Ask a Manager

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

1. Coworker sent me his photography page — and it’s mostly racy portraits of women

I’m a woman in my late twenties and I work at an entirely remote company of about 250 people, although we get together for events once or twice a year and see each other at trade shows. Because of this, although I’ve worked here for seven months, I have met most of my coworkers on other teams only once, at a multi-department, multi-day event a few months ago.

I joined another (all-male) team’s weekly meeting to present a project I had worked on for them. During my presentation, one of the members I had met during the big event sent me a “good to see you again!” message, and I responded to it after the meeting with “great to see you too!” He then followed up with “did you know I do photography in my spare time?” with an Instagram link. Although I was a little dubious, I clicked on it hoping it would be nature shots … it was not. The vast majority of the (to my untrained eye, pretty good? I guess?) photos are of women, and while some are just regular headshots, some are tasteful nudes, in lingerie, or just … pretty sexual? I feel deeply uncomfortable and am not sure how to proceed. There is also possibly a cultural or language disconnect — I am American and he is Northern European and not a native English speaker.

As I see it, I could message him back directly, talk to my boss (who is amazing and I would feel comfortable talking about this with), or progress directly to some sort of HR report, which I feel like would be a big escalation without discussing with him directly, but I also … do not want to respond at all. We’ve never even talked about photography before! Why did he send me this? I feel so uncomfortable! How would you proceed?

Ugh. He sent it to you because he doesn’t care about boundaries and he’s getting something out of sending you a page with nude photos. It’s not about his photography hobby; you don’t even know him and he brought it up out of absolutely nowhere, with no context where it would be relevant. I’m sure he thinks he has plausible deniability because it’s his “hobby,” but he doesn’t.

I completely get not wanting to deal with it, and you’re not obligated to if you’d rather just ignore it. It’s exhausting having to take on the labor of responding to this stuff. But if you do want to say something, personally I’d respond with, “WTF dude? You just sent me a page with nude photos. Totally inappropriate for work.” (Adapt language as needed to fit your own style.) And then I’d forward it to my boss in case it’s part of a pattern. If you’d rather just do the last part, that’s fine too — it’s perfectly reasonable to transfer this burden to your boss to deal with rather than you having to be the person who stresses over what to do about it.

Read an update to this letter. 

2. How to avoid constant questions from job candidates who haven’t yet been invited to interview

I am involved in recruitment for my team and we often have many applicants. Invariably, I receive numerous emails asking questions about the role, or even that I call them to discuss these questions.

I am happy to respond to a simple factual question not adequately answered in the job ad (say, is hybrid work an option, expected travel time, etc.) and for a highly specialized role with few relevant candidates I’d also be open for more pre-interview discussion. However, mostly we hire generalist entry- to mid-level staff from a relatively large pool of possible candidates, and the questions posed are either sort of pointless/already described in the job ad or in-depth questions I would only want to discuss while interviewing candidates. As has been mentioned on your site before, it is rarely well-qualified candidates that do this, and I honestly don’t want to spend time on unqualified candidates other than the screening.

What I am lacking is a polite response to those reaching out with overly detailed questions. I want to protect our organization’s image, and a poor candidate for this job may be a good candidate for another job, perhaps later in their career, so I don’t want to come off as rude or too rigid. Do you have any suggestions for such a response?

Yeah, in my experience, the vast majority of people who do this aren’t contacting you because there’s something crucial they need to know before they decide whether to apply, but because they want to try to pitch themselves and make a connection that they think will give their application a boost. (Of course, make sure your ad really does have enough info in it, but you can have the most informative ad in the world and you’ll still get these calls.) I agree it’s different when you’re hiring for a hard-to-fill, specialized role — but the rest of the time it’s typically a better use of your time to steer people to the actual hiring process that you’ve established for each side to learn more about the other.

I often use language like this when a candidate sends over questions that would be impractical to answer over email (whether because there are so many or because it doesn’t make sense to delve into them in depth at this stage): “It would be tough to do justice to these questions in an email, but we’ll make plenty of time to discuss them in detail if we move forward to an interview. So if you’re interested, I’d encourage you to apply and we can go from there.”

