4 reader updates: my coworkers use my email when I’m away, a creepy boss, and more

by Alison Green on December 12, 2013

Here are four more updates from readers who had their questions answered here this year.

1. Should I take a job working with a creepy boss? (#1 at the link)

Thank you so much for publishing my letter! It was very helpful to hear what you and your readers thought. I spent a lot of time thinking about how it would be to frequently work one-on-one with this guy and in the end decided not to apply for the job. While it would have been a good step for my career, I wasn’t so excited about the opportunity that it would have been worth it to work that closely with him. Some commenters suggested going to HR, which I didn’t end up doing. I didn’t think I had enough concrete evidence that he was acting inappropriately for them to do anything.

One good thing that came of this is that it made me think about the direction I wanted my career to take and how my company fit in with that. I had a lot of other issues with the way my company operated and my work environment, and I didn’t feel like I had a whole lot of opportunities to advance my career. This issue gave me the push I needed to start seriously looking for other jobs. I was lucky enough to get a new job not too long ago. Your website was an extremely helpful resource during my search. I am enjoying my new job SO much more than my last job, and so far no one has given me any inappropriate presents!

2. My mother’s boss is spreading a false rumor that my mom is dying

There hasn’t actually been much drama since Mom’s had to take FMLA for the whole of her chemo. She’d gone back after surgery, but she quickly realized how tired it made her and she won’t be going back until February. She hasn’t said word one to her boss, or vice versa, since her last day there, and she’s dreading having to deal with her again in February. I’m sure I’ll hear more when she goes back to work, but right now there’s just silence while my mom works to get better.

3. My manager and coworkers use my email when I’m away (#6 at the link)

Maybe my manager also reads AAM. Since the question was in AAM, I have not had a problem with my password being changed/email being hacked while I am on vacation – to my knowledge anyway. My manager/IT did ask for my password of which I have given them a password they can use to change to while I am away instead of the one I regularly use – this way I know when they access my system. Thank you, AAM.

4. The reader whose cubicle was giving her migraines

So you might recall that I wrote in a while ago because I was stuck in a cubicle next to gigantic windows, and getting migraines, and my boss was throwing a holy fit about letting me switch to another desk less than five feet away. He did let me move desks but wasn’t pleased about it, as I mentioned in my first update.

So what’s been going on since then? In January 2013, my second boss (who would have been fine with me not sitting next to windows) had to move her office and lab four floors up. Eventually, my first boss would have to move floors too but last I heard, he was trying to delay that until 2014 or so. It was decided that I would continue to support both managers, which is cool, but it meant having to have desks on the two different floors. Okay, fine– it’s still a job, right? Only I couldn’t just do (for example), the morning on the original floor and the afternoon on the new floor. Oh no. It was decided that I would spend 9 a.m.-12 p.m. on the original floor, 12-3 on the new floor, and then come back down to the original floor from 3 to 5. Every day. Ironically, around this time, the financial manager is complaining about how we all need to be more efficient so we can save money, but then he authorizes a $5000 work order to get me set up with a second computer, telephone, printer, fax line, etc. on the new floor. And all the other people on the new floor weren’t related to my department at all but they were so totally happy and welcoming to see our lab! (sarcasm alert).

I’d been job searching anyway for a while because I’d been there long enough that it was time for a change. Luckily, earlier this summer, I got a lead on a job opening at friend’s company that led to a job offer! It’s much more in line with my degree and writing experience, it’s only a half hour away (previous job was a 90-minute, multi-mode trip on public transit), and I don’t have to switch desks every three hours (unless I really wanted to for some strange reason, like if I felt like writing in the conference room). My team is very nice too; total opposite of what I was dealing with at my old job. There had been a lot of interpersonal drama with my cubicle-mate and cubicle neighbors (on both floors) that I’d left out of my original letter to Alison. Nothing like that here at New Job (knock on wood). (I’m totally willing to agree that I was the problem in those conflicts but I’d also get random coworkers coming up to me about So-and-So to say that they’d had inappropriate behavior from her too. So I don’t think it was *all* my fault, you know?)

