Ask a Manager

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

1. My boss flipped out when I said I “have options”

Recently, I had a terse exchange with my boss during a meeting where a group of my colleagues and I were being updated on a serious HR situation.

After hearing about the problem and the path forward, I tried to clarify the timeline for rectifying the situation. After I asked a question similar to “So are we talking about a month, six months, a year?” my boss deflected by asking, “Why do you need to know that and what does it matter to you?” This certainly raised the temperature in the room and I stammered something about this situation impacting my team and my own career negatively. I calmly said that I hoped the the situation would be resolved quickly and that we all had “options” if not.

Several days later I got called into a private meeting with my boss. They went absolutely ballistic. They said that they had never had an employee tell them that they “had options” during decades of management. They said that was such a horrible misstep that I was lucky I wasn’t getting fired. I was stunned, but apologized!

I am still really shaken, but mostly I’m struggling to believe that I really did something horrible. I’m curious if you also think that telling your boss you “have options” is the worst thing you can do.

What on earth. Your boss is wildly out of line. No, calmly noting that you “have options” is not a cardinal sin, let alone something that should get you fired (!). It’s true that you said the quiet part out loud; it’s not super common for people to spell out that they might leave if a serious problem remains unresolved, but it’s certainly implicit in many, many conversations (hell, it’s often the subtext when you do something as basic as ask for a raise) and the concept itself is not an adversarial one. Of course you have options! Of course you might choose to leave if you’re dissatisfied with your job/company/boss. That’s how this works. It’s good that you have options — it’s good for you for all the obvious reasons and it’s good for your boss because it means they’re employing people who have desirable skills. (As a manager, I would be much more concerned if my employees didn’t have options. What would that say about my hiring?)

A less volatile boss might still have found it a little blunt or aggressive for you to say it so baldly in that particular context, but your boss’s bizarrely excessive reaction says a ton about them and how they see employees: they don’t want to be reminded that you’re an independent agent with the power to act in your own interests, and they want you to perform deference in a really outmoded and exploitative way.

2. We’re interviewing a candidate who was recently hired elsewhere

I follow my former employer on social media, and saw that they recently hired Uniquely Named Guy (UNG) to a junior position. I am part of a hiring committee interviewing UNG for a senior position at my current company next week. Because I’m connected to the prior incumbent of the junior position on LinkedIn, I know when that job came open: about the same time as our senior position. Our hiring process is admittedly slow for the senior position (it’s pretty high level and a lot of teams are invested in the hire) but he would have known he was in the running when he took the other job.

I know that I shouldn’t tell my former colleagues that their new hire is still looking. What I am wondering is whether or not this is a black mark against his candidacy here? Should I tell the other members of the hiring committee what I know?

Nah, leave it alone. You don’t know the full context — it’s possible that his new job has turned out to be horrible and that’s why he’s staying in the running with you. Or he accepted his current job because he needed the income, but if he’s offered a much better fit (like your more senior and presumably better paid position), he’s reasonably going to take it.

I know the concern is “will he do this to us too?” — but really, that’s always possible when you hire someone and you can’t perfectly control for it. If he seems to have a relatively stable job history, I wouldn’t worry too much about it.

Read an update to this letter. 

3. Job application asked for my consent for AI screening

I’m currently applying for jobs and came across this note while doing an Indeed application: “We use machine learning for an initial comparison of resumes against the education, experience, and skills requirements of the job description. This analysis does not exclude any applicants from consideration. For more information, the Profile Relevancy score for applicants who opt out will be listed as ’Not Available.’” Then there was a box to check for “I wish to opt out from having my resume reviewed by artificial intelligence as part of the application process.”

I know that software has been used for years, but this is the first time I’ve been given the option to forgo the software review. I thought I’d share it with you because I found it interesting but I’m also curious if an applicant should or shouldn’t opt out?

They’re using that language because New York City, Maryland, and Illinois now require companies using AI to assist in making decisions about applications to notify applicants and allow them to opt out, and several other states are considering similar legislation.

