how late can you call employees at home, dealing with abusive customers, and more

by Alison Green on December 3, 2015

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

1. How late can I call employees at home?

Is there a cut-off time that I as an employer can call an employee’s home or cell phone?

There’s a general expectation — in life, not just in the context of work — that you don’t call people after 9 p.m. unless it’s an emergency (and the bar for a work emergency call late at night is very high) or they’ve given you permission in the past.

In addition to that, though, I’d be really, really careful about calling people outside of work hours. There are jobs where it’s necessary, yes, but even in those you should keep it to a minimum. People tend to respect and appreciate managers who make an effort to keep work from intruding into their off hours, and they tend to really resent managers who violate that boundary except when it’s truly necessary.

2. How to support employees when they have abusive customers

This is my first management position. I work in retail and I manage a great group of high school girls. For most of them, it’s their first job. I want to know how to stick up for my team when they have to deal with outrageously rude customers.

This weekend, we had an incredibly obnoxious and rude customer. There was a language barrier, and my employee was handling the situation great; she was patient, polite, and spending a lot of time with the customer. We were working together helping this customer. The customer was snatching shoes out of my hands while I was checking them to make sure they were a matching pair. After we had finished helping her, she threw shoe stuffing at my employee, than said something in another language and left.

This was the last straw. I wish I had told the customer to leave immediately and never return. I’d rather lose a terrible customer than a great employee. I told my employee that she did a great job and didn’t do anything wrong to cause the customer to be a world class jerk. I feel like that’s not enough. But since I’m a new manager, I don’t know what to do. How should’ve handled the situation?

You did the right thing — you clearly told your employee that you had her back, she didn’t do anything wrong, and the customer was in the wrong. You handled it well!

In the future, you can also intervene earlier if you think a customer is mistreating an employee. In this situation, though, I’m not sure that it had reached that point until the throwing of shoe stuffing, but it sounds like she left right after that, so you didn’t have the chance to intervene before she was already headed out the door. But in general, if a customer is being abusive, you could step in and say that you’ll handle that customer yourself (and ask the employee to go do task X, so it’s clear she doesn’t need to stay), or you could directly say, “I can’t allow you to talk to employees that way.” But the specifics will depend on the situation … and if you don’t think of the perfect response in the moment, doing what you did here — talking to the employee afterwards — is a great way to handle it.

3. Starting a new job while five months pregnant

I was recently hired for a great new position. I was almost four months pregnant during my interview but was able to hide it successfully. I hid it because I was discriminated against during my last pregnancy when I had an opportunity for a promotion with my current employer (as in, they told me that they wanted to promote me but my pregnancy was really poor timing). Plus, as you wrote in a previous Q&A, I didn’t want my pregnancy to influence the hiring committee’s decision, even subconsciously.

The interview was nearly a month ago. I received and accepted an oral offer on November 5, but I didn’t receive (and accept) the written offer until November 18. My first day is December 7. I am now obviously pregnant. The last thing I want to do is walk in on the first day and surprise my new boss and team with the news that I will be going out on leave in less than five months. However, I don’t know when or how to tell my new boss. I want to reassure her that I’m committed to the position, but with it being a new position for the organization, I have no way of laying out a specific plan to address my projects, my leave, and my return. How should I approach this? Also, what method of communication do you recommend? Email? Phone?

Multiple people during the interview process told me how family-friendly the organization is, but I’m still nervous about how to approach this.

Send your new boss an email now and let her know. I’d say that you know the timing isn’t ideal (that doesn’t mean you’re apologizing for being pregnant or anything, but you can still acknowledge that the timing isn’t super easy) but that you’re really excited to begin tackling the position and you’re committed to doing all you can to work out a smooth plan for your leave, and that you’d be glad to sit down and talk details with her when you start next week.

4. Do we have to be paid when we’re on-call?

My coworkers and I all participate in a six-week on call rotation: one week on, five weeks off. During that one week, should we be compensated for our on-call work during non-business hours?

We’re in Oregon, and we are all salaried employees.

Well, if you’re salaried and exempt, it’s a moot point — as an exempt worker, your salary is your salary, and no law requires you to get overtime or extra pay. (They also can’t dock your pay if you work fewer hours some weeks.)

However, if you were non-exempt, the answer would be different. An employer would need to pay for that on-call time if you were required to wait on their premises while you were on-call (such as a fire fighter waiting at the firehouse to be called to duty). But if you’re allowed to go about your personal business at your own house or out and about, but just to answer your phone or respond to emails, you wouldn’t need to be paid for that on-call time (although you’d need to be paid for any time spent doing actual work). The only exception is if the calls are so frequent or the restrictions on your availability so severe that you can’t really use the time for your own purposes; in that case, you’d be considered “engaged to wait” and that waiting time must be paid.

But again, if you’re exempt, none of this applies.

5. Can I request a one-week notice period instead of two weeks?

Let’s say you’ve just gotten a job offer and you need to give notice to your current employer. In any circumstance, would it ever be okay to give a one week notice but tell your boss that, if needed, you can stay two weeks? Does it make any difference if your job is causing a lot of stress and you feel the need to get out asap? This may be my situation soon, but I’m not sure how it should be handled.

