Ask a Manager

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

1. My coworker reported a colleague for injuring a client, but it wasn’t true

I work in an office that serves a vulnerable population in their homes. My coworkers Jane and Anna have repeatedly butted heads over the past few months about basically everything. Jane is generally very unpleasant and demanding, which may be coloring my perception. We are very much a team environment where no one can do their jobs without the support of the team. Jane seems to think her clients are the only ones and should take precedence. She has been spoken to about her tone and behavior multiple times.

A few weeks ago, Jane reported to my boss that a client had bruises after Anna and a third coworker physically assisted her. Jane was not a witness. My boss spoke with the client’s family, Anna, and the third coworker. It was determined there was no intentional harm to the patient, she bruises easily, and the family said it may have even been something they caused. Anna will get additional training around lift assistance. Case closed. Jane then filed a report with our corporate parent, accusing Anna of injuring a patient. Anna was immediately suspended pending an investigation. It took less than 24 hours to determine Anna did nothing wrong and should be reinstated. It was also determined that Jane, based on things she said when interviewed, had made the report in retaliation for her ongoing personal issues with Anna. HR and Compliance advised my boss to essentially manage Jane out with weekly meetings about her behavior. Shouldn’t false/retaliatory reporting get someone fired immediately?

Yes.

When you say they advised your boss to manage Jane out with weekly meetings, what exactly does that mean? Do they mean pressure her to leave on her own? If so, that’s ridiculous — and it’s always bad management. If someone needs to go, you need to tell them to go, not wait for them to leave on their own (which they may never do, and it will be prolonged and painful for everyone involved, and it’s an utter dereliction of a manager’s duty). Or do they mean that your manager should follow an internal policy that will take many meetings but will end with Jane being fired? If so, that’s far more than is necessary; making a false report as retaliation against someone is egregious enough that it’s not PIP territory, but rather “fire immediately” territory. So either way their handling of this is bizarre, but one way would be worse than the other.

Read an update to this letter. 

2. Interviewers who quote a lower salary range than they listed in the ad

I’m interviewing for jobs and I’m puzzled by the discrepancy between the salary posted and the salary conveyed in the actual interview. The range posted would be, say, $50-80,000. At the interview, they would say $50,000-$55,000.

My current expectation for roles is at $75-80,000, so in theory these posts look within range, but then the interviews end up lasting only five minutes, ending once we get to the salary part.

Is it weird to say “but your posting said $80,000” or is that too pushy? Or can I say “I’m still interested in the role and would like to discuss further?” and hope they’ll offer a higher salary?

Yeah, that’s a huge waste of applicants’ time — and of the interviewer’s time too, because they’re going to have people applying who aren’t willing to work for the salary they’re offering. It’s possible that what’s listed in the ad is the salary band for the role, without mentioning that everyone starts at the bottom of it, but either way it’s deceptive and disrespectful of people’s time.

I would not just continue in the process hoping they’ll offer a higher salary when they just told you they won’t. But you can say, “We may be too far apart then. Your ad said $50-80,000, and I’d be looking for the higher end of that.” If they dance around it and don’t give you a straight answer, you can push for clarity by saying, “I’d be looking for $75-80,000. Does it make sense to keep talking or is that prohibitive on your end?”

3. Candidates changing their mind after accepting an offer

I’m a recruiter at a software company, and I’m hoping for a reality check on a new trend I’m seeing. Usually, a candidate signs their offer, works through their notice period of two to four weeks at their current employer, and then starts here on the planned date. I’ve been recruiting for about three years now, and that’s what happens 99% of the time. Until a few months ago, it was VERY rare for a candidate to sign an offer with us, and then back out to either stay where they are or go somewhere else. Like it only happened to me about twice over 2+ years.

In the past three or four months, however, I’ve had half a dozen candidates bail after signing an offer. I know it’s not a legally binding agreement, but it’s still poor form, unprofessional, and a great way to burn bridges — largely because it’s massively inconvenient for us to count on someone showing up, plan for their onboarding, and reject all our other candidates, only to have to start all over again (are candidates aware of this? I know it’s just the cost of doing business but it sucks). So I guess my question is: Am I wrong? Is this more normal than I thought? Or is something changing in ~the market~ and we should just start to expect this? What’s going on?