Sorry this update is so long! Thank you for all of your advice, Alison and commenters, both with these issues and job searching in general. I used Alison’s advice to rewrite my resume and cover letters, formulate interview questions, etc. and I think it definitely helped me land this new job.

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update: a possible coworker turned out to be my date’s wife

by Alison Green on December 12, 2013

Remember the reader whose date turned out to be the husband of an employee at the company she was interviewing with? She got the job, and here’s her update from after she started working there.

So, she was told by friends of friends that I work here: my close friend’s husband works here too. I’ve been greeting lots and lots of my colleagues from previous jobs here, and they all expressed how glad they were I had come on board. My field is a really small world, and though we usually get fairly paltry raises, we get good pay bumps from rotating through different companies every so many years–we’re constantly running into folks we used to work with. *Except* Mrs. Dancer has been at this job ever since she graduated from college, so she doesn’t really have the same connections/network.

The company is being audited by a third party quality certification group, and literally everything she does is being combed through for her errors, and they are finding many. The lead on the third party quality group is from my hometown (in the middle of nowhere) and I actually went to grade school with his daughter. This keeps getting weirder and weirder, I swear the stars have aligned or something. Anyway, I get along well with the lead auditor, and he’s very good at his job. He and the other auditors have expressed how pleased they are with my work already (in just two weeks). The third party auditors handle the quality certifications, I never have to deal with her directly: she deals with them, and I deal with them, but we don’t have occasion to meet just because of how the third party system is set up. When I’m at lunch, I have plenty of current and former colleagues to sit with at the cool kids’ table, no worries there. We don’t speak to each other at all, and because my group has much more political power than hers (we determine whether the facility will be able to operate at all, as third party consultants ourselves), she really REALLY doesn’t speak to me or anyone else in my group.

The job is going pretty well so far, though it’s only been two weeks, and I’m getting lots of responsibility right off the bat. I like most of the people I work with–there are a few characters, there always are–and I like my client contact a lot, we also grew up in the same area. The client contact and my boss have been extremely supportive of me, which is awesome. We are in the middle of relocating the satellite office from Big City to Hipster Paradise, and when we’re done I’ll have a really nice office with a door, in a fashionable part of town only a few blocks from one of my favorite dance studios! Plus I get to pick out the office furniture. Very exciting!

I realize, however, that despite my networking like crazy to get the lowdown on the place before accepting the offer, most of this is pure dumb luck. I did buy myself some fantastic dance shoes, though.

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can I pass along my boyfriend’s professional advice to my coworkers?

by Alison Green on December 12, 2013

A reader writes:

Thanks to much of your advice on job-hunting — particularly the idea that interviews are a two-way street, which really helped me keep composed when I went in for my interview — I landed an entry-level position with a great company in a field I’d hoped to get into for a long time. Yay!

My boyfriend has a significant amount of background in my new field. From time to time, we’ll discuss work and I’ll mention that we had trouble getting the chocolate to extrude correctly to fill a certain teapot mold, and he’ll say, “Huh, sounds like you should check to see if there’s enough cocoa butter in the melted chocolate mix” (or some other solution that I never would have come up with on my own.)

But, then what? I’m a little hesitant to turn up at work the next day and say “Hey, we need to add more cocoa butter”! It’s not like I’m getting help on things I’m expected to be able to do myself (see: entry level position), but using advice from someone who doesn’t even work here still feels like cheating. Plus, when someone says “wow, how’d you figure that out?” I’d have to say “I asked my boyfriend!” (I think I might be a little bit extra conscious of this because I’m female and working in a traditionally male-dominated field, and am paranoid about playing into stereotypes, even though none of my coworkers have done anything to make me think this would be an issue.)

On the other hand, no one benefits from holey teapots, so I wonder whether I should just get over my hesitation.

I wrote back and asked, “Are the problems that he’s making suggestions about stuff that you’re in charge of handling, or is it someone else’s purview?”

The response:

Since I am still a trainee, there’s very little I’m actually in charge of, but the projects are always something I am personally working on, either helping or under the supervision of someone more experienced.

