Ask a Manager

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

1. A coworker threatened to kill me

A coworker, Sam, messaged me to say they were going to do something against company policy and if I reported them, they would kill me. Sam is a known bully who will intimidate people and retaliate against them until they are fired or quit. I have seen, firsthand, how people are fired after baseless accusations from Sam. Sam is beloved by 99% of our company, including our CEO, because everyone Sam does not get along with is fired or quits. Sam reports to the CEO.

I reported Sam through our internal ethics hotline and provided screenshots of the threat. I was told an investigation could not be conducted unless I was willing to have myself identified in the process. Sam has access to my phone number and physical address, and I am scared of them, so identifying myself is not an option I am comfortable with. Is requiring a person to identify themselves, to an accuser, for an internal employee investigation normal? The company has evidence of the threat in screenshots but is unwilling to proceed. Sam has already started their campaign to discredit my work, but it does not seem like I have any recourse. Any thoughts or suggestions would be appreciated.

Your company has screenshots of one employee threatening to kill another employee but won’t do anything about it unless you’re willing for Sam to know you reported it?! What?! Even if they don’t care on all the obvious grounds — like concern for your safety and not wanting to run a workplace where people threaten to kill each other — they should at least care on legal liability grounds. Because holy legal liability if something did happen.

To be clear, it’s not uncommon for investigations to need to identify the accuser to the accused; sometimes that’s the only way for an investigation to be possible. But they have your screenshots, and they can presumably verify the messages if they were sent on company systems. Is there any chance what they meant was “we want to make sure you know that when we speak to Sam about it, Sam will probably know you reported it”? Because that’s likely true — but it’s not a reason for them not to proceed (there are also ways around that if they bothered to think about it — like the message having been seen by someone else in a routine IT check or so forth).

In any case, it’s illegal to threaten to kill someone, not just a violation of workplace etiquette. Please consider talking to the police, or at least to a lawyer who can guide you from here.

2. Can you ask to extend your work trip to make it a vacation?

My job recently asked me to go to an industry conference outside the country. They’re willing to pay for flights, hotel, per diems — everything is great on that end!

Here’s the thing: Not only is this city and this country a place I’ve dreamed of going for years, but my favorite nerdy hobby is hosting their international conference in the same city the weekend before the event my job asked me to go to. Normally, flying here is a bit out of my reach, financially. But if work paid for my flights and I paid my hotel in the interim and took some PTO between my hobby conference and work conference … I could turn this into the trip of a lifetime.

I don’t know if this is something companies do or allow, but if so, I want to at least try asking! But I have no idea where to start. Would I sound too young/inexperienced for even asking because this isn’t normal? What’s the cut-off for what the company pays vs what I pay? Like when I’ve traveled for work in the past, they’ve paid for an extra day of hotels when I couldn’t find convenient/cheap flights out the day of an event. I know they wouldn’t pay the whole time, but if I’m in the same hotel, how do I split that up? How do I convince them to let me hang out in another country on PTO before the conference? It sounds like I just want to take a vacation on the company’s dime, and that’s not completely false!

This is a completely normal thing that people do. Companies generally don’t care at all as long as it’s doesn’t incur additional expenses for them. So they’d still pay for your flights because they’re paying for those anyway (unless you’re choosing dramatically more expensive flights to accommodate the vacation dates) and your hotel for the nights you’d be there for work anyway. You’d pay for the extra hotel nights and any other expenses during the days you’re adding on for vacation (like food, etc.), and you’d use PTO for the vacation portion. Basically, anything they’d be paying for if you weren’t tacking on a vacation, assume they’ll still pay for — and anything extra, you cover. That’s it!

It doesn’t look young or inexperienced to ask; it’s very, very common to do this.

3. How to ask, “Why do I always need to ask twice to get a task done?”

How can I diplomatically ask someone why I always have to ask twice to get a simple task completed?

Using llama grooming as an example for anonymity, imagine that in our llama grooming business, I get the health certificate from the owner but need to provide this to the llama records department before the grooming appointment can be booked. The llama records department needs to go into the llama’s record in the database and indicate that the health certificate has been received. (Note that I am unable to complete this task myself.)