It’s the market. Most likely, people are getting a better offer in between when they accept yours and when they’re scheduled to start. (Alternately, it’s possible that it’s something about your company — how’s your reputation? are people hearing bad things and getting spooked? — but it’s much more likely that it’s just the market.)

I agree that it’s massively inconvenient, but you also can’t expect people to turn down better jobs/more money if they’re on offer … and it sounds like right now, they’re on offer for a lot of your candidates. If you haven’t already, it’s worth revisiting the current market to make sure your salaries and benefits are competitive. (Even when you’re competitive with the market, you can still run into this — but that’s the first thing I’d look at.)

4. Inviting employees to social events and contacting them when they’re on leave

I like to think I establish healthy boundaries at work. But I’d love to hear your thoughts on this so you can tell me if I’m actually just a grump.

We had several employees take parental leave this year, and at one point we had four women out at the same time. We’re not a huge company, and the vibes are definitely “we’re like a family” (I know). When these employees were on leave, they were routinely invited to more casual, team building-type meetings (all virtual). We also had one employee leave the company during this time, and they were virtually invited to his goodbye party (only one of the four women actually attended). There were also many instances of “this recurring meeting falls on a holiday so I’m going to ask (employee on leave) to change it,” which I guess is less problematic if you genuinely don’t have control over the meeting, but it still frustrated me.

I’ve never taken leave to have a baby or for any other reason, so I may just not understand … but is this normal? Even though the meetings were obviously not for actual work or in person, I feel like the last thing I’d want to do is log on to zoom and hang out with my coworkers virtually.

As far as I know, none of the women were pressured to attend, but even getting an invite would bother me! And when we had the goodbye party, I was asked by a couple of higher-ups, “Is Rhaenyra coming?” since we work closely together and I guess they thought maybe we were in contact during her leave? We weren’t!

I would maybe not care as much about this, but there’s been some other weirdness that makes it worse, specifically regarding these new mothers and their (lack of) accommodations.

It’s not that unusual for someone to choose to attend a purely social work event while on parental leave. As long as it’s really voluntary and not the result of pressure to be there, that’s okay! Some people like continuing to feel connected to their teams in a social way, don’t want to miss saying goodbye to a colleague they liked, etc. (But since you used the term “team-building,” if any of these events were more classic team-building stuff rather than purely social get-togethers, then no — people on leave would not normally attend those. Some of us would have a baby solely to get out of attending those.)

Contacting people on maternity leave to change meetings (!!) is not okay (nor is any other work request). Your office should be able to come up with a workaround that doesn’t involve contacting someone who’s out, just as they’d have to figure it out if the person were unreachable in the hospital. The problem is that they’re not viewing maternity leave as that same level of “do not disturb.”

5. Can your company urge you to vote for a political candidate?

The company my husband works for was founded by the family of the wife of a current candidate for the U.S. Senate. The entire C-suite and most of the employees are very conservative politically. I’ve already asked my husband to keep quiet about being a member of the opposite political party, as I know that political affiliation is not a protected class.

The president of the company sent out an email that basically says they “strongly urge” all employees to vote for their in-law for the Senate. My husband thinks this is illegal; I think it’s a bad idea, but legal.

You’re correct: bad idea but legal. Private employers can indeed urge employees to vote a certain way. They can’t explicitly threaten employees’ jobs over it, but they can urge you all they want. Some states do have additional restrictions; for example, New Jersey prohibits employers from requiring workers to listen to the employer’s political opinions, and a handful of other states forbid employers from posting notices saying that they will shut down if a particular candidate wins.

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

1. The Try Guys drama — can they fire Alex?

Just for fun, I am wondering if you could weigh in on a pop/internet-culture moment that’s been all over my feeds this week. A popular YouTube group (four members — the “Try Guys”) recently parted with one member, due to him cheating on his wife with one of their producers. He is an owner in the company and so the producer is his employee. His whole persona was centered around his wife (who is featured often on the channel) and being a family man. The employee/producer he cheated with was also cheating on her partner of 10 years. Details are unclear, but it seems possible it was not a singular incident and perhaps something that had been happening for a while? Maybe?

