boss edits emails before forwarding them to his wife, manager wants to pull an offer over traffic tickets, and more

by Alison Green on March 15, 2024

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

1. My boss edits emails before forwarding them to his wife

My boss always forwards every convo in an email chain. However, when he forwards anything to his wife (who is the accountant), he deletes certain threads I have written. Specifically, one recent example was one where he mentioned looking forward to me attending an event that requires overnight accommodations. I responded that I’m looking forward to seeing him and the other employees and confirmed that I would be staying overnight. I then followed up with a second email asking about company shirts. When he forwarded the email about the shirts, he left in his initial email to me but would have had to manually delete my response. Why would he do that?

I’m guessing there’s something up with his relationship with his wife where either (a) she’s overly reactionary when he exchanges normal pleasantries with female employees or (b) he thinks she will be. Who knows why, but I can imagine it feels a little icky on your end to be caught up in that when you’re just offering routine niceties.

2. Hiring manager wants to pull a pregnant candidate’s offer over traffic tickets

We offered a candidate a job, contingent on passing the background check, and submitted her info to our third party right away. The background report has been pending for a very long time, like 10 days. Usually that is because of a California jurisdiction (they take forever!) or a remote rural area where I always picture someone’s grandma searching the basement for records to provide in a dusty old courthouse. This time it wasn’t that, it was a large metropolitan area that is all electronic reporting and usually comes back same day. So I went to our state Bureau of Public Safety website and put in the candidate’s name to see if I could find anything out, and she has two outstanding warrants for her arrest! They are for traffic tickets, but one of them is over five years old.

Our normal procedure would be to wait for the background to go through, then send the notice of adverse action, etc. However the candidate has been checking every day to see the progress and is eager to start, so I sent an email telling her what I found and that it may jeopardize the offer. She apparently went directly to the website and paid the fine on one of the warrants and made arrangements to go to court to deal with the other.

I am really torn. This is for a managerial position (head of a department) and it definitely could cause complications with our insurance carrier if the person has to travel or drive company vehicles, not to mention showing a lack of judgement that is concerning. Then again, these things happen. The hiring manager wants to rescind the offer, even though we have been looking to fill this position since last year.

Further complicating matters, the candidate disclosed that she was pregnant after she accepted the offer, so we don’t want to make it look like we are retaliating due to the pregnancy, but the manager was definitely not happy when he found out. I have a call in to our attorney to get his take but I thought maybe I would throw this at you as well.

I mean, they’re traffic tickets. It doesn’t make sense to pull an offer over traffic tickets, unless they were for something like reckless driving and driving is a key element of the role.

If you’re concerned it will cause problems if the person needs to travel or drive company vehicles, look into that and find out for sure. Right now it sounds like you’re speculating, and if you’re considering pulling an offer over it, you should find out with more certainty.

The bigger issue is that you have a hiring manager who’s unhappy that a new hire is pregnant, and just happens to want to rescind the offer the first time he gets a way to do it. It’s worth questioning whether his concern over the traffic tickets is actually credible (after you’ve been searching for a year?!) or whether it’s actually about the pregnancy … and I’d be having a serious talk with him about why the company is committed to following the law when it comes to pregnancy discrimination, as well as spelling out what that needs to look like in his management of her.

3. Head of HR accidentally sent an all-staff email calling employees “whiny”

I work at a 200-person company. Our head of HR intended to send an email to a department head but accidentally sent an all-staff email. In it, he called the staff “whiny” and said we are exaggerating complaints about a major new change in the company.

Staff are alternately laughing and furious, of course. This person has a history of foot-in-mouth behavior and is generally not well liked or trusted by staff. I’ve talked to fellow managers both within the company and out about what appropriate follow-up action looks like as a result. One said an apology email. Another said he should be fired, as this is quite the error since he leads HR. Just curious what your take is.

If I were managing him, the big questions on my mind would be: What does this say about the way he sees his role and the people he needs to work with, particularly in light of the history with him? And can he still be effective in his job or is this a last straw in what sounds like an already very problematic history? Having an untrusted head of HR is a problem already; having one who’s openly antagonizing the staff who need to have some degree of trust in his impartiality makes that problem even bigger. And last, what does he think he needs to do to repair his credibility with employees? Talking that through with him might tell you all you need to know about whether it’s salvageable.

4. Should we say more about salary in our job postings?

A few years ago, my organization finally started posting salary ranges in our job descriptions (hooray!) and I’m thrilled that that’s becoming more the norm. It’s good for equity and, at least in theory, it saves everyone the time and effort of going through a whole interview process and having it all fall apart in the end because of salary. But somehow we’re still running into that problem.

We set a fairly wide salary range (say, $110K-140K), because people with a wide range of experience and skills can fit into the same position. We reserve the very top of the range for those who tick nearly every box and have, say, 15 years of experience rather than the minimum five. Ultimately, we base the salary offer on skills, experience, and internal equity (i.e., what other staff with the same title and qualifications are earning).

A few times recently, we’ve had excellent candidates who are earlier in their careers than many of our current staff, and/or who don’t have direct experience in our field but show a lot of promise to learn on the job. To my mind, it’s obvious that they’d be at the lower end of the salary range, but once we reach the offer stage, they’ll counter with the number at the very top. We may be able to come up a little but not a ton, and then they walk away.

