Ask a Manager

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

1. Coworker is leaving early and clocking out from home, and I don’t want to be implicated

I recently heard from a trusted coworker that our other coworker, Terry, has been leaving early very frequently and clocking out from home (we have the ability to clock in and out via a web browser). Neither of us are managers and we are not in the same department, and I have been at our organization for several years and he has been there about five months or so. We are both paid hourly, and are friendly but don’t know each other well. His manager is my grandboss but it is not a direct pyramid, so I report to her directly for certain things. After he finishes his public desk shift in the morning, he is supposed to do work at his non-public desk, but he just leaves instead (his boss’s office is in another part of the building, so it goes unnoticed by his boss but noticed by colleagues). Usually, I’m pretty firmly in the camp of looking the other way, especially when it is something I heard secondhand and doesn’t directly affect me. I knew that he was not working from home, but I thought that maybe this was an accommodation or otherwise just none of my business.

However, Terry and I recently had an interaction that made it clear to me that this is what was going on. When there are no managers in the building, the most senior non-manager will be “in charge” and he asked me if I was “in charge” at that time. I said, “Nope! Manager Jane is in her office if you need something.” He responded with an annoyed look and said, “Ugh, I’m trying to leave but she would definitely notice.” I said something like, “Whatever you do has nothing to do with me.” I also was the “in charge” person a few days ago (on a day with no managers in the building) and can confirm he left the building after his public desk shift even though he was scheduled to be in the building the whole day. This poses an issue as he does our in-house IT and would be needed if we had a tech issue.

Now I feel like I might be seen as complicit in this habit. This is a pretty serious offense that would likely result in his termination if he was caught. Since he has confirmed to me that this is what he is doing, do I have an obligation to report it? I don’t want to overstep and wouldn’t even consider it if I didn’t have the first-hand knowledge. I don’t want him to lose his job, but I also don’t want mine to be at risk if it got out that I knew about it and didn’t report it. I’ve also considered bringing it up in a way with his boss/my grandboss in a way that seems like I am just confused, like, “Just wondering, does Terry work from home after his desk shift on Fridays? He wasn’t here when we all left so that would just be good to know for future Fridays when I am in charge, especially if there is a tech issue.” Thoughts?

If being the “in charge” person means that you are fact in charge and subbing for your manager … then yeah, you do need to say something, especially since Terry has done this on your “in charge” days. If you’re standing in for your manager and not speaking up when people do things that you know are serious offenses, you’re not really doing the job you’ve been asked to do during those times.

Bringing it up to your boss as a question rather than an accusation makes sense, but your wording is a little too passive. “He wasn’t here when we all left” doesn’t really convey what actually happened (since that sounds like he could have left 10 minutes early, which wouldn’t be a big deal). “He left the building after his public desk shift even though he was scheduled to be here all day” is clearer about the situation, and including “I’ve seen this happen other times” is even clearer. You could add “is there a plan for IT coverage on days he leaves right after his desk shift?” if you want to spell out your concern.

2. Getting my coworkers to stop calling me by a nickname

I am transgender, and I semi-recently changed my name to one I love — it’s old-fashioned and stately. For the purposes of anonymity, I’ll say Josiah. Before I legally changed my name, I went by a more gender-neutral nickname (let’s say Jo) among friends.

I have introduced myself as Josiah to every single employee at my organization. My name on my email and Zoom is Josiah. Unfortunately, I knew a few of my coworkers before I started working here, and they knew me as Jo, and somehow the nickname has caught on among all 100+ people who work here. I briefly correct people (“actually, I prefer Josiah in a professional context”) on an individual basis, but nobody seems to remember the correction even five minutes after we have the conversation. It feels weird to have my coworkers call me by the same affectionate nickname that my partner uses, but it would feel weirder to send out a mass email to correct people for calling me by something that is, technically, my name!

Is it reasonable that being called by my more gender-neutral nickname instead of my more obviously masculine full name raises my hackles, or am I being over-sensitive to nonexistent transphobia? Should I keep correcting people briefly and individually and assuming they won’t remember? Do I just have to deal with this?

