our remote employees were excluded from our company appreciation day

A reader writes:

My company is kind of new to remote work. Covid forced us all home, and hiring developers remotely has been significantly more successful than trying to hire them in-person only. Because of those two factors, the small tech company I work for is now about 40% remote employees located all over the U.S. and Canada.

We have had some growing pains with appreciation and growth for remote employees. I myself am someone who was in office and then moved away to another state to be fully remote. I have been able to grow since I’ve moved away, being promoted to manager and getting an entire new team stood up. Other remote employees have also been able to grow, but we seem to be hard-won exceptions, whereas in-office people get promotions and raises thrown around like candy.

The other issue we have is with employee appreciation. The company regularly has in-office lunches and other kinds of perks for employees who come into the office. Most of these I don’t have a huge problem with. For example, breakfast is purchased for those in the office every Wednesday, with no compensation given to remote employees for that. I get that, I get the perk of not having to drive into the office twice a week (no one is required to be in-office every day). But then there are other things like big holiday parties with catered lunches and swag boxes. Sometimes the company is good about sending things out to remote employees as well, sometimes they aren’t. For example, they usually send remote employees a DoorDash gift card by email when they do catered in-office lunch parties, but they forgot at Christmas. I brought it up a couple of times, but then I just let it go.

The most recent and egregious example was all of the employees in the region where the office is located were invited to go to a theme park for the day. Anyone remote was invited to fly themselves out if they wanted to as well, on their own dime. All of these employees, so roughly half the company, got a day off work, transportation to or parking at the theme park, the ticket to the theme park, and a catered lunch in the theme park. The remote employees worked the whole day and got a gift box of cookies (worth $27 when purchasing one, and I’m sure there was a bulk discount) three days after the trip to the theme park. I was kind of expecting something somewhat equitable, like also getting the day off and a $100 Amazon gift card or something, but nope. So we were all working and watching the in-office employees in the region posting pictures of their company day off to the company Slack channels.

This coupled with some other ridiculous remote work policies (can only work from your home address and nowhere else, and yes they monitor this) has made me pretty angry and sour. I’m wondering if I’m overreacting and there is nothing wrong here or if I’m right to be mad and this is not how other companies are approaching having some remote and some in-office employees. And any strategies for fixing this — I manage a team of seven fully remote employees, only two of whom are anywhere close to the office, which makes it feel really important for me to stand up for my team, not just for me.

Well … I’m not terribly bothered by any of the appreciation perks, including the theme park day.

The thing is, the benefits to working from home are significant if you’re someone who prefers to do that and has chosen it. It’s not just all the stuff that’s been repeated ad nauseam the last few years — doing your laundry while you work, walking your dog at lunch, taking calls in sweatpants with your cat on your lap, having access to your own kitchen, focusing without distracting coworkers, and reclaiming your commute time — but it’s also things like not having to use PTO when your kid is sick or furniture is being delivered or when you’re too under the weather to drag yourself to work but willing to work from your laptop in bed. You also control your own environment, and your time, in ways that in-office workers generally can’t. And that’s before we even get into the ways that in-office workers often end up covering for remote colleagues on things that require a physical office presence.

All of which is to say: Even if you got absolutely nothing every time in-office workers get a perk, you’d still generally be coming out ahead.

Plus, a lot of the perks you described are things that don’t translate well for remote workers. Take that theme park day. That’s not just a perk for the sake of doing something nice for people; it has an actual business purpose. Having people spend time together having fun is a camaraderie-builder, and it’s supposed to pay off in more cooperative, collaborative work relationships. Sending remote employees a gift card wouldn’t achieve that, and giving you the day off wouldn’t either (and if they did offer you that, they’d undoubtedly have some in-office staff saying, “If a day off is an option, I want that instead” — and that’s defeating the whole purpose of what they were trying to organize).

Ultimately, I think you need to accept that you get a ton of benefits from working from home that in-office staff don’t get … and that conversely, sometimes they’ll get something from being at the office that you don’t get. Even accounting for those differences, I suspect you’d still prefer to be remote. If you realize that you don’t — that those sorts of in-person perks are important to you — then it might not make sense to choose a remote job. But your company can’t make it perfectly equal for you, just like they can’t mirror your remote perks for the in-office staff either.

Now, to be clear, if your employer wrote in for advice, I’d come at this differently. If I were advising them, I’d say it’s smart to find ways to ensure remote employees feel included and like part of the team. That doesn’t mean they shouldn’t do things like the local theme park day or that they need to send you DoorDash every time they do a catered meeting, but it does mean they should be thoughtful about inclusion in general and make sure remote staff isn’t routinely ignored.

That said, it sounds like ultimately your company has bigger problems in its management of remote employees — if remote staff are feeling like they won’t ever be promoted even if they’ve earned it, that’s going to eventually affect things like retention and engagement — and I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s coloring the lens you’re seeing the other stuff through.

people keep asking why I wear pantyhose, career coach wants me to use someone else’s job title, and more

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

1. People keep asking why I wear pantyhose

I am an adult woman who doesn’t shave my legs. I don’t like the feeling of shaving, I’m prone to rashes that I feel are more noticeable than the hair, and I hate having stubble. I’m fine with my hairy legs at the beach, but I feel like the leg hair would look unprofessional in an office. At the office, I am always wearing pants or hosiery. I’m a recent grad in my 20’s so my boss let me know that I didn’t have to wear pantyhose if I didn’t want to. The dress code is slightly more formal than business casual. Pantyhose is appropriate, just a bit old-fashioned. My boss and one other woman at the office wear them, but they are both about 60. Even the women in their 30s and 40s don’t wear pantyhose. (The office staff is eight women. The only man who works here is my boss’s retired father who shows up for a few hours two or three days a week.)

When I started, I had the convenient excuse that the office was way too cold and I couldn’t do bare legs. Our office shares a building and we are not the people who own it. The back office was regularly set to 68, sometimes even lower. It was believable and nobody asked further. Now I’m sharing the back with somebody new and she purchased a space heater. I’m not complaining — the office is way more comfortable now — but I am once again being asked why I never have bare legs. It’s not like they are singling me out, talking about clothes is regular small talk in the office. Wearing pantyhose by choice in your 20s is somewhat unusual and it keeps coming up. What should I say?

