Ask a Manager

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

1. Are patterned stockings unprofessional?

I am at my first professional job after college and have been in this position for about a year and a half. Today when I walked in the lunch room to get some hot water for tea, I heard a guy say “ohhhh, sexy stockings” as I walked through the door he was facing. I’ve never seen him before, but we’re a corporate office and regularly have field employees visiting, so I think that’s who he was.

At first I thought I had misheard him, but the table he was at burst out laughing. They whispered some comments I couldn’t make out, and then the office manager who was sitting at the table laughingly said, “You need to watch what you say and how loudly you say it.” I was really embarrassed and pretended not to hear. I got my tea and got out of there as quickly as I could.

No one here as ever said anything to me about how I dress except comments like “cute dress,” etc. I wear a lot of knee-length dresses and with them stockings of various designs and colors. Especially being young, I want to find the balance between dressing professionally and dressing in a style I like. I had to stop myself from writing the word cute, because although that’s what I thought, it doesn’t really sound professional when I write it out. Anyway, I’ve attached a picture of the stockings/tights. Are they unprofessional? Are there any standard rules on solid stockings are more professional then ones with designs or patterns?

Well, first, that guy was way out of line. “Sexy” is not commentary that should ever be offered about a coworker. It’s wildly inappropriate and gross. Hopefully, the people who laughed after his comment were laughing in shock at how ridiculously inappropriate he was, but regardless, please know that his comment wasn’t okay at work.

Now, as for patterned stockings … it really depends on the office and the pattern. There are definitely offices where the stockings in the picture you sent would be too outside of professional norms, but there are others where they’d be fine. More generally, there are offices where relatively conservative patterns like ribbing or diamonds are fine but other patterns (like fishnet or lace) aren’t. So this is a thing where you need to know your own office and its norms. If you’re unsure, you can probably get a better sense if you make a point of watching what other women wear, and/or you could ask someone slightly senior to you (or very senior to you, for that matter) whose judgment you trust and who’s generally respected in your workplace.

As for colored tights, non-neutral colors will generally read as “young,” which isn’t always the most helpful thing to reinforce when you are in fact young.

2. Manager offered to let me expense my dog-boarding costs when I travel

I work for a very generous company, and have a fantastic boss. Lucky for me, my job only requires travel a couple of times per year. I have two dogs that I put into board/daycare when I travel, which generally works out to about $400 for each week that I am gone. Over the last few years, my boss has asked me why I don’t expense the dog boarding since I am not a frequent traveler. I always respond by saying that if I had non-hairy kids, I would have to pay for daycare for them so I don’t think this is any different. However, a coworker really questioned me about this, since it is not “part of the job” to travel, and thinks I should take him up on his offer to cover the expense. What are your thoughts on expensing care for the kids for the occasional work trip – not only for pets but for human children? Any other managers have any experience with this?

I actually don’t think those are the right questions. Your manager has told you directly that you should expense the dog boarding. So you should expense the dog boarding.

If you want to have a theoretical discussion of whether this is something that employers routinely offer, we can do that. But in your particular case, there’s no compelling argument for turning down an expense reimbursement that your employer is freely offering and encouraging you to use. You should use it.

More generally, no, this isn’t a super common benefit. It’s probably more common for pets than for kids, to the extent that it exists at all. But lots of employers offer uncommon benefits, and the fact that they’re uncommon isn’t a reason not to use them.

3. How do people recover from scandal?

Recently, there was a lot of media coverage in my city about the head of a nonprofit who did something against the mission of the organization. It was egregious enough to spur a public petition to have her fired. The comments on the petition indicated that she had instituted questionable policies that led to staff and volunteers quitting and had fired some staff so that she could hire her friends. The media never said whether those allegations were true, but after the board met on Friday, she issued a statement that she was resigning.

This person was very publicly degraded for her actions and was likely left with no choice but to leave the organization. My question is, how would someone in this situation recover professionally? Is that even possible?

It depends on the specifics of what she was accused of, whether it was true or not (and whether she can present a credible “other side of the story”), and how it intersects with the main work she does. What I mean by that last part is that if, for example, her life’s work was fighting animal cruelty and it turned out that she was running a secret dog-fighting ring, then no, she’s probably never working in that field again.

But people do generally continue to be employed after scandal. It’s not always in their original field, and it’s not always doing the type of work they would have chosen (often in much lower-profile positions doing work behind-the-scenes because they might be irredeemable as a public figure or spokesperson but still have other usable talents). But at least from what I’ve seen, they usually they do manage to piece a life back together.

