Ask a Manager

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

1. My coworkers stole another coworker’s car keys

This is not a situation I currently have to deal with, just one that I know about involving a group where I will be applying for a supervisory position. Would like to know how you would handle this.

One employee laid her keys down on a shelf as she went to the bathroom. When she came out she couldn’t find them, and looked everywhere. She was about to call her husband to bring her extra set of keys to her and another employee overheard her. The other employee admitted that she took the keys, and along with another employee, had devised a plan to get in the other employee’s car (Brand new Cadillac Escalade – not that it matters but still) and move it into another parking space where she couldn’t find it. Luckily, they did not do that.

How would you deal with this? Let it die, or talk to them about it and set expectations? I don’t know how to handle it (if I need to).

Are they all friendly and this was an affectionate prank that would have been well received? If so, I don’t see why a manager would need to intervene, unless the pranking got out of hand. But if they’re not all friendly and/or this wasn’t intended warmly, that’s not okay, and the manager should make it clear that people can’t take other people’s property, even in jest.

2. I think I witnessed a drug deal at work

Earlier this month, my roommate and coworker “Christina” invited several other coworkers for a party at our apartment. People smoked marijuana, which is something I am strongly against (I didn’t have a say in it at the time). Today, one of the newer coworkers, “Max,” with whom Christina is friends, stopped by “Jessica’s” cube. Jessica attended the party and smoked. While Jessica does float in several different departments, Max is new enough that he doesn’t have much reason to speak to Jessica yet. The main connection would be through Christina. Max and Jessica were talking in extremely hushed tones (Max is normally very loud), they left the area for a couple of minutes, and Max walked away with his hands in his pockets. Based on their behavior, I’m fairly certain I overheard a drug deal or the set-up for a later meeting. I privately messaged another coworker after Max left and she said she had the impression that I did, that either a deal took place or was planned to.

Our company policy expressly prohibits the possession, trafficking, use or influence of intoxicants and other behavior-affecting substances while at work. Is this situation something I should bring to HR or management? I did not witness an exchange of money or anything, but it was rather uncomfortable and distracting to overhear/see such out of the ordinary conversation and actions.

If I’m reading this correctly, you saw a hushed conversation and Max had his hands in his pockets. That … isn’t really evidence of anything. Many people walk around with their hands in their pockets and speak quietly on occasion. There’s nothing to report here.

I wonder if what’s happening is that you’re disturbed by what happened in your apartment and you’re now interpreting people’s behavior through that lens. Not wanting marijuana use in your apartment is absolutely legitimate and you should talk to your roommate about it so that she knows that it’s not okay to do that again. But other than that … well, you now know that some people you work with use marijuana in their non-work hours (which was probably true of previous coworkers you’ve had; the difference is that now you know about it). But I’d handle this by establishing some house rules with your roommate, not by putting your coworkers under a cloud of suspicion (unless you see real proof that you should).

(In the interest of full disclosure, I strongly oppose imprisoning adults for using marijuana in the privacy of their own homes … but it’s not okay to conduct drug deals at work, and it would be reasonable for your employer to take action if that were happening. The issue here is that there’s no compelling evidence that it is.)

Read an update to this letter here.

3. Asked to work all weekend after I resigned

I have a question about where it is acceptable to say I cannot work overtime. I recently gave 3 weeks + notice to my employer and will be leaving this job for various reasons, but mostly because I feel they completely take advantage of their employees. I gave so much notice because there is a deadline I would like to finish out and didn’t want to completely screw them.

Today (Thursday) we got notice that a consultant wants some work to them by Christmas day (today is Dec. 19, this is not in our contract with them, and their office will closed for the next 2 weeks) and my boss said OK, then told me I would be working the entire weekend. I said I didn’t think I could as I have plans this weekend that I have had for months. I’m an exempt employee, live in California, and I typically work 45-50 hours a week and am very underpaid. 

Is it acceptable to say hey I have plans this weekend I can’t work? Or am I required to work the overtime?