… When I think about it in terms of it actually being someone else’s responsibility, it seems extra awkward to offer outside information. But the last time this happened we almost ended up sending the entire batch of molds (actually giant servers) back because we thought they were defective. Eventually another employee figured out the solution, but I would have felt really bad about letting us go to the trouble and expense of sending them back when the problem was actually on our end (and I knew what needed to be fixed.)

I think you can pass along his input occasionally, but not regularly.

I absolutely agree that you don’t want to not speak up about a problem that you know how to fix, but you also need to keep in mind that your boyfriend might not have enough information to actually know what the solution is, or what has been tried and failed, or what has been tried and discarded for some other reason. You also need to keep in mind that the people in charge of doing this stuff presumably have at least a decent level of expertise or they wouldn’t be in charge of it (and if that’s not the case, there are bigger problems that passing along suggestions won’t be able to fix).

But occasionally passing along some thoughts? Sure. Just make sure that your answer reflects the caveats in the paragraph above. That means that you don’t want to come across as “Bob says the problem is ABC,” but rather something like “Bob was telling me he once ran into something similar, and Y worked to resolve it” or “Bob works on X and suggested that we take a look at Y.” And if this stuff is really outside of your purview, you can acknowledge that by adding, “I have no idea if that will help here but wanted to pass it on.”

The idea is that you don’t want to seem like you think that someone from the outside has definite answers to problems that someone on the inside is having trouble finding — particularly when that insider presumably has a more nuanced view of the situation — or that you’re confident that he’s right (not because you don’t trust him, but because he isn’t seeing it firsthand).

As long as you do that, and as long as it isn’t constant, the input should be appreciated.

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what’s your best tip for staying organized?

by Alison Green on December 12, 2013

In response to last week’s call for people to share cool Excel tricks, we’ve had a request for something similar on organization, task management, and project management. So … share your favorite organizational or task/project management tip here.

I’ll start with a tip that’s pretty basic but can change your life if you’re not doing it: Don’t have multiple different to-do lists floating around. Have one central to-do list and put everything on it, and I mean everything — not just assignments from your boss, but also things like a call that you need to follow up on if you don’t hear back from the person by Tuesday, and your coworker’s request to stop by her office whenever you have time to hear the update on the Fleebus account. Everything. Otherwise it has to all float around in your head, and that’s (a) stressful and (b) how you forget things.

Of course, you can also have sub-lists for big projects that are significant enough to need their own separate lists — but they should still all feed into your main to-do list, because part of the point here is that you shouldn’t need to check a zillion different lists to see what your most pressing priorities for the week (or day or month) are. If you have to check seven different places to get a full picture of what you need to get done, you’re probably not really going to check all of them and your system will fail.

What else do people recommend for staying organized?

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when a client calls you “baby girl,” avoiding interviews that will waste your time, and more

by Alison Green on December 12, 2013

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

1. Client keeps calling me “baby girl”

I know from reading your blog that you are outspoken against referring to adult women as “girls” in the workplace. I was wondering if you had advice on how to handle it when the offender is a client. I manage the account of a male client who regularly calls me ‘baby girl’ instead of my name. I have asked him once before to call me by my name and he did so, but the next time we spoke it was right back to “Hi baby girl…. Thanks baby girl,” etc.

This is seriously grating on me. I am neither a baby nor a girl and I absolutely want this to stop. However, he is a big client and so I am not sure how direct I can be for obvious reasons. I’ve struggled to come up with a way to say something in a direct but non-confrontational way, particularly since a polite correction did not work the first time. Can you please advise as to how I can shut this down? All that said, given the power differential, I know the easiest option would be to just let it go. Am I being unreasonable in letting this bug me to this extent?

No, it’s not unreasonable to be bothered by that! Baby girl? That’s ridiculous.

And yeah, you’re right that you risk souring a relationship with a big client if you take as hard of a line on it as you might take with, say, a coworker who was doing this. As for how to address it, much of it depends on your dynamic with the client. But if he’s calling you “baby girl,” the relationship is probably at least somewhat informal, so personally I’d just say cheerfully, “You know I’m not going to respond when you call me that, right?” and move on with the conversation. Repeat as needed / adapt to fit your style.