Option 1: “I like them!” Because you’re allowed to like them. People probably think you’re wearing pantyhose because you feel like you have to, so if you reframe it as something you like, it might take care of those comments.

Option 2: “I don’t shave my legs so I prefer this at work.” There’s no reason you can’t just own it —and if you do, you might hear, “Hell, go with hairy legs if you want to, we don’t care!”

There’s definitely still a thing about women’s body hair, particularly legs and armpits, but it’s starting to change a bit. It would still be A Thing in many offices, but there are an increasing number of offices where it wouldn’t be. And by A Thing, I mean mostly that it could be something people notice, think about, and have feelings about, not necessarily anything more than that. You might care about that or you might not.

In any case, you need to know your office to judge how much of a thing it might be, but I wouldn’t assume hairy legs would be side-eyed everywhere (especially in less conservative fields).

2. Career coach wants me to use someone else’s job title

I’ve recently hired a career coach as I’ve been looking to leave my job for a while and figured putting money down would finally motivate me to fully participate in the job-searching process. It’s been going fine, but I’m concerned about their advice for my resume. They’ve changed my current job title to fit the jobs that I’m looking for. For example, if my current job title is operations manager and I’m hoping to transition to the leadership coaching field, they’ve encouraged me to change that to say “leadership coach.” Aside from that just not representing my current role, I’m weirded out by the fact that someone at my current workplace does have the title “leadership coach.” If people from my workplace see my LinkedIn profile updated with that job title, they might actually think I’m having a break from reality and that I think I have my coworker’s job.

Is it normal to paint your resume and LinkedIn to reflect what you’re looking for instead of what you’ve actually done? If so, how would I do that without confusing all my past and current colleagues?

No! Not even slightly normal. This is not a thing that is done or would be okay to do. You can’t just randomly change your current job title to something completely different. And even if you could do that, which you can’t, it would be bizarre to list “leadership coach” as your title and then, presumably, have the bulleted list of accomplishments for that job be things that have nothing to do with that job and instead reflect your actual job of operations manager.

What does your career coach suggest you do when an interviewer asks why your title doesn’t match your resume’s description of your work? What do they say will happen when employers contact your company to verify your title and discover that you lied about it? (For the record, you could lose the offer.) And there’s also your very good point about how weird it will look to colleagues if you use someone else’s title on LinkedIn.

This is so astoundingly and strangely off-base about how hiring works that I’d be very wary of taking any other advice from this coach.

3. Should I report deceased people’s LinkedIn profiles?

As I get older, I’ve encountered former colleagues who died but their social media accounts including LinkedIn are still active. A freaky thing on LinkedIn is that LinkedIn generates posts on people’s work anniversaries as if those people are still working at the employers. LinkedIn support accepts requests to remove those accounts from non-family members by providing an obituary. I have done so once, but felt nosy afterwards.

What’s your take on reporting deceased people’s LinkedIn accounts? Some people, while still living, wrote a post notifying their connections that their accounts will be closed because death was imminent. Some people also entrusted family members to use their accounts to notify others upon their death.

Unless the person is a family member or you’re the executor of their will, I’d stay out of it. You have no way of knowing what their wishes might have been; it’s possible they or their family wanted their profile to stay up, and you risk directly violating their wishes. It’s really theirs/their family’s/their executor’s to handle.

4. My interviewer apologized for ghosting (but they didn’t and I wish they had)

About six weeks ago, I interviewed for an entry-level position in a field I’ve been considering moving into. They told me they hoped to have an update after two weeks and they’d let me know if anything changed. Then I repeatedly heard from them via email with apologies for not having updates yet and explanations about the status of the offer — an industry conference delayed us, the offer is stuck with HR, etc. Then six days after the last follow-up, they sent me a rejection email with a long apology for “radio silence” and “ghosting.”

However, I did not feel remotely ghosted. It’s standard in my experience for interview processes in this field to be pretty slow moving with lots of gaps in communication (a comparable org told me after an interview in May that they hoped to have an update “before September” for a job I applied for in February). So I was assuming that these detailed updates about the status of the offer were because they were planning to offer me the offer. I know that basically the number one thing you tell people about job searching is to assume nothing from a potential employer’s communications, but I was assuming. And now I do feel a little resentful that these updates spent so much time pushing this offer to the front of my brain when I could have just ignored it until the rejection rolled in.

Is this type of communication typical? Should I reframe my expectations here, or is it worth bringing up to the hiring manager that I didn’t find their approach to the process as helpful as it seemed like they wanted it to be? I know more transparency is theoretically good thing, but this felt like more of an exercise in frustration than a meaningful shift in the power dynamics of the interview process.

Nah, let it go. They were trying to do the right thing: they gave you a timeline and then tried to keep you updated about potential changes to it. It’s possible, even likely, that they were doing that because they did consider you a top candidate and thought they could end up making you an offer — in fact, this looks to me a lot like what can happen when you’re in the top two or three candidates and they want to make sure they maintain the connection because they very well could end up offering you the job. But even if it’s not that, it’s worth reframing your expectations; let this just reinforce that the only true  sign that an offer is imminent is when they say “we are sending over an offer.”

5. Do you have to be paid for your waiting time if your manager is late to open the building?

I have a question about the legality of docking hourly employee pay. Let’s say that an hourly employee is scheduled to start work at 5 am. The opening manager is scheduled to start at the same time and this manager has the keys to unlock the door to get into the building. What happens if the manager oversleeps and doesn’t arrive until 6 am? Can the business dock the pay of the hourly employee by one hour? I can’t find anything online about this type of situation, but I hope that the employee would be required to be paid for that time since it is not their fault that they can’t get inside the building to clock in.

Yes, they’d need to be paid for the hour they were waiting. This falls under what’s called “waiting time,” which is where you arrive at work and are required to remain there until you’re needed. This is the same concept as if you got to work and your computer was down so you couldn’t work immediately but were expected to wait there while it was fixed.

the faked heart attack, the very smart dog, and other (amazing) stories of pettiness at work

Earlier this month I asked about the pettiest things you’ve seen (or done!) at work. You offered up so many ridiculously petty stories on that post that I can’t fit them all my favorites into one column … so here’s part 1. Part 2 will be coming next week.

Note: We’re not endorsing petty behavior here (well, except the dog’s). We’re just enjoying the entertainment value.

