Ask a Manager

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

1. My boss told me to bring my sick four-year-old to work with me

I want to start off by saying I am the absolute backbone of our store and everyone, including my boss, knows it. My boss has the flu right now and my four-year-old has been sick. She woke up crying, feverish, snotty, etc. I texted my boss at 4 am (I was scheduled to open at 10:30 am) explaining that my child’s sickness had taken a turn for the worse and asked if there was a possibility that anyone else could cover. She responded that there was no one besides me who could work and I would just have to bring my sick daughter with me. I’d been up all night with my child as well, which I also stated to my boss.

I don’t feel like this is fair. My sales are the highest, I feel I work the hardest, and I’m often told how great I am. Even corporate has reached out to me about my amazing sales. Am I overreacting?

No, you’re not overreacting. It’s not reasonable to expect to you bring a sick child to work (nor would customers be likely to appreciate it).

I think where you erred, though, was in asking if you could take a sick day. If we had a time machine, I’d send you back in it to instead say, “Jane is very sick and I’ve been up all night with her, so I won’t be able to open the store today.” Don’t ask, which implies you’re open to hearing “no” — say you wouldn’t be there and why (just like you’d presumably do if you yourself were throwing up or in the ER or so forth). There are some situations where you simply cannot come to work because of sickness, period. In those cases, it’s better not to cloud the situation by presenting it as optional.

2. My coworkers saw porn on my phone’s lock screen

I graduated from college last May and got my first office job. I have my work iPhone and my personal phone. I only ever use my work phone for work things, of course, but my problem came from my personal phone.

I downloaded something on my personal phone so that every time I turn on the screen, the lock screen background is an AI porn pic. A new pic comes up every time. Aside from obvious benefits, this motivates me to never take out my phone at work. I won’t even check my phone until I get to my car. (The reduced phone use was my New Year’s resolution, and it has made me noticeably mentally sharper.)

But today, my phone was ringing from my backpack while I had three coworkers in my cubicle talking about a project. I usually keep it on silent but forgot this time. It kept ringing, and one of them asked if I needed to get it. I said no, and tried to turn my phone on silent with my hand still in the backpack while I peeked inside it. One asked why I didn’t just take my phone out, and I said it was fine. But I was struggling to hold the backpack and unlock my phone at the same time, and the backpack slid down and fell on the floor with my phone still in my hand.

The porn was only there for a split second, but everyone there saw it. Everyone went dead silent, and they were looking between me and each other. I put the phone away immediately and tried to start up the previous conversation again, but everyone was giving minimal answers. The meeting ended shortly after that. After half an hour of silently panicking in my cubicle, I said I was sick and left to work from home the rest of the day.

I’m working from home the rest of the week. I have no idea what to do. I hate how everyone is judging me for something that is not deontologically bad, but I never would’ve shown it at work. Everyone is looking at me like they think something’s wrong with me, and I’m terrified it will get to my manager. Will I lose my job? Does everyone hate me? What do I do now!?

First and foremost, you should take the porn off your phone’s lock screen. Yes, you didn’t intend to have it out at work but, as this experience showed, there are ways that can still happen and the consequences are too severe if it does. Moreover, even if you never intended to bring your phone out while you were there, you were bringing pornographic material into your workplace! Find another way to reduce your phone use. (That’s before we even get into the reality that as you go about your non-work life and are using your personal phone, you’re probably exposing other people to pornography against their will, which really isn’t okay to do.)

As for work … all you can really do is to make a point of being scrupulously professional from here on out. It’s unlikely that people hate you, although some of them might feel a little icky around you for a while until that impression gets overridden. You’re probably not going to get fired (although you might get spoken to about what is and isn’t appropriate to have at work). But yeah, you made people really uncomfortable because you exposed them to something sexual against their will! Demonstrate through your actions that it was out of character and that you’re professional and respect boundaries, and it shouldn’t be impossible to live down.

3. Can my out-of-office messages say that emails sent while I’m out will be deleted?

I am going on vacation for just over two weeks with my husband — our first decent holiday since before the pandemic. Given the amount of emails I normally receive (about 100 daily), I want to leave an out-of-office that will politely say that I will not be reading my emails and therefore they will effectively be deleted. I will give details of a team member who can handle urgent requests (which she is happy to do) but beyond that I would just want to ask people to resend anything non-urgent on the date after my return. I have seen OOO emails along these lines but sometimes they come across as a bit aggressive. What is your advice on how to word this? This will be the first time in 17 years I haven’t taken work or my laptop away with me and I so need the break. And also not to come back to several hundred emails to wade through!

There are jobs and companies where you could do this and jobs and companies where you couldn’t, so the first thing to figure out is whether this will be okay in your job and in your company. In some jobs, this would be seen as off-putting to clients (since it puts the burden on them to remember to contact you again in X days, which won’t necessarily be seen as reasonable or client-friendly) and/or out of sync with your company’s culture, or it might result in you missing things you really needed to know (if someone doesn’t bother to resend later as instructed, which is highly likely in some cases, especially since a lot of people don’t pay attention to the actual content of OOO messages).

