ultimately didn’t force me to share my login. Instead, my boss told me to use the scripts developed by the outside group to reach out to people myself (who I did not know or have any real connection with) to “grow my network” and prospect for leads.

Extremely reluctantly, I followed directions. This meant scouring LinkedIn for people with titles that seemed like the sort of folks who would be hiring our company, who also had something else in common with me. I’m talking the most tenuous of connections — we both attended the same massive university, or lived in the same giant metropolitan area — by saying something like “hey, I’m building my network, can we connect?” and then if some sucker actually said yes, it was off to the sales pitch.

Needless to say, this sucked and was not productive in any way. I made very few contacts and we never got one legitimate lead from this. And I felt super dirty doing it — my personal LinkedIn is supposed to represent my actual network, not a bunch of people I cold called.

Anyway, I pushed back a lot and we finally stopped, but my boss was unhappy that this wonderful method for finding new business didn’t pan out. When we had layoffs, I wound up being on the list, and I can’t help but think this was in part due to my not being a team player with the LinkedIn stuff. But this was bananapants, right? What could I have done differently here?

Yes, bananapants — particularly expecting you to turn over your login so someone else could pose as you and say who knows what to people in your network.

I don’t love your framing of “what could I have done differently?” because you’re not to blame for not thinking up a way to convince your boss that this was both slimy and ineffective. I suppose you could have simply not done what they were asking but reported that you had (how would they know? I’m not a fan of lying but I’m also not a fan of pressure to misuse your network this way) or you could have told your boss you were getting angry messages from people who were then blocking you so you couldn’t continue without decimating your network. Or you could have held firm from the get-go and said you weren’t going to use your account that way, and pointed out that lead generation wasn’t part of your job (although I suspect you had the type of boss who would have responded that lead generation is everyone’s job).

All this was really about was that your boss sucked.

3. Navigating a vendor relationship after escalating an issue

I work in a high-profile scientific library. At the end of each year, we update our collection of journal and service subscriptions for the next year. It’s a busy period and involves a lot of negotiation with providers, agents, scientific societies, and so on, as well as internal budget negotiations. I handle both, but I’m not a manager, just a librarian.

Last year, one of our long-standing vendors didn’t respond to my invoice request for 1.5 months. I tried several approaches: (1) emailed their only salesperson, Jane, from different email addresses to ensure my message wouldn’t go to spam, (2) emailed the head of the sales department and tech support, (3) called their sales and general public service line—this was very difficult as we are in opposite time zones, and I had to make the calls late at night but I reached voicemail, (4) sent direct messages to their social media pages, and (5) faxed them.

Despite all these efforts, I still received no response. Time was running out for budget planning, and my manager wasn’t helpful. She told me she didn’t know what to do but emphasized that we needed their materials.

I decided to email their C-level executives using the email addresses provided on their website. I got my manager’s approval and wrote an individual letter to three people, apologized for taking an unusual and desperate step, didn’t mention Jane, and simply explained that I was having trouble reaching them and asked for assistance. I emphasized that maybe it was me who was doing something incorrectly here.

The next day, I found about 15 emails from C-level executives. They were apologetic, cc’d sales and other people I don’t know, and promised to help. That same day (night for me), Jane finally responded and her email had a very sad tone. I could sense how bad she felt. In the end, we renewed our subscription. I thanked both the C-level executives and Jane and that was the end of it. However, I feel very badly that I might have caused harm to Jane. I’m not sure if there were any consequences for her, but I know she didn’t lose her job.

Now I need to repeat the negotiation process with them for the upcoming year, and I’m unsure how to proceed. My manager has quit, so I have no one to consult with. Should I reach out to Jane again (she’s still the sales contact) or should I approach it differently?

You don’t have anything to feel badly about. You made repeated efforts to reach someone who could help you, including some efforts that were truly above and beyond what most people would do. This is a company offering a subscription for sale, and it’s reasonable to assume that they will be set up to respond to requests for it without you having to go on an onerous quest to make it happen. And judging by their executives’ immediate response when you escalated it to them, it’s clearly something they want their organization taking care of.

You didn’t go to Jane’s boss after she didn’t answer you within a day or because she sounded a little tired on a call or something else minor. You went to her boss after truly unusual efforts to reach her weren’t successful. (Social media messages! Faxes!)

