Ask a Manager

It’s a special “where are you now?” season at Ask a Manager and I’m running updates from people who had their letters here answered in the past. 

Remember the letter-writer whose boss wanted to hire them out for their “unique talents and skills” that had nothing to do with their jobs? Here’s the update.

I found using the suggested phrasing “I freelance in that field and it would be a conflict of interest” to be a helpful way to express my concerns politely. I think it helped my boss feel less like I was shutting them down personally and more making it about general business norms.

One of your suggestions, “I do that for fun and I’m not interested in doing it professionally,” helped me to see how crazy of an ask this was. I could see how someone might naively ask about making cupcakes for an event, or taking photos. None of the three of us asked about adding our skills to this business were asked to make our hobbies part of our job. Two of us were asked about adding our services that are related to our master’s degrees and one to a field of work that they left over a decade ago. Fields that have professional certifications and titles that are unrelated to the company.

The company was and is very successful. It provides a much needed service in my community. But as it grew with more employees and in servicing more clients, it started to become very disorganized. A few months after the infamous meeting, I was asked to start coming to in-person events. My boss knew my availability and that I was only working this job because I could work from home. These events took place during regular working hours for my full-time freelance jobs and my boss hoped I could take a day off my full-time job occasionally and come in. I was asked two days before Thanksgiving if I could work from home for a couple hours on Thanksgiving Day (I was hosting my family on Thanksgiving). We had some in-person trainings that were rescheduled multiple times with little notice because of family emergencies from other staff. One of those reschedules happened while I was on a family vacation, so my boss used my emergency contact to get ahold of me to see if the new training time would work. Another time, my boss asked to meet with me quickly on a weekend to drop off something, and then was two hours late.

I said no to all of these last-minute asks and reschedules that conflicted with my full-time job and I didn’t wait around when my boss was late. I couldn’t event attend some of the rescheduled meetings or trainings because I couldn’t find a sitter with two days notice. But this type of thing started happening several times a month and I started to resent it.

While I do feel my boss has their heart in the right place, the last-minute requests started to really add up. By late winter, I couldn’t discount it as being “new” to running a company anymore. They were showing me who they were and how disorganized they are. I kept hoping they’d get it together. That’s on me! So I put in my notice a few months ago. Even though I worked such few hours, I feel like I’ve gained so much time back.

In the original letter you made up a name for my boss, “Craig.” My boss is actually non-binary and fairly young. While I know this wasn’t the intent of your advice, I felt differently about the situation when I started to think about my boss being an older man named Craig making these same requests. (I am a cis queer woman in my forties.) I liked my boss personally, and it was clouding my professional judgement of them. I excused a lot of behavior I wouldn’t if my boss had been a different person. This has given me a lot of reflect on personally.

I’ve briefly spoken to my previous boss a few times since I left, and we seem to be on good terms. I wish them success in their company and growth in their professionalism. I’ll always root for them and their business goals. But I’m much happier not being behind the scenes anymore.

It’s a special “where are you now?” season at Ask a Manager and I’m running updates from people who had their letters here answered in the past.

There will be more posts than usual this week, so keep checking back throughout the day — there’s still more to come.

Remember the letter-writer who was told by HR that they had a moral obligation to tell everyone they’re autistic? Here’s the update.

Firstly, thank you so much for your response to my letter, and to all the commenters. It was incredibly reassuring and did give me the strength to raise the issue with the interim CEO. One of the commenters, also autistic, said that they felt autistics could be especially vulnerable to emotional manipulation and the feeling that we are always in the wrong — I think that’s partly why I was so twisted up about it and unsure what to do.

I think a lot of people wanted some serious consequences for Jane, which didn’t happen as I didn’t really want that. I could see that she was doing good in some other ways (I’ll explain further down!). I spoke to the interim CEO, who suggested a mediated conversation with an autistic counselor. They were able to express the issues in a much better way than I could have, and Jane apologized. I think she also got a warning from the CEO. She’s since been on a training course with an autistic charity, and we’ve had some really good conversations about autism and how it affects me.

