Ask a Manager

Remember the reader whose mother kept telling her that she wouldn’t possibly get any of the jobs she interviewed for? They live together, which made the situation harder. Here’s her update.

When I wrote to you originally, I was at a point where I was really feeling defeated. You weren’t the first person to tell me to stop talking to my mother about interviews and my job search at large.

Prior to your posting my question, I knew I was going to limit what I told my mother about the interview I had that day. And when I got home, although my mom started off by asking how it went, it quickly segued into, “Why do you keep going after these jobs that are so far out of reach?” I said, “I don’t think that’s a fair assessment.” She said I was taking it too personally, and I explained that this is the way her statements are coming off. We ended the discussion soon after that.

While I didn’t get the job I interviewed for, it was truly one of the best interviews I’ve had in a long time – if not ever. I left the interview feeling excited, that I could do the job and do it well and that it would have been a good fit. It really provided the confidence boost I needed. I can take that positive experience with me, as I continue to interview for the foreseeable future. I truly believe that I’m on the right track as far as my job search goes. I’m continuing to get interviews (and now that I’m a regular reader and have gone through some of your older posts), and I’ve seen you mention in the past that when you stop getting interviews it’s time to make changes.

Over the last month, I’ve really tried to take your and the readers’ comments to heart and tried to put your advice into action. I had an interview recently and it happened to fall on a holiday. I tried to claim I was off because of the holiday, but it didn’t work very well. I didn’t tell her where I was interviewing and didn’t really provide any details until I came back. I provided as few details as I could, when pressed. I thought this was the best course of action.

Unfortunately, I just found myself in another discussion with my mother about my job search. Clearly, my efforts to deflect are not going as well as I thought. She feels that I should start looking outside “the box” and not just look at colleges – look at hospitals, banks, residential facilities/psych wards. She feels the competition for administrative positions in higher ed is too high and I just don’t have enough concrete experience to result in a job offer. I know competition is high, especially for administrative positions. And I understand what she’s saying, that I shouldn’t only apply to one type of job, which I can attest to that I’m not. But her suggestion that I apply for things so far outside the box, like a psych ward, isn’t likely to serve me well or get me where I ultimately want to go. They’re more likely to pigeonhole me in a whole new way.

At this point, I’ve come to realization that I may just have to listen to her (though not act on her advice), and let her say what she needs to say.

Remember the person whose company was threatening to strand her at an out-of-town job site after she gave her notice? Here’s the update.

I talked with HR about everything my boss was doing and how he was threatening to take my things and leave me stranded and so they called him, and he was told that if he didn’t let me take my truck home that he had to provide me with a ride back to my house because it was requirements for my company.

He still went about 3 days without calling me, so I just left. I had written everything out in my two week notice, so I just took the chance. He didn’t say anything about me being in major trouble because he knew that I was done. They had me turn everything in to the local office, and when I did I had the manager sign a paper accounting for everything returned so if something was to go missing, I wouldn’t be at fault. It’s a good thing I did though, because my company iPhone randomly went missing, and even though they tried to say that I stole it, I had the signature to show otherwise. In the end, there was nothing that really ended too horribly. Just irritated that people in authoritative positions act so ridiculously.

Remember the reader whose new employer was funded by her old employer — and the old employer was insisting that she continue to do work for them? Here’s the update.

Unfortunately, the situation I wrote about only escalated after my inquiry. I did (finally!) get a telephone conference to discuss my time with my manager and the ad-hoc HR/CFO/COO who originally made the agreement with my former employer. My management both agreed that the former employer needed to finish the project on their own because my new employer did not want to pay me for the week I would need to finish running former employer’s work – even though they acknowledged they wanted me to use the results. (To clarify some confusion by readers, think of the work in question as scenario analyses: I had to compile various inputs, put each through the same set of calculations, and spit out completed summary files for each different set of inputs. I had been delayed because I was finding serious errors in the input files I was given, which made the summary files nonsense if I didn’t spend the time fixing the inputs).