So you really need to know if it’s going to be been seen as reasonable in your office. If you’re not sure, ask your boss.

But if you’re confident it’s fine in your particular context, then I’d word it the message way: “Emails sent to this address March 10-21 will not be read. For anything urgent during that time, please contact X at Y. Otherwise, please resend your message after March 21.”

Related:
my colleague’s auto-reply says she might never answer your email

4. Using an inhaler during a job interview

For reasons I won’t go into, my employer is in the process of downsizing. I am currently a full-time, salaried employee, but within the next month I will either be changed to a part-time hourly employee or let go. I am actively looking for a new full-time role, and my employer is supportive of my job search.

My issue is that recent cold winter weather, work stress, and other stressors have caused my asthma to flare up. Currently, it is difficult for me to speak more than a few words before I start wheezing. My doctor’s advice has been to continue my daily medication and use my rescue inhaler as needed, which I have been doing. This is a flare-up, it will eventually pass.

Do you have any tips on how to navigate job interviews when I will likely start wheezing and need to use my inhaler in the middle of the interview? Is it appropriate to let the hiring manager know ahead of time via email that I’m okay, I’m healthy, I’m just having a temporary flare-up and they shouldn’t be alarmed if I have to use my inhaler during the interview? At the level I’m at in my career, interviews could easily last up to an hour.

You can absolutely let them know that. At the start of the interview, you could say, “I’m having a temporary asthma flare-up from the weather. It’s nothing to worry about, but I might need to use my inhaler at some point while we’re talking and I don’t want you to be alarmed if that happens.” People will generally take their cues from you on this kind of thing, so the more your vibe is “I have this under control,” the more likely they are to take it that way.

5. Should my resume have an objective at the top?

I am applying for an internal department director position at my organization. I’m doing a redesign of my resume since it’s been a while. Is it appropriate to put “Objective” at the top? I’m seeing this in a lot of templates, but it seems like overkill to me – I mean, the objective to get the position, is it not?

Objectives at the top of resumes were outdated 15 years ago, and it’s bizarre that they’re still showing up in resume templates. You do not need one, and should not use one. They’re unnecessary, take up valuable real estate that’s better spent on something more important, and will look dated.

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

1. My boss is great in some ways but is he crossing lines?

I’m trying to figure out if my manager is interested in me as more than a coworker, or if the lines he crosses are just a part of his personality. I’ve been with my company as a general manager for eight months, hired into a lower position and immediately promoted by this man. He is always kind and funny with me. He calls me awesome, amazing, sunshine, tells me how funny I am, tells me I’m tough, and that he wants to make my life easier. And these are just the things he regularly says. He is never sexual, and mentions his wife casually in group conversation we are both involved in. He is very stern with other people, but still outgoing and friendly. He isn’t stern with me. He makes sure I’m set up for success in every situation he can.

Now to the parts that are a bit on the fence, so to speak. He often asks me to come and see things on his laptop at a hightop table; I’m 5’2” and he is about 6’4″ and he keeps the laptop in front of him, even if asking me to type something for him, which leads to very close contact. While we speak, he keeps non-broken full eye contact the entire time. He often stands so closely behind me that when he breathes deeply, I feel his chest as he inhales. Other people claim he is “different” with me.

He is an extremely extroverted person, who in my opinion is usually more openly friendly with others than with me. But he makes sure we speak every day, even if one or both of us is off. Flip side, he visits other locations more often than mine. He brags on others more openly than he does me. But something has gotten strange. Does this seem like normal extroverted behavior? Could I just seem like a child to him, paternal affection type stuff?

I just don’t know if maybe I’m misreading and it’s just that I have the best boss ever, not a potential issue.

You have alarm bells going off for a reason; don’t talk yourself out of it.

I don’t know exactly what’s up with your boss, but standing so close that you can feel his chest when he breathes is not normal behavior, and is in fact very creepy. The laptop thing could be simple lack of consideration or it could be pervy, I don’t know — but in combination with standing practically against you, it alarms me. In both these situations, you should feel free to create more physical separation between you. When he’s standing behind you practically touching you, move away! You can do that without announcing it, or it would also be fine to say, “Oh, let me move so we’re not so crowded.” With the laptop, you can say, “I can’t easily reach it from where I am, let me move it closer to me if I need to type” and then move it somewhere where you can access it without leaning into his lap (or whatever is going on in this configuration that he’s arranged).

I suppose it’s possible that you have an otherwise good boss who is remarkably oblivious about physical space issues, but I doubt it. Is he breathing all over male colleagues? If he does it to everyone, regardless of gender, perhaps he simply has no sense of physical boundaries. Otherwise, he knows what he’s doing, which moves him solidly out of “good boss” territory (and, frankly, into “not a good person” territory, too).

