my company won’t allow any name changes, ever, for anyone by Alison Green on July 12, 2023 Two letters, one theme: 1. My company won’t let me use the name I go by in our directory I just started a new job. When I applied, I filled in my legal name and my preferred name. I go by a shortened version of my middle name — let’s say “Beth.” I have never gone by my legal first name, “Jane,” and no one would recognize me by it professionally. On my first day, I immediately noticed that every system at my office referred to me as Jane Watson. I immediately updated the HR system with my preferred name so that people could, for example, find me in Outlook. However, in the company directory, I’m still listed as Jane Watson. If you scroll over, “Beth Watson” is listed as an alternate name. HR told me there is no way to change a legal name in the company directory. I find this bizarre. I can see requiring use of my legal name for certain systems (e.g., payroll), but why would it be necessary for a system where the point is to be able to find colleagues? Additionally, while this is a relatively small matter for me — I mostly just find the use of Jane annoying — it could be deeply frustrating for others who go by a name other than their legal one but have not officially changed it. Since I’m very new, I won’t push back on this rule for the time being, but if I have more capital in the future, is it worth escalating? 2. Company won’t allow any name changes, ever, for anyone My girlfriend works at a very large, multinational corporation. She’s also a trans woman and is known by Trisha LastName everywhere but her work, for this reason: HR told her, officially, that she cannot change the email address that she was given when she was hired, which for her is Richard.LastName@company.com. They have this policy for everyone, even people who get married and change their last names. She asked HR if there was any way to change the email address. They responded that she could do that if she were to voluntarily be put into the system as if she were a new hire — no vacation accrual, no 401k vesting, salary reset, everything. She has been at her position for 5+ years. They said most people simply change their display name in the system and live with their old name being their email address. However, we live in a very conservative area where she’s worried about facing hostility or violence because of the mismatched email/name. This can’t be legal, can it? Bizarrely, this is a thing in some companies. It should not be a thing — it’s a ridiculous and in some cases deeply upsetting practice — but it is in fact a thing with some particularly foolish employers. An electronic system that doesn’t “allow” for name changes or preferred names is a terrible system. As evidenced by all the many, many companies that handle name variations just fine — for people marrying or divorcing, for trans people, for people who change their names for myriad reasons — it’s eminently doable. Decent companies that are saddled with computer systems that make it difficult find workarounds; they don’t simply decree that you’ll need to be listed forevermore as a name you don’t actually use. Systems are supposed to exist to serve people, not the other way around. Moreover, since we have laws both federally and at the state/city level regarding gender identity, refusing to allow an employee to change their name during their employment could lead to a discrimination claim. And in at least some places, it’s outright illegal: In California, for example, employers are required to identify employees by their preferred names (with an exception for documents where a legal name is legally mandated). People working at companies in jurisdictions without that protection should point out to their employers that the practice disproportionately impacts marginalized populations — certainly trans people but also women, who are significantly more likely to change their names upon marriage — and that these systems are designed for cisgender male users and ignore a sizable portion of workers. You may also like:my employee keeps getting deadnamed by a coworkermy new company wants me to change my namemy coworker is dating a convicted pedophile { 433 comments }
boss uses therapy to analyze our interactions, former coworker listed me as her manager, and more by Alison Green on July 12, 2023 It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go… 1. My boss uses therapy to analyze all our interactions I’m a new therapist two months into the job, and I have noticed that my clinical supervisor has a tendency to analyze me to my face when I have a question she wasn’t anticipating, when we disagree on a non-clinical issue or are attempting to solve a workplace issue. She is also my direct managerial supervisor, so I think something is coming up from the dual relationship. To give examples, she will say things like, “I don’t know what’s in your story to make you think that [insert really common workplace norm/expectation].” “It seems your mind is imagining scenarios that are making you fearful” [about a legitimate, common workplace question that wasn’t accounted for in the employee handbook and she later agreed to include because “I’ve learned from couples work that sometimes the way to get the other person to work with me is to humor their unreasonable request, even though it shouldn’t take that.”] There is a lot more, like opening a salary/benefits discussion a few months ago stating “from my view it seems you have been having ‘racing thoughts’” — because I had sent her a simple, bullet-point list of questions, as she had no information on my benefits and I was due to start in less than a week. Telling me I “have a paranoid part” when in our initial interview discussion I learned they weren’t sure if they had funding for the position, but they wanted me to accept the offer on good faith they would secure a grant — that they had been rejected for the previous year. (I waited until they got the grant to accept.) It seems anything I do can and will be analyzed. I just want to know — is this normal? It makes me really uncomfortable and angry to have someone question “my story,” when I just have a question about PTO. There are three other employees at my level and one other full LPC in the practice, but the other LPC’s schedule is too full, which is why I’m with the clinical supervisor I have for management. I want to say something, but I know that some amount of therapizing during the clinical part of supervision is normal (example: “what came up for you when your client said XYZ?”). Ironically she is an incredible clinical supervisor, so it also worries me that I’m damaging our relationship when I push back. Recently when discussing a major part of my contract that was left out, we got into a tense back and forth because I wanted it in writing and she wanted me to “use your knowledge of me and trust me to honor this, let that guide you, not your fear of workplace power dynamics.” No, this isn’t normal. It’s bad management — she should be focusing on behaviors, concrete actions, and outcomes, not whatever she imagines you’re feeling — and she’s not your therapist, she’s your manager. As your boss, she shouldn’t be assessing you through a therapeutic lens at all (and you’re undoubtedly right that her dual role is contributing to the issue). Frankly, some of it sounds … abusive is too strong a word here, but manipulative? Gaslighty? She’s weaponizing the language of therapy to avoid dealing with very basic employment issues. It might not be intentional — maybe this is the lens through which she sees everything in life — but it’s making her a terrible manager and colleague. 