Ask a Manager

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

1. Only spouses and significant others are allowed at holiday dinner

Is it typical for office holiday dinners to restrict an employee’s guest to include only a spouse or significant other? I’ve worked as a doctor for more than a decade in a very successful privately owned clinic with fewer than 30 employees. The clinic recently changed hands, making this year its first holiday under new ownership.

Being single, I was looking forward to bringing a close friend to the dinner, but was told by my employers that only spouses and significant others were allowed to accompany employees. Is this a common practice?

Yes, extremely common. Probably more common than not, actually. The idea is that etiquette has long treated married couples (and now other significant others) as a social unit, so they’re invited to social events as a unit. The idea isn’t “bring any plus-one you want,” but rather “we’re not going to ask you to leave out a spouse/spouse-equivalent during this non-work-hours social event.”

2. Employee sent abusive personal texts from a work phone

I have an employee who is off work due to personal reasons. This is a long-serving employee with a good track record. I like this guy, and we have a good working relationship. However, he used his company phone to send abusive texts (non-sexual) to his ex-partner’s new boyfriend. The boyfriend has complained and threatened to go to the police if we, the company, do not do something about it. The phone contract has now been terminated. What can I say to this employee to make him realise how serious this is for the company?

“It’s unacceptable to use a work phone to send messages like this, and you’ve exposed the company to potential legal problems. This has shaken my trust in your judgment, and I’m going to need you to work to rebuild it. As a start, I need you to agree not to use company resources for personal business going forward. Can you do that?”

People who send abusive messages to the new partners of exes tend to have some serious maturity and boundary issues, so you might keep an eye on that as well.

3. Mentioning a recent job offer when asking for new types of work

I am an admin assistant at a university and recently interviewed for and turned down a teaching job offer at a local private high school (the start date wasn’t ideal, the pay increase wasn’t substantial, and it seemed more of a temporary assignment). I have my master’s degree and I love being a part of a university, but my ultimate goal would be to teach in higher education. The job market in academia, however, is not friendly to master’s degree-holders, and even PhD’s, especially in the humanities.

My current supervisor was recently promoted and I would like to request a performance review with him before he begins his new assignment (I have only been at this university in this position for about six months—my current supervisor hired me). I would like to use this opportunity to discuss creative ways I could perhaps integrate more academic research tasks into my current position. I have received a lot of positive feedback so far and think my current supervisor would be willing to hear me out, but how could I phrase it? Is it wise or useful to mention the teaching job offer I turned down to ask for an opportunity for a stretch assignment in an academic department or student activities department? The job offer I turned down offered a couple thousand more than I make now; is it unreasonable to request a raise only 6 months in?

Yes, you really need to wait a year before you ask for a raise, and you should base the request at that point on contributions you’ve made in the past year, not on a different job offer.

In theory, it could be possible to mention the offer in the context of explaining that you’re strongly interested in working in an academic position, but I think that’s trumped by the fact that doing that would make it obvious that you were seriously considering leaving only six months into your job, which is a bigger strike against you than any help the rest of it would provide. So I’d leave it out and just make your ask without that detail (and really, I don’t think that detail would provide so much help that it’s a huge loss to leave it out).

My bigger question is whether it’s realistic to expand an admin assistant role into one that includes academic research. I suspect it’s probably not, but maybe commenters working in academia can weigh in on that.

4. Employees did unpaid work for “contest”

Recently, my company decided to hold a contest to develop a software that, once implemented, will save the company a lot in the next couple years. Participation was voluntary.

A few hourly employees invested 80 hours+ per week to finish in the short time of the contest, but did it outside of work hours. The people who worked on the software volunteered, but the end result is of enormous value of the company–it feels uncomfortably close of the conditions under which many unpaid interns have sued their employers. At the very least, the contest has been incredibly demoralizing for employees; they feel their work is being devalued.

My question is, can this get the company into legal trouble?

You’d need a lawyer to tell you with 100% certainty, but yeah, I’d think so. Calling it a contest doesn’t change the fact that they have employees doing actual work.

5. Can my resume include a company on my resume that went out of business?

If I previously worked for a small company (film editing) that closed down, should I still include it in my resume even though it is unlikely its existence can be verified and I no longer have contact information to my former boss? I’m hesitant to tell an employer that these smaller film companies start and shut down often but that I was too naive to try to make a record or portfolio of my work.