1. The replacement monitor

My personal favorite is from my call center days. One of my team’s monitors had an almost imperceptible yet inevitably headache-inducing flicker which was far beyond merely annoying, yet every time it was reported to our regular IT guy he insisted it was fine. Cut to his holiday, and I reported it to the cover IT guy, along with the back story. He appeared 10 minutes later with another monitor, then proceeded to carefully remove the ID stickers from both, before swapping them around and disappearing with the now-relabelled defective one. When he got back, I asked why the subterfuge — “the replacement is regular IT guy’s monitor.”

2. The air fresheners

My old boss was a really big air freshener person. She had tart warmers, plug-ins, lit candles, electric oil diffusers, salt lamps, going all the time in her tiny office.

All of us complained at some point, but our other colleague “Ted” got migraines and would beg her to get rid of all the scented stuff. She put up a fight and refused to stop and told us all to get over it. Later on she even gave Ted a warning about his attendance, despite being the one who caused his migraines.

Ted called our risk management officer who came in to inspect our building. The RMO flipped out about the sheer number of lit candles and plugged in electrical scent lamps, all of which were major fire hazards. She made our boss box them all up and put them in her car, and came in weekly to check for more scent diffusers. I left the company but people told me for years afterwards until old boss quit that RMO inspected her office weekly for years.

3. The uniforms

I used to work for a security contractor. I had a coworker who had changed to a new job site and required a completely different uniform.

These companies are notorious for requiring uniforms but not providing everything (i.e. we’ll give you only two shirts for a full time job, you have to buy your own pants, belt, boots etc). As a woman, I especially had difficulties because most often clothing was “unisex” (read: men’s cut) and would look sloppy and unprofessional. Anyway, my coworker was not provided a new uniform before his start date, and was told to wear his wife’s uniform (!) because she had recently quit and not yet turned her items in. He proceeded to do so, finding the smallest and most ill-fitting items he could. He even made sure to wear her name tag.

Within 48 hours, someone drove from the office to deliver him uniforms on site. I bought him lunch, brimming with pride.

4. The very good dog

Several lifetimes ago, I worked for a tiny wildly corrupt nonprofit. It has since gone under, which it needed to. It was a super toxic workplace with one of the few culture benefits being that you could bring your dog to the office. I had my first dog at the time, a very smart rescue dachshund. She happened to be with me at the office on the day that I was fired without warning. I did the traditional packing my things into a copy paper box move and, unbeknownst to me, my dog marched into the main room where the two VPs sat, one of whom would be fired the following week, and pooped right next to the desk of the VP responsible for firing me. This was a housetrained and very, very smart dog.

The VP noticed the poop right as my dog and I were getting ready to walk out the door for the final time, my arms loaded with my copy paper box, my dog in her harness and on her leash. She demanded I put everything down and go clean up my dog’s poop, which until that moment I truthfully did not know existed. I knew I was never going to get a reference from this place and particularly her, so I said, “Nope” and walked out the door, never to return. It was so satisfying. My good girl got so many treats for that.

5. The lights

Our owner and GM hate each other. The GM hung some lights in a very public space of the office, and the owner hated them and made him remove (owner offices at a different location). Except GM never removed them. He just turned them off. Now, whenever people come in, our GM turns on the lights, tells them the story and asks them to email the owner about the “really cool lights that are gone.” Owner remains unmoved. I’m one step under the GM and the showdown is a bright spot in my work life.

6. The recycling bin

I worked in an open office at a small company where maybe 10-15 of us were in a large room at any one time. Every 1-2 desks had a small waste basket where people would toss wrappers/lunch detritus/etc. Of note, there was no recycling available in the space when I started.

I was out for a week and when I came back “Joe” was talking to me about something and saw a soda can in my waste basket. Apparently we had gotten a recycling bin while I was out, but it was sort of behind the door in a place you wouldn’t see unless you looked. Instead of telling me “We got recycling last week, it’s over there,” Joe proceeded to mansplain to me how to put something in a recycle bin. He literally demonstrated by taking the can out of my trash and moving it over while explaining how to put a can in a box as if I were a particularly slow 2 year old.

Joe thinks he is a feminist, but in case you missed it, he is actually a misogynist and did this with the room about half full. I, along with others, seemed to find ways for all our empty bottles and cans to end up in his personal waste basket for at least the 6 months until I left. In fact, his trash was basically never empty during that time.

(Note: Joe would meticulously put recyclables in the recycling bin, so no harm done other than to Joe.)

7. The girl

We had a tutor who would have described himself as a “good old boy.” He used to describe ME as “the girl on reception.” I am in my 30s and the company’s operations manager.

Every time he called me “the girl on reception,” I would find a reason to send him an email and increase my job title in my email signature by 1pt size each time.

It got pretty big before he was unceremoniously fired.

8. The card

A coworker and I were bitter enemies, which was awkward because there were only three people on our team. One time a vendor sent us a gift of cookies to share, and Enemy Coworker intercepted it and ripped apart the card to destroy the evidence that it’d had both our names on it. But I has SUSPICIONS and took the ripped-up card pieces out of the trashcan, reassembled them, and presented the evidence to our manager like I was Kid Sherlock Holmes.

We were both rightfully yelled at by a grandboss for our pettiness and told to get our act together. Luckily for both our sake, I left the company shortly after; we brought out the worst in each other.

9. The assistance

I’m in a public facing “helping profession.” Before I left my last job, I changed every instance I could find of my contact info to my slacker coworker’s email and told people how happy they’d be to help after I left.

10. The buffet

I worked at a hotel that put on a grand Sunday brunch buffet—ice carving, free-flowing cheap champagne, and so on. Working it was exhausting—my thumbs were raw from peeling the foil and popping the corks, the tables were spread across the lobby, which was upstairs from the kitchen so we had to haul stuff up there and haul it down, for $2.11 an hour. But the tips made it a lucrative day. I answered the phone to take a reservation one busy Friday morning at the restaurant because the cashier was swamped. It was for a large party and I told the caller about the 15% gratuity for large parties, and she got snippy and asked why, “since we have to serve our own plates?” In a serious, helpful tone, I told her we could arrange a table where they got nothing to drink, near the busser station so they could retun their dirty plates there, would she like one of those? and in the long silence that followed, I hung up on her.