Typically when employers use software that automatically scores applicants, having no score isn’t treated the same as having a low score and it’s not likely to result in an automatic rejection. And most employers experimenting with AI in early-stage screening are likely using it to generate a score to flag particularly competitive applications, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t looking at the others. In fact, I’ve never known a competent hiring manager who doesn’t give at least a quick look at all applicants, regardless of how their hiring software works.

Still, there are a lot of ways this could play out over time. For now, if you want to play it safe, you’re probably better off opting in (and frankly, I’m not convinced it’s appreciably different than the electronic application systems that have been helping to process applicants for quite a while, without any consent required).

4. Should I stay or go?

A year ago, after nearly 15 years working in nonprofits, I took a job at a small consulting firm. My friend and close colleague was also transitioning from his longtime research position and coming on as the new CEO; we had big hopes of expanding the firm’s niche work— in, let’s say, china teapots — to include copper teapots, plus training on how to make copper teapots, brew the best tea in them … all of the things in my wheelhouse. The owners of the parent company had made some promises about helping us expand into the copper teapot market, but none of that support is present here.

Everybody else is focused on either working on their teapot work and following the same business models that have existed for years. Then there’s me: I am a specialist in copper, with an understanding of copper teapots, but really my expertise is copper overall — so the expectation that I understand marketing, communication, business planning and development. It’s like I’m frozen solid every day with anxiety and utterly overwhelmed, absolutely over my head with work that I’m not good at, doing work I didn’t want. Yes, I wanted to be a consultant and have freedom, but I joined a firm with the expectation that I wasn’t going to have to do it all solo and establish this copper expansion and generate business, the way that one would if they hung up their own shingle. I have creativity and freedom, but it goes nowhere because I don’t know what I’m doing … and since everybody else is focused on their specialty work in china teapots, nobody can help me. I’m expected to do this; this is my job. (Let’s not touch on how I feel like I can’t even ask for help with how my ADHD is impacting my work, lest I come off like I’m trying to shirk administrative work everybody else seems to do effortlessly.)

The thing is, there’s another consulting company that does specialize in all things copper, and I could apply for an open position there. They are very well established, I’d just take on the work that they assign me. I’m getting conflicting advice from folks around me — many say stick with the current company and give it another year, others worry that my mental health is taking such a blow that it’s better to try to get a position elsewhere. I’m worried that I’ll look flaky by leaving after a year, especially when the CEO believes in me. I can’t tell if I just need to dig in and let this ride for a while more and see if it stabilizes or makes more sense (and maybe we expand to hire folks to help with marketing, who knows) versus if it’s time to move to something more certain.

In a lot of similar situations, my advice would be to try talking to the CEO and/or your boss first if you haven’t already, to name the problem and see if anything changes. But in this case, the problems sound fundamental enough and broad enough that I’m skeptical that will produce enough change. It sounds like you were lured into the job under false pretenses — maybe not intentionally, but it’s certainly been the outcome that the things you were told would happen are not happening, and no one is even talking about making them happen. They’d need to make really significant shifts, including multiple new hires, to give you the set-up you were led to believe you’d have. That’s just not likely to happen.

Even if you get some movement from them, it doesn’t sound likely to be enough.

And you’ve been there a year! It’s not flaky to leave after a year as long as long as you don’t have a pattern of lots of short-term stays. You also have a very easy explanation of “I was brought in because the company planned to shift its focus to X but that ended up not happening.”

You’re not happy, the job isn’t what you were promised, there’s another job that sounds much more promising … you should go for it! You don’t need to stay just because the CEO believes in you.

5. Is it unprofessional to say I’m on a road trip?

I was furloughed for the month of January, and I’m using the time to take the big cross-country road trip I’ve always dreamed of. I also already told my boss that I won’t be returning to our company afterwards.

In the meantime, I’m reaching out to contacts in my area to ask about freelance and full-time positions for when I get back. But is it unprofessional to say that I’m not available until February because I’m on a road trip?

It’s not unprofessional, but it’s also not necessary. You can simply say “I’m away until February” or “I’m on the road until February so not available until then.”