Since it’s now becoming a pattern, I think the real solution is to increase all of our staff salaries because clearly we’re not competitive at the lower end of the range, but while I work on pushing for that change (a whole other letter), is there any language you’d suggest including in our job postings that might mitigate the problem in the near term? Right now we just say the range is X-Y, depending on experience and qualifications. Should we include the equity rationale? Should we say explicitly that the top of the range is reserved for candidates who tick every box? Should we introduce a more specific salary discussion earlier in the interview process? (When I’ve been recruited for jobs with a wide salary range, I’ve said up-front if I’d only consider the top of the range, but most of our candidates don’t do that, especially if it’s a direct hire, not through a recruiter.) Or is it just human nature to assume you’ll be at the top of the range, so it won’t really make a difference?

It’ll help to be more explicit about it in the job posting. Use language like, “The top of the range is reserved for candidates with XYZ qualifications and experience. Candidates earlier in their careers or without XYZ experience will typically be offered the lower part of the range.”

Ideally, you’d also bring up salary early on in your interview process, using similar language — so that if people aren’t happy with where they’d fall in your range, they can opt out early rather than going through your whole process.

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my coworker is working alone overnight despite explicit instructions not to

by Alison Green on March 14, 2024

A reader writes:

I work in a small research lab (less than 10 people total, including our CEO) as a scientist. I’m in charge of OSHA compliance and ensuring that we’re following local and federal safety standards. We work with hazardous materials, including biohazardous materials, compressed gasses, and chemicals.

One of my coworkers, who I have no authority over, has been staying at work overnight, working a total of up to 36 hours at a time. He sometimes takes naps in between, but not always. He doesn’t record this time in order to avoid getting in trouble with our boss. He has been told multiple times that he isn’t allowed to do this, so he he tries to keep it a secret. However, sometimes he tells me in a cheeky way, even though he knows I don’t approve.

He started doing this during a crunch period when we were trying to collect a large amount of data in a short period of time, so he was staying to run experiments. When we pointed out that the risk of screwing up is higher when you don’t sleep, he got extremely defensive and would say that unless we found fault with his data, there was no problem. I figured the behavior would stop once we were done with the project, but he has continued to do it. I broached the topic once since then and he got angry, claiming that people are trying to micromanage him. So I don’t know why he’s still doing it, or even what he’s doing.

He is otherwise a really good coworker and I like working with him a lot, so I don’t want to get him fired.

I can’t find any specific laws that say he isn’t allowed to be at work overnight, so maybe it’s fine? I guess my questions are:

1) Do I have a legal responsibility here? What about a moral one?

2) Should I just keep the secret and pretend not to know? Am I an asshole if I tell our boss, potentially getting him fired?

3) Am I overreacting by thinking it’s dangerous for someone to be in a lab alone at night?

I can’t speak to hazardous materials laws at all, but what you’ve described sure sounds like a safety risk and a legal liability to me. You’d have standing to speak up about that regardless, but you have even more standing to speak up because you’re charged with ensuring lab safety. Given the safety implications, I’d say yes, you do have a moral obligation to say something.

If something happens while your coworker is there alone overnight and it comes out that you — the person in charge of safety — knew and didn’t say anything … that’s not good.

And no, you wouldn’t be an asshole for telling your boss. If it were something more minor, I’d suggest first giving your coworker a warning that you weren’t willing to keep his secret anymore: “Dude, you know you can’t sleep here and it’s a safety issue. If you keep doing it, I’m obligated to tell (boss). Please don’t put me in that position.” But with this level of seriousness and because your coworker has already shown he’s willing to hide what he’s doing (and might just deliberately hide it from you if you warn him) and because he’s gotten angry when you’ve raised it before, just talk to your boss. Your coworker probably isn’t going to get fired over this (unless your boss told him the last time that he’d be fired if he didn’t stop, in which case that’s on your coworker anyway) but your boss needs to know.

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update: my boss keeps asking me to do things that aggravate our community partners

by Alison Green on March 14, 2024

Remember the letter-writer whose boss kept asking them to do things that aggravated their community partners? Here’s the update.

I wanted to wait to offer my update after I was settled in my new job.

As you and the commenters predicted, this was a bad situation. Fergus was a bully, but one thing I realized is that he was also someone who over-promised and then expected to bully (or have someone else bully) others to do what he wanted. So telling Org A he could get Org B to do something but not asking Org B, things like that.

He was the same way with staff, because all of the staff were part-time workers (25 or 30 hours a week) with no PTO or benefits, but everyone was hired with the promise that he would turn the job into a full-time job if we could prove ourselves.

I liked the part-time hours (for me, 25 hours a week) because of family obligations, but other staff did not. However, my job did not work well at all in 25 hours a week. Not just the quantity of the work but also because I was dealing with a lot of outside partners, scheduling meetings, calls, and so forth, and that’s hard to do when you work part-time and everyone else is working full-time. So I was already interviewing by the time “The Project” happened.