Almost every time I email the certificate and ask that the record be updated, I have to email again (typically 3-4 days later) to remind them of the task. Usually when I email the second time, the task is completed within a few hours.

How can I nicely ask why I have to email twice to get this simple task completed?

“I’m finding that I usually need to come back and ask a second time for the record to be updated. Is there something I can do differently on my side so it gets done with just the first request? A different way you want me to send these, or something else?”

In other words, allow for the possibility that there really could be something you’re doing on your end that’s making it less convenient for them — or at least frame it that way even if you’re sure it’s not the case, since that allows you to point out the issue in a pretty low-key way.

4. My coworker wants my job after I’m promoted, but she’s not qualified

Our general manager has received a promotion and is moving to a new location. I want her position, and she is pushing for me to have her position. Most of my coworkers want this to happen, and in all reality, it probably will. However, one of my coworkers (I’m technically probably a half step above her, but we work in tandem over different departments) has expressed to me that if I move up, she will be applying to my position. She is not qualified for it, nor do I personally think she could learn the ropes quickly enough to not avoid just losing her job altogether. Perhaps under a more seasoned GM, she’d flourish, but I know how much slack for her shortcomings I picked up in that role; I will not be able to pick up her slack in my new role, while also training her replacement.

How do I gently let her down and not sour the relationship? I think in a year or two, with a serious action plan, she could do it. But not in the next 30 days we’d want someone in role by.

Are the qualification she lacks pretty clear/obvious ones? If so, you could say, “We’ll need to look for XYZ qualifications.”

But otherwise, you should probably wait until things are further along with your own hiring, so that you have some standing to opine on the hiring process to replace you (and you’ve either already become her boss or are clearly about to be). At that point you’d have standing to say something like, “For this role we’ll need someone with qualifications XYZ. If it’s a position you’re interested in working toward, we could put together a plan for you to get those qualifications over the next year. But for this round of hiring, we’ll need someone who comes in with those.”

Alternately, you could let her throw her hat in the ring and give her the chance to make the case for her candidacy, while making it clear you’re conducting a full search and she’ll be competing against other candidates. And then assuming she’s not hired at the end of that, you could explain where other candidates were stronger and offer to put together a development plan to strengthen her in those areas for next time.

5. Can I ask for dividers in our open office to protect me from the AC?

I work in a small open-space office. I really like the job. However, the AC (or some other ventilation) creates a constant draft blowing right into my face. It is not strong, but after 8+ hours it accumulates and now I have constant pain in this side of my face. It is also super distracting — I literally count minutes until I can leave my desk. Our office gets pretty hot so we do need AC, and all other tables are taken so can’t switch. My colleagues accommodate my requests, but it doesn’t change much and I don’t want them to dislike me for making them hot. I tried a lot — brought a hoodie with a big hood to protect my face, a small fan hoping to divert the airstream, even sealed the vent above me — nothing worked.

Now I want to ask the maintenance to install tall plexiglass partitions on the two sides of my table which should hopefully protect me, but I am concerned about the reaction of my officemates/other colleagues. Is it a reasonable request? Maybe you have any other suggestions? It feels ridiculous to struggle over such a detail, but it bothers me a lot.

It’s a very specific request to start with if you haven’t talked to your boss about it yet! Start there — explain the issue to your boss and what you’ve tried and ask if it’s possible to move. The fact that other desks are all taken doesn’t mean they can’t switch things around if someone else won’t be bothered by it (and it sounds like most other people aren’t, unless there’s something about your specific location that’s more impacted than the other desk areas).

If that doesn’t resolve it, then that’s the time to ask if you can speak with maintenance about solutions. And who knows, maintenance might be able to adjust something about the ventilation that solves the problem, or your plexiglass barriers might be the only solution, or they might suggest something else entirely. But talk to your boss first, and then present the problem (not just a single pre-determined solution) to maintenance if your boss can’t solve it.