I’d also try to balance the understandable frustration of this against how he treats you aside from this — is he otherwise respectful and does he treat you as a competent professional aside from this? If so, I’d be more inclined to write it off as an annoying eccentricity.

2. How can I prevent wasting my time on interviews for jobs that aren’t what I’m looking for?

I was contacted by a search firm for a “senior leader” opportunity. I am a director and interested in jobs in the next level (exec director or VP). The recruiter set up an interview with the next level, who turned out to be a director too. Since all titles are not equal at companies, I agreed to interview. After the interview, I could tell it would be a step down, as it was really a senior manager job with a sign-on bonus that would match my salary but year two would not.

I went to the next interview with the SVP hoping to make an impression for future director-level positions. She said they didn’t have any plans anytime soon for more directors. The external recruiter sent me about 20 text messages trying to convince me it’s a growing company and director jobs would open down the road. I just can’t take that risk 30 years into my career. They made an offer that I declined. The reason I gave was I felt it wasn’t a step up and the timing was wrong since I will be getting a bonus soon.

The recruiter was very annoyed with me after all this and said I should have been more transparent about my bonus. But I was very transparent in at least 5 conversations that a senior manager job is not strategic for me and a step down. I feel it was none of his business about my bonus, and if he would have been more honest about the job level from the start, I would have never interviewed. How can I prevent this waste of time and resources in the future?

You can’t always perfectly screen job opportunities to eliminate the ones that you won’t be interested in. Sometimes you do need to go to the interview and learn more before you can realize it. And actually, that did happen here — you realized at the first interview that it wasn’t the job you were looking for. After that, it sounds like you went to the next interviewing only hoping to build a relationship for the future — but if you look at what you wrote, you’d already realized at that point that this wasn’t the right job for you. So I wouldn’t really blame the employer for wasting your time. The recruiter, maybe — and that bombardment of 20 text messages is a good indication that this recruiter isn’t exactly top-notch, as is his blaming you at the end of the process — but I think the lesson here is really to listen to what you learn at the first interview.

3. Addressing a cover letter when it’s to my current boss

I’m applying for an advanced position at the place I’ve worked at for the last 10 years. What is the most approriate greeting to use on the cover letter without sounding like an overly formal stranger? By this time, my boss knows me well, and I don’t want to sound too casual or too formal. Any ideas?

I’m trying to avoid stuffy and formal and come across as personable and outgoing.

What do you normally call her? Assuming you normally call her by her first name, that’s what you open with here too. You don’t need to pretend like you call someone Ms. Whoever when you’re on a first-name basis with each other … and in fact, it would be weird to do so. (After all, if your’e normally on a first-name basis, wouldn’t you be weirded out if she came by to talk to you about the job and called you Ms. LastName?)

Cover letters aren’t some special extra-formal thing; they’re just like any other business correspondence.

4. My coworker and I aren’t on the same page about our joint responsibilities

I work in content management, and I share identical and equal responsibilities with one other person, “A.” Because of the way we divide up our work (each of us spend equal hours on the necessary tasks every week), I have noticed that A works at a slower pace than I do. This is fine in theory — I would just get whatever I needed to get done in my time frame and A should be able to take over where I leave off.

My problem is that the work A is completing is actually creating additional work for the both of us. Our work relies on an outside vendor who is fairly unreliable, and the product we receive is partly determined by how details our instructions are to them. In an ideal world, they would need minimal instructions at this point, but as it stands they need careful scrutiny and feedback. My partner doesn’t have time for this (we do have other work to handle, separately, other than what we share) and so when we get some bad product back, I have to spend more time fixing it.

A and I have a good relationship, and we know that our vendor is bad, but A insists that they need to improve, rather than the fact that we’re still on the hook for the quality of the output, which is the stance I take and why I spend more time in the upstream part of the process to try to mitigate the errors that come after. So what can I do? It’s frustrating to do repeat work, and I feel like A and I do need to be on the same page on this, because we’re both responsible for the same thing, and there is a time-sensitive component to getting our product delivered (so it reflects equally badly on me when things don’t get done). Do I need to get my manager involved at this point?