I am a student and it really is the most impressive paid work I have ever done, but I don’t want anyone to think I am a liar if I describe my work without supplying a working reference.

Companies shut down. It’s very unlikely that an employer will think that you’re lying simply because the company is no longer in existence, unless there’s something else that appears shady about the way you talk about it. You absolutely should list it.

That said, you should try to track down your former boss using LinkedIn if you can.

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

1. Do I have to give this vendor gift away?

Last week, I scheduled a demo from a vendor for today on a project I was leading, and the next day I had an interview and accepted the job. I immediately gave notice to my boss, who delayed announcing it to the office until this past Monday. On Monday morning, after it was determined who would take the lead on this project, I emailed the vendor contact, informing him of the change in leadership, but apparently not informing him I was departing the company.

Today I received a nice gift of a canvas and leather picnic tote, with plastic wine glasses, a fancy bottle opener and blanket… and I want to keep it. Part of me believes I shouldn’t, for some intrinsic reason held over from a previous job where all gifts were to be turned over to the company, and if only because I am leaving. This gift was sent FedEx overnight too, addressed to me, but I can see on email timestamps that the vendor may not have read my email until after the gift was sent.

Logically, I think I should give the gift to the person taking over the project – I know he happens to appreciate wine too, and he’s the business owner’s son. I imagine if I gave the gift over to the company, one of the family members would get to keep it anyway.

Help! I’ve hidden the gift away and my last day is the Wednesday before Thanksgiving.

If your office doesn’t have a policy on gifts, I don’t think it’s the end of the world if you keep it — but I also think keeping it is a little shady, since it really was intended to be a gift to your company, and more specifically to the person managing the project because they want to maintain that relationship.

A good litmus test: Would your coworkers or manager think it was shady if they found out you kept it? If so, you should turn it over. (And the fact that you’ve hidden it away probably indicates that you do think it would be an issue.)

2. Jobs keep hiring me quickly and then it doesn’t work out

I applied for an $11/hour, part-time (30-35 hours/week) litigation paralegal position. The job was posted on November 9. I applied on November 10, I was called about an interview on the 11th, I interviewed on the 13th, and was offered the position on the 17th. I was the only person interviewed.

Usually, when I’m the only person interviewed, am offered employment rather quickly, and am told, “no experience, no problem because we’ll train you” for the purposes of “giving me a try,” it never really works out for me in the long run. Several days or weeks later (it never lasts longer than a month) I’m, without fail, given a check and shown the door. The training promised is either nonexistent or piss poor to begin with. I leave feeling deflated and always feel like I was never really given a fair chance to begin with. It then makes me wonder why I ended up rushing into it and giving the employer a benefit of a doubt rather being somewhat apprehensive about it. Over the past 2 ½-3 years, this has happened to me four times and the last two times it happened to me, it happened twice in a row. It’s happened four times too many and I wasn’t going to let it happen three times in a row so I ended up declining this firm’s job offer, explaining why and encouraging them to continue with the interviewing process.

I could never understand why I’m the only interviewee for the position and there’s such a rush to offer me employment. I’m starting to learn if it’s too good to be true, then it probably is. I just can’t understand employers who interview one person and then rush to hire that person without sifting through and interviewing other applicants because the first one may not be the right one, so why stop at just one applicant?

Because they’re bad at hiring. It would be one thing if you were an incredibly strong candidate and it was clear that they weren’t going to find someone better and they had to snatch you up quickly because you had another offer pending, or something like that. But that doesn’t sound like the case, so … bad hiring.

For what it’s worth, this reads to me like there’s an issue with the jobs you’re applying for and/or how rigorous you’re being in your own screening and vetting before accepting an offer. What you’re describing is a fairly unusual way of operating, and if it’s happening with this kind of frequency, it says to me that you need to do stronger vetting yourself (just as much as they do!).

3. Hiring assessments that weigh heavily against newly arrived immigrants

I work at a nonprofit that helps newly arrived refugees find jobs. For context, refugees are legal immigrants who are background checked, invited here by the US government, and have a legal right to work. Obviously, our clients have a variety of backgrounds and many have been in the U.S. less than three months.

