Ask a Manager

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. Office lunch event is out of control

Once a month, my mother and her coworkers coordinate a potluck to celebrate birthdays and other special events. “Potluck” is the terminology my mother uses, although it does not sound like a typical potluck to me. These lunches have been going on for at least two years, and are definitely expected by the employees. The potluck is pretty extravagant. Each person is given a three-course meal that is catered from a local restaurant. In theory, if every employee contributes $10, this would cover the cost of food, drinks, plates, and cutlery. The company does not contribute any money, nor is there a company budget for this. These potlucks are 100% funded personally by employees.

Here’s where the problems comes in. Not every employee contributes money to the potluck, but every employee takes the food that is offered. I would say there are about 5-10 people who contribute financially, but there are about 40-50 employees who are eating. My mother’s contribution has swelled to $60, and one of her friends is contributing $100 to make up for the lack of funding from other coworkers. Even more annoying is that some employees who do not contribute financially will bring tupperware to the potluck so that they can bring food home to share with relatives or save for a later date.

These potlucks have caused resentment and stress for my mother. She is now getting into monthly disagreements with coworkers who she feels should not take food if they did not pay for it.

I’ve told my mother that she should opt out from the potluck, or even try to cancel it due to the lack of equal funding. However, she thinks it’s a better idea to create a list of those who do financially contribute to the potluck, and only allow those who paid to take food. I told her she has no authority to enforce that plan, but she’s all gung ho about it. Any advice you can offer would be great!

Yeah, these aren’t potlucks! Potlucks, by definition, are where everyone brings a dish to contribute. These are catered meals!

In any case, the current situation is obviously ridiculous. Your mom and the other coworkers who are contributing have four options: (1) They can continue paying up to $100 each (!) to buy meals for people who aren’t contributing anything at all. This seems absurd, and there are better uses for their charitable dollars. (2) They can decide this clearly isn’t working and cancel it. (3) They can opt out individually and decide it’s not their problem if their colleagues want to subsidize moochers’ meals, but they’re not going to do it themselves. Presumably this will then make the subsidizers’ shares rise even higher, which might prompt them to take similar action themselves, but who knows. (4) They can change this to a “lunch club” where anyone who’s interested in participating pays $X (the cost of their full share) to join in the meal, and anyone who doesn’t pay isn’t part of that month’s lunch.

#4 seems pretty reasonable to me. You said that you don’t think they’d have the authority to keep out people who didn’t pay, but this is a pretty common set-up in offices — “we’re ordering delivery, if you want in you can place an order and pay the cost of what you’re getting.” This is more of a prix fixe menu, but the concept is the same. They’d announce the change ahead of time, saying they’re switching to a new format and the cost is $X for anyone who wants to eat, and then if nine people sign up, they’d order nine meals only, with money paid in advance, and if someone else tries to take food, they’d say, “We only ordered nine meals and you didn’t sign up or pay for one, but you’re welcome to purchase one next month.”

– 2019

2. My friend doesn’t understand how work works

I have a friend who just started his first job (ever, never worked a part-time job) after graduating undergrad. He is taking two gap years between med school and undergrad, and he’s working in an admin position on campus in the meantime.

My friend really just doesn’t understand how work works! Though he is the most junior person in his office, he constantly gets annoyed if other people in the office ask him for help on anything. He says he doesn’t want to be a crutch for them to use. He seemed generally stunned when a coworker asked to send out a package when he is already sending several out for the office. It’s not that he is swamped with work – he just doesn’t want to be seen as the person who does everyone’s mail.

The rest of the lab IS swamped, while my friend watches TV shows daily. He also takes long breaks walking around campus, without alerting anyone, and then clocks all this time as time worked. Eventually his boss said something about needing to set hard deadlines for assignments because things were slipping through the cracks. He freaked out, saying that he doesn’t need to be micromanaged. But in reality, he is purposefully drawing out his assignments by watching TV, so they’re definitely not being completed in an effective manner. He’s in an isolated part of the building, so nobody checks in on him to see if he’s actually working or not. I don’t believe that anyone is aware that he slacks off, as he describes the methods used to look busy and to hide his TV screen.

He complains constantly to me about these issues, saying that he doesn’t want to be the “B****” of the office just because he is the youngest. In other aspects of his life, he is truly very hardworking, so I feel like he just really does not understand how work works!

It’s not my place to say anything, as I’m not his manager, but as a friend, I would like to make it clear that he’s acting unprofessionally. He’s counting on letters of recommendation from this office for his applications, and I don’t want him to jeopardize these. I normally act shocked when he says he watched TV or whatnot to show it’s not standard behavior, but it’s not getting through. Should I stay out of it or say something?

You can definitely say something as his friend, but you should be prepared for the likelihood that you won’t get through to him. But if he’s telling you this stuff, there’s no reason you can’t have a natural reaction when he does — like, “Dude, this is how work works — when you’re the most junior person and have time on your hands, of course they’re going to ask you for help.” And “Hey, are you still counting on this job for letters of recommendation? Because you’re putting those in jeopardy by the way you’re acting at work.” And “You’re going to get fired if you keep that up.”

