Ask a Manager

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

1. Should my workload be higher because my coworker is pregnant?

This is my first corporate job and I am unsure if I am being an asshole. I work in the IT industry at a big company, but our team at this office is only two of us. I am not very fond of my coworker (I believe her work is sloppy and she has zero interest in improving — but hey, not my circus, not my monkeys). I’m the most senior person in the team, but she doesn’t report to me. Our manager is the same person, though.

She got pregnant a few months ago. Nice, congrats. Now our manager is asking me to pick up the slack because my coworker feels stressed (I honestly can’t fathom why, the job is a piece of cake — I know it because that was my position before getting promoted). However, I don’t want to. I don’t get why should I do my work and part of hers. My understanding is that she is paid for eight hours work. If she can’t commit, then she needs to reduce her working hours and our manager should hire someone else to help out. Doing her tasks would negatively impact the work I am doing and wouldn’t be worth much for promotion and raises as it’s considered lower tier work. Am I in the wrong for not wanting to help? How can I explain this to my manager so I don’t get punished or labelled as “uncooperative”?

(Just FYI: we are both women and we are located in the U.S.)

Part of the deal with work is usually that you pitch in when a coworker has a short-term issue that means they can’t work at full capacity, whether it’s a health issue or a family emergency or anything else. But the amount of time matters, and if we’re talking about the rest of your colleague’s pregnancy (and possibly her maternity leave too?) that’s a significant amount of time. You’re not wrong to balk at taking on extra work for months instead of your manager bringing in additional help.

In raising it with your boss, the key is to focus on the impact on you — not what you think is or isn’t fair for your coworker. Her arrangements with your employer are her business; the part that’s your business is the impact on you/your work and how your manager is or isn’t handling that. For example, you could say, “I was happy to pitch in to cover X and Y for a couple of weeks, but it’s a significant increase in my workload and not sustainable long-term. If we’re going to need additional coverage for more than another week or two, can we look at bringing in additional help or other options?”

2. My coworker made up an elaborate lie about a cruise ship and a family death

My coworkers and I are all remote workers. Recently, our team brought on a new employee who also does outside part-time work as an influencer. A few weeks ago, this new coworker contacted me on a Monday and told me he got a last-minute opportunity to do some work for a cruise line and he was going to be working from the cruise ship, but did not tell our boss. He let me know he was having connectivity issues with phone calls, but was trying to work through it.

The next day he informed me the cruise ship was turning around due to a storm and that it was perfect timing because his family had just told him his dad had a heart attack. I let him know I was so sorry to hear this and glad the timing was working out for him. The next day he told me his father had passed, and this story continued on until Thursday or Friday where he took the day off to fly home to bury his dad.

The odd part of this story, which he doesn’t know, is that I am a certified scheduling agent for this cruise company on the side and the cruise ship never turned around due to a storm. The cruise had no issues and carried out the itinerary as planned. This coworker, from my understanding, made up a lie about his father dying and continued on sending VERY intricately written texts/emails talking about his father dying and the funeral. My assumption is that he could not deal with the internet issues on the ship and for some reason felt that this was the only way out of working. Knowing what I know, has made me extremely uncomfortable working with him and I now feel he is a complete fraud and liar. Is this something I should escalate to my manager or just keep to myself?

Ugh. I suppose it’s possible he was never on the cruise ship and the part about his dad is true … but why say he was on the cruise if he wasn’t? So most likely you’re right. And if you are, and he made up a detailed and ongoing story about his dad dying to get out of a very minor work situation — or for any reason, really — something is really, really not right there.

As for whether to pass this along to your boss: Do you generally like, trust, and respect her, and feel this job treats you well? If so, yeah, I’d pass it along — framed as “this felt really off to me and I don’t feel comfortable keeping it to myself.” But even if not, if you’re concerned about having to work with this guy/things he might lie about in the future, and it might help to have this incident on record in case he does other shady stuff, that’s also an argument for sharing it. (When/if you do, make sure you’re not presenting it as “I’m sure X happened” — but just what you laid out here.)