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

1. Family member is upset that I’m quitting with only two weeks notice

Two years ago, I started working for a family member’s business as a favor to them when they were in a tough spot. It was a completely different industry than the one I was in and went to school for, but I found myself loving the pay and other benefits, although not so much the work. Because they are family, they’ve done so much for me, including letting me live with them and driving me around a lot.

Unfortunately, because they are family, I am familiar with all of their dysfunction and am used to explaining it away.

I recently gave two weeks notice and my boss is very upset that I didn’t give her more. She stated that she wished I had given her three or more months of notice. This is a basic secretary/admin job.

She is now stating that because I’m quitting and am one of only three employees, she will have to cancel her month-long trip out of country to visit family. Even if I am related, this is not a normal response, correct? There are also some pay issues where I am aware I should go to the labor board, but that would throw a huge bomb into family life.

Two weeks notice is the standard business convention; there are some fields that are exceptions, but secretary/admin work isn’t one of them. Giving three months of notice is unrealistic and would mean that you’d need to ask your next employer to wait three months for you to start.

I suspect what your relative means isn’t “you should have done this because these are normal business expectations” but rather “because we are family, you should have given me a heads-up that you were thinking about leaving, not made plans in private and only sprung them on me at the very end like you would do with a non-family employer.” And, well … there could be something to that. You’re not wrong for not doing that — this is still business — but she’s not necessarily wrong for feeling dismayed that you didn’t. You put her 100% in the “employer” category where she might have expected you to put her at least partly in the “family” category too.

But if the reason you didn’t give more notice is because you knew from past experience that there would be drama and dysfunction … well, that’s what employers, even family members, get when they run their businesses with drama and dysfunction.

If this weren’t a family member, I’d say just stick to your two weeks and let them be as weird as they want; you wouldn’t owe any apology or concessions. Because this is a family member — one who you say has done a lot for you — it’s probably to your benefit to frame it as, “I’m really sorry for the short notice; this fell in my lap and I can’t control the timing.”

2. We had so many good job applicants that I couldn’t give all of them a chance

I work in a non-academic job at a major university. This month, I got permission to hire a student assistant, and my boss said that they would leave it up to me to interview the candidates and make the hiring decision. Which makes sense since the student will be working under my direct supervision in my specific area of expertise. The problem is, we got nearly 200 applicants! Even after I looked over all the applications (which took hours) and tossed out the obviously unsuitable ones, there were nearly 100 good ones left. I took the 20 that seemed best, put them in a spreadsheet, ranked them as objectively as I could, and interviewed the top five. One of the five proved to be exactly what I’m looking for — right skill set, right experience, came across as quick-thinking and enthusiastic in the interview, etc. So I had HR offer her the job, and she should be starting soon.

Happy ending, except I feel kind of bad about all the other candidates who submitted good applications and never got a chance to interview. There’s no possible way I could find time to interview 100 people, and every interview takes time away from my regular work (and I’m kept pretty busy), but should I have done more? Is there some kind of rubric for what percentage of qualified candidates a hiring manager should interview? How do you handle a huge excess of qualified applicants?

This is a completely normal and routine part of hiring! You normally can’t interview everyone who seems qualified; you interview a small number who seem like the strongest matches because it would be wildly impractical to do anything else. Using a ranking system like you did to select your strongest matches is a smart way to do it, as long as the things you’re ranking them on are clearly tied to the key must-have’s for the role.

You wouldn’t generally pick a number based on percentage of the total pool (I’ve hired for jobs that received over 1,500 applications! Even 3% of that pool would be an unrealistic 45 people.) Generally most employers will strive to interview around three to five finalist for one slot — although depending on what the candidate pool is like and how rare the qualities are that you’re looking for, it might end up being more or fewer than that.

However, ideally you’d do a higher number of phone screens before bringing people in for real interviews. A typical way to do it, although not the only way, might be to do ~15 phone screens, with four or five people advanced to more substantive interviews after that. Phone screens are useful because short conversations like that can help you narrow down your pool in a lot less time and can help you spot people who might be weaker on paper but stronger in real life (and vice versa).