You shouldn’t have to deal with this; you should be called the name you’ve asked to be called. It sounds like the problem might be the people who knew you as Jo before you started; if other people hear them calling you Jo, they’ll assume it’s a nickname you use. (I realize this doesn’t explain the people you’ve corrected who don’t seem to be able to retain the correction, but it’s got to be playing a role.) Can you talk to the people you knew before you started, explain the situation, and ask them to be more mindful that you do not use Jo anymore?

I wouldn’t say “I prefer Josiah in a professional context” since that’s probably inadvertently reinforcing that you do use Jo in other contexts … which is likely muddying things. Stick with a clear, firm “Josiah, not Jo, please” or “It’s Josiah” every time someone messes up and it’s likely that people will get it in time.

3. Getting job applications over gchat

I work for a university where all faculty, staff, and students are provided with a gmail account. Students are messaging me via gchat to express interest in open (and sometime closed) campus positions within my department. They have also gchatted me to inquire if they are receiving an interview or when to expect to hear back from HR.

It happened once during the summer, but I wrote it off as a bizarre outlier. However, since the academic year started, I’ve had a couple students write to me over gchat to introduce themselves, tell me the job they are interested in, and attach a resume.

I don’t oversee the selection process for most of the jobs they are interested in, but I can see how my title could imply that I do. When I receive a gchat, I typically tell them who to contact and send them the delegated account email address for job applications. Should I use this as a teachable moment too? Should I let the hiring manager know that this happened?

This feels very bizarre (and a bit annoying) but maybe job search norms are changing faster than I can keep up with. Is this similar enough to an email that they should get a pass?

It would indeed be a kindness to include a note saying something like, “By the way, we typically use email, not gchat, for any hiring-related communications.” They’re students so they’re still learning what methods of communication to use for what (and this current crop of students has even less experience figuring that out than students usually have, because of the pandemic upheavals of the last two years).

You don’t need to alert the hiring manager to it since it stems from an understandable lack of knowledge rather than a more serious error in judgment; when you hire students, needing to fill in those knowledge gaps is normal and not terribly alarming. (Whereas you should pass along something like rudeness.)

4. Should I alert my new boss about my “wait and see” medical situation?

I recently started a new job. It’s all going well, but I have one question. I have a health issue that isn’t serious, and I have elected to “wait and see” what happens rather than have a procedure before I need one. It’s possible I will never need it. However, if I do need surgery, it could be very sudden and urgent (like I need to go in today or I could get seriously ill) and if that happens I would need to recover for a couple weeks.

At what point do I share this information with my supervisor? Never, because it may never happen? Is it sharing too much to say something, or do you think they’d appreciate any heads-up?

I lean toward no, because there’s not anything your manager can really do with that info.  You’d basically be saying, “I might need an urgent procedure at some point in the future but I might not and if it does happen I don’t know when it might be” — which is actually the case for all of us, really. There’s nothing your manager could act on at this point, so there’s not real benefit to alerting them.

The exception to this would be if it’s a condition where you want to be able to say something like, “If I ever seem X at work (lethargic, dizzy, or whatever it might be), call an ambulance immediately because it’s likely an emergency.” But that doesn’t sound like the case.

5. Doing virtual therapy when you’re back to in-office work

I’m looking ahead to a stressful year and am looking to start regular (weekly or biweekly) therapy. My initial research has turned up a lot of therapists who have transitioned to entirely telehealth/virtual appointments. I am 100% back to in-person office work — I share an open-plan office with three coworkers, and there’s no truly private place in my office building to take a telehealth appointment. (There are two “nap” rooms abutting the break room but they are not soundproof at all.) I take transit to work so I can’t sit in my car. Leaving early or arriving late to take a business-hours appointment from home would mean taking a full 2-3 hours off of work. (I commute 1 hour each way and work 8:30 to 5:30.)

Right now I’m trying to find someone who has availability on weekends or evenings, or someone who is doing in-person visits somewhat close to my downtown office. I am REALLY hoping to find someone in-network because I actually have good insurance with only a small copay for mental health appointments. But it’s a tough Venn diagram! No luck so far. Any ideas that I haven’t thought of for making private, virtual, daytime appointments feasible? Or for some other solution to this problem?

Agggh. Let’s throw this out to readers.

Read an update to this letter. 

