Ask a Manager

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

1. My boss gossiped about me to my mother-in-law

By a coincidental set of circumstances, my mother-in-law has become BFFs with the wife of one of my managers. I didn’t find out until I was in the process of getting hired at my job and when I was told, I’ll be honest, it made me nervous because my MIL is nosy.

Recently, my MIL has informed me that said manager told her he would not hire me as a manager because of my attendance. (If this is exactly what he said, I’m a little confused because I’ve not applied for a manager position.) I know my attendance right now isn’t the greatest but I am working on it. I don’t know if this is relevant, but I was having a lot of car trouble and was having to try to get rides to work.

It feels wrong for him to talk about me and my attendance to my MIL. I’m also wondering how much other stuff has been said about me and is this even legal? I live in Georgia if that matters.

It’s legal. There aren’t many workplace privacy laws in the U.S. and none prevent a manager from gossiping about someone’s attendance or what jobs they think a person is or isn’t suited for. (Of course, there are defamation laws, but the bar to meet that is very high and wouldn’t apply here; you’d need to show that the statement was false and also caused you injury.)

But it’s wrong! Your manager shouldn’t be gossiping about you to your mother-in-law. Depending on your relationship with your boss, you might be able to explain you’re in an awkward situation due to his wife’s friendship with your in-law and ask if he’d be discreet in the future about discussing you. (You shouldn’t need to ask, of course! But sometimes people
don’t think things like this through and a nudge can help. Not always, but sometimes.) Alternately, you could consider asking HR to take it up with him although you’d need to consider what you know of how they operate and what the repercussions might be for your relationship with your manager afterwards. Which sucks, but is the reality of it.

You could also try asking your mother-in-law not to discuss you with your boss, pointing out that it’ll be far easier for you if there’s a firewall there. Or at the very least, if they do talk about you, perhaps she can be convinced not to pass it along to you. This, of course, will depend heavily on what your mother-in-law is like.

2. My team gave bad feedback about me as a manager

I am the manager of a small department. I like to think I have a good, open relationship with all of them but the results of a recent survey showed that over 50% of the team responded negatively on questions regarding their immediate supervisor (me). This has hit me hard as I try to go above and beyond for my team. I rarely deny time off, often covering shifts on my own time; I say hello and goodnight to every team member every day; and I always try to find something non-work related to talk about with the team. What can I do to build these relationships to level I thought they were?

What was the specific feedback they gave? Usually when people have concerns about their manager, it goes beyond stuff like saying hello and goodbye and chit-chatting; it’s generally more substantive stuff like not getting useful feedback, not feeling they have clear expectations or being subjected to unreasonable ones, not feeling you advocate for them to upper management, being micromanaged or not getting enough guidance, feeling their work goes unrecognized, not feeling their input is heard, and so forth. (I’m not saying it’s necessarily anything on that list, just giving a sampling of what management issues often look like.) Hopefully the survey contained specifics; if not, it’s worth talking to people one-on-one to get a better understanding of their concerns.

For what it’s worth, the fact that you listed mostly fluffy stuff as what you’re getting right makes me think you might not have given enough thought or attention to what you need to be doing as a manager, and that itself could be where the problem is!

3. I asked for a promotion and a raise and it was denied — now what?

I finally worked up the courage for the first time in my 15+ year career to ask for a promotion and a raise, and it was denied. Now what? There was nothing I could do to work towards this or prove it was warranted, I was just given the company line of “we can’t give off-cycle promotions at this time.” I actually love my job, but I’m severely underpaid and am doing more work and have more responsibilities than my peers with more senior titles. I love my boss and I don’t want to leave, but I’m being undervalued and feel dejected after I finally worked up the courage to ask for this. Where should I go from here?

Ask your manager what a path to promotion would look like — what would you need to do to get promoted in the future, and what’s a realistic timeline for that? And since they mentioned they can’t give off-cycle promotions, make sure you know what that cycle is and how far in advance of it you should broach the topic again.