When I iterated to my former employer that I did not have time to continue working for free and I would be willing to do consulting work on the side, the response I got back simply asked where they could find the completed summary files (I responded to clarify that my not being finished meant the summary files were not yet completed). Even better, I began to receive emails from the person that was hired to take over the project asking how to re-create the entire year-long analysis from scratch. Mind you, although I would not consider it fully training, I did walk this same person through how to run all steps of the process from my files twice and left a manual — only to find out that the reason she was asking to re-create everything was because, 4 months later, she never bothered to learn or download the software (Access) that housed my files and she was still not aware of basic concepts needed to identify errors in the input files. So, I actually found myself in an even stickier situation- my former employer was livid that I could not finish, I had no one competent to hand off the completion of the project, and my current employer wanted me to use the results but not take the time to finish. At this point, I made the decision that trying to keep my former employer happy and keep a positive professional reputation was most important to job hunting to get out of this situation ASAP. Due to the fact that this replacement employee made it impossible to hand over any semi-finished work, I wrapped up and delivered the fraction of the project summary files that I could finish over the next 2 weekends – on my own time- to try to salvage a positive reference.

However, after this conversation (and a positive performance review), I began to hit retaliation from my current manager: berating my work in front of the rest of the team, avoiding/not reading emails with deliverables, being openly critical of my ideas until the CEO expressed her stamp of approval, and missing phone conferences (I was in a different office cross-country so stopping by was not possible). To top it off, he requested late one Friday evening a huge set of analyses designed to support his “hunch” (his word, not mine – not to be based on any research or numbers) to be finished over the weekend on top of other impending deadlines. Because I really didn’t know how he expected me to fabricate the write-ups when everything I researched over the weekend contradicted his “hunch,” I was writing an email update requesting clarification when the manager called. When I mentioned that further work on his request would conflict with everything we had designed to date, and that further work on this request would prevent my ability to meet major deadlines, he began yelling for a good 20 minutes that I was “not doing my job.” After this particularly nasty phone call, I wrote an email very politely explaining that I did not appreciate the disrespectful tone I had received and asked in the future to keep our appointments (which he requests) so that we could address any concerns he might have about my work in a more timely manner. My requests for a follow-up meeting were ignored every day for the next week, until I was brought in and my contract ended because my work was “too advanced and no longer needed.”

Thank goodness unemployment insurance recognized that I was misclassified all along, like you and many readers commented. My situation is, unfortunately, not unique; I have since been contacted by other candidates asking about this company and they too have had similar situations of unprofessional behavior in the offer process (i.e. contract-only offers and errors/”miscommunications”). While I am unfortunately still unemployed, I am much better now (physically and emotionally) and looking forward to the opportunity to have a fresh start.

So, the morals of my story would follow much of the advice posted more eloquently elsewhere on your blog:
1) Pay careful attention to any red flags in the hiring process, regardless of whether they are framed as miscommunications, because it really is indicative of the company,
2) Be vary wary of managers who are hot-tempered in any conversation that doesn’t fluff their feathers,
3) Push companies about independent contractor/employee status at the offer stage, and of course,
4) Do not take a position with any association to your former employer, no matter the reputation of the new company and no matter how dire your situation.

Remember the reader looking for ways to help her friend, who she suspected was a bad employee with a bad attitude? Here’s her update.

So I took your advice and the advice of a lot of your commentators and just tried to nudge toward him thinking about his office values. It wasn’t well received and I just resigned myself to hoping he would read your blog (which he does occasionally) and see himself in it. That probably won’t happen. But he still hasn’t been fired, so that’s an upside.

As it turns out, I think he might have realized that the environment he placed himself in just wasn’t made for his skill set. Last I heard, he is considering going back to grad school to get a masters in library science. While a library might be more fitting, I think some skills are necessary no matter the work setting. So maybe he’ll take a few lessons from what he’s learned on this job and transfer them.