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

1. I’m worn out by the weekly driving for a new assignment

Recently, my supervisor assigned me to make weekly trips to another destination that is approximately 1.5-2 hours away from my home each way for the next six months to a year. My organization is reimbursing me for mileage, but the drive is absolutely exhausting me. They have not offered to put me up in a hotel and, because this is a nonprofit, I don’t know if it is something we could actually afford.

The worst part is that it is a for an extremely worthy cause (I can’t give out too much info without being identified, but think along the lines of making a Make-A-Wish kid’s wish come true; it is that level of “do good.”) I am honored to be selected for the assignment.

I want to have a conversation with my boss about the drive, but 1) I don’t know if there is another practical solution and 2) I don’t want to seem like I am unsupportive of the cause or don’t agree with its level of importance.

Well, let’s dispel concern #2 right away. There are lots of things one could do for a good cause but which would be exhausting, draining, unreasonable, and not in anyone’s interests because it would burn you out, leaving you unavailable for other important work in the long run. Any decently run nonprofit knows it needs assignments to be sustainable (unless their model is to just burn through people, but even then you still get to protect yourself from burn-out).

Talk to your boss and frame it as a business problem that needs to be solved like any other, just like if you had to flag that shipping costs were exceeding your budget or that the printer was on its last legs. And if you have solutions, bring those too (the hotel is one, but are there others, like taking a train instead of driving or splitting the trips with someone else?). Say something like this: “‘I’m so glad to be working on X, but I’m finding that driving for four hours in a day that frequently is absolutely exhausting me. Could I get a hotel and stay overnight so I’m not going and coming back the same day? Or take the train there and back, or maybe split the trips with Jane or Cecil?”

If there’s not a practical solution, then you can cross that bridge when you come to it but I’d want to know you were struggling with this if I were your manager.

2. My coworker reminds me every day about our shared assignments

I share a daily worklist with about half a dozen other people across more than one job site. “Judy” is one rung up the ladder and in charge of ensuring the worklist is done each day; she emails our small team when the list is ready to be worked. The items must be finished by end of day as they are highly time-sensitive and can result in losses if not completed in time. Management has made it clear that these items take priority over any other work we may have to do.

My issue is with one particular coworker also assigned to this list, “Jane.” Jane sits near my desk and asks me every single day if I am working the list. This is infuriating for several reasons: Jane is not my boss, nor any higher up than me (we both report to the same boss), nor is she the person responsible for distributing the worklist. She is assigned to work this list the same as me and the other assigned employees. She always uses the excuse that she is too busy with other work, every.single.day. She doesn’t ask any of the other employees, just me.

The first time she did this, I tried to keep things pleasant and reassured her that yes, I check the list every day, and I always inform Judy when the list is complete. This did not stop her daily check-ins. She continued to ask me daily, usually phrased like, “You’re working the report today, right?”

I asked her to stop asking me, but her response was that she “needs to know that it’s done.” I asked her about the other people who are assigned to the list, and she said they don’t work it, just me and her. I reached out to Judy to tell her what’s going on, but I’m not very optimistic anything will be done since they don’t seem to care who does it as long as it gets done.

How do I get Jane to stop without causing waves? So far we have been friendly, and I don’t want to ruin that, but the resentment has been building.

It sounds like Jane is checking in with you about the list every day not to keep tabs on you but to make sure someone is doing the work so that she can feel free to continue ignoring it herself. She’s assuming you’ll handle it all yourself and is just verifying to make sure that’s happening.

What if the next time she checks in on the list, you answered that no, you’re not able to work on it today? Or even proactively told her before she asks that you’re not able to work on the list today and so she’ll need to? You could also address the problem head-on by saying something like, “I’m finding that the list always falls to me but it’s supposed to a shared responsibility that takes priority over anything else on our plates, so can we start distributing it more equitably?” If she tells you again that she’s too busy with other work, point out that your boss has told you these items trump everything else. (By the way, where is your boss in all this? I don’t love that a whole group is responsible for getting the list done but in practice only one person is doing it.)

3. Belt bags at work

Are belt bags (aka fanny packs) okay to wear at work? I’ve been suddenly seeing them everywhere on social media, sold by brands I buy from — some high end, some more appropriate for an athleisure look. I work on a college campus, and the belt bag trend has definitely been embraced by our student body. Can I wear a belt bag, too? I am all about a comfortable, hands-free option like this and currently wear one in my personal life… just don’t know if this look translates to the office.