Fergus was contacted by an outside partner who wanted to find a contractor who could help them create a new program for their nonprofit. He convinced them that they could pay us to do it for them (quite a bit of money — I saw the documentation). He decided I should handle The Project, even though it was completely out of my area of expertise. I pushed back because of my workload, but he said he would move some of my tasks to others so I could do The Project.

The Project involved me spending one day a week at the partner organization’s office for eight weeks, plus followup emails, phone calls, and zoom meetings. He refused to increase my hours and only transferred some small easy tasks, so I was trying to cram the rest of my job into 20 hours a week. I was stressed out, pushing things ahead, and generally frustrated, but I did enjoy The Project and the people there and thought it would look good on my resume (it did, eventually) so I made it all work.

When The Project was over, Fergus called me in for a meeting where he was very complimentary — he, like a lot of manipulative people, could lay on the compliments when he wanted — until he said that the most impressive part was how I was able to do the rest of my job in only 20 hours a week which made him realize I didn’t need to work 25 hours unless I was working on a special project! So he was cutting my hours to 20, effective immediately.

Somehow he managed to act shocked and offended when I got a new job and gave my notice six weeks later.

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what’s the most Machiavellian thing you’ve seen or done at work?

by Alison Green on March 14, 2024

A few years back, we talked about Machiavellian things we’ve seen done at work — self-serving schemes or manipulation that you watched being carried out (or carried out yourself!).

The stories were amazing, including someone who pretended to be Canadian for months in order to get a day off for Canadian Thanksgiving, someone who submitted his awful boss’s resume to a bunch of recruiters (it worked and the boss left for a new job), and someone who learned that if she occasionally showed up to work without makeup , her boss would insist she must be sick and make her take the day off (paid).

Let’s do it again. We’re looking for stories of underhanded machinations, double-dealing, and conniving in the workplace.

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is it patronizing to say I’m proud of my team, asking for help from a candidate we rejected, and more

by Alison Green on March 14, 2024

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

1. Is it patronizing to say I’m proud of my team?

I’m a manager of a small team of 10 and recently they had a very visible win for the larger company. At a department meeting, I said I was very proud to be their manager and that they all did an exceptional job. Everyone seemed to take this well, but one (younger, newer) employee had a visible negative reaction. I asked a colleague I trust whether they noticed this too (we were on zoom at the time) and they said maybe it was because me saying I’m proud was patronizing. This surprised me, I am proud of my team and have expressed this multiple times. What’s your take on this? Is it patronizing or maybe is it just too “motherly” of an expression for a manager?

It depends on context. Most people won’t see it as patronizing if it comes from a good manager who supports their team and makes obvious contributions themselves. But in a situation where work gets done despite the manager or where the manager is a clear problem in other ways … yeah, at least some people will find it patronizing. So it’s very context-dependent.

Some of it is also personal style. Personally, I’ve preferred to frame it as “I’m proud of us / what we’ve done” rather than “I’m proud of you / what you’ve done” — because something about “proud of you” does sound a little parental to me. (And weirdly, almost diminishing of the person? Like I feel superior to them and am praising them for their adorable efforts? This might just be me.) But I’ve heard managers say it where it doesn’t sound that way so I do think it’s at least in part personal style.

2. Asking for help from a candidate we rejected

A few months ago, I helped with the hiring process for two openings in a nonprofit that would have reported to me and another employee. One of the candidates was Cat, who was strong but didn’t have quite the experience of the hirees.

In the time since, I’ve learned that Cat has an extremely popular newsletter that goes out to nonprofits, schools, and other organizations in the area. Part of the newsletter highlights community programs, similar to the ones I work with and was hiring for. They do this for no fee.

I’ve thought about asking Cat if they would be able to highlight our programming in their newsletter, but my colleague thinks that since we previously turned down Cat for a position, this makes us look slimy and entitled, and that if we wanted to draw on Cat’s help we should’ve hired them. Are they overreacting or do they have a point?

Yeah, don’t do it. “Slimy and entitled” is a bit much, but it’s very likely to come across badly.

To be clear, this isn’t 100% logical; if Cat had never applied for a job with you, it would have been fine to ask about being included in their newsletter. And I don’t agree with your coworker that if you wanted Cat’s help, you should have hired them; you can wish you had someone’s help with X even when it doesn’t make sense to hire them for Y. But once you reject someone, asking them to do things for you for free (even things they’re doing for others) is going rub a lot of people the wrong way.

3. Political signs at our business when we’re hiring

I work for a small business and they’re having trouble recruiting for certain positions due to the nature of the work and limited number of people qualified. The owners of the company have decided again to put up political signs right in front of our business that some of us believe are turning off potential hires. The signs are for political candidates with poor track records for trans/women/gay rights. If I had seen these when I interviewed, I would have turned around and left. The office is also dominated by people who share the signs’ politics, which is probably not a coincidence.

The owners absolutely do not believe it’s an issue and refuse to remove them at least during the hiring process. Do you have any input on this? It is causing a lot of stress on the other staff with these empty positions.

The signs are functioning as truth in advertising; let them stay. Candidates deserve to know what kind of environment they’d be working in; the signs do an effective job of telling them.