2. Coworker injecting medication at their desk

I work in a small office with about 15 people. One of my colleagues has diabetes and has to regularly monitor their blood sugars, which is of course of absolute importance. However, this colleague regularly pulls up their shirt to inject themselves in the stomach while sitting at their desk, and has once or twice done this in front of clients. I completely understand that this is a medical issue that they have to act on urgently, but part of me wonders whether it’s appropriate to ask them to do this in a private space. I’m not weirded out by injections, but some people can be, and I don’t necessarily want to see so much of my colleague’s skin on a regular basis. I have a feeling that this is a me problem and I should just ignore it, but any advice on how to appropriately support my colleague would be gratefully received. (To note, this is an early professional job for my colleague, who is still learning business norms, and helping them learn these is part of my role.)

I’d leave it alone. You’re right that people can be squeamish about needles but there’s no way for you as a colleague to know how urgent the situation might be and they need insulin to live. So it makes sense to err on the side of assuming that if they’re doing it at their desk, it’s because it needs to happen right then (and they might feel a public bathroom isn’t a particularly sanitary place to inject something into their body).

To be clear, if your coworker were the one writing to me, I’d tell them that if they’re able to avoid doing it in front of clients, that’s preferable (with the caveat that it might not always be optional). But as a colleague, I’d stay out of it.

3. Reference for an employee who didn’t perform well

I’m in a situation where I may have to respond to reference checks about a mediocre employee.

My direct report was with us for about nine months. In that time, I quickly discovered some of her basic skills were not as good as her resume or her small test had revealed. I invested a solid chunk of time in training her, and I saw a trajectory of improvement that was slower than I’d have liked, but still reasonable.

However, she recently made a few egregious mistakes. I gave her very serious feedback in the moment and also discussed the situation with my manager and HR. We decided a formal PIP was needed to more formally codify what she needed to fix and improve, and how soon. We all agreed that she had the potential to get there, and this was not a performative PIP where you go through the motions because you want to fire a person. We had not finished drafting this plan and communicating it to her when, for entirely unrelated reasons, many people on our team, including her, were laid off. I was not involved in the decision-making, but it made sense to me given the circumstances of our organization.

She has mentioned that in her job search, she’ll be asking me to be a reference. I don’t feel like I can recommend her without reservations. She has potential, but it was a lot more work to bring her along and train her than I expected or think should have been necessary. If I receive a reference call, how do I respond? Despite my feedback in the moment, I’m not sure she’s fully aware of the pattern of errors she was making, because I was expecting to emphasize that during our PIP discussion that never happened.

Do I talk with her about this? Refuse to be a reference? Act as a reference but be up-front about her strengths and weaknesses? She’s a good person, and I don’t want to be careless and damage her chance at a new job. But I don’t want to give a great recommendation that makes people doubt my judgment, either.

Talk to her and let her know so she can decide whether she wants to offer you as a reference or not. I’d frame it this way: “I want to be transparent that the reference I’d give would be mixed because of what happened with X and Y. The layoffs cut off our discussion about those issues, but otherwise we would have needed to move a formal improvement plan because those concerns were such serious ones. In a reference I’d be able to share that I saw A and B as strengths, but would need to be honest that I wasn’t seeing what I needed in C and D. I want to be up-front with you about that so you can decide whether it makes sense to share my name as a reference or not.”

On my first read of your letter, I was going to add that it’s really important to be giving feedback all along so that the person isn’t blindsided by something like this if it comes up later. But in this case, the way things unfolded made it more understandable that you didn’t: you thought she was coming along, just more slowly than you’d expected, and then when things became more dire you were preparing to address it, but then the layoffs cut you off just as you were about to. It’s not ideal but it sounds like that’s largely a consequence of the layoff timing, not a mistake on your end.

4. Are the federal layoffs causing layoffs at private companies?

I was discussing the federal layoffs with a coworker and she said her in-laws who work at (a) a big private financial services company and (b) the Bezos space company have all seen layoffs recently. Is this in reaction to the federal layoffs? I had thought my and my husband’s jobs in the private sector were safe for now, but now I’m worried.

I can’t speak to the layoffs at those specific companies, but in general, yes, there will be layoffs at private companies as a response to the federal government cuts. Loads of private companies have contracts with the government and so will be affected by the cuts there. And then it’s likely to trickle down further; heavy job losses in any large sector will start affecting other businesses because people will begin restricting their spending (either out of necessity because their households have less or no income or out of caution at what’s happening around them and uncertainty about what’s to come). It’s all intertwined, so what’s happening federally is likely to affect a lot of people in the private sector as well.

5. Alternative to Facebook for discussion groups

I am hoping you can put this out to the readers of AAM for some solutions. I work in payroll for the movies and run a couple of Facebook groups for people doing payroll for both film and television. Not to get too political, I would like to move my group off of Facebook, but I have no idea what other options are out there. I’m Gen-X so comfortable with computers but not so much with social media that isn’t mainstream.

Could someone direct me to a site where a group can have discussions, share files/documents, and limit access to members only? Basically, FB without the political ramifications.

I’m happy to throw it out to suggestions from readers, but take a look at Discord.