Who knows what was going on with Jane — maybe she’s overworked, maybe it’s not her job anymore, maybe she was on a three-month bender. You don’t need to figure it out! You’re just someone trying to buy their product. Whatever problems occurred on their end, they can handle those internally.

For the upcoming year, follow whatever process they’ve laid out for you to follow. If that’s contacting Jane again, contact Jane again. You don’t need to tiptoe around what happened last time; if anything, Jane should be bending over backwards to get you helped quickly this time (and likely will after last time).

The only thing to do differently this time is that if she doesn’t respond to your email, don’t resort to multiple email addresses, late night calls, etc. — that’s way too much. Instead, if you don’t hear back in a reasonable amount of time, go back to the C-suite execs who got it handled last time and say, “Apologies for bothering you, but I had trouble getting our subscription renewed last year until you stepped in and I’m concerned the same thing is happening this year. I emailed ADDRESS on DATE and haven’t heard back yet. Can you let me know how to take care of this, both for this year and for future years?”

Separately: any chance you have a pattern of being excessively deferential in situations where it’s not called for? It really is okay to deal with people straightforwardly and to escalate when you’re not getting what you need from a vendor, without blaming yourself for problems that were clearly on their end.

4. Should people be able to prove summer jobs they worked decades ago?

I had a politics conversation this week, specifically about Kamala Harris’ claim that she worked at McDonald’s in the summer of 1983, and the Trump team claiming that’s a lie. This person said he thought it must be a lie because how could you not prove you worked at a job?

I tried to point out that this was a summer job from decades ago before everything was stored digitally, and I absolutely have jobs like that from only 20 years ago! Jobs where the company has since closed, or everyone who would have known me has left and the records aren’t kept, where I didn’t keep in touch with anyone, and I definitely haven’t held on to my old tax records from decades past. Even the IRS doesn’t promise to keep anything past six years, according to their website.

This person was still skeptical that anyone would be in that position, but it got me thinking! In your experience, how likely is it that people who have been active in the workforce for decades have an essentially unprovable past job? Are Kamala and I outliers, or is this common?

It’s extremely common. I am confident there is zero way I could prove I worked at TCBY the summer after I graduated high school, and that wasn’t as long ago as Kamala Harris’s McDonald’s job. Nor could I prove my Mrs. Fields’ Cookies job from high school, or the three months I spent being extremely cool working in a record shop at 17. You will just have to take my word for it that I ate a ton of white chocolate macadamia nut cookies and listened to way too much soft rock holiday music on repeat.

This was before everything was digitized, and who saves records from fast food jobs decades ago? It’s a ridiculous and impossible (and politically motivated) standard to hold anyone to.

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

1. Should my employee provide any explanation for her repeated last-minute time off?

One of my employees, Ciera, has been regularly requesting her PTO at the last minute over the past few months. For example, she’ll submit a request over the weekend to have Monday off once or twice per month. Our request form has an optional comment box where Ciera can include a note to me, but she always leaves it empty. I don’t need a specific reason for why she’s requesting the day off, but given the repeated last-minute notice, is it unreasonable of me to want some kind of ballpark explanation for why it’s coming in so late (i.e., her waitlist for an appointment came through, she thought she put in the request earlier and forgot, a family emergency came up, etc.)?

While I can typically accommodate the request, it can sometimes strain our workload when we can’t plan in advance. Without any kind of explanation, these continual last-minute requests are starting to make me question her reliability in a way that I probably wouldn’t if I had some context. Am I off-base feeling this way? I don’t want to appear to be prying into her private life (I don’t need to know what the appointment is for or what the family emergency is), but I would like to come up with a solution that would allow her to request her PTO earlier if possible or at least get a heads up that she has A Thing going on that means these last-minute requests will probably continue and we need to put a plan in place to help us better prep for unexpected absences.

I don’t think you’re off-base. In jobs where coverage is needed or where an unexpected absence will cause a strain on other people, PTO normally comes with some expectation of advance notice unless the person is sick or has an emergency. In many jobs, last-minute requests can still be accommodated, but when it’s happening a lot with no context, it’s reasonable to wonder what’s going on and to want to make sure that you’re both on the same page about how time off is managed.