As I said in the letter, the company had a lot of issues relating to discrimination against neurodivergent and black employees especially, and a lot of it stemmed from two members of senior management. Even while the above was going on, Jane was starting to work on that. Those two individuals have now both left the company — one was fired, and one saw the writing on the wall and resigned. It was a stressful period (the one who was fired raised several retaliatory grievances, including against Jane and the interim CEO) but now thankfully is over.

With them gone, we’ve started a DEI audit which will hopefully lead to new policies and training for all staff. I have started to be a little more open about being autistic, but haven’t yet made any company-wide announcements!

Part of Jane’s frustration came from hearing real distress from some of our employees, and feeling that I was part of the senior management and not doing anything about it. I know she was definitely in the wrong to let this lead her to tell someone I was autistic and then telling me that I had a responsibility to share this (and she now agrees and has apologized!) but I do also want to try and be stronger in future in challenging discrimination if I’m in a similar position again (hopefully not).

Thank you so much again for your reply. I was feeling really low but speaking to the interim CEO and Jane, while stressful at the time, ended up with everything in a much better place – and I’m not sure I would have done that without you and all the comments!

It’s a special “where are you now?” season at Ask a Manager and I’m running updates from people who had their letters here answered in the past.

There will be more posts than usual this week, so keep checking back throughout the day.

Remember the letter-writer whose new manager was someone she slept with years ago … and he didn’t know they have a child together? Here’s the update.

Thank you for answering my letter. You were right, it was a really big deal. I was viewing the Jacob-as-my-manager problem from his perspective — until I told him otherwise, it was just a simple one night stand over a decade ago — and it didn’t seem like a huge problem. I hated and appreciated the reality check. I regret reading the comments, but thank you also for moderating them as quickly as you did.

A lot happened in a short space of time (thankfully I already had a therapist!). First, I spoke to my union rep who said, “Say NOTHING but call us if HR tries to set up a meeting with you.” Staying silent and having Jacob independently declare the prior relationship when he arrived would have been problematic because I’d still end up in the same position and I would have lied by omission. Our HR team can be gossipy and they know the age of my half-Chinese daughter, so I needed to have as much control as possible over the disclosure. I spoke to an employment lawyer who reviewed our policies and, at his suggestion, I wrote an email to HR declaring a prior relationship with Jacob.

And then I was immediately pushed out. Even if you have all the legal support in the world, you can’t prevent someone from doing something illegal, you just have recourse afterwards. In a meeting with my lawyer, the union rep, HR, and a member of the senior management team, I was asked to resign. When I said no, they insisted on a statutory declaration about the relationship with Jacob stating what happened, when it happened, how many times it happened (??) and who initiated it (??). I also said no to that. We ended the meeting with each side agreeing to think about possible solutions.

The company’s solution was to start messing with my pay, my benefits, my swipe card access to my office, my computer log in, and my email/calendar account. They spread rumors about me and I heard coworkers whispering that I’d had an affair with a manager. They sent me for a “random” drug test at a time when I was scheduled for an important meeting with clients. They cancelled accommodation that had been booked for upcoming travel, which I only found out about because I was getting paranoid and called the hotel.

I can’t describe how awful it feels to know that someone with this kind of power over your job is devoting their time and energy to thinking of ways to screw with you. Every day I was going into work wondering what was waiting for me and it was wearing me down fast. The advice from the union rep was to go back in time and follow their first piece of advice, or just keep documenting everything as we prepared to take legal action. The lawyer estimated that it would take at least a year to get any kind of resolution, and I didn’t even want the job anymore. By this point, I wasn’t sleeping much and I had cried a few times at work. I was beginning to crack and we were only just getting started.

So, I resigned. I wish I’d held up better under the pressure but it was all just too much with the looming deadline of Jacob’s start date at our office, and whatever way HR was going to drag him into this. I’m lucky that I can take my time looking for a new job, so I’ve had some space to process everything.

Outside of the work stuff, I spoke with a family lawyer who outlined all the possible ways this situation could go, and what the most likely outcomes were. Basically, my daughter is old enough that what she wants would get heavily weighted by a court if it came to that. I have spoken to my daughter many times about her father. I told her what I knew about him and that I had tried to contact him. I’ve offered for her to see a therapist if she ever wanted to talk about it with someone who wasn’t me, and she has always said “thanks, but no thanks.”

