Ask a Manager

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

1. What if hiring a spouse is truly the best choice?

I know that having a manager supervising their partner is fraught with peril — I have read enough AAM to have some great examples! But if the partner is truly the best candidate, are there guardrails you recommend? This is in a church context, and the minister’s partner is supremely qualified to be our music director. They are both being totally up-front about it, looking at alternate supervisory roles (could have a board member be the partner’s supervisor?), checking with the denomination for policy recommendations, etc. I am on the board and the hiring committee and looking for guidance.

There has also a suggestion that the partner be supervised by our volunteer HR committee. This seems awful. Even if these volunteers are completely qualified as supervisors, there will be disagreements and possibly unclear chain of authority. I keep thinking of cartoons about things designed by committee.

You shouldn’t hire the partner at all. Even if they’re the best candidate, hiring the minister’s partner is way too fraught! What if the person needs to be fired? Can everyone involved be 100% sure the situation won’t be dragged out in painful ways while everyone tries to avoid firing the minister’s partner? Can everyone involved be 100% sure that firing the partner won’t cause issues between the board and the minister? To say nothing of all the other issues that can come up with you hire a top person’s partner to work in the same organization?

There are other candidates who don’t come with those issues. The partner is not the only music director in the world.

But if you go forward with it anyway, definitely don’t have them managed by committee; that’s a recipe for ensuring they’ll receive either inadequate feedback or no feedback, issues are unlikely to be addressed in a timely manner, and they won’t have a single point person for guidance and support, and it would be unfair to them as an employee. It’ll also highlight the special nature of their situation to other employees, compounding the discomfort that’s likely to already be there.

This is a bad idea all around.

2. My new coworker told me to “slow down”

I recently received some feedback that I don’t know how to interpret. My coworker told me I needed to “slow down” and that “I didn’t need to prove myself because I was already on the team.” I feel like I did something wrong, but I’m not sure what.

I’m getting mixed messages here because my boss told me she wanted me trained on all practice areas by April, so I’ve been busting my butt trying to learn everything.

I don’t think I’ve been making any mistakes in my work, I’ve been asking good questions, and trying to take initiative on some projects. I’m not sure if this has anything to do with it, but I transitioned into this role in local government after several months of being unemployed and coming off of 8+ years in corporate roles. I’m scared to lose this job because I really enjoy it and my teammates, but “slowing down” is not really something I’m used to.

Well, it’s possible that your coworker told you to slow down because you’re moving at a speed that’s out of sync with their culture and are at risk of making mistakes, overlooking important context, or alienating team members … but it’s also possible they told you that because they’re threatened by you and/or worry about being outshined. I don’t know which of those it is, but your boss will probably know and this is a good conversation to have with her. At a minimum you should sit down with her and ask for her sense of how things are going … and ideally as part of that you would share the feedback you heard and ask if she agrees with it (and maybe whether it points to any context on the team that you should be taking into account).

3. Applicant lied on resume; should I tell her boss?

I am a director and recently received a resume from an employee at a partner organization. Our industry is small, and it’s common for employees to move between organizations. However, after reviewing her resume, I am certain she is misrepresenting her job duties.

I am friends with the director of her current organization and recently spoke with her about this employee. She has caused significant disruption within her current organization, including issues with a program we collaborate on. The duties she listed on her resume are not ones she was responsible for. I know this because we worked with different employees on these projects. Additionally, she included several responsibilities that, according to her director, were not part of her role and even led to disciplinary action.

Normally, I would not disclose to another organization that their employee is job searching. However, I also feel a sense of responsibility to inform my colleague that this employee is falsifying job duties under their name. If the situation were reversed, I would want to know. Should I tell her?

No. The appropriate consequence for lying on her resume is for you not to interview or hire her; it’s not to have her job search outed to her current employer.

4. Should I tell companies I’m interviewing with that I might be suing the government?

I was just fired by DOGE. I was not a probationary employee, and there is reason to believe the firing was due to political considerations and therefore illegal. I’ve been told that I may be a strong lead plaintiff for one of the class-action lawsuits that are being teed up. I am considering participating in one, for the sake of helping my fellow feds and preventing DOGE from destroying the government.

In the meantime, I also need to find another job outside government. Do I disclose to potential employers that if they hire me I could end up suing the government while working for them? It could impact them in three ways: (1) I would need to take time off at various points to spend on the lawsuit; (2) I could end up in the news, and my current employer would probably be mentioned in news reports, which would be viewed as a negative by some people reading those reports; (3) if the company does work for the government, a lawsuit by one of their employees could prevent them from winning new contracts.

Does the answer change if the company I’m applying to work for prefers to fly under the radar and generally tries to avoid press coverage?