2. Employer thinks I accepted a job they never offered me I sent out applications for two jobs, and I only intended on choosing the better of the two since I’m not in a place where I can work two jobs. Job A was first, and it went so smoothly I thought I was dreaming. I got along with everyone and the store manager went into detail about what would be expected of me should I be hired and my hourly pay. She was open about my benefits, how many hours I’d be working, the work environment, training, and potential room for growth. I left feeling great, but kept my options open just in case. During the interview with Job B, the manager vaguely told me I would be working very, very long shifts. This was a major reason I left my previous job of three years, and I respectfully let her know that I wasn’t interested anything similar. In addition, the manager spent most of the time talking about how frustrating her younger employees were and how everyone kept disobeying her. She didn’t mention benefits, weekly schedules, or even pay rate. It felt like I was there to listen to her complain about her current employees. The same day she wanted me to consent to a background check, which I did, and ran it on the spot. No interview did this before with me and it made me feel very uneasy. Nowhere in the application did it said “urgently hiring” or that they were hiring on the spot. It came across as being very pushy. Not even a full 24 hours after the interview, Job B calls me back, but not for a offer. I was being asked to work because someone called in. I wasn’t given any training, I still didn’t know the hourly pay or benefits, and most of all I never accepted a job offer from them because I was never given one. I’m concerned that Job B is assuming that because I showed up to the interview, this meant I wanted to work for them right away. But the only thing I consented to is a background check and nothing more. I didn’t even complete any onboarding paperwork and Job B has been trying to get me to work hours that told her I did not and could not work anyway. Job A didn’t go about it this way; I received an offer from them that I happily accepted. How do I decline a job offer that I wasn’t given? Should I decline the assumed “job offer” as normal or should I politely tell Job B that there are some assumptions that are being made? Does this sound odd or am I overreacting? Is this retail? It sounds a lot like retail, where there’s sometimes a strange assumption that if you interview, you’ve as good as accepted the offer. Call Job B back and say, “I appreciate the offer but I’ve decided to accept a different job. Thanks for talking with me, and all the best with your hiring.” If you were still open to considering Job B but wanted more info first — which isn’t your situation — you could say, “Before I could accept the offer, I’d need more information about the pay rate, schedule, and benefits. Could we go over that now, or schedule a call to do it later?” 3. Bathroom etiquette Your recent article about angry notes in workplaces made me think of an office I worked in a few years ago, and I’d be interested to get your take on it. At the time I was going through an IBS flare-up. Nothing super serious, but it meant that I was using the toilet quite frequently. A few weeks after I started, a note popped up in the office bathroom I’d been using. From memory I think there was a little poem about “using the brush after you flush”! I don’t know for sure that it was targeted at me, but given the timing I think it probably was a result of my use of the bathroom, even if the person who put it up didn’t know I was the culprit. At the time I was quite embarrassed but also a little annoyed. I was already spending more time in the bathroom than I would have liked, and wasn’t always able to take extra time to ensure that the inside of the bowl was pristine before I rushed back to my desk. So, was I out of order here? You’ll find two camps on this: the camp that feels toilets will sometimes show they’ve been used for the purpose they’re intended for, and the camp that feels you need to take 15 extra seconds to remove that evidence when the toilet is shared with others. Personally, I’m in the second camp — if it’s a shared bathroom, you should leave it in the condition you found it in. I don’t think you were outrageously rude and you don’t need to feel shame or anything like that, but in general you should take the 15 seconds to leave things just as clean for the next person. 4. My former coworker listed me as her manager I had something weird happen the other day. I received a call from a company saying that Katie, my coworker when I worked retail, had listed me as her manager and they wanted to know about her work ethic, etc. Katie was a seasonal worker and I was a part-timer. I was never Katie’s manager. I would have been considered a senior coworker because I had been there longer but I had no managerial power over her. She was seasonal so never got a performance review (performance reviews were for people who worked in the company for a year). The only manager thing I really did was tell her stuff like:“Hey, Boss says we need to move this. Can you help me with that?” Or “Hey, why don’t you go straighten up that part of the floor?” I usually worked the night shift as did Katie and our actual manager usually worked the day shift. I acknowledge that I may have seemed like a manager to Katie but she never told me she was putting me down as a reference and, in fact, we never spoke after the season we worked together. I was honest with the caller saying that we had been coworkers and I was not her manager but she’d been a good coworker for the short time we worked together. I have no idea if she got the job. But, like, what would be the best way to handle this? You handled it correctly: you were honest about your role relative to hers and how long you worked together, and you gave an honest assessment within that context. Ideally you would have included something like, “Our manager usually worked a different shift from us and I’d been there longer than Katie, so that might be why she put me down” but it’s not a huge deal that you didn’t; it’s not your job to explain why Katie picked the references she did (and I imagine you were caught off-guard anyway since she didn’t check in with you before listing you). If you want, you can contact Katie and tell her you got a reference call for her and that they mistakenly thought you were her manager … but you’re not obligated to do that. (She should have contacted you first to tell you she was listing you as a reference, but not everyone knows to do that. It’s the kind of thing that can feel obvious when you have more experience, but doesn’t feel obvious when you don’t.) 5. Not paying people who don’t submit a timesheet on time I am a supervisor at a multinational consulting firm in the U.S. The majority of our staff are also on billable hours and required (as per industry standard) to submit timesheets on a weekly basis. The finance department will chase late timesheets for a couple days but have threatened to not pay people for submitting a timesheet in a timely enough manner. This just happened to one of my staff — her paycheck was short a week’s time and while finance did pay her for that time, it was late. (I was out of the country for this week and not available.) We both think this appears to violate the Fair Labor Standards Act. Does it, and if so, how should we approach getting the company to resolve the practice? We definitely have some growing pains but this isn’t a small company nor a young one. Logistically it is critical that staff submit their time in a timely manner for our billing and client budgeting, but that’s a separate issue here. Yes, this is illegal — under both the FLSA and your state’s laws. Your state will specify how quickly employees need to be paid — usually worded as “within X weeks of the work being performed.” Employers are obligated to pay employees within that time period regardless of whether a timesheet was submitted late and even if it wasn’t submitted at all. Google your state name and “paycheck law” to find out the law for your state specifically. Once you have that info, send it to whoever manages the finance person who’s doing this with a note saying, “This violates state law and we legally cannot do it.” I’m sympathetic to the finance team’s struggle — getting people to turn in timesheets on time is a pain — but they can’t withhold paychecks as a tool to make it happen. You may also like:we have twice-daily mandatory group therapy at workI'm the smelly coworkerhow do I manage a bad employee who I can't fire? { 795 comments }
