Ask a Manager

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

1. Is it unprofessional to show chest hair at work?

I’m an admin at a large university in the midwest. I wear collared shirts every day, and given the recent heatwave, I unbuttoned an extra button to try to be a bit more comfortable in our stuffy office.

My boss (who is an oddball on several fronts) told me that it was inappropriate for me to do so because it exposed a little bit of chest hair. She said it would be fine if I shaved my chest or wore an undershirt, but “body hair should never be visible in the workplace.” There’s nothing about body hair or chest hair in our dress code, just a note that people’s appearances should be “neat and well-kempt.”

So far, I’ve just sucked it up and kept my shirts buttoned all the way, but is the “no chest hair” rule a norm?

I should note that my dress shirts are not see-through at all and that I dress on the more formal side of business casual while most of my coworkers are in jeans.

“Body hair should never be visible in the workplace” is not a rule. Your boss made that up. If that were true, men with hairy arms could never roll up their sleeves. (Or for that matter, anyone with an average amount of arm hair.) I suspect what your boss means is “chest hair feels out of place at work in a way that arm hair doesn’t” which … okay, I can see that. It’s one reason a lot of men wear undershirts. But it’s not a rule and she’s being overly rigid.

That said, when you say you unbuttoned an extra button, how many unbuttoned buttons is that? (Try to say that out loud five times fast; you cannot!) One unbuttoned button should be fine. Two without an undershirt might be pushing it for your particular office and your particular chest.

(For the record, all these conventions are BS! But they exist nonetheless.)

Related:
Hairy legs at work

2. My struggling new hire takes long lunches and leaves early

I am a first time manager with one direct report, Jared. Jared has been with the company for two months but I’m noticing that he will often take a really long lunch and leave early. I feel I should say something to him but I’m not sure if this will seem a bit rigid.

The problem is that, as a junior, he is still very much in training and I feel it’s better that we have as much face-to-face contact as possible. He is (self-admittedly) a visual learner.

In addition, he typically starts earlier than I do (7am) and I don’t arrive until 8am. But the last two weeks, I’ve noticed that he is never online at 7am and seems to only log on closer to 8am. But he still leaves early like he would if he had arrived on time. I suspect he thinks I don’t notice because I arrive after he does. How can I address these issues?

For context, his performance is not good and I have already discussed this with him. My boss has been kept in the loop but he is not a very active manager and isn’t really interested in resolving anything. Unfortunately I don’t have the power to fire him.

Just name what you want him to do differently and be direct and matter-of-fact about it: “Our expectation is that you’ll work a full eight-hour day, so if you’re arriving at 7, that means you’d stay until 4 if you’re taking an hour lunch. Lunch is a maximum of an hour unless you make special arrangements. It’s fine to start at 7 if you’d like to, but I do need to see you logged in then.” Also, given that he’s struggling and may need more time with you to learn (or just need more supervision, frankly), would you rather he start at 8? If so, it’s fine to tell him you want that (or at least to ask if it’s possible), or even to say, “I noticed you’ve been logging in closer to 8 and while we’re working to get your performance up to speed, let’s formalize your schedule as 8-5 so you and I overlap more.”

This isn’t excessively rigid; it’s a normal expectation that people will work a full work day — in any situation, but especially when they’re new and struggling. Address it now, because the longer you let it go on, the more he’ll think it’s okay.

3. My wife doesn’t want me to hire a woman

I run a small business and am about to make a significant hire. This new employee will work very closely with me, although will be located in another state. My wife is adamantly against this being a woman. I have three applicants left, and the two who are most qualified are female. What should I do?

Hire the most qualified applicant and seek marriage counseling with your wife because there’s a lack of trust in your relationship that’s going to cause problems in other ways too (and likely already has).

You can also point out to your wife that it’s illegal to make hiring decisions based on gender.

4. Facebook comments from job-seekers

We recently posted a job ad on our Facebook for a part-time position. We got one comment that was a plain and simple, “What are the hours?” A message asked the same question so that they know before they “bother” applying.

This is a desk shift with a rotating schedule, based on the weekend rotation and others’ availability, so we don’t have set hours for it right now. The job posting itself says that it includes day, evening, and the occasional Saturday.

