Ask a Manager

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

1. Should I take a stand on getting ready for work in the office bathroom?

I work for a small company in the HR department as an administrative assistant. There are two bathrooms on the property, both single occupancy, one in the office and one in the warehouse.

I get up at 6 a.m. to work out at my gym every day. I then use the shower at the gym, arrive at work 15-30 minutes before I start, and get ready in the office bathroom. I take roughly 10-15 minutes to get ready, and then I clock in. One day, as I was walking out of the office bathroom, the call center manager asked me not to use the office bathroom to get ready and instead to use the warehouse bathroom. I said okay, but was a little bothered that I was asked to change what I was doing (which is harmless) to accommodate her.

After deliberating about this, I don’t feel I’m doing anything wrong. My productivity and attendance is not up for debate. I’m an excellent employee. So why should I change? I did, however, choose to use the office bathroom only if I knew I would be quick, and if I was going to take the full 15 minutes I would use the warehouse. However, the GM spoke to my boss, and my boss asked if I would please use the bathroom warehouse from now on. So, now all of a sudden this is an office policy?

I choose to use the office bathroom because it’s much warmer than the warehouse bathroom. The call center manager can use the warehouse bathroom, but she is choosing not to for the same reasons I’m using the office bathroom. The only difference is she wants to have access to the office bathroom and not have to wait. So, should I fold to these demands? Should I change my bathroom usage to accommodate someone else and go into the cold warehouse bathroom because someone complained? Now I feel like I will get written up if I use the office bathroom to get ready.

Yes, you should use the warehouse bathroom to get ready from now on. In an office with a single-occupancy bathroom, it’s reasonable for your company to say “this bathroom is for toilet use, not for getting ready for work.” By doing an optional, non-work activity in there every day, you’re preventing people from using the bathroom for the purpose it’s intended for, and there’s not a lot of ground to stand on in insisting that they go out to the (apparently cold) warehouse. This would be an odd to battle to fight, and you’re likely to lose and to come out of it with your reputation a bit tarnished, because their request is a reasonable one.

But why not solve the whole thing by just getting ready at the gym after you shower there?

2. Interviewer said “wow” when I told him how long I’d been out of work

I was let go from a job in October and still have not had any luck or offers. Seems that I am overqualified or under-qualified. If I wanted to go back to doing what I was doing before, I think I might have had an offer or two, but I think I am burnt out on that career path. Just a little while ago, I had a phone interview with an owner with a very dry sense of humor. When he realized how long I had been out of work (four months), his response was “wow” … which is something that I didn’t need to want to hear, of course. I was curious what you thought of his response. I am not happy that I have been out of work for this long, but every situation is different and a good portion of my unemployment has been over the holidays. Is his response a bad sign?

It might be a bad sign about this job/this manager, or it might be that he doesn’t have much of a filter, or that he was ineptly trying to express sympathy. There’s no way to really know, but I wouldn’t let it rattle you too much. Four months isn’t a terribly long time.

3. Should I drop a client who tried to renegotiate rates?

I teach a training course at a company that is also my client in other matters. This course is recurring, meaning that I teach it every year. Well, this year, just three weeks before it was supposed to start, my client told me that due to financial problems they are having, I should accept a 15% decrease on my fees. This was months after we had agreed upon my teaching this course this year, and reducing my rates never came up in the meantime. They apologized profusely, claiming that their telling me so late was an oversight on their part.

I find that hard to believe, since I provide them with other services, meaning that we talk regularly, and they had already started puting the word out about the course, inviting employees and other partners of theirs as well (the participation is not free of charge, at least not for non-employees).

I explained that I could not accept this decrease at such a late notice, but that I now felt so badly that I preferred not to teach my course at all, as my not accepting a lower rate made me feel as if I was exploiting them in their time of need, so to speak. They answered that it would be very bad for them if the course was not taught this year, and that they would not decrease my fees.

However, I now want to drop them as a client, because I feel they behaved unprofessionally and that they still are, since it turns out that they are able to pay my rates, they just would prefer not to. Would it be terrible and unprofessional on my part if I did not teach my course this year, despite the fact that my client has already started accepting participants?

