Ask a Manager

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

1. Dealing with an unpaid intern who’s chronically late

I have a couple years of work experience, and I am currently managing an intern on my team. Interns at my organization are unpaid, which I do not agree with, for the record, but this does not seem to be changing any time soon. She has very poor timekeeping and is constantly late, often by a significant amount of time. The fact that the position is unpaid is influencing the way I am dealing with this, as I feel a bit uncomfortable about being too stern as she is not being paid. What are your views on this and how can I broach the subject? Should I make it clear that I understand she is not being paid but that constant lateness is unprofessional and would not be acceptable in future roles she may have?

Even unpaid internships have requirements that you can and should hold people to. You presumably chose her over other candidates; are investing time in training her, giving her feedback, and helping her get work experience; and will potentially be a reference for her in the future. All of that means that it’s reasonable to be clear with her about your expectations and to hold her to them.

In this case, I’d say to first figure out whether the work she’s doing requires being there on time. If it does, you should be direct with her about that: “Jane, I’m counting on you to be here no later than 10 a.m. on the days you’re scheduling because of XYZ. When you’re late, it causes problems A and B. Can you commit to being on time going forward?”

If the work doesn’t actually require her to be on time, you could instead say this: “Jane, I’ve noticed you’re often late to work. This particular role actually does have some flexibility to it, but I need you to give me a heads-up when you’re running late so that we’re not counting on you being here before you will be. Since you’re at the start of your career, I also want to make sure you understand that regular lateness would be a problem in most roles, especially early-career roles. I don’t want to our flexibility to give you the wrong idea about what might be okay in future jobs.”

2. Someone stole my phone charger off my desk

I work at the front desk. I was previously in the habit of leaving my phone charger plugged in at my desk all the time, whether my phone was charging or not, whether I was at my desk or not. Two days ago, I noticed it was gone and since I use it daily it probably disappeared around that time. I have no idea who would have taken it. My feelings are hurt and I’m worried now about all my other personal property I bring to work. It’s possible it wasn’t a coworker but instead was a visitor or an employee of one of the other companies that rents out space in our building. Regardless, I’m not sure what action can be taken, if any. I’m pretty upset, maybe disproportionately, but it’s made me feel unsafe, like I can’t trust my coworkers. I haven’t told my bosses or HR yet and I’m not sure if I should. What do I do?

One of the hazards of working at the front desk is that people are weirdly prone to thinking that anything on your desk is available for borrowing. So it’s very possible that that’s what happened here: someone spotted it there and just intended to borrow it, not thinking through that it was someone’s personal property. That doesn’t make it okay, of course, but might be helpful context.

If your office is small, you could send an email around asking whoever borrowed it to return it. If your office isn’t small, you might be out of luck, unfortunately; there probably isn’t much that your boss or HR can do about it. Your better bet might be to clearly label anything that you don’t want walking off (for example, if you bring in a new charger, label it “Jane’s personal charger; please do not remove”).

3. I’ve been asked to set retroactive goals for the past year

I work at a small organization that has not had a formal evaluation process in place for several years. I’ve been here 2-1/2 years and have never had a performance review myself (although I do get regular feedback from my manager). Management has finally rolled out an evaluation system and is now starting to do reviews.

To prepare for my review, I’ve been asked to check over my job description and make sure it’s accurate (which makes sense) and come up with four goals for myself…. for the PAST year. I’m guessing that this is because whatever performance system has been chosen hinges on completion of annual goals. But how am I supposed to set retroactive goals for myself, and is there anything useful about doing that? Do I just pick four things I achieved and call them completed goals? To me, it seems like the only reason I need to do this is because of the review format requiring goals, and it feels like a waste of my time.

It’s not a waste of time; it’s a way of assessing what you were expected to achieve this year with what you actually did achieve. Pick the four biggest things that you worked on this year.

And yes, ideally goals are forward-looking — but in a case like this it’s not unreasonable to lay them out retroactively as a way of talking about how your performance compared to the expectations for your role this year. Ideally, from here on out, their new system will have you set up goals at the start of the year for the next 12 months.

4. Employer wants me to repay notary certification cost

About six months ago, my employer sent me to get my notary certification. This is something that she wanted me to do; I did not ask for this training. We had no contract saying that I would need to pay this back. I have given notice at her office and she is demanding that I repay her. She threatened to take it out of my pay check. Can she legally do this? I’m in California.