The family lawyer helped me write a letter which I left for Jacob. I told him about his daughter, said I wasn’t trying to get anything from him, and gave him the contact details of my lawyer. After a few weeks (of me freaking out that HR had somehow intercepted the letter), he emailed my lawyer. He was the easy-going and practical Jacob I remembered. He was still processing it but said he wasn’t going to take any legal steps, he offered us his family medical history, he apologized if I resigned because of him, and he said he would like to meet our daughter if she’s interested. She also has some siblings. I told her all this, she said she’s happy that she has her father’s contact info but she doesn’t want to meet him right now. She’s of the view that having him in our lives would cause unwanted disruption. And she doesn’t even know about the work clusterfudge.

It’s a special “where are you now?” season at Ask a Manager and I’m running updates from people who had their letters here answered in the past. Here are four updates from past letter-writers.

1. My coworker won’t stop touching and complimenting me (#2 at the link)

I acted very cold and avoided him the best I could, but he wasn’t totally getting it and then one day I wore a new lotion and he immediately said, “Did you change your scent?” I said yes. He said he could tell because “I know your smell.” I guess that was my final straw because I finally told him he’s creepy as hell and the comments he make really bother me. He got defensive and actually quite hostile towards me, even saying I am acting like I have “white privilege.” I was shocked and angry and after that totally avoided him the best I could. He quickly moved on to a new female hire … following her and bugging her non-stop … but luckily he was also engaging in some dishonest stuff at work no one knew about and he was fired. Work’s been wonderful ever since! He’s gone.

2. How do I stop myself from getting overly attached in the application process?

Thank you for publishing my letter! A lot of the commenters mentioned — and I noticed this as well — that your analogy to dating was pretty spot on, and with that perspective (as well as help from the aforementioned mental health professionals and my wife) the job hunt … well, I won’t say it got easier prima facie, but it got easier to manage.

In the meanwhile, I’ve had two jobs. One was with a Trust and Estates firm run by a lawyer who was brilliant at what she did, but kind of threw me too quickly into the fire without any training and got stressed by the fact that, well, I didn’t know what I was doing, so she conceded that she should have hired someone with more experience, and we parted ways amicably after about two weeks. The second job — where I am now — is with a business litigator who’s … old school is the best way to describe him. He pays me well and he hands out bonuses like it’s going out of style, but he’s cantankerous and curmudgeonly, and the benefits here are middling. Oh, and he smokes cigarettes in his office, something I didn’t know during our one Zoom interview and something that definitely would have given me pause if I was able to interview in person. So I’m still job hunting — in fact, as I write this, I got off a first round interview with a pretty big in-house financial counseling firm that seems like it would be a good fit for me, and if anything happens between now and when this is published, I’ll be sure to shoot off an email, or leave a comment if this is published by the time I hear news.

3. Our new admin crashed the company car and lied about it (first update)

Pam stuck around another nine months, doing fine but not amazing, and then left for a new position. While she was a decent employee and did a lot of things well, in the end her departure worked well for the business. There were no issues with trust as she didn’t do anything to make anyone question her truthfulness again and the accident quickly became water under the bridge. However, it was difficult to keep her workload full: she repeatedly made small (but not negligible) mistakes that made leadership nervous about handing her larger responsibilities with big repercussions for an error. Her manager tried to work with her on the attention to detail but it never consistently got better, and she must’ve seen the writing on the wall and found a position that was a better fit. We wish her all the best — no regrets with the original decision, but not amazing “this was 100% the right choice” update either.

4. Calling students “clients” when transitioning out of teaching (#4 at the link)

I am the (former) teacher who asked about translating my classroom skills into corporate-speak.  I’m happy to report that I found a job outside of teaching not long after you printed my letter. I adjusted my resume to focus not only on the results of my work, but the how (example: “Led the creation and execution of a site-wide training plan by establishing a working group and developing customized training materials, raising pass rates from 17% to 76% in one year”). It took me a while to get over the imposter syndrome of feeling like my work was irrelevant or somehow juvenile, and finding pride in my accomplishments helped me to see more clearly the value I can bring.