Totally acceptable. What are they going to do, fire you? You’ve already resigned. I suppose it’s possible that it could affect the reference they give you, but if they’re the type to do that, I question how reliable they would have been for a good reference anyway.

Say, “I’m sorry, I’ll help as much as I can in my time remaining, and in fact I pushed back my start date at my new job by a week to give you extra notice, but I have another commitment this weekend that I can’t break.”

4. Is my boss engaging in sex discrimination?

I work as a recruiter for a small company in the staffing industry. The company consists of about 75 people and the executive staff and upper management is male dominated. The one woman in place as an executive also makes up what “HR” we have, and she is very tight with the rest of management.

I have been in line for a promotion and am hoping to receive it soon, which often requires that I put in extra hours at the office (for which I am not paid overtime, and I am an hourly employee, but that’s a separate issue). One evening recently around 6 p.m. I started to pack up and my manager asked why I was leaving “so soon” and mentioned the other people (men) in the office staying late. Now, not only do I commute but I also take much longer than a man to make myself presentable for a professional environment. My response was “Unfortunately I have about an hour a day less than male coworker A and male coworker B (who I was being compared to) because I have to get ready and make sure I’m presentable in this professional environment. This probably applies to any female — she will take more time to get ready.” The real reason I was leaving “early” was because I had to wash my hair, etc. His response was “Well, maybe I will just hire guys then.” He said it with a joking tone, but there have been other comments in the past that make me feel as if he thinks of women as less capable. I should probably also tell you that he is Mormon and has a stay at home wife and 9 children, which could add to his negative opinion of women in the workplace.

What should I do in this situation? These types of comments make me want to tell him what an idiot he is (he is for other reasons, too many to explain here) and without any type of HR it’s hard to report him. I firmly believe the woman executive I mentioned wouldn’t support me if I told her this was happening. Sometimes I feel that even though I have earned a promotion, he’s withholding it and I may not receive it even though I worked harder than anyone in my department for it and he regularly dangled in front of me. If I do receive my promotion, I will be responsible for managing junior employees and it’s possible he could make my future team so uncomfortable that they continue to leave (we as a company have very high turnover). Thought, suggestions, advice?

I don’t know if this guy shows gender bias or not, but you saying that you need to leave work earlier than men because you have more grooming needs than they do is not exactly conducive to a bias-free workplace. And a joking comment in reply to your assertion isn’t evidence of discrimination on his part.

Frankly, you’re lucky that’s all he said — plenty of managers, me included, would have told you that citing grooming needs in this context was ridiculous, as well as a really damaging (and inaccurate) way to portray women as a group.

5. Job offers with no mention of salary

Is it normal practice for companies to make offers without knowing what the salary is?

No, not at all — but like every bad practice, it does happen sometimes. If someone offers you a job and doesn’t mention the salary, you should say, “Thank you so much for the offer. I’m very interested in the work. What salary are you offering?”

It’s five short answers to five short questions: the holiday questions edition. Here we go…

1. My home office hid their Christmas party from us

We just found out that our home office had a swanky Christmas party for their entire office and only select members of my branch office. The worst part of all of this, is that the people who were invited and attended from my office, kept it a secret from those who were not invited. Three out of the seven people in our office were not invited. The people who were invited were salaried and generally “higher up on the food chain” than the three of us non-invitees are. However, everyone at the other office was invited regardless of their position in the company. Oh, and their spouses were invited too.

We found out a couple days later, when it came out through the grapevine. One of those invited was our immediate supervisor / office manager, and he has never said a word. Should we call him on it? We really feel lousy that we weren’t invited, and it makes us feel like we’re not appreciated or valued as employees. Should we say something?

That’s lame and obnoxious, and especially silly since we’re only talking about an additional three people. I don’t know what your company was thinking — they missed a opportunity to build good will and instead created bad will.

You could certainly ask your manager about it (although don’t take the approach of “calling him out on it”; that’s overly adversarial). I’d say something like, “We were disappointed when we realized that the home office had a Christmas party and invited some people from our office but not all. Do you know what the thinking was?”

Read an update to this letter here.