But your friend sounds immature, and someone did him a disservice by not requiring him to have a job before now (or at least preparing him for how work works). It might be that nothing will get through to him until he experiences the natural consequences of his behavior. As a friend, it’s understandable to want to try, but it’s not on you if you don’t get through to him.

– 2018

3. Employee wants to retract his resignation — but we don’t want him to

We have an employee who resigned by email two weeks ago. He sent the email to our office manager, the head of HR, one of the VP’s, and the president of the company. Our office manager did not get it because the employee sent it to the wrong address, but everyone else got it. Fast forward to last week, when the employee told us that he wants to stay. (Evidently he had a job lined up but it “fell through.” In this business, that usually means they failed the drug test.) Well, there have been talks all week between project managers and the office manager who is on vacation, as well as corporate. Today I was told to call him to come in tomorrow (they work a four-day week) and terminate him. So, how do you terminate in this situation?

It’s not a termination — it’s telling him that you’re choosing to let the original resignation to stand and are declining to take him back. That makes sense to do if you were relieved that he was leaving and you want the chance to hire someone stronger (or if you’ve already promised the role to someone else and don’t think he’s strong enough that you want to find another slot for him). It doesn’t make sense to do if it’s solely on principle.

But assuming it’s the former, I’d say something like this: “At this point, we’ve already begun taking action on your resignation and don’t think that it makes sense to change course. We’d like to keep your last date as (date), as you originally suggested.”

Ideally, you’d also explain your reasoning — such as that you’re heavily into talks with other candidates or changing course with the position, or that you had performance concerns that make you hesitant to renew the employment agreement, or whatever the reason is.

– 2015

4. My boss saw me guzzling chocolate in my car

After a particularly long day, I stopped at the convenience shop by work and got myself a well deserved candy bar. While waiting to merge back into traffic, I proceeded to shove it in my mouth, barely avoiding eating the wrapper. To my horror, my boss was the car waving me into the lane and witnessed me unhinge my jaw like a snake in order to get as much chocolate in my mouth as quickly as possible.

My question is, can I take FMLA due to dying of embarrassment or should I just email my resignation right now?

Just ghost the job entirely and let her think what she witnessed was part of your jubilance on your bacchanalian flight to freedom.

– 2019

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

1. HR doesn’t want me to fire an employee for lying and falsifying records

I manage a small team, and one of my employees has been having performance issues. Recently, they made a series of mistakes that resulted in a patron receiving a charge four times more than what was expected. My employee insisted that their review process showed the expected charge rather than the actual charge, and showed me the review file. However, the original data file (which they then copy into the review file) showed the actual amount charged, and when I looked at the version history of the review file, I saw that an earlier version showed the actual amount charged. I asked about the original data file, and they doubled down on their insistence that they didn’t edit it. I have not yet addressed the version history I found with them. I did save all these files and take screenshots. The review file has since been altered to show the actual amount charged.

I can’t find a version of these facts that doesn’t involve my employee lying, and I’m very concerned about continuing to employ someone who lies, particularly when they are the person who processes all our revenue. I addressed this with my own manager, and we met with our director of HR. In this meeting, my manager stressed that we can’t lose a team member, as we’re already understaffed. The director of HR pointed out that we don’t know for sure that my employee lied, and said that when we ask them about the series of events, we need to be careful that we don’t accuse them of lying. Additionally, HR was very pointed in stressing that we need to put this person on a PIP that outlines a timeline for improvement (and suggested six months), and that the goal has to be that we want the person to stay.

I am feeling quite frustrated and unsupported here. I don’t want to fire my employee without exploring the possibility that there’s an honest explanation here. But if there isn’t, I’m not sure how to create a PIP that suitably addresses this. We’re already understaffed, and I have two new employees, who frankly both show a lot more promise and initiative than this employee. I am worried about my full attention being pulled into double-checking everything this employee does and missing out on the chance to mentor these new employees. Aside from these management concerns, I am responsible for keeping my department running, which involves a lot of work outside my supervisory responsibilities! Do you have recommendations for how to approach this?

Yeah, this is BS (assuming, of course, that it does turn out the employee lied and changed the record; you do want to hear them out with an open mind before concluding that, although it sure doesn’t look great so far). You don’t put someone on a PIP for something like this; you use a PIP when you need to see someone improve their skills or work habits, not their character. Lying and falsifying a record should be a firing offense. (What would the PIP metrics even be — don’t lie? It’s ridiculous.)

I don’t know if you’re dealing with a single incompetent HR person or if your whole HR team is like this, but it’s worth going over their head to see if someone will overrule them. HR is supposed to help the organization meet its goals while ensuring you don’t violate the law — and their edict here does neither of those things. In your shoes, I’d be lobbying your boss hard to explain why you’d rather manage your team without this employee than with them (despite being understaffed) and pushing to escalate the HR decision. If they won’t budge, at that point you know you’re working somewhere that has completely disempowered you from managing your team effectively — and you can make your decisions from there.