If you don’t get a clear answer, then assume that for whatever reason a promotion isn’t going to happen there and that you’ll need to look outside the organization to get one. (Which isn’t to imply that you can’t do that regardless of what your manager says. If you’re underpaid and overworked, it makes sense to look at what else is out there. You don’t have to leave if you don’t find something you like better, but you should at least look.)

4. Should slacking off 15 years ago be counted against someone running for office now?

A former coworker (Sam) is a candidate in the upcoming election for county clerk. Sam did a good job and got along well with coworkers when I worked with them. When they left for a new position, their duties were divvied out to the rest of the team until someone could be hired to fill the position. The project I was assigned to cover should have been started a couple months before Sam left. When I took over, we were close to the first of three deadlines and their work for that deadline should have been almost done. In reality, Sam had barely started so I had to scramble. I later found out that Sam had slacked off on other tasks and projects in their final couple of months.

This happened almost 15 years ago and it looks like Sam has held roles of more responsibility since then. I don’t know what was going on for Sam in those last few months. Maybe they had personal things going on that made doing their work extremely challenging. Maybe they saw no need to do more than make themselves look busy because they were planning to leave. If Sam had been struggling, they could have asked for help. They did not. Instead, they did very little work and let everyone think they were doing their job.

Should I vote for Sam because I do think they can do the job if they set their mind to doing it? That would mean giving them the benefit of the doubt that they had a valid reason back then for not doing their work and not asking for help. I’d need to assume that they have changed in the last 15 years and would not do that now. Or should I not vote for Sam because they slacked off once before when reaching the end of their time in a job and they might do so again? I’m leaning toward not voting for them – but am I being too harsh?

I don’t think slacking off one time 15 years ago means that Sam is likely to do it again. 15 years is a really long time. Plus, who knows what was going on with Sam then. If you otherwise knew them to be conscientious and responsible, I’d assume something else might have been going on to explain what happened at the end.

That said, you can vote or not vote for Sam for any reasons you want! If you don’t have faith in them or just have a bad taste in your mouth from when you worked together, they’re not owed your vote. (If you were thinking of actively campaigning against Sam because of what happened when you worked together, I’d discourage that, but that’s not what we’re talking about.)

5. Demotion in title but raise in pay

I’m in a strange situation at work. We have pay scales and titles which are standardized by a department outside our control. Recently, that department has decided that our pay scales should increase — I will get a very large raise along with everyone else in my department.

However, the pay raise is accompanied by a change in the list of available titles. The titles available within my pay scale are a clear and obvious demotion — think “Director of Technology” being changed to “Technology Aide” or “Technology Tactician.” I am not comfortable with this.

There is some potential for wiggle room on the titles, but it will require my department head to advocate strongly in favor of my preference, and it’s still not certain to work. My department head will probably be willing to try, but I need to know if I’m being unreasonable before I push. I’ve gotten feedback from some friends that a raise is preferable to a good title, and I should drop the issue. Do you have any advice?

Assuming the new title doesn’t more accurately reflect your job than the old one did, yes, it’s worth pushing back on. Point out that it’ll read as a demotion outside the company and for the rest of your career. Also, in some cases a lower-level title can make it harder to get things done with people outside your organization; if that’s the case here, mention that too.

Large raises are good! But titles do matter too.

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

1. I don’t want to change my hair routine for a coworker

I’m a cancer survivor in remission. When my hair grew back, it was surprisingly curly! My hair had always been fairly straight before, so there’s been a learning curve to care for it. There is a hair regimen known as the “Curly Girl Method” where you use specific sulfate and silicone free products and special techniques to enhance your curls. It isn’t easy and it isn’t cheap. After a lot of trial and error, I found a combination that really works for me and my curls. Now for the problem … the shampoo that works best for me is scented and noticeable from a few feet away like a light perfume would be. It isn’t a bad smell, it doesn’t linger in a room after I leave, and it’s only noticeable from a small radius around me (I’ve asked friends).