My instinct is that, to protect my own interests, either I shouldn’t mention it at all until I’m hired, or I shouldn’t mention it until after I have an offer in hand. But this feels icky.

For people who don’t know what’s going on: Probationary employees in the federal government are being fired and are having it documented as being for “performance reasons” even when they’ve had glowing performance reviews and even when their managers oppose the firing. A slew of letters doing this to people went out on Saturday night (of all times). This is not only profoundly shitty from a human standpoint — being told you’re being fired for performance when your work has been good — but it will have practical ramifications too, since if they apply for another federal job in the future, this will come up during the background check.

Anyway, you definitely shouldn’t disclose the lawsuit/potential lawsuit until you have an offer, at the earliest — at which point you could maybe frame it as, “I want to let you know about this in case it’s something that you foresee causing issues.” But I’m not even convinced you should disclose it at that point; I see a stronger argument for not disclosing it at all, until and unless something specifically related to it comes up.

5. How to treat a coworker who’s struggling at work and has been moved into a different job

One of my coworkers who has been on my team has been transferred to a different role in the organization as a final Hail Mary before being fired if she doesn’t shape up.

It’s going to be awkward going forward because not only are we hiring for her old position, I am moving into her old desk. I will still see her daily and I’m wondering if it’s better to just pretend there’s nothing wrong and say nothing except pleasantries when I see her, or if congratulate her on her “new role” as if I don’t know why it’s happened (even though I have known for weeks and have been part of the decision-making around moving her). She has directly been told this is her last stop at our organization. Hoping for some professional guidance!

Treat her the way you would treat anyone who had just made an internal move that hadn’t been forced on them. You don’t need to congratulate her on the new job if you think that would be awkward, but otherwise try to mentally frame her in your head the exact same way you would anyone else who had simply changed roles. (Which means that you don’t need to feel weird or apologetic about having her old desk either.)

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

1. Canceling a women’s group because of DEI concerns

I’m a PhD student and it seems like my university is trying to cancel the Women in Computer Science networking group that I run. They’re going about it in a really weird way: rather than directly saying “this is illegal D.E.I.,” they’re trying to send us on a bureaucratic runaround to maintain the status quo of funding and booking rooms. We’re in New England, so I suspect it would be locally unpopular to bluntly state that they’re cancelling women’s groups due to D.E.I. How do I fight this? Just delay, delay, delay until this political storm blows over? Fight it head on? Go to the press?

Go to your campus media, and possibly your local media. That’s outrageous.

The only DEI that’s “illegal” is giving a preference to one demographic group over another; gathering to support a particular group or to discuss issues affecting them is not illegal, even under the new federal directives that have been issued. This is a crock.

2. Are minimum requirements really an absolute minimum?

I’ve read your advice that it’s usually okay to apply if I meet about 80% of the qualifications for a job, but does the category of qualifications matter? When job postings split their criteria into “minimum” and “ideal,” is it fine to apply to jobs where I don’t (exactly) meet the “minimum”?

For example, a job will say a candidate “must have (a) five years of experience working with Role; (b) three years of experience in Environment; (c) two years of experience doing Work; and (d) familiarity with This, That, and The Other.” And that “an ideal candidate” would also have qualities/experience (e-h).

I’ll have (b-g) but (a) is iffy: say they want someone with five years experience working with C-level executives and I have five years with directors, or my relevant experience was 15 years ago in a job that isn’t on my resume because it’s otherwise completely unrelated to my current career. I have been applying anyway, addressing the discrepancy in the cover letter, but am I right to still apply?

Yes. If you didn’t have anything near (a), then it wouldn’t make sense to apply since that’s listed as a minimum requirement. But your experience is close enough that it’s reasonable to throw your hat in the ring. It could turn out that they’re being absolute rigid about that requirement, but there’s frequently room for some flexibility of interpretation if you have all the other qualifications. You can’t really know from the outside whether that will be the case or not, but you’re close enough to it that if you’re interested, you should apply.

Related:
should I apply to jobs I’m not fully qualified for?

3. Taking sick leave for emotional upset

I’m wondering your take on something I did a few years ago. I had something very upsetting happen in my personal life and was having a hard time focusing on work; I basically wanted to curl up and cry all day. I work remotely and had a light day — two meetings and no urgent to-dos. I went to both of the meetings but other than that didn’t do any work and used PTO to cover the hours.

To me, this felt like the mental health equivalent of a bad cold. I could have powered through and worked a full day, and I would have if needed. But on that particular day I didn’t need to, so I chose to take it easy. (I was back to work the next day.) What do you think?

That’s a completely legitimate use of a sick day. Mental health is part of your health!