2. What gift can I give the awesome managers under me?

I am a store manager for a retail chain store. I supervise a team of six managers. I want to get them all a nice, thoughtful holiday present — the holidays are brutal on retail workers, and they all are awesome and have gone above and beyond. I especially want to show my appreciation because I while I was recently in a temporary position at another location, their interim supervisor was less than stellar, and it was a challenging few months for the managers here.

Things that are off the table: cash (our retailer already provides bonuses); time off (I wish!); wine (I’m unsure if everyone in the group drinks alcohol). I have already done several smaller gift/ gestures for the team to kick off the holiday season/ show my appreciation after I stepped back into the store– gift cards for coffee, brought in cookies, handwritten individual notes, a silly grab bag of holiday gifts.

Any ideas? A party is also off the table, as 1) we don’t have time for that during the holidays and 2) I’m not going to ask the staff to attend a party outside of work hours!

Do you know them well enough to pick out thoughtful, personalized gifts that would be different for each of them? If not, I’d go with gift certificates to a reasonably nice area restaurant, or delicious food in the break room while they work, or gift cards to places you know they like (these can be different for each person).

But that’s if you’re set on giving a “thing.” The nicest thing you could do, the thing that would likely be most appreciated, is to tell them each in clear and specific terms what they’re doing well at and how much you appreciate them and why, and ask them what you can do to make their lives easier (and then act on the feedback to whatever extent possible).

3. Do I need to bring a hostess gift to an office party at a partner’s home?

My company’s holiday party is this week. It is a fairly formal dinner normally held at a fancy restaurant, but this year it will be at the home of one of the firm’s partners. It will be catered though. I am having a disagreement with a friend over whether I need to bring something (like a bottle of wine, for example). I say no because it’s a work party that is 100% catered (and to be honest, if I had a choice I would rather not attend). My friend says I should treat it like a regular dinner party at someone’s house, in which case of course I wouldn’t show up empty-handed. My feeling is that this is different; if it were at a restaurant like last year I would be under no obligation to bring anything or pay for anything. What are your thoughts? For context, it is a small company (~16 employees plus spouses/significant others attending the party). I have been there for about a year and a half and am one of the most junior employees.

I agree with you that you’re not obligated to bring something … but I also agree with your friend that it would be a gracious thing to do. Yes, this is a work party and it’s being catered, but the partner hosting it is still opening her home to you, and so it’s a nice gesture to bring something — a bottle of wine, a box of fudge, or whatever. That said, it’s not the sort of thing that will raise eyebrows if you don’t. It’s more a question of whether you want to make a little extra effort to be particularly gracious — and either decision is fine.

4. Pushy assistant is trying to make us kick in cash for cards and gifts

I am the E.A. to a VP and do not work for or report to my boss’s boss’s E.A, who is very old-school and insists on birthday cards, coffee, cakes, parties, etc.

She is making the other assistants participate in a “holiday” party and calling it volunteering. When one of the assistants had to opt out, this woman bullied her, face to face, at the admin’s cubicle, into “volunteering” anyway. Her definition of not-mandatory and volunteer is different from the rest of the world.

This unpleasant woman wants everyone give $20 per person in cash to buy a present for *her* boss and cash for a gift for the custodian, whom I’ve never actually met before. She will not let anybody sign the Christmas cards that she got unless they give her cash. She also is soliciting face to face to do this. Nobody is given the chance to avoid her on this.

I am broke, the company has zero salary increases this year, I just had to fix plumbing in the house, my car needed repair, and I have enough stress trying to get food for the Christmas dinner and presents for family. I am vehemently opposed to buying gifts for the boss (it is currying-favor, brown-nosing, kissing up), not to mention he’s wealthy and wants-for-not! Also, my mother just died and I’m really not feeling it this year.

So, how do I politely say, “I’m not giving you money to kiss up to your boss or to a person who I’ve never even met before”? She always makes me feel like I’m the rude one, like I’m the jerk.

Say, “I’m sorry, it’s not in my budget.” If she continues to push, complain to your boss or hers.

