Ask a Manager

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

1. My company wants remote employees to take a pay cut

At a recent managers meeting for my company, we discussed our mandatory return to office, which will start early next year. It was mentioned that people who are working remotely from places not near one of our offices would have to take a pay cut if they wanted to keep their jobs and stay remote. This includes anyone who moved during the pandemic to care for a family member. Is it legal to cut someone’s pay under these circumstances?

Yes. It’s legal to pay remote workers differently than on-site workers, or workers in state X differently from workers in state Y. The exception would be if doing that had a disparate impact on a protected class, like race or gender — so if, for example, all of the people who were staying remote happened to be women (who are more likely to get saddled with caretaking responsibilities and may have moved for that reason), that could be a legal concern for your company. But otherwise, it’s legal.

Whether it’s wise management is a different question. Are they planning to justify the pay cuts by arguing that remote employees are contributing less than on-site ones? If they can’t back that up with some evidence, they’re likely to have some seriously pissed off and demoralized staff (for a while anyway, until people leave). Maybe your company is fine with that; maybe they’d like those people to leave over time so they can hire local ones. But it should be part of their thinking.

2. What to wear to a work holiday party

What do you wear to a work holiday party? I recently began working remotely for a small law firm. Law firms are usually known for their conservative dress, of course, but my remote position means I’m often working in a T-shirt and sweatpants. This holiday party/dinner (not in the office, but at a local restaurant, on the nicer side but without a dress code) will be my first time meeting several of my colleagues face-to-face.

Do I need to break out the suit I only ever wore to job interviews? Can I get away with business casual wear? Do I need to worry about things like making sure my winter coat is professional enough or changing from boots that trudged through slush on the way there to suitably professional shoes?

Business casual might be a little too on the casual end of things for a law firm. Typically you’d wear something a little fancier and more festive than what people wear at the office (but not, like, ball gown level of formality — more like cocktail attire). But it also depends on the restaurant — if it’s a really nice restaurant, fancier dress is more likely than if it’s someplace casual.

The best thing to do is to ask a coworker who’s been there longer what people normally wear to the dinner.

You shouldn’t need to worry about your coat (and you may end up checking it anyway). Whether you need to change your boots for dressier shoes once you arrive depends on the outfit, but if you’re going to be trudging through snow, a lot of people (particularly women) will probably do that.

3. Giving free tuition to employees whose kids attend our school

A question you recently answered about employees who are able to access different benefits made me wonder about something going on at my work. I’m in HR at a private school, and one of the biggest benefits that employees utilize is tuition remission. Of course, not everyone has kids, and some who do choose not to send them to our school for a variety of reasons. Recently, some employees who fall into those categories have brought up to me that they see this as a disparity, as they’re essentially missing out on about $17,000 per year. While I understand what they’re saying, I also don’t know if there’s anything extra we could do to compensate for not being able to utilize that benefit. We wouldn’t, for example, give extra money or perks to someone who chooses not to use our health insurance. What are your thoughts and could you think of a different, more equitable solution?

You’re also not going to give extra money to someone who doesn’t use the subsidized gym memberships or doesn’t max out their 401K match. That’s how some benefits work; not everyone will use every perk. Tuition is obviously a much bigger perk than a gym membership, but really, what you’re saying is that you won’t charge employees who use the service you sell. Your service happens to be school. Not everyone will be able to or will want to use it; that’s the nature of it. It’s unreasonable for someone to expect that they’d receive $17,000 in a different benefit.

4. Am I obligated to keep helping my low-performing teammate?

My coworker and I joined our team about a year ago and received identical training. I am in my late 20’s; my coworker, Mel, is in her early/mid-20s with an MBA. I am the lead on the project and Mel supports me. I am senior to her, but she is not my direct report. We work remotely.

Mel is lazy, slow, unreliable, and sloppy. Any task that is given to her needs to be followed up on and checked as it is often riddled with errors. We work in a field where attention to detail is crucial.

I avoid giving her additional work because I do not have the bandwidth to wait for her to reply (if she does), follow up, and then review the work and/or re-do portions. These are not personal edits, but rather objective corrections. For example, Mel will inform stakeholders that a renewal is needed on an annual basis, but our policy specifies that it is quarterly.