You really should always give two weeks notice; it’s the professional expectation and not doing it risks impacting your reputation. I get the stress thing, but you’re leaving — those two weeks will usually be significantly less stressful because you know you’re getting out.

That said, you could try saying something like this, “I can give you a full two weeks notice if you need me to, but I wonder if it would cause any issues if we instead set my last day for one week from now, because (insert reasons). Would that work on your end, or would you really prefer I do the full two weeks?” I would only say this if you genuinely think there’s a reasonable chance your boss will be fine with it; if you say it during a crunch time or when you have lots of key projects to finish/transition, it’s going to come across as tone-deaf.

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update: coworker keeps calling me “baby mama”

by Alison Green on December 2, 2015

Remember the reader whose coworker kept calling her “baby mama” after she returned from maternity leave, even going so far as to refer to as another coworker’s “baby mama”? (And that other coworker was simply another person he disliked, not the father of the letter-writer’s child.) Here’s the update — and it doesn’t end up where you think it will!

So, I went to HR about this once Fergus REALLY crossed the line (he called me a “know-it-all c- word” at a work function). My manager and this jerk are friends, so going to my boss isn’t going to help.

I was called into a 1.5 hour meeting with the local HR rep and the area manager after my complaint. They spent the first five minutes telling me that this “has been addressed” and will not happen again. The remaining hour and 20 minutes was spent reprimanding me for things I’ve been doing for the whole three years I’ve worked here that were never a problem, and have never been raised as an issue until now. It was all small things, and 99% of these things were done at my boss’s’ request or with his written permission. (Example: coming in to work early Monday-Thursday to make up for having to come in late Friday because of a prenatal appointment.) I protested when they gave me a formal write-up, and asked to see any documentation that I was ever told any of these things were a problem. (Company policy requires a verbal reprimand before a written reprimand.) They were unable to present anything. Not only was I written up, but my job duties were so significantly decreased that I went from being an office manager to a receptionist.

I took my case to the corporate VP of HR, claiming hostile work environment, retaliation for filing an HR complaint, sexual harassment, etc. He ignored me and my emails for three months and only responded when I threatened to get a lawyer involved. I was offered a job in a different state (I was looking to relocate anyway, but the offered job was not anywhere near where I was trying to move to), and pretty much told that I could either take the job, take two weeks severance, or quit my whining.

I now have a child and my husband recently lost his job, so unfortunately I’m stuck in this nightmare workplace.

However, now, almost a year later, I have had all the tasks they took away returned. Not to sound cocky, but no one else could handle them, so they had to give them back! The manager has been ordered to leave me alone and has not spoken to me since. He still runs his mouth behind my back, but I just can’t be bothered to care.

I did recently speak to the VP of HR again (he was visiting our site), and he asked me how this situation was going. I flat-out told him that I will NEVER being contacting HR for anything again. He seemed surprised. I told him that all HR did was make the entire situation drastically worse, and I’ve learned my lesson. He apologized for about 10 minutes, and I just got annoyed, stopped him, and walked away.

He was so upset that he complained to his boss. His boss reviewed the whole file, and I received a formal apology from his boss the next day. He personally fired the local HR rep and the HR VP. The lovely d-bag that was making the “baby mama” comments now has to attend a two-week sensitivity training course, and had to write me an apology. So, long story short, it almost a year but finally was resolved.

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how to break up with a client

by Alison Green on December 2, 2015

A reader writes:

Several years ago, I left a full-time job in order to freelance, and my most recent employer has remained one of my clients. I have been handling an ongoing series of projects for them, with the understanding that my contract will be renewed each year for the foreseeable future. However, the work has become tedious and I don’t really enjoy it anymore. I’d prefer to focus on other, newer clients who are a better fit for my schedule and business goals (and I realize that I’m fortunate to have a large enough client base to be able to make that decision).

My current contract with the company ends in a couple of months, and I’ve decided not to renew it. I’d like to notify them now to give them time to plan. But for some reason, I’m stuck for a way to word this notification gracefully. I respect the folks at this company and would like to maintain a good relationship. Any guidance you can give?

You can read my answer to this question over at Inc. today, where I’m revisiting letters that have been buried in the archives here from years ago (and often updating/expanding my answers to them).

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managing an employee with inappropriate emotional outbursts

by Alison Green on December 2, 2015

A reader writes:

My sister has an employee with a long history of inappropriate emotional responses to situations. For example, my sister will ask Jane to adopt a more professional communication style in meetings, and Jane will say/text/IM “I don’t know how you can ask me such a thing” or “I should not have to tell you what’s wrong if you don’t know” or “I will just have to stop telling you how I feel, since you never listen.”

They were friends before my sister hired Jane, which she now understands was a bad idea (so maybe we can skip the “you can’t be friends with people you manage” conversation). Because of Jane’s outbursts, my sister has asked that they limit their communication to work matters only, but it has not helped much.

Recently, they were at a work retreat and Jane had to leave early, before group transportation would be available. The airport is an hour away from the site. A male volunteer at the site offered to drive Jane, and my sister said “Great idea!” However, Jane is a sexual assault survivor and told my sister that this would not work for her, and that she felt triggered. My sister immediately apologized, profusely, and made arrangements for a cab.

