Ask a Manager

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

1. My best friend is dating my employee

I own a small cocktail bar in a small town and recently one of my oldest and best friends, who is also a regular patron, started dating one of my employees. (He gave me an opportunity to weigh in beforehand, but I told him I had no right to interfere in my employees’ relationships, so to proceed if he wanted to. Whenever a patron starts dating an employee, there is risk, but it also goes with the bar territory.)

It seems like it is going well for them, so I had a chat with my friend, clarifying that I didn’t expect our friendship to divide any loyalties or anything dramatic, or expect him to share things with me that she had told him about work, or anything like that. He said he assumed that but it was good to hear me say it.

Should I have a similar conversation with her? On the one hand, talking to an employee about her private life seems like an overreach (although she has brought up issues with past relationships before), but on the other, she might also be relieved if I spelled out that she doesn’t have to worry about me leveraging my friendship in a problematic way. And this is a friend that I regularly travel with, including his past partners, so there may be further necessary boundary conversations in the future if they become a truly serious item.

Err on the side of being clear about where you stand, so she doesn’t need to guess. Spell out that you recognize the potential landmines (which are more risky to her than anyone else) and plan to maintain a firewall with your friend, and — most importantly — if things end with him, it won’t affect her standing at work. (You have to mean that, though! If they break up and your friend tells you horrible things about her behavior as a girlfriend, you need to be committed to not letting it impact how you treat her as an employee.)

You also need to be committed to protecting her work environment if it becomes necessary. If they break up and he’s mooning around the bar making her uncomfortable, you’ve got to be willing to handle it the same way you would if he were any other customer, not your best friend. And while it might feel weird to spell that out for her while they’re happy, it’s probably worth saying … because if at some point she does want to end things with him, you don’t want her having to worry about whether it will make things weird for her at work.

2. “Gentle reminders”

Is anyone else annoyed by the phrase “gentle reminder” in emails? It seems to almost always be followed by some sort of passive/passive-aggressive statement. Why can’t we just be direct and say “reminder, X event is happening” or “reminder, please do ABC”? Is it an overreaction to people attempting to be overly polite in emails since tone is hard to convey in the written word? Am I completely neurotic for being irked by this language (and similar language)?

“Gentle reminder” is my number one email pet peeve! It’s like announcing “I think you are very delicate, and I am going to softly tiptoe up next to you and whisper in your ear because otherwise you might be offended by a routine workplace interaction” — ugh!

People are not delicate flowers and they can handle matter-of-fact work communications! Why are the “gentle reminder” people labeling that way? (In fact, why are they labeling it all? Just give the damn reminder and let your recipients decide whether they think it’s gentle, or aggressive, or routine, or whatever. Stop telling them how you want them to feel about your email.)

3. Is it illegal to reassemble a laid-off team before a year has passed?

In January, my entire team was laid off, with the official reason being that our positions had been eliminated. We were a team of four, and there were no other layoffs or positions eliminated at that time. Cutting the entire team meant there was no one left doing the kind of work we did.

I still have friends at the company. They let me know that many people were voicing concerns about my team’s function being cut. In response, they were told that legally, because our positions had been eliminated, they couldn’t resurrect that function with a new team – nor could they re-hire any of us to perform that function – for a year.

I did a quick search trying to find any laws that applied and came up empty. My best guess was that they’d been told that if they let us go by “eliminating our positions” and then soon after hired a bunch of, say, young white men to do those jobs, they’d be open to claims of discrimination. But that doesn’t account for them saying they were legally not allowed to hire the original team back.

Now, nine months later, they are in fact resurrecting our function under a different department. I hear that the first question from folks still there was, would they be re-using the materials my team had created? And again, they were told that there are legal restrictions, in this case preventing them from using those materials.

Of course, it’s not my problem if they don’t want to use our old materials, for whatever reason. But it’s such a strange excuse to give! We were salaried employees creating work-for-hire – they clearly own it and can use it any way they like, as I understand it.

This (probably) has no bearing on my current or future work life, but I’m curious – are there some laws around this that I’m unaware of? Are they in fact legally barred from rehiring any of us for the same job within a year? And/or legally barred from using the materials we created while working for them? (We’re in the U.S.)