11. The allies

I’m a trans man, I use he/him pronouns and have used them for over ten years. I have been rocking a beard for quite a while, I have short hair, a flat chest, a very masculine first name and a low voice. Despite this, I once worked with a woman (I’ll call her Jane) who kept calling me “her” and “she” and “Mrs. LastName” because “you look so womanly, I can’t remember that you’re a man!” I transitioned well before being hired and she didn’t even know I was trans until I’d been there a while, so I don’t know what made her think “woman.”

I reported her to HR, but I’m not sure what actions they took. To my coworkers credit, they did a good job trying to get her to stop:

– Any time Jane said “she,” a different female coworker (Lisa) would respond as if Jane was speaking to her, even if Jane was looking right at me. If Jane said she wasn’t talking about Lisa, Lisa would say, “But you said ‘she,’ so you’re talking about a woman, right?”

– Alternatively, staff would ask who Jane was talking about, because no one named Mrs. LastName worked there. Sometimes she’d double down and people would act confused, because “we’re helping you remember his name/that he’s a man, you know your coworkers, right?”

Didn’t matter when this happened. If she got my gender/name wrong, everything ground to a halt so staff could “clarify who Jane is talking about” and “make sure they understand what she’s saying.” Meetings could drag on if she kept doing it enough, since no one let her get away with it. Even some people higher up would “help clarify” what she was saying.

Thankfully, she eventually stopped misgendering me, even if it took a while. I do genuinely wonder if she was being intentionally offensive, since she never had any problems remembering non-binary or trans women’s pronouns and names (even if they transitioned on the job). I guess I have a particularly womanly beard!

Note from Alison: This isn’t even petty! But it’s a great story and a model others might want to use, so I’m including it.

12. The screenshot

I’ve done this at several jobs. People would do this thing where they would call me or interrupt me on Teams to get a small set of numbers (like literally six digits) they were just too lazy to pull off a share drive because it was URGENT!!! When i would gently remind them where they could find this data, even with a live hyperlink on teams, they were always like “oh hoho but it’s easier and faster to call you.”

So every time they called i sent them the data back as a screenshotted picture. Enjoy manually typing for wasting my time.

13.The flowers

The HR lady at my old job, Sharon, was very used to getting her own way. She didn’t have a birthday, she had a whole birthday “month” (and was irritated she had to share it with Jesus), her BFF in the office would ask everyone to contribute to a birthday present for Sharon (this happened for absolutely no one else), when she got married she made her fiance re-do the entire proposal because the first one wasn’t “good enough,” and then her mom’s boss bought her every single gift from her wedding registry. Everything had to be pink and absolutely NEVER orange — she graduated from Texas A&M and acted like even seeing the color orange offended her very soul.

One year for Christmas, our boss gave us these blown glass flowers he got on vacation or something. They were kind of pretty, but otherwise pointless. I received a pink one. Sharon — horror of horrors — received an orangish/coral colored one. Shockwaves of offense begin radiating throughout the office. She walks into my office and spots my pink flower on the corner of my desk. Starts begging me to trade with her. Trying to convince me how she just absolutely cannot have anything orange around her and she must have pink. I couldn’t have cared less about the stupid flowers but I just shrug and say, “I think I’ll keep it but thanks for the offer.” I then placed it on the most prominent place possible on my desk and left it there for as long as I worked there, three years. It was just my little flag of victory, my nod to all us nobodies in the office, to that ONE time Sharon didn’t get what she wanted.

14. The personal calls

I had a coworker who would take long, and I mean 20-30 minutes, personal calls gossiping with her family members all day at work. She’d try to speak quietly sometimes but mostly it was full volume chatting while the rest of us worked around her. After a few months I waited for a call to end and then poked my head over the cube wall and said “I had to go the bathroom and missed it, was your cousin able to make bail?!?”

He had! And for some reason she then started taking the calls outside.

15. The heart attack

I once worked in a small office. One coworker got so upset about two other coworkers going out for lunch and not inviting her that she faked heart attack symptoms, made our safety rep call 911, and got carried out on a gurney.

16. The walkie-talkies

I had been working all summer at a residential summer camp as part of a select group of staff who had walkie-talkies on 24/7 for emergencies. The last week the directors became more and more loose with their use of the walkie-talkies for jokes and chatter, which I normally wouldn’t have minded, but by the last night of camp I was too stressed and sleep-deprived to have any sense of humor. As the evening wore on and the joking and staticky cackling grew to almost nonstop levels, I had had enough, and I walked the entire length of the camp with my finger on the talk button, completely silent, so that nobody else could talk. It couldn’t have been more than 5 minutes, but the radios went silent for the rest of the night. I don’t know if they ever knew what had happened, or that it was me who did it, but it was a thrilling moment of miniscule power I will forever relish.

how can I get better at spotting talent in people different than me?

A reader writes:

I like to think I’m pretty good at judging technical abilities, but I’m wondering if I’m actually only looking for the cues that people like me (male/western culture) show. If so, I’m wondering how I can get better.

Here’s the situation that makes me wonder: At a recent technical conference, we gave prizes to young engineers for the best contributions. When the prize committee met, all agreed that “Alice” deserved first prize.

However, when I had visited that group (I work with lots of groups in this field) last year, Alice asked me for advice. I recommended she not work initially on the hard problem she was successful at, but instead start on an easier problem before tackling the hard one. She ignored me, and did a fantastic job. I clearly didn’t spot how bright Alice was. She listened to my advice, but didn’t ask any of the questions I normally see as markers of really good technical abilities. My question then is how can I improve my “spot bright people” skills.

I answer this question — and three others — 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.

Other questions I’m answering there today include:

  • My coworker keeps texting me about non-emergencies
  • Why won’t anyone eat the last cookie?
  • My CEO insists on advertising jobs we’re not hiring for

update: if I quit my job when everyone else is quitting, the organization will fall apart

It’s the final installment in “where are you now?” season at Ask a Manager. (If I didn’t print your update yet, it’s still in my queue for later!)

Remember the letter-writer worried that if they quit their job when everyone else was quitting, the organization would fall apart? Here’s the update.

I wanted to thank you for your kind response and the commenters for their feedback and thoughts on the letter. The day that my letter was published, I spoke to my family about the financial consequences of quitting without another job lined up and ended up resigning the next day. It was definitely the right decision. The short answer is that the organization kind of fell apart, but I wish them the best. The way it all happened is a doozy, so grab your popcorn and your coffee.