4. Former employee is claiming her new firm worked on our logo, but they didn’t

Ten years ago, Miranda worked as director of marketing at my nonprofit for several years. One project of hers was collaborating with a team of consultants to redesign our logo. While she represented our org in the overall project, the consultants performed the actual graphic design and brand architecture. Two years after our logo redesign, she was let go from the org under not-positive circumstances.

After she and my org parted ways, she founded and became CEO of her own local boutique marketing firm, MiranCo. For a while now, she’s had between 1-3 interns/associates as employees. I was hired as marketing manager at my org two years after Miranda left (my immediate predecessor is still at my org, now in a non-marketing role), and I have been here for seven years.

Because Miranda and I live and work in a relatively close-knit community, we are acquainted. We have collaborated on a couple projects, ones both involving my org and ones when I freelanced before I was hired, and in those projects both of us contributed as part of a larger collaborative group. However, we are not friends, and it’s clear from our interactions that she views me as junior.

Today, I noticed a social media reel that MiranCo posted, showcasing logos that they ostensibly produced. While many of the logos in the reel appeared to have been designed by her firm in recent years (labeled in the video as “New Logo”), my org’s logo is also featured (labeled as “Refinement”). I know for a fact that neither Miranda nor MiranCo has worked on, refined, or altered our logo in any way after she left my org. However, the language MiranCo uses in the caption seems to be pretty clearly claiming us as a client: “Showing some of our best logos” … “Celebrating the creativity of MiranCo” … “Our diverse collection of logos.”

She has also included press hits from her time employed at my org under her firm’s press hit page, presenting them (albeit less explicitly) as work MiranCo did.

Is this ethical or a common practice? Could I start my own small business in, say, graphic design and cite design projects that I did for my org in promotional material for my firm? My understanding is that work performed while on payroll at an org is property of that org, but I’m not sure how to categorize this, since it could equally read as perhaps a resume of sorts.

If it’s not ethical, do I have any standing to ask her to stop representing work that she did while employed at my org as work that her firm did? If so, what might be the best way to go about it? Is it a job for my org’s CEO instead (a different person than the one she worked under)? Or should I let this go and laugh from a distance?

Let it go. It’s probably true that she helped “refine” your org’s logo even though she didn’t do the actual design. It’s not unheard of for people to include work like this; her reel sounds like it’s essentially a portfolio of her work, and while she might be stretching the truth about her involvement in the project, it’s not egregious enough that it warrants intervention. It gets sketchier if the reel claims this is work her company did, but if the reel is more promoting Miranda’s work, it’s more reasonable.

(If it did warrant intervention — which, again, I don’t think it does — that intervention definitely shouldn’t be from you; it would be something you’d alert someone more senior to and they’d decide if they wanted to do anything. But unless it was a really black-and-white case of someone laying claim to something they didn’t do, there’s a good chance your company would just roll their eyes and ignore it.)

5. Why do job applications ask candidates to self-disclose race, gender, etc.?

I am in the thick of applying for jobs (thanks, tech layoffs!) and am wondering how the “voluntary self-identification and disclosures” on applications actually work. These questions always state they are voluntary and are for government reporting purposes relating to equal employment opportunities, but I’ve often wondered if they might have an impact on my application? There are generally four questions about the following: gender, race or ethnicity, veteran status, and disability. I typically answer them accurately, but each question always includes the option to “decline to identify” or “do not wish to answer.”

They’re asking because companies over a certain size, as well as companies with government contracts over a certain dollar amount, are required by law to report the demographic makeup of their applicants and employees to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (in the aggregate, not individually). However, they’re not allowed to consider your answers when they consider your application; in fact, they’re legally required to store the information separately from the rest of your application. (The exception to this is veteran status; in some cases employers are permitted to give preference to veterans.) They’re also not legally allowed to penalize you for not answering. All of which is to say … it’s fully up to you and shouldn’t affect your application at all unless you’re a veteran receiving veteran preference.

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how do people take months off from work to film a reality TV show?

by Alison Green on March 13, 2024

A reader writes:

I’m watching my country’s Big Brother, and I’ve noticed the employment ranges of the contestants tend to be either “gig economy” (bartender, delivery) which, to not denigrate how important those positions are, is less likely to come with the psychological attachment to the job as someone who’s worked up their career ladder for ten years; self-employed/contracted and can decide their own time away from work; or students, who can take a gap year. There are no long-term career contestants, which I think is reducing the variety of personalities and life experiences going into the social broiler these shows make their bread and butter on.

My question is: considering reality shows will NDA your participation until day one, how would you go about informing your boss that you’ll be away for two/three months for a television show you can’t actually tell them about with the hope of still having your position, and career, to come back to?

This is academic, by the way. I’m camera shy.

I think your answer is in the question: the only people who can really pull this off are people who don’t have traditional jobs or who are planning to take a break between jobs.

(I also have the impression that a lot of reality show contestants are actors/entertainers, so this sort of is their job. Not in the sense that James, an actor from LA, is hired to portray “Chad, a banker from Boston,” but in the sense that aspiring actors try out to appear as themselves on many of these shows. Which is why you see a lot of gig work and other jobs that aspiring actors might have on the side.)

