Ask a Manager

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

1. My husband’s coworker is a jerk to me

At my husband’s company party, a colleague of his got quite drunk and started asking me really demeaning questions. I shut it down politely and quickly, and chalked it up to a one-off irritation. Yet every time I go into the office now, this person seems to come at me in some mean-spirited way.

My husband has been with his company for over 10 years and is otherwise quite happy there. The company has a strong retention rate in part because they love sponsoring events for the whole family, and they encourage family members to participate in fundraising or outreach campaigns- think “come in and help wrap presents for shelters,” etc. I’ve happily attended and been a part of these activities for a long time, and will often chat with his coworkers when I pick my husband up at the end of his day to go to dinner or a nearby show.

I am, however, now reluctant to go into the office, and events I was once looking forward to I am now dreading and will probably back out of.

I know the first question is “is your husband having an affair?” and I can say for certain that he is not, and I don’t feel threatened by this coworker in that way. I don’t know why they’ve decided to basically bully me, and I am really confused and saddened by it.

But this isn’t my workplace, and their behavior isn’t directed at anyone in the company. Is there anything I can do, or do I just resign myself to missing the party until my husband gets a new job?

There’s nothing you can do since you don’t work there, but there are potentially actions your husband can take. It depends on exactly what the coworker is saying to you, though. How subtle or flagrant is the rudeness? The closer it is to the “flagrant” end of the scale, the more standing your husband has to report it to someone (like his boss or HR); some companies have anti-bullying policies and even if those don’t explicitly apply to non-employees, his company would probably be unhappy to hear an employee is waging a campaign of hostility against an coworker’s spouse at work events. Otherwise, though, is your husband up for saying something to the coworker directly? Whether or not to do this depends on things like their seniority relative to each other and the workplace politics there, but in a lot of cases your husband could (and should) tell them they need to leave you alone at future work events.

2. How do I tell my boss I can’t afford to live in our town?

I live in a town that is considered a very trendy destination for outdoor sports like hiking and mountain biking. When we moved here 10 years ago, it was mostly locals and folks from the nearby major city who came to enjoy our beautiful town, but thanks to marketing, making several “Best Places” lists, and a lot of aggressive real estate development, our town is now filling up with high-priced condos. Real estate prices have skyrocketed, and rentals, when they are available at all, are triple what they were when we moved here. We were lucky to rent an affordable place eight years ago, with modest increases in rent each year. And now our luck has run out.

The house we live in is being sold and we will have to move. We have been looking like crazy for a new place but it is pretty much impossible. Our rent was $2,000 a month for three bedrooms for my husband, daughter and I, and we had a roommate to share costs. Now we can’t get even a one-bedroom at that price and three-bedroom units are going for $5,000. I am the only one employed in our house (husband is unable to work due to health issues, daughter is a student) and I am making $62,000 a year. The kicker? I work for our local municipal government. (We live in Canada.)

Right now I am able to work remotely two days a week. I do not want to quit my job! Especially since we are trying to find a new place to live and will most likely have to move a couple of hours away (other cities close by are just as expensive). My ideal would be to go entirely remote, with maybe a few on-site visits a couple of times a year, depending on where we end up. Most of my job can be done remotely (records management) and we recently hired a clerk who could take up the on-site work. How do I frame this to my boss? Can I just say that I can no longer to afford to live in our town but I’d like to keep my job? How do I make this sound like it’s not all about me? I’ve been here four years and am the lead on a large scale project that will last at least a few more years and am the only one in our department with the knowledge to implement the system I’m working on.

Yep, be straightforward about it: “I’ve been priced out by the increase in rents and I can’t afford to keep living here. I’ll most likely need to move, but I like my work and don’t want to leave it. Would you be open to me moving to full-time remote with occasional on-site visits, so that I’m able to both afford housing and stay in my job?”

If your boss isn’t already aware of the situation (which is unlikely), she needs to be.

Some municipal governments have residency rules where you need to live in the city/county you work for, but I’m guessing you’d know if that were the case (and if yours does, this is probably going to hit them in a big way pretty soon).