I gave a little over 7 weeks notice to coincide with the end of a program we had coming up and not leave the staff in a lurch. Our board chair, who happens to be my coworker Abby’s best friend, didn’t try to ask me to stay as she’d been through a tumultuous job herself and knew I was frustrated with the lack of authority in my position.

During my only board meeting that overlapped my notice period, the board chair shared that there wouldn’t be any time to say goodbyes to me as she wanted to go into an executive session with just the board to discuss the fact that all staff have now resigned. I didn’t even get a thank you for my five years there.

Abby, as some commenters suspected, was on a power trip and tried to take over the organization the second I resigned. Here are some highlights:

  • Announcing that she needs to be made interim Executive Director with hiring and firing power immediately, a title and authority she actively sought against for me, literally the day after I resigned
  • Stating that neither I or the Board are her boss
  • Deciding that I am not allowed to be part of the staff/board transition committee since I “won’t have time”
  • Even though she gave 18 months of notice, she wasn’t going to have time to prepare transition documents and must stay on as a part-time consultant to create these documents after her last day
  • Declaring that the transition committee “doesn’t have time” to take my feedback about announcing my resignation to the general community — despite the Board chair and I agreeing on a different plan

The transition committee’s original plan to announce my departure was going to be buried in another email, which made it look like they were hiding something (or that I had done something wrong), and this was a sticking point for me. During the back and forth with the Board chair about my resignation announcement, it came out that Abby had given the board an ultimatum to make her interim Executive Director after I leave, and the Board chair and board members involved in the “mediation” never informed the rest of the board about what happened or that Abby had yelled at program participants. I got a call from one of the Board members on the transition committee asking what was going on and I gave her the details. She was shocked, and then informed the other Board members what was happening.

The Board ultimately decided not to make Abby Interim Executive Director, and informed her of their decision two days before my last day. She stated that she would move up her last day to be either the following business day or December 31. The Board chose the end of December, to which Abby then decided to take a 6-week “mental health break” immediately and return to less than 2 weeks of notice period to wrap things up. I’m impressed with how unabashedly unashamed she was in using up her accrued sick time, which would not be paid out otherwise.

After I left, things got worse. I got a call Friday night at 11 pm from a Board member saying that my exit interview notes had gone out to the Board and staff by accident, and we worked to get him access to delete the email from the staff accounts. Luckily, Abby was already on her mental health break so she didn’t see the notes when they went out. Then, the Board member who was taking over some of the administrative things from me (payroll approval, mail pickup, etc.) started emailing me every week with questions. Almost all of the answers were found in my transition documents that I put together and shared, and some were silly, like asking if we had branded envelopes in the office. After a few weeks of this and responding back days later and with lots of “I don’t know as I’m not on staff anymore,” the Board member continued to email. I wrote back a polite but direct email stating that I can’t be one of the first people he asks questions as I’d left the organization several weeks ago, he responded with a nasty email ending with, “Whatever. I won’t email you anymore.” But then, the Board chair started emailing me questions and I told her off the bat that I’ve answered many questions now and moving forward, I will need to charge [an exorbitant rate] for my time. I stopped getting questions, finally.

I took several months afterward to recover from the burnout, and now I’m job hunting outside of the nonprofit sector using your book and the blog’s advice!

The organization didn’t quite fall apart, but it went into a hiatus and hasn’t had any staff since the end of December. Lessons learned:

  • Don’t give more notice time than necessary
  • Get everything in writing
  • Severance agreements are your friend
  • You can’t fix what is institutionally broken
  • People won’t return kindness if they don’t have to, so look out for you
  • Alison and the commentariat are a wealth of knowledge and support

Thanks again for taking my question and for your thoughtful response. I can’t express my gratitude enough!

rude instructor comments on our food choices, husband won’t wear noise-canceling headphones at home, and more

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

1. Instructor keeps commenting on everyone’s food choices

I’m taking a four-day online class (I’m federal government and the class is put on by a private sector training company). We get a break for lunch, and when we return, the instructor checks in to make sure we’re all back by asking us to type what we had for lunch into the training chat (since we aren’t on camera). Then, as the answers come in, he makes conversation by passing judgment on each person’s lunch, declaring many of them “too healthy” but deeming things like pizza to be much better and something he would enjoy eating. He talked a lot today about how his wife makes him eat salad before he’s allowed to have dessert.

Setting aside his very gendered approach to his nutrition, this is an absolutely terrible environment for anyone with food issues. I understand why he wanted to have a “conversation” as we came back in after lunch. In this virtual setting, no one is on video and he’s the only one on audio — the rest of us are typing into a group chat. So having him just asking “are you there?” over and over would have been pretty dry and boring. I like the idea of him asking a question that requires something more than “here” as an answer. But this is the second day he’s labeled me a “health nut” because I didn’t have pizza and I’m dreading the next two days. I’m trying to decide if I should say something, either now in a private message to him or in the course evaluation at the end. From some of his comments, I don’t really think he’d would put much stock in anything I tell him about this. Do you think I could suggest another topic for our after-lunch conversation? Or do you have a good suggestion for how to bring us back together in this weird virtual setting?

I’m just not sure if I want to spend capital on a guy who I don’t think will understand the issue. It’s annoying to me but not derailing me, so it might not be worth the effort of shouting into the wind. But then I don’t like to “tell on him” to his employer without giving him a chance to address it himself, and I don’t like to just leave it unaddressed. I feel like I’ve eliminated all of my options!

I think you should complain about this to his employer because what he’s doing is so rude — not to mention full-on harmful to some people — and he (and they, and his future classes) would benefit from someone in a position of authority telling him to stop. And if you want to just go straight to that rather than trying to address it with him directly first, there’s nothing wrong with that — especially when he’s already given you the impression he wouldn’t be receptive.

However, if you’re willing to speak up directly before the class is over, I think there’s value in that too. A private message to him is one option, but what about just typing it in the public chat? The feedback you’d be offering isn’t so sensitive that it demands privacy … and it might be good for other people to see it (and who knows, maybe someone else will back you up). But whether it’s public or private, the next time it happens, you could write, “I know you don’t mean anything by it, but could you stop all the commentary on people’s food choices? It would be really terrible for anyone with food issues. Maybe you can ask us to indicate we’re back by naming our favorite movie or show instead.” If he blows you off, that’s one more thing to add in your evaluation later.