3. An employee I fired reapplied for the same job with me

An employee I let go, John, applied for a job posting that reports to me. John and I are still connected on LinkedIn. I posted a link to the job with the title “I am hiring…” There’s no way he didn’t know I am the hiring manager. It’s also the same title as the position I fired him from. We’re not moving forward with him, but I have two questions: (1) This is weird, right? Why would you apply for a position you were fired from, under the person who fired you? (2) Our recruiter will handle disqualifying him, but should I reach out separately or disconnect from him on LinkedIn?

I can think of some situations where it wouldn’t be weird, but I’m betting they don’t apply here, given your reaction. Situations where it wouldn’t be weird: if you sugarcoated the message when you fired him to the point that he misunderstood why you were letting him go (like if you let him think it was a layoff rather than a firing), or you told him the issue was his lack of skill in X and it looks like this job doesn’t include X (although that’s probably not the case since it’s the exact same job title), or the firing was seven years ago and you told him he needed more experience in X and now he has it (although then you’d think he’d explicitly address that in his application materials).

But if you were clear that you were firing him because he wasn’t competent enough at the work and now he is applying for another job with you doing exactly that work … yes, it’s weird! (And possibly an example of that same incompetence.) I don’t think you need to reach out yourself unless you want to, and no need to disconnect on LinkedIn (again, unless you want to).

4. Manager is also in charge of HR

I work for a very small manufacturing company in a managerial role. The plant is run by the plant manager, who is also in charge of HR. How can I deal with an issue that happens to be with that person? There are times that the plant manager can be very unprofessional and flies off the handle. There are times this person will not listen to reason when someone tries to explain, and he already has a preconceived notion on an issue. It makes for a challenging workday to say the least. So — is it ethical for the plant manager to also be in charge of HR?

You see this a lot in small companies — where they’re too small (or think they’re too small) to have a dedicated HR person and so they just tack it on to someone else’s duties. When the HR work that person does is just administrative stuff like benefits enrollment, that can make sense. But in those cases, there also needs to be a clear process laid out for higher-level HR concerns, like reporting harassment or discrimination — including a mechanism for reporting concerns with the person taking those reports. It sounds like that last piece — the mechanism for reporting problems with the manager — is the part that’s missing in your company.

5. Strange college career center advice

I walked past my university’s career center, where they have a big whiteboard with rotating advice on how to get a job. The latest was, “Did you know that 75% of job applications are rejected because of an unprofessional email address?”

I rolled my eyes because this one is relatively harmless, but figured you might want to add it to your annals of “weird useless things uni career centers say.”

What on earth! That is just a fully made-up statistic with no basis in reality.

I agree with you that it’s relatively harmless … and yet, it’s awfully crappy to full-on lie to students about how hiring works (and this career center just doesn’t care at all about their own credibility, I guess?).

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

1. How to professionally ask, “can I sit with my friends?”

I’m in my early career, in my mid 20’s, and I work in one of the several small office areas in a manufacturing facility. I sit in an area with six other desks which used to be full but things have shuffled around recently and there are now only three people (including me) who sit here. The two others are very competent coworkers, but we are not peers and they are not people I would consider friends. We interact here and there, but we don’t really have fun together.

This has had a larger-than-I’d-hoped impact on my happiness at this job. I miss talking and joking around with people! It wasn’t so much talking that I wouldn’t get my work done, but those little social moments throughout the day were really important to me. I work fully in person five days a week, which normally I like, but now I feel it’s meaningless since I don’t interact with coworkers much anymore.

What’s the best way to professionally ask to move desks to sit with some of the other people who I’m friendly with? There isn’t a clear business need for this or any place that makes sense for me to move to with a better excuse than “I wanna chat” so I’m not sure how to approach this. Additionally, my manager recently left so my grandboss is now my direct boss and she is incredibly busy all the time. I have difficulty getting her attention for actual important work-related things so I feel like this is too minor/petty to try to bring up with her when we do talk. What’s your advice on this? I’m considering finding a new job over this but I’ve only been here five months and I used to really like it here, so I want to avoid that if possible.