Now, theoretically, could someone with a more traditional career take several months away from it to be on a reality show? Not easily, but it could be doable in some cases. If your employer valued you enough and you’d been there a while, in some jobs you might be able to negotiate a few months off. If you signed an NDA prohibiting you from saying why, you could say it was for travel (since presumably some travel would be involved) or something in the entertainment industry that you couldn’t talk about. Of course, you’d need to factor in how your employer would react once the show aired; some might be delighted/fine with it and others might really not appreciate that clients might now know you for your bad behavior on show X. Theoretically, it could even jeopardize your job, depending on your type of work.

People with more traditional careers that they’ve invested in long-term are also more likely to worry about how appearing on a show might affect them professionally in the future. If you’re edited to look like the show villain or you achieve notoriety in some other way, will future employers see you through that lens rather than as The Guy Who’s Really Great With Excel? The greater your notoriety, the greater the risk.

Of course, the type of show matters. Appearing on, say, a baking show — or a show designed to showcase your talent in the field you work in — is less risky than something like Big Brother.

Relevant anecdote: Years ago I knew someone who worked on Capitol Hill who appeared on the wonderfully horrible reality show Blind Date. He took a lot of teasing for it (particularly for a shot of him running into the ocean with his date and falling flat on his face) but it didn’t seem to affect his career. (Notably, that was more of a week-long commitment than a months-long one.)

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updates: parking lot gate wars, the employer that wanted more notice, and more

by Alison Green on March 13, 2024

Here are four updates from past letter-writers.

1. My company is issuing new work-from-home standards because we should have the hang of it by now (previous updates:1, 2, 3)

I have a happy update for you!

I ended up needing to pause my job hunt as I ended up having surgery and being out on medical leave for 3 months, and when I got back, the long-time operations manager (who was the right-hand person to the COO) had left for another opportunity.

Alison, I kid you not, after they left we learned that the operations manager had made up ALL of the ridiculous policies without the C-suite knowing, while saying they were the directive of the CEO/COO (including inventing the COL raises that were never actually on the table – I’m not sure where they were going with that one). C-suite lack of involvement notwithstanding, everything vastly improved with this person gone. A lot of other sketchy things have been uncovered since they left and I know there has been a decent amount of clean-up required. The new operations manager is awesome (and a totally reasonable human being) and there has been a really positive culture shift since she came on board.

I’m currently interviewing for two positions outside of the organization that both seem like great opportunities (and both are in cities close to my friends and family), so I hope to be in a new position in 2024!

2. Parking lot gate wars (#2 at the link)

Re-reading my letter, I realized my stressed, perfectionist attitude contributed to the problem. This, plus how I was brought up, meant I thought that if it didn’t go perfectly, it was something to stress about. I have been working to get rid of this attitude and feel well on the way.

It helps that I’m part-time here (full-time but work at a separate office too) and job searching. And it’s still easier to deal with than my old nightmare boss, which is a whole other letter.

I have also found better phrasing for visitors: “please park on the road, as the parking lot belongs to the school.” This has gone over with a lot more understanding and acceptance.

I don’t really know if the school receptionist was scolding me or if I was taking her approach personally. In any case, she hasn’t had any cause to come knocking.

3. I was rejected for not having experience I do have (#4 at the link)

I wrote in about whether to address a misunderstanding about my experience when replying to a job rejection, in order to keep the door open for future opportunities. I appreciated Alison’s advice and the commentariat’s thoughts too — especially because I hadn’t considered that it was most likely a miscommunication between manager and recruiter. I did reply to the email with a simple but gracious “thank you for the opportunity,” with a subtle line to correct the record just in case, along the lines of “I can see how my current work isn’t as X as your ChairProduct is, and I appreciate the feedback on how I might better highlight my past experience in X for the future.”

Four months later, I noticed that a position was open again, seemingly the same one (or maybe a new one, very similarly worded). I reached back out to the recruiter and learned that one of the people I had interviewed with had been promoted to the head of the department! By that time, my casual interest had turned into an active job search, and so I was able to reopen that door to have a 1:1 discussion with the hiring manager. It just happened to be that right around that time I received a compelling offer elsewhere, so I decided not to move forward with their interview process, but I did cement a great professional connection.

I’ve been in my new role for less than a year, but the job has turned out to be significantly different than what was presented during hiring, and I’m afraid I’m already looking for a change. I’m reassured by Alison’s guidance that I get one “freebie” of changing jobs after less than a year, when the rest of my resume shows multiple years with employers, and so far there haven’t been any awkward “why are you leaving so soon?” questions in interviews. I’ve learned that, as much as I enjoy working from home, having strong connections to my colleagues is both important to me personally, and also makes a noticeable difference in how effective I can be in my role. I don’t think this requires being in an office together, but it at least requires more company-wide investment in remote collaboration practices, and I know now to really focus on and ask about that in my interviews. Thanks again to Alison’s advice, and to this community!