2. Employee won’t do the work we hired her for

I am the the grand-boss of our administrator, Jane, who is driving her manager, Marissa, distracted. We are a small organization and this doesn’t leave a lot of leeway for picking up other’s tasks and means we have to be very focused in our priorities. When Jane started, she was very enthusiastic about our work and explicitly said she wanted to do “backroom support” as she was burnt out from front-line work.

Unfortunately, it has been an uphill battle to get her to do the admin work we desperately need. She doesn’t seem to see or take ownership of tasks that are right in front of her, e.g. getting rid of furniture we don’t need that is in the way or she starts a task such as organizing to get the furniture picked up, then works from home and emails the whole organization to “see who will be in the office” on delivery day. Staff in the office are usually there doing front-line support work or strategic and finance work and are constantly having to reorganize around this. It seems like she has to be constantly reminded what her actual job is and that she should be doing it.

Alongside this, she will go off on tangents doing work that no one has asked for, isn’t in our strategic priorities, and takes up other’s time and capacity to deal with. She has emailed our board directly a number of times trying to arrange meetings about work that is not at their level. (The board have nicely redirected her but she keeps trying.) This is despite repeatedly being told not to do this, that this work is not our priority and not in her job description.

We have raised these issues with her and are about to go down a more formal route, but Marissa and I are baffled about WHY. Jane is smart, personable, and enthusiastic but despite being here for nearly a year has not picked up the tone and strategic position of the organization. It doesn’t seem malicious or lazy and although we are taking steps to address it, it’s bugging us both that we don’t understand. Just to be clear we have asked Jane, we’ve reviewed and tightened up her job description, set clear work plans, talked about communication mismatch, and asked her point of view, and then things improve for a week, then circle back. Can you help me understand?

You might never know the “why.” You should certainly ask Jane that directly if you haven’t already — phrasing it as, “We’ve spoken repeatedly about X and it improves for a week but then backslides. This is serious enough that we can’t keep you on if it continues. Do you have any insight into what’s getting in the way?”

But ultimately, while it’s useful to try to figure out the “why” if you can, the most important thing is the “what.” And the “what” is that Jane, for whatever reason, isn’t doing the job you need her to do, even after clear, explicit, and repeated feedback. Sometimes an employee just isn’t well-matched with the job they’re in, no matter how much coaching you give them — and the reason could be anything from a fundamental skills mismatch, to lack of interest, to things in their personal lives, to mental health, and all sorts of other things. The best thing you can do is to be really clear about what success in the role looks like, how she’s falling short of that, what needs to change for her to stay in the job, what support you can provide, and how much time she has to make those changes. (And because she improves briefly and then backslides, you should be explicit that you need to see “sustained and consistent improvement.”)

That said, I get why you’re so interested in figuring out the “why”; if you knew it, it could potentially point you toward solutions. But sometimes you just won’t get that answer. Ultimately — assuming that you have been clear about your expectations and the consequences if she doesn’t meet them — the mismatch sounds significant enough that you should be planning to resolve this quickly one way or another (for example, if you do a formal improvement plan, do it for something like four weeks, not months and months).

3. Can I make my spouse wear noise-canceling headphones at home?

This is a bit of an odd question because it involves my spouse, not my coworker, but as we are both working from home, I feel like this is about a shared workspace. My husband works a later shift than I do, and he takes online meetings after our kids return home from school and while they are home in the evenings. The kids are 11 and 14, and the youngest has some behavioral disabilities that make them a bit volatile at times. My husband is constantly shushing us at home, and it really stresses me out! I will try to pack all the kids off to the park after dinner, but then one kid starts dribbling a basketball on the way out the door — and my husband comes out to shush us. I let them have screen time, and he says the video game is too loud. He does use earbuds; I’ve suggested he invest in a really good pair of noise-canceling headphones that will eliminate the noise around him, but he says the technology isn’t good enough to cover up how loud we are when he’s speaking in a meeting. Is there a solution I’m missing? Are there headphones that will help? He says the situation is not that bad, but I feel awful for my kids.

I don’t have the technical know-how to speak to whether there are noise-canceling headphones that would help (although I’m inclined to think yes) but hopefully readers can. But I do think this may be more of a husband problem — it’s not reasonable to expect perfect silence at home in the evening, particularly when you have kids, and if he’s shushing you just for dribbling a basketball on the way out the door (when the noise will obviously be short-lived), it sounds like his expectations aren’t reasonable. I’m also concerned that he’s not willing to even try the headphones idea, given how helpful it could be for all of you if they work and especially given the stress he’s causing your family.

At a minimum, he should be collaborating with you to figure out how to make this better — if not noise-canceling headphones, then how about sound-dampening material in the room he works in? Some other solution? The answer shouldn’t be that the rest of you have to spend your post-work/post-school hours in silence.

Read an update to this letter

4. My company is cutting pay to force people out

I work at a small startup, and a new CEO has just come on. He has decided he wants to get rid of me and other senior members of the company without having to pay severance, so he is cutting our pay.

In my case, I’ve had multiple promotions and many glowing performance reviews and he wants to cut my salary by nearly half — to less than what my direct report makes.

Is this legal? Obviously I’m looking for a new job, but my field is very hard to find new jobs in so I fear I may either be stuck or unemployed without unemployment if I quit.

It’s legal unless he’s targeting people based on race, gender, religion, disability, age, or other protected classes (and age is one I’d particularly look at here). However, the salary cut is big enough that in a lot of states it would be considered “constructive discharge” (which is when your employer changes your working conditions in such a way that remaining in the job would be intolerable to a reasonable person) and you’d be able to get unemployment benefits. At a minimum, you should consult with your state unemployment agency — and you might also want to consult with a lawyer who can look at the specific facts in your case (not necessarily to sue, but lawyers can be good at finding points of leverage to compel the employer to behave differently or, failing that, to get you severance).

5. Can I charge a fee for all the follow-up I have to do with my boss?

I am a 1099 contract employee project manager for an ad agency. I have to continually follow up with the boss to see if they have read and approved the proof attached to emails before sending to the client.