No law prevents companies from re-filling positions that were previously cut before X amount of time has past, either with new employees or the old ones. Some companies have internal policies about it to help avoid the appearance that they laid people off for illegal reasons (which could look like the case if the new hires are all in different demographic categories than the people who were cut — for example, if you eliminate a team where everyone is over 60 and then three months later reassemble it with a bunch of 30-year-olds, that’s going to raise concerns). But that’s an internal policy, not a law. (It also doesn’t explain why they wouldn’t hire the same people back, although some companies have that policy too.)

What’s really bizarre, though, is their insistence that they couldn’t use any of the materials your team created. As you point out, they own that material and there’s no legal reason they couldn’t. Either your company is getting really odd legal advice or they had other reasons for wanting to start from scratch that they’re not sharing with your old coworkers (or something just got lost in translation as this made its way through the grapevine, which sometimes happens).

4. My boss and I have the same side hustle — can I promote his work?

My supervisor and I happen to both pursue the same creative work outside of and in a different field from our day jobs, and we both have big new projects in this outside creative field coming out this winter (think book illustration or graphic design, where it’s project-based).

My supervisor has been extremely supportive of my outside work and mentioned that he can’t wait to promote my upcoming project on his social media, brag about me to his contacts, etc. I’m so flattered that he wants to do so! However, I’m not sure how, if at all, I should reciprocate. I regularly promote my friends’ work in this creative field on my social media accounts but it feels different when it’s my boss. But at the same time, I’m also very impressed with his work and think it’s worth promoting — if he wasn’t my boss and was just a friend or a colleague, I’d be shouting about it from the rooftops. But because of the power dynamics, I’m hesitating. Am I overthinking this? If I acknowledge the relationship in my posts (“this is my boss — isn’t his work amazing?”), does that make it better or worse? And if my boss posts about my work and I stay silent about his, is that a bad look?

Since you genuinely like his work and want to promote it, go ahead and do that! I do think you should mention the relationship just for transparency’s sake (I’d frame it as “I get to work with the artist, Burt Burtlebot, in my day job” but that’s really personal preference). It would only seem weird if he were getting a disproportionate share of your focus relative to other things you post about.

But if you didn’t want to promote his work, it would be okay to stay quiet about it. If I were in your boss’s shoes and you weren’t promoting my work, I’d just assume it didn’t occur to you to or would write it off to power dynamic weirdness (because it’s inherent in our respective work roles that I will champion your work as your boss and not necessarily vice versa). But since you’re enthusiastic about it, go ahead and share that enthusiasm.

5. Gift cards from the company didn’t work

This week my customer service team received gifts of $25 prepaid credit cards from higher-ups via email. However, we work remotely in Canada, and these cards only work in the U.S. I brought the issue up to my team and said we should talk to our boss about it next week, who is currently away on vacation.

I’m hoping our company does the right thing and replaces the basically useless gifts. I’m a little disappointed/annoyed this happened and they didn’t do better oversight on the gifts. Is this a big deal? Am I overthinking it?

Sometimes mistakes like this happen, and it would be easy to occur if the person ordering the cards is based in the U.S. and hasn’t dealt with this internationally before.

Your company will almost certainly replace the cards with working ones once they’re informed of it. If they don’t, you’d be right to take issue with that (not only did they not get the gift right but they couldn’t be bothered to fix it once they knew?!) but it’s really unlikely to play out that way. I think you’re being premature in being annoyed, and are in fact borrowing trouble! Give them a chance to learn about the error and remedy it.

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

1. My boss never apologizes for being late

My manager is always late. Always. Especially in the mornings. She’s acknowledged that it’s a problem and that she’s working on it, but it keeps happening. She’s even off-handedly said she thinks she should be put on a PIP because of her tardiness.

However, she rarely apologizes for it! She’ll send a message a couple minutes before a 9am meeting saying “Good morning! Let’s push to 9:15am” and then still not walk in the office or join the virtual call until 9:30 or later. She never offers an explanation in the moment, but often later in the day she’ll admit that she was having stomach issues, or her dog was sick, or something. I don’t need the explanation. I don’t care. She’s my boss and can do what she wants. But it grates on me that she can’t just apologize for the inconvenience and disruption.