To any teachers who feel like your experience is irrelevant: you have so much to offer! Everything we do in the classroom, from analyzing data to long-term project planning, has a corollary outside of education. The only difference is you’ll have half as much to keep track of mentally, twice the autonomy, and infinitely greater room to grow professionally. I have been promoted twice, earn more money than would have taken me years to achieve on the district salary schedule, and was able to take a real maternity leave! Speaking of which, if you’re in California, urge your state senator to pass Assembly Bill 2901, which would allow teachers to take paid maternity leave (instead of hoarding sick days and trying to time for a summer baby like I and my former colleagues did).

It’s a special “where are you now?” season at Ask a Manager and I’m running updates from people who had their letters here answered in the past. Here are four updates from past letter-writers.

There will be more posts than usual this week, so keep checking back throughout the day — there’s more to come today.

1. How can I pull back on a friendship with a coworker? (#2 at the link)

It certainly has been a learning experience and implementing some of your suggestions has worked in a lot of ways. I greatly appreciate your help. I think I needed permission to not be as nice as I was and it was helpful that other folks had similar experiences in the comments.

Shortly after receiving your initial advice, this person and I disagreed on a work policy and they blew up at me. They also were having similar interactions with other coworkers on different floors and in different departments. I decided then and there to put your steps into action and also take it a bit further to protect myself and my sanity! I realized I needed to follow my gut and give myself the green light to limit friendships in the office, starting with this one.

What’s worked:

I stopped answering calls and texts from them on my personal devices. If they talk to me about work, it has to be via traditional company channels so I can keep a paper trail. I muted their messages in my cell phone so I am not alerted to their attempts to contact me outside of work hours. If they ask, I just say that I didn’t get it or I was busy and saw it too late. I am busy outside of work so it passes muster.

I have ended my open door policy completely. I used to keep my door to my office open all the time. I do not anymore. If I know that the person in question is on site, I will close my door, lock it and mark that I am in a meeting or busy. It sucks because it restricts my own movement in our building but, it helps discourage them from coming to my space. I have asked if anyone needs me, to message me and ask if I have the time. This gives me the option to say no.

I also stopped speaking to them about any issues or information I have about work or people at work. This means no gossip or information is shared unless about a specific joint project. If they try to come vent to me I say, “I have only a few minutes before my next meeting” to cut the interaction short. If they ask my opinion, I don’t have one. I also do not ask follow-up questions.

As a result, we do not hang out in or out of the office anymore. We do not spend much time speaking other than to go over project details or if they have a question. It is still hard. There is a definitive shift in the energy when we interact. We are still polite, but they are hot and cold with me. Because of the incident mentioned earlier, I am sometimes on edge but the restricted engagement has helped me manage.

2. A disgruntled fired employee says he’s coming to a work event I’m planning (#3 at the link)

I spoke to our human resources person, and she told me that she and the director had already reached out to the local police about coming to the event, and Sam was notified that he is barred from attending it.

They’re still waiting to hear back from the police, so I will be checking in regularly until I hear that they’ve actually agreed to come, and if they don’t, I’ll look into hiring private security or canceling the event.

On the urging of the commenters, I also contacted local law enforcement about Sam, because a) I don’t know exactly what upper management told them and b) I realized that my concerns about Sam won’t end even if this event goes smoothly.

3. My husband and I share a home office — how do we make this work?

Thanks for running this Ask the Readers question last year! I had a busy day when it ran and didn’t participate in the comments at all. It sure was interesting to look back and see all the assumptions people were making! As I expected, the most useful feedback we received was from people who actually do share successfully home offices. Thank you to all those who shared their experience!

What we took away was the most important thing is to be sure we’re not on calls at the same time to avoid audio interference. So we set up an alternative call space in our bedroom (aka I cleaned off my vanity), and then every morning we compare schedules and decide who’s going to take calls where. We set up the shared office the month before I went on maternity leave, and we’ve been loving it ever since! We both always use headsets and virtual/blurred backgrounds for calls so this works perfectly for us. We also have a clearly defined workspace space away from the baby (who is taken care of by someone else in the house during the day), which was important to us.