Following up with the boss to see if they are reading their own emails is a burden on me, as I have to keep an eye on my own emails and projects. Can I bill an inconvenience fee or babysitting fee on my invoice to cover this insane amount of follow-up? Child care service rendered?

You can’t bill for fees your employer never agreed to, but you can either (a) raise your rates to account for the additional hassle or (b) bill for the additional time you’re spending, if your contract is written to allow that.

I suspect the bigger problem might be that you’re referring to yourself as an employee when you’re actually a 1099 contractor — those are two different things, legally speaking. If you’re being treated as an employee but your employer has misclassified you as a contractor, that’s a legal issue that needs to get straightened out (especially since it would mean you’re paying a bigger tax burden than you should be) — but if you’re an employee, this kind of thing is part of dealing with having a boss. On the other hand, if you’re correctly classified as a contractor, then the remedies in the first paragraph are available to you, whereas they wouldn’t be to an employee.

weekend open thread – June 24-25, 2023

This comment section is open for any non-work-related discussion you’d like to have with other readers, by popular demand.

Here are the rules for the weekend posts.

Book recommendation of the week: By the Book, by Jasmine Guillory. A reimagining of Beauty and the Beast in which a young publishing assistant agrees to help a stand-offish celebrity get his memoir on the page. I am not normally a romance reader but this was fun and charming.

* I make a commission if you use that Amazon link.

it’s your Friday good news

It’s your Friday good news!

1.  “I’ve been meaning to write in with this good news — my household has benefited from AAM twice in the past year! First, last fall my husband’s manager took a new job, and after some deliberation my husband decided to throw his proverbial hat in the ring for the position. He wasn’t sure where to start with his cover letter, so I sent him a list of your most popular posts, including the cover letter template (he commented multiple times about how useful that was the weekend he was working on his application!). Lo and behold, a couple of months later he was offered the position, and the pay bump was much higher than he intended to ask for. Again, using advice from this site, he decided to go back and negotiate for more PTO, which was way more valuable for him, and he got it! He’s learning a lot about being a manager in the new position, and we are already making travel plans to take advantage of the increased time off.

For me, I had a long, frustrating eight-month job hunt when I decided to leave academia and education behind. Changing industries is hard, but I drew on your advice for cover letter writing and interviewing, trying to draw direct lines between my previous working experience and what I could bring to the newer roles. I finally got a great offer a couple of months ago, and I’ve been really happy with the new role. I got a 25% pay bump, much better benefits, and am reaching something like work-life balance after years of it being heavily skewed towards the former.”

2.  “A few years ago, I was pretty fed up with the politics in my field and was desperate for a way out. Like most people, I couldn’t leave my industry without retraining and new experiences to add to my resume as I have worked in the same field my entire professional life and have only worked at two companies over the last 15 years. I was pretty stuck.

I decided to pursue a national certification for a mostly unrelated field that I was barely dabbling in but had a lot of transferable skills. I took a course from the local college to see if I was even interested in moving forward and after having a great experience, I took another course and then the National Certification Preparation Course. In total, it took me a year and a half, three classes, and $6,000 to gain the certification.

While I have never used the certification in a professional capacity, I have been able to use the certificate as a way to leverage more money and title changes at my current job. I quite literally do an entirely different job than I was doing before, with skills I already had. I simply needed a piece of paper to prove I could handle it. My salary is now 48% higher yearly and have an entirely new title. While there are still political issues, they are on the periphery vs front and center in my daily tasks and duties.

I know many people may not be able to drop $6k on retraining but my investment in myself paid off the first year and has steadily grown to a salary that allowed me to auto-pay my bills for the first time in my life. I would encourage your readers, even if it takes longer than a year and a half, to invest in themselves and try for new opportunities.”

3.  “A small but meaningful update: I had a phone screen for a job this past Friday and I got the HR rep to name the salary range first! (Unfortunately a little lower than I’d like but I could work with it depending on benefits.) I have a second round interview later this week.”

4.  “I was part of the first batch of Friday good news and things have changed in the last 3 years. I changed jobs twice since then and while I have been a bit anxious about the perceived job hopping, its been ok!

I switched from my agency role to corporate and then followed my partner in a bicoastal move! It was hectic to say the least with a lot of stress on interviewing with the recent work history. I had hoped to remain remote at the previous job in order to get the time in for my resume but it wasn’t approved by HR and leadership. With your advice and a revamped resume, I managed to go from $35k to $120k across all those jobs. (Holy flipping shitballs, that’s a significant change.)

I’m now settling in as a contract to hire and loving the company I’m assigned to, with praise from leadership on my work. Everyone is looking at budget to get headcount and I’m currently sitting at 1 number spot to get flipped. While things could change, I feel confident that I have the skills to get another job without the significant amount of stress involved.

I’ve been reading your blog since college, and when I was stuck so many years ago as an assistant manager in retail and thinking I would never get out, your advice helped me stay sane and keep striving to leave for better pastures. Thank you thank you thank you.”

open thread – June 23-23, 2023

It’s the Friday open thread!

The comment section on this post is open for discussion with other readers on any work-related questions that you want to talk about (that includes school). If you want an answer from me, emailing me is still your best bet*, but this is a chance to take your questions to other readers.

* If you submitted a question to me recently, please do not repost it here, as it may be in my queue to answer.

coworker is always late because she stops for coffee, my boss told me to change my ringtone, and more

I’m off today. Here are some past letters that I’m making new again, rather than leaving them to wilt in the archives.

1. My coworker is routinely late to work because she stops for coffee first

I have a question about a coworker, Sansa, who is routinely ~5-10 minutes late (2-3 times a week). Her job does not require she be here at 9 on the dot. I know being a stickler about a few minutes is not good. However, every morning (not an exaggeration) she is late, she strolls in with Starbucks drinks/food … so in this case, it’s not “traffic was bad” or “the kids weren’t cooperating” — both of which I totally understand happen and aren’t cause for concern. To me, this is a known discretionary stop on her commute and she should plan appropriately for it. If one day the milk steamer explodes and she is late because of that … well, fine, but this is happening SO often. Honestly it just drives me crazy, but I know I have a pet peeve for habitual tardiness.