Days later, Jane sent my sister a string of abusive text messages, starting with “I think I need to know if you get the depth of how betrayed I feel,” continuing with dozens of messages, and ending with “I need to stop before I unleash everything I have ever wanted to say to you,” and “I am so hurt that I want to destroy you.”

My sister acknowledges that she made a mistake and hurt Jane, and regrets it, but she and I both think that Jane’s outburst was inappropriate and unprofessional. My sister works for an organization where it is extremely difficult to fire people. How would you handle it? And how would you handle it in a normal organization?

Whoa.

This is beyond just unprofessional and inappropriate; it’s abusive, and it’s really, really not okay. There’s no way your sister can be managing this employee effectively. For example, how is she going to be able to give feedback to someone who reacts like this? And presumably any feedback she does attempt to give isn’t getting a lot of attention paid to it, given that Jane’s focus seems to be on being betrayed by it.

Your sister can’t manage effectively when she has a employee who unloads on her like this, who barrages her with abuse, and who has such a warped understanding of what their relationship should look like.

Moreover, is your sister sure that Jane is only doing this to her? There’s a possibility that she’s doing it to other coworkers too, and that is really, really not okay too.

None of this okay. It’s all really bad, not just a little bit inappropriate or unprofessional. It’s high-level, code-red, must-address-immediately, totally-embarassing-if-her-boss-found-out-that-she’s-let-it-go-on stuff. I get that this is probably all made much harder by their pre-existsing friendship and the fact that by allowing it to keep happening, she’s inadvertently reinforced with Jane that it’s okay, but if your sister is going to do her job, she needs to put a stop to it.

As for what to do … Ideally she would meet with Jane and lay out firm boundaries and make it clear they’re not negotiable. I’m not sure if the “I want to destroy you” text messages were recent, but if they were, I’d start with that. I’d say something like this: “I was really taken aback to get these text messages from you. There’s no situation where it’s okay to send a coworker, let alone your boss, messages saying that you want to destroy them, or otherwise become this emotional with colleagues. I regret not setting clearer boundaries earlier, but going forward I need there to be no misunderstanding: I cannot have you sending messages to me or anyone else like this. (Fill in here other specifics that illustrate the type of thing she needs to stop doing.) I need you to keep your communications with me and other colleagues about work, not about your feelings toward them or me, and I need you to maintain pleasant and professional relationships with everyone you work with. Can you do that?”

If she says no — which seems like a real possibility — then ideally your sister would say, “I want to be clear with you that is a requirement of the job. You cannot continue to send these types of messages to me or continue to make negative personal feelings such a focus in your communications. It’s extremely disruptive. What I need from you is a commitment to keep your focus on your work goals, and leave personal issues at the door. If you genuinely don’t think you can do that, we’d need to talk about a transition out of the role. Would you like to take a few days to think about whether this is something you’ll be able to do?”

If Jane says that she can do this, then your sister needs to have a zero-tolerance policy for missteps going forward and needs to address it immediately if it happens again, with consequences (more on that in a minute).

I’d also tell Jane that she can’t use texting for work communications anymore — none, zero, zip. She’s not using it appropriately or constructively; take it off the table as an option. (And that’s not outrageous to do; plenty of managers, myself included, don’t text with employees.)

Now, as for it being “extremely difficult to fire people” at your sister’s company; that’s not the same thing as “impossible to fire people.” It generally just means that there’s a bunch of documentation and warnings involved, but that it can be done if she’s willing to put in the time and effort. So she needs to find out exactly what the steps are in her organization for letting someone go, and she also needs to bring someone (her own manager or HR, or both) into the loop about what’s been going on and what her plan is for dealing with it. She’ll want to have her own boss backing her up before using the language I have above, but no decent manager — hell, no mildly decent manager — is going to tell her to put up with this behavior. (In fact, it’s more likely that her manager is going to be concerned that she’s allowed it up until now, but there’s no way around that, and if she shows that she’s committed to stopping it now, that’ll help.) Frankly, there’s also a potential safety issue here, given the content of some of those messages, so your sister has an obligation to her employer and to herself to loop someone else in on what’s going on.

And really, barring a major turnaround on Jane’s part, this is probably someone who your sister is going to end up needing to remove from her staff. There’s no real way around this — this is just so, so, so unacceptable, and it’s killing me that it’s been allowed to go on as long as it has.

Read an update to this letter here.

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coworker was arrested for DUI, asking for a different room assignment, and more

by Alison Green on December 2, 2015

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

1. My coworker was arrested for DUI and hasn’t told our employer

My coworker was arrested for a DUI a few months ago. I only just found out because he’s in my carpool and he just realized he wasn’t supposed to be driving. I also found out that he hasn’t told our employer. We drive rental vehicles as a regular part of our job. It’s not actually in any part of the handbook to tell our employer, but obviously he’s a liability and we’re also government contractors – I’m sure there’s a breach of contract somewhere in there. We don’t have the same boss and we technically don’t work together, just for the same company, but I have no idea if I should be telling someone. The other two coworkers in our carpool who know are subcontractors and technically work for a different company. One of them is leaving to go work primarily for her company and the other is technically below me in our work hierarchy so I feel like it shouldn’t be up to her to do anything.