One of my coworkers, Jane, makes of show of wrinkling her nose and mentioning how strong it is any time she’s near me. Today she asked me via email to “tone it down with the perfume” after she had stopped by for something. I’ve been playing oblivious to her face-making and hand-waving up until now, so apparently she doesn’t realize it’s my hair and not perfume.

Jane and I are the same level of authority but report to different managers/departments. We generally get along fine, but she’s known to be stubborn and a little difficult (to be honest, I feel she just wants to make a power play, which wouldn’t be out of character). As far as I know, she doesn’t have any official workplace accommodation requests in place for scent sensitivity. We don’t have a scent-free policy. I have a private office, as does she. She stops by my office (or vice versa) maybe three times a week at most, usually for around 5-10 minutes. And perhaps most importantly to me … I don’t want to switch my shampoo! It wasn’t easy getting to a place where I’m happy with my hair every day, and this shampoo was part of that. I feel her request is unreasonable considering the very small amount of time it affects her.

Can I ignore her request and is there a kind way to shut it down? Should I talk to my boss or hers or both? Or do I need to go back to the Curly Girl drawing board until I find a different and less scented shampoo that works for me?

This is tricky — partly because of how Jane is handling it! I suspect you’d have had a different reaction if she’d come to you and said, “I’m sorry about this, but I’m having a reaction to a product you’re using and it’s giving me a headache when I come into your office. Can we try to figure out a solution?” (And then that solution might be that you’re more willing to change the product, or that you meet in more open/ventilated spaces, or who knows what.) But her face-making and hand-waving is A Lot, and it sounds like you have reason to think she’s just being difficult for the hell of it. Still, though, you have to consider that Jane could be obnoxious and have a genuine scent sensitivity that’s causing her real issues.

But this is trickier than if it were just about perfume. It’s reasonable to immediately respect requests not to wear perfume to work; it’s harder when it’s something like shampoo, soap, or detergent since those aren’t optional in the way perfume is, and people can have their own important reasons for choosing a shampoo or soap (like yours, or skin sensitivities, or so forth). There are offices that ask people to avoid scented hair products because they can trigger reactions in people, but yours isn’t one of them (so far, anyway) and Jane hasn’t even said the issue is a sensitivity (as opposed to just not liking it).

So right now I think I’d just respond back to her email with, “I don’t wear perfume. I think you’re smelling my shampoo, which I can’t easily change. Let me know if you’d rather meet somewhere more ventilated or sit further apart when we’re meeting.” If she wants to push it beyond that, suggest she talk to HR about getting an accommodation if she needs one.

Read an update to this letter. 

2. Being late for a meeting because of stomach issues

What is the etiquette if something comes up right before a scheduled meeting that would make one late to or miss said meeting — especially when the reason is, er, a little private? This morning I had a sudden upset stomach about 15 minutes before a call with my manager, and while I made it back to my computer in time, I found myself struggling to word a message in case I hadn’t. “Something came up” sounds too weirdly vague, especially since being late to/cancelling a meeting last-minute seems rude and like it needs some explanation, but saying anything more specific seems like TMI-territory. The situation is one of those things that theoretically everyone knows happens but in practice feels too gross or personal to even mention in a professional environment.

Is there language I’m not thinking of that hits the right balance? Does the equation change if it’s a virtual versus in-person meeting? What would one say afterwards if they didn’t have their phone to send a message and were stuck in a restroom while others in the meeting presumably wondered where they were?? Somehow fully missing the meeting sounds less awkward — “I’ve gotten sick and need to log off for the afternoon” versus “sorry I’m 15 minutes late, my burrito caught up with me but I’m fine now.” It didn’t even happen to me and I have gone down the rabbit hole wondering about this!

If at all possible, try to send a text or email so the person knows you’re going to be late/might need to cancel. It can be very vague though! For example: “Apologies, could we push our meeting back by 15 minutes?” If you feel you must give a reason (although you often don’t even need to), you could add, “I’m feeling a little ill but grabbing some water and hoping it will pass.” And if you can’t do that in the moment and end up showing up late without any warning, you can say, “I’m sorry I’m late, I was feeling a little sick but I’m fine now.” (Or, if you can plausibly say another meeting ran over, feel free to sidestep the whole  issue and just say that instead.)