4. Can I give 2 weeks notice when my employer says they “expect” 4 weeks?

For my resignation notice, after consideration of your thoughts, I ended up providing a 3-week notice. I gave my notice the Friday just before Memorial Day in the U.S. and to me that felt fair with a shorter week due to the holiday. My supervisor was thankful for the extra week outside of a standard two-week notice which I appreciated. I did not receive any pushback from my supervisor or the administration about giving less than a 4-week notice per the policy. By the end of my last week of work, it was quite slow and I may have gotten away with a 2-week notice.

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there’s nothing I can do about my nightmare workload … right?

by Alison Green on March 13, 2024

A reader writes:

I’m in a rough spot at work. When I started nearly two years ago, this was a six-person company: two owners and four staff. One staff member, who split a workload with me, moved away a few months later. They posted his position immediately, but nobody from the first wave of applicants worked out, things got hectic, and by the time the dust settled I had been handling the full workload for so long that they never replaced him.

A few months ago, my de facto supervisor took a job elsewhere. Three weeks later, my last remaining coworker did the same. (The timing was coincidental even if the root causes were similar.) During her notice period, one of the two owners went on maternity leave. The remaining owner is a few years from retirement and largely focused on client relationships and big-picture decisions. This left me as the only person around with any operational know-how, in an industry where regulations require us to stay in operation. We hired someone who’s been fantastic, but training is another thing on my plate and there’s only so fast I can do it, particularly since we have no written procedures. It’s slow going and hugely time-consuming to create them, but I know in the long run it saves me time over the “figure it out, and then I’ll look it over and tell you all the things you couldn’t have known you were missing” way of doing things.

We’re slowly easing down from having 100% of all tasks involve me in some way, but we’re still upwards of 90%. (There’s client-specific variation even between comparable work items, so it takes a while for someone new to be able to fly solo.) We’re supposed to get another new hire after the maternity leave is over, but that’ll be another situation where it’ll mean more work for me in the beginning. Having the other owner back will be helpful in some sorely-needed ways, but it’ll also be a net negative because the business will start ramping up for a busy spring.

We’re probably 4-5 months out from my job not being a complete nightmare, and a month and a half out from me being able to take a week off without this place collapsing. I have a retention bonus coming in April, and my plan is to quit if things aren’t really and truly good by July. The remaining owner means well and panics at any sign of me being unhappy, but I can’t think of anything they can do to meaningfully improve my situation that wouldn’t involve them going back in time and making better decisions about staffing, compensation, cross-training, and documentation.

Here’s my question: Am I right that in situations like this, there’s not really anything to be done except power through it while new hires are trained up? My outlook is basically, “This is miserable, but they’re throwing money at me to get them through it, so it is what it is.”

Yes and no.

When the only solution is “go back in time and hire more people months ago” and hiring them now will mean more work for you because you’ll have to train them, you don’t have a ton of options. Depending on the role, you can push to hire people who will need less training … or for someone else to help with the training (although that doesn’t sound possible in your situation) … or for the training to be structured in a way that minimizes the burden on you (for example, the new hires master X first so they can take X fully off your plate and you get a month to focus on Y before you do more training). But when those aren’t feasible or wouldn’t make enough of a difference, then yeah, it is what it is.

On the other hand, you have a lot of leverage in this situation. You can say, “I’m available for X hours a week and no more” and hold firm on that, or “I only have room for three of these six projects” or “there’s no way I cover all this work in the time I have; let me know how you want to prioritize but some of this is going to get dropped because there’s only one of me,” or whatever other boundary you want to set. Sometimes doing that can shift some of the burden off you and back to the business, where it belongs (meaning, for example, that maybe they don’t get to do every single project they want to do, if they haven’t staffed for it).

You can also ask for money! Point to how much extra work you’re doing and the increase in your responsibility level/hours/etc. and tell them what number it would take for you to do it happily. You mentioned a retention bonus and maybe it’s big enough to achieve that … but you’re also still planning to leave in July if things aren’t fixed, so there might be room to think about what number would make you want to stay (if any) and ask for that. Or maybe there are other things you want — more time off, a better title, a promotion. If so, now is the time to ask.

Your employer sounds very, very dependent on you right now, and they’re also making you miserable. You’ve got leverage. Think about how you might use it.

Read updates to this letter here and here.

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am I a hypocrite for dating a customer, coworker sends political texts outside of work, and more

by Alison Green on March 13, 2024

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

1. Am I a hypocrite for dating a customer?

“Meg,” the owner/manager of the independent coffee shop I work at, is giving me a hard time because I’m dating a man who asked me out during my shift. Months ago, we went through a big thing where a different man came in and hit on me repeatedly. I told him I had a boyfriend, but he stalked me on social media and found out I didn’t. So I wanted Meg to back me up by telling him we have a rule against employees dating customers. Meg thought this was stupid and didn’t understand why I wouldn’t just tell the guy I didn’t want to date him. Finally, after I told her I was seriously afraid of him, she did it; she banned him from the shop when he argued with her, and I haven’t had any more problems with him.

But now, Meg is saying I manipulated her into setting a policy I didn’t abide by, and I’m a hypocrite for dating another customer. Aside from the small, unimportant fact that I’m attracted to my boyfriend and was not attracted at all to the other guy, my boyfriend asked me out very politely, and I’m sure he wouldn’t have kept pestering me if I’d said no. Am I being hypocritical, and what should I say to Meg, who now brings this up every time my boyfriend drops me off or picks me up from work, or I mention him in any way?