3. Our gift to a retiring manager was a pile of cash

When I joined my current employer, I joined a team of 15 people, with Bob as the boss. Half a year later, the group was split, and Bob went with the other half. So for the two years since the split, I haven’t reported to him, but I work closely with some of his team members.

Recently, Bob retired. The groups wanted to surprise him with a gift. I would have been okay with donating for a gifted item — like a comfy folding chair since he loves fishing, or a fine wine, something like that.

However, the gift organizer decided the gift should be cash. Just a wad of cash with a bow around it. And honestly, it irked me when they asked me to donate cash for someone who earned way more than me, and who owns a home, travels a lot, and is set up for a comfy retirement (Bob told us about his plans often.)

I managed to sneak out of donating. But should I have spoken up? The whole situation felt icky. What can I say if something similar comes up again?

A pile of a cash with a bow around it is really, uh, laying bare what gifting up sometimes is. And yes, it’s tacky!

Whether to speak up depends on how much capital you felt like spending and how much you think it would have taken to convince your coworkers to change course … but all else being equal, it would be a good thing to speak up about! Sample language: “I’d be willing to contribute to a gifted item like X or Y, but I don’t think we should give cash to people above us in the hierarchy, and I think it’ll make Bob uncomfortable too! How about doing X or Y instead?” Chances are good that at least some of your coworkers would agree with you; sometimes, though, it takes one person speaking up first for others to be willing to say something themselves.

4. Do I need to reply when my boss texts me after I have called in sick?

I work in a cafeteria in a hospital and called off work sick according to policy. I was surprised to get a text from my boss “reminding” me that she is checking attendance and asking if I know how many times I have missed work this year. She did not ask me why (although there has been a cold/flu virus going around our department). Is it okay for her to do that? I feel like she is trying to force me to come in without even knowing what my reason was for staying home. And do I need to answer her?

It’s only “okay” in the sense that it’s legal and there’s nothing preventing her from doing it, but it’s not actually okay; it’s a crappy thing to do and bad management. If she has concerns about how many days of work you’re missing, she should raise that with you when you’re back at work, not while you’re home sick.

You don’t need to respond until you’re back at work. Once you are, you should say, “Do you have concerns about the number of days off I’ve taken this year? As far as I know, I’m within our regular allotment.”

5. What’s up with this rejection?

I applied for an administrative assistant job with a big university. It was in a job newsletter and you had to apply through their website, so everything was normal. I interviewed in person where you had to drive downtown and find parking in a huge construction area. The interview was with five people, and they said it might take two weeks to go through the HR bureaucracy before they could say anything. Two weeks come and go, and I checked in each week with the director who was in the interview each week, who seemed to not have any new info.

Then I got an email that said in part, “Due to unforeseen circumstances, it has been determined that this position will not be filled as advertised. We apologize for the inconvenience this may have caused.”

It was budget-approved, posted online, in-person interview with five people, and this is what they say? Not “While your qualifications were great, we went with someone who was a better fit” or something? I’ve never heard of an HR response like that before. Do you have an idea what might be going on?

It’s almost certainly exactly what they said: They’ve decided not to fill the position. It’s probably for budget reasons, but it could be a different kind of internal change too — a reshuffling, a hiring freeze, a decision to do something different with the role, all sorts of possibilities. It’s actually not that weird — it happens sometimes. They went through the whole process because they intended to hire, and then something changed and now they aren’t.

They were reasonably transparent — about the upshot, at least, which is the part that’s relevant to you — and that’s a good thing! There’s no reason for them to make up a cover story about hiring someone else when they didn’t.

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

1. My coworker keeps sending out questionable Covid advice

I work for a completely remote team but we have our annual all-staff retreat coming up next month, and with Covid cases rising again, it’s been coming up in conversation. For context, we are not in the medical field and no one I work with has any medical training. I’m also fully vaxxed and boosted and completely support Covid safety measures, including masking when needed and frequent testing.

But a coworker of mine, Lee, has taken it upon themself to be the Covid advice person, sending recommendations and reminders in both our team and all-staff Teams chats in advance of the retreat. They’ve recommended folks get their bivalent booster if they haven’t gotten one recently, getting their flu shot in August, using nasal sprays and taking zinc to prevent Covid spread. I have a few issues with this!