Or if they’re just asking for a phone call for vague reasons: “Were you thinking of throwing your hat into the ring for one of our open positions? If so, I’d encourage you to do that as a first step. We get a tremendous volume of interest for our openings and we’ve found that the best way to get to know people and explore the possibilities is to steer them to the process we’ve created.” Or even, “Because we get a high volume of interest in our open positions, we’re not generally able to set up calls outside of our hiring process. But I encourage you to throw your hat in the ring and we can take it from there!”

Caveat: make sure that your application process isn’t time-intensive. If you’re requesting more up-front investment than just a resume and cover letter, it’s going to alienate people if you also decline to answer any questions first.

3. Do I need to buy my coworkers gifts if they bought me gifts?

I work for a large company and this year relocated to one of our satellite offices in a different city. The small office has about 20 employees, none of whom work in my department (all my coworkers who I work with are based at headquarters). Even though we don’t work together, I often chat with my “cubicle neighbors” to pass the time, and while we aren’t super close, we’ve gotten to know each other. Many people here have worked together many years and so some have close-knit friendships outside of work. I prefer to keep work and my personal life separate, so I’m not trying to become close beyond an amicable work relationship.

We had an office holiday party for the 20 of us, and there was a “white elephant” gift exchange, which I participated in. (Everyone brings a gift, you pick from the pile or can “steal” etc.)

In the days after that, the five people who sit closest to me, who I know best, gave me separate gifts. Nothing extravagant – things that probably cost $10-$15. I thought this was very sweet, but I was surprised. I’ve worked in corporate jobs for about a decade and have never received a holiday gift from a coworker, outside of the occasional gift exchanges for the whole office – and this year, I’ve received five! No one on my actual team (based at headquarters) got me a gift, either this year or in past years when we worked in the same office. I’ve wondered if it’s just a cultural difference – while we’re a large company, this office has a more of a “small company” feel due to the office size.

Do I have any obligation to buy gifts in return? I don’t really want to; it seems like a hassle to think of something for everyone, and I don’t want to set the expectation that I’ll buy gifts for several people every year (especially when I already participate in the gift exchange), and it seems odd to buy my “office neighbors” gifts but not my actual coworkers. I think this is reasonable but am I committing a social faux pas buy not getting them gifts in return?

Nah. It very likely is a cultural difference due to the small office size, but you’re not obligated to give gifts back. You could do new year’s cards if you’d feel better doing something (or could do that next year if you want), but as long as you thank them warmly for what they gave you, you don’t need to reciprocate if it’s not your thing.

4. An observation about updates

I’ve noticed over time that a good number of updates involve someone ultimately leaving the job they were writing about. Do you think that’s because writing the letter to you is the catalyst for people to realise it’s time to move on regardless of your answer?

I’ve had something similar happen with a relationship (where telling a friend out loud that I wasn’t happy made me realize the answer was to break up rather than continue to be unhappy) so it seems plausible that it would be the same for job relationships.

It’s a good question! I do think that often by the time someone is moved to write in, the situation is bad enough that they’d likely start thinking about leaving anyway. But it’s also true that the act of writing out your question can clarify the situation for you — and sometimes that can mean that you realize how bad it is, or that the only real solution is to leave. (And I’ve heard from a number of people who say, “The act of writing my letter made me realize what you would say, so I didn’t even need to send it to you.”)

Other times, though, it’s just normal professional churn — sometimes people leave for reasons that aren’t connected to the situation they wrote about. Or it’s connected in a less obvious way — like that what they wrote about was really the tip of the iceberg, and there were a bunch of other problems there that ended up making them flee, beyond what we heard about in the letter.