Oooooh, I was going to tell you not to until I got to the end of your letter and saw you might leave over it. This is tricky because if you don’t have a lot of interaction with your grandboss, you don’t want one of the few data points she has about you to be “highest priority that I’m aware of is sitting with her friends so she can chat during the day.” (To be clear, I’m not saying you’re wrong to want what you want — just that there’s a high risk of it coming across that way.) So normally I’d suggest that you wait until your manager is replaced, build a relationship with that person, and then ask about it … but that could be a long way off … and if you’re so unhappy that you’re thinking about leaving over it, there’s more of an argument for saying something now.

Is there any feasible way you can frame the request as more than just “I want to talk to friends while I work”? Even something like “I’ve found I work better when there’s some conversation around me and not as much silence”? If so, and if you’re miserable and/or close to leaving over this, that might be worth a shot.

If that doesn’t work, are there other measures that might help, like using a chat program here and there while you work (assuming it doesn’t interfere with your work any more than little moments of in-person chat would)?

2. My employee misses key details in meetings

I have an intelligent employee who seems to have a listening and picking-out-context issue that I’d like to address directly with him. He’s shadowing me in many meetings and frequently I will leave a meeting and give him specific direction to perform a task, the necessary background details having just been discussed clearly in the meeting, and he will ask a series of questions that reveal he missed key items in the meeting that would enable him to perform the task solo or with minimal clarification. He’s also disorganized in his explanations of problems he’s having on other projects that he’s looking for advice on, which tells me he’s missing context in those sessions as well, and when I ask probing detailed questions he can’t answer them.

I’d like to provide feedback to him that I’ve noticed he misses a lot of context in meetings and ask him to come up with ways to make sure he understands everything that’s happening in a meeting on his own. I’m not sure if he’s second-screening, bad at listening, or bad at contextualizing disparate collections of spoken information, and I’m not sure I need to know — I just need him to fix it. Any advice on how to approach this without saying “I think you’re a bad listener, do better”? I am team lead, not a line manager, and do not have hire/fire/PIP authority, just general coaching.

The first thing is to name what you’re seeing without making any assumption about the cause — you want a statement that works whether he’s playing Suduko under the conference room table or has a learning disability. So something like: “I’ve noticed that you’re not always retaining details that are discussed in meetings, like last week when you missed that Jane had said X, and this morning when you didn’t realize Cecil wanted Y.” Then ask for his perspective: “Do you know what might be going on?” Start there because maybe he’ll have insight that will help you understand the situation. But assuming this doesn’t bring you to an easy resolution, you could say, “I’m not sure if it’s a need to pay more attention in meetings or eliminate other distractions, or if it’s something else. Can you work on this on your end? And if you realize there’s something you need on my end to help with this, let me know.”

If he’s just not paying enough attention, naming the issue might be the nudge he needs to fix it. But it’s possible something else is going on, like an inability to absorb info at the same time he’s taking notes (and so someone else should take notes), or an info-processing challenge, or an auditory disorder, or all sorts of other things. Your job at this stage is to name the issue, let him know it’s causing problems, and open the door as widely as you can to him telling you if there’s something more challenging going on / asking for specific supports he may need.

You could also try a coaching approach — like after some meetings, asking him to name his key takeaways and if he misses some, asking if he heard X or Y. (Did he hear it but not recognize its significance? Not hear it at all? Those are both different problems with different solutions.) But I’d also loop in your/his boss if you don’t see pretty quick improvement, since at that point it’s something she should be involved with too.

Read an update to this letter. 

3. My company only asks behavioral interview questions and we can’t consider anything else about candidates

I wonder what you think of behavioral interviews? My current employer uses them exclusively for all positions. Your resume gets you an interview, but after that your resume, experience, credentials, references are not considered in the hiring decision at all, nor are you asked about them in the interview. The position is filled using 12 behavioral questions and whether you tick the right boxes in answering. (Literally … there’s a score sheet and the candidate with the highest total gets the job.)

I see the value in some behavioral questions, but as the only measure of fitness for any position, no matter how specialized or how high up in the organization?!