how do I deal with a painfully slow talker? by Alison Green on July 11, 2023 A reader writes: I have a situation which I think I would know how to handle as a manager but no idea how to handle as a client. My son has developmental delays that qualify him for certain therapies. After months of searching, we have finally found a therapy provider that fits our needs. This facility’s owner (there’s no one above her) and head therapist, Jane, is clearly competent, knowledgeable, and friendly. She also gets along very well with our son. However, Jane is an EXTREMELY slow talker. By that, I mean she has trouble gathering her thoughts, takes long pauses between words, and constantly uses fillers (um, ah, y’know, etc.). A sentence which might take you or me five seconds to say will take her 30 seconds. This had made meetings with her interminable (for the record, I have no idea if this is a medical issue). I generally get the gist of what Jane is trying to say after a few seconds but don’t want to interrupt her because (1) I think that’s rude and (2) what if I don’t really know what she’s trying to say? We’ll eventually have another therapist working with our son along with Jane but, for now, we expect to primarily be working with Jane for the foreseeable future. We are still in the assessment phase for our son, so our recent meetings with Jane involve a lot of questionnaires to make sure our son is getting the right treatment. The last questionnaire Jane pulled out was about two pages long and should’ve taken 30 minutes max to complete thoroughly. It took us a full hour just to get through the first page. We had to schedule another meeting to complete the second page, which also took a full hour. Jane works a typical 9-5 so my husband and I must take time off or use our lunch hours for these meetings. So far, we have had six of these meetings (which should’ve just been two or three) and there are more to come. At this point, I expect we will just barely scrape by the assessment deadline (or else we’ll have to start this whole process over again). Jane also needs to work closely with our son’s preschool (who are amazing!) since that’s where he’ll receive most of his therapy. Jane has had a couple meetings with our son’s teachers, which they told me took much longer than they expected. I am prepared to forge ahead with Jane because (1) her facility really is perfectly in line with what we want for our son, (2) she is a good therapist, and (3) the thought of having to spend months finding and completing this process with a new (probably less fitting) facility fills me with dread, mostly because we’d be wasting valuable time my son could really use in therapy. If I were Jane’s manager, I would probably address this issue with “radical candor,” but as I am her client, I’m not sure how to approach it. Her sessions with my son are fine because they’re play-based, not dialogue-based. But there will also be continuous check-ins with both my husband and me, and our son’s preschool. I don’t want to frustrate his teachers whenever they must interact with Jane (which will be often) or spend my foreseeable lunch breaks waiting for Jane to finish her sentence. What do I say to her, if anything? Is it better to just grit my teeth and bear it? Can you address the amount of time your meetings with Jane are taking without getting into the reasons why they’re taking so long? By that I mean, when scheduling meetings, could you say to her, “I will have a hard stop at 3:30 that day — can we get it all done in half an hour?” Or, if you think she’ll just suggest rescheduling for a day when you’ll have more time, you could address it more broadly: “Our meetings are taking a lot more time than I’d anticipated. We of course want to get you what you need, but we’re having to schedule extra, unanticipated meetings because we’re running so long. Is there a way to streamline the meetings to make it more possible for us to juggle them with our jobs and other commitments?” Maybe you could add, “If we’re able to answer some of this over email, that might help a lot.” Try approaching it as collaborative problem-solving — with a tone of “we want to make sure you have what you need, but we’re already stretched thin and it’s butting up against time claimed by our jobs and caring for other family members / can we find a way for our son to work with you that doesn’t endanger our own jobs?” The danger, of course, is that no matter how you couch it, Jane could tell you this is just the way it needs to be. But I’d argue that’s ultimately a good thing in that it will provide sharper clarity about exactly what working with Jane will look like (and what flexibility is/isn’t available). If that happens, you’d know for sure that this is part of the package of working with her — and then would need to decide whether you’d rather choose Jane with all the endlessly long meetings over switching to someone else with all that that could entail. Read an update to this letter. You may also like:why do offices say they’re “fast-paced” when they’re not?friend drama may collide with job huntcan I do anything about a senior-level colleague who doesn't do any work? { 212 comments }
I just found out I’m seriously underpaid — now what? by Alison Green on July 11, 2023 A reader writes: I think I need a reality check because I just don’t know how I should be feeling about this. I work for a very large company (100,000+ employees). I started nine years ago as an intern and have been promoted twice since then. I’ve been considered a top performer, earned a stellar reputation, and have year after year of glowing performance reviews. My managers love me, my coworkers see me as a trusted resource, and I’ve even received awards for my work (like with an actual trophy). I’ve suspected for the last few years that I’m being somewhat underpaid, but I wasn’t really sure how far off I was. I’ve only received three raises in nine years and those were pretty small; I’m now making about 14% more than I was as an intern nearly a decade ago. Management also makes a huge deal out of even small raises like they’re doing us a big favor: I got a merit raise last year and my manager gushed about how everyone else got 2% but I’m just so darn valuable I got a whopping 3%. A couple years ago, my state enacted a pay parity law requiring job listings to include a salary range. My company managed to avoid doing this for the better part of two years by listing all openings for my role in a less worker-friendly state. But in the last two weeks, there were about 10 postings for my same role in other locations of my company, and those included the range (which was consistent across all of them). My salary is in the bottom 25% of that range. If I just aimed for the upper half (not even the top end), I’m being underpaid to the tune of $40,000-$50,000. I’m livid. For whatever reason, when I didn’t have the actual numbers, I could tell myself it wasn’t personal and probably not *that* bad. But now that I see it in black and white, it’s really hard not to feel angry and downright insulted. I live in a very high cost-of-living area and with all the inflation over the last couple years, I literally do not make enough to pay my bills anymore; I’ve been taking payday loans every single pay period for months and am drowning in debt. I’ve been casually job searching for about a year when I see a particularly attractive listing (and was trying to stay with this company if at all possible), but now I’m really cranking it up to find something better elsewhere. Am I overreacting or off-base for thinking that my high performance should get me a salary higher than the bottom of the range? Also, is it even worth addressing with my management at this point? I figure that a company that acts like a 3% raise is a massive favor isn’t going to even consider for a moment the sort of bump I would need to get to a fair salary. And I don’t want my manager to spend political capital for me only for it not to be enough for me to stay. But on the other hand, it seems like they’re never going to change if nobody calls it out. Yes, it’s worth addressing it with your manager. There’s enough of a chance that you’ll get a salary bump that it’s worth at least trying. Even if it doesn’t work, there’s value in raising the concern so that they’re clear on why you’re leaving when you eventually do. Also, there’s very little cost to raising it. You’re not asking for something unreasonable (your company publicized the salary range for your role so you have solid data behind the request, and they must have known there was a chance you’d see it) and you’re not going to look out-of-touch for thinking nine years of excellent performance should put you somewhere other than in the bottom 25 percent of the pay band for your job. One important caveat: You didn’t say how long you’ve been in the role you’re in now. You’ve been at the company nine years, but you’ve been promoted twice. If you’re new to the job you’re in currently — if it’s been less than a year, say — it’s possible that it could make sense to start you at the bottom of the range for this specific job, since pay bands are generally based on tenure in a particular role, not at the company more broadly. It wouldn’t be uncommon to start you toward the bottom of the pay range when you were first promoted into the position, with the plan that you’d move to the middle and then the top of the range with time and experience, after you prove yourself. That said, even if you are new to the role, I’m skeptical that would account for the discrepancy entirely. Nine years into your career, with glowing performance reviews and awards behind you, you shouldn’t be making only 14 percent more than you were as an intern a decade