Whenever you give details in a situation like this, you run the risk of people having Opinions (like that a road trip sounds frivolous when they would be prioritizing their search or so forth). When you’re job hunting, it can be smarter not to invite that (unless you’re deliberately choosing to, as a screening mechanism or because you want to share and DGAF, which is also legitimate).

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

1. Coworker offered to be my “work mom”

I know your take on calling someone a work mom, but I’m wondering about your take on Work Parents in general. Through television, I’ve heard jokes about a work wife or work husband and, since it’s drama shows, never put much stock in it.

I’m relatively new to my team, and at a company lunch a woman who’s been with the company for a long time came over to offer the table of less-senior women a “work mom.” It was fairly easy to brush off, but she followed up with an email. Now, I’m all for a mentor. I’m very happy at my company and it’s incredibly rare in my field to have so many women. But this is also my second career, making me nearly 10 years older than the majority of my peers. My only thought at her offer was, “I have a biological mother and a mother-in-law and that’s plenty.” This woman doesn’t directly oversee any of the people she was talking to, but it’d be really easy to fall into that scenario here. Is this a normal relationship to happen in the office, and people have just gotten cute about the names? Does she actually mean a professional mentor role, not a motherly figure? Am I properly weirded out by this?

Maybe it also needs to be said — I’m a queer agender person with a feminine name and body, but I present very masculine/andro. It’s a reasonable assumption I’m also a little weirded out by gender roles.

No, that’s not a normal thing! It’s weird. I assume she was offering herself as a mentor, but calling it a “work mom” is really bizarre and problematic. (I promise you no men are going around offering themselves up as a “work dad” and if they are it’s coming across as creepy.) She could have simply said “mentor” and conveyed what she meant. “Work mom” brings in all sorts of other connotations that don’t apply in a business context, including that you are young and in need of parenting. It sounds like the phrase of someone who has no frame of reference for women in senior positions or with authority, and therefore “mom” — with all of its gendered subtext — is her go-to rather than “mentor,” “advisor,” or “senior colleague.” That in itself makes her suspect as a good choice for the role she’s offering.

(As a side note, it’s also a title that’s particularly odd to bestow on oneself! When it does get used, it’s normally in the context of a third party saying something like “Jane always makes sure everyone has enough food at meetings, she’s like our work mom” — which is also sexist and problematic — rather than someone saying, “hi, I’m available to be your work mom.”)

2. My team lead says it’s a problem that I don’t trust my incompetent coworker

I work in a close-knit team in a company with about 170 employees. I like my job and have grown a lot since I started a few years ago, but a situation with a coworker has me baffled and has made me question if I want to stay here.

“Brenda” has worked for the company for about 15 years, the longest of anyone on my team. She started at entry level and worked her way up to the role she has today, which I thought was really impressive. Until it wasn’t.

We deal with a lot of subjects that require tactfulness, and Brenda is as tactful as a sledgehammer. Her work is sloppy and her suggestions for technical solutions are so out of touch that I have found myself stunned into silence in meetings with her. Some of her mistakes could have been prevented if she brainstormed with anyone on the team first, but she likes to do her own thing. She doesn’t take feedback; either she coldly replies and does nothing, or she says thank you and corrects one mistake out of 10. There have been two instances since I started where she felt slighted and didn’t show up to group meetings to prove a point.

Her behavior is something I, and other coworkers, have addressed with my team leader several times, both separately and in a group. During one recent conversation with the team lead, they told me that I “have no trust in Brenda at all, which is a massive problem.” This shocked me, and I made it clear that I am not the problem here, Brenda is, and they agreed and mentioned that even our manager has seen examples of her sloppy work.

I have mulled on this conversation a lot: is it a bigger problem that I don’t trust my underperforming colleague than that someone underperforms? It can’t be okay that someone produces bad work as long as the team gets along, right? Ever since I started, and realized there was an annoyance with her work from others, I have tried to find something positive about her work and even told other coworkers to stop assuming the worst. But I am at my wit’s end with how to go about this. I feel like my team lead is dealing with Brenda with kid gloves and I fear that my only two options are accepting the situation or leave.

