Ask a Manager

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

1. Our CEO attacked me in an all-staff email for scheduling a happy hour on Rosh Hashanah

I work at a nonprofit in lower management. Two folks who report to me and I report to a VP who reports to the CEO. One of my reports recently received another job offer. We countered but he still chose to move on, highlighting some concerns about how we’ve been handling DEI recently. I share those concerns and made that clear in the follow-up discussion with senior management about his departure. It was very clear to me in those discussions that the CEO does not agree that these are problems we need to address.

There was a tense staff meeting where our CEO does this thing where he doesn’t really have an agenda and asks people to talk and ask questions. My departing direct report asked a lot of questions. They were good questions, but I definitely noticed the CEO’s hackles going up.

I then sent around a goodbye happy hour invitation to all staff from my team and the other team involved. The CEO responded directly to me telling me that FYI, I have scheduled this happy hour over Rosh Hashanah.

This is not a holiday we get off or a holiday that has been raised as a scheduling issue during my tenure here. But I apologized profusely and suggested to my CEO another time when he could say goodbye to our departing colleague. I checked in with our interim DEI director, who saw no problem with me going ahead with that date, and I emailed back to all staff, apologizing for any implication that I didn’t want to include people, but commenting that it was the only time that worked for the relevant teams and that we’d be happy to set something else up if folks wanted an alternative.

Our CEO responded to my email (and all of the staff). He accused me of disrespecting his religion and for over two paragraphs explained why he could not believe that I was this disrespectful and that I was forbidden to spend any company money (which we had not asked for) on a happy hour that was so offensively scheduled. He added that this was clearly a violation of our DEI plan since it was religious discrimination.

Am I missing something here? I’m an atheist and am definitely not an expert in any of this. But this is a day that we are legally required to be in the office. We have never been offered an alternative to that. Our Jewish staff have to use a vacation day if they want to celebrate the holiday. And I am getting criticized for scheduling something on that day. Obviously, in an ideal world, this would be a day the company just gave everyone off so that we didn’t have to interfere with the practice of our colleagues’ religion. And had our CEO in his initial email told me that I needed to reschedule the event, I would have tried to do that. The way this went down honestly feels like a trap.

There are two separate things going on here. First, yes, organizations should avoid scheduling things on Rosh Hashanah and other major religious dates. That’s true even though your staff doesn’t get the day off (which is true of pretty much all non-Christian religious holidays at most organizations). But separately, your CEO’s reaction was wildly over the top — if he had an issue with the scheduling, he should have talked to you directly, not sent a scathing all-staff email raking you over the coals. It sounds like he disliked being questioned publicly about DEI (an issue he apparently hasn’t been very concerned about before now) and decided to respond with this attack. It reads very much like it’s coming from a place of spite (you made him uncomfortable on DEI issues so here’s what you get) rather than genuinely raising an issue with you. (One key piece of evidence: if he wanted to genuinely raise it in a non-spiteful way, he’d do it in a private meeting with you, or you and the DEI director, not in an angry all-staff email.)

I do think it’s a problem that you pretty much blew off the CEO when he raised the scheduling concern to you initially! At least you should have circled back to him and told him you proposed going ahead with the date after consulting with the DEI director, and given him a chance to weigh in. It does seem disrespectful that you didn’t do that when he’d told you it was a concern for him. But his reaction is so over the top that it’s clearly not about your actions.

2. I can’t give my employee satisfying answers to her questions

I have a newish report who is very thoughtful and asks a lot of questions about the work she does. This is the only client that she and I work together on. I know that she is working hard to understand our work and go above and beyond, which is really great, but this is a client that we can’t go above and beyond with due to the volume of work and a low billing rate that’s not negotiable. When she asks me why we do a certain process and if it’s open to changes, the real answer is usually either “I don’t know and I don’t want to look into it because we can’t get paid for that” or “We’ve always done it this way and setting up a different process will take longer than continuing the current process.”

I hate giving her such unsatisfying answers when I know that she wants to do well and I will say something like, “I know this is an unsatisfying answer, but we can’t spend time looking into this so I need you to just do what I’m asking. Let me know if you have questions about that, but anything outside of this process isn’t going to be relevant to this client.” I’m worried that shutting her down with this particular client will be discouraging. Am I saying the wrong thing?