The fad these days is the “assessment” attached to the online application, which seems like a combination of the psych evals that cops have to take and a variety of intrusive questions, which also weight heavily against any immigrant. (And probably many native born Americans.) Some examples: “How far away do you live from your nearest family member?” (or some variation on that theme) “How long would your commute be if you took this job?” and “How many friends did you make at your last job? How many of them are your still in touch with?” The perverse part of me wants to answer, “All my friends were genocide victims” but… inside voice, inside voice.

These assessments add 30-60 minutes to the already cumbersome application and are being used even for low-paying, entry-level jobs. What gives? Do companies want to hire or to give tests? Also, isn’t this a way to get around questions that would be either illegal or borderline if asked in an interview? I’d appreciate your perspective.

It’s unlikely that it’s usually a deliberate attempt to get around questions that would be illegal if asked outright. (And actually, the interview questions that most people think are illegal aren’t — it’s making a hiring decision based on the answers that’s illegal, but the act of asking isn’t.) It’s more likely that it’s a combination of thoughtlessness, a sometimes legitimate concern about commute length, and buying into silly pre-packaged assessment tests without really evaluating what they’re getting out of the questions.

But if the impact has a disparate impact on refugees — or more specifically, people of a particular race or national origin — then yes, that could indeed be found to violate federal anti-discrimination laws.

Your organization might be in a good position to point that out to some of these companies.

4. My boss won’t pay for mistakes or non-billable work

My boss is very concerned with wasted time and has the belief that it is not “fair” for his employees to be paid for mistakes. I am paid hourly, and work in a very small office environment, so there is no HR department to handle issues. As an example, my boss has given me work assignments, which aren’t billable hours to our clients, but are learning exercises to prepare me for the work when it is billable. I can see how that is reasonable to do it unpaid, since my dedication to doing those assignments prepared me for new tasks at work, which I wouldn’t have been given if I hadn’t done the assignments. Then there are times when my boss has asked me and other coworkers to redo work unpaid because the first time it was done wasn’t good enough. I am pretty sure that is not legal – having hourly employees work for free just because they made a mistake or did not follow directions.

At what point does it become illegal to work for free? Is it true that work assignments that aren’t crucial to my daily duties but only prepare me for getting more responsibility at work are not required to be paid? And in the case of mistakes gone unpaid for, is that illegal? And if so, how do I approach my boss about that situation without hiring a lawyer? I work in California.

None of this is legal — none of it! It wouldn’t be legal in any state, but California takes this kind of thing incredibly seriously.

You have to be paid for all of your work, even if it’s not billable to a client, even if it’s just to help you learn, and even if you do it poorly. You can be fired for making mistakes, but you can’t not be paid for the time you spent making them.

I’d say this to your boss: “I’m concerned that we’re running afoul of state law, which requires that people be paid for all hours worked and doesn’t allow exceptions for mistakes or non-billable work. California has pretty steep penalties for violating that law, so I think we need to change the way we’re handling this.”

If you get pushback, the California Department of Labor should be your next step.

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

1. My company gave me a much smaller wedding gift than it gave my coworkers

I work for a small but successful international company. I am the office manager, but I take care of all accounts payable/receivable, HR, and building management. Three of my coworkers, including me, have all gotten married within the last two years. On our expense reports, I have seen our company wedding gifts to each of the other two employees; both were around $300 and purchased from a registry. When my wedding came along a few weeks ago, I was of course looking forward to a nice gift from my office just like my coworkers (with birthday gifts, we always give the same amount to everyone, so I assume it would be similar with other gifts). For my gift, I received simply a $50 gift card. I wasn’t registered for my wedding, but I thought that my gift would be at least ballpark to the others in value.

I am grateful for the gift, but I also think it’s kind of unfair to give so much to some employees, and much less to another employee. When it comes to gifts I usually have a totally different attitude, but since it’s obvious to my boss I see the expense reports, I’m surprised. It’s also bothering me because everyone at the company knows I’m one of the most hard-working employees here. I know based on my work with the budgets that it’s not an issue of cutbacks, and I also have been here just as long as the other employees and I’m actually at a higher level of management than both of them as well, though my pay is around the same level. Please let me know if I’m being ridiculous or if there is something I can do to make things more fair.

My boss does seem to really like the employee who received almost $300, but from my perspective he has shown just as much like toward me as well, so I don’t feel it’s a favoritism issue necessarily. Anyways, I’m not sure if this is worth bringing up at all or if I should just move on, but I’m curious what your advice might be.