It’s also reasonable that you’d be more willing to shoulder whatever burden the last-minute requests cause if you understand that they are necessary rather than Ciera just, for example, feeling on Sunday that she’d rather not come in the next day.

The right next step is to talk to her and let her know it puts a strain on the team to accommodate frequent last-minute time-off and ask if she’s able to give you more advance notice. Include something like, “Unless you’re sick or have an unanticipated emergency, it’s easier on the team if we can get more advance notice. Thinking back to your recent time-off requests, does that seem like something you’d be able to do more often?”

She may not realize it matters either way, and just having this conversation might change how she approaches it.

Related:
my staff keeps requesting time off at the last minute, even though I keep asking for advance notice
how should I handle last-minute schedule change requests without being a jerk?

2. Coworker hawks up snot in the kitchen every day

Warning: if the headline didn’t alert you, this is gross.

About six months ago, we returned to the office three days a week. The building is new and there are pretty nice kitchens on each floor with sinks and fridges and places to eat lunch.

I eat my lunch earlier than most of my coworkers so I’m often the only person in there. Often, while I’m sitting and reading and eating my lunch, a person from another group whose name I don’t know comes in and performs what I can only describe as the most thorough evacuation of all the mucus in her sinuses and lungs I have ever had the misfortune to observe. For at least five minutes she cycles between deep, liquid throat-clearing and coughing, rich snorty snot-inhaling and sinus-clearing, and spitting the results into the sink or into napkins, which she then throws into the trash. She does this over the counter, next to the coffee mugs and tea, near the office fruit box and snack dispensers, right in there with food and utensils and everything.

It’s one of the most astonishingly disgusting experiences I’ve ever had at work, and I’ve worked at a university where the campus food service catered our meetings.

What can I even do about this? I don’t want to confront her, although she clearly has no self-awareness and isn’t self-conscious about it or she’d go in the bathrooms or outside or something instead of doing her stuff in the kitchen. Also, I’m a tallish man and she is a shortish woman, and I’m not sure how that would look,

Should I take this to HR? Put up a passive-aggressive sign? It’s incredibly gross and she does it almost every time I’m in there eating lunch. Maybe she does it more than once a day, even. Whatever, a shared kitchen isn’t the place to be clearing out ridiculous quantities of snot. Any advice you can offer would be welcome. I didn’t really want to go back to the office in the first place, but this makes it much much worse than I’d anticipated.

From what infernal pit of hell did your coworker ascend? Is there any chance you’re on a reality show and being punked? Because this is disgusting.

The next time it happens, you could just say to her, “Would you mind doing that in the bathroom?” Feel free to add, “There’s food and clean dishes right near you.”

I hear you on feeling weird about the gender dynamics, but she’s doing something truly gross and you’re allowed to ask her to take it to a more appropriate location.

I don’t think it rises to the level of HR … although I also don’t think it would be wildly out of line to ask them to handle it if you really don’t want to speak up yourself, given how unsanitary it is, which affects more people than just the lone unfortunate witness. (This is the kind of thing that makes HR people question their life choices, but that’s not your problem.) Don’t do the sign though, as much I enjoy imaging what it might say; this is something where someone needs to just have a direct conversation with this reprobate.

3. My employer wants to see my family tree

I work for my local county in the Human Resources department. Our county attorney is rewriting some polices, including nepotism, which will be retroactive once approved by the board. For background, I live rurally and my family was an original settler of the area in the 1800’s. The county is the largest employer in our area with over 500 employees. My family on both sides is quite large and the majority of us all still live locally.

I have two family members who work for the county. Both are distant cousins, a father and son in different departments. I didn’t know they were employed by the county when I applied or was hired. Of course, as soon I found out, I disclosed this to my manager. There was no problem mentioned at that time. Now, a year later, the new polices are being developed, and I’m being asked to submit a family tree to show exactly how distant the relationship is. It’s not only distant on the tree, it’s emotionally distant as well. I haven’t spent any real time with these people since I was a small child in the 1990’s. Others in my department seem to not have been asked for a family tree even though they have family employed by the county as well, which is made very clear and openly appear as a very close family relationship. They often discuss weekend plans together, family dinners, etc.