Yes, I think so. Part of your manager’s job is to help resolve things like this, and you don’t really have the authority to solve it on your own. I’d approach your manager and lay out what you laid out there. Approach it collaboratively, as if you’re searching for a solution to any other business problem you might bring to her.

5. Having to work when everyone else is being paid to be on vacation

I’m a salaried, non-exempt employee, and my employer is closed down for two weeks over the holidays. If I’m expected to work a day or two during that time, am I entitled to either receive comp time or additional pay for the hours I work? These two weeks are paid staff holidays for all full-time employees.

Legally, there’s no requirement for that. However, you could certainly approach your manager and say, “I’m missing out on two days of holiday pay that everyone else is getting since I’ll be working those days. Is it possible for me to take those two days in January (or later) instead?”

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update from the person on a performance improvement plan

by Alison Green on December 11, 2013

Remember the letter-writer wondering what to do after being put on a performance improvement plan? That writer also wrote in earlier in the year about what to do when a potential mentor isn’t responding to your emails. Here the update on both situations.

When I was put on the Improvement Plan, I emailed the woman I hoped would be my mentor, in a sort of last-ditch effort to connect. And she responded! She apologized for being absent for my other requests, and we began meeting monthly (I learned that scheduling far in advance helps carve time in her busy schedule that she can stick to). We discuss goals, and she acts as a really great sounding board for my interactions with coworkers and supervisors. I’m still working on extending my peer network, but I think this is a good start.

The Improvement Plan update is a bit more involved. I DID make it successfully through the PIP. It was difficult, and included a lot of hands-on management by my supervisor and another Director. After the month was over, I was feeling good, though my ego was bruised by the whole ordeal.

However, it quickly became apparent that every time I made a mistake (no matter the impact), I got wrapped into larger conversations and meetings about the Improvement Plan. I’d run situations and conversations past my mentor, and she would tell me I was doing everything correctly to respond to mistakes, and establish new processes in my own work plan. We came to the conclusion that my supervisor had a negative opinion of me that I probably wasn’t going to be able to change. For example, she would wonder how I “let a typo happen,” instead of focusing on how I fixed the issue within minutes of noticing the error, and before anyone saw the mistake publicly. It got to the point where I got physically anxious and nervous each time I saw my boss, wondering what I’d have to defend. I began intensifying my job search, and had a few interviews that didn’t pan out into offers.

About 4 months after the initial Improvement Plan conversation, they decided it wasn’t working, and I was let go. Honestly, I was relieved more than anything. I’d already reshuffled my finances, and could get by if I tightened my budget for awhile. I just wish I had found a new job before being let go. I was on unemployment for 6 weeks, applying for jobs every day, and going on interviews. Being away from the old environment really illuminated other issues I had been ignoring, because I really was in “survival mode.” In the overall organization, everyone was doing the job of at least 2 people, and the Executive Director wasn’t interested in changing things to make it more manageable. Morale was extremely low for most employees, and it was definitely a toxic situation for me.

But there IS good news after all of that! I received a job offer ON MY BIRTHDAY and have been in my new position for about a month at a larger and more corporate company. I now have a very manageable amount of work, and a supervisor who gives me the space to stretch my skills, and do what I was hired to do. I even make 30% more at this job than I did before. Overall, I’m thrilled to be where I am, and am working hard to make sure I thrive at this job. Thank you again for all of your advice, and I hope I can be an example of someone who can rise from an awful situation into something pretty great. :)

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my boss keeps asking me for input on coworkers’ performance — and then firing them

by Alison Green on December 11, 2013

A reader writes:

I’m a software analyst. I’ve had a situation come up twice now at work, where my manager has asked me my opinion of a particular coworker, and then discussed her general opinions with me about their performance. Soon after each conversation, the person got fired!

Each time, I said my opinion, but tried to be diplomatic. In the first case, I felt the person had some weak areas that were impacting team productivity. In the more recent case though, I thought the person was a good asset to our team. It was clear that my manager had already made up her mind and was trying to get me to validate what she already thought. I finally said that I personally had no issues with this employee, but if she had concerns that it was worth it to speak to that person. A few days later, the person had been let go and my other teammates kept asking me if I knew why. In my opinion, it seemed like it was more of a personality clash.