It sounds like those are indeed your only options, since you and others have raised your concerns repeatedly and nothing is changing. It’s possible something is happening behind the scenes that you don’t know about (in most cases you wouldn’t), but if it’s been months and months since you started raising the issues (as opposed to a few weeks), it’s safe to conclude you’re dealing with a passive manager who’s not handling a serious situation with the urgency it needs. (Updated to add: I just realized you didn’t say you’ve raised the problems with your actual manager. If you haven’t, that’s absolutely the next step.)

But no, it’s not a bigger problem that you don’t trust a coworker who has shown you can’t trust her than it is that she’s underperforming in the first place. If Brenda had fixed the problems and was operating differently and you still didn’t show her any trust a year later, that could be a reasonable thing for your team lead to flag — but when Brenda is still actively Brenda-ing, of course you don’t trust her. Why would you? Your team lead sounds like they’re focusing on something they feel they might be able to influence (you) rather than on Brenda because Brenda is a harder problem (and one they might have no power to affect, if their manager refuses to act).

3. Can I ask an employee to blur her Zoom background on external meetings?

Is it appropriate for me to ask my direct report to blur her Zoom background in external meetings? She works from her bedroom, which is totally fine — I couldn’t care less most of the time. However, her room is often untidy and the background is generally an unmade bed with a lazy dog lounging on it. I think that this is fine for internal meetings, I know she’s proud of her animals and likes to show them off. However, I invited her to an external meeting with a prospect for corporate sponsorship and it felt unprofessional. Is it appropriate for me to suggest that in external meetings we should blur our backgrounds? How could I go about this?

It’s 100% appropriate to say she needs a professional background for external meetings, and that one way to do that would be to blur her background. That’s a pretty basic professional expectation; you’re not overstepping by requesting it.

Say this: “I don’t care about anyone’s background during internal meetings, but for external meetings, we need a professional look, which includes no beds or pets visible on the call. I know it can be tough to find a neutral-looking space when you’re working from home, but blurring your background should solve it — can you plan to do that for external meetings?”

4. Can I take off a full week when no one can cover for me?

I work for a completely virtual, family-owned company, about 45 employees. I’ve been here eight years. I am head of a three-person department and answer directly to the owner/CEO. We haven’t had raises in two years, not even cost of living. We keep hearing how we’re losing customers — and we are. (Bad management, but that’s another letter!) I did negotiate a lot of vacation — 20 days a year, which I like because we only get seven paid holidays a year. I generally take vacation a few days here and there, because our sales/customer service staff gets hysterical if I can’t instantly respond to a customer request.

But now I want to take a week off at a time more often and completely disconnect. This is going to make our sales/customer service go nuts. The two people under me are very good and trustworthy, but don’t have the experience I do. I’m not saying I’m a genius and the only one who can possibly do this, but it’s more than technical training: it’s years of experience in areas I have that they don’t. Working to get them here just through video chats, when we don’t work near each other, would be next to impossible. Do I basically just find a polite way to say, “Folks, I’m taking off a week in two months from now. I’m well ahead on my scheduled work, but many of these customer ‘crises’ are just going to have to wait”? Or should I just realize life isn’t perfect and try to connect even when I’m on vacation?

Nope, take your vacation. Give people a heads-up in advance, but that’s your time off that you negotiated as part of your benefits package and you’re entitled to take it. Taking a few days here and there can be great, but it’s also important to be able to disconnect for a large chunk of time like a week or more or you won’t reap any of the real benefits of time away. (I say this as someone who just took five weeks off and didn’t even begin to feel fully decompressed until the end of it!) That kind of real break is necessary to avoid burn-out.

Unless you’re very highly compensated and it was part of the deal going in, do not agree to stay connected during your time off; if you do that, you’ll negate the benefits of trying to disconnect in the first place. (And frankly, even people in highly compensated jobs where it was part of the deal going in still can take full weeks off here and there if they set their minds to it.)

However, if your boss does push back and you think you’re likely to give in, this would be a very good time to say you need to revisit your salary if those are the expectations.

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

1. A past fling is joining my team and I might need to manage his work

A few years ago when I was living across the country for grad school, I hooked up with a guy (Wesley) a couple of times. We exchanged a few texts afterwards, but our communication quickly faded out and I assumed we’d never see each other again. I moved back home a year later and have been working at my current company ever since.