No. If you didn’t have an agreement that you’d pay her back if you left within a certain period of time, she has no standing to require you to repay her. I’d say this: “I obtained a notary certification at your direction, as part of my work for you. I would not have done it otherwise. It was part of my job duties, and there was no agreement to repay the cost. For that reason, I do not give you permission to take it out of my paycheck, and please be aware that state law would prohibit you doing that.”

5. Factory has banned wedding rings

I work in a cabinet factory and do not use the machines, such as saws, nailers, etc. Two weeks ago, our compay started a policy that we are no longer allowed to wear rings, watches, etc., including our wedding rings.

The ladies in the office get to wear their rings and do not take them off when they come out to the plant. I could understand this policy if I was working with machinery where my hand, ring, etc. could get caught, but I do not.

This issue has a lot of employees upset and we have even been threatened with write-ups, termination, and even cutting the ring off our finger.

Well, it’s presumably for safety reasons, so that you don’t lose a finger or a hand, right? And I’m assuming that the threat about cutting the ring off your finger is a statement of what might need to happen if you were to get caught in a machine … not a threat of what they’d do to you as punishment.

But if you don’t ever work near the machines, I’d point that out and ask if you can be treated the same as the office workers who occasionally come to the plant without removing their rings. Otherwise, though, this is probably a pretty reasonable safety policy. And of course, reasonable or unreasonable, your company has the right to make this a policy if they want to, so ultimately if you push back and don’t succeed, all you can really do is go along with it.

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

1. EAP’s gatekeeping procedures scared me off

I called my company’s EAP hotline. I was hoping to make a quick, discreet inquiry about local health service providers and maybe come away with a list of network-approved counselors who might offer me a referral to a proper doctor. (Yes, I’m well- insured, in case anyone was wondering, but it seems that one practically has to beg for a referral to any sort of specialist these days, at least in my experience.) The hotline staff pretty much grilled me, though. They wouldn’t let me access any services until I gave them my name, birth date, address, phone number…plus department, title, duration of employment with the company, and other exceedingly specific and potentially confidentiality-compromising stuff that I can’t see anyone willingly volunteering.

I understand that EAPs are supposed to be confidential, and that confidentiality doesn’t require anonymity, but their questions scared the hell out of me. I hung up crying and wondering if I’d already gotten myself red-flagged in some way just by calling. I don’t want my situation to come to my employers’ attention at all, let alone reflect badly on me.

If EAPs are really confidential (as they are), and prepaid by the employer (as this one is), why do EAP providers feel the need to gatekeep their services to death unless/until they have every scrap of their potential users’ personal info? I understand that they need SOME identifying info to confirm that any given would-be user is actually entitled to take advantage of the brnefits, and I can see why they’d like a few more details in order to report to their clients about the demand for, and efficacy of, their services. But it seems to me that demanding major-league personal stuff about employees goes way beyond the realm of professional competence and into that of a) the EAP provider’s greedy curiosity about the demographics of their clientele, or–I really doubt this is the case, but it struck me as horribly plausible at the time, prima facie–b) the employer’s greedy curiosity about their employees.

Is there an anonymous way to tell an employer that you chose not to use their EAP benefits because the providers were so disconcertingly nosy and gatekeeperish?

Yeah, I can see why that unnerved you. EAPs are supposed to maintain strict confidentiality, and this one probably does — but its practices are guaranteed to make at least some people feel uneasy, which is a deterrent to people actually using it. If nothing else, they should have prefaced the questions by explaining why they were asking and how the information would be used. (It also would have been okay for you to say, “Before I provide this information, can you tell me how it will be used?”)

If your employer has anything set up to take anonymous feedback and suggestions, you could mention it in that forum — but I actually don’t think this would mark you in any kind of bad way if you just tell them without worrying about the anonymity. You don’t need to tell them WHAT you contacted the EAP about, only that you found the process off-putting. It’s probably HR who coordinates the service, and you could simply say, “I contacted our EAP recently for assistance with something but ended up not talking to them because they required such a large quantity of detailed information from me before they’d talk to me that I had trouble trusting that the service was really confidential. I realize I could be wrong, but I wanted to bring to your attention that it might be deterring others from using it as well.”

2. Am I supposed to say goodbye to my coworkers when I leave work?

I am a new employee in a hotel. I am the front desk clerk. Should I go around and see goodbye to my coworkers when I clock out? If they did not look at me, do I still have to say goodbye to them? If they are busy doing things, do I have to say goodbye to them?

It really depends on the culture of your workplace. In some workplaces, it would be odd not to say goodbye to people as you left — at least the ones in your immediate vicinity. In others, it would be odd to make a particular point of it. I’d pay attention to what other people working around you do, and follow their lead.