4. How to list freelance experience on a resume

I have a question about how to best list freelance experience on my resume. I was a freelance designer and design assistant for five years after I graduated college (everyone in my field worked on a freelance basis, in case that matters). After five years, I decided I wanted more structure and work-life balance, so I moved into an administrative role at a large company in a completely different industry. I’ve now been in this role for three years and am looking to pursue other administrative opportunities in a more creative environment.

I’m concerned about future employers thinking I’m flighty or a job hopper based on my prior freelance experience (most of these gigs lasted anywhere from two months to two years). Would it make sense to list all five years of my freelance work under one title with start and end dates for that period of time? (For example, Freelance Teapot Designer, May 2008-February 2013.) If so, can I also list my overall accomplishments beneath this one title? All of my freelance projects generally followed the same process and required the same skills (maintaining budget of varying sizes, coordinating vendor schedules to ensure deadlines were met, producing presentations for management team, etc.) Or is it important for me to outline specific jobs, and if so, do I need to include individual dates for each one?

Grouping them all under one overall freelance heading is the perfect way to do, and then you can list all your accomplishments from that time period there. You don’t need to list every specific freelance job you held during that period or individual dates for them — but if it strengthens your resume (it may or may not), you could include one bullet point that says something like this:

* Clients included Teapots International, Texas Rice Sculpture Tournament, Northwest Llama-gram Society, and more

5. Update: My company wants me to return part of a gift from a client

Here’s an update from the letter-writer whose company wanted her to return amusement park tickets from a client.

Both you and some of the commenters hit the nail on the head with your insight that my problem with returning two of the tickets to my client, as the compliance officer recommended, was tied into the larger issue of me feeling generally unappreciated by my company, which is absolutely true.

You also pointed out that the way the compliance officer phrased her response — i.e. as a recommendation rather than a mandate — left some room for interpretation. I re-read the compliance plan once again and found a clause that stated an acceptable alternative to returning a gift would be to share the gift among co-workers. So I ended up giving two of the tickets to a co-worker who also worked on the project with me, and he was surprised and delighted. (Which made me feel really good!)

I then emailed the compliance officer, thanking her for her recommendation and letting her know that I had shared the gift with a coworker, a solution that prevented us from appearing ungracious to the client while also keeping both of us under the gift limit set forth by the policy. I got no further response from her, so I think the matter is closed.

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

1. Employee came in with blue, green, and purple hair

I wanted to ask how I tell a sweet younger employee, who dyed her hair from a rather unassuming brown to black with blue/purple/green highlights over the weekend, that it is unprofessional for the workplace. It is jet black with highlights that change with how the light hits it — think peacock feathers. I don’t want to hurt her feelings, but it just doesn’t fit here. Our policy is specific about nails, attire, tattoos, and piercings but not hair. I never dreamed I would have to include that “crazy cartoon hair” is a no-no. She is a medical assistant and is in patient care all day.

I’m going to take your word for it that your stance is necessary for your particular business rather than debating that here — but I’d also encourage you to think through that question first, because the world is changing in this regard and this is now okay in many places that it didn’t used to be.

But if it is indeed a business necessity for you, just be straightforward: “Jane, your new hair color looks great on you, but unfortunately we need you to have a more conservative appearance while you’re working here. I realize that the dress code didn’t spell this out so it’s not your fault for not knowing it, but I do need you to revert back to a more natural color.”

2. Boss is circumventing HR to do hiring work on his own

A number of recent interviewees for various positions in our marketing team have turned down their offers. Our chief marketing officer (CMO), who can be a micromanager in the extreme, has taken this as an indication that HR is somehow screwing up the hiring process. His solution is to step in and do more of the offer-giving, negotiating, and question-asking on his own.

We’ve told him this is a bad idea, but he’s unwilling to see that it could be a problem… and then this weekend happened. The team interviewed a tremendously talented young writer and we all pushed the CMO to make an offer ASAP. “No,” he said on Fridayafternoon, “I’ll need a couple days to think about it.” We were all disappointed that he wasn’t as eager as we were, but we went into our weekends hopeful that he’d give HR the green light to send her an offer letter on Monday morning. Instead, we arrived at work this morning to find that he had called the candidate over the weekend to “unofficially” offer her the job without first consulting with HR to secure official offer paperwork.

As a mid-career professional, this would have set off a number of alarms and I wouldn’t have accepted the position. As a recent graduate, the candidate didn’t seem to connect the dots/be concerned that the CMO of a large company called her on a weekend to extend an unofficial employment offer.