3. My struggling employees agrees with me in our meetings, then disputes my summaries later

About two months ago, I was appointed to my first leadership role with two direct reports at my company. One of my employees, Shannon, has been been with the company three years, but has struggled during that time. She’s been getting feedback around these concerns for a year or more before she was moved to report to me (she previously reported to my manager.) My manager (now her senior manager) has given Shannon a deadline in which to improve her performance, and I have been working to coach her toward improvement.

Because this has been an ongoing issue and my manager is involved, I send an agenda before our meetings with discussion points we’ll cover. The tone of the meetings is always positive. Shannon seems optimistic, asks good questions, and engages with the discussion. We wrap up with next steps and I always confirm she understands and we’re aligned. After our meetings, I send a recap of what we discussed.

Lately Shannon has been responding back to this recap email with a very different understanding of the discussion and bringing up challenges and concerns she didn’t voice in the meeting, in some cases very strongly. It’s feels like a 180 and I’ve noticed she’s been doing the same with my manager.

I’ve made an effort to ask her in meetings to elaborate on her responses, hoping to get a grasp on what the disconnect might be or get her to express her concerns more openly. She deflects or offers surface-level answers, but the pattern repeats after each meeting. I responded to her last email with clarifications on her notes and expressed disappointment that she didn’t bring up key concerns in our meeting, but invited her to do so the next time we connected.

I’m not sure the best course of action. I’m concerned that not addressing the emails in written form implies that her summary is accurate and her sentiments warranted, which is an issue of documentation with performance issues in play, but in addressing them there is a risk of escalating the issue further.

I think you’ve got to name it directly for Shannon in the next meeting: “We have a pattern where we meet, discuss the points from an agenda, recap at the end, and agree we have the same take-aways, but then when I send a written recap, you have a different summary than the one we both agreed to in the meeting, as well as new items that you didn’t raise while we were talking. This has happened enough that we need to resolve it. I need to be able to take you at your word in our meetings when you say we’re aligned. What’s your perspective on what’s causing the discrepancy?”

As for not letting her written account go unchallenged because of how that could play out later: You’re right to note that! You need to respond to those emails by saying something like, “These are different points than we discussed in the meeting, and we had agreed on X, not Y” (or whatever is accurate). Yes, there’s a risk of that escalating things, but it’s not really avoidable, and it’s trumped by the bigger risk of letting her written responses simply stand.

Most important, though: Loop in your manager about how to navigate this, because it’s very much a 301-level management challenge and you’re brand new to managing. It’s going to be crucial to have her guidance as you work through this — not just once or twice, but probably on at least a weekly basis or after each of those meetings. There’s a lot of potential for this to go badly, and your boss should be deeply involved in helping you manage it.

4. Is my popcorn causing unforgivable temptation to my coworkers?

A bit of a silly question. If I make myself a bag of popcorn in the office and snack on it at my desk, is that … a little evil? Popcorn is such a commonly shared snack, and an aromatic one at that, that I suspect some people in my desk area can smell it and may crave popcorn, but I wasn’t really planning to share.

In this particular case, it’s unflavored popcorn (no butter or salt, just popped kernels) and it’s not burned or buttered, but I still wonder if it’s any different than any other food I might bring in.

Nope! Popcorn is a pretty common office food. Yes, the smell may make people want their own, but as long as you’re not burning it, you’re not doing anything wrong by preparing it at work.

5. Freelance etiquette with a full-time job

I work full-time at a very small company in what I find to be a demanding role. Recently a newer freelance coworker who I don’t work with directly asked if I was available for a small-ish freelance assignment. I don’t think there are hard-and-fast rules around freelancing, but am I expected or obligated by general etiquette to disclose this work to the company? And is this normal on the coworker’s part? (The project is the same thing I do at work, but is too small to make it worth working with the company as a whole.) With an uncharitable lens, could this be seen as something that would impede my ability to do my main job?