ago. You also should have been getting more significant increases with each promotion. Three percent is average when you’re staying in the same job and meeting expectations, but promotions to higher-level positions should come with larger gains, and it sounds like yours didn’t (and that’s before factoring in inflation with a cost-of-living adjustment). Moreover, even if we ignored all that, we’d still have the fact that nine years into a successful career with multiple promotions, you’re resorting to payday loans to pay your bills. Your employer almost certainly isn’t compensating you appropriately. Any chance part of the explanation is that your company caps how much of a raise you can get when taking an internal promotion? This is a terrible practice, but it’s not uncommon: Some companies will limit you to no more than an X percent raise when you switch roles internally, even if that puts you well below the market rate for the new job, and even when they would have paid much more had they hired someone external. That wouldn’t justify you being underpaid, but it might at least explain how you ended up here. In any case, it sounds like you have all the data you need to ask for a (significant) raise. If you don’t get it, even after pointing out the advertised range for the role and your track record of achievement in the company, keep your job search cranked up. In fact, you might keep it up regardless. Unless you get a really compelling explanation of why you’ve been underpaid for so long, this is a company that’s much too comfortable paying you less than your work is worth. And even if they increase your salary now, I’m worried about how responsive they’ll be the next time you deserve a raise. But for now, let’s try to get you paid what you’re worth for however long you decide to stay there. Originally published at New York Magazine. 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my employee pressures coworkers for rides everywhere by Alison Green on July 11, 2023 A reader writes: Your recent post about an intern who wanted rides to work made me think perhaps you might have some insight into my present situation. Unlike similar posts I’ve seen, it’s not the chauffeurs who are asking about the situation, but the manager (me) who sees someone taking horrible advantage of coworkers. I know these people are so compassionate and caring, but they also don’t have the extra funds to be putting the wear and tear and gas on their vehicles. I have an employee who started working here as a college student, “Jenny.” Jenny didn’t have a driver’s license or vehicle, but the campus housing was less than a quarter mile away, so she walked. However, after she graduated, she moved a few miles farther away and started asking fellow employees to give her rides to work and rides home. People gave her a ride. Jenny also now asks the person giving her a ride to stop at her child’s daycare on the way to and from work to drop off/pick up the child. (She’ll leave the car seat at the daycare during the day.) This has been going on for almost a decade. She still does not have a driver’s license or vehicle and has no intention of getting them, as far as I know. Employees have actually quit because they didn’t want to continue to give Jenny a ride but felt guilty saying no. Currently, she gets most rides to and from work (and daycare) from three compassionate employees who are very caring and can’t tell her no. One person always gives her a ride home, every single day. Usually Jenny gets a ride to work with one of the other two employees. Sometimes Jenny will ask for (and receive) a ride from someone who is not even working that day. They will drive in (one employee driving 23 miles one way), pick her up, drop her off at work, and drive back home. She never offers to pay for gas. She’s asked people to drop her off at the movie theatre where she’s meeting friends. (Presumably the friends give her a ride home.) She has had coworkers drop her off at her kid’s daycare in the morning for a meeting. Then she’ll call her coworkers in a few hours to pick her up and bring her to work. She does occasionally have other friends give her rides, but it definitely looks to be the majority of time she asks coworkers to pick her up and drop her off and generally drive her around. I don’t think she’s ever used public transportation (which is mediocre here). Her daily commute is farther than the previous quarter mile, but could still be traversed by walk or bike. This is the situation I inherited when I became manager about a year ago. I have talked to the employees giving her a ride. Most don’t want to do it, but they are too compassionate to say no. If this is what their conscience is telling them to do, what can I say to that? Part of the problem is that the majority of this happens before and after work hours. Occasionally, Jenny will ask for a ride to or from an appointment or meeting (during work hours), but most of it is the employees giving her a ride on their own time. The few times when she does ask for a ride on work hours, well, everyone helps each other out occasionally. How can I forbid an employee from picking her up at her child’s daycare when I just drove out to jump another employee’s stalled vehicle? She rarely asks me for a ride so it hasn’t been an issue personally. Again, how can I help one employee (with a dead battery) when I won’t on occasion help out another employee? I hate to see people taken advantage of. I know most of these people don’t have extra financial resources. I have heard some employees say something like “She’ll hate me if I don’t give her a ride.” Is there anything, as the supervisor, I can or should be doing? Aggggh. This could all be solved if your employees would stop being so passive about it! If they’d simply tell Jenny they can’t drive her anymore, the problem would be solved. But they’re not — and since you’re actually losing employees over it, something that shouldn’t need to be your business is becoming your business. To be clear, there are a lot of ways this could play out that wouldn’t be your business. If Jenny were just asking for occasional rides and people were mildly annoyed but doing it anyway … not really your business. But you’ve had employees quit over it. I also wouldn’t be surprised if over time, a cultural expectation has built up on your team that driving Jenny around is “what we do here” — and so people who would like to tell Jenny no worry they’re expected to do it anyway. Some of them might worry about how it will affect their relationship with Jenny at work, or even their relationships with other coworkers if their refusal to drive her means someone else feels obligated to drive her in their place. So again: your business. But I can see why you’re struggling with it, since it’s outside-of-work behavior that your employees are agreeing to. Keep in mind, though, that there are times when behavior outside of work falls into your purview: for example, if an employee kept showing up to outside-work social events and insulting the coworkers who were there, that would be your business because it would affect the dynamics on your team. Or, for an example that’s closer to your situation, what if you had an employee who was constantly nagging coworkers to buy her dinner and they didn’t want to do it but felt obligated to help her out, and some people were starting to resign rather than continue to fund her meals? In both those situations, although the behavior was outside of work, it would be affecting your team dynamics and so you’d have standing to intervene. There are limits to this, of course. If two of your employees used to be outside-of-work friends and had a falling-out, it wouldn’t be appropriate for you to get involved other than ensuring they were treating each other civilly at work. But when things come into work, they’re your business. And in this case, with people quitting over the situation, that bar has been met. Ideally, you could just talk to the people driving Jenny and give them your explicit encouragement and permission to turn down her ride requests. But it sounds like you’ve done that and it hasn’t changed anything. Maybe that’s because these employees are people-pleasers or afraid to be assertive, which can become extra potent if it intersects with any feeling of “this is what the team does.” But since talking to them hasn’t worked, I’m hesitant to rely on trying more of that. Because of that, I think you’ll have to talk to Jenny and say something like: “I need you to figure out transportation to and from work that doesn’t involve relying on your coworkers. I know on your end it must look like people are driving you happily, but what I’m hearing on