All of the mid-level managers are taken aback by his actions. Even my director is shocked. Is his behavior as weird as we think it is? How do you approach senior management who is openly distrustful of HR’s ability to onboard new candidates about his behavior with new recruits?

This … seems really normal to me. Managers should do this stuff themselves, and if your company has been leaving it to HR, that’s actually not a great thing. When managers turn this kind of work over to HR, they often miss out on opportunities to sell the position and to get a good sense of any reservations the candidate has, which they’re often going to be far more effective at addressing than HR will be. HR also isn’t going to have the same investment as the manager in hiring this particular person, getting the tone right, getting the person excited about the job, and setting up the relationship well from the start. Hiring is one of the most important things that managers do, and the offer stage is a critical part of hiring; it makes no sense to turn it over to someone without the same stake in it that the manager has.

So I don’t think it should set off any alarm bells for the candidate — maybe the weekend call, but not the rest of it.

Your CMO may have other issues, but this doesn’t sound like one of them.

3. My director requires more reporting from my department than from another

I work in a department of seven people that is overseen by a managing director who is also over another department of four people. Those in the smaller department all make about 5-10% more than those in my department, but we do completely different functions.

What I’ve noticed is that my department has to turn in weekly reports of our accomplishments. I won’t go into detail and give away what we do, but suffice it to say that our work is easily quantifiable and I generate a report and graphs for a weekly director’s meeting that my boss attends.

I’m considering making a formal complaint to my director that I feel like he’s only keeping track of our side while letting the smaller department do whatever. I’ve seen copies of the reports that are submitted to the company managers and there’s no mention of the smaller department. Their work is also easily quantifiable and they are setup to use the same work order tracking system we use, but they don’t. What would be the best way to approach this?

Don’t. It doesn’t impact your job, and it’s not really any of your business. There are all kinds of legitimate reasons that your director might ask for different reporting from your department than he does from the other department — but even if there’s no good reason for it, it’s just not your business and you don’t have standing to complain about it, formally or otherwise.

4. My boss wants me to work with an estranged relative

One of my relatives is a big supporter of the organization I currently work at (apparently it really is a small world, after all) and, without knowing that I was related to this person, my supervisor suggested that I might work with my relative and that they could be a resource for a project I’m working on. This person is very well-connected, and may be able to open doors that will be very helpful to this project.

However, I have been estranged from a relative for just over a year now. This person is not abusive, and I don’t fear for my safety—we were actually close until they did something pretty terrible and I decided that I could no longer have this person in my life.

I eventually told my supervisor that this person was a relative because I thought it would seem odd if it became known eventually and I hadn’t said anything, but I didn’t mention the estrangement. I just started working at this place a few months ago, and I don’t know if it will reflect badly on me if I tell my supervisor about the estrangement and that I would rather not work with this person. My supervisor is also a big believer in the separation of work life and personal life, and I’m not sure how they would react if I mentioned this personal story, even in very general terms. I don’t know if I should talk to my supervisor, not say anything and hope my supervisor forgets about it (the idea of working with my relative has been raised as a possibility, but in the meantime another project has come up that needs to be our top priority for now), or if there’s a better solution.

Would it seem like you dropped the ball if you didn’t follow up on it? If so, you should proactively bring it up so that you don’t look like you just let it drop or that you hoped that if you didn’t bring it up again, you could get out of it — those two things would be a bigger problem than just explaining what’s going on. But if neither of those things are true, then sure, you could just wait and see if it comes up again.

If you do need to address it (either now or down the road), I’d just be straightforward and brief: “Jane and I are actually estranged due to some family issues, so it would be awkward to work together.”

5. Can my resume list pieces I ghostwrote?

One of my current job duties is authoring op-eds and blog posts for senior leadership at my organization. Is it appropriate to list specific ghostwritten pieces in a publications section on my résumé? I like that this conveys the range of topics, diversity of voices, and frequency of publication, and also highlights work of which I am particularly proud. But I worry that it’s gauche to “out” the publicly credited authors and to assert a role that is not backed by bylines. Is it better to leave it as a general bullet point with some sample topics and publications?

Nope, it’s totally normal to list ghostwritten publications on your resume. It’s also very normal for staff to be the ones who actually author the pieces that have the byline of a top organizational leader, so you won’t be exposing any dirty secrets or anything like that. (That said, since this isn’t a CV, you don’t want a long list of publications on your resume — just selected highlights.)