Sometimes, when it’s meetings outside our immediate team, not only does she come in late, but she also grinds the meeting to a halt by asking us to review everything that had already been said and asking several questions on it, preventing us from getting through the whole meeting agenda.

I know it’s popular to tell women in particular not to apologize when it’s not warranted. I get that! I’m all for it! But we are a small team of all women. We are all on good terms with one another and respect each other. But! The regular tardiness with no regard for the other people on the team is frustrating to me. A quick acknowledgment with an apology would mean the world to me. Am I putting too much into this? How should I handle the frustration?

I think this is in the category of “frustrating, but nothing you can do about it.”

Yes, she should be apologizing. When you throw off someone else’s schedule or delay a meeting, it’s just good manners to apologize. But you can’t really ask your manager to apologize; it’ll come across as focused on the wrong thing. You could ask for something else more logistical, like if for more advance notice if she needs to delay a meeting or to talk about how to avoid repeating the whole agenda when she’s late (for example, should the meeting not start until she’s there?). But if it’s really just the non-apology that’s grating on you, all you can do is accept that this is how she is and try to let it roll off you.

Related:
when should you expect your boss to apologize?

2. My employee announces her time off rather than requesting it

I have an employee who has told me when she is taking time off. I think she should have put in a request for the time off. She also texts the same day as her doctor appointment to tell me that she’ll be in around noon because the provider is running late; however, I had no knowledge that she had a doctor’s appointment on that day. Not that her appointments are my business, but when your scheduled start time is an hour after your scheduled appointment, I feel as though fair warning should have been given. She always seems to want to have the last word as well, when it will not have any effect on the outcome of the situation. Am I being too picky?

Different offices do it differently: in some offices the culture is very much to simply let your manager know when you’re taking time off, and they’ll let you know if it’s a problem. Other offices expect people to get approval first. But unless you oversee jobs with a heavy coverage component (where you need to ensure coverage as part of approving any time-off request), I’m a strong believer in the first system; to the extent that people’s work allows it, treat them as adults who can manage their own schedules while keeping you in the loop, unless and until that becomes a problem. But if you have good reason for wanting her to request the time first — and it’s not just the principle of it — have you clearly told her you want her to do it that way? If you’ve explained that and she’s ignoring you, that’s a problem. But if you haven’t, then just be direct about what you want her to do differently.

The same applies when she’ll be late because of a doctor’s appointment. Tell her clearly that you want to know in advance when she’s likely to be late. If you’ve already done that, remind her of the policy and ask why she’s not following it.

Wanting to have the last word is a completely different issue (and you lumping them together makes me wonder if there are other problems with this employee too; sometimes when there are a bunch of problems, it gets harder to parse each one out individually). That’s something you can and should give direct feedback on (explaining that it’s disruptive, harming her relationships with coworkers, coming across as adversarial, or whatever the case may be).

Related:
my staff tells me what they’re doing rather than asking permission

3. How do I build a professional network?

I’ve been hearing something my whole life from a really wide range of places: that skilled professionals generally know other, similar skilled professionals, and if they can’t help you, they can probably refer you to someone who can.

I’ve been in the workforce for 11 years, and I do not have this network of similarly skilled professionals. I honestly don’t even know how to get one. I have met two or three people who could potentially do my type of work whom I might trust with a referral, but they have other interests and probably wouldn’t accept.

I do mostly employee onboarding, which is a mix of HR and admin responsibilities. Since I’m the only person most of the people in my life know with any kind of connection to HR, I get a lot of questions from my friends and family about resumes, cover letters, career path options, and how to handle problems at work. I think these people might be looking for that referral to someone with more experience than me (or would benefit from expertise I don’t have), but I just don’t have that network.

Maybe this has to do with my background. I’m the first person in three generations to get a bachelor’s degree in my family. So maybe other people’s parents are connecting them with this network? But my friends from school didn’t end up in similar work to mine either. I have an English degree, so maybe that’s different if you go into a field with a more defined career path, like chemistry or computer science?

Is it true that most professionals have a network like this? And if so, how can I get one?