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

1. My boss hated my “question authority” bumper sticker

You recently posted an old letter from a guy who had a “fat girls can’t jump” bumper sticker on his truck and he was facing HR complaints about it. This made me think about something that happened to me early in my career. I had a bumper sticker on my private vehicle that said “question authority.” That’s it, that’s all it said; black text on a white background, no images. My manager hounded me for weeks about how I needed to remove that sticker because he found it offensive, how it demonstrated I had a terrible attitude, and how important it was that I never question his authority. To my knowledge, no one else ever complained about it, and HR was never involved. The car was my private car, and the job was a desk job, no driving, no customer interface. Was the manager right that I should remove that sticker? I think this is a thornier issue than “fat girls can’t jump” and am interested in where you draw the line.

Did your manager not realize how much he was revealing about himself there? He needs his own bumper sticker that says “insecure authoritarian.”

Anyone who deserves to hold authority should want to be questioned and should be suspicious of people who don’t examine things too deeply.

In any case, that’s an absurd thing to ask you to remove. Your sticker was inoffensive and far outside the bounds of anything an employer should care about, let alone raise to you. I suspect if you’d taken it to HR, they would have shut him down.

2. Is my babysitting client stealing from his employer to pay me?

I’m a recent college grad with a full-time office job. Since I was a teen, I babysit for extra cash on the side.

For the past 10 months, I’ve been caring for a very sweet infant boy. His father is a single dad who works at a nonprofit. I don’t like him for several reasons, but my question is about payment. In the beginning, he would pay me by Venmo or cash, which has been pretty standard in every babysitting job I’ve worked. About four months ago, he switched to writing checks. The checks were labeled with the nonprofit, and the memo line made no reference to childcare, but generic “logistic support.” Being naive, I cashed the checks and went about my business. Honestly, I thought he was just embarrassed to write nanny or babysitter. He has now sent me a W9 form through the nonprofit, and I’m expected to pay taxes on all payments received by check. I have never done any sort of work for the nonprofit. My work is exclusively changing diapers and making bottles for the baby.

I’ve never been asked to pay taxes on babysitting income, but it’s probably legal to ask me to pay taxes in general. But was it legal to pay me with company checks and send the W9 through the nonprofit? He’s neither a donor nor the owner. My mom (a childcare professional with over 30 years experience) says it’s embezzlement and fraud. I don’t plan on returning to that family for a number of reasons, but this would be a huge one.

Whoa, no, this guy is almost certainly stealing from the charity that employs him. And especially now that they’ve sent you a tax form, you really need to call the organization and report it. Call and ask why they’re sending you a tax form since the only work you’ve done is personal babysitting for one of their employees. (It’s very likely that he didn’t generate the W9 himself — the org is just automatically sending them to all their contractors and thinks you’re one of them because he fraudulently claimed they needed to pay you for logistics work. Holy crap.) They’re going to be able to unravel it from there.

I know that might not feel great — he’s a single dad, etc. — but ethically you really have to now that he’s made you part of it.

3. When I tell people my job, they always share heavy emotional stories with me

I have an extremely niche job, one that almost no one has heard of. I love talking about it, because it’s my passion and because people are very interested in it once they understand what I do. I’m a veterinary social worker — I guide pet families through hard decision-making and through the euthansia process and provide grief counseling and resources, and I also work with veterinary staff on burnout, compassion fatigue, processing of difficult cases, and suicide prevention and intervention.

The trouble I run into is that because my fields are so universally experienced, everyone I talk to (and I do mean EVERYONE, I’m not sure I’ve ever met an exception) has an “Oh wow, I wish you’d been there when…” story. These are often very heavy, emotional stories, relayed by strangers as I’m grocery shopping, getting my hair cut, waiting for my kids at the dance studio, getting coffee … and whether it’s a cause or effect of my job, I have the kind of face people want to tell these stories to. Often they’ve never had the opportunity to tell the story to someone who would understand and validate its significance in their lives. Is there a compassionate, kind way of establishing and holding a boundary for my own sake in those relatively brief interactions without invalidating their experience or just never talking about my amazing job?