What should I do? We’re in California and drive on U.S. government property, if that helps. In all honesty, I really feel like I should say something, but I don’t know him very well and I’m actually kind of afraid to do so. He’s very quiet and passive aggressive – I don’t really know how he’d react.

Ooooh, I think this will be an interesting one to get other opinions on.

Call me a busybody (I am one! and I’m also not inclined to protect drunk drivers), but I’d err on the side of speaking up since now you’re burdened with the information and he specifically told you that he hasn’t told your employer, which puts you in a bad position. I’d discreetly mention it to your boss and leave it to her to decide if it’s something that needs to be pursued or reported to anyone else. I’d say this, “I feel awkward about mentioning this but I’d also feel uncomfortable if I didn’t. I hope I’m not overstepping, but Bob mentioned that he was recently arrested for DUI and isn’t supposed to be driving but hasn’t told the company. It seemed to me like something that might matter for liability reasons since we drive so many rental cars, and I felt like I might be being negligent if I didn’t say something. Again, I feel icky about raising this, but I’d feel worse if I knew and didn’t say something and it did turn out to be an issue.”

I’m sure lots of people would argue this differently though.

Read an update to this letter here.

2. Asking for a different room assignment at a conference

I’m a PhD student, and our research group is going on an overnight trip for a conference tomorrow. Typically the culture is for same-gender students to share hotel rooms. A while back, I volunteered to host a new student joining the group (I’ll call her Brook) in my home. This was a decision I almost immediately regretted. Brook continuously left our bathroom messy, cooked and left food and dirty dishes out overnight, and left her clothes and personal items everywhere. Brook also expected to share meals with myself and my partner but did not disclose prior to her arrival that she was a vegetarian, meaning my partner went out and bought all new groceries (for which she never offered to pay him back).

Back to the conference. I was asked if I was okay with doing a twin share, with an undergraduate student (I’ll call her Piper). I said this was okay, but the email I received today with room assignments has me down to share a three-person room with Piper AND Brook. The thought of sharing a room with Brook again (a twin room for 3 people – I don’t actually know if it’s three separate beds!) makes my stomach turn and I know I will be on edge for the whole trip if this happens.

How should I raise this with my supervisor, and can I without looking immature?

I’d say this: “Is there any flexibility on room assignments? I’d agreed to a twin share, but it looks like I’m in with two people, and one of them is someone who I had a pretty bad experience hosting in my home last year. I normally wouldn’t ask, but given the history, I’d really like to switch if there’s any possibility of that.”

That’s a reasonable thing to say and won’t look immature. If you’re told no, at that point you do probably need to suck it up and deal with it, but it won’t look immature to calmly ask the question.

3. Can I write recommendation letters on work time?

I am a senior staff member at the small firm that I work at, and oversee several junior staff/interns. I have received requests from one current intern and one past intern to write letters of recommendations for them for their grad school applications. I am happy to do this, but my question is whether this is something that I should do in my own personal time, or during my normal work hours as part of my responsibilities as a supervisor.

For what it’s worth, I am leaving my current firm right about the same time that all of these applications are due (I’m leaving for a much better and AWESOME job, and I will be forever thankful to AAM and its readers for your incredible advice throughout the entire job search process; I was able to increase my annual salary 40% with this move!). I’d love to get them done on company time before I leave :)

Yep, it’s fine to write recommendations for current and past employees at work — it’s part of your job as a manager, and it’s not a task you’d be doing if not for your work there. It gets a little more grey when you’re asked to write them for employees from previous jobs, although even then it’s something that you’re doing in your professional capacity.

Moreover, as an exempt employee, you’re expected to manage your own time and in general it’s fine to do this kind of thing at work as long as it’s not bumping back higher priorities.

4. My title isn’t the one I agreed to when I was hired

I got my first “real,” aka industry, job a year ago (spent my time in academia roles previously). When it was time to write our yearly review, I noticed that my official title lacked the “senior” descriptor. I went to HR and was told, “Oh, it must be a typo, things are hectic now, give me a few weeks to correct it.” I wait a month to follow up and was told that my hiring job code reflected the correct title. I should be “teamaker” as opposed to “senior teamaker.” Well, I mention that all my documentation (job offer letter signed by HR, correspondence, even the job advertisement) says “senior teamaker.” HR says, “Wait a couple of weeks, we’ll try to straighten it out.” I go to my manager (who is new and wasn’t the one who hired me – there has been a lot of flux and my original hiring manager is gone) and say I’m confused and explain. He says he’ll look into it.

One month later, I follow up with HR and am told “you have the correct title according to your job code. A senior title means a promotion and we can’t give you that.” I am struck dumb. I go to my manager, and he says that my job reviews are favorable and he can recommend that I get promoted (but it’s not a sure thing and that’s not until next spring). I am flabbergasted. They give me an offer letter and then decide they can’t give that title to me?!? I do feel like I am underpaid compared to other people with the same work load (and the senior teamaker title I was initially offered). But holy crap! This amount of pushback makes me feel like I should have been getting paid more and that’s why HR is insisting that they can’t promote me to the title they offered me (I have advanced science degrees and I think titles matter in this line of work).