No, you’re not being hypocritical, and Meg is being horrible. You weren’t asking her to actually have a policy against dating customers; you were asking her to tell someone that for your own comfort and safety when he didn’t respect your original no. Try framing it like that for her: “I wasn’t asking you to set a policy against dating customers. I was asking for your help, as my employer, in a situation where I felt unsafe. I’d appreciate it if you would stop implying otherwise.”

2. Assigning tasks to an assistant

Whenever I assign a task to my assistant, he says something like “I can’t do that until tomorrow afternoon” or “I can add it to my list but right now I’m doing A, B, C…” or “I was doing something else right now” or “I was actually planning on doing other things today, but if you can wait for three days from now, sure.” It never feels helpful, but rather it feels like an initial “no” or like I’m being managed. I truly just want to lob tasks over to him, I want him to say “got it, I’ll send it when I’m done” and that’s that. And I’m absolutely fine with him just adding it to a long list and doing it when he can, unless I say otherwise and need him to prioritize an urgent task.

I bristle every time he sends some kind of a time boundary in response to a task. I feel like I have to consider it in some way — like I’m being given some bit of info or scheduling that I now have to deal with. Am I being unreasonable? Can I ask him to stop replying to tasks by telling me when he will do them, and that I will tell him if there is a deadline for these things?

Part of me also wonders if he does this because he’s trying to manipulate the role so that I never ask for something quickly, but the job sometimes demands that tasks can shift into suddenly being urgent and I need him to be flexible rather than defensive about that.

How’s his workload? A lot of those responses sound like someone with a high workload trying to manage up because there’s no other way to make his priority list sustainable. If he does have a high workload, this is a sensible strategy: he’s giving you info about how he’ll fit a new task into his existing workload, so that you have the opportunity to say, “Actually, I need it sooner than that.” That’s good, because if he didn’t volunteer that info and you needed it sooner, you’d both be missing an opportunity to spot that and course-correct. So if his workload is high, I’d leave this alone.

On the other hand, if his workload isn’t particularly high, some of those comments would feel a lot more rigid. In that case, it’s reasonable to say, “When I give you new work, I’ll tell you if there’s a particular deadline but otherwise I’ll assume you’ll fit it in with your existing priorities. You don’t need to warn me that you’ll need a few days with it; I’m generally assuming that’s the case.” And then if it still continues, the next time you could say, “Yep, no need to flag that, let’s always default to the assumption of a few days of turnaround time unless we discuss otherwise.”

Re: your last paragraph: is he ever resistant when you do need something right away? If so, that’s a separate conversation to have with him — that sometimes things will be urgent and rolling with that is part of the job.

3. Coworker sends me political texts outside of work

My coworker (who was just hired to be an equal, and is supervising staff I work with) is texting me at home about anti-vaccination movements and fringe science things. She is (mostly) well behaved at work but I get frequent messages at home. We were quite friendly before this and I’m not sure how to stop this in a way that won’t raise her hackles. She clearly knows the behavior isn’t work-appropriate. Any advice would be appreciated!

Text back this: “We have different views on this stuff and I would rather not receive texts about it. I actually prefer not to get texts after work hours at all unless it’s an emergency. Thanks in advance and see you at work tomorrow!”

But I’m concerned she might be doing something similar to people she manages, who might feel less able to push back. It’s worth mentioning that concern to your boss if you share the same manager.

4. My office is weirdly focused on bathrooms

I’ve worked at my current company for roughly three months. It’s a standard office environment for the most part. But apparently there’s an ongoing issue of people not cleaning up after themselves in the bathroom. I’ve seen nothing egregious, but am extra diligent due to all the focus this has gotten. There have been at least a half dozen emails, signs, and meetings on the topic and there are sanitizing wipes, gloves, and toilet covers. Yes, it’s gross. It’s also a fact of life that some people, by will or physical abilities, will have issues that no amount of signs or meetings is apparently capable of resolving. I’m sick of the topic. Thoughts on how to resolve the issue or get people to move on? At the latest talk, the manager said a possible “solution” was floated among higher ups to lock the bathrooms and have a manager open and check them as needed, but thought that might be going too far and shelved the idea.

That does indeed sound excessive (multiple meetings on the topic?!) but you’ve only been there three months, which means it’s highly unlikely that you have the standing to shut it down (unless you’re a high-level manager, but it doesn’t sound like that’s the case). Your best bet is to either find it amusing or tune it out.

5. I lied about my new job

I recently left my previous organization for a better opportunity. While I was on my notice period, my manger was constantly after me to reveal the place I was going to and under that pressure I randomly blurted out the name of a company which is situated in another location and just cooked up a story that I would be joining there. The other reason being that the company which I was going to join was one of our clients and my manager and the managing director have connections there, so I was very scared as to whether they would just put out something against me to retain me here … which lead to the cooked-up story.

So now everybody thinks that I am joined the place I told them about, even though I haven’t. I don’t know if I did the right thing or whether there will be any repercussions once they find the place that I have actually joined.