Have you explained to her why you’ve determined that this approach (non-inquisitiveness and no changes) is necessary with this client? That’s actually a pretty interesting topic and would give your employee insight into a different aspect of your team’s functioning — i.e., she might not learn the answer to the question she asked originally, but she’ll learn how you make that kind of client management decision and why, and that’s valuable. Then once she has that baseline understanding, you’ll be able to refer back to it when it comes up in the future. (And who knows, once she understands it, she might be able to make suggestions that do fit in the framework you want her to use.)

Also, if you haven’t been explicit that you want her asking those sorts of questions about other clients, make sure you’re clearly encouraging that.

If you’ve already done all this, then you should be fine to continue what you’ve been doing.

3. Interviewer wanted a 2-hour “deep dive” into my life

I had a first interview with a hiring manager at a software start-up today, and it was going okay. I was feeling a little up in the air about it, but after I asked at the end of the interview what the rest of the process would be like, I immediately knew I was out.

My interviewer listed out four more interview rounds with different stakeholders and then a final round of what he described as a two-hour “deep dive” with him, that could get “very personal” discussing scenarios in my life and work and explaining how they impact how I work and the decisions I make. This felt wild to me and I emailed the recruiter to withdraw my consideration.

Is this normal? Is this a thing I should expect while interviewing for a mid-level tech role?

No, a “very personal” two-hour “deep dive” into your personal life is not normal or something you should expect. A deep dive into your work and how you operate there, sure. But if he was clear that it would also include your non-work life, that’s seriously overstepping and strange.

(And good lord, if they don’t already have a good feel for you after five previous interviews, something is wrong anyway.)

4. Drinking out of brewery-branded pint glasses

I work primarily from home and I also drink a ton of water/coffee/tea/seltzer/etc. throughout the day. If you’ve seen the memes about women with multiple half full beverages on their desk at all times, that’s me. I also have a decent little collection of pint glasses from microbreweries I’ve visited all over the world while traveling. I never really thought about what I was drinking out of, until today when a coworker across the country spotted the branding of a brewery from her area on my pint glass of iced coffee. The pre-meeting chat quickly turned to breweries, beer, other alcoholic beverages of choice, etc. I don’t think anyone was uncomfortable, but this was an internal meeting and our organization is fairly casual and open.

It got me wondering, do pint glasses from microbreweries raise eyebrows in a work-from-home setting? I do have other plain glasses that I could use, but they’re smaller which wouldn’t be as convenient. Should I make a point to steer the conversation away from drinking and focus more on the trip or travel if it comes up again? Avoid using brewery glasses with external folks on calls? Or is this something that people wouldn’t think anything of? For what it’s worth, the logos aren’t profane or inappropriate in any way, and most of them aren’t even something you’d associate with beer or alcohol unless you were familiar with that brewery and their logo (so not like Bud Light or anything that well recognized).

Nah, you are fine.

I would give a very mild caveat if the pint glass combined with the look of your beverage made it appear that you were drinking a beer, but based on your beverages that doesn’t sound likely.

(And to be clear, I don’t mean to suggest that everyone should scrutinize their beverages to make sure they can’t possibly be mistaken for alcohol! Generally, unless the misleading signals are as strong as with the non-alcoholic beer question from last week, this is a non-issue. But since you’re asking the question, it’s an interesting side point.)

5. I’m in talks for a new position but the salary they mentioned is too low

An organization wants to bring me on board as a consultant. There is no specific role/position; rather, they are carving out something new for me as they believe I can take on a very distinct role within their team. However, they have not given me a written offer or hourly rate. Verbally, they quoted a salary which I found very low when I later converted it to an hourly rate. Should I wait until they send me a written offer to negotiate the rate? Or should I bring up now via email that the rate that they have in mind is well below what I would normally expect? On the one hand, they are creating this role for me and I don’t want them to go through the trouble, only to see me back out because of the remuneration. On the other hand, I am finding it quite awkward to approach the subject without a written offer.

I’d raise it now since they’re probably assuming you’re fine with that number if you didn’t push back when they first named it, and you don’t want them to go through all the work of figuring out the role while not knowing that’s a deal-breaker for you.

You could say, “I know you’re still ironing out details and things may change, but I did want to flag that the rate you mentioned earlier — $X — would be a sticking point for me. Based on our conversations so far, I’d be looking for something around $Y. I wanted to mention it now in case that’s prohibitive on your end.”

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

1. Manager only invites senior employees to drinks

I am one of the most junior employees at a pretty small firm. (I am not junior for my field, I’m quite seasoned, just one of the more junior on this particular team.) We are almost entirely remote, and I am also one of the only staffers whose job often requires them to be in the office. Some other junior employees are in from time to time, but it is often just me.