This can vary a lot by field, and it depends on the project and your company. The first place to look is at your handbook or any written policies, especially anything on conflicts of interest. Some companies prohibit second jobs across the board (which can be an overstep, but isn’t uncommon in some fields), some prohibit them under specific circumstances, and some just require them to be disclosed first in case there’s a conflict of interest. If you don’t find any applicable policies, then the next step is to consider the nature of the work: is it for a competitor, or would it set you up as a competitor to your employer? (Almost certainly a no-go in both cases.) Is it during your current work hours? If you don’t see any issues there, you’re probably in the clear … although if you want to be perfectly safe, ask your boss. Some people will argue you shouldn’t ask — and that if there’s no written policy or obvious conflict of interest, it’s none of their business — but if you’re more invested in your regular job than in doing the freelance work, it makes sense to find out before accepting if it’s likely to become a problem later.

As for whether it’s normal on your coworker’s part, it’s not uncommon for a freelancer to send out work to other potential freelancers. It would only be weird if they were soliciting you to do something your company prohibited or obviously wouldn’t want.

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

1. How to handle chronic interrupters/ramblers at meetings

I’m on a team at work with a coworker who always jumps in with personal anecdotes or non sequiturs whenever we’re in a meeting. Our team lead (not her supervisor but the person who assigns the team work) will be leading a meeting, telling a story to make a point, and she’ll jump in with her own experience. It basically triples the length of our meetings. The lead doesn’t do anything to turn it down, but I don’t know if he’s just being polite or what. He’s also pretty new so I think he doesn’t want to make waves. I currently just ignore her and vent to anyone who will listen (not the best strategy, I know, but she’s SO ANNOYING).

My concern is I just got a promotion and I’m about to go to another team to be the team lead, and I have no clue what I should do as a leader if I’m faced with someone like her. I realize I can’t just shout “shut up!” but I’m not sure what I could do to politely shut it down. My ideal scenario is I won’t have someone like her, but just in case I want to be ready.

You have to be willing to assertively manage the flow of the meetings — and to see that as just as much your job as, say, meeting deadlines is. That means things things like:

* Saying in response to rambling or off-topic tangents: “I’m going to interject because we have a lot to get through today and I want to stick to our agenda.”
* Or: “Let’s hold that for the end of the meeting if we have time remaining. Right now I want to stay focused on X.”
* Making it clear your meetings will start and end on time (and sticking to that).
* Saying things at the start like, “We have one hour to cover A, B, and C and I’m going to try to keep us really focused so we get through all of that.”
* Talking privately to repeat offenders and asking them to share the air time and stay focused on the agenda.

Side note that may or may not work for your context: someone I know who runs extremely effective meetings will often use the last five minutes of a meeting to ask everyone say one thing that worked well about the meeting and one thing that could have been improved. (This is only for significant/longer meetings, not at quick half-hour ones.) It opens the door for people to say “we spent too long on X” or “we got sidetracked by Y and never got to talk about Z” or “we need to be better about sticking to the agenda and not having side tangents” or “it would have been helpful to be able to review X ahead of time” or so forth.

Related:
why meetings suck and how to make them useful for your team

2. How to hire someone who can roll with changes

I run a small growing company. I recently had an employee quit because she was frustrated and angry about changes to our processes. Most of the time, the things that set her off were small glitches that I was available to help her work through. To be clear, maybe three days a month would be impacted by a glitch — the day she found it, the day we fixed it, and the day we double-checked that it was fixed. About once a year, it might take a week to resolve it, but we provide support, so she wasn’t dealing with it alone. From my perspective, dealing with this is part of the job, but it’s not constant.

But because I didn’t know the glitch was going to happen ahead of time, I couldn’t warn her (her main complaint) — we are a “building the plane in the air” kind of company. I understand that’s not for everyone, and I want to do a better job of hiring someone who won’t find this quite so upsetting to replace her.

Do you have any suggestions for how to describe this situation to prospective employees and filter for people who will be able to roll with things being broken from time to time?