1. They’re recommending folks who haven’t gotten another bivalent vax in the last six months get one now, without acknowledging it is less effective than the monovalent vax that could be made available as soon as this week! And that may limit people from getting a more effective vax this season. (Note from Alison so this doesn’t confuse anyone: The CDC did announce a new booster shot on Tuesday; this letter was received before that happened.)
2. The largely accepted medical guidance recommends getting your flu shot at the end of September/October to be most effective.
3. Nasal sprays and zinc have been found effective at preventing Covid in a few small studies, but neither the FDA nor the CDC have officially recommended these because there is simply not enough evidence.

What really threw me off was that today, the head of my department said, “Listen to Lee on all things Covid prevention and health guidance!” It came off as a joke but just like — no! I think Lee might be high-risk or live with high-risk family, so I completely understand taking as many precautions as possible. But that is a personal decision and I don’t think I should be encouraged to take measures that aren’t currently FDA- or CDC-approved. How can I bring this up and with who, without sounding like I’m resistant to safety measures? FWIW, we are required to test before arriving at the retreat, and every day before activities. Masks are optional but I plan on masking!

Two options: The first, and best, is to talk to whoever’s in a position to intervene (and who you trust to have the judgment to do it well). That might be your boss, Lee’s boss, or an HR type, depending on your workplace. Say something like, “I strongly support Covid safety measures, but some of the recommendations Lee has been sending out contradict the advice from the FDA and CDC, and some could even make people less safe, like recommending they get vaxxed last week, which could have made them ineligible for the more effective vax that’s about to be released. I think we’d be better off limiting all-staff medical advice to what’s being put out by official sources, rather than letting one person send out their own medical advice to the whole staff. It’s starting to feel like what Lee sends is semi-sanctioned by the company and I don’t think the company would actually stand behind some of it.”

If that doesn’t work or doesn’t feel like an option, the other option is to say something similar to Lee themself. In theory you could also reply to some of the most egregious messages (“getting boosted right now may make people ineligible for the updated vax that’s coming out this month”) … but it shouldn’t be your job to do that and it risks getting into a war of facts, which isn’t what you want.

2. I play in a church band and the director’s guitar is always out of tune

I have a problem that has never ceased to perplex and torment me. I volunteer as an instrumentalist in a relatively small church band. I love playing in it, but I am defeated by one issue: The band’s director (my boss — he gets paid, I volunteer) has an electric guitar that is ALWAYS out of tune. And not in an ordinary way. It’s so noticeable that I sometimes glance at the congregation as he hits a chord, only to see looks of barely stifled horror on some faces. I don’t really know what to do. It’s like the emperor’s new clothes. Everyone knows how bad the guitar sounds, but nobody says anything. It’s not my place to tell him that his guitar regularly tortures people (including myself), but we simply cannot go on like this. Any ideas?

I don’t know, I think this is awesome and would leave it alone just to watch people’s faces and to see how long it would take someone in the congregation to speak up.

But if you do want to address it, just being really straightforward is the way to go: “Hey, I think your guitar needs to be tuned.”

I suspect you’re making it more complicated than that in your head, because you know how ridiculously bad the guitar sounds and so it feels like you can’t bring it up without including “the congregation is literally in physical pain from your instrument” and implying “it’s astonishing that you yourself don’t hear this” … but really, you can just keep it quick and matter-of-fact, similar to the way you could say “there’s something on your shoe” without adding “and the smell is making everyone hate you.”

Updated to add: Musicians on Twitter suggest, “Something sounds off” or “Do you have a tuning app on your phone?” or “Can we check our tuning?”

Read an update to this letter. 

3. How to describe mostly remote work in job postings

You’ve answered several questions about remote jobs that aren’t really remote. I am struggling with how to describe the opposite situation in my job postings — jobs that are in-substance fully remote, but where we want candidates to live within 1-2 hours of our headquarters and reserve the right to ask people to come in occasionally.