However, once a month or so, a bunch of senior management all travel to the office for a monthly meeting they have. I look forward to these times, as the office is very lively and it’s great to see everyone, and I get along really well with many of them. However, recently our vice president, Laura (who is everyone’s boss or grandboss), has begun inviting all the senior management to drinks after work on these days. I’m never invited — I will see her walk around to everyone else’s desks and ask if they’re free for drinks after work and just skip mine entirely. When other junior staff are in the office, they are also not invited. But as I mentioned, this is rarely the case and I am almost always the only person in the office who’s not invited. It is almost always the whole office getting up to leave at 5 and all saying goodbye to me on the way out.

This has been upsetting me and making me feel really isolated from the team, which I thought I got along pretty well with. But I don’t know if I’m taking it too personally. Is it normal that senior management will frequently go for drinks without inviting other employees? Should I just try to ignore them, or is there a way I could bring up with Laura how this makes me feel?

It’s not odd for senior management to get drinks together, but it’s pretty rude in these particular circumstances — where it means continually excluding one person. It might land differently if they framed it differently — like if they explained they were doing a management team meeting and liked to do it over drinks (which could even be the case, since they’re all there for this monthly meeting) — but if it’s clear they’re just socializing, it’s rude.

But I wouldn’t mention it to Laura. Sometimes you just need to deal with stuff like this when you’re the most junior person, and you risk coming across as … well, not delicate, but something in that neighborhood. That doesn’t mean it’s not understandable that you feel slighted; it is! But saying “please invite me” when you’re not part of the management group that’s going carries a high risk of feeling off. That said, it could be something you could ask your direct manager about. She might be able to give you more insight into why Laura does it this way (who knows, maybe they are talking about work stuff and just haven’t made that clear) or invite you along sometimes.

2. Smoking on camera

I recently had a one-hour call with colleagues from another department and one of them chain-smoked four cigarettes on camera!

We’ve all seen people doing things at home while on camera that they wouldn’t do during an in-person meeting. And I’ll be the first to admit that I very rarely wear real clothes while working from home unless I absolutely have to, though I make sure it’s not obvious on camera. But smoking just hits differently. Right?

If they were on my team, I would send them a chat message in the moment telling them to put it out, and then follow up with a conversation about how it isn’t professional. However, this person isn’t part of my team or even in my larger department. We’re both at the same level title-wise. Would you alert their manager or let it go?

Let it go. It’s unprofessional, but it doesn’t rise to the level of something you need to alert their boss to.

3. How to dress when traveling for work

I’ve been working from home since I started my job about a year ago (this is my first job out of college). The teams who work in the office have a dress code, but my boss isn’t strict and as long as the C-suite or clients aren’t on calls we have Zoom meetings in T-shirts, sweatpants, etc.

Our upcoming quarterly meeting is in person, and since it’s across the country it will be a long travel day for me. I know what to wear for the meeting itself but, given that we are traveling from the same area and staying in the same hotel, there’s a good chance I’ll run into coworkers on my travel day. Is it generally expected that I dress professionally while traveling for work?

No, you can dress comfortably when you’re traveling — in nearly all jobs, but especially in one where your colleagues wear sweats on Zoom calls. Don’t go as far as traveling in full-on pajamas, but otherwise feel free to dress for comfort.

4. Employer refuses to change my employee ID even though my name changed

When I got divorced, my company changed my email address to my maiden name as soon as I had the legal paperwork in place. I was thrilled at how seamless that process was.

However, my employee ID, which is essentially my first initial plus last name, cannot be changed. Everytime I sign into my laptop I have to enter in my employee ID, which includes my married name. Every single application and software through work uses my employee ID. All day long I have to be reminded of my ex life. Recently I had to get a new work laptop and go through all the logistics of setting everything back up, and vocally telling the tech team my old name to sign into things over and over. To be honest, it’s brought up some trauma. I left my ex because he was emotionally abusive. Still being tied to this name is such a challenge, and to be faced with it daily at work is just horrible. Is this considered discriminatory based on marital status? Is there any recourse I have?

It’s not considered legally discriminatory. It would be if they only applied this policy to women who changed their names but not to men, but assuming they apply it across the board it’s not illegal … just bad.

You can try escalating it above whoever is insisting it can’t be changed, and you can try enlisting your boss for help in pushing for it. Ultimately, though, if you’re working somewhere that’s more devoted to rigid bureaucracy than to sensible flexibility, you might hit a wall. It shouldn’t be that way, but it sometimes is.