Be really straightforward about it! Say something like, “I want to tell you about the primary frustration the last person in this role had,” describe what you explained here, and then say, “Dealing with this is part of the job, but it’s not for everyone, so I want to be transparent about it so you can decide if you’d be okay with that or not.”

In addition, you could ask about times candidates have had their work thrown off by something unexpected and how they responded to that, and you could ask references about how they rolled with unanticipated changes. But I think just laying it out really openly is your best bet. Plus, people are often a lot less frustrated by this kind of thing when it was disclosed ahead of time and they knew they were signing up for it.

3. Can my reference be someone who works in the department where I’m applying?

I landed an interview for an open position in a different branch of my organization, and I’m pretty sure I’ll be asked for references at some point soon. I’ve actually worked in this branch before, in a temporary entry-level position that ended months before the pandemic hit. I was able to land my current job roughly a year after the temporary one ended. Can I use my supervisor from that temporary job as a reference for the job I’m trying to get? My other choices are internship supervisors from five years ago who aren’t as familiar with my current work, or managers from food service jobs I picked up in between who definitely aren’t familiar with my work. It feels weird to use people as references who are already in the department that I’m trying to get into, and I’m not sure if I’m overthinking it.

People already in the department you’re applying to are ideal references! From the perspective of the reference-checker, they’re more likely to be candid and more likely to know what is and isn’t important to succeed there, and they know the nuances of the work and the culture in a way an outside reference won’t. The reference-checker is also more likely to trust their judgment if she already knows them. So these are the best references; definitely use them!

(To be clear, they’re highly likely to talk to that person anyway once they realized you worked for her, whether you list her as a reference or not. But she’s a great person to put on your official list.)

4. Will it hurt my career to quit after taking lots of FMLA?

For personal reasons, I’m considering spending a few months outside of the workforce (and am in a position where this is a financially feasible thing to do). But I wanted a second opinion on if doing this would have inadvertent consequences, either with my current company’s willingness to give a decent reference (they’re the only Real Job I’ve ever had, so their opinion counts for a lot) or if the gap in employment would cause future employers to give me side-eye. Specifically, I’m particularly worried about my current company’s reaction, given this would follow me taking a sizable amount of leave.

Some context, because I suspect the situation is meaningfully different from me quitting after, say, a long vacation: I’ve gone through two rounds of continuous FMLA and accompanying bereavement leave this year. Both were in regards to people who were my only immediate family members — the second relative’s health started worsening a few weeks after the first one passed away. Even when I was at work between these leaves, I wasn’t particularly functioning, since things like unexpected late night emergency room trips still happened. I don’t think I want to come back to my job after my current bereavement leave is done, but I worry leaving now/soon would make my employer feel like I was taking advantage of their good will, especially because they paid my full salary during my continuous leave and offered more than the industry standard of bereavement. And to be frank, I admittedly did stick around mainly because switching jobs would have jeopardized my FMLA protection.

Is it likely to cause problems if I submit a two-week notice when I get back? Or is there anything I can do to protect my reference if it does? Are future employers going to worry about me not having a job for a bit, and if so is there a way to offer context that doesn’t sound too “oh poor me”-ish in tone? (When I tried to explain to a recruiter what was going on earlier in this process, I suspect he heard “for family reasons” as “I’m pregnant.” Not that there’s anything wrong with being pregnant, but there’s still amount of institutional bias against pregnant people so I’d rather not give recruiters or employers that impression when it’s not true.)

If you frame it to your employer as having realized that you’ve been through a lot and need some time away before you return to work, that’s likely to make a lot of sense to them! It logically follows what you’ve been through. You can thank them for how flexible they’ve been, then say you’ve realized you need more time off than you can reasonably ask of them. (Do be prepared, though, for them to offer you long-term leave where you’d return at the end of it. If that happens, you could say, “I’m honestly not sure what I”ll want to do when I’m ready to work again, but I really appreciate you offering that.”)

As for future interviewers wondering about the gap, it’s perfectly fine to say, “I was dealing with some family health issues that have since been resolved.” A few months out of the workforce is not a big deal at all.