My coworkers and I have been discussing both the wording of these questions and the fact that they’re on our Facebook page. It feels a bit like they’re forgetting that Facebook questions are still reviewed and answered by an actual person who might have hiring power over this position.

Personally, I feel that even if they are asking over Facebook, they should ask the question with a similar level of courtesy as they would if they emailed the hiring manager directly. Some people feel that they shouldn’t ask the question at all, and should save it for the interview, since many of these types of part-time jobs operate in the same way. Others don’t feel there’s any harm in asking at all, even over Facebook. Most agree that a message is more appropriate than a comment, though. What’s your take?

I suppose you could argue that a message is more appropriate than a Facebook comment — but if you’re posting the job on Facebook, it’s not inappropriate for people to respond there. It might be ineffective (a lot of companies aren’t that active in their comments) but it’s not inherently inappropriate. Either way, though, Facebook is an inherently casual medium, so it’s not surprising that the interactions have a more casual feel to them.

But I don’t agree with your coworkers who think candidates should save the question about hours for the interview. They may end up needing to save it for the interview because a lot of employers don’t answer that kind of query beforehand, but it’s reasonable for people to want to know about the hours before investing time in applying. The fact that they’re asking is a sign that your company should be including that info in the ad up-front so that people who aren’t interested in that type of scheduling can opt out. (Why waste your time or theirs in an interview if that’s going to be a deal-breaker?)

5. Should I tell an old boss why I was falling asleep at work?

In my first job out of grad school, I fell asleep at my desk twice. Both times were accidental. Once a coworker saw me, and the other time a client noticed and reported it to my supervisor. My supervisor handled it really well. He called me into his office and said what amounted to, “You are an adult, falling asleep at work is not acceptable, figure out how to get enough rest so you are awake during work hours.” His boss, however, sought me out to give me a real dressing-down, telling me that what I did was “inexcusable” and I was a disgrace to the company. This was humiliating, as you can imagine, and left me with a strong dislike for this manager.

A few months later, I transferred to a different division. I was still struggling with staying awake but did manage to stay awake most of the time. It was so bad that I built extra time into my daily commute to get to work safely, just in case I needed to stop and stretch to stay awake or stop for a 20-minute nap. I was legitimately trying to stay awake and just couldn’t. I finally spoke to my doctor about this and received a diagnosis and treatment (more than a year after my supervisor had spoken to me).

I’ve always wondered if I should have gone back to my supervisor (we stayed on friendly terms when I transferred) and explained that I had received a medical diagnosis and the excessive tiredness had been a symptom. I really had been trying to stay awake but it really was something I couldn’t have helped at the time.

You didn’t need to, but there could be benefit to it. Something like “I wanted to let you know that I figured out the cause of the sleep issues I struggled with while we worked together; turns out it was a medical issue that I’ve treated and it’s now fully under control” might put it in context for your old boss and made it a non-issue in his head. Knowing it was a medical issue that’s been resolved could make him much less likely to include it his thinking if he’s ever asked to comment on your work for him. That said, if he was only aware of it happening once, it might be a non-issue anyway — although I wonder whether he might have noticed you struggling to stay engaged other times too.

Again, there’s no need to say anything, but in your shoes I’d probably like the peace of mind of closing the loop on what had been happening.

Relatedly, there’s a longer discussion coming later today on the benefits of just saying a thing that will give you peace of mind!

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

1. When I broke my ankle, my mom called my boss’s boss

I broke my ankle pretty severely earlier this year (three bones and a dislocation). I was out of it to the point that I didn’t feel in pain; I was cracking jokes with the ambulance workers and my lawnmower guy (who thankfully happened to arrive just after I fell, as I didn’t have my phone on me at the time). My mum left her job early to come and see how I was and then called my company’s CEO (who is also my boss’ boss) to say that I wouldn’t be in for a while because of the accident.

I have to admit I lost it at her a bit after finding out because I feel that it was extremely unprofessional that she called the CEO on my behalf. My mother’s opinion was that I was in no state to call myself (possibly true, but I wasn’t working until the next day so had time to become more coherent and functional – the accident happened mid-morning) and the CEO wouldn’t mind (also ended up being true, but not the point). I know it worked out in my particular situation, but I’m curious as to — in a general situation — would you think that this is okay or should I have made the call myself?