If you ended up missing the meeting entirely rather than just being late: “I’m so sorry, I suddenly felt really sick and couldn’t reach you in time.”

3. I’m nervous about being around my coworker whose husband is sick

I have a coworker who just started in our office but previously worked in a different department in the business. She came in today and said her husband is really sick (probably with Covid). I’m recently undergoing some challenging health problems and even if it’s not Covid, I really do not want to get sick because of my other health problems. We share a kitchen and bathroom in our office. Can I ask my boss if I can work from home given that someone may unintentionally make me sick? Or can I make a request that if someone is sick, they work from home themselves? Working from home is an option for us. My boss is aware that I have some health problems, but is not aware of specifics and is really understanding!

Yes, please talk to your boss! In some offices you wouldn’t even need to ask; you could just tell your manager you’d be at home for the next few days because it sounds like Jane’s husband may have Covid and you want to stay safe. But if you’re in an office where you ask, rather than announce, it’s a very reasonable thing to ask to do.

On the question of whether you can ask someone else to stay home … you can try (and it would certainly be the preferable option, so they don’t risk infecting other people either). It’s much less of an uphill battle today than it was pre-Covid, but you still might encounter resistance; if that happens, focus on the piece you have more control over (you going home yourself if you can, rather than trying to convince them to). You can also talk to your manager about putting better policies in place to keep illness from spreading (which can also be an uphill battle, depending on the workplace).

Related:
can I ask my coworkers to keep masking around me and not come to work sick?
can I tell sick coworkers to go home?

4. My boss avoids meals with her employees

My manager is a more than mediocre one — not perfect, but definitely not a bad one. There is one uncommon thing about her though, which is that she avoids having lunch or any meals with her direct reports, except those who are obviously her friends. It has lasted for a couple of years.

As she had been helping us a lot, I somehow managed to initiate a one-on-one gathering at a restaurant with her, and she did agree to come. The gathering itself was fine. Casual chats, good food, and both of us seem to have enjoyed it. But later on, she began to avoid talking about any topics that might be related to the gathering, even when we were not at the workplace. It unfortunately causes quite a great deal of anxiety, given that she is a likeable manager and the last thing I want to do is to make her do something she doesn’t want to do.

Did I do a taboo thing by inviting her for a meal? Should I also begin avoiding anything that may be related to that meal gathering? We are of the same gender and I am quite sure it is not about romance.

It’s fine if she prefers not to have social meals with employees. You didn’t do anything wrong by inviting her to one, but it sounds like you should accept that for whatever reason it’s not her thing and it makes her uncomfortable. I wouldn’t worry about it, but I also wouldn’t suggest another meal. As for never alluding to that previous meal again … well, she’s being weird! But assuming it’s not a major hardship to follow her lead there, you might as well just respect that she wants to be circumspect about it and stop mentioning it.

The bigger problem is that your manager apparently is friends with some of her employees and treats them differently than the rest of you (including with extra face time outside of work). That’s not okay at all, although you’re probably not in a position to do much about it.

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

1. Wouldn’t younger candidates be better at the jobs we’re hiring for?

When does experience “age out?” I work at a small nonprofit that is trying to be “cutting edge” in our area, but they keep hiring older employees who don’t really know what they are doing. Recently, we went through a long, drawn out hiring process for a marketing role where they kept rejecting candidates on the basis of having too little experience since they want them to “hit the ground running.” They seem not to trust anyone under the age of 40! So, they hired an older woman, “Jane,” who has “a ton of experience and connections.” But, as it turns out, most of those connections have since retired and her idea of marketing is snail mail and print ads, and she doesn’t seem to know social media! She is also struggling really hard with our basic IT set-up; she can’t even get her signature to come out right. Wouldn’t a younger person do better in this situation? Or am I just salty that as the admin I have to fix a lot of her mistakes but get paid a fraction of what she does?