On something a lot of commentators said, I would take issue with it not being a friend’s place to tell their friend they’re part of the problem in their work setting. I’ve worked with bad employees before and always wondered why no one close to them sat them down and explained they were part of the problem. There is a way to do it, and I think your advice was very helpful in framing my approach. But I think if more people helped their friends out in those situations, maybe you would get fewer letters from the coworkers of bad employees complaining about their awful attitudes and work habits.

Remember the reader trying to leave her parents’ dysfunctional business and getting told she was a terrible person because of it? Here’s her update.

I quit September 15th as planned, but there’s been nothing particularly thrilling for your readers… no fireworks. I’m getting the silent treatment, I think, which, despite the intent behind it, has been wonderful. She’s badmouthing me a little behind my back, but that’s it. The guy she hired to replace me is probably going to crack soon and quit due to the disorganization, judging from the texts I’ve gotten from him literally pleading for me to come back. I expect my mother is going to come back crying crocodile tears about how much she neeeeeeeds me once he leaves in disgust.

…which I won’t be doing because I just landed a new job! I will be working at a highly rated boutique catering company as assistant office manager. It’s a slight pay cut, but I will also be working approximately 10 fewer hours per week and get to partake of the free staff lunch made by the chefs every day. While it is obviously too early to be sure, the company culture of upbeat, well-grounded, Mac-using, muppet-loving foodies seems like an excellent fit for me.

Remember the manager wondering how to get a reluctant employee to take minutes at a board meeting, when the employee was resisting taking it on? Here’s the update.

I want to thank you for your very helpful advice. After reading your response, and the responses of many helpful commenters, I tried a different approach. I began by telling her again why I thought she was the best person to help me with this task. Then I asked her to tell me what her reservations were. I listened. Then I explained what I would do to help her though it: giving her electronic copies of previous minutes to go by, giving her a detailed agenda ahead of time, providing her with a digital recorder, and assuring her that we would work together on editing the minutes afterward. I also explained that there would be no repercussions if it turned out that she wasn’t right for the job, and that I didn’t expect perfection from the get-go.

She agreed to do it, and she covered her first board meeting last week. She was hesitant at first, but her draft minutes were great, just as I knew they would be!

Some people pointed out that as the boss, I should expect to be able to assign work without being told, “Thanks, but no thanks.” And, yes, I am the boss and have every right to do that. But I think there’s a difference between delegating and dictating, and I want to make sure I fall on the right side of the line. So, by following your advice, I was able to get her to take on this task without resentment, and I didn’t have to resort to saying, “Do it because I said so!,” which is good for no one.

Thanks again, for helping me be the kind of boss I’d want to have.

Remember the manager who wanted to assign employees’ hotel rooms by race? Of course you do. Here’s the update:

Sadly, unlike so many other follow-ups, I can’t really say that things have changed at all. As many commenters pointed out, beyond race-based decision-making, some of the other factors brought up (intimidating employees, skimping on budgets, micro-management, bad performance review procedures) signaled that even if this was not a racially-motivated decision, it was a superlative example of bad management.

My former coworker is still at the current place of employment, waiting for her visa renewal process to go through. She (and most other workers there!) don’t let a day go by without applying for a job. Despite the overwhelming response from you, your guest, and most commentators that “Yes, this is illegal,” she decided not to pursue any case, mainly due to concerns that the CEO would cancel her visa renewal or try to muck up her immigration situation. For context, she often calls new employers and tells them that hiring her employees is violating her non-compete agreement — even when people move into totally different fields! She has also threatened to sue two former employees for slander and damages for things they have posted on their Twitter months after they left the company. In short, my friend decided it’s a situation that might be better to just get out of rather than fight.

If there’s any solace in this horrible situation, it is that the business continues to struggle as other companies compete for the previously unoccupied market space. I wouldn’t be surprised if these companies’ competitive edge has something to do with employee retention and better management, both from an entrepreneurial and HR angle. I also recently just found out how awful this CEO’s reputation is within the broader field of publishing — it is true that your reputation follows you and people in your field talk!

I’m so sorry that this didn’t really end better – just keep on crossing your fingers for my friend (and all past, present, and future employees in this company!)