Noooo. I love behavioral interview questions (“tell me about a time when…”) because they let you really probe into how someone thinks and operates in real situations rather than hypothetical ones, but it makes no sense to use only those questions and not consider someone’s experience and accomplishments. I suspect your organization is doing this in an attempt to level the playing field and eliminate bias, but I would love to see data on its outcomes from doing this (data re: its effectiveness in hiring people who excel at the job and also whether it does result in a more diverse group of successful hires).

4. I turned down an interview but now want to work there

I was in the middle of my job search for a new role since I improved my skill set. One of the problems was that before I started the search, I wasn’t certain how competitive I was since it’s a new field for me. I’d just completed a day of interviews that were awkward/not the right fit, and was feeling a little burned out. One company offered me an interview the next day, and I turned them down because of the burnout and because I’d have to relocate. A couple days later I researched them more thoroughly online (which I should have done first) and realized they’d actually be a really good fit. Since I essentially turned down the job by turning down the interview, would it be a good idea to contact them and mention I am interested in their company and future positions? Or should I just let it go?

You didn’t really turn down the job; you just turned down the interview. You might have missed the window for interviewing, but you might not have — contact them now and say that your circumstances have changed and you’d like to interview after all, if they’re still setting up interviews. You might be too late, but they might be perfectly happy to schedule you.

5. Recruiter wants to change a job title on my resume

I recently applied to a job that is using an external recruiting agency to initially review candidates. During my screening call, the recruiter said they would change one of my job titles on the materials they’d pass along to the hiring committee to better reflect the work I did there.

Can … they do that?

Granted, I was severely under-titled (and underpaid) for the work I was doing in this particular role. It was the main reason why I left. But I feel uncomfortable with this — the actual job title is on LinkedIn for all to see, and I wouldn’t want to answer for the confusion should my former boss be contacted for a reference. Help!

They should not do that. It risks causing problems for you during a background check when the title on your resume isn’t the title the organization reports you had. What you or the recruiter can do is to add a clarification to the title. For example, rather than just outright changing “data analyst II” to “oatmeal data team lead,” you/they could instead do this:

data analyst II (oatmeal data team lead)

or this:

oatmeal data team lead (data analyst II)

That way, you’re not misrepresenting anything and it’s not likely to cause an issue in background checks. You’re just adding more specificity to a vague or less accurate title.

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

1. My manager seems angry that I turned down a job offer from his wife

I work for a big multinational entertainment corporation with much name recognition. For the most part, I’ve enjoyed my job. A while ago, I received a phone call out of the blue from my manager’s wife. My manager is the director of the team I’m part of. His wife called to offer me a job managing her private veterinary clinic, which is their family business. This field is completely unrelated to the field in which I presently work.

The wife then sent me an email to my private email account (not my work email) with the official job offer, which I politely and graciously declined. I thought at the time that this situation was rather awkward.

Ever since I declined the offer, my manager has blocked me from two promotions and also sent me to HR with complaints about things like not CC’ing enough people on emails and working in a silo (we moved to a hybrid model, which means less time in office).

I’m unsure what to do. It seems my manager is actively trying to remove me from my place of employment. I also wonder if a job offer from his wife is an abuse of power and goes against company policy. The whole thing has made me feel uncomfortable and like I have a target on my back. However, because my manager has already sent me to HR with petty complaints, I’m unsure if I should show them the emails of the job offer.

I will add that other people within our corporation seem to value my work and output, so I’m wondering if approaching HR will help or hinder me.

On its face, this sounds pretty outrageous! It’s not inherently an abuse of power for your manager’s spouse to offer you a job, but it’s definitely an abuse of power for your manager to punish you for not taking it.

Now, it’s possible there’s more to the situation — like maybe your manager’s actions haven’t been in response to you turning down the offer and would have happened anyway. Who knows, maybe your manager had concerns about your work but thought you’d be great at this totally different job with his wife, and was hoping this would be a solution that worked out for everyone … but when you didn’t take the job was forced to start dealing with the work issues he saw. But that’s a pretty big stretch and I doubt it’s what’s happening.