When I’ve asked how family is being defined, my manager isn’t able to give me a straight answer. I’m curious if you’ve heard of this before? How do I navigate potentially being asked to leave my job based on a policy that didn’t exist when I was hired (but I’ve been told will be retroactive, thus affecting my job directly) and doesn’t seem to affect others in my department?

It’s not unreasonable for them to want clarification on the exact relationship, but it’s unreasonable to only require it of you and not of others. Are you sure other people aren’t being asked similar questions? If they’re not, is there anything that could explain the difference in treatment, like that you’re in a position of authority or influence that they’re not in? Or that those relationships are already clear and don’t require more info?

Also, has anyone actually said you could be asked to leave your job over this, as opposed to simply wanting the info so they can put in place any necessary safeguards against conflicts of interest? I would assume it’s likely to be the latter unless something specific has made you think it’s the former.

If you do end up being asked to leave your job over a policy that isn’t applied to others who are similarly situated, you should push back on that — with a union if you have one, or with an attorney if you don’t. That said, government employers are normally fairly risk-averse about applying clear-cut policies to one person and not to others so, again, unless you have reason to think that will happen, there’s a good chance that’s not where this is going.

4. What should I do in meetings with someone on an improvement plan who’s not improving?

I have an employee with performance issues who is basically on an informal PIP because we don’t have enough documentation of the issues to put her on a formal PIP. I’ve clearly laid out my expectations for what she needs to do and by when, and she’s indicated that she understands. I’ve also told her that the consequences of not meeting these goals are that she will be put on a formal PIP. We’ve previously discussed her personal issues that may be contributing, and I’ve repeatedly offered her FMLA, accommodations, and the EAP, which she has not to my knowledge taken advantage of.

What do I do during my weekly check-in meetings with her? There are occasionally things where I need to ask her “did you do X?” but most of the time I am already aware of whether she has completed her tasks or not. Some weeks she’s doing well and meeting the goals, some weeks she’s not, so there’s no sustained improvement yet. It feels weird to go into that meeting like “you didn’t do the thing. Do the thing,” for the 20th time.

HR said we should document her performance and my communication with her through the end of the year in order to have enough info to get a PIP approved. What do I do in weekly meetings for the next three months where we both already know the status?

If you’re not seeing the sustained improvement you told her was needed and you’re having to repeatedly remind her to do things she’s not doing, you should tell HR you’ve seen enough to be ready to move to the formal PIP now rather than dragging this out.

But meanwhile, use the check-in meetings to give feedback on what you’re seeing and to flag that you’re not seeing the needed improvements: “I’m concerned that you haven’t done XYZ. This is an example of what we’ve discussed needed to improve. What happened?” It sounds like you’ll be repeating that a lot, and there’s no way around that.

5. How do I set goals at a job I don’t like?

Last fall, I was laid off from a job I really loved. Earlier this year, I started a new job I’ve always disliked. While the job is technically in the industry and field I want to be in, I’m not using the skills or knowledge I’ve worked hard to amass. I’m passionate about consumers, but we are firmly B2B. My boss isn’t particularly kind, and we’ve butted heads on lots of issues. I’ve continued looking for a new job since day 3, but I’m still here many months later.

Over the summer, my boss was supposed to conduct a mid-year performance review, but he never did. This would have included setting goals for the rest of the year, so those goals have never been set. He mentioned last week that soon, we’d start working on setting goals for 2025. But I can’t for the life of me figure out what good goals are for this job when my goal is to find a different job and get out of here.

What are generic professional goals I could be working towards in this position? Or how can I think about the goals differently to come up with things I’d like to work on?

Don’t think of this as being about goals for you personally; think of it as being about goals for the position, regardless of who’s in it. In other words, it’s about what needs to be done for the work; if you were replaced tomorrow, what would a successful 2025 look like for the person who took over? For example, if you work in online media, you might have goals around increasing click-through rate or adding email subscribers. If you work in finance, it might be about having a clean audit and lowering overhead costs by X%. If you work in IT, it might be implementing a new CMS and resolving the database errors that have been plaguing your team. And so on — they’re goals that anyone could inherit if you leave, and they describe what successful work or progress would look like for the position, not a specific person who happens to be in it.