5. Vacation time and pay when the office is closed

The organization where I work has a new policy that says that if the organization is closed for more than one day, employees have to use a vacation day or take an unpaid day after the first day of closing. This is certainly not fair, but is it illegal?

It’s legal to require you to use a vacation day for days that the office is closed. Whether the option of taking unpaid time for those days is legal depends on whether you’re exempt or non-exempt. If you’re non-exempt, it’s legal. But if you’re exempt, you must be paid your normal salary for any week in which you performed any work (so if they closed for a full week, they could do this; for less than week, they couldn’t).

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

1. Did my boss pass off someone else’s work as his own?

I have been in my position for a little under a year, as a science researcher in a small high tech start up. In a recent meeting, my boss asked if I was familiar with a specific technique, and I said I wasn’t. He said he would send me the details of the technique after the meeting was over, no big deal.

After the call, I did a quick google search and came across a write up in PDF form that was put together from a university (first hit on google). I thought that was perfect because I just needed a summary to familiarize myself. A couple hours later I get an email from my boss sending the specifics of the technique to me, and a couple other colleagues. It was the same document – again, that is no big deal (we weren’t citing it in a patent/paper, etc). But what I found bizarre was the fact that it was stripped of the university affiliations at the top, and also a brief acknowledgement at the bottom. I did a quick search to see if one of the higher search hits were the same document without the affiliations, but I can’t find it (not saying it doesn’t exist because Google creeps all of us like crazy, making different things pop up in different orders).

So, do I mention it? It appears he stripped the authors so that it looked like he spent the hours between the meeting and the email typing it up. I know not to assume malicious intent if it can be explained otherwise, but if it was actually intentional, that makes me feel very questionable about my bosses ethics. I don’t care that we sent the information to summarize the technique, but I do care if he was modifying the document to make it look like his work.

I am not really in a position to change positions at the moment, so I don’t really want to ruffle feathers. I just feel so uneasy about it. It was such a small thing to try to claim as his own that it makes me wonder where else this might be done. Thoughts?

I would let it go. You don’t actually know if your boss did what you suspect him of; it’s entirely possible that he had the same document already stored on his computer and it originally came to him that way, or that he found his version using different search words than you did, or something else also perfectly innocent. Given that the facts here are in no way conclusive about wrongdoing, this isn’t something it makes sense to bring up. (I’d go even further and say that you should stop worrying about it in your own head too, since that could end up being toxic to your relationship. If you see other signs of integrity problems, look into those — but I wouldn’t put this one on the list.)

2. My employer is handling my resignation terribly

I recently submitted my resignation notice to a job I’ve been at for 3 years. I’m currently the only person trained in my department and I know it’s a key job in the company. Along with my 2 weeks notice, I also added that I’d be happy training a new person in the evenings and weekends until the transition was complete.

The response was terrible. First, I was told no, that I couldn’t leave for at least two months. And then, when I told them two weeks was all I could offer, my boss said, “You can go, I’ll decide what to do with you later.” Then a few hours later, they told me I would have one week remaining to work with the company and to have 4 months worth of work done by the end of this week. Followed quickly by, “stay off your damn phone and get this work done for me” while she was walking away.

Do I stay and do it? I love this company and I loved working here, but I really expected better when I told them what a great opportunity I had been offered. I would also like to add that I was NOT looking for work. The new employer pursued me based on reputation.

Do you stay and do four months of work in less than a week? No, that doesn’t sound possible. You do what you’re able to do and you leave your work in as good of shape as you can with the amount of time you have left. You don’t do anything beyond that, because (a) it doesn’t sound like they’re paying you to do anything beyond that, and (b) they’re being horrid to you and so you don’t owe them special treatment beyond the normal things that are expected when you’re leaving (which is to work out your remaining time without slacking off and leave your area in good order).

If you find your resolve weakening, read this and this. ANd if they try to convince you to do more work after your last day there, read this and this.