Related:
what do I say when I’m calling in sick for a mental health day?

4. Can I just use the phonetic pronunciation of my name as my digital name?

I have a name that’s pronounced differently from the typical pronunciation. Let’s say my name is Aron – pronounced like A-Ron, not like “Erin.”

Coworkers call me A-Ron, until they see an email exchange with my name spelled Aron and now they call me “Erin.” Would it be okay if I changed my digital signature to A-Ron, so that people (coworkers and clients) will stop making their own assumptions about how to pronounce my name based on how it’s spelled? This is so frustrating to me, to have people who use to call me A-Ron, suddenly start calling me “Erin” because they saw my name in print.

Does anyone care if my digital name is legally correct? Going a step further, what are the legalities when I am writing a contract? I assume that I would use the correct spelling of my name to sign. But would I place the phonetic spelling in the contract, so that people see it and continue to call me by the correct name?

The phonetic pronunciation isn’t normally included in my business emails, but I do include it in my personal email account.

It’s going to cause problems and confusion if you spell your name one way in emails but need it spelled a different way on official forms and contracts (or work travel arrangements that someone else makes for you, etc.). But the solution for work emails is the same solution you’re already using in personal emails: include a note with the phonetic pronunciation in your signature. So your sign-off would be:

Aron Porcupine (pronunciation: A-ron)

That’s not uncommon to do if you have a frequently-mispronounced name, and it should solve a lot of it. You’ll also need to be willing to correct people in the moment if they mispronounce it, though.

5. Can I accept a job offer on the spot?

Can I accept a job right away if I’m sure I want it?

The context: There is one university in town, and I’ve been fairly certain for several months now that (a) it’s the only place better than my current position regularly posting jobs and (2) I want to leave my current position. I’ve applied for several jobs at the university over the past year, interviewed for two before this one, and been a finalist for one, so I’ve already talked to HR about their benefits and PTO. The salary range is available online. I would have twice as much maternity leave. I already know I want the job.

Assuming there are no surprises such as a lower salary than I expect, is there any reason I should delay and ask for a day or two to think it over? I am planning to negotiate salary right away if offered the job.

If you already feel confident you want to accept, there are no surprises in the offer, and there are no additional questions you need answered before making up your mind, there’s no reason you can’t accept on the spot (or begin negotiations immediately)! A lot of people do that.

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

1. Boss said, “Well, someone’s parents didn’t love them” about me

In preparation for a team-building retreat, all employees in my department were asked to submit a baby photo for a “match the baby photo to the employee” icebreaker activity. The request for baby photos was framed as a requirement, not an opt-in request. I wasn’t able to get a baby photo because my mom is my only living family, and we are estranged. The request stirred up some *feelings* and left me feeling pretty crummy for a few days. I considered saying something to my boss about how this required activity might be a little rough for some people (for a variety of reasons!), but I decided to just be easy-going about it. Instead of a baby photo I submitted a cute baby animal picture instead.

The actual retreat activity involved going through each photo individually on an overhead monitor with the group guessing who the photo belonged to. My boss was “emcee-ing” the activity with a running commentary on all the photos. My baby animal photo came up and my boss commented, “Well, someone’s parents didn’t love them” (!!!). The thing is, my boss is actually normally a really wonderful boss that I think very highly of! I know it was just a dumb off-the-cuff remark. But of course it still really hurt and has stuck with me.

So my question is: should I say something to my boss? Mostly I just want to let it go. But it’s been eating away at me — I fear this is going to negatively impact the way I interact with my boss in the future. If I did say something, what would I even say? I’m sure my boss would be absolutely mortified and feel horrible if I revisit this with her.

She should be mortified. That is an appropriate consequence for what she said, and it’s a fair consequence even if she is a lovely person who just had a brain blip in the moment and didn’t think about the ways that remark could land — not only for people estranged from family, but foster kids who don’t have photos from their childhood, people who experienced other trauma at that age and so their early years are not happy memories, and more. Even aside from her remark, this particular game is a bad idea to play at work for those reasons.

You could say this to her: “I know you intended it to be a light-hearted comment, but it really bothered me. I don’t know if you realized how that game, and that remark, would be experienced by anyone who’s estranged from their family, or someone who grew up in foster care, or people from other rough situations. I know you’d never want to be hurtful, so I wanted to share how it landed with me.”

It’s okay if she feels bad about it. Sometimes that’s how we learn lessons.

2. How do I work with a former manager I can’t stand?

This is probably the pettiest question you’re getting from a federal worker right now, but: What is the absolute bare minimum of courtesy you can give to a coworker you’re now trapped in the office with since there’s no telework?