Usually the type of professional network you’re describing comes from working with other people who are doing similar or adjacent work. Over time, you build up a group of people you’ve worked with, either coworkers or people in other companies who your work brings you into contact with. It’s not typically a network that comes from your parents (unless your parents are in your same field, but that’s not the case for most people); it’s one that comes directly from the people you work with over the years.

If your employers have been big enough to have someone dedicated solely to onboarding, I’m guessing you’ve worked with a fair number of other HR people — not ones necessarily doing exactly what you do, but doing other pieces of HR. This is where building relationships at work comes in — talking to coworkers, grabbing the occasional coffee with them, bouncing ideas off each other, and so forth. Those are all people who should become part of your network, even after you or they move on to other jobs. So I wonder if (a) you’re keeping to yourself at work and not building those relationships (in which case your network would definitely suffer for it) or (b) you’re just not defining “network” this way and thus don’t see that you already have one.

People who don’t have that kind of built-in potential network at work (usually because their jobs are very siloed) often go to conferences and other industry events to build it, or they might find industry communities online.

All that said, I don’t think the friends and family who ask you about HR stuff are looking for a referral to someone with more experience than you. It’s more likely that they just lump all HR people into one broad HR category and don’t realize that at large companies the work can be split into lots of separate functions — and you can have a compliance person who knows nothing about resumes, a benefits person who has no particular expertise in the interpersonal bits of HR, and so on.

4. Which internship should I choose?

I’ve been fortunate to secure interviews for two different internship opportunities, and I’m at a crossroads in making a decision.

The first option is with a relatively young but highly promising company. If I join, I would be the youngest employee on the team. The company is incredibly growth-oriented, and there are many young leaders, which I find appealing. However, the downside is that it’s entirely remote.

The second option is with a more established and older company, located locally. This internship would be a hybrid role, with some in-office work. They have a structured internship program in place, which is a positive aspect. However, there’s no guarantee of employment after the internship program concludes.

Currently, I’m leaning towards the fully remote internship due to its growth potential and the opportunity to work with a young and dynamic team. However, I’m also aware of the benefits of the local internship with a more established company. I would greatly appreciate your advice on this matter.

Absent any other information, I’d recommend the second one. Especially when you’re early-career, a ton of learning happens simply by being around more experienced colleagues in person, and it’s much, much harder to get those same benefits if you’re fully remote. I’m all for remote work when it makes sense for your job and career stage, but one of the most valuable things about internships is all the learning that happens by osmosis — by being in an office and overhearing calls and conversations, watching your coworkers do their own jobs, and generally just learning how to be in an office. As an intern, that stuff is often, or even usually, more important than the actual work tasks you’re doing.

I also think you might be overestimating the benefits of a young team. There are a ton of advantages to working with a more established company and more experienced colleagues; in many cases (although not all) you’ll find things are more organized (and thus you’ll be better positioned to get meaningful experience) and your coworkers have more expertise for you to learn from. That’s not to say there aren’t advantages to the opposite — there can be. But between these two options, the non-remote internship sounds a lot more useful.

5. Boss makes me turn around to see her while we’re eating

My coworker and I take lunch together each day, at the communal table in our break room. We sit directly across from each other, me with my back to the break room door, with my coworker facing it. Each day, our supervisor comes into the break area to chat with both of us but always stays at the door, behind me. She never walks all the way to be in an area where my coworker and I can both see her. This makes it so that for me to view her, I would have to spin my chair at least 90 degrees, no longer facing my food or my coworker who I’m eating with. Additionally, her interruption always starts as small talk but then inevitably turns into a work conversation between her and my coworker.

If you haven’t already guessed, this drives me crazy. Am I wrong for not turning around? Am I being irrational for thinking the least she could do is walk to the center of us if she is going to interrupt our lunch?? Argh!!!

I don’t think you’re irrational for being annoyed, but it does sound a little irrational that you don’t just switch up where you’re sitting, since you know it’s going to happen! I wonder if you’re digging in your heels on that a bit since you don’t think she should be interrupting your lunch in the first place — but that’s just keeping you mired in the annoying thing.

It’s also probably not even registering to your boss. Any reason not to say, “Would you come further inside so I don’t have to crane my neck to see you?” A few days of saying it might solve the problem.