I do think you probably need to be more circumspect about what you do in situations where you’re not up for getting into the details — and really, strangers in the grocery store don’t need to know exactly what you do! You could say social worker (true) or consulting (also kind of true) or anything else vague that isn’t likely to prompt the sort of outpouring you don’t want in that moment. (I often just mention the consulting part of my work in similar situations, because when I say I write a work advice column, I get everyone’s horrible boss stories — which aren’t as emotionally draining as the ones you get, but still aren’t what I want to hear when I’m trying to disconnect from work.)

But in cases where you do want to share more, you could try being transparent about what you want to avoid. For example, after explaining what you do, you could add, “I always hear everyone’s heart-breaking pet stories when I share this so I should be up-front that I need a break from that right now!” Some people will give you their stories anyway because some people are like that, but you’ll have laid the groundwork to interject and say, kindly, “I’m sorry — I know this topic can be such a tough one, but I need space from my work right now. Thank you for understanding.” There may also be times when there doesn’t feel like there’s any kind way to say that, so adapt as needed based on what you’re up for doing.

4. A former employee keeps sending critical emails to another former employee … and BCC’ing me

I work at a company that does design stuff. 40 years ago, a then-employee, Carlyle, led a major design charge that resulted in Big Project which drastically changed our downtown for the better. It was one of our firm’s biggest and to this day most recognizable projects. He also apparently was hard-headed and difficult to get along with.

I started at my company three years ago. Another employee, Hiram, had started there right out of college. Hiram is a big design thinker and had a lot of big ideas, a lot of graphic skills, and a lot of youthful naivete and hubris. In his free time, worked with a grassroots collective that was looking to inspire large-scale design changes to continue to shape the city. He had reached out to Carlyle during his schooling to learn about his experience on Big Project. However, as Hiram and the collective’s vision started to depart from what Carlyle thought it should be, Carlyle started to lash out through emails.

Hiram has moved on to another job in a different city but is still somewhat active in the collective. I have only met Carlyle a handful of times. The last time he came to the office, I gave him my business card and email address. He frequently copies me on mass emails he sends, which include other designers in the community, fervently pushing his ideas and pushing for other people to push them. Lately he has taken to BCC’ing me on emails he sends to Hiram with accusatory critiques of his ideas. I would like to get Carlyle to stop including me on these emails, and stand up for Hiram a bit. My petty response would be to reply to a BCC asking Carlyle to stop copying me, but I’d like to handle it tactfully. What’s the best way to respond? Should I respond?

It’s not petty to respond to the next email and ask him to stop. (It would be petty if you replied-all, but not if you just address it to him.) There’s nothing wrong with replying to the next one with, “I’d prefer not to be included on these messages and would appreciate you removing me in the future. Thank you.”

5. My temp’s eyes glaze over whenever I talk

I have a temp who I meet with once a week virtually. I am a full-time worker and we are both the same age. She reports to me. I have been working in our field longer so I often explain things to her when providing her direction so she has context. She’s expressed this isn’t her dream job or anywhere close, but a learning experience and a way to pay the bills. It’s been three months.

More often than not, when I explain our tools, how it compares to other tools, and general functions, she gives me a blank stare. I’ll ask, did that make sense or was any part confusing? She just nods. I sometimes say, I don’t want to scare you and I talk a lot, so you can interrupt me or say that you have enough info if you want me to stop. She hasn’t done that. But I feel that her eyes glaze over when she asks me a question and I respond (perhaps, it seems, too long-windedly). Her body language expresses boredom or subtle annoyance.

She is responsive to small talk and whenever we talk about shared hobbies. I was hoping to teach her more stuff since she is newer, since I had a boss who did the same for me and I really appreciated it, but maybe I am overstepping my bounds. Your thoughts?

I don’t think you’re overstepping your bounds — you’re her boss, you’re sharing work information — but it does sound like you could be ignoring cues that she’s just not that interested in information that doesn’t directly relate to her job. While you appreciated it when your boss taught you things, this is someone who’s already told you she’d not that invested in this job and so she might feel very differently than you did.