Most of our experienced staff members on our team of 12 only come to the office once every few months. We have some folks who haven’t been to anything in-person in over a year! At the same time, there are some tasks that require in-office work such as checking the mail each week, but we have always had several employees who prefer a hybrid format who handle that when they are in the office. Also, when we hire new staff, in-person training for the first few weeks is often more effective than remote training over screenshare, so the team will usually rotate who comes in each day to work with the new staff, with each experienced staff member spending 1-2 days with the new hire.

It seems misleading and harmful to our recruiting efforts to describe the position as “hybrid” in the job posting when most of the team is in-person less than five business days a year. Candidates would read the posting, assume the in person requirement is closer to a specific days per week requirement, and pass on applying. In my mind, the job is accurately described as remote, in the same way that I wouldn’t feel the need to disclose in a job posting that a job required visiting a nearby warehouse every December for year-end inventory. At the same time, I don’t want to have candidates apply from out of the area or have them feel misled when we do ask for a few in-person days per year.

What is the best way to describe a job that is in-substance remote, where the term hybrid would be misleading?

“Mostly remote” — and then explain what you mean. “While this position is mostly remote, we’re seeking candidates based within two hours of our headquarters in Souptown because of occasional in-office work (including your initial training and occasionally training others — generally about five days per year).” If you’re advertising somewhere that only offers remote/hybrid/on-site as options for categorizing the job, pick “remote” and then include the explanatory text in the posting itself.

4. When does “this fell in my lap” not work?

I know you’ve frequently recommended using the “this fell in my lap and was too good of an opportunity to pass up” phrasing when you are resigning for a new job at a time that’s inconvenient for your employer or soon after accepting a promotion/raise/big new project/etc. at work. I’ve always assumed that the unspoken subtext is that “this fell in my lap [since I accepted that promotion/raise/project].”

Does this work, or is there another formula you’d suggest, in cases when, for whatever reason, people will know that you must have been in the hiring process for the new position for longer than that? I’m thinking small industries where everyone knows what jobs are posted when, or something like higher ed where everyone knows that a hiring process will have taken months.

It still works! You’re not really saying, “I was just minding my own business, not interviewing at all, when a stranger on the street walked up to me and offered me a job.” The implication is more, “I wasn’t actively looking but an opportunity came across my path and it made sense for me to talk with them, and they ended up offering it to me.” The idea is, “I wasn’t actively doing everything in my power to leave, but this specific job was too compelling for me to pass up” and a bit of “and I didn’t know they’d offer it to me when I accepted the promotion with you” (which might be especially plausible in fields with long hiring processes).

5. How much do I need to suffer before an accommodation is considered ineffective?

I have a disability that cannot be objectively measured. At what point can I tell my employer that the accommodation they’ve offered me is ineffective? I’ve lived most of my life with pain and fatigue, so I am used to pushing myself to the point of making me miserable, but I would much rather not.

Related to that, is it my responsibility to come up with an accommodation they like? What happens if we can’t come up with one that is both effective and that they approve of? Can they fire me or refuse to let me come back to work until I and/or a doctor says that it’s fine?

Ideally, employers would want to work together to find the most effective one, but we all know that often doesn’t happen in real life. For this question, please assume a hostile HR and upper management, because that’s what many of us people with disabilities deal with.

The law says your employer needs to engage in an “interactive dialogue” with you, meaning that they can propose an accommodation and you can say “that won’t work because of X, but what about Y” (and vice versa) and they need to engage in that process in good faith. The law also says they can’t simply reject all the accommodations that would work (or fire you over it or refuse you let you return to work) unless they can show accepting would cause them “undue hardship” (the bar for which is pretty high and the burden of proof for which is on the employer).

Now, obviously in real life things don’t always work the way the law says they need to — and if they’re not working that way, that’s a good time to talk to a lawyer, who can do anything from advising you behind-the-scenes to negotiating with the company on your behalf to pursuing legal action if that becomes necessary.

There’s no clearly defined answer to “how much do I need to suffer before an accommodation is considered ineffective?” but in general the law doesn’t say you need to suffer at all. You might need to tolerate a little inconvenience (for example, a shift that isn’t your ideal but doesn’t aggravate your condition) but that’s a different thing than pain and suffering.