The group kicked him out (their statement says he is no longer working with them). No word on what will become of the female producer. However, I’ve seen SO many TikToks/tweets from armchair experts saying they can’t fire her because she was his employee and due to the power imbalance it is a lawsuit waiting to happen. My question: is this true? I want to be sensitive to any power imbalance that might have contributed to the situation (because I know it happens!), but if a boss/employee have an affair is the employee always excused from repercussions at work? Could she face any repercussions? Is it really always a potential lawsuit?

I obviously don’t know all the details and I’m not advocating for any specific outcome, just curious if these armchair experts are accurate.

It’s not that it would be illegal to fire the employee — and some companies do fire both parties in situations like this — but it could increase the legal risk for the company. The concern for the company is that the employee could argue that she was coerced, subtly or not so subtly, to enter the relationship or remain in it after she wanted to end it, because of the power the owner had over her job. She could argue that if she remains employed too, of course — but the concern for lawyers is often that people are more likely to approach it that way if they feel the company has mistreated them (on top of whatever else happened). And indeed, if there was any type of coercion or harassment, firing the person who was subjected to it is a really bad thing to do — for legal reasons, yes, but also for basic ethical ones. Plus, there’s the principle that the person with the power is more responsible than the person without the power.

(As a side note, it used to be routine that when this kind of thing was uncovered, the woman was dismissed while the more powerful man remained — and that has been found to be illegal, because it was clearly based on gender.)

2. When a coworker badgers you about holiday time off

This happened a couple years ago but as everyone’s booking their December holiday leave at my office, I recalled something that is very likely to happen again. Due to mandatory coverage, only one or two people in my area of specialization can take time off at the same time. I booked time off for Christmas in July because I know how hard it can be to get time off during the big holidays and I rarely ask for time off over holidays at all as I don’t have kids and with WFH makes it almost a non-issue. However, that particular year, another staff member tried to guilt me into cancelling my leave so they could have it off instead, as they were the only other person trained in processing X at the time.

I didn’t cave and I gave non-committal “haha yeah, I worked that time last year it’s super dull” and “mhm” answers. But they kept pushing it, saying stuff like, “Team Leader told me you were the one who got the week after new years off” … “when did you book that?” … “What are you going to do with that time off?” … “I was hoping to spend more time with my nieces and nephews before they go back to school” … “are you going out of state?”

It petered out when I mentioned I hadn’t seen anyone in my family for over two years, but it still threw me for a loop and the entitlement really rubbed me the wrong way. If it happens again, is grey-rocking and a few mmhmms the best way to do it or is there a secret key to dealing with this kind of policy (and this kind of coworker) I should know?

You can either stick with the boring, non-committal answers or you can say point-blank, “Are you asking if I’ll move my time off? I really can’t — sorry.”

Ideally employers with coverage needs should put some energy into ensuring that time off at desirable times of the year is equitably distributed. With first-come first-served systems, if you have someone who always turns into their holiday requests early, it can mean they get all the prime vacation slots every year and others never do. Some employers use seniority (not a great system, especially if you have low turnover, which can leave some people never getting the time off they want) or ranked preferences. Some use rotations where you get one holiday off this year and a different one the next. What works best will depend on your office, but one thing that often helps is offering an incentive for people to sign up for holiday coverage, like premium pay or extra days off in exchange.

3. Is it true that most jobs are filled by networking?

I am, at this moment, sitting in a conference for information communication technology. I am attending a mini session aimed at increasing women in the industry. The speaker said something that took me aback. She was explaining how networking is incredibly important and then said, “84% of positions are filled via networking, only 16% are filled via ads.”

I am wondering what your take is on this? Is this really true? Certainly, having a professional network is an obvious boon to those who can manage it but would you agree the difference is so stark as that? I am not currently looking for a job but might be in a year or so. The idea that I need to have insiders or sponsors to have even a three-quarters chance at a job is disheartening.

Nope! This is a number that has been tossed around for years, but if you look into where it came from, no one ever seems to be able to find a source. There’s no data backing it up.

Jonathan Blaine had a good post debunking it 10 years ago. But it keeps getting repeated by people who hear it and just assume it’s true without fact-checking it (or simply testing it against their own experience hiring).