My big question is: How’s her work? When you give her info that’s relevant to how she should do her job, is it later reflected in her work? If so, then you might just need to back off from sharing the extras with her, or accept that she’s not going to be terribly engaged in these conversations. But if her work has problems, then that’s something you’d need to address, and as part of that you might raise the question of whether she’s not paying enough attention when work is discussed.

It sounds like you have good rapport with each other, so you could also just ask point-blank: “I might be misinterpreting, but when I talk to you about X or Y, you seem like you’re bored or wanting me to wrap up. Am I reading that correctly?” That said, I’d be less inclined to do this with a temp, whose professional development you’re not responsible for in the same way you would be with a longer-term employee.

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

1. I caught my boss listening at my door

I have been a manager for more than 20 years. I started at a new company about three months ago. About a week and a half ago, I was having a meeting with my team of two in my office. The door was closed. I have frosted glass but I could see my boss pacing back and forth outside the door a few times. Eventually, I saw him stop and I could see that he was cupping his ear to listen at the door.

My department has had a lot of turnover. Though I have not been there long, I can already tell you that my boss is the reason for the turnover. I have literally been losing sleep while working for this man. How do I confront him? I’m generally a very blunt, straight shooter type personality. I’m having a hard time right now for fear of losing the job but his behavior shows a clear lack of trust and I may lose my job whether I speak up or not. I guess I just have to chalk that up. I can’t stand the distrust and disrespect.

Listening at your door was ridiculous, but it sounds like there are much bigger problems with your boss and I don’t think there’s a ton to be gained by “confronting” him over this. You could certainly say, “It looked like you needed something while I was meeting with Jane and Maximilian — feel free to knock if you need me urgently while I’m in a meeting” … although since it’s been a week and a half since it happened, the window for saying that is probably gone. Ideally, you would have addressed it while it was happening, like by opening the door and saying, “I’ll be done in about 15 minutes if you need me” (which is a way of responding assertively without making it adversarial).

But if you’re losing sleep working for this guy, there are bigger issues than his eavesdropping, and I’d focus on deciding whether there’s any bearable way to stay (and actively working on leaving if there’s not).

2. Not accepting a job that drug tests, and being honest about why

My partner is an engineer who has been casually job searching. She was recently offered a role at a very large company and is inclined to accept, but recently discovered she will have to be randomly drug tested. She is fully remote and does not do any work in the field.

We live in California and regularly use cannabis (both recreationally as well as for medical reasons for me, so it’s always going to be around). Not only does my partner not want to stop smoking, we both are morally against the war on drugs and the way that cannabis has been criminalized and demonized.

She wants to mention this when refusing the offer and make clear that she believes it’s a DEI issue to drug test remote workers who don’t operate any machinery, pushing out people who are disproportionately non-white or disabled.

Is it worth it to mention this to the recruiter? She doesn’t expect or desire any change to their decision, it just seems right to flag that candidates care about this. Would that be appropriate?

Hell yes. One person pushing back on something like this usually won’t in itself create change, but multiple people doing it absolutely can. Be one of those voices. That kind of pushback is often what tells employers when the tide is turning on a whole range of issues; it’s often how companies realize that something that they thought was uncontroversial no longer is. (Note: It’s possible this policy is outside the control of the company, like if they have certain types of government contracts. But it’s worth speaking up regardless.)

Read an update to this letter. 

3. Using a fake name for job hunting

With my unusual last name (think similar to Butts or Dicks), I have found that I get zero, zip, zilch response to any online application. I’m accustomed to websites stating that I can’t use my last name since it violates their profanity policy (Disney and Citibank are recent examples). Even if I have a contact at the firm I’m targeting and I’ve spoken to them on the phone, they always say I still need to submit my information online to their applicant tracking system. And there’s where it dies.

Adding to my conspiracy theory, both of my children graduated from college in the past few years. Both have the identical experience (hundreds to thousands of applications, zero responses) with the internet job search process.

Prior to internet job boards, I was always able to get a new position in under week. From all of this, I’m pretty convinced that my submissions are being filtered out early in the process.