Should I be concerned that she is having these conversations with me? In a way, I guess it’s flattering, but I’m not completely comfortable being put in this position, especially when I don’t always agree with the outcome. I’m also afraid that if I don’t agree with my manager’s opinions that it will affect me negatively down the line. Should I say something the next time, or just keep my mouth shut?

It’s not unreasonable for a manager to seek out input on an employee from that person’s coworkers. That kind of information can be useful in confirming that there’s a problem, surfacing problems the manager didn’t know about, or providing new insight or a different perspective.

And it’s possible that that’s what your manager has been doing — although I’m inclined to think it’s not, based on two things: your manager discussing her own opinions about the person’s performance with you (which is generally inappropriate, unless your role or some other context requires you to be part of that conversation), and the fact that the person was fired only days later (which makes it more likely that she was seeking validation of a decision she’d already made).

That said, it’s also important to realize that managers do need to fire people at times, and in at least one of these two cases, it sounds like that might not have been an unreasonable outcome. (It’s possible that it was reasonable in the second case too; there’s not enough here to know.)

As for how to handle this if it happens again, it really depends on what you’re comfortable with. If you’re worried that candor will jeopardize that person’s job, you can frame it in terms of what they need to help them do a better job — for instance, “I think Jane would get a lot of benefit out of shadowing some field organizers, so that she has more background when she’s writing about our campaigns.” And you can also emphasize what you think the person’s strengths are — “I know it’s taken Jane a while to get comfortable with our writing style, but her ability to explain sea lion politics in layperson’s terms has been invaluable.”

Alternately, if you’d prefer to get more context first, you can ask, “Why do you ask?” and see what she says. (A good answer would be, “I”m trying to flesh out my perspective on her work so that I can give her more useful feedback, and you work closely with her and generally have good insights about what will help someone succeed here.” A bad answer would be if this triggers her to simply vent about the person.)

Or, you can be studiously neutral: “What I’ve seen seems good” or “I don’t work closely enough with her to really have much of an opinion” or whatever else you could credibly say.

Along with the above, I’d also take a look at what you know about your manager aside from this. Is she generally a thoughtful, fair decision-maker? Is she volatile? Does she form an opinion early and refuse to change it? Is she reasonable? In other words, don’t look at these two recent situations in a vacuum; make them part of the overall landscape of what you know about your manager, and guide yourself accordingly.

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how to stop procrastinating and get your work done

by Alison Green on December 11, 2013

If you often find you still haven’t started that project that you had intended to do days earlier, if you have trouble simply sitting down and starting a piece of work, or if you often do less-urgent work as more important deadlines are approaching, you’re probably a procrastinator.

And you have lots of company. After all, it’s tempting to think, “I’ll get to that tomorrow” and do something you’d rather spend time on instead. Most people procrastinate at least occasionally, but if it’s interfering with your ability to perform at the level you’re capable of and accomplish the things you want to do, it’s time to take action:

1. Think about the consequences of not doing the work sooner. Putting off work means you might end up missing a deadline, doing a halfhearted job, letting someone down or staying up all night to finish a project. It could also affect the way you’re seen professionally or in your personal life. Make sure you think about these consequences. Your might find that simply reminding yourself of how miserable you’ll be cramming to finish something at the last minute can be enough to get you to start working on it earlier.

2. Resolve to work in small chunks. With procrastination, the hardest part is often just getting started. Tell yourself that you’re going to sit down and work on a project for just a small chunk of time – one hour, or even just 15 minutes. Much of the time, you’ll end up working longer than that because getting started is the hardest part, and it’s easier to get started if it doesn’t feel like you’re making an enormous time commitment.

3. Set yourself interim deadlines. Break projects into pieces and resolve to get one piece done per day (or per week or whatever makes sense for you). For instance, rather than just think, “I have to clean out the whole filing system,” decide to do one file drawer a day. While the entirety of a large project can be intimidating enough that it feels easier to put it off, it’s much harder to be intimidated by a small piece of the project.