It looks enough like retaliation that it’s worth having a conversation with HR about what’s happened. (And don’t let the fact that your boss has sent you to HR for petty complaints be a reason to stop you. In fact, you should cite that as part of what has been happening since you turned down the job offer.)

2. Dressing up for Halloween on my first day at a new job

I’m starting a new job on Halloween, and this is an office where people dress up for the day! I’ve never worked in an environment like this, so I don’t know what’s appropriate for the workplace. Furthermore, this is quite literally my first day at a brand new company, and I don’t want to look like a stick-in-the-mud! Is there well-known (or not) etiquette on Halloween at work?

Do you want to dress up for Halloween? It’s very unlikely that you’ll look like a stick-in-the-mud if you skip it on your first day; generally even in offices where people wear costumes, not everyone wears a costume, but even if that’s not the case with this one, people aren’t likely to hold you to their traditions on your first day. It’s fine to skip it this year and wait until you know the vibe of the office more and what kind of costume would or wouldn’t be inappropriate for your activities that day.

But if you do want to dress up, go low key — a witch’s hat or cat ears — or even lower-key, like skull earrings — something that’s more a nod to Halloween than a total embrace of it (and which you can easily take off if you realize it’s not a great fit for what they have planned for you that day). This is not the right day to show up as an enormous piece of toast or a flamingo.

3. How do I avoid being the go-to person for questions from our new people?

I work at a firm where most people are still working from home for the majority of the time. Management is looking to up this, but hasn’t taken any firm action. Due to my role and because I am one of those folks who enjoys being back in person in an office, I am in-person five days a week.

Recently, a few new members have joined the team, and all of the folks are working to help them acclimate and succeed in their new roles. Most of them are early in their careers. They of course have tons of questions … and they ask me literally all of them. I am interrupted once every 15 minutes. Some of them could easily be googled (“how do I connect to the monitor?”, “How do I change the formatting on this document?”), some could be found with a couple minutes of critical thinking, some genuinely do need to be asked, but to someone more senior than me.

The tricky thing is that they are so nice and apologetic. I am starting to say “this is more of an Angela question” when it isn’t at my pay grade, but it feels aggressive to say “spend more time looking for an answer” when I can give it to them easily.

A large reason they come to me is because I am physically in the same office space as them and most of our team isn’t (which I can’t change). But I’m losing productivity over this, and I don’t think it’s optimal that the bulk of training falls on my shoulders when my team has multiple people. Any suggestions to remedy this?

Tell your boss what’s happening and that it’s impacting your work, and ask to have the training distributed more evenly. This is something a decent manager would want to know about and intervene on. She probably needs to give the new people more guidance on how to handle questions (both that they should go to different people on X and Y and spend more time looking for answers themselves on some things). She’s much better positioned to have those conversations than you are, but she can’t do it if she doesn’t realize it’s happening.

Read an update to this letter. 

4. My employer only gives Veteran’s Day off to veterans

My company recently announced that they are going to give the Veterans Day holiday only to employees who are veterans. Is this legal?

It’s legal because non-veterans are not a protected class. (Protected classes are things like race, sex, religion, etc., and an employer can’t give different perks based on those things.)

In fact, some states — Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Oregon, and Tennessee — require employers to provide veterans with the day off, even if they don’t offer it to other employees.

5. Should I email the hiring manager after applying?

I’m curious if this piece of advice is still relevant/accurate. In the cobwebs of college past, I was given this piece of advice by a career counselor: After you send in an application through a career portal, you should hunt down the recruiter/hiring manager’s email and send an introductory email. Not attaching the whole app, but just a short, “Hello, thank you for the opportunity. Please keep an eye out for my app.”

Is this pushy, creepy, or annoying? Or is this ambitious and eye-catching? Looking forward to your thoughts!

Pushy and annoying. They know you’re interested because you applied. There’s no need to email them separately.

It’s different if you have a specific connection to the hiring manager. In that case, it’s fine to send a short note (with your resume attached!) saying, “Cadence Warbleworth, who I used to work with, suggested I contact you about the X position on your team because of my background in competitive oatmeal eating. If you think I might be matched with what you’re looking for, I’d love to talk. (I’ve applied online as well.)”