If you were expected at work that day (or if your mom thought you were), it’s reasonable that she called on your behalf. You describe yourself as out of it; that’s a point where it’s okay for someone else to alert your employer that you won’t be in because of a medical emergency.

The thing that makes it an overstep is that you weren’t working that day and thus your employer didn’t need an immediate notification. Your mom could have just left it to you to handle however you wanted once you were more capable of doing it (or could have asked you later that day if you wanted her to, or assessed for herself later that day whether you’d be able to field it with reasonable lucidity or not).

That said, I wouldn’t call it “extremely unprofessional.” It was unnecessary and a bit too much mom-ing from your mom, but it’s not the sort of thing that you should worry an employer would judge. (That said, if your mom has a pattern of overstepping and not respecting your agency as an adult, I can see why you’d be more pissed off.)

Related:
when you’re sick, can you have someone else call your office on your behalf?

2. I’m drowning in informational interview requests

I am drowning in informational interview requests. I’m filled with dread when I think about opening LinkedIn and seeing the next batch of them. My job sounds cooler than it actually is (biotech venture capital), and I’ve also worked in pharma business development and have a PhD. As a result, I get requests from anyone touching this background: students looking to learn what biotech VC is, graduating PhDs or MDs seeking advice on how to break into the field, people a few years into biotech careers looking to make a switch, advice for how to get a job in pharma.

I turn down requests where I can come up with a clear reason why (for example, someone coming from undergrad or from an MBA, I recommend they reach out to someone with a more similar background). But otherwise, I feel like a jerk saying I’m too busy to talk! Many people donated their time when I reached out for interviews, and I want to pay it forward. I also always feel a bit bad taking the call knowing they want me to give them some secret to getting the job of their dreams, but the reality is, I was lucky and I don’t have any secrets.

Are there any ways to make this more manageable? Could I host something like “office hours” for an hour each month and invite anyone who wants to join to drop in on Zoom? I’d be super grateful for any advice you could provide on how to maintain my sanity while continuing to support young folks in their careers.

Well, first, you’re allowed to say no just because you’re too busy. I get that you want to pay back the help you were given, which is great, but that doesn’t mean you need to turn your life over to it or do it when it will be a strain. During times when you’re particularly busy, or where the thought of doing it makes you internally groan, it’s fine to say, “I’m in a particularly busy period for me and unfortunately I’m having to be be disciplined about not adding anything else on my calendar.”

You can also decide you’ll do these calls one week a month (or whatever frequency works for you; it’s fine it it’s less than that) and that you’ll say yes to the first three people who want to book for that time period.

You also absolutely can do something like your “office hours” idea and say, “I hold a monthly Zoom for anyone who wants to drop in to talk about this stuff. Here’s the info for this month.” I actually love that idea; you’ll get it all out of the way in one call per month, and people will learn from each other’s questions. It will also help weed out the people whose sole motivation is “maybe I’ll magically come out of this conversation with a job.” In fact, I worked with an organization that got so many prospective job candidates asking for one-on-one conversations before applying that we set up a monthly drop-in call exactly like this. It gave us somewhere to funnel the many incoming requests, made the time commitment more manageable, and allowed us to say “yes” in a way that worked for our calendars.

3. Different teams are held to different standards

I have been promoted to a senior role, which means that I now do some supervisory work across multiple teams. Each team is headed by a senior manager. Doing this has made me aware that the standards that are considered acceptable by the different managers are wildly different: on one team, higher quality workers are put down and their work isn’t considered good enough so they end up being micromanaged, while worse workers from the other teams are deemed fine and are allowed to act without supervision. To me this seems fundamentally wrong. I don’t expect every team leader to act identically, but it feels like wrong to keep saying one team’s work is not good enough when far worse quality work is routine for the other team.

I have quite a fixed view of right and wrong and am struggling to accept this approach to the point that I don’t know if I can continue at the firm, but maybe this is normal, acceptable behavior and I’d encounter it at any firm? When I have raised the point, the main comment I get back is that I shouldn’t compare others people’s work and look for errors, but part of my job requires that I see the work and I can’t help but notice the major errors being missed in one team, while even work that is fine is still having to be checked in the other.