my end is that people feel pressured to help but would like to stop, and it’s affecting the dynamics on the team. I understand this has been your set-up for a long time, so I don’t expect you to change it overnight, but I do need you to have another system in place one month from now.” She will probably push back, saying people are happy to do it and they’d say no if they didn’t want to. To that you can say, “Unfortunately, we’ve had people quit over this and I can’t continue having it impact the team that way. You do need to find your own transportation to and from work.” In theory you should add, “Obviously an occasional ride when you’re in a pinch is fine — we’d all do that for each other. But your coworkers can’t be your default plan for getting here and home.” But given the high danger that Jenny will take that as license to continue to ask for rides most of the time, I’d probably leave it out for now. After you have that conversation, it’s worth talking to the ride-providing coworkers again, letting them know you’ve had this conversation, and saying you need them to do their part by being clear with Jenny that they can’t continue to drive her. From there, you’ll need to stay pretty actively involved to make sure that Jenny really does stop leaning on colleagues for constant rides; this is entrenched enough that it’s likely to take fairly active involvement from you (possibly ongoing for a while) to ensure she actually lets up on people. Is this a weird amount of involvement to have in an employee’s transportation and other employees’ favor-providing? Yes! It absolutely is. But it’s at the point that you’ve lost multiple employees over it, so you’ve got to intervene. You may also like:coworker assumes we'll give him rides, can I fire a new hire for being pregnant, and morehow can I get out of chauffeuring my coworker everywhere?intern wants me to drive him to work, saying no to a weekend party in my honor, and more { 604 comments }
my assistant won’t stop talking about my cane, recovering after a serious mistake, and more by Alison Green on July 11, 2023 It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go… 1. My assistant won’t stop being “concerned” about my cane I am a GM at a construction company office. I have a part-time assistant I cannot do without and five field technicians I see once a week or so. Within the past 18 months, I have developed a need for the occasional use of a cane. I’m seeing a doctor, but sometimes I have to slow down or use a cane to get around. When I walk to my assistant’s office, with the cane — not making a big deal about it (I don’t wince, sigh, push baby ducks out of the way with my cane, so forth), she sighs and puts on this face like I need a wheelchair and asks how I am, if I need a chair, if I need help at home, if I need need need. I’ve told her many times, “It’s okay, I just need a little assistance with the cane sometimes” or “Well, it’s a little damp out and this works for me.” Thinking back, she does get a kick out of talking about illness, crazy bruises, sniffles, so forth, but I don’t comment or acknowledge with more than a polite comment. It’s nice she is concerned, but how can I get it across to her that it’s fine and she doesn’t need to keep commenting on it? “It becomes a much bigger deal when you keep talking about it and I’d prefer that you stop doing that.” And if that doesn’t work, then get even more direct: “I don’t think I’ve been clear enough: Please stop commenting when I use my cane. It’s not the big deal you’re making of it, and it’s distracting to have to keep reassuring you that I’m fine.” I have a feeling both of those are more direct than you’d prefer to be — but you’ve tried a softer version and it’s not getting through so you really do need to spell it out. At some point it’s actually not nice that she’s concerned because she’s ignoring what you’re telling her would actually be helpful in favor of indulging whatever is going on on her end. Either way, though, as her manager, it’s completely reasonable to be direct about something like this … and you might need to keep an eye on whether she’s being similarly aggravating to other people in the office with health conditions too. 2. How do I recover after making a serious mistake? I am a junior employee in a department of about 20 people. I recently sent an external-facing email with an error that required my senior colleagues to do damage control in a way that could harm their relationship with some of the recipients. What is the right thing to do when that happens? I apologized when I alerted them to the mistake, but I feel awful. I’m relatively new and I don’t want to be seen as a liability, but I also don’t want to draw further attention to myself by sending everyone a personalized quilt with “I’m sorry” embroidered into every square. How do I recover in the eyes of my colleagues after screwing up, especially as a newer employee who hasn’t built up much capital? For what it’s worth, my manager is great and helped me handle the problem. Everyone makes mistakes, especially when they’re junior! That’s normal. What sets good employees apart from less-good employees is how they handle it when it happens. The most important steps are to disclose the mistake as soon as you can, take responsibility for it, and share a plan for how you’ll avoid something similar happening in the future. Sometimes people are so embarrassed about the mistake that their instinct is to not talk about it; they worry that talking about will just draw more attention to it. But that can backfire, by making it look like you’re not that concerned. Conversely, the person who says, “I realize how serious this was and here’s my plan for making sure it doesn’t happen again” will inspire a lot more trust. Of course, that that’s likely a conversation you should have with your boss rather than the rest of your coworkers, so they won’t necessarily see that part of it. For them, the way you rebuild trust is by demonstrating conscientiousness going forward. They’ve undoubtedly seen junior employees make mistakes before, they know it happens, and what they’ll be most interested in is any pattern. If you demonstrate a pattern of good work going forward, you should be fine. That said, you could also ask your manager for advice on this — she may be able to suggest specifics that would be helpful in your office. Regardless, though, no “I’m sorry” quilt necessary! 3. Asking for three days off after a week on the job My grandson just accepted an entry-level position. Four days later, he learned that my daughter and husband are going on a camping trip for three days only one week after he starts the job. He wants to go. Can he still ask for time off for three days when he didn’t say anything at interview time and acceptance of offer? He shouldn’t. If he had brought it up as part of his offer negotiations, that would have been fine — but at this point he’s accepted the offer and they’ve been planning around his start date. Asking for three days off that early — at a time when they’ve likely already scheduled training and other activities for him — will look like he’s not taking the commitment he just made to the job particularly seriously. 4. Applying for a job using a resume that isn’t current Is it acceptable now to apply for a job using a résumé that is not current? I am the executive director of a social services program, and I noticed that we are receiving a lot of applications with résumés that aren’t current. One person we interviewed a couple of weeks ago was asked why her résumé wasn’t up to date – the jobs on the résumé stopped at 2017, but her application indicated she was working as of June 2023 – and the person responded, “Oh, I forgot to update that.” I didn’t interview the above-mentioned person, as I would not select to interview a person if they submitted a résumé that wasn’t current. But I was wondering if it is not as important nowadays to submit a current résumé if the job application reflects the most current work history? I did some internet research but I didn’t see any information about this topic, which is why I’m emailing you the question. No, that’s strange! I mean, it’s fine to leave off jobs that don’t strengthen your resume overall, so it would be different if they made a deliberate decision to exclude their most recent job — like if it was in a totally different field and they thought it would detract from their candidacy rather than strengthen it, or if they’d only worked there a few weeks when they applied with you, or it it were otherwise a strategic choice. Also, if you approached the candidate rather than the other way around, it could be fine in some circumstances for the person to say, “I don’t have a current resume since I’m not actively looking but I can send you my last version — be aware that it doesn’t include my current job.” But if it’s just “I didn’t think to update my resume from several years ago before applying for a job now”? That’s an unusual lack of care about how one is presenting oneself when applying for a job. It’s not a trend, although if you’re really seeing it a lot (like more than twice recently) and these are otherwise good candidates, it’s worth exploring what’s going on. (For example, are you giving people a ridiculously short window to apply? Paying so little that people aren’t willing to put any effort into your application process? Even that wouldn’t normally result in this though, so who knows.) 