Yes, it would be unprofessional and bad for your reputation! You agreed to teach the course, they’ve agreed to your regular fee for it, it starts in the three weeks, and they’ve already advertised it. It’s up to you whether to drop them as a client after this, but backing out of the course at this point and for this reason wouldn’t reflect well on you.

As for whether to drop them after that, I don’t see anything that they’ve done especially wrong here. They asked if they could lower your rates, you said no, and they said okay.  Clients sometimes try to renegotiate contacts and rates. It’s up to you whether you agree or not, but the act of them asking isn’t a big deal. (After all, wouldn’t it feel pretty unwarranted if they wanted to drop you after you asked for a rate increase, they declined it, and you agreed to continue at the old rate?)

4. Should I mention that my wife applied for a job at my company?

A previous question about talking up your spouse after an interview at your company brought many negative responses. For my situation, my wife has only just applied. Last I heard, there had been over 130 applications submitted for the position. This was about three weeks ago and the position is still posted.

I was wondering if it would be wise to at least mention to the hiring manager that my wife has applied so she does not get lost in the shuffle and possibly give him somewhere to start within all of the applicants. One reservation I have is that she is on the borderline for meeting the years experience qualification they have listed, so I would not want to be looked down upon in any way for suggesting an applicant who might not even meet their criteria.

So should I mention her, talk her up, or just heed the advice I’ve seen online and let her application speak for itself? I am in good standing with my company, have been here for 1.5 years, and been promoted once.

I think it would be fine to say, “Hey, just a heads-up that my wife applied for the X position you’re hiring for. Her name is Valentina Warbleworth. No pressure if she’s not the right match though.” But that’s it — you don’t want to come across as if you’re trying to get her special treatment or that you’ll be disappointed if she’s not interviewed or hired. That’s why that “no pressure” bit at the end is important — given the usual dynamics with this kind of thing, people will assume that there is pressure unless you explicitly say otherwise.

And definitely don’t talk her up. You’re assumed to be biased, so it won’t carry a lot of weight and instead will add to the worries about tension or awkwardness if they go with other candidates instead.

(Also, are you sure you want to work at the same company? There are lots of downsides to that, including financial security if you’re both at a company that’s having layoffs.)

5. What does a one-hour performance review meeting indicate?

My question is regarding performance reviews. Are one-hour reviews an indicator that the review might not be good?

That’s a normal amount of time to schedule for a performance review. Generally, it would be an indicator that your manager is devoting an appropriate amount of time to what should be a substantive, important discussion about your performance. Of course, if your manager has a history of scheduling these for 20 minutes, and is still doing that with everyone else, then yeah, it might indicate that there’s some specific reason that she wants to have a longer conversation with you, which could be good, bad, or neutral. But I wouldn’t read too much into it, unless there’s some other context (like that you’ve been getting warned about performance problems).

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

1. My boss accused me of faking a panic attack to get out of a meeting

I’m diagnosed with panic disorder. My boss knows about it — we have an informal arrangement where I can leave early for appointments with my psychiatrist/therapist and make up the time working from home in the evenings. Luckily, it hasn’t affected my work to an extent where I’ve needed to disclose the condition to anyone else. My panic attacks usually happen when I’m at my desk, so I can quietly step out of the office for a moment and cool down without anyone knowing.

A few weeks ago, I had a panic attack in an important meeting. My boss, his boss (our team lead), and I were discussing an urgent cross-departmental project. Our team lead lost his temper and started screaming at us, and that triggered a panic attack. I managed to say “I’m having a panic attack. Can you please give me a minute to collect myself?” They let me have the time, and we finished the meeting later. They were understanding; my boss said that he understood, and if I need to take any time off, he’d explain to his boss.

But the next day, my boss told me I was being written up for disrupting the meeting. I tried to dispute it, by explaining that I had a panic attack which I couldn’t control. My boss’ reply was that he thinks I faked the panic attack to get out of the meeting and doing the work, and that it doesn’t matter either way, because I disrupted a meeting, wasting his and our team lead’s time.