Well, it’s a small world: Wesley recently accepted a job at my company … on the same team, in the same city. He’s starting work in a couple weeks. We’ll see each other regularly, but as our department does project-based work it’s possible (but not guaranteed) that we would never have to work together. But if we do, I’ll be his manager. He’s a nice guy and I’m not concerned about being colleagues in the same department, but if I had to manage his work I’m concerned about potential awkwardness or perception of bias. I’m guessing he’d also find it pretty uncomfortable.

Our HR has nothing to do with staffing on projects and I’m not eager to involve them. Should I have a conversation with my boss? I’m envisioning something brief and to-the-point, where I share that Wesley and I know each other from a few years ago and that although I feel we can be professional, friendly colleagues, I wouldn’t feel comfortable managing him directly. My boss is involved in project resourcing decisions and I’m hoping she could (without divulging to others the reason why) ensure that Wesley and I aren’t assigned to the same work.

One friend has suggested I’m overthinking this, and that it’s not a big deal at all — I should proceed as if Wesley and I had no prior connection, and if we end up getting staffed together, just manage his work as I would for any other team member. What do you think?

You should not manage the work of someone you used to date, no matter how briefly. There’s too much potential for complications or the appearance of partiality. (For example, look at this similar — although not entirely the same — situation from someone on the other side of it.) And if there is any weirdness (on either side) and it comes out later that you didn’t disclose the past relationship before agreeing to supervise his work, that’s likely to reflect badly on you.

But talking to your boss doesn’t need to be a huge or awkward thing. You can just say, “Weirdly enough, I briefly dated Wesley a few years ago — nothing serious, but given that, I don’t think I should supervise his work.”

2. My employee gave me cash for a holiday gift

I own a small retail business with four part-time employees. We gave our employees a cash bonus for the holidays and to thank them for their hard work during the year.

About five days later, one of our employees presented me with a gift basket and $50 cash! I was surprised in the moment and said all the “oh you don’t have to’s,” etc. But ultimately I ended up thanking her and taking it, as it seemed it would be more awkward in that moment to decline. The basket I could somewhat be okay with but the cash definitely not.

How should I have better handled this? I definitely didn’t want her spending her money to give me a gift. And how do I stop this from happening next year? I’m so glad she liked us enough and was so generous, but it still feels a little icky.

Taking cash from an employee is a really bad look, even though you tried not to, and it’s not too late to undo it now! Bring the cash back to her today and say, “I thought about this over the holidays and I cannot accept it. I really appreciate the thought and intent, but I can’t accept money from an employee. So I’m returning it to you — it’s not up for debate — and I hope you had a wonderful holiday.”

Even if this feels awkward, you’ve got to do it. It’s one thing to accept a gift from an employee, but money is a whole different ballpark. If other employees hear about it, it risks affecting their assessment of your ethics and integrity. And if someone happens to think the gift giver gets the best schedule or any other kind of special treatment and also knows about the cash, it’s really bad.

Here’s advice on heading it off next year.

3. HR manager has a life-sized image of Ron DeSantis on display

A close friend works at a private, medium-sized company in Florida with a large workforce both locally and remotely around the country. The company’s HR manager maintains a life-size cardboard cutout of the state’s governor on prominent display in their office. I think it’s fair to say this governor is a highly divisive figure with national significance. The HR manager and others on the leadership team ares open about their partisan orientation in other ways as well.

An HR manager is responsible for the well-being of all employees, so a display of political orientation strikes me as exceptionally unprofessional. The divisive nature of party affiliation in the country is reason enough to avoid such identification in the workplace. The Florida governor and presidential candidate has made “anti-wokeness” a central part of his governing philosophy. Much of that energy is directed at demonizing and othering LGBTQ people.

How can the company provide a welcoming, supportive, and fair workplace when employees have to stand in the glare of this governor’s effigy to report a workplace issue? What message does it send to LGBTQ employees?