That doesn’t mean networking isn’t valuable or that some jobs don’t go unadvertised. It is, and they do. But 84% is a crazily high number with nothing backing it up, and it tends to freak out job seekers and make them think they’ll never get a job just from responding to ads — which is convenient for people who make money by convincing job seekers they need to pay for help.

4. How early should I log on for a video interview?

So excited — after following your suggestions in Secrets of a Hiring Manager, I’m one of five people who moved onto a second round interview with the hiring manager for a job I’m super interested in! Since my Zoom interview is tomorrow morning: how many minutes beforehand would you suggest I log in — two minutes? Five minutes? I don’t want to look overeager but I do want to allow for the vagaries of Internet connections.

I’d say three to five minutes but no earlier. (Some platforms — including Zoom, I believe — will send an email to the organizer when someone is waiting so you don’t want to show up much earlier than that. Three to five minutes is reasonable though.)

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

1. Boyfriend’s employer keeps wrecking our plans

My boyfriend works as a carer and, so far as it’s possible for an outsider to judge, seems really conscientious and dedicated to the clients. Unfortunately the company he works for seems to be taking advantage of this.

The long hours and low pay are bad enough, but what’s putting our relationship under strain is that he can’t even make plans for his limited free time. Every time we arrange to spend time together, he gets a call either the night before or the morning of saying they need him to travel to the other side of the county, work through lunch, or some other change in work patterns that ruins our plans.

I have encouraged him to job search, but the aforementioned long hours leave him without much energy for more than immediate plans. I know this is his problem to solve, but is there any advice I can give him besides “Flee, they are terrible people”?

Does he always say yes to those last-minute requests? What would happen if he said no to some of them? If he’s open to suggestions, that’s the one I’d try — saying, “Unfortunately I can’t do that; I have an existing commitment that I can’t move.” Unless a requirement of the job is “be available 24/7 no matter regardless of what your work schedule says,” this is a reasonable thing to do (and very few jobs have that requirement, and the ones that do generally compensate you extremely well for it).

It’s also worth noting the the job market for caregivers is quite good in most places right now, which means your boyfriend’s job is probably pretty secure and he shouldn’t have a hard job search when he launches one.

2. My company doesn’t care about customers threatening violence

I recently started working for a big box store as a sales associate. I mainly help customers on the floor and do very little cashiering. So far, I had been impressed with the culture and the supposed emphasis on workplace safety.

However, as I’ve gotten to know the other employees, I’ve heard about some disturbing things that happened to cashiers and customer service people within the last couple of years — things like customers threatening to shoot them, another customer shoving a cart into an employee that she had been arguing with (i.e., cursing at), and having customers pull guns on them in the checkout line. Management’s response was in all cases was, “You are welcome to call the police and file a report on your own, but not on work time.”

Is this normal? Is this legal? If an employee left work to call the police about a work-related assault, could that employee be terminated? How could an employee protect herself at work from that customer after filing a report? (I use “herself” because in all the cases at my job it has been young women who were threatened.) It’s horrible that these things happen, but it makes it so much worse that the company is indifferent.

It’s really sad because these cashiers all make low wages and have children to support, so they stay and put up with this. I think most of them did not file police reports because they were afraid they would lose their jobs and that the customer would retaliate. I also don’t think there are a lot of options in our town for them.

You’ve had customers pulling guns on cashiers and your management’s response was to do nothing?! No, that’s not normal or okay. I can’t speak to the legality of not letting you file a police report on work time (it’s outside my knowledge, unfortunately; I’d recommend consulting a lawyer in your state) but I can tell you it’s profoundly wrong if indeed your company is blowing off violent threats to its workers and discouraging employees from protecting themselves.

Any chance that the emphasis on workplace safety you were impressed with before you heard these accounts is a newer development in response to older incidents? Or, of course, it could be nothing more than lip service. To determine which it is, you could ask your manager about how to respond if a customer makes threats or has a weapon, and see what they say.