4. Don’t strive for perfection. It’s a lot harder to get started on a task when you think the work needs to be perfect. So don’t even aim for great – just aim to get the work started. For example, if you have to write a report, sit down with the goal of simply getting words on paper without worrying about how good they are. You can go back and revise later, which will be a lot easier once you have something to work from.

5. Enlist a partner. If you have a friend or co-worker who also struggles with procrastination, agree to help each other out. Jointly commit to spending one hour each working on whatever you’ve been putting off, and then check in on each other at the end of the hour to ensure you each kept your commitment.

6. Commit to deadlines. Tell your boss you’re going to have that report draft to her by Wednesday, even if there wasn’t previously a deadline attached to it, or announce publicly to your team that you’ll have the new filing system ready this week. Of course, don’t do this unless you trust in your ability to follow through – otherwise you could end up as a procrastinator and someone who doesn’t meet commitments.

7. Create rewards for yourself. Don’t let yourself watch the next episode of that TV series you’re binge-watching until you complete half an hour of work on the project you’ve been putting off – but then reward yourself with a guilt-free viewing. You can also reward yourself with a walk, a cupcake or whatever else motivates you.

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how can I get employees to stop saving all their vacation time for December, I don’t want my photos on my company’s Facebook page, and more

by Alison Green on December 11, 2013

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

1. How can I get employees to stop saving all their vacation time for December?

I am an office manager for a small company (under 10 employees). Every year it seems we run into the same problem – everyone wants to use their vacation time in December (we have a “use it or lose it” vacation policy). The line of work that we are in requires that we bill clients hourly. It has already been a tight year and it will be tough to make payroll if half or more of the company is leaving us without billable hours. How do we avoid this situation without upsetting employees?

Let people know in advance: “We often need all hands on deck in December, which means that we can’t promise vacation time will be approved that month. While we’ll make every attempt to do so, the reality is that we might not be able to approve more than a couple of days off per person that month. People are strongly encouraged to use all or most of their vacation time before December for that reason.”

And for this year, assuming you didn’t warn people in advance this time around, if you can’t approve all of the requested time-off in December, make a one-time exception to your “use it or lose it” policy and let them roll it over to next year (or until March, or whatever seems reasonable).

2. I don’t want my photos on my company’s Facebook page

My company wants to post employee pictures on Facebook. I do not want mine posted that were taken at company functions. I am a big guy and would be embarrassed to have them on Facebook worldwide.

The date of an employee snapped a few shots at a function and emailed them to us the day after. Our company posted them the company Facebook page but did not tell us they were going to be posted there for advertising. I asked the company to remove them and they did, but now they are mad and telling us in the future they want to post pictures from company functions. Can they post them?

Yes, they can — but you can certainly have a conversation with whoever is in charge of posting the photos and explain that you’re uncomfortable with it. If you’re polite about it and simply explain that you’re self-conscious about having your picture up, reasonable people won’t force you to do it.

3. Can I include event planning for personal events on my resume?

I have planned a wedding for 70 people (somewhat traditional: invites, photographer, DJ, food, renting a space, etc.; we didn’t use an all-in-one place). It was mine, which removes some credibility, I know. I am also in charge of organizing our family’s parties. We’re talking about emailing everyone to make sure they know the where, when, what and, specifically, organizing who gets to cook what for New Year’s Eve (nothing too onerous) and handling the whole logistics of a weekend away in the summer: renting the place, getting a head count, deciding the menu, buying the groceries, dispatching the cooking and cleaning duties (hey, it’s my weekend off too!), paying for the place, calculating the amount each person owes me (since I’m centralizing all the purchases).

Could any or all of these experiences count as managing a project or organizing an event? And if so, how would I go about presenting it on a résumé?

I wouldn’t. It does reflect organization and the ability to juggle lots of details, but it’s the kind of thing that so many people do in the course of normal life that it doesn’t really hit the bar for “personal stuff that is resume-worthy.” Even if these events were unusually involved, it would look a little silly and likely hurt more than help.