I feel like my boss totally crossed the line here. I think he’s in the wrong for writing me up for a health condition I can’t control, especially after telling me that it was okay, and even more wrong for accusing me of faking it (since if he thinks he faked it, that definitely influenced his decision to write me up). What can I do to protect myself?

They think you faked a panic attack to get out of a meeting? I’ve been in some pretty awful meetings, but that’s ridiculous and insulting.

I don’t know whether your panic disorder meets the conditions to be protected under the Americans with Disabilities Act (it would depend on the details of how it impacts you), but either way, it’s pretty likely that your company isn’t going to be thrilled to learn that one of its managers is accusing someone of faking a medical condition and disciplining someone for said medical condition. I think HR is your next step here because if they’re at all competent, they’re going to step in and squash this. If they don’t and you want to explore other options, the next step would be to talk with a lawyer, who would be able to give you more tailored advice. That said, if your relationship with your boss is otherwise good and this feels like an aberration, you might judge that it’s worth more to you to preserve that (unless this starts to be a pattern, in which case that calculation should shift).

Read updates to this letter here and here.

2. My coworker is taking over my outside-of-work social life!

I have a great coworker who I began inviting to casual get-togethers with friends a while ago. For what it’s worth, he’s very smart and nice and my friends and I do like seeing him. However, he quickly got my friends’ contact information and is becoming a pretty constant presence in my social life, whereas I prefer to have more separation between work and home. Also, now he has started to see my friends without me, to the point that he is sometimes evasive when he tells me his plans so as to intentionally exclude me from social events. I feel like I have lost control over my personal space and also my enjoyment of what was previously a good working relationship. Short of going back in time, how do I put these boundaries back in place?

I don’t think that you can. I totally understand why you want to, but you can’t really control this kind of thing, at least not without coming out of it looking pretty bad. You introduced him to people who it sounds like he clicked with, and now they’re forming their own relationships with him. The very most you could do is discreetly mention to one or two of your closest friends that you sometimes want to hang out without having someone from work there, or arrange plans yourself and say something like “let’s keep it just you and me.” But beyond that, all you can really do is chalk it up to a lesson learned.

3. I’m afraid a mutual contact will tell my new job that I quit my last job without notice

About four years ago, I did something stupid that I am very ashamed of that is coming back to bite me. I had been working in a small nonprofit that for various reasons was not the right fit for me. Instead of resigning the respectful, professional way, I quit via email with no notice. I know, it was a horrible thing to do and I will never do something like that again! This organization is based out of a big city about an hour away from my town, so I didn’t think I’d run into anyone from there again and I thought it could remain a skeleton in my closet.

However, about a year ago, I started working for a large nonprofit in my town, and it turns out that the person who my old job had to hire to replace me (who now works in a different organization) sits on a committee with several of my colleagues from my new job and my boss! This committee is very actively involved in my department, planning community events and such. At a meeting several months ago, I unknowingly sat next to her and upon introducing ourselves, she (nicely) brought up that she knew who I was! Needless to say, I was mortified but tried to act as friendly and polite as possible. Since then, I have tried to avoid situations where I might see her but it isn’t always possible. The last time we were at the same place, I tried to stay occupied and engaged in conversation with other people to avoid interacting with her.

I really love my new job and organization and am making a good name for myself there. I had been a volunteer there for many years before starting as staff so they know me well and know I am committed to the cause. But I am terrified that this girl will say something to somebody and ruin my reputation. Can you please give me some advice for how to handle this situation both right now, and in the future if my colleagues and boss were potentially to find out? Do believe me when I say that I have changed and would not do this again!

It’s true that it’s possible that she’ll say something. But you’ve been working at your new job for a year now, and they have a lot of data from that year to judge you by. If you seem reliable and professional, that’s going to carry a lot more weight than a story about how you quit your last job. They’re also likely to think that there could be more to the story that they’re not hearing (like that there was a reasonable cause for leaving without notice, which your replacement wouldn’t necessarily have all the details on).

This is the kind of thing that can really bite you if it comes up during the hiring process, but is much less likely to be an issue once they already know you and you’ve established a good track record with them.