It’s fairly common for different managers to hold their teams to different standards. Sometimes the differences are minor (but can still grate to those on the teams in the question) and sometimes they’re more significant. Ideally organizations should set a culture of high performance across the board — without being unrealistically demanding — and should hire and manage managers through that lens, but a lot of organizations aren’t well-managed enough to do that. So what you’re seeing isn’t necessarily that uncommon, although that depends on the extent of the differences (how bad the worse work is, and how unrealistic the expectations on the higher-performing team).

Whether or not you have standing to do anything about it is a different question. It’s possible your job is one that does give you standing — particularly if the work from the weaker team isn’t at the standard needed, but also if the better team is being managed in a way you can see is unsustainable (since that will mean burn-out and turnover). It’s also possible that your job doesn’t give you that standing; it depends entirely on the nature of your role, the outcomes you’re charged with meeting, how much seniority and influence you have in your organization, and how the internal politics work there.

4. Removing the dates of your work history on your resume

My wife has been job hunting for six months without an offer, and we’re open to trying just about anything to get her resume through the initial screening process. She has written it, re-written it, paid other people to rewrite it, and asked multiple HR professionals for their feedback during resume reviews at job fairs. She has gotten some good advice, and she has gotten some that sounds very strange.

Just today, an HR professional told her that she should refrain from including anything like dates of employment on her resume, and instead list her tenure there, rounded to the year. For context, she has spent her time since the beginning of the pandemic working remotely for startup tech companies, and this has led to a little more company-hopping than she’d like. They said that instead of writing, for instance, “May 2020-Feb 2022,” she should write “two years” without including the actual months or years. This person’s argument was also that it makes it easier to rearrange your roles according to what fits the position you’re applying for best, rather than showing any chronological information.

This feels like a dicey gamble to me, and runs counter to just about everything I’ve ever heard about resume writing. It certainly won’t work for any website that requires employment date information in your application profile. In my experience, resumes tend to be a very conservative medium, but maybe things are changing! Before I dismiss this particular piece of advice, is this something you’ve run across before?

She absolutely should not do this. It will look like she’s trying to hide something and has no familiarity with how resumes work, and 99% of employers will toss the resume rather than trying to parse it out. She’d have to be a staggeringly extraordinary candidate for most hiring managers to keep looking after seeing a resume written that way (and if she’s not getting bites after six months of a resume with normal dates, she’s definitely not going to get bites after weakening the way she presents). It’s truly terrible advice.

Employers want to know how recent your job experience is, and they want you to adhere to basic resume conventions like, you know, years so that piecing together your work history isn’t a mystery project.

5. How do I give notice at a job I’m passionate about?

I took my current job a year ago. I was hired to build a program and, while we have made excellent progress, I would say the program is about 60% built out.

I wasn’t looking for other opportunities, but I have been headhunted by a company I’m familiar with in the same industry. The role would be less high-profile but would suit my skills, pay more, and offer more opportunity for advancement. I am still in the interview process but I feel I’m going to be offered the job. And I’m so stressed about how to tell my boss if in fact I need to give notice.

My reasons for wanting to leave have much less to do with the core work of my role, which I am passionate about, and more about surrounding circumstances (like lack of support for our work, lack of structure and process because my current company is small, and the isolation of working on a small team without other senior people to bond with). The role I’m interviewing for will solve these things — bigger company, established in the work, more folks at my level. Plus it will pay a lot more.

If I am offered the role, how do I tell my boss? I really enjoy working with her and remain passionate about the work we are doing. I know making the move is the right one for me, but I can’t help feeling like I’m letting down the folks who hired me. If this opportunity had come in six or eight more months, I might not feel so bad. But it’s only been a year and this was definitely a passion project for me.

“This fell in my lap — I wasn’t looking but they approached me and it’s too good an offer to pass up.” If you want, you can add, “I’ve loved working with you and I’m passionate about the project, but I can’t turn this down.”

That’s it! That’s the truth of it (although frankly you could say it even if it wasn’t), and this is normal thing to happen. Other opportunities come along, and some of them will be better for you than whatever you’re doing currently.

I think you’re looking at leaving as somehow being a sign that you don’t care about the project as much as they might believe. But none of that is in play; you get to leave work you like and managers you like if something else comes along that’s better suited to you.

And it’s not like you’re not leaving after two months. You’re leaving after a year, because someone made an offer that you can’t responsibly refuse. It’s fine.