Read an update to this letter. 

2. My coworker blew up at me when I asked about documenting her job before she retired

I read this post about ageism and it got me thinking about a past experience when I was explicitly hired on a contract to document, improve, and create processes for a one-person team at a small organization. The person in this role had always functioned by just doing what needed to be done but without any long-term planning, documentation, a cohesive set of goals, etc., and now they were planning on retiring but didn’t have time to document anything so they hired me.

I have always been of the mind that your documentation and objectives should be up-to-date because you could leave. This seems like a best practice. However, I went to talk to my colleague about their retirement and broached it as, in effect, “I know you’re planning on retiring, so I’d like to document the plans for how to transition the role and how a new person can start when the time comes for you to retire, or anyone else who might hold this role in the future, so can you let me know when you have time to discuss this?” I got chewed out for mentioning this and accused of being ageist. I was blown away because I was literally told that one of the reasons my role was created was because this person wanted to retire, but I was being treated like I was trying to force her out for having a matter-of-fact conversation about having transition plans in place. Was this person just reacting badly? Or was I unknowingly being insensitive about the fact that she was planning on retiring? How could I have handled this differently?

I’m wondering how transparent the organization had been with your colleague about why they were hiring you and the project you were charged with. It sounds like maybe they had been clearer with you than they were with her. If that’s the case and she had no idea people were discussing her retirement (or no idea that they had discussed it with you), her reaction would make a lot more sense.

Read an update to this letter. 

3. Is worrying about the candidate pool a bad reason to apply for a promotion?

The excellent and widely liked manager of my department recently left, and I’m trying to decide whether to apply for the job. I’m having trouble deciding in general — I’ve tried writing out a pros and cons list, and there are big factors in both columns. But one reason to go for it that I keep coming back to is that I’m concerned about who might end up in the job if I don’t apply. The last several people in the role had all been internal candidates. I know no one else in my (small) department is planning to apply, our government salaries are far from competitive with private industry, and our peer departments within the bigger organization tend to have weird political stuff going on that I’d be worried about a candidate from those departments bringing with them. Upper management have also said they’re hoping to keep the search short, which they mean to be reassuring, but it makes me more worried that they’ll settle for someone just-okay for the sake of filling the seat. I feel like if I did apply and there ended up being a really awesome external candidate, I would be pleasantly surprised and fine with staying where I am — but, definitely surprised.

I’ve enjoyed my current job for several reasons, but my former manager’s approach definitely played a big role. If we end up with someone who micromanages or plays politics differently or is a bad manager in other ways, my feelings about my job could change quickly. I suppose that’s a risk anytime there’s a new manager somewhere, and I suspect it’s probably not a great reason to apply for a job, maybe? It’s also not at all my only reason for considering it or for thinking I’d be a strong candidate. But it’s still weighing pretty heavily for me right now. Is this a valid thing to factor into my decision, or should I try to set it aside?

If it were your only reason for applying and you were otherwise unenthused about the work, I’d try to steer you away from it. Managing can be stressful and thankless under the best of circumstances, and even more so when you never wanted the job in the first place (not to mention the harm a reluctant manager can cause to their team).

But if you think you would genuinely enjoy doing the job and would be good at it — but just aren’t sure if you should pursue it — it’s perfectly fine to factor this in as one of your reasons. It shouldn’t be your only reason, but it’s okay to give it some weight in your calculations.

4. How to invite rejected internal candidates to a meeting to explain the decision

Luckily, we had 18 internal applicants for an opening on my team. Based on qualifications and prior ad hoc experience assisting our team in aspects of the job, we advanced 11 people to the first round. In the next two weeks, I want to have 10-15 minute 1:1s with those who were not interviewed or not advanced to the second round in the interview process.

Our team has LOTS of outside helpers who pitch in throughout the year. A good comparison is a training team who uses people outside of the team to deliver sessions, act as mentors or on-the-job trainers, update materials, etc. I want to give the candidates feedback and encourage them to stay engaged/start to engage with the team, but what I don’t want to do is send them a meeting invite that makes them think it’s an interview or that they got the job.

How do I word it in a way that conveys that? Again, seemingly low stakes, but I’ve been on the receiving end of a meeting like this that was titled in a way that made me think it was an interview. It was not a pleasant experience, and I want people to leave these 1:1s knowing there are other opportunities to pitch in and get more experience with what we do.

I’d actually send them the news of the rejection in an email first, and in that email suggest meeting to discuss it further. The reason for that is that a lot of people strongly prefer to receive job rejections privately, so they can process it on their own rather than getting the news in person and needing to control their face and emotions for the rest of the meeting. Also, giving them space to work through any disappointment privately first will make it easier for (some) people to benefit from the conversation you’re offering, rather than expecting them to do both simultaneously.