What are your thoughts on using an assumed name in my resume, email address, LinkedIn name, etc.? Once we’re at the offer or background check stage, I would let them know my real name.

Using a different last name could be a problem if you’re filling out an application that requires you to attest all the info you’re submitting is accurate … but otherwise, I think you might as well experiment since you’re not getting bites any other way. At this point, it doesn’t sound like you’ve got anything to lose by trying.

Rather than making up a whole new last name though (which could throw people when you have to explain), could you use your middle name as your last name? Or a parent’s maiden name? Or even add a suffix to your real last name (so Dicks becomes Dickson or so forth)? That way when you do explain it, it doesn’t seem like you just threw a random false name in there. Also, when you explain, be very matter-of-fact — “I’ve starting using Dickson because a surprising number of online systems think my legal name is profanity.”

It’s ridiculous that this is happening, by the way.

4. Conflicting cover letter advice

I’m stuck between two different common sources of bad advice: my parents and my college career center. While writing cover letters for internship applications, I’ve bounced back and forth between the two and gotten wildly different feedback. For instance, my school suggests starting with something like “I’m delighted to apply for X position at your company.” My parents, however, suggest I leap straight into the cover letter and start discussing myself. For comparison here’s the first few sentences of a cover letter after being reviewed by each:

Career center:
Dear X company hiring committee,
I’m delighted to apply for Y internship and honored to have the opportunity to learn from a business that values the explosive imaginations of both players and employees and whose colorful, distinctive franchises have reached around the world.

Parents:
Hello, X company hiring committee!
Professional whimsy, artistic science, playful programming: these are terms many might consider oxymorons, but in Y industry, it’s never either-or. The best entertainment (to me) always embraces these paradoxes.

Whose advice is better? On the one hand, I understand my parents’ point that the career center version feels a bit lifeless/personalityless. On the other, I feel weird not acknowledging the company or posting until the end of the first paragraph. Because internship cover letters are a different beast than job applications, a lot of the cover letter advice online is irrelevant to me, so I’m left ping-ponging between these two. Help! Whose advice is better—or is there a happy medium? And do you have any advice for writing internship cover letters in specific?

These … are both bad.

You want to write like a normal person, with plain but conversational language and the way you would write if you were writing an email to a slightly senior colleague who you knew a little but not well. I will bet a large sum of money that there is no circumstance in your life where you would truly write emails with phrases like “explosive imaginations of both players and employees” or “professional whimsy, artistic science, playful programming.” Those read like … well, really bad marketing language. Do not take cover-letter-writing advice from either of these sources.

If the question is how to open a cover letter, you really only need to say “I am writing to apply for your X position.” That’s it — then go into why you’d do a good job at it.

I strongly urge you to read some of the sample cover letters in the archives here (like this, this, or this). It’s not true that internship cover letters should be dramatically different; all the same rules apply. When I hire, I’m looking for the same thing in cover letters from intern applicants as I am from employee applicants; the only real differences are that you’ll have less experience to pull from, so they can be harder to write in that respect. But the general goals, structure, and content should be the same.

5. National park passes as gift idea

At the end of every year I’m always looking for ideas for holiday gifts for people in the office, either ones who report to me or not. So I wanted to write to offer a suggestion: annual national park passes. We are fortunate to be located right near one of our amazing national parks in the country, and in December they offer annual passes for the next year for half price, making it affordable for me to buy several for my reports. I realized that these are great gifts for people, a full year’s worth of natural beauty, able to be experienced at any time. In theory it’s a good healthy resource for personal de-stressing, also offers a nice option for something to do either alone or with one’s family whenever they want, on the weekends, whatever. Depending on the park, an annual pass is ~$50, which with the cost of everything going up, is enough of an expense that I predict a lot of working people don’t feel comfortable justifying spending on themselves. Getting it for them as a gift solves that. Finally, it avoids getting people gift cards for restaurants they might not like, etc., or booze or anything potentially fraught, that sort of thing. I just wanted to mention the annual national park pass for your local national park as a good option. Plus that money supports the national parks, another good thing.

Consider it passed along!