Go for it. I wouldn’t recommend it if you were in a field with a business formal dress code, but on a college campus it’s likely fine. I’d stick to ones that are a little sturdier and more businessy-looking though — and not, for example, something made of nylon with writing on it. Lean more toward high end and less toward athleisure.

4. Will I turn off my interviewer if I ask these questions?

I read your article about what types of questions to ask when you’re interviewing, but am still struggling to learn what I need to know at interviews. I am very sensitive to company and team culture and want to deeply understand as much as possible how the company works and team dynamics before accepting an offer. The issue I have is that I find interviewers either just lie or present an overly rosy view of everything. Everybody always says that the team is great, company culture is awesome, etc.

A mentor of mine has recommended that I switch to bold, specific questions. For example, questions like:

* What is the worst thing about working at your company?
* Has the company ever not given you your agreed yearly bonus? (For context, I work in an industry where bonuses are 10%-20%; while not contractually obligatory, they are expected and agreed upon in advance)
* How many times over the last month have you stayed up past 8 pm working on something?
* When was the last time you worked on a project that you thought had little value, but did it because your manager told you to?

While I find questions like these compelling, and think that interviewers are less likely to lie about specifics, I am a bit concerned that these questions will turn me off to the company. What do you think? Is there a way to have my cake and eat it too by somehow asking these types of questions but not being seen as overly aggressive?

Rightly or wrongly, if you ask those questions to the person who would be your manager, the first and fourth will come across as overly aggressive — and you’re still not likely to get fully honest answers. You have a lot more room to ask things like this of would-be peers. Even then, though, it’s hard to know if you’re getting honest answers; you’re a virtual stranger to them and they have more loyalty to their company than to you (and also potentially reason to worry about a particularly negative answer making it back to their manager).

The best way to get real info about the culture and manager is to find people to talk with outside the constraints of the interview process (here’s advice on how to do it). If you can’t do that, talking with the people who would be your peers there is the next best thing. I would not rely on answers from managers themselves on these topics; they’re too likely to have blind spots, be uncomfortable disclosing real negatives, or bristle if the questions aren’t phrased diplomatically enough. (And yes, you shouldn’t want to work for someone who would bristle at an honest discussion about the job, but it’s a common enough response that it’s got to be accounted for, and especially when the chance of real payoff — honest answers — is low.)

Read an update to this letter. 

5. Success story

A small chain of restaurants is opening a new location in my town. They have a sign up in their window inviting people to apply for jobs, and initially it asked applicants to submit their name, contact information, age, gender, experience, and working hours. The request for age and gender set off all sorts of alarm bells for me, and I figured that since I’m not looking for work here, I had nothing to lose by raising my concerns with the company. I used past AAM columns to figure out exactly how I should word my email since it would be illegal to use this information in a hiring decision, and I sent them a polite, concerned message, using language that indicated I was sure they would want to fix this as quickly as possible.

And they did! They never replied to my email, but when I walked by the location today, I saw that someone has put a piece of duct tape over the part of the sign that said “age” and “gender.” I hope that this creates a fairer, better experience for applicants.

I would not have known how to handle or express my concern without AAM, and I thought you would like to know that it worked out so well!

Well done.

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

1. If I quit my job when everyone else is quitting, the organization will fall apart

I am the executive director for a small nonprofit with three staff. One of the staff members, “Abby,” has been there for 10 years and is in a leadership position. She reports to me but because of our organization structure, I don’t have hiring/firing power. Abby can be very difficult to work with when she’s in a mood and refuses to accept responsibility or accountability. For example, I updated our database policy so that all conversation notes/summaries are recorded in there for historical purposes. Abby HATES this policy because she does not take notes during conversations and “remembers” everything. She said verbatim, “I don’t see the point of this and I’m not going to do it.” So of course she isn’t following it, nor is her direct report. There’s a slew of other issues, including her snapping at program participants, board, other staff, and me.