5. A question about The Office I was watching old episodes of The Office, and had a question for you inspired by the show. In the episode I watched, Michael Scott (regional manager) was dating Holly Flax (HR rep for his office). In response, Michael’s boss transferred Holly to a different branch that is seven hours away. Is this legal? It seems kind of sketchy that an employee would be transferred because they dated their boss. Michael wasn’t Holly’s boss; she reported to corporate, not to Michael. (That’s why Michael could never fire Toby, the HR rep Holly replaced.) It’s not outrageous that they’d choose to transfer the relatively new HR person over the long-time regional manager presiding over what was (bizarrely) one of their most profitable branches. They could be in problematic legal territory if they transferred Holly without having a clear business reason to move her while keeping Michael where he was — and definitely if they always transferred the woman when there was an office affair — but I don’t think either of these was the case here. (Although … a lawyer could probably have an interesting time with the fact that they also fired Jan while Michael was dating her. Hmmm.) You may also like:how do I ask the CEO if I can "borrow" his assistant for my projects?my employees ignore my wifecan I send a male assistant to get me tampons? { 268 comments }
I have to train an aggressive man when I have a trauma history by Alison Green on July 10, 2023 A reader writes: I’m part of a project team creating and launching a new online system, which will mean significant changes in the way employees do their job. There’s some resistance to this change within the organization and one department in particular that is deeply opposed to the new system. We have been on a massive change management journey and this resistance unfortunately hasn’t gone away. It has gotten better as the project went along, but it hasn’t left altogether. The next step of the project is formal training on how to use the new system, which I am running. One staff member, Derek, is especially anxious and combative regarding the new system. For example, he frequently complains he has not seen aspects of the system that relate to his job (he absolutely has) and that he disagrees with how the system is configured (even though he has been asked for and has given input along the way). I know his anxiety comes from not knowing how he will do his job and even that his job might become redundant (not likely but not impossible). Recently he was part of a group testing the system and it didn’t go well. Aside from his general dislike of the system, he got frustrated and threw his mouse at another staff member. While I’ve never seen him do something like this, it isn’t really a surprise to me and tracks with his previous behavior. I wasn’t in the room when this happened, so I’m not sure why it wasn’t dealt with in the moment and I’m not sure how it has been managed since or if he has been spoken to about his behavior, although I know my manager was told. I’m not a manager in my team, nor is Derek part of my team or someone I work with day to day. I’m now supposed to be training Derek. And I don’t think I can do it. In one of my previous jobs, a man hit me in the face because I was “bossy” (his justification — I am a woman in my 20s) so I have some real trauma and fear of confrontation in the workplace. This doesn’t usually affect me because the people I work with now are sane, rational people who would never throw things or act violently at work. I handle confrontation and disagreements fine as long as no one is throwing fists. I have not felt unable to do my job or work with certain people because of this trauma until now. I’ve had therapy for this, but obviously being put in this situation is terrifying to me. I don’t know how I will react if he acts like this in training (e.g. yelling, slamming his fists on the desk, or THROWING THINGS, even if it’s not directed at me). I don’t know what to do. Before training starts (in about a month) I need to speak to my manager to make a plan for if he does act like this but I don’t know what to say. Am I allowed to kick him out? If so, how? Will my manager step in to remove him? If so, when? Can I just leave? I don’t know how to communicate that if I can’t remove him, I will need to leave. I cannot and will not be in another room where a man is acting violently. I don’t know how to explain that to my manager. I also don’t know how to advocate for myself and be taken seriously and not be brushed off as overthinking when I’m trying to come up with a plan. I’m also going to speak to my therapist about this but I would love and appreciate some advice about how to come at this from a work angle. Sometimes when you know you have a really strong reaction to something due to trauma, it can be easy to forget that even people without that trauma might have a strong reaction to it too. And that’s the case here. Many, many people without the history you have would be deeply alarmed by an employee who threw office equipment at a colleague in frustration, and would want to go into any training with him with a plan for how to handle any similar display of anger in case it happens again. That’s not to say that their alarm would be the same intensity or the same experience as yours, of course — just that it’s not odd or unusual for someone to hear what you heard and want a plan in place before working with Derek again. So even if you didn’t have any history around this kind of thing, it would be reasonable and unremarkable to go to your manager and say, “I’m really concerned by what we heard about Derek throwing things at a coworker in that meeting, especially in light of how combative he’s been with us previously. I’d like a plan in place for how to handle it if he does that when I’m training him. Specifically, I’d like to know that I can choose to discontinue the training if he’s being aggressive, yelling, or throwing things, or seems headed to that point, and I want to talk with you about the logistics of what that would look like.” If your manager will be in the training (it sounds like maybe she will be?), you could say, “Can I rely on you to step in if he starts to go in that direction? As well as get your blessing to do it myself if I feel I need to?” This isn’t you overthinking or being excessively cautious — it’s just smart business practice to have a plan in place for this kind of thing once you’ve seen signs it might be needed. I think you might be thinking of it as “I need to disclose my unusually strong reaction to aggressive men in order to address this,” but I’d be encouraging you to do this even if you hadn’t mentioned your history or your responses in your letter to me! If you’d just described Derek’s behavior and nothing else, my advice would still be to use exactly the script above. That said, you certainly can disclose it if you want to and feel like it would help. You just don’t need to, because this is a reasonable thing to address either way. Read an update to this letter. You may also like:my boss asked me to project-manage a peer -- and the peer treats me like his assistantmy company won’t allow any name changes, ever, for anyonehow can I explain a mistake wasn't mine without looking like a tattletale? { 330 comments }