Do I have any other recourse? Is this wage theft (I get demoted so they don’t have to pay me more)? Do I end up burning bridges if I push? My manager is nice and we have a good relationship, but I’m not sure how much power he has over this.

I still have the offer letter, emails about interviews, a PDF of the electronic job application, and a PDF of the job ad, and they all say “senior teamaker.”

I would take all that documentation — but most especially the offer letter, because that’s what really matters — and go back to HR and your manager and say, “I think maybe there’s been some confusion. I was clearly hired as a senior teamaker, as you can see by the offer letter that I accepted. If the offer letter didn’t have this title, I’d accept that I might have misunderstood. But the offer letter clearly gives this title, and that’s the title that I left my previous job for and came onboard for here. This is what we agreed to, as you can see right here in the letter. How can we get this fixed?”

That’s a reasonable thing to say; it won’t burn bridges with anyone even semi-reasonable. But if they refuse, at that point you’ll need to decide if you want to continue working here under these conditions. There’s not much recourse beyond that (it’s not wage theft since they’re paying you the wage you agreed to), but a reasonable employer will find a way to resolve this.

5. What is employment verification?

I’m curious about what “employment verification” entails. My current company does not allow managers to be contacted as references, but does have employment verification done via HR. It’s in the employee handbook and I’m very much a by-the-book person, but I’d like to be ready with what I may need to supplement when the time comes to move on.

Not that I’m actively looking to leave my company, but is employment verification merely “Yes, [name] worked here from [dates]” or is there more information that might be supplied?

Employment verification usually just means verifying that you did indeed work there during the time period you said you did and with the job title you said you had. Sometimes it also includes verifying other details you self-reported, such as duties, salary, why you left (not in detail — just whehter you resigned or were fired or laid off), and/or whether you’re eligible for rehire.

It’s different from a reference in that it doesn’t include commentary on your work or what you were like as an employee.

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update: my new office is full of dogs — and I’m allergic

by Alison Green on December 1, 2015

Remember the letter-writer in July who was highly allergic to dogs and discovered that her new office was full of them? Here’s the update.

Right after I wrote to you, HR bought me a HEPA air purifier for my desk and announced that dogs had to be washed regularly to cut down on dander. I’m not sure how they planned to enforce it, but one woman who is very well liked announced that her dog had a skin condition that meant it couldn’t be washed often. HR told her that the dog couldn’t be in the office for “medical reasons,” and EVERYONE blamed me. People made comments to each other as I walked by about how I “discriminated” against a dog with a medical condition, how much I must hate dogs, how selfish I am. After a week, one person came into my cubicle where everyone could hear and demanded to know why I worked here when I clearly wasn’t a cultural fit. I had been ignoring the comments and trying to take the high road (was that the right move, Alison? Should I have confronted them right away?), but this was too much. I told her that I was a good fit – I had a strong background in teapot design and a passion for optimizing teapot handles. I reminded her of the times I had helped her brew new tea flavors above and beyond my job. I said that regardless of anything else, I’m here to help produce the best teapots and that I want us all to work as a team to achieve that.

Within 10 minutes, HR sent me an invite to meet with them, and when I arrived there were all three of our HR people – including the director – as well as our company’s lawyer! They wanted my statement on a “workplace incident” – they said that someone accused me of yelling at another employee. I hadn’t raised my voice at all; I was actually proud of how I calmly said those words and my voice didn’t even shake. I told them about the comments and how I was starting to feel like this was a hostile work environment based on my medical condition. The HR rep said that my allergies weren’t covered under ADA and that they wanted to help me work there because they liked me, but that one person was not worth damaging a strong company culture.

While this wasn’t entirely moral, I heavily implied that I’d consulted two lawyers who disagreed with her ADA assessment and that firing me could lead to a lawsuit. I didn’t talk to a lawyer; my comment was based off of the two lawyers who you quoted in your blog post. They decided to “reevaluate the situation,” and it was basically swept under the rug. I don’t know if they spoke to some of the people who made comments, but those stopped within a day.

I wish I could say it got better, but it didn’t. The company then announced that we were going from cubicles to an open floor plan to promote communication between teams. They banned dogs since we were in a temporary work space for three weeks as they ripped up the carpet and put in new desks. The day before we came back into the office, they sent around an email that said that dogs were no longer allowed due to 1) the open floor plan (no way to contain them) and 2) the new carpet (there had been so many accidents that the old carpet was smelly and gross) but that they had negotiated a discounted rate with the local doggie daycare. It’s normally $33/day, but they got the rate down to $22/day. People were up in arms – if this was the middle ages, there would have been pitchforks. They didn’t openly blame me and no explicit comments were made, so I thought it would be OK. I was wrong.