4. Could I have salvaged this hiring situation?

I am currently employed but have been searching for a new job for the past year. (There are few options in my area and I’m not willing to relocate.) While working at Nonprofit A, I collaborated with Nonprofit B on several projects and, as a result, have made a handful of contacts there. When a position opened up at Nonprofit B, I was thrilled! The position aligned so closely with my career goals and was a much better match than my current entry-level position. (I should add I have been working in this industry for eight years, moving up from part-time and taking time off for a graduate degree.) When I mentioned to my contacts that I noticed the position was open, they eagerly encouraged me to apply.

Well, I submitted my application, and a couple months went by without a word. Then I received an email on a Sunday night inviting me to interview over the phone that week. I was unfamiliar with the name on the email and did a little research. I realized it was an outside firm helping them hire. I responded the following day around noon (after checking my work calendar and less than 24 hours after receiving the original email) with my availability that week. Several hours later, I received a follow-up email and the person informed me that he no longer had time to talk to me that week. I asked if there would be more interview slots available the following week (and hinted that I had colleagues at Nonprofit B). He told me that he would contact me if he found more time.

I never heard back from him and according to my colleagues, the organization finished the hiring process and hired another candidate. I’m still searching for a new position several months later and I’m wondering, is there something I could have done differently? I keep kicking myself because I imagine this all could have been avoided if I responded to his email more quickly. I’m sure there were many applicants, but I was qualified for the position and felt I would have been a great fit, especially considering my proven track record working with the organization’s staff.

You responded to the email in a perfectly reasonable amount of time. It’s possible this guy is a crappy recruiter who chooses candidates based on who he gets ahold of first, but that’s bad hiring and it would be out of your control. It’s also possible that he just ended up moving forward with candidates who were a better match (keep in mind that being qualified for the job doesn’t mean that you were the most qualified).

Ideally, though, you would have reached out to your contacts at the organization and made sure they knew you were applying, and that although the recruiter had reached out to you originally, he ended up telling you that he no longer had time to talk. If they felt you were a strong match who should be interviewed, they could then intervene, or at least pass that along to the hiring manager, who could intervene. (If you did that, I’d take the lack of interview as a sign that they just didn’t think you were the strongest match of all their applicants.)

5. Do I have to list references on my resume?

Is it necessary to list personal and/or professional reference on my resume? I’ve seen good examples of resumes, one on your site, sans that info. Is it necessary? Would the hiring manager ask for them if/when they wanted them? It seems like something asked more on an application than a resume. Most of the jobs I’m looking for are home-based, so I don’t know if that makes any difference in adding the references or not.

Do not put your references on your resume. They don’t belong there, and employers will specifically ask you for them at the point that they want them.

Don’t even put “references available upon request.” It’s assumed that you’ll provide them upon request. Use that space for more important things.

Also, leave personal references off your reference list altogether, unless some weirdo employer specifically requests them.

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

1. CEO’s son drives like a madman while I’m in the car

I work for a company as a business director. The CEO’s son meets me out of town for a few store visits. He pulls up in a rented Camaro, and we do our visits of the stores in the city. During our travel that day, he proceeded to race between stores at extremely high rates of speed, regularly using the paddle shifter on the steering wheel. I’m 65 and he is 30. He must have assumed that I didn’t mind the totally incomprehensible speeding actions. The problem is that he’s spoiled and the heir to take over the company soon. When I got back home, I told my immediate boss and he just blew it off. One of the companies big sponsor’s is NASCAR, and he made a joke out of it.

How would you have handled it with out kissing your job goodbye?

Ideally, in the moment while you were still in the car with him, just by saying, “Hey, could you slow down? We’re way over the speed limit.” And then, if he protested that it didn’t matter, by saying, “I’d appreciate if you’d slow down on my account anyway.”

Is your concern now that you’ll have to drive with him again in the future and he’ll do this? If so, I’d plan to address it in the moment then — or better, see if you can arrange to be the one who drives. Or is your concern that he’s out there driving around like this in general? If it’s that, I don’t think there’s much you can do about it, unfortunately — but you can at least make sure that he doesn’t do it while you’re in the car. (I wish that weren’t the answer — but I can’t think of a practical way to intervene more broadly.)

