Ask a Manager

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.

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.)

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.