Instead of outright comments, it became subtle things. I was no longer invited to standing meetings and when I pointed that out it was explained away as an “oversight.” I was excluded from new meetings about teapot design that I was integral to and when I found out about them and asked, I was told that teapot handle design wasn’t changing (but it did in the mockups – someone else was doing my job!). If I sat at a table at lunch, everyone at that table was suddenly not hungry and would leave. I would go home and cry; it was like being in high school, but when I brought it up to my boss, she explained that they were oversights or mistakes and that I was blowing things out of proportion. She seemed so sincere and I felt like she was really trying to support me. I felt like I WAS blowing things out of proportion.

One day I was in a bathroom stall, and I heard my boss and two other coworkers enter. They loudly talked about me, about how my boss was looking for a replacement for me, and how I would be gone soon anyway and then they would petition for the dogs to come back. My boss then said “(CEO) didn’t like the smell of the carpet after dogs had accidents and there was that flea problem last year, so even when is gone it won’t happen, but she ruined a great situation and I want her gone for that reason alone” and then they all laughed. Before any of you ask – it’s illegal to record someone without their knowledge in my state, so I didn’t pull out my cell phone, but I did note the names of the people. My close friend (and one of my only supporters) was also in the bathroom and agreed that if needed, she would testify on record about overhearing that conversation.

I did mention in the comments that my mother was terminal, which is why I didn’t feel I could move to another city with more job opportunities. Throughout the past few months, I’ve been searching but I was having problems answering “why are you leaving your current job so soon?” Eventually, I told one hiring manager the truth and he confided that he is also severely allergic to dogs and that it would never happen at his company (a small start-up). He offered me the job the next day. It was a slight pay decrease, but included stock options and surprisingly better health benefits! I took it and started a week later.

I was so upset about the whole situation that I called a meeting with the company lawyer, HR department, and my boss. I gave notice, saying I was leaving immediately with no transition period due to the hostile work environment. I reported what my boss had said and named the people who were also in the bathroom. When she tried to deny it, I told her I had a witness willing to corroborate everything and she then claimed that I was taking her words “out of context.” At this point, HR and the lawyer asked her to leave the room. I told them that if there were any issue with my paycheck or backlash against me (including defamation), I would bring a lawsuit. We agreed to what they would say if they were contacted as a reference in the future, I got it in writing (!!), they cut the check within minutes, and I left right away. I’ve only been at the new job a few weeks, but it’s a great environment so far and I have high hopes.

There were many questions about why I didn’t see the dogs when I was interviewing. My interviews took place in the front conference room directly off of reception. I was never anywhere near the cubicle farm to see any dogs. A few people also said that if it were their company, they would see it as unfair to lose the dog benefit. I hate to take those comments personally, but it had the ring of “blame the victim.” Maybe I’m bitter, but your “right” to have your dog lay next to you while you fiddle away at your computer does not trump my right to breathe. This wasn’t just a discomfort; if I’d missed a dose of medication or grew more sensitive over time (which my doctor said was happening), I could have had a massive reaction that could have caused serious damage or death. I think many of the readers – and my coworkers – ignored that.

Thank you to your readers who gave their support, to the two lawyers who gave me free legal opinions, and especially to you for doing the research and giving me the information I needed to get out of that bad situation. I don’t know what would have happened in that first meeting with the lawyer and HR if I hadn’t had that information. I’m still very angry about the whole situation, but I’m trying to let it go and move on.

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how to prevent alignment problems on your team

by Alison Green on December 1, 2015

If you’re like a lot of teams, you’re spending a lot of time right now setting goals for next year. And if you’re like a lot of teams, chances are good that those goals might be knocked aside next year when other projects, priorities, and metrics push their way in. And while sometimes it truly does make strategic sense to set aside a set of goals for new priorities, often when it happens it’s because team members and their managers are simply out of alignment with each other.

Here’s a good test of whether alignment problems are cropping up on your team: Spend a few minutes jotting down what the two or three most important things are for each of your team members to accomplish next year, or even just in the next quarter. Then, without showing them your list, ask each team member what they would say are their two or three most important priorities for that same period. If your answers match up, great. But on a lot of teams, this will reveal core misalignment about what’s most important for each person to accomplish.

Then, go one step further and do the same exercise with your own boss. Are you aligned there as well?

What you want to end up with is alignment up and down, where everyone’s goals and vision for their role tightly lines up with the company’s goals and visions, where no significant chunks of time are being spent on activities that don’t align to broader business goals, and where each person understands how their work ties into larger objectives.

If you don’t find that, the good news is that you’ve now surfaced the problem and can figure out where the misalignment is happening:

  • Are people treating their formal goals as a bureaucratic exercise, rather than as a real tool that guides their work and time allocations every week?
  • Have you miscommunicated somewhere along the way about what’s most important to achieve, and what trade-offs are okay to make in service of those efforts (such as making it clear that it’s okay to put project X on hold if needed to achieve goal Y)?
  • Have you overloaded people with so many goals that they realistically can’t feel commitment to meeting any of them?
  • Have you signaled to people that they’ll won’t really be evaluated on how well they meet their goals, so it doesn’t feel like the most important thing for them to pay attention to?
  • Have you and your own boss neglected to get aligned on what should be coming out of your team?

Once you see misalignment, it’s much easier to dig into where it’s coming from and get people back on the same page, and to then continue checking in regularly to make sure the problems don’t crop back up. But it’s crucial to take that first step of checking whether it’s there or not to begin with. That’s the step too many managers skip, so vow not to let that be you!