4. Handling an upcoming work trip when I’m getting ready to resign

My current manager wants to schedule a work trip out of state for me. However, I am currently in negotiations for a position with a different company. (I have been waiting for an opening at this company for 2 years!) I expect to start with the new company before/around the time that this trip is to take place. I have tried suggesting that someone else go in my stead, but she isn’t budging. What do I do?

Proceed as you would if you weren’t expecting to take a new job. Until you have a firm agreement with the other company (meaning an offer that’s been made and accepted, with all terms agreed to, and a start date), you have to proceed as if it might not happen. If it does (and hopefully it will), then at that point you can talk with your manager and figure out how to handle the trip. But it’s generally a bad idea to make work decisions on the assumption that you’ll be in a new job soon, until that is actually 100% confirmed.

(And once that happens, your current job will survive. They’ll cancel the trip or send someone else in your place, and this is a normal cost of doing business. The exception would be if they were, say, planning to send you to Alaska for a year or something else very long-term.)

5. How to explain I don’t want to grow professionally right now

I am unsure how to handle a situation in year-end performance reviews. I work for a large Fortune 500 company and am truly blessed with a position I am very happy with, great teammates, and a supervisor who is great and really encourages all of us to grow into learning new skills, new technology and is supportive if we want to pursue other opportunities within the company, including overseas assignments. I started about 18 months ago, so my review last year was based on about 7-8 months of the year. This year is my first full year and I feel I have hit all the goals we agreed upon for 2013.

My question/problem is this. My manager will inquire about my thoughts on growing, etc. I don’t know how to tell her that I am content and happy where I am at, and risk sounding like I don’t want to grow into other areas or consider an overseas assignment. A colleague recently transitioned to another department and some of her projects will fall on me, which I am excited about as there are some new skill sets that I will learn by taking over these projects for the next 18-24+ months. I feel if I tell her I am happy in my current role she may take that as a negative and feel I don’t want to grow and not fill me in about a new position or assignment that may come up. I don’t want her to think she can’t approach me about new opportunities, as I would like to be the one that gets approached and decide if it is right for my career path and my family’s goals. For example, we have two small kids at home in addition to a husband who is transitioning to a new career in 2014, and right now is not the right time to take an overseas assignment, but perhaps in 2-3 years would be ideal. I just feel I run the risk of blacklisting myself if I answer/present my goals in the wrong light.

This is all in how you frame it. Don’t say “I don’t want to grow right now, but maybe later.” Instead, say, “I’m really excited about getting better at XYZ (stuff you’re currently doing) and taking on Jane’s projects now that she’s changed teams.” And if she asks about something that you’re specifically not interested in right now, like overseas work, it’s fine to explain that you’d be excited to talk about it in 2-3 years but that right now you’re more excited about ___. (And especially with overseas work, it’s very normal and understandable to need to time it with other things in your life.)

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update about the micromanaging boss who wanted all calls taken on speaker phone

by Alison Green on December 10, 2013

Remember the reader in October who asked if her micromanaging boss could be rehabilitated? Among other problems, the boss wanted to review our reader’s emails to colleagues and wanted her to take all her phone calls on speaker phone. Here’s the update:

I met with my boss and followed your advice, asking if she had concerns about my work, and whether we can try having her pull back. You won’t believe this: she was completely stunned and mortified. She said that she did not ever rewrite or was that involved with my work! (That in itself was the most shocking part of this whole thing.) She said she was sorry I felt this way and thanked me for being honest; she said she would most definitely pull back.

Of course, I was a little skeptical, since it hadn’t happened after the initial meeting. But lo and behold, she did. She completely stopped rewriting everything and wanting to be looped in on meetings or phone calls or emails.

And then, unbelievably, I DID end up getting that promotion. Things have been much better; it was almost as if she was reading all of the reader comments and trying to change her management style. Since it’s only been a month, I’m not 100% optimistic or anything; I know she might revert back to her old behavior. But so far, so good. I am allowed much more autonomy and decision making, and I am definitely happier. (Which is a good thing, because upper management could care less about issues like this, and if the talk didn’t go well, I was ready to send out resumes.)

Thank you so much for your sage advice on how to approach my boss, as well as all of your readers who commiserated and reminded me that I was not being overly sensitive.

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