Yeah, that’s potentially going to be weird! Best case scenario: if you’re not likely to stay in touch with anyone from your old job, it might never come up. But if you’re likely to have contact with anyone there … well, could you plausibly just say your plans changed? Or even: “I have no idea why I said that. I’d thought about X, but decided on Y.”

In the future, if you don’t want to say where you’re going, it helps to have an answer already planned out so you’re not put on the spot. For example: “I’m not ready to share publicly yet, but I’ll let you know when I am.”

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is it reasonable to leave without notice when my company lets employees go without notice?

by Alison Green on March 12, 2024

A reader writes:

I am a senior software engineer at a mid-sized company. My team became part of this company through an acquisition three years ago. Within the first year of the acquisition, our product managers (“Joey” and “Chandler”) were let go as a “business decision.” Joey and Chandler were subject matter experts who shared the PM role along with their other duties. Of course the company is within its rights to reduce costs by letting personnel go, but they were locked out of their computers and told that they had been let go with absolutely no notice. We lost access to irreplaceable knowledge and expertise in the middle of a development cycle, and we permanently lost access to important documentation, as we had not even been fully integrated at that point.

After nearly a year without a product manager, we were allocated 50% of “Rachel’s” time. Rachel had also come in via acquisition (of a directly competitive project). It took several months to get her up to speed. Then, in the middle of specing out a brand-new large, shiny feature set, she was (yes, you guessed it) let go without notice. I had literally just gotten out of an hour-long meeting with her, working through the complicated new functionality we would need to implement.

These losses were upsetting and demoralizing for the entire team. For my part, as the lead developer, I did my best to keep the team calm and on track. I have a lot of political capital at this job and relatively little worry about being let go. I have made my concerns known to my managers. I have been fully invested in making this transition work, in part to help take care of my team and in part because I am invested (emotionally, not financially) in the success of the product.

Our division manager (“Monica”) announces personnel changes by putting a meeting on our calendar with anywhere from 0 to 15 minutes of warning. Two days ago, one of Monica’s meetings popped up on my calendar, and we were informed that one of our senior software engineers (“Ross”) was being let go (business reasons) and that he would be replaced with multiple off-shore workers (which means that our team is actually growing and being supported, according to Monica, even though our new “resources” share exactly zero hours of business day overlap). Again, this happened with no notice. Ross was locked out of his systems and informed that it was his last day.

I know this is the end of the road for me. It is time for me to leave, and the sooner the better. My question is twofold, I guess:

First, would it be wildly unprofessional of me to announce my resignation without notice? I doubt I will look for a job in the same sector, so I’m not necessarily concerned about references. I don’t want to be overly petty, but I feel that they have been abundantly clear that they consider their employees to be fully fungible “resources,” so why should they need notice? (I know I’m being petty, here, but is it overly petty?)

Second, my leaving will likely cause additional resignations. How much notice should I give my team? I don’t want to alarm anyone before my plans have firmed up a bit, and I don’t want to put them in the spot of needing to keep secrets from other team members or managers.

Does your company give severance to employees who are let go with no notice? I’m guessing they do — and if that’s the case, you resigning without notice isn’t really comparable.

It’s pretty typical for companies not to provide advance notice when they lay people off, instead substituting severance pay in place of notice. There are a lot of reasons for that, including that having laid-off employees still at work can make things harder for remaining employees and delay the process of figuring out how to move forward, and sometimes people who are being laid off are too angry or upset to effectively do their jobs (and you could argue that it’s unkind to expect them to). But severance pay means they continue getting paid for a while.

Now, if your company doesn’t offer severance and they cut off people’s income with zero notice the day they’re laid off, then sure, you absolutely have  the ethical standing to leave without notice yourself. That said, it still might not be advisable since it’s the kind of thing that often comes up in reference checks and can give a new company pause. (And even if you move to a new industry, they’re likely to check references from recent past jobs.) You might decide you’re okay with that outcome! Most of the time, though, it makes more sense to give two weeks notice so it doesn’t come back to bite you later. (Exceptions: if you’re being treated egregiously or you have the kind of F-you money or professional options that negate any real consequences to you or there are extenuating circumstances, like a health crisis you need to deal with.)

And really, I think your point would be missed! Your employer isn’t going to think, “Oh, this is what happens when we lay people off with no notice. Lesson learned.” They’re just going to think, “Wow, Phoebe is unprofessional” and then move on. Again, that doesn’t mean you can’t do it. But it’s probably not going to send the message you want.

As for whether you should give notice to your team, even if you don’t give notice to your employer … you don’t need to. People leave jobs; people should always assume their coworkers could be thinking about leaving. Plus, if you share it, you risk it getting around to people you didn’t intend to know, and you risk putting your colleagues in awkward positions, like if they’re in a meeting about plans that are dependent on you a few months down the road and they know you won’t be there.

I also wouldn’t assume people will definitely leave just because you leave. Maybe they will! But people often overestimate that sort of thing. Either way, hearing about it a couple of weeks ahead of time isn’t likely to appreciably help them. If you do want to help them, leave behind documentation to aid them in taking over for you even without the transition time a notice period normally provides.

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