For context, said coworker is my former supervisor, with whom I had such an incredibly bad relationship I got to move to another team as part of an EEO settlement. This was after she filed disciplinary charges against me, which prompted me to charge her with workplace harassment. All those proceedings are still ongoing, but she hasn’t been my supervisor for about a year.

Anyway, it’s a small office and everyone knows everyone, and she and I are still in the same even smaller work unit, so I’m going to have to break my vow to never speak to her again. How can I prep so I can act professional with someone who made my life a misery for years?

You do need to be civil, because it would be unprofessional not to — and that would reflect on you, not her, no matter how justified your dislike. You don’t need to socialize with her or initiate small talk, but if she says “hello” or “good morning” or similar, you need to return the greeting, and if she asks how your weekend was or otherwise initiates chat, you need to be courteous in responding. You don’t need to be warm, and you don’t need to answer with anything other than something bland and neutral, but you can’t freeze her out. A good litmus test to have in your head is: if someone who didn’t know anything about either of you or the history observed the interaction, would you appear rude or not?

To mentally prepare for encountering her again, it might help to frame it for yourself as you being the bigger person: you will be civil to her because you are a professional person and she can’t change that about you, and also because you aren’t going to give her the power to make you look bad in front of others.

3. Lecturer said “fuck consent” about using AI for creative work

After a decade working full-time in an office, I went back to school last year to finish my bachelor’s in art and design. In a lecture series class last week, a professional graphic designer straight-up told 200 college students that if they don’t use generative AI in their creative work, they will be irrelevant and essentially fail. He then went on to showcase professional work he and his company made using AI, and spoke about how a project that they wanted to make using only AI was “unfortunately” scrapped (for not complying with fair use laws — apparently the art they stole used was too distinctive).

I am still in shock over the fact that a professional designer, with a successful company, admitted out loud with no shame that he uses AI to create the work he gets paid for. When I asked if he had any concerns about AI using artwork that has been illegally scraped from the internet, he said, and I quote, “Fuck consent.” And the professors backed him up! They said that AI is “just a tool, like a camera, or Adobe software,” and we have to “use our own moral compass” in deciding if we’ll use it or not. Astounding. For what it’s worth, I find the ethical and environmental effects of AI to be completely detrimental, and really have no respect for the lecturer or my professors in saying that these issues don’t actually matter.

I’ve been pondering if I have any ethical standing to name-and-shame this company and creator, or create Google/Glassdoor reviews (anonymously). I want to, but I also wonder if using AI this casually in professional creative settings is becoming the norm. I’ve been telling everyone I know about this company, because holy crap, the blatant disregard and disrespect shown to the students who spoke up about the problems with AI was the most unprofessional thing I think I’ve ever seen. And if I were thinking of working with this graphic designer, I’d want to know if they were using AI for the work I’m paying them to create. Is this an absolutely wild urge? Am I completely out of line? I guess I’m just wanting a reality check because I feel like I have to do something to counteract the absolute insanity of the lecture.

AI is becoming common in many settings, but that doesn’t mean that its use shouldn’t be disclosed to clients who presumably believe they’re paying for original and proprietary work, and it definitely doesn’t mean that artists who don’t use it will be irrelevant and fail (WTF?). Also, anyone who stands before a class of students and says “fuck consent” (on pretty much any issue I can think of, including this one) should be named and shamed, disavowed, and never invited to speak anywhere again.

Your professors aren’t wrong that people have to “use their own moral compass” in deciding if they’ll use AI or not, but there are still many, many situations where its use would be objectively wrong (or even just prohibited).

Maybe you can ask that your class bring in someone to speak to the counterpoint on this issue.

4. How to answer “can we contact your manager” when you have no contact information for them

So my most recent, non-current job was a temporary government contract, we only spoke to our supervisors on company phones, and the contract has since been terminated and presumably most of the contractors have scattered to the four winds (very common with this type of contract).

What should I put when future employers ask if they can contact a supervisor? Other than that, the most recent job I’m still at and the one before that I left about 10 years ago. So far I’ve been trying with old bosses who no longer work for my current company but there’s not many of them (and sadly, soon to be one less) so I feel like it seems a little sketch to have no recent contactable references.

When applications ask if they can contact a previous supervisor, they’re asking about your permission, not how easy it will be. Answering no risks being interpreted as “I left this company on bad terms” and/or “this manager will say bad things about me.” So you should answer yes, they have your permission. Whether or not they will succeed if they try is a different question. (However, if they’re asking your permission to contact a current manager, that’s a different question and it’s fine to say no to that; that’s common since people’s managers often don’t know that they’re looking.)

More here:
stop saying “no” when job applications ask “can we contact this manager?”