Nope, it definitely does not follow that a younger person would do better. There are incompetent and/or tech-illiterate people in every age group. You could hire a 25-year old who is bad at tech (believe me, there are tons of them; ask the many managers aggravated that their fresh-out-of-college hires have no idea how to attach a file to an email) and doesn’t know much about social media either. And you could hire a 55-year old who was a whiz at both. (Frankly, the idea of a 55-year-old inherently being worse at basic IT stuff is strange, since it’s been a part of professional life for decades.)

This isn’t about age; it’s about bad hiring. Good hiring means figuring out the skills you need and then testing for those in your interview process, something whoever hired Jane apparently didn’t do. And sure, recency of those skills can matter — if someone’s accomplishments in the area you need are all a decade old, you’d want to talk with them about current trends and get a feel for how they have or haven’t kept those skills up-to-date and how well they’ll do with the requirements of the job now — but again, this is about interviewing effectively and looking at what that individual person brings to the table, not about correlating skills or expertise with someone’s age.

2. Coworker edited my email to make themself look better

I have a new colleague who I am starting to interact with for the first time. I was getting increasingly frustrated because they were asking me questions about things we had discussed very recently (usually within one or two days). I started out responding kindly because they’re new and I like to give people the benefit of the doubt, but then the same issue happened four times in one day. They asked me about an item we discussed in a meeting, which was detailed on the agenda sent out before the meeting and which I had emailed their whole team about previously. I was planning to raise these concerns with my boss and/or their boss about them needing to refer back to meeting notes, searching email, etc. before reaching out to me in the future, but then something else happened.

I responded to one of their questions and said something to the effect of, “We talked about this at the meeting, see agenda attached” and proceeded to provide an answer. In their email reply, they deleted the portion of my email saying that we had talked about the item at a previous meeting. When I noticed this, I was shocked. I cannot find a reasonable explanation for this and now feel like I cannot trust this person because I’m worried they are going to forward my emails after editing them to make themself look better or change my message to suit their needs. Should I tell my boss about this? Am I overreacting? I do know that I will be on high alert when interacting with this person moving forward.

Ooooh, I don’t like it. It’s possible that there’s an innocent explanation, like that they were copying and pasting that to save it somewhere else (like in a reminder about places to check!) and inadvertently cut it rather than just copying … but yeah, it really does look like trying to make themselves look better. Was anyone cc’d on the email or did it just go to you? If it just went to you, I’d be more inclined to give the benefit of the doubt, but if others were included, my gut would say they edited that intentionally.

As for whether to mention it to your boss, I’d probably just watch very closely to see if it happens again — and if it does, call it out at that point. But if this email went to more people than just you and the edit seems clearly designed to hide their mistake, I would mention that to your boss — framed as “I don’t want to make a big deal about this, but this looks like they changed my words to avoid responsibility falling on them.” Alternately, depending on the dynamics involved and what your coworker wrote in their response, you also have the option of replying-all back and just flatly saying, “It looks like you removed the part of my reply explaining that we had talked about this at a previous meeting.” (That would not be appropriate in all circumstances but it could be in some. If they just replied “thanks!” it would be overkill. If they replied “it would have been better to make this info more available,” it wouldn’t be.)

3. Our meetings are filled up with endless introductions

In the past year I started working at a large institution in an administrative role. I love my job and my immediate team — everything is going really well with my work and day-to-day relationships.

My department is situated within two larger entities, and we attend all-hands meetings monthly for both of them. Some have been virtual, some have been in-person. The issue is that the people running the meetings ask everyone to do introductions every. single. time. The first few times, I got it — we had a lot of people that hadn’t met anyone except their immediate team because of the pandemic, and then a run of new people starting all the time, but now things have normalized and it’s still happening. It takes up so much time in every meeting. I’ve started skipping the first 15 minutes of virtual meetings with these groups, but am still usually treated to at least another 10 minutes of introductions. The in-person meetings are a nightmare of tedium.