my coworker quit as soon as I became his boss by Alison Green on July 10, 2023 A reader writes: Soon after I started in my current job, “Bob” joined our team in a similar role as me. He was noticeably very anxious and insecure, and he struggled with getting the basics down. The job includes giving feedback on others’ work, and I noticed that I kept having to ask him to fix the same basic issues constantly. I didn’t shy away from giving him feedback directly but professionally – the same way I give feedback to everyone else – and while no one else in the company seems to have a problem with me, he would get angry and defensive when I critiqued his work. I invited him to coffees with our other colleagues, in the hopes that being more friendly could improve our working relationship. But he was hot and cold socially; sometimes he was kind and funny, and other times withdrawn and sullen. Over time, I was promoted to a more senior role, and then our boss announced that he was leaving the company. I applied for our boss’s job and I got it. Bob abruptly took the next day off and emailed HR his resignation. The timing of his resignation seems too immediate and sudden to feel like a coincidence. I’m having so much trouble figuring out what happened and if I could have prevented it. I’ve spoken to multiple people about the situation who agree it’s a distinct possibility that Bob didn’t like having so much feedback come from a woman, especially one who was on the same level as him at the time, and especially one who was younger than him. I’ve wondered if I should have been gentler when I was giving him feedback – but I didn’t want to condescend to him by assuming he couldn’t take it, and his work had so many obvious errors that that letting them slide would have negatively impacted the quality of our products. Worst of all, I have to manage him until his exit date. It feels like he found me so intolerable that he didn’t think it was even worth giving working with me a shot, so I’m not sure how to deal with talking about his remaining projects that I’ll have to help him hand off to someone else. What can I do to try and keep the peace until he leaves? And is there anything I can do differently to avoid a situation like this ever again? I answer this question over at Inc. today, where I’m revisiting letters that have been buried in the archives here from years ago (and sometimes updating/expanding my answers to them). You can read it here. You may also like:my employee is constantly hyping himself -- but his work isn't goodI was asked to be “friendlier” when giving feedback about serious safety issuesmy employee shuts down when I give her feedback { 167 comments }
a “thought experiment” is causing a cold war in my office by Alison Green on July 10, 2023 A reader writes: I work in an office of ~20 people. The majority of us have lunch together in the conference room most days. It’s not organized or mandatory, just a preference for most of us. People drift in and out and sometimes skip if they have errands or out-of-office meetings that day. The only person who consistently does not join in is Carrie. She has a chilly personality, but she’s not rude or outright unfriendly, just keeps to herself for the most part if something isn’t work-related. That’s fine! She attends holiday parties or any outside work event our bosses organize. However, one day a month or so ago, our IT contractor came in to update software, and Carrie did come into the conference room for lunch because the contractor was working at her desk at that time. She was quiet except for greeting everyone, which is normal, until another coworker, Steve, brought up one of his “thought experiments,” which is a common lunchtime bit he does, although not every day. He proposes the questions to the group at large — along the lines of the immortality pill or Mary’s room (concepts I wasn’t familiar with myself until they came up in these conversations). This time, his question was essentially, “If you had to choose between the death of one person you’ve never met or the destruction of all the works of Shakespeare (or another author you prefer), what would your choice be?” Everyone was being flippant for the most part (i.e., “If I save the person, no kid will be forced to read Shakespeare ever again!”) until Carrie chimed in and said, “Shakespeare teaches us more about humanity that saving one life would, so I would save the plays.” This created a very awkward silence and made several people visibly uncomfortable. Personally, I thought it was a theoretical discussion (and was scrolling on my phone anyway) so didn’t take it too seriously. Steve seemed to feel the same at the time and debated with her a bit, but no one else said anything related to it for the rest of lunch and most everyone excused themselves quickly. I thought it was awkward but just one of those things that would blow over. …which it didn’t. People started avoiding Carrie or being very curt with her almost immediately (like, that very afternoon). It’s not really the vibe in our office to email each other since we’re so small, but most everyone started emailing her when normally they would just approach her or speak to her over her cubicle wall. I honestly can’t tell if Carrie even minds the different treatment, but it’s so pointed I have to think she’s noticed. The next day at lunch, Steve expressed relief the IT update was over so Carrie would stay away. Many chimed in with their agreement. Unfortunately, every day at lunch since at least one person will bring up Carrie’s response to the question and how freaked out they were by it and that will prompt a prolonged discussion about the weirdness and how people don’t want to be around her and how she’s always been “off.” I don’t really know what to do! It seems so silly, but people are not backing down on avoiding Carrie or talking about how strange she is, when they never seemed to feel that way before. Our bosses are both about 10 years older than most of us (a couple in their 40s; most staff are late 20s/30s) and I feel like if I bring this up they’ll see the whole thing as childish and gossipy, and particularly judge anyone who brings it up to them. We don’t have HR. For my part, I’ve tried to continue to approach Carrie the same way I did before. She hasn’t complained herself, so maybe I’m just making something out of nothing and she’s fine with the cost of one remark she made! Is there something I should say to my coworkers, or should I just hope they move on soon? This is a really extreme reaction to a pretty mild discussion. In fact, those thought experiments are designed not to have an obviously right or obviously wrong answer; that’s why they’re thought experiments! So I have to think that your coworkers’ reaction to Carrie isn’t about her willingness to save literary works over a human life, and is more about their reaction to Carrie in general — as evidenced by those “she’s always been ‘off’” comments. Would they be having this reaction if a different person had chosen Shakespeare? I’m betting no. They’re freezing out Carrie because they didn’t like her to begin with — simply because she keeps to herself?! — and now they have something to pin it on. And it sounds like they’re all feeding off each other and reinforcing/escalating each other’s reactions, rather than each independently deciding to freeze her out without consultation with each other. We all saw this play out in junior high at some point; it’s pretty horrible that it’s playing out in your office. So please speak up for Carrie! For example: “Y’all, it was a thought experiment. The whole point is that there’s not an obvious right answer for everyone. This is really unkind.” And: “Carrie took it as a thought experiment, which is how it was presented. She’s not a monster, and it’s awful to freeze her out and talk about her this way.” I don’t think you need to escalate this to your bosses unless it starts getting in the way of work, particularly given your concern that they would judge you for bringing it to them. That said … are you sure they would? This isn’t just a small interpersonal thing; your coworkers are trash-talking Carrie every day and avoiding talking to her. That’s a pretty big deal, and a good manager would want to know about it and shut it down. But either way, you should stand up for Carrie when you hear your coworkers talking badly about her, and you I hope you’ll make a point of being warm toward her yourself. That’s the right thing when you see a group turning on someone who hasn’t done anything to warrant it. Read updates to this letter here and here. You may also like:my coworker suddenly dislikes metwo of my employees won't speak to each otherhow do I work with someone I can’t stand? { 618 comments }