3. Coworker takes things from other people’s offices (for work)

Our office “Nosey Rosey” has recently been going into peoples cubicles/offices when they aren’t around. She’s been with the company about a year and a half and this just started in the last couple of months. It has almost always been work-related: getting a roll of labels out of one person’s drawer or a reference page out of another’s file tower. Last week she helped herself to my key cabinet while I was at lunch, going into my desk to get the key to the cabinet and then taking another key from the cabinet to hand out to someone else. (I’ve never given her permission to do either of those things, and there were other people in the office who have copies of the key that was needed.) And there have been other instances too. One afternoon my boss couldn’t find his coffee mug as he was packing up to leave for a meeting. While he was looking for it, she went into his office, opened up his lunch bag, and pulled out his water bottle, asking me if that was the coffee mug. I was so taken aback I didn’t have the presence of mind to say anything.

How do I address this? Am I overreacting? I for one am super uncomfortable knowing that a coworker feels so free to other people’s things. My intuition tells me that, work reasons or not, this kind of behavior is not okay. So far I haven’t told anyone the things I’ve seen Rosey doing. Should I? I don’t want to be a tattletale, but I also want my and my coworkers’ boundaries to be respected … and to make sure other people know to keep an eye on their stuff!

Well, you don’t have the same expectation of privacy at work that you would at home, and there are times when a coworker might need to go into your desk for something if you’re not available. But it sounds like Rosey feels a higher level of freedom to poke around in other people’s stuff than she should, and it would be reasonable to say to her, “Please don’t take my cabinet key without my permission unless I’m not here and it’s an emergency” or “please don’t go through the things in my office unless it’s an emergency and I’m not available.” (If you work with confidential materials that she shouldn’t have access to, cite that as well.) And if you see her doing it to someone else, you can call that out in the moment too — like with that incident with your boss’s lunch bag, you could say, “Whoa, I don’t think you should be going through his personal stuff.”

But if, aside from the lunch bag incident, it’s always been about getting work items that were needed in the moment, it doesn’t sound like it necessarily rises to the level of needing to flag it for someone higher up — just something where you should clearly lay out your own boundaries with her.

4. I’ve had no contact with our new hire

What is the protocol for introducing new employees when everyone is fully remote? A new junior staffer was just hired onto my immediate team, making us a team of three, in an organization of ~200. When I got a notification on Teams that my new colleague had joined one of our private teams on their first day, I took the opportunity to IM a friendly welcome message. That has been our only contact so far. There’s a larger departmental meeting in a few days where my new colleague will likely be introduced. Is it normal that our shared manager hasn’t set up a meet-and-greet call for the three of us? Should I proactively set something up for the two of us, or would that be inappropriate? When I asked my manager about greetings and training before my new colleague started, he said he had it all under control. I was surprised I wasn’t asked to plan to provide training. Now that our new colleague is on board, every passing day feels more awkward. Is this a typical case of sloppy on-boarding, or is this the latest sign I’m being pushed out?

I wouldn’t take this as a sign that you’re being pushed out unless there are other things that make you think that! It’s possible, of course, but absent some other evidence*, I’d assume that either your manager just dropped the ball on introductions (not uncommon) or has the new hire busy with other things. But there’s no reason you can’t reach out to her on your own and offer to do an introductory call.

* Is there other evidence? You wrote “the latest sign” of being pushed out, so if there are others and they form a pattern, that is worth paying attention to, and perhaps worth initiating a conversation with your boss about where you stand. But this on its own shouldn’t make you think that.

5. Can you leave your street address off your resume?

Should applicants in subsidized/section 8 housing leave their street address off their resume? My colleagues and I are career counselors for people receiving state assistance (welfare). As such, most of our participants live in financially assisted housing. The location of this housing is widely known to the general public. Some career counselors advise leaving the street address off a resume other than town/city to avoid stigma. Some say to include it because otherwise it appears as though the applicant forgot it or is homeless which also brings about stigma. Some have no opinion on the matter.

It’s incredibly common these days for applicants to leave their street addresses off their resumes and list only city/state (I’d guess about a third of the resumes I see do it that way). The convention of listing a street address goes back to the days when employers might contact you by postal mail — it’s really no longer necessary at all, and loads of people have stopped doing it. It should be fine for your clients to just list city and state. (That said, you may find that street address as a required field with online application systems  … although that info often isn’t passed along to hiring managers the way a resume is.)