The work she does deliver takes forever. For our current project that is bordering on completion, Mel has only contributed 6%. My concerns have been shared with my manager. I am not aware of any updates.

I don’t know if Mel is just incompetent, or if she is an early talent who needs mentoring. Based on the questions she asks me after calls (SHE leads), I wonder if she was even paying attention. It would be one thing if she were engaged and showing critical thinking. I’m not motivated to help someone with the skills of a bowl of cheerios, who is contributing less than 10%. Plus, I am exhausted from doing all the work to meet our project goals.

I am struggling with what to do next. I have already carved out a small portion of the project for her to own. I am copied on her emails (this will stop once the misinformation minimizes) and I am always available to jump on a call. We are not that far apart in age, so I don’t really want to take on a “mentor” relationship. Work is just work to me and I just want her to do her own portion independently so I can go home at the end of the day.

Am I obligated to try harder to help her, or should I keep my distance, document her mistakes, and hope she will be let go at some point? (Granted, this is a joint project, so I can’t completely wash my hands). I’m not even sure what this “help” would look like.

It sounds like you’re helping plenty. You don’t need to handhold her any further.

Go back to your manager, say that Mel is doing less than 10% of the work on your joint projects, you’re spending significant time checking and fixing mistakes in her work, and you’re exhausted from having to do so much more than your share of joint assignments, and ask what to do. I know you’ve already shared your concerns, but it needs to be more than information-sharing at this point; it needs to be framed as as a clear request for help: “This is unsustainable for me. How can we change this?”

5. I’m being shut out of the hiring for my employee

My direct report is retiring next month. She gave two months notice to give me plenty of time to hire and train a replacement. We are a small team and nobody within the organization knows our jobs or how we complete our work. We’ve worked together for almost 10 years.

I notified our HR director to request her help in finding a replacement. I learned today that my boss, the HR director, and my boss’s boss have been meeting with the headhunter and discussing applicants without looping me in. I am very disappointed and upset given that literally none of these people understand the details of what’s involved with this role. They understand what’s in the job description but not what’s involved in getting the work done.

I don’t know how to proceed. Should I just let them make the decision and step away from having any input given their behavior? They obviously have no respect for me or my feedback regarding the new person.

Speak up! Yes, they should be involving you, or at least keeping you in the loop about what’s going on, and it’s not great that they’re not … but you’re also jumping to the most negative conclusion without talking to them first. Talk to your boss and explain that you’d like to be involved in the hiring since you will be managing this person and know the work and the needs of the role intimately.

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

1. How can I help my teenagers figure out career goals?

I have twin 10th graders, both intelligent and hard working. One has an idea of the field they want to go into and the other has no clue. I don’t know how to guide them at this point in their life in regards to future careers and education. I want them to find a career that more than pays the bills — enough to live comfortably, have some fun, and retire at a decent age. I’ve had several jobs and no clear career path or upward mobility. My spouse and I live comfortably due to his job and I’ve filled the role of providing modest income and being the caretaker of everything else. How do I guide them into figuring out career goals and what to do with the rest of their life? To find a career that is satisfying to them? I’m not even sure how I’d define a satisfying career at this point in my life. I just don’t want them to go to a four year college and end up without job prospects and a career path.

Very few people are equipped to pick a career at 15 or 16 years old. They don’t know yet who they’re going to grow into, and they don’t have — can’t have — any realistic idea of what different jobs are like to be day-to-day. In fact, I’d guess that the majority of us ended up in jobs we didn’t even know existed when we were 15. It’s just too early.

But what you can do is talk to them about work in general — what types of jobs you’ve had and what’s been hard about them and what you’ve enjoyed, what jobs your friends have, what those are like day-to-day, how much different types of jobs pay, and what type of education and skills various jobs take. Ask about the kinds of lives they think they want, and talk about what it would take to achieve that.

Also, ensure that they’re exposed to a wide range of possible interests, from law to writing to tech to mechanics to science to investing (my mom used to make us pick stocks to fake-invest in) to gardening to environmental science and on and on. That could just mean talking about an article in the news and seeing if it sparks an interest, or showing them how your car engine works, or asking them to create a plan for how your family could start composting. See if something clicks.

All of this is about giving them a good grounding to make decisions later, rather than making decisions now.