2. My director keeps following up in person about emails she just sent me

I support the executive for my team and do a lot of scheduling. I currently have 646 items in my inbox since January 1, and 90% is scheduling. I have completed all but about 10.

I have a director who will send me an email and then soon after show up at my desk about the same thing. How would you approach this situation? I’m constantly interrupted by this person and really don’t know how to approach it.

“Jane, I’ve noticed you’ll sometimes come over in person to follow up on an email after sending it. I’m really vigilant about responding to all emails quickly, but it throws off my system if you follow up in person right after sending one. Can I ask you to give me some time to see it and process it? Of course if you haven’t heard back in a reasonable amount of time, definitely follow up — but my goal is for you never to have to do that.”

3. My sources want to see — and change — my articles before I publish them

In addition to my full-time office job, I’m also a freelance journalist. Right now, I’m writing for a local magazine. Occasionally, the people that I’m writing articles about will want to see the story before it’s published. In the past, I didn’t have a problem with this, but it caused a major problem for me a few months ago. I emailed a draft of my story to someone I interviewed, and she basically rewrote the entire article to be an advertisement for her business. When I politely told her that I wouldn’t be sending her version to the editor, she then tried to back out of the story.

Now, something similar is happening with a different article. The subject wanted to see my first draft, I reluctantly sent it to her, and now she wants to change the whole thing. (I should note that I don’t have a problem with changing something if it’s inaccurate, but in this case, all of the facts were correct and she just wants the story to be more focused on her).

What should I do in these situations? I don’t feel good about saying no when someone asks to see the story I wrote about them, but I can’t continue to re-write my articles just to appease them.

In journalism — as opposed to something like corporate PR — you shouldn’t be showing article drafts to your subjects at all. Checking quotes or facts is fine if you’re not positive you’ve quoted someone correctly or that you’ve gotten a fact right, but otherwise even letting people approve quotes before you use them isn’t good journalistic practice, and you definitely shouldn’t be running the whole article by them.

If someone you’re writing about or quoting wants to see your draft, say something like, “We don’t run article drafts by people, but it’ll be published on the 23rd and I’ll send you a link when it’s live.” (Or you can check with your editor about how she wants you to handle this, but a reputable publication isn’t going to agree to let sources sign off on entire articles.)

4. Will my husband’s age raise eyebrows in our benefits department?

My husband is a lot older than me, he’s 61. I have him on my health insurance plan where I currently work, and am just wondering about the likelihood that his age raises eyebrows in our HR department/benefits office. I work in academia where there are a lot of older employees. I am just wondering if HR ever takes an age of a dependent spouse into account when making decisions about promotions, layoffs, and the like.

It’s super unlikely that anyone even notices, and even more unlikely that anyone cares (especially since 61 isn’t especially old, but this would be my answer even if he were 91), and close to no chance that it would ever impact employment decisions. Don’t give it another thought.

5. Cover letters when an application system only provides a comments box

I just applied for a job that happily involved only a single page – add resume, type your name, email and phone, and … a comments box. I entered a brief note about being happy to answer any questions they have, to fill in the details behind the brief overview in the resume.

Is this a way for the company to signal that a cover letter isn’t really necessary, or should I shoehorn a cover letter into their comments box? I’m leaning towards the former. I interpret it as a way for the company to keep their application system very lightweight for applicants to positions that have straightforward technical skill requirements, possession of which could easily be made evident in a resume. I do wonder if shoehorning in a cover letter would actually make me look old-fashioned, like I took a mimeographs and Bob Dylan approach to a modern job application system that was specifically built to allow me to avoid the time commitment of writing a position-specific cover letter.

I’d put a cover letter there, but keep it informal and on the shorter side. And all my usual advice about not summarizing your resume in your cover letter probably goes double here — it should really be something that adds to what you’re already uploading, explaining your interest in the job and why you’d excel at it. In fact, given the format, I’d possibly even skip any intro stuff and go straight into why you think you’d be great at the job.

I tend to want to stay away from “happy to answer any questions you have” language, since that’s always assumed to be true and really just ends up being filler that doesn’t add much substance.