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I have to share a hotel room with my boss on an international trip

by Alison Green on December 1, 2015

A reader writes:

I took a new position (event planner) earlier this year and relocated from across the country. During my interview, my boss mentioned we had one international event for 2016. No big deal. Now, she has booked a second international event and is on track to book a third in 2016. Planning an international event is incredibly challenging and time consuming. I also wasn’t aware I would be traveling this much for work and traveling outside of my comfort zone. I moved here to work here – not in Europe.

My issue is that my boss told me we would be sharing a room internationally for five days in February to do a wedding. I find this totally inappropriate and invasive of my privacy and space. If I am being required to travel internationally for work, I should at least have private accommodations. I am an adult – there isn’t a reason I need to sleep in a room with another adult, especially when the client is paying for our accommodations. When I expressed concern, my boss said, “Well, sister, it isn’t up to you.” The client signs a contract stating they will cover those costs….. and these are high-end events with very large budgets.

I’m concerned about traveling and now concerned that every time we travel we will be sleeping together and I am feeling helpless. I want to have an adult conversation about this by also not come off as demanding. Please help.

So, there are some industries where adults share rooms on business travel — academia and some nonprofits, for example. There are other fields where it would be totally unheard of and ridiculous. I don’t know which is true for event planning, but I’d guess it’s not typical. (Any event planners want to confirm that?)

I’d say this: “As you probably gathered, I was surprised to learn that we’d be sharing a room in Europe, and I want to make sure that my expectations are in sync with reality going forward! Is this typically how we’ll do rooms when we travel, or is this an unusual circumstance?” It’s possible that you’ll hear that this one is unusual for some reason (maybe the wedding is already over-budget, or who knows what). Or you might hear that yes, this is how it will always be.

If the latter, then you can decide if it’s a deal-breaker for you, or something you’re willing to deal with even though you don’t like it.

While you’re at it, do you want to get more clarity on the international travel aspect of the job too? It doesn’t sound to me like she misled you about that (saying in your interview that she had one international event for 2016 isn’t the same as saying “and that’s the only international event I expect to book”). But if it’s really out of sync with what you want to be doing, it would be good to find out now how much international work you can expect to be doing, so you can decide if you’re up for that or not.

And last … Totally aside from the issue of sleeping arrangements, what’s up with your boss’s dismissive and kind of rude response when you raised the accommodations issue earlier? If that was a one-off, then fine — but if it’s typical of how she talks to you, that would concern me.

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boss is demanding gifts back, right-wing talk radio in reception, and more

by Alison Green on December 1, 2015

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

1. Boss is demanding gifts back

My mom’s boss gave her multiple new iPhone 6’s as gifts. One of those which was given to me as a gift by my mom. Now her boss wants her to work 7-7 everyday and she can’t do that, considering other priorities she has to take care of, so now her boss wants her to pay the gifts back, which is about $700 a phone. That’s too much money to pay for our own good right now. If they were gifts and my mom already quit anyway, do we absolutely have to pay her back? Is there anything her boss can do legally considering the phones were gifts?

If they were gifts, then no, your mom has absolutely no obligation to return them, and your mom’s former boss is being a huge ass by trying to say otherwise. Gifts, once given, belong to the recipient.

Is there any chance that the phones were given to your mom to use as part of work, and not as a gift? That would be the only scenario where she’d need to return them. Otherwise, she should simply say, “These were given to me as gifts, and I’m not able to return them.”

2. Receptionist is playing right-wing talk radio

We have a receptionist who has been with us for over a decade now. She’s relatively good at her job but has one issue she insists on pushing everyone’s buttons on. She listens to right wing radio talk shows all day, such as Rush Limbaugh, and keeps the radio just loud enough so others (clients, etc.) who come in can hear the radio.

We’ve asked her at least twice to keep the radio off, or so low that nobody coming in can hear it, but it keeps getting louder and louder. Now we’re presented with the issue of either following up with some kind of reprimand or just pulling the radio out of the office all together (we really don’t want to aggravate the situation, but she’s decided to push this issue by continuing to ignore our requests).

What can we ask her to do or not do? What can we do to reprimand her without creating a problem for ourselves? By the way, the radio is not her personal property – it belongs to the office. And everyone else in the office is irritated at having to listen to people screaming on the radio when they walk into the reception area.

You absolutely can remove the radio altogether, or tell her clearly that she can’t have talk radio on at all in reception, or insist that it be kept lower. It’s completely reasonable to want to control what visitors to your office hear, and most companies would step in if they weren’t happy with the aural reception visitors were getting. So you’re on very solid ground with any of those courses of action. There’s no free speech issue here or anything like that; you’re allowed to set rules for your reception area, and even if she weren’t in reception, you’d be allowed to ban radios or require that they be kept at low volume.

I’d recommend just asking her what’s up, since she’s ignoring clear instructions: “Jane, I’ve asked you in the past to keep the radio off or so low that others can’t hear it, but it’s actually getting louder. What’s going on?”