Well, it’s possible that it was because you didn’t have a registry and they did; sometimes that leads to unevenness, without people realizing it. That doesn’t make it a great move on their part, but it might mean that it was inadvertent. In fact, it’s much, much more likely that this was inadvertent than intentional.

Unless there’s other evidence of you being devalued or not treated as well as others who are similarly situated, I’d let it go. I get why it’s striking you strangely, but it’s going to come across as petty if you raise it, and really, the value of your wedding gift is really not the thing you want to base your work satisfaction on. (And if there is other evidence of you being devalued or not treated as well as others, that’s where I’d focus anyway, not on the gift disparity.)

2. My office-mate stinks

I share an office with a guy who’s about 20 years my senior. Our office is a pretty good size. We’re constantly about five feet away from each other. I’ve been in this office for about two months now (just moved teams in my company and therefore buildings).

As the day goes on, he gets stinkier and stinkier, and whenever he stretches, it stinks up the whole office. I am keeping the door open. I haven’t rigorously documented how often he gets stinky–it’s definitely more than once a week, perhaps not every day, and more towards the end of the day.

At what point, if ever, could I request to change offices, or some other course of action? We’re on the same team, but we don’t work on any of the same projects. I’m certainly not perfect to share an office with, as I also occupy a human body, etc., but this is egregious.

I think you could ask to change offices now — you’re not required to tolerate this for some particular length of time before you’re allowed to ask not to be subjected to it. When it’s at the point that it’s clear that it’s a regular thing and not merely occasional, it’s reasonable to explain the situation and ask if you can sit somewhere else.

Do be prepared that your boss might instead choose to try to address the problem with your coworker instead of moving you, or even that you might be told to find a way to deal with it … but it’s a totally reasonable thing to speak up about.

3. What to use instead of “write-ups”

In a recent post, you had a parenthetical thought that’s had me thinking. You wrote: “If your manager still wants to ‘write you up’ (a silly concept that needs to be banished, but that’s a different post), at that point there isn’t a lot you can do about it.”

I’m an HR manager, and supervisors come to me when they want to write someone up. It often feels needlessly adversarial to me, and I end up encouraging the supervisor to have a candid conversation with the employee that’s more collaborative than a formal write-up.

On the other hand, if that employee is not going to stick around (either by our choice or theirs), that paper trail is pretty vital. What happens if we banish the “silly concept” of write-ups? What’s a better method, but still covers the bases for documentation?

Yeah, the problem with “write-ups” is that they’re infantilizing. Your employees are adults, not naughty schoolchildren being sent to the principal’s office. If there are problems, you have a direct conversation. If the problems are serious ones and it’s a pattern, you can document the conversation by writing a memo to yourself about what was covered and keeping it on file, or you can send the person a quick email summary of the conversation (framed as “just wanted to summarize what we talked about, in case it’s helpful to have it to reference”).

4. Employees seeing our private health insurance information

Is it legal and or ethical to have three regular floor employees help HR go through and process all other employees’ (hourly and salary) open enrollment insurance information? All of our personal information is on them, as well as our loved ones’. This can’t be legal.

I get why that made you uncomfortable, but it’s legal; the law doesn’t look at that any differently than it looks at HR employees doing that work. And I’d argue that it’s ethical as long as the employees were instructed to keep the information confidential, and some safeguards were in place to ensure that they did (and that there were serious consequences for any breaches).

5. Who should I resign to?

There’s a chance I might be offered a position with another company soon, and I’m wondering how to go about resigning from my current job should I want to take that offer. My situation is a little unique in that I’ve had three direct supervisors over the past several months. My original supervisor (the director) went on leave in August and won’t be back until mid-January. When she first left, I was assigned to report to one of our VPs in her absence. Then last month, we hired a new assistant director and I now report to her. The plan is currently to go back to being supervised by the director when she returns in mid-January (possibly later).

Who should I approach to give my notice to? Right now I’m thinking I would first approach my current supervisor (even though I’ve only been working with her for a month), but also send an email to my original supervisor who will be returning. We had a good working relationship and I wouldn’t want her to come back to find that I just left without telling her. In terms of my official resignation letter, who should that be addressed to (current supervisor, supervisor on leave, HR)?

Yep, that’s exactly the way you should do it — tell your current manager first and then email your original manager who’s returning in January to let her know too.

If you’re asked for a resignation letter (and you may not be; it’s not a universal requirement), address it to whoever has requested it.