3. Writing a grant to fund a job that I want

I’m looking at working for a new nonprofit. At an interview for a different position (which we agreed was not a good mutual fit), they shared that they desperately want to hire someone to do other work (which we agreed WAS a good fit), but they don’t currently have funding to create the position. I offered to help them write applications to secure grant funding, on the condition that they hire me – that is, I proposed to secure funding for myself. I have an emailed “of course” but no signed guarantees or anything. I also didn’t ask (and they didn’t offer) for them to pay me upfront for any of the time I’m spending writing the grant.

When I tell people about the situation, some are impressed that I may have found an “in,” and others are concerned that I’m currently working for free as a grant writer with no guarantee of being hired under the grants I might secure. And your recent answer about an interviewee performing 30 hours of work for free gave me pause. So I could use some additional perspective: are they taking advantage me unfairly? Should I take some additional steps to prevent them from taking advantage, e.g. ask for a signed guarantee that I’m the one they’d hire in the event of securing funding, ask them to pay me as an intern while working on grant applications?

I don’t think they’re  taking advantage of you — you offered to do it, it was your idea, and they seem to have agreed to your condition.

Frankly, they’d be unwise to give you an ironclad guarantee that they’ll hire you if the grant money comes through; after all, what if they learn more about you during this work and realize that you’d be a bad fit? That probably won’t happen, but it could and so they’re wise not to lock themselves in with a contract. If you want to pursue this, you pretty much just need to accept that you have an informal agreement on this but not a binding one.

I also wouldn’t ask to be paid for this — they’re a nonprofit, they made it clear that they don’t have a ton of available funding, and you’re the one who proposed doing the work. Going back now and asking to be paid for it (essentially changing the earlier terms) is likely to result in them simply deciding not to pursue the project with you.

4. My boss violated a non-disclosure agreement with a client

I work for a small company where I’ve been managing a large digital services project for about a year. My client has been mostly happy with our work, and has shown off some of the content at trade shows and to a few pilot users. However, we’re still bound by an NDA since the client hasn’t made the product publically available. I conformed the project’s confidential status with the client last week on behalf of some of my freelance team members, who would like to include this project in their portfolios, and was told in no uncertain terms to maintain confidentiality for the time being.

We’ve been pursuing some bigger clients over the past few months, including some direct competitors to the client I’m working with. Yesterday, my boss presented some of my project’s work to one of the client’s competitors, as part of a broader presentation of projects we’ve worked on this year. I found out what he’d shown after the presentation, and I’m fairly certain he violated the non-disclosure agreement in our contract. I alerted him to the problem this morning, since he left the office right after the presentation yesterday.

As far as I’m concerned, we’re both contractually and ethically bound to alert the client about what happened. My boss, as you might guess, thinks I’m overreacting. He believes that since the content has been shown to pilot users and at trade shows, it was fine for us to use in a presentation of our work, especially since we’re not making the product widely accessible to our potential clients (or anyone else). He firmly insisted I should not tell my client, to avoid causing any “undue concern.” Since my boss is one of the company’s owners, I can’t escalate my concerns about this to a higher level of management.

This whole situation makes me deeply uncomfortable. If my client finds out my company violated the NDA and covered it up, I’m worried my professional reputation will be damaged–but I also can’t alert them to the problem without defying my boss and hurting my company’s reputation. What are my ethical obligations here, to both my own company and my client?

I think this one is your company’s call. You did the right thing by bringing it to your boss’s attention, but from there it’s really up to him.

If you disagree and decide to tell the client, I’d think you’d need to be prepared to part ways with your company for directly ignoring your boss’s decision on this.

5. When teachers are required to pay to chaperone

I am a school teacher, and my school will be taking students on a field trip to a movie theater. Teachers are required to go to chaperone (as it is during school hours). I was informed today that teachers are also required to pay the $6 ticket price to attend the movie.

I have done some research on this, but have been unable to find any information regarding what employers can and cannot require. Is it legal for my employer to require me to pay to perform my duties?

I can’t think of any law this would violate, but that doesn’t mean it’s not horrible practice — it is. It’s pretty common for teachers to have to buy their own classroom supplies (which is also a huge problem), but this seems like a new level of wrongness. Any teachers out there have advice on this one?