From there, you can either remove the radio altogether, let her know that that will be the next step if the problem continues, limit it to music only, or anything else along those lines.

3. Responding to questions about why I’m not spending the holidays with my family

It’s the time of year where many people in the office are discussing holiday plans. I have an unusual family background and am not spending the holidays with my family. Some coworkers are more inclined than others to try to find out the reason why. Can you suggest a way to redirect the conversation? I’ve tried phrases like “My family doesn’t handle the holidays very well,” but I don’t even want to give that level of detail. I would like to be open with my colleagues, but this is still a sore spot for me and I’d rather not be known for my family drama. (I’m very early to my career and to this company.)

Yeah, “my family doesn’t handle the holidays very well” is too much personal information in response to what’s probably just a friendly and fairly generic inquiry. Instead of talking about what you’re not doing, can you instead say what you are doing? (For example: “I’m joining friends for a big blow-out feast and then we’re watching an X-Men marathon.”) If people insist on knowing why you won’t be with family, just say, “Oh, just made other plans this year” or “it didn’t work out this year” or “it’s hard to get us altogether” or something else similarly vague. And then immediately change the subject by asking about their plans — “so what do you have planned?” People like to talk about themselves, and if you ask a couple of follow-up questions, they’ll probably let it go.

4. Do minimum wage jobs expect you to accept on the spot, rather than asking for time to think it over?

I’m retiring and plan to get a minimum wage job to supplement my social security income. When I’ve been offered skilled or managerial jobs in the past, the employer has generally accepted a brief period to consider the offer. It’s my impression that in minimum wage work, the expectation is that the job should be accepted or rejected immediately when it’s offered. Is that correct?

Often, yes, I think so too — at least assuming that we’re talking about something like retail or food service work. If it’s a minimum wage job in an office, normal office norms would apply.

But even in retail or food service, I think you could still ask for at least a day or two. I’d phrase it this way: “I’m really excited to get this offer. Would it be okay for me to get back to you with a firm commitment on Wednesday rather than accepting on the spot?” (But my retail and food service knowledge is really outdated, so I’d love to hear from people with more recent experience who can confirm or deny this.)

5. Scheduled to work on days that we were supposed to be closed

I work in a doctor’s office. We all have set schedules and are open on weekends. Naturally, on the rare occasion that we have weekends closed, I make plans. Lately my boss has been opening days that had been closed for months without so much as a notice. In fact, if I had not looked at our patient schedule, I would never have known I was scheduled to work some days. My question is, is this legal? Can an employer make you work on days that you had been closed without any sort of warning?

Yes, it’s legal. It’s not very smart though, since it’s a good way to end up with people who don’t come in because they didn’t know they were scheduled. I’d say this to your boss: “I’ve noticed a few times recently that I’ve ended up scheduled for weekends that had earlier been marked as closed, and I only found out through chance after I’d already made plans for those days. Is there a way to get more notice when we end up opening on weekends that had previously been marked as closed?”

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update: I live where I work, and now there’s a haunted house next to me

by Alison Green on November 30, 2015

It’s here: the start of “where are they now?” season, when we get updates from people who had their letters answered here this year (or sometimes earlier), and we get to find out how things turned out. We have so many updates this year that I’m going to be publishing at least one every day from now until the end of the year. Here’s the first…

Remember the letter-writer in October whose job required her to live on campus, and students were putting on a haunted house right under her, filling her apartment with screams and making it impossible to relax? Here’s the update.

The day you posted my letter, my boss told me in a very clipped manner that the VP would be handling the haunted house situation (she pretty much didn’t talk to me all week after our initial complaints) and the VP reached out to me and my husband. That same day, my husband also left for a a job in a major city four hours away. The VP said he asked that the student group halt their preparation until a solution could be reached. Two days after that, they were back in the basement, and a male stood outside my door repeatedly saying, “We have to be very, very quiet,” which of course left me feeling quite scared.

I let the VP know what happened, and he said they shouldn’t have been down there as no solution was reached. A couple days after that, I received a very formal letter via email from him including my boss, her boss, HR, and our representative from the attorney general’s office (sigh) detailing the steps that were being taken. In short, the student group was allowed to work on the haunted house during regular business hours while I was at work, the weekend before while I was out of town, and the three nights that it was taking place my employer was going to put me and my dogs up at a local hotel. Although I didn’t exactly like dragging my dogs and belongings to a hotel for three nights and being kept from my home (I had to leave immediately after work because each night they were already down there making noise), I couldn’t say the accommodation was unreasonable and I at least got three decent nights of sleep.

Overall, it seems that your advice that I will lose the war has been correct and I have felt ostracized by my boss ever since. I feel like I am quickly being forced out of a job I’ve been looking to leave for 5 months. However, I appreciate how supportive most of the comments from your readers were and particularly that several said this job wasn’t worth the negative impact on my health. Those comments resonated quite a bit with me (what wasn’t in my initial letter was that I suffered from hives all summer due to job related stress as well), and so I am happy to say that I have plans to be moving to where my husband is shortly, in our new apartment not on a college campus! I have had a part time job for several months that makes me happy and that allows more opportunity in this other city, and it’s looking like I could have another full time job lined up soon as well.

 

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