2. Interviewer asked, “If I talked to the person who likes you the least, what would they say about you?”

I applied for a role in a department adjacent to my current position, and during an interview with one of the other managers in this department her last question was, “If I talked to the person who likes you the least, what would they say about you?”

In the moment, I was a bit taken aback and said something like, “Wow, what an intriguing question!” And then tried not to get too personal since the first thing that came to mind was my ex spouse. Like, I get that they are probably trying to have you share a weakness, but … seems like kind of a weird place to put someone in a professional setting? What are your thoughts — good or bad use of interview question?

Terrible interview question. Few people are likely to answer that honestly, it’s highly likely to make most people/everyone uncomfortable, and it makes the interviewer look oblivious to normal human dynamics. It’s not even framed in a work-specific way.

There are ways of probing into people’s relationships with others that don’t come with those serious drawbacks. For example, I used to ask candidates for management roles, “Taking it as a given that every manager has things they do that frustrate their employees, what do you think frustrates your employees about you?” That’s more about their own self-awareness and thoughtfulness (have they even thought about it before?) and it was relevant to the work they were applying to do (manage people).

Because your interview was an internal one, I do wonder if the question was rooted in internal politics of some sort. But it’s a bad question regardless.

3. My coworker sent an upset all-team email after I asked for my chair back

My workplace recently moved spaces (within the same building). I was out of town for some of the move but coordinated most of it. As such, I was later than the rest of my colleagues in getting to the new space. When I got there, one of my coworkers had taken a chair that I’d reserved for myself (but hadn’t been using at the old location as it didn’t fit under the desk). When I came into the office, I told him that was my chair and explained that I’d specifically pulled it from surplus a few weeks earlier to have in our new space. He gave up the chair with minimal fuss, and I thought that was the end of it. However, a few hours later, he sent the following email to the entire team (my name replaced with “Jane”):

“I think you will agree with me when I say that no one in the office has any intentions to claim somebody’s stuff in their absence. As part of the move, we were told to take whatever was needed from the original office space. I took an additional chair from the office thinking no one is using it. Today Jane asked me to leave the chair that I was using, mentioning it belongs to her. I first apologized and then put away the chair and said I didn’t know it was hers. I didn’t mind that I had to apologize or had to leave the chair but what bothered me the most was that she didn’t care to ask if I took it by mistake or unintentionally. The chair was not actively used in the basement and if that was wrong then she could have looked for it on Monday or Tuesday. My apologies for bringing it up but I felt embarrassed having gone through this situation. A healthy conversation is the least that we can expect from each other. I firmly believe that it’s not a few, but we all are giving our best for the workplace’s success. If you have questions or issues in this regard, I am happy to discuss or resolve them in person or at the coming weekly meeting.”

He is not my supervisor (nor am I his). I don’t really know how to respond to this. What I’m currently doing is ignoring it. I didn’t attack him when I asked for my chair, and his email feels like he’s trying to justify himself for taking my chair. (Even if he didn’t know it was mine, he knew it wasn’t his.) However, him sending this to the entire team makes me feel attacked for simply wanting my chair. Do you have any advice for how to address this with him/our manager/the team?

There’s no need for you to address it with your manager or team. This is a bizarre email for him to send to a group, and it’s going to reflect on him, not on you. It’s very Milton with the red stapler. (Also, his invitation to people to speak with him if they have “questions or issues in this regard” is especially strange. I doubt that anyone has questions about anything other than his choice to send this email.)

That said, it’s probably smart politics for you to try smooth things over with him. Don’t grovel, but a brief “I’m sorry that I upset you; it wasn’t my intent” is probably worth doing as an investment in office harmony.

4. Wrongful termination on Gilmore Girls

On Gilmore Girls one of the running jokes is that the grandmother, Emily, is unable to keep a maid. She’s shown firing them for a variety of reasons. In one episode she’s sued for wrongful termination, and her daughter, Lorelai, is asked to give a deposition. My question has a few parts:

1. Emily tells her family she fired the maid in question because she walked very loudly “she was the clomper” and she couldn’t stand the noise in her house. Would that be considered wrongful termination (i.e., could the maid win the case)?

2. In the deposition Lorelai is asked the following questions: “Would you say your mother is a tolerant woman?” “Why has your mother dismissed maids in the past?” “Would you say your mother sets impossible goals which people cannot help but fail to reach, thereby reinforcing her already formed opinion of their deficiencies?” “Would you call your mother an extremely critical woman?” and “On a scale from one to ten what would you rate your mother’s compassion for others feelings?”