It can’t. By design, that cutout tells a whole range of employees that their concerns won’t get a fair or supportive hearing at the company — which would be a problem for any role but is an especially serious problem when it’s in the office of the person you’re supposed to rely on if you need to report of harassment or discrimination, request accommodations, or hope to be treated fairly during an investigation. You’re expected to feel comfortable reporting, for example, harassment for being LGBTQ while a massive image of DeSantis looms over you? Not going to happen — again, by design. And that’s going to be true from now on even if they take it down.

The fact that the company has allowed it tells your friend all she needs to know about where she’s working.

4. I lied about a meeting

I’m relatively new to my job (eight months) and in a new field. During a WFH day, I missed an important after-hours email delegating work on a project with a tight timeline. It was subsequently buried in a pile of emails from other project members. My lack of response didn’t hold the project up, but it made me and my boss look bad. The following day, I got a talking to about communication. I apologized and took accountability for the mistake.

What I’m still kicking myself for is I confirmed that I met with a project leader in my boss’s stead that day. I did not do this. I felt like I had to save face from looking like I completely dropped the ball, which I absolutely did, and nodding and saying “yep!” was easier than explaining otherwise. The lie probably won’t come up again, but it could, and I feel a lot of shame for both the lie and the initial mess-up. Do I tell my boss?

Oh no. How likely is that the missed meeting won’t come up in some other way in the future? If there’s any chance it will — or if it would harm the work not to let your boss know the truth — you need to come clean about it. You could phrase it as, “I realized after we spoke that I left with you the impression that I attended the X meeting in your stead; I want to be up-front that I did not, which I realize is part of the exact problem you spoke to me about. My plan for making sure this never happens in the future is…”

Even if it’s unlikely to come up again and there’s no actual harm done … well, maybe you can get away with not saying anything now, but if your boss ever does realize it in the future, it’s going to look a lot worse that you lied about attending than if you set the record straight right away. So even in that situation, ideally you’d still clear it up.

For what it’s worth: the instinct to lie because it was easier in the moment is a bigger deal than the initial mess-up. It’s worth spending some time thinking about how that happened and how to make sure you don’t in the future. (One possible motivator is thinking about how much harder it’s made the situation now.)

Read an update to this letter. 

5. The small business advice group I joined needs too much from me

I have a full-time job but also I started a small business in 2021 based on a craft that I love and am passionate about.

It’s been a rough year for small businesses, and I’m autistic and ADHD, so I have definitely been struggling to build my business. A local nonprofit has a mentorship and business support program for small businesses and I signed up.

Unfortunately it take so much of my time and energy that I’m wasting their time and mine, and I’ve been trying to back out. There’s a two-hour zoom meeting every other Monday with the small business coach, who is great, but honestly the meetings are just everyone chatting about their businesses and nothing new is presented. Add to that, I work in a call center from home, so I have to constantly mute myself on zoom to take a call. It’s very stressful for me. I didn’t know any of this when I signed up.

I did try to back out but got a guilt trip from the organizer. I brought up dropping out with the coach and he talked me into keeping on. But also the other business owners have a restaurant, a hair coloring business, basically real businesses and not a crafting business selling on Etsy. I feel like they need the coaching because they are trying to earn a living where mine’s just a side gig.

Now I really need to stop participating, but I don’t know how. They’re starting to talk about moving to “phase two” of the program, which sounds like it’ll be more of the same.

If you want to drop out, you get to drop out! The organizer might see part of their job as to convince you to stay, but that doesn’t mean you have to agree.

Do it by email since you’ve had trouble resisting their entreaties in the past — and because really, this doesn’t need to be a back-and-forth conversation — and say this: “Thank you so much for all the time and support you’ve given me during this program. Unfortunately my schedule no longer allows me to participate so I am withdrawing, effective immediately, and will not be in further meetings. Best of luck with all the work you’re doing.”

That assumes you just want to withdraw and don’t want to get into the reasons why. But if you want to give feedback about why it didn’t work for you, you can! Just know that if you do, you should be prepared for them to try to find ways to make it work for you or otherwise overcome your objections, so you’d want to be prepared to hold firm with, “I appreciate you trying to make it work for me, but I do need to withdraw.”