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

1. My boss changes her instructions after I’ve already starting working on a project

After having a few different managers in my current role, I now have a manager I love. I’ve been reporting to her for just over a year and it’s been great — she’s really into my professional development and I’ve learned so much and feel more empowered now than ever. However, my biggest issue is that she will give me instructions on a project or presentation during our 1:1, I will then spend hours creating a presentation or project plan, only to have her completely change her mind once she’s seen my work product! This happened again yesterday where I used my notes from our previous 1:1 to create a presentation based exclusively on our discussion, to have her review it and tell me to redo the presentation entirely with another set of information. It took up the rest of my afternoon (over two hours) and I got no other work done.

When I’ve asked a coworker (who also reports to my manager) if this happens to her, she confirmed and is as frustrated by it. My coworker thinks our manager is very disorganized and “just forgets” what guidance she provided previously. How can I appropriately address this if/when it happens again?

I suspect it’s less that your boss forgets what guidance she provided and more that she’s bad at explaining what she wants (or maybe even knowing what she wants) … but then once she sees something concrete (your work product), she’s more able to respond to that and better explain what she does and doesn’t want. Some people are really bad at translating what’s in their head, but when they have a concrete example in front of them, they’re better at explaining how what they have in their head is different.

To be clear, this isn’t okay — as a manager, she needs to learn to delegate effectively. But as her employee, your power to make her do that is pretty limited, so often with a manager like this the best thing to do is to check in soon after you begin work on a project, before you’ve put a ton of time into it. Show her a draft before you get too far, or write up a sketch, or otherwise give her an early look at your plans and progress — that way you’re likely to elicit her feedback at a much earlier stage and can course-correct before you’ve finished the whole thing. (In fact, right after she assigns you a project, even just writing up your understanding of the work and sending it to her might be enough to jog that “wait, no, that’s not what I want after all” response that right now is happening at a much later stage.)

If that doesn’t work, then you can try naming the issue and asking if there’s something else the two of you can do to solve it (here’s advice on how). But otherwise, it might help to figure that some of this back and forth is just part of the job and it’s not wasted work if it helps both of you refine what the finished product needs to be. (Within reason, of course. You don’t want to spend weeks on something only to find out it’s wrong. But it doesn’t sound like that’s been the case — and if it were, checking in with her early should help.)

2. How common is swearing at work?

One of my bosses, Lesley, is from the same religion as me. Based on things he’s said and done, I’m pretty sure that he recently left the faith. That’s fine — he should do what’s best for him.

But maybe because he feels free to swear for the first time in his life, he’s started swearing all. The. Time. I totally get doing that in his personal life, but it’s weird how he seems to go out of the way to slip curse words into conversations about deadlines and strategic initiatives.

To be clear, this isn’t an environment where swearing is the norm. Most of our coworkers are not members of my faith, but they rarely swear. In fact, I’ve mostly worked with people who are from different religions or not religious at all, and they don’t swear constantly like Lesley does. Maybe because of this, I’ve always viewed swearing as unprofessional in most working environments. But am I just colored by my own upbringing and preferences?

It depends heavily on the specific office and on the specific swear words. There are offices where swearing is common and others where it isn’t. Even in offices where it’s common, though, there are usually some limits — a very common one being that people will swear about an object but not at another person. In other words, “this F&$#!ing project” might be okay but “F you, Dennis!” definitely would not be.

If someone comes into an office where swearing isn’t common and starts dropping profanity all over the place, it’s going to be jarring and that person will seem unpolished and out of step with the culture. In Lesley’s case, he’s not new and he already knows the culture, so it’s a particularly interesting dynamic.

If it bothers you, you could say so! If you feel awkward about it because he’s your boss, sometimes a mild “whoa” or even just a surprised look can get the point across.

3. How to tell a former employee he can’t visit us weekly

I’m a senior director for a group of highly skilled experienced employees. Everyone is at a high level in the large organization and they are primarily self directed while I set organizational strategy and ensure everyone has resources. We had a very kind and beloved employee, “Frank,” retire in 2021. He was very isolated during Covid and had a hard time with the transition to retirement. He feels comfortable resuming activities now, and one of those activities is stopping by our office once a week to chat. We are a very relaxed hybrid so most days there’s only a small handful of people there, but Frank will sit down and chat with whoever is there for 30-40 minutes and then move on to the next person.