Would any of these questions be relevant for a wrongful termination suit?

Some of those questions could be relevant in establishing a pattern of behavior, but it’s moot because firing someone for walking loudly isn’t illegal.

“Wrongful termination” doesn’t mean “fired for an unjust or bad reason.” Wrongful termination is when the firing was based on something illegal, like firing someone because of their race or religion or as retaliation for engaging in legally protected behavior (like reporting discrimination or harassment, or taking legally protected FMLA leave). Firing someone for walking too loudly wouldn’t qualify unless the loud walking were caused by a disability. However, even then, the federal law against disability discrimination only covers employers with 15 or more employees. (Some states have laws that kick in at lower thresholds, but many of them specifically exclude household employees.)

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

1. My coworker prayed that I’ll return to Jesus

I work in higher ed at a university that has roughly a 40% Jewish population. I have worked in my office for a little over four years. About a year ago, I converted to Judaism. I am quite open about this and often wear a Magen David necklace. In the office suite across from my department is a woman who is an evangelical Christian. Prior to my conversion, she had asked me to come with her to church several times. I always told her no. Tried to hand me religious pamphlets. I wouldn’t take them. In the last year, she has asked me to church several times — I told her I was Jewish and no thanks. She asked me what I was doing for Christmas, I reminded her I was Jewish so I do not celebrate Christmas. It’s all annoying and I now regret not pressing this with her supervisor and/or mine after what happened today.

I was walking down the hallway and she walked up to me, cornered me, put her hand on my head, and before I could run away told me she’s going to pray for me. She said this very long prayer that ended with, “And may you come back to Jesus.” I was floored. I honestly had no idea what to say. I looked at her in shock and walked away. I feel violated to my very core. And I am unsure what steps to take next. Even if I was a fellow Christian, this was not something that I think is professional in a workplace. I know I really need to go to HR, but is that the right path? Is there anything else I should do to protect myself? I fear what will come next if she’s not talked to.

That. Is. Outrageous.

Yes, HR is the right path. Tell HR that your coworker has made numerous religious overtures to you, including repeatedly inviting you to church and trying to give you religious materials, and you’ve declined them each time but this latest one crosses a new line and you you want her religious harassment to stop. Use those words.

It’s not clear to me if you’ve ever told your coworker directly to stop — you’ve declined her overtures, but have you ever explicitly said “please do not raise religion with me again”? If not, that’s worth doing too. You don’t need to do that in order to ask HR to intervene — your coworker’s behavior is so over the line that it’s not on you to address it yourself at this point — but if you’re up for it, ideally you’d cover that base too. Ideally you would have done that earlier on and it might have short-circuited what followed (or who knows, it might not have) … but either way, it’s reasonable to take this to HR because (a) her latest action is so over-the-top that it warrants it regardless and (b) we don’t want her to just stop doing this to you; we want her to stop doing it to anyone at work, and your company should want that too.

P.S. An acquaintance of my mother’s recently drove eight hours from another state to visit her to attempt to convert her from Judaism. When my mother wasn’t sufficiently receptive, she later mailed her a bible. This is deeply offensive. Do not do this to Jews, please. Do not do this to anyone.

Read an update to this letter. 

2. Requesting additional work clothing in a bigger size

When I started with my current employer two years ago, we got to choose several pieces of uniform clothing. Amazingly, my boss didn’t want us to all dress the same — we got to choose whatever styles and colors suited us from the corporate clothing supplier, which was a huge relief after years of trying to make my oddly shaped body fit into certain styles.

We don’t wear our branded clothing every day, only when we have external meetings or high-profile events. As a result, I’ve only got three tops and a jacket. I probably wear the top once a week and the jacket a couple of times a week.

My problem is, I’ve put on about 30 pounds since I started working here, and my work tops no longer fit well. One doesn’t fit at all, and the other two have to be worn with tummy control tights and a certain style skirt. I managed to quietly swap out the jacket for a bigger one that was left in the store cupboard after a colleague left, but there aren’t any spare tops in my size lurking around the office.