It all came to a head earlier this year when Abby *reamed* her direct report during a staff meeting for asking to take vacation time in two months — plenty of notice. Abby’s employee has since announced that they are leaving the organization to pursue other opportunities. When I talked to Abby about it afterward, she “didn’t remember” what she said, then told me I was misremembering, then said that she didn’t mean it like that, then stated that she has a “direct” communication style and I’m too “sensitive.” I called for a mediation process from our board per our conflict resolution policy, but that has stalled out because Abby is convinced she did nothing wrong and that she has been “harmed” by the process. I’m BIPOC and Abby is white, so I have some resentment on how she has co-opted.

Here’s my dilemma: Abby announced last fall that she will be leaving the organization — in spring 2023. I don’t want to invest anymore time or bandwidth into dealing with her attitude. Our board chair asked me if we need to ask Abby to leave sooner. YES — but I think at the end of the day my heart is just not into this job anymore. I’m burned out from our mission area (think never-ending, like the environment or civil rights) and nonprofit life in general. Abby’s attitude definitely accelerated my wanting to leave.

So, would I be an awful human if I left the organization soon, too? It will likely fall apart since it’s a staff of three and all three left within six months. I feel incredibly guilty but I also feel like I’m stuck between a rock and a hard place.

No. You aren’t obligated to stay in a job you’re ready to leave just because others are leaving too. People leave! Sometimes it’s really inconvenient for the organization, but that’s just how this goes. If they care about keeping you on, there are all sorts of things they can try to incentivize you to stay if they care to (like more money or real authority rather than this “executive director without any real power” sham they have going).

On that last point — it sounds like you’ve been … well, not necessarily set up to fail, but set up for extreme frustration. You can’t lead an organization or do the ED job with no hiring/firing power or when your board forces you to rely on “mediation” instead of managing. The fundamental set-up here is unworkable; it’s bad for you and bad for the organization. And frankly, if the board wants to be involved at this level (which isn’t appropriate for a professional org with full-time staff), they’re already set up to be plenty involved when three of three staff members depart for green pastures.

I know nonprofits have a special way of making people feel obligated to them, but please don’t lose sight of the fact that even in nonprofits, you are simply trading your labor for money. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t care about the organization or its mission or your work, but it does mean that at whatever point you decide the trade is no longer serving your interests, you get to end the arrangement without guilt or agonizing. (There should be a law requiring this to be printed on every paycheck.)

Read an update to this letter. 

2. My colleagues are really nice; how rare is this?

I’ve spent the last decade working in manufacturing. A couple of years ago I realized I’d need a postgrad degree if I wanted to get promoted, so I quit my job and went back to school. I picked up some part-time TA work to make a bit of extra cash.

The people I work with at my teaching job are so nice. They’re always kind and respectful. Even when there are urgent deadlines, nobody shouts. When I pitch in to complete urgent tasks, people say thank you. There are loads of professional development opportunities, and as a result I’ve been promoted and am now working at the same level (and pay grade!) as full-time permanent staff. In every other job I’ve had, I’ve always felt like I have to manage other people’s feelings about me whilst simultaneously pretending that I don’t personally have feelings (I guess that comes with being a youngish woman in a male-dominated environment, where my entire existence is somehow never “professional” enough.) Here, I can be enthusiastic, I can be weird, I don’t get criticized if I speak in a way that feels normal to me (too fast! too high! too girly!) and what’s more, I got promoted because people like the way I am.

My manager told me that she would support me if I apply for a full-time position with the department when I graduate. I think it would be the best job I’ve ever had. But moving into teaching full-time would likely kill my manufacturing career, since I wouldn’t use any of my technical skillset. I also feel weirdly guilty about dropping out of the STEM pipeline, like I lost a fight I’ve spent half my life (and my entire career) fighting.

How rare is it to find a workplace where there isn’t conflict and where people are always kind, and how much should it factor into your decision about whether to take a job?

I don’t think it’s terribly rare. It’s not something you should take for granted, but it’s not something you should fear you’ll never find again either.

I’d be wary of changing your entire career path because of the culture at this one job, especially since cultures can change, new leadership can come in and blow everything up, etc. However, I do wonder if what you encountered at previous jobs was about the culture in manufacturing as a whole; if it is, then you’d need to decide if you want to sign up for years of that, or if you’d rather move into another field. In other words, leave if you don’t like the industry’s culture, but not just because you like the culture of one office outside of it.