We aren’t a public-facing office so it’s unusual to have someone visit to hang out, but while everyone is busy, it’s not completely unheard of that someone would have a 30-minute chat catching up with an old colleague or client, and everyone can manage their time and a break for a midday chat is welcome on occasion. However, this has been going on for MONTHS, and I’m hearing people make offhand comments about Frank’s visits.

I told everyone to feel fine saying “It’s a busy day, no time to talk” but everyone genuinely does care about Frank and it seems like these visits are a lifeline to him. I tried inviting him to an after hours happy hour to set the tone that he’s welcome to socialize with us but at a less disruptive time, but the visits haven’t stopped.

I was going to directly talk to him about the need to stop or drastically cut down on visiting but when I mentioned it to two other directors they thought that was really harsh and I’m having trouble coming up with the right words to use with Frank since the usual things a manager would say don’t work with a team this self directed. Should I just ignore this perceived problem and leave it up to everyone if they want a chat? Any potential scripts for how to also tell a very kind person that we cannot be his social club?

It’s really up to you, but it’s reasonable to decide to put a stop to weekly social visits that take up hours of your team’s time (especially if your sense is that people feel it’s too much but are uncomfortable setting boundaries themselves).

I’m assuming Frank’s visits don’t violate any kind of security protocol you have in place? If there’s any rule you can point to about outside visitors, that’s one way to go. But otherwise, how about, “It’s been lovely to see you when you drop by, but with the team’s workload these days, we cannot continue having you visit during the workday. However, while we can’t accommodate you here at the office, you’re always welcome at happy hours after hours. We’re doing one at the end of the month — would you like to join us there?”

Read an update to this letter. 

4. Presumptuous recruiter

I just had an exchange with a recruiter on LinkedIn that has me puzzled. It’s a small thing, but I’d love your take on it. For reference, I am in a very hot field, and I am not listed as “open for work” on LinkedIn.

A recruiter reached out Tuesday after work hours that their company has new roles in my field in my area and could we talk this week? They said they were happy to work around my schedule. I replied Wednesday afternoon with two separate two-hour blocks on Friday and asked if either would work. Here’s the verbatim reply I got an hour and a half later: “Wonderful, thank you for responding with interest, please send me your resume and we can lock down a time for Friday.”

What I don’t understand is, why not actually set the time right then? They already have my basic resume from LinkedIn, and without a position description it’s not like I can custom tailor it. The way it’s worded it’s almost like they are holding the meeting over me until I send my resume, which strikes me as weird. If they wanted to confirm my certifications (required in this industry) or some particular interest or experience, they could simply have asked for those.

Frankly, I find this off-putting, particularly when they were the ones that requested something in the next three days in a cold contact. Is this some weird sort of power trip? Perhaps part of a psychological “act fast” type sales ploy? What possible benefit is there for them in holding off setting a time until they have my resume?

I was wondering if maybe this was a recruiter just collecting resumes, but the email they gave was the company’s domain so they don’t appear to be an outside agency.

This is pretty typical recruiter behavior. Really good recruiters are more in the mode of true recruiting — meaning they’re wooing you a bit and understand they can’t make you jump through hoops when you don’t even know if you’re interested yet and when they’re the ones reaching out to you, rather than the other way around. But tons of other recruiters, once you’ve agreed to talk to them, operate no differently than they would if you had initiated the contact — going right into standard “send a resume, answer my questions” mode.

It’s perfectly reasonable to reply, “I don’t have an up-to-date resume since I’m not currently looking, but you can see the basics on my LinkedIn and I’d be glad to put an updated resume together after we talk if there’s mutual interest.”

5. Company wants employee surveys to stop being anonymous

My company is considering modifying their engagement surveys to no longer be anonymous (or at least to have the explicit option to share your name, which is effectively the same thing if other people on a small team choose to share their names). They say that the anonymity runs counter to the “speak up culture” where people are supposed to be able to say things without fear of retaliation and makes it harder to effectively address the problems people might bring up. Is this reasoning as BS as I think it is? I have nothing against named surveys per se, but I’m concerned that it will make the answers more bland and filtered, thus having opposite the intended effect of making the data more useful.

Yes, this reasoning is BS and your concerns are well taken. Of course people are more likely to be candid when their names aren’t attached to their comments. (Obligatory caveat that “anonymous” surveys at work aren’t always as anonymous as they’re made out to be.)

You might suggest they anonymously survey people about the idea.