can I ask for a raise because I stopped getting high at work, how to talk about a firing socially, and more by Alison Green on July 10, 2023 It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go… 1. Can I ask for a raise since I’m not getting high at work anymore? I am a customer service manager. Recently, I quit getting high at work. My marijuana use here was no secret, and sometimes even encouraged by ownership. I recently took a long break from cannabis, and discovered that I am much, much better at my job without it. Who figures. I have a review coming up, and I’m wondering if there’s any possible way to leverage “I’m not taking bong hits, and my performance has improved vastly” into more money without making it sound like my previously stoned work was not worth my salary. Is there any artful way of handling this? Leave the weed out of it entirely. If you’re performing at a higher level now, that’s what you should build your case for a raise around — leaving the reason behind the change out of the discussion (just like you would if your work improved because you were getting better sleep or finally left your crap boyfriend or so forth). That said, if the change has been relatively recent, you need to wait a while longer. There’s not enough case for a raise if it’s just “my work has been better for the last few weeks.” You need a sustained period of higher-level work to point to — generally an absolute minimum of six months (and always at least a year from when your salary was last set, unless something very significant about the job itself changed). 2. How to talk about a firing socially I am in a situation where all signs point to me being fired from my current job. I’ve been using a lot of your prior advice about how to improve job performance issues and talking to my manager candidly about expectations and performance. However, it’s very much looking like a “when, not if” situation. My question is: when that shoe drops, how do I discuss it in social situations? You’ve talked about how to address it in interviews, but what do I say about it to friends and family? Do I bring it up proactively, or do I wait until somebody asks about work? It will come out eventually and since many of my friends are from grad school, it would be helpful to let them know that I’m looking for work to activate that network. (For context, I am financially independent of my family and have been for several years now. I wouldn’t be asking for money from them!) It’s really up to you! It definitely makes sense to share it proactively with people you’d like emotional support from; beyond that, you can announce it or not, as you feel like. If you don’t announce it to someone and they ask about work, it’s fine to just say, “Actually, I’m back on the market” … and then you can either share more or not, as you feel like doing. If someone asks what happened and you don’t want to get into it, it’s okay to say, “It wasn’t the right fit” or “they really needed someone to do X and that’s not my strength — I’m better at Y.” That’s not to say you need to dance around the fact that you were fired; there’s nothing shameful about it and if you want to share it, you should — this is just advice for navigating it if you’d rather not. All of this also applies with people in your network who you specifically want to know you’re looking for work; you can still use language like the above with them if you’d like to. And if you want to proactively contact them to let them know you’re looking, you could start with, “I’m back on the market and looking for X.” You can fill in as much or as little detail as you want to from there. 3. Coworker is posting daily bible verses on the company social channel I work for a large U.S. company, one that you’ve definitely heard of. We have an instant messaging app that the whole company uses, with different “channels” for different groups. My immediate team has a channel, my entire department has a channel, and so on, including one channel for the entire company, with approximately 128k people who see it. For the past three days, a person (non-management) has started the day by posting a bible verse of the day. The first two had overtly Christian titles and were multiple paragraphs long, encouraging readers to “commit to Christ.” This morning his verse was much shorter and had no title, so I wonder if someone spoke to him about it. Between 10 and 20 people have responded with “like” emojis to each post. Since the channel is company-wide, someone in HR has to have seen these. I know it’s only been three days, but many, many employees (myself included) are not Christians. And I really don’t want to be proselytized to while trying to find instant messages that actually do pertain to me. However, the channel is, by definition, a social channel. There’s someone who posts (non-offensive) jokes, and someone who posts fun polls asking things like “What’s your favorite rock band of all time?” So the vibe for the channel is pretty much “anything goes.” Should I point out the bible verses to my HR rep? Or should I just ignore them and hope that the poster gets tired or bored and stops sending them? You should absolutely complain to HR and say you don’t want to be proselytized to at work. I wouldn’t assume they’ve seen it (not everyone reads company social channels or sees every message on them). It’s also possible someone in HR saw it and wrongly thought it would be fine as long as no one is complaining; scuttle that by being the person who complains. Read an update to this letter. 4. Can your boss refuse to let you ever eat lunch while at work? Several years ago, I worked for a truly horrendous woman at a mid-sized company. From day one she set out to make my life miserable. I know most bad boss behavior is not illegal, but there was one thing that I always wondered about: she refused to let me have lunch. I couldn’t pop across the street to grab a sandwich, or even leave my desk to eat food brought from home in the break room. I would even try to eat while I was working, but she stated this was a distraction from my work and therefore not allowed. Twice, she called a lunch meeting and ordered food for everyone else but me. When I tried to eat afterwards, she reprimanded me. She frequently demanded that I sit at my desk until 100% of my work was completed, which was regularly 10-12 hour days. I was classified as exempt so break and meal period protections don’t apply, but can management legally refuse to allow an exempt employee any kind of break at all? And can they refuse to allow you to eat while working? I did try mentioning that I was legally allowed to have a break and she told me that since I was exempt I wasn’t legally allowed anything, and skipping a few meals wouldn’t hurt me. For the record, I only lasted working for her for two months. I tried to bring my concerns to HR and they were useless, so I walked out of that office in the middle of the day and didn’t even tell my boss I was quitting. This was clearly not the only horrible thing she did, and I had no qualms burning that bridge. You’re right that state meal and break protections mostly only cover non-exempt workers — but a handful states do extend those protections to exempt workers too. So first and foremost, check your state’s laws. Regardless, though, it sounds like your boss was specifically targeting you and trying to make you miserable in a particularly sadistic way. It’s ridiculous that HR refused to intervene, and you were right to get out without bothering with notice. 5. When and how long can you take FMLA for bonding with a new baby? My wife is a teacher with a due date after the school year ends, and her contract is supposed to only obligate her to work the 180 days of the school year. Her principal told her she might not be able to take as much time off (or at least get paid for it) next fall as we had planned since some of it falls more than 12 weeks after the child will be born. She only gets paid for FMLA if she uses sick days, so we had planned to use up most (not all since we need a buffer) of her accumulated sick days and then use my company’s more generous paternity benefits afterward, but this would limit how many sick days she could use that way. Can employers block taking newborn bonding FMLA that starts a few months after the birth of the baby? If you can use sick days for maternity leave generally, can your employer limit you to only using them for days that fall before 12 weeks after the birth? No! You’re allowed to take FMLA for the birth of a baby and to bond with the child during the 12-month period that begins on the date of the birth. That’s any time in the 12 months, not 12 weeks, following the birth. The only thing I can figure the principal might be thinking is that you get a total of 12 weeks of FMLA per year, so maybe she misunderstood and thought your wife was proposing using those first 12 weeks over the summer and then more in the fall? But since her contract gives her the summer off anyway, that wouldn’t make any sense. You may also like:will asking for a huge raise make it more likely you'll get the lower number you really want?can I ask for a raise if I wouldn't leave over salary?how to answer when your interviewer asks, "how do you relieve stress?" { 498 comments }