I can’t speak to the culture in manufacturing, but it would probably be useful to talk to women who are in that field to get their take on whether what you’ve experienced so far is typical and hard to avoid. Whatever you decide, though, try to take guilt out of it. You don’t owe anyone your happiness or quality of life just because you originally thought you’d fight this fight.

3. I got a parking ticket while staying late to cover for a coworker

A coworker was 40 minutes late in relieving me from my work station and I got a parking ticket, since my parking was only paid up until a few minutes after my shift was supposed to be over. Any possibility of recourse in having the employer reimburse for it? Is this a cost of “doing business”?

Notes: the coworker is salaried and I am hourly. They are not in my chain of command. The amount I made in the extra 40 minutes was still less than the parking ticket. This is a business that regularly pays mileage/parking when traveling, but only outside of normal job duties/radius.

In theory, if you incurred costs because of your job, your employer should reimburse you for that. This is a little trickier, though, since it’s not clear if your employer could have reasonably known you’d be incurring costs or whether you flagged it for them ahead of time. Ideally when you needed to stay late, you would have made someone aware of the situation — “I can stay until Cecil gets here, but my parking meter is about to run out and I’ll get ticketed if I don’t go add more money to it.” If you didn’t do that, you can still try asking about reimbursement now, pointing out that the pay you received for staying late was less than the cost of the ticket for doing so … but your employer could reasonably feel that you should have raised it at the time, before either of you incurred that cost. If it comes up in the future, definitely flag it in the moment!

4. Hidden instructions in job ads

I’ve been aggressively job searching for a while now, and I’ve seen some weird stuff in job ads. I just noticed this today in a job ad that otherwise looked great and it really turned me off. The employer “hid” a word in the job description and then asked applicants to include it in their cover letter. (They literally buried the words “the magic word is XYZ” in the list of job requirements.)

I’m not sure if I’m feeling raw coming off of approximately 100 rejections, but this seems really patronizing and and weird. Just wondering how you feel.

Yeah, it’s patronizing and not even very effective at its intended purpose of screening for attention to detail. Lots of qualified candidates apply for jobs without reading every word of a posting even though they have good attention to detail on the job (it’s a cost/benefit analysis; since people know they might never even hear back after applying, it’s reasonable to skim rather than scrutinize, particularly given the amount of boilerplate most ads contain) and lots of people who have poor attention to detail on the job are capable of following a single instruction in an application. It rarely seems to be high-quality jobs that try this.

5. I’ve followed up about a job three times — am I just their back-up?

I’ve been waiting for about four weeks after a second panel interview. I have followed up with the company weekly for the past three weeks. They’ve been replying to my emails and in the last email, HR stated that the hiring manager might need another week to make a decision. When I read that, I felt like they already made an offer to another candidate and I’m their back-up. Is that true? I haven’t followed up this week. I want to follow up again this week but my fiancée told me that I’ve been following up for three weeks and it seems like I am rushing them. I truly don’t know whether I am their back-up candidate or they are in the decision-making process. Do you think I should follow up with them again? I don’t want to rush them if they still interview other candidates. Or is it okay for me to ask them if they are still interviewing other candidates?

Don’t follow up with them again. You’ve followed up three times; they know you are interested! If they want to offer you the job, they’ll do that when they’re ready to; you’re not going to speed anything up by continuing to email them.

There’s nothing here that indicates that they’ve made an offer to someone else and you’re the back-up. That could be the case — that’s a very normal thing to happen — but it’s equally likely (if not more likely) that the process is just taking longer than they thought. Hiring nearly always takes longer than anyone expects it to, including the people managing the process. Higher priorities come up, decision-makers are away, questions need to be ironed out before things can move forward … that’s just how it goes. But even if you are their back-up, that’s not a bad thing. This isn’t like dating, where you wouldn’t want to go out with someone who had their heart set on someone else. Second-choice candidates get hired all the time and thrive, and no one thinks about them being the back-up at all once they accept the offer. It’s normal for hiring processes to produce multiple candidates who could do the job well; there’s no shame in not getting the offer first.

But give them space. They know you’re interested.