This strange practice turns what should be a 45-minute meeting where we get to everything into an hour-plus long meeting where multiple agenda items are pushed to the next month. I know I’m not the only one bothered by it, but I don’t work closely with either of the meeting organizers or their immediate team members. How do I effectively push back against this?

What on earth! How well positioned you are to speak up depends on how senior your role is. If you’re pretty junior, you probably don’t have the standing to tackle this when others aren’t. But otherwise, one option is to contact whoever’s running the meetings and say, “I know getting everyone introduced to each other has been important, but we’ve been spending upwards of 20 minutes per meeting on it, which means meetings run over and we’re often not getting through our agenda items. What do you think about skipping the intros now that we’re through our wave of new hires, or keeping them shorter?” (If you read that and think you’re not the right person to say it, you could try asking your boss if she’d raise it instead.)

4. I don’t want to do contract work for the job that laid me off

I was recently laid off from my job of three years in the middle of my vacation. It wasn’t totally unexpected, but the timing was and because they decided to make the layoff effective immediately, I didn’t have time to wrap up loose ends that I would have liked to do. It doesn’t feel great, but we’ve known for a long time that the organization was experiencing instability and I’ve been casually job searching for a few months already.

However, they offered me the opportunity to continue on-call until the end of the year, to support remaining staff and to finish some of the work I would have done if I’d worked out a notice period. The hours would amount to less than 15% of my previous monthly wage. I’d also have to pay my own taxes and other deductions from that, and give up the few other benefits I’d previously had. This would give me the chance to wrap some things up and help out my remaining coworkers (we were already understaffed for months when I was laid off, and as my layoff was a money-saving move, the understaffing will only be worse now.)

The way this has happened doesn’t sit well with me, but I understand their reasoning and I don’t bear a grudge. But I’d also really like to have a break from the uncertainty and organizational instability and move on with my life.

Would declining the on-call work hurt my professional reputation or future opportunities? All the references I’d use from the organization have already left (see: previous understaffing and cutbacks), so I’m not concerned from that angle, but I work in a mid-size sector with an ethic of pulling together and making personal sacrifices for the greater good. The organization has a not-insignificant public image and heaps of public goodwill, so I worry a bit about the optics of me leaving them high and dry. But I’m also just really ready to move on. Am I overestimating how much other people in the sector care, or even notice?

Yes. They’ve laid you off; that ended your work obligations. You have the option of accepting additional work from them if you want to, but no obligation whatsoever if you prefer not to. It would be 100% fine to say, “Unfortunately I’m not available” or “I wouldn’t be interested in working as an independent contractor” or “Thank you for the offer, but it won’t work for me right now.” It’s very normal to not be available to a job after you leave (ever, but especially one that terminated your employment). No reasonable bystander would think anything of that.

You also have the option of saying you’d do it for a higher wage. It doesn’t sound like you’re interested in that, but just as a general piece of advice, know you can always try to negotiate rates for stuff like this if you want to. (And it’s particularly easy to say, “I’d need $X/hour to make it work for me since I’d be responsible for my own payroll taxes and since it’s so many fewer hours.” They can then take that or leave it.)

5. Including quotes from a manager on your resume

What are your thoughts on using direct quotes from a performance review on a resume? I’m re-writing mine right now, and would love to use this text: “She is well respected and communicates well upward, downward and laterally.” Would a cover letter be a better place for it? Should I not include it at all?

I wouldn’t include it. You can include one or two truly fantastic quotes in your cover letter or on your resume, but they need to be unusually impressive. Otherwise it risks looking a little … meh.

“Well respected and communicates well” is lovely but not superlative enough for job application materials. (“Best communicator I’ve worked with during my decade in this field” would be, to illustrate the difference. Or even, “Earned the respect of her team under extraordinarily challenging circumstances” — something that indicates this was above and beyond your basic “good” baseline.)

However, you could think about what accomplishments you have that stem from the traits in your quote, and make a point of playing those up. What did those traits lead you to achieve in those jobs? Write about those!