You’ve got some great guidance around requesting better fitting clothes up-front, but what can I say to my manager about needing new clothes two years in? To make matters worse, the clothing company no longer does in-person try-ons — we have to pick the right size from the catalogue and the products can’t be returned as they’re embroidered with our logo.

People’s bodies change! You don’t need to hide that or approach it like it’s anything shameful. Be matter-of-fact: “My sizes have changed and the branded items I have don’t fit. How do I get updated sizes from the clothing supplier?”

3. My coworker went through my laptop bag

I’m trying to decide how mad I should be.

I accidentally left my personal laptop bag at work yesterday, and my co-manager (we are equal in positions) went through it. He told me about it today. He said he was looking for a certain piece of my equipment because he forgot his and needed to use it at a work-related but out-of-the-office event. Mine wouldn’t have been compatible, is brand new, and cost me $300. And it’s mine. I bought it. He opened my office, and then opened and went through my personal laptop bag. He never called to ask if this was okay, and was apparently just going to take my equipment out of our offices without asking? My laptop bag has my calendar, my notes, my MacBook, my personal equipment, my makeup … all my stuff. It’s basically my briefcase. WTAF am I supposed to do with this? I was so surprised in the moment I just kind of stared at him until the phone rang. There are some underlying politics between us, and while we do work well together, we’d probably rather not work together at all.

Yeah, that crossed a line and he shouldn’t have done it. That’s your personal bag with your personal stuff in it. And the equipment he was looking for doesn’t sound like it’s up for grabs — it’s yours personally, bought with your personal funds.

You said you’re trying to decide how mad you should be, and I don’t think that’s the right question. While he was in the wrong, this doesn’t require sustained outrage — but it does require a clear and direct statement to him not to do it again. Go back to him and say this: “Please don’t go through my bag again. That’s my personal bag with my personal belongings in it. If you’re looking for something that you think I might have and I’m not around, please call me. But I wouldn’t loan out my frog grooming kit anyway — I bought it personally and it was expensive. If you’d taken it without asking me, I would have been really bothered.”

4. Are we wrong to want to keep an employee who could earn more somewhere else?

We are a very small company – five full-time, two part-time employees. We are financially strong and are slowly growing. Payroll is about $400K/year. One of our part-timers is going to graduate this December with a degree that is highly valued. We’re thrilled to have had him here for four years and look forward to bringing him on full-time. Unfortunately, we will not be able to pay him the market rate for his degree and experience. We can pay him okay for our small town and the size of our company but financially he could do better elsewhere. Where we do excel is in benefits and opportunities – paid very good quality low-deductible health insurance, good time off. We are very flexible with hours and occasionally close for the day (with pay) because workloads are light, the weather is nice, or we just want to give folks some time off. We have a closet with snacks and sodas. We pay annual bonuses, often low-mid four figures. We have some new products in development and he will be the developer on some of these, supported by a manager who is an excellent leader and teacher. He typically isn’t motivated by money. He’s probably not someone who wants to relocate much beyond 25 miles.

Are we a bad company for wanting to keep him on, knowing we can’t pay him what he’s worth? Do you have any suggestions for how we might do this better?

You’re not a bad company for wanting to keep a good employee! You’d be a bad company if you guilted him when he tried to leave or tried to mislead him about his value. You can be a good company by being up-front with him about the situation: “You’re graduating with a degree that’s highly valued. We’re thrilled to have had you here for four years and want to bring you on full-time. I want to be up-front that we’re not in a position to pay what you could probably get somewhere else. We’d love to keep you if we can, and what we can offer you is…”

You don’t need to do that; you could let him figure it out on his own. But being transparent will probably add to the other incentives that might keep him there.

5. How to navigate food restrictions at a holiday potluck

My local office is doing a holiday potluck as a tradition, but the office has doubled in people in the last year. I’m wondering how to navigate food allergies and requirements? I’m writing out a card with ingredients for my dish, personally, but not everyone else is doing that.

Ideally whoever is organizing the potluck would ask everyone participating to set out an ingredients card. (That’s better than people just marking things “vegetarian” or “nut-free” or so forth, because otherwise you’ll get people who mark things incorrectly — not thinking about the chicken broth in their “vegetarian” pasta, etc.) If the organizer isn’t suggesting it, you can suggest they implement it … or just suggest it to everyone yourself.

That said, anyone with allergies or other restrictions likely already knows to approach potluck food with suspicion.