So with some good communication we have a super easy solution … no need for my husband to do an hour long commute everyday, share our bedroom with a baby for a year (he moved into his own bedroom at four months and everyone slept 100% better), or my favorite ridiculous suggestion: build a freestanding wired office shed in our tiny backyard. Maybe if we have another kid!

4. Can my younger coworkers read cursive? (#4 at the link)

The commenters helped me realize I could ask my 20-something direct report, who was the one I was most worried about, especially since the power differential would have made it harder for her to speak up. She delightedly said that she loves cursive, but that her same-aged family members who grew up in this area generally can’t read it. Like I said in the comments, it doesn’t come up a lot, but it seems reasonable for me to take a second to think about whether cursive is likely to be comprehensible before using it in work-related things.

It’s a special “where are you now?” season at Ask a Manager and I’m running updates from people who had their letters here answered in the past.

There will be more posts than usual this week, so keep checking back throughout the day.

Remember the letter-writer who thought their intern prank-called the office? Here’s the update.

So first, thank you for answering my question! Unfortunately, it was posted on what turned out to be a very busy day of an even busier week, so I wasn’t able to interact with the comments, though I did read all of them. I’ll start with the update and then address a few other things:

I wasn’t there when my boss and the person who oversees interns met with our intern to discuss the incident, but I was told he seemed very surprised and said he didn’t have anything to do with the prank call. We decided to take him at his word. Like I said, he didn’t really seem the type, and I know technology has advanced so far these days that I don’t want to jump to the worst conclusion at the cost of hurting someone who actually is innocent. Did he secretly pull a fast one on all of us? Maybe, but his internship went by without further incident so at worst he was guilty but learned his lesson (or at least learned about caller ID). He did also apologize to me for the incident, and he seemed sincere. At the end of his internship he also thanked me for taking time out of my schedule to teach him and find projects for him, so I’m really glad either way that he was able to see his internship through!

Just a few notes:

First, while in my original letter I expressed some annoyance from an employer perspective, from a personal perspective I thought it was hilarious. My department was laughing so much at the voicemail that a couple of other folks came over to see what was going on and also found it amusing. I’ve saved the message for future laughs.

Second, I will say once I got home and played the voicemail for my husband on my cell phone (as opposed to my work phone) it was much more obvious to me that the “woman” was clearly a young man trying to put on an old lady voice. He wasn’t doing too bad either (though he did waver a bit between a New York/New Jersey accent and a southern drawl at one point, so he needs to work on his dialects).

Third, there was some discussion about what name the pranker wanted to name our theater. Sorry to disappoint, but this wasn’t a Seymour Butz or Amanda Huginkiss situation. The name was just a regular name. In fact, we found out it was the real name of a couple who is apparently very philanthropic in a larger nearby city. This is one thing that made the prank less funny since it lent some credibility to the situation. Obviously we would never move forward assuming this was a real pledge without necessary paperwork, but it still could have had a negative impact on us or the couple in question.

Fourth, someone in the comments pointed out that I had made an error in calling $7 million a six-figure gift rather than a seven-figure gift. That was a mistake on my part (what can I say, I was a bit tipsy that afternoon…)

Finally, if anyone is interested, here is a full transcript of the prank phone call (including a bit at the end where the caller “forgot” to hang up). The names have been changed to protect the innocent (and the guilty):

“[starting off with a NY/NJ type accent] Hi (my name), yeah, hi, this is Prudence. I was told this was the right number to call. My husband and I are hoping to donate 7 million dollars to The Theater, um, and are interested in name recognition. Could you give this number a call back to discuss the possibility of donating many millions of dollars? Uh, I’m … I’d love it to be named the Prudence Snooter … Prudence and Wakeen Snooter Theater. And if that’s more like 12 or 15 million, [dipping into a southern drawl] my husband and I would be interested. Could you just give this number a call back? Thank you.

[back into the NY/NJ accent, in the distance] Wakeen, I just called The Theater … I called ‘em … Wakeen get off the toilet, I called The Theater. How much money are you willing to give them? 15? 14 million? That’s what I told the lady on the phone … she didn’t answer … oh gawd, it’s still recording … oh gawd.”