A further concern is that we are in the midst of recruiting (two offers have been made to new grads and we expect them to start within two months). These new employees will be at the same level, and doing similar work at Sansa (they’ll be more or less equals), and I’m worried Sansa is setting a bad precedent.

I’m not Sansa’s direct manager, but I do have seniority over her (I’m middle management, she is entry level). Am I crazy for wanting to say something to her? I could go to her manager? He and I have a good relationship — we’ve been working together for seven years and I consider us friends. But that seems extreme.

I think this is a you problem rather than a Sansa problem!

You have a pet peeve about habitual tardiness, but the fact that it’s your pet peeve doesn’t mean Sansa is doing something wrong. The way to solve this isn’t to talk to Sansa, but for you to realize that this isn’t really your business.

Many managers, including me, couldn’t care less if someone is routinely five or 10 minutes late, as long as their job doesn’t require coverage that starts earlier than that. The question for any manager should be: What is the work impact of this? If there’s no work impact and Sansa is doing good work, who cares? I suspect you care because of the principle of the thing — it annoys you on principle that she doesn’t take timeliness more seriously. But lots of things can annoy you on principle without it being something you should address.

Ultimately, if her manager doesn’t care, why do you need to? And if you’re thinking, “Well, her manager is making the wrong call” — it’s not smart to nickel and dime good employees over five or ten minutes, especially when a lot of people value that kind of minor flexibility in their jobs. (Personally I’d be really annoyed if my boss gave me crap about being five minutes late when I was doing great work and it didn’t have any impact.)

If your concern is that Sansa is setting a bad example for the two new grads who about to start, that’s something for those new hires’ managers to deal with. If you’re their manager and you really need them to arrive at 9 on the dot, then you can let them know that — saying something like, “You might see some people come in a little later than that, but for our work it’s really important that you’re here on time because of ____.” (But if you can’t figure out what to fill in the blank with, that’s a sign that you don’t have a reason to require that.)

2019

2. My coworker copies everything I do

One of my coworkers and I share a desk, so we’re very close all day long. I’ve been getting super frustrated lately because it seems like she copies everything I do. She started bringing in the exact same breakfast as me, and then proceeded to copy my daily lunch as well. At the end of the day, she won’t pick up and leave until I do too. She’ll finish her work about an hour before the day ends, but as soon as 5 p.m. hits, she’ll suddenly start pretending to do work again until she notices I’m leaving too. I one time casually mentioned how I come in early each day due to my rough commute, and ever since then she’s been coming in early as well. She has a very light workload, so I know there is no reason for her to be in the office before 9. She also stares at me continuously throughout the day, which is super uncomfortable when I’m trying to get work done.

At first, I let it slide because I realized that as a new employee, she was probably just looking for a role model. But at this point, she’s been here almost a year and it frustrates me that she can’t form her own identity. Any tips on how I should handle it?

There’s not really a kind way to address most of this. The breakfast and lunch copying probably falls in the category of “sometimes coworkers have really weird, often annoying quirks,” which is just part of the deal of working with other people. But I do think you could ask her about the arrival/leaving time thing. For example, you could frame it as making sure she knows that your hours don’t have to be her hours, by saying something like “I’ve noticed you’ll often wait to leave until I’m leaving — you know you can actually leave whenever you’re done, right?” Or you could just ask “What’s bringing you in so early lately?”

And with the staring, I’d recommend meeting her eyes and saying, “Did you need me?” Do that a couple of times and it might be enough to make her realize it and stop. But otherwise, there’s the more direct “You keep looking at me — what’s up?” and, if necessary, “You’re staring and it’s unnerving me!”

Read an update to this letter here.

2017

3. My employee keeps adjusting himself while we’re talking

I have a male employee who will adjust his balls (over top of his pants) during most conversations I have with him. It’s distracting, a bit uncomfortable, and I have no idea if I should have this conversation with him or if so, how I would approach this issue in a respectful way. Does he even know he is doing it? Am I being unreasonable in pointing it out as a habit that needs to change? Is this common and I only notice with him? I’m too embarrassed to even bring this up at work to ask anyone else how they could approach it. Thank you for some practical guidance and honest feedback on if this is worth the energy to discuss.

Well, this is incredibly awkward. You shouldn’t have to tell him that regularly touching his own genitalia during a work meeting is not okay, and I’m annoyed on your behalf that you need to.

I do think you should, though, because he should not be touching his balls while talking to people at work. I mean, most people aren’t going to take issue with one quick, discreet adjustment — but this does not sound like that.

After reading your letter, I had a good solid five minutes of not being able to come up with language for you to use, but I’ve come up with three options.

You could pointedly say, “Do you need a minute to yourself?”

Or you could be more direct: “Could you do that adjusting in the bathroom?”

Or: “I would feel more comfortable if you could do that in private.” And you could follow that up with, “Assume your coworkers might feel the same way.”

It’s going to be awkward, no matter what you say! Because referring to an employee’s balls is awkward AF. But he’s the one causing the awkwardness, not you, and you should be perfectly comfortable letting him shoulder all of that burden himself.

2018

Read an update to this letter here.

4. My boss asked me to change my ringtone

Is it worth it to try to push back when you’re the only one in an office of 10 people asked by your manager to change the ringtone on your personal cell phone? My standard one (that’s the one when anyone calls, but I have distinctive ringtones for certain folks) is the theme from the Beverly Hills Cop movies, and I keep my volume at about 20-25%. Everyone else in the office has their ringtones on full blast. I know because I hear them. One is a particularly shrill old-style telephone ring, and another is the bugle call “Release the Hounds” from a fox hunt.

In any case, mine’s not bad, and it’s not loud, but I’m the only one asked to change it. Is it worth pushing back on?

I mean, I think everyone in your office should be keeping their phones on vibrate; this sounds like way too much jarring noise.

But I don’t think you can push back on this. Your manager has told you that she finds yours in particular to be disruptive (and maybe others have told her that too), and that warrants changing it. Or if you feel strongly about keeping it, then keep your phone on vibrate when you’re at work.

(And actually, even if this request had come from a generally reasonable peer, rather than your manager, I’d say the same thing. It can be hard to work in an office full of other people’s noises, and if someone tells you you’re making a noise that’s particularly driving them round a bend, it’s kind to try to accommodate them if you can do so without major inconvenience. Even if you feel like other people are just as bad!)

2018

Read an update to this letter here.