In general, though, and especially if people are busy, simply saying goodbye as you’re passing them on your way out is usually fine — no need to make a special point of finding them or stopping to talk as you leave.

3. Family members stopping by my office

I work in an office. Sometimes, maybe once a month, an immediate family member will come by for a short visit line to discuss a family matter. Can my supervisor prevent them or even reprimand me for them stopping by?

Yes.

In some offices, this would be no big deal. In others, it would be no big deal if it happened on rare occasions but would feel odd or unprofessional (or simply distracting) if it was happening regularly. In others, it would be frowned upon generally.

In any case, if your manager has asked you to stop letting family members stop by, you should comply with that.

4. Adjunct teaching work keeps getting cancelled at the last minute

I am an adjunct at a school that I love. I enjoy that it is part-time; I don’t want full-time work now, but when my kids are older I will, and this would be the school for me.

I teach some short-term classes that get cancelled if there is low enrollment. Unfortunately, they don’t tell me until the day before class was supposed to start, so I am suddenly out all the money I would have made freelancing or adjuncting somewhere else (there are three schools where I teach) and I turned down opportunities to be available to teach the short-term classes.

Here are my choices: (1) stop accepting jobs at School A because they only make about 50% of the time, or (2) continue accepting at School A and know that they will only make about 50% of the time, but with such short notice I won’t be able to accept other work.

I have asked repeatedly to know if the classes are cancelled, but they leave enrollment open until the day before class starts. They schedule the classes months in advance, so they are asking me to commit to spring classes now, but so is School B, and they are a less nice facility but they have never cancelled a class that they offered me.

I really like the school where the classes cancel. The people and the facilities are so nice at this school, they pay me to attend training and develop curriculum, and in general they are just really lovely. Is there an option I am not seeing?

Nope, it sounds like those are the two options. Knowing that part of the deal with School A is that half the time your classes will be canceled the day before they’re set to start and you’ll have given up other work that you could have filled that time with, you’ve got to decide if you like them enough to make that worth it to you.

5. Boss is asking me to commit to staying if he makes me full-time

I’m in a bit of a predicament at my job of 18 months. My manager has been promising for several months to promote me from part-time receptionist to full-time. I’ve been given a couple of different time frames on that, and they all came and went, and we stopped talking about it, so I started secretly looking for full-time career positions. I’m moving along well in a couple of interview processes and am a finalist in one, but out of nowhere, my manager asked me to start full-time almost immediately and wanted to confirm that if I went full-time, I’d stay for awhile. There will now be one part-time and one full-time receptionist.

I have to talk to him about it further on Monday morning, and I’m not sure how to reject a full-time position I’d previously told him I’d accept. But I can’t take it in good faith either, especially when I know one of the jobs I’m a finalist for will be making a decision very soon and I could be leaving by the end of the month. Even if the jobs I’m interviewing for now don’t pan out, I still can’t imagine staying there answering phones full-time for long, now that I’ve seen what else is out there. How can I gracefully skirt around this and stay part-time, allowing him to hire someone more committed for the full-time position while not insulting him with the fact that I’ve been interviewing elsewhere?

Tell him that you’ve changed your mind and would like to stay part-time. Be prepared for a reason for that in case he probes for one (but since you originally accepted a part-time position and have been part-time for a while, you can probably come up with some credible-sounding reason for why this arrangement is working well for you).

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

1. The ethics of gathering information from competitors

I work in marketing research and a large part of my job involves tracking the activities of our competitors. This typically involves gathering information from their public websites/all social media pages/publicly available revenue information/etc.

Recently, however, I was unable to find pricing information on a specific product line on this particular competitor’s website. A potential customer would have to call to find that information. Which is exactly what my supervisor asked me to do: call pretending to be a customer and find out the pricing. This feels really unethical to me. Information that presented publicly is one thing, but this feels like intentional manipulation and I feel like it crosses a line. No one else seems to feel like this is a big deal, but I don’t think its right that I’m being asked to do this.

Is this a common thing and I’m just unaware of it, or am I right in thinking this is unethical behavior? And if it is wrong, how do I tell my boss no?

I think it depends on how deceptive you’d need to be to find out the pricing. If it’s as simple as just calling and asking and getting an answer on the spot, I don’t think that’s a big deal; it’s not all that different than getting the info from a website or from price-shopping a competitor’s store. But if your competitor would need to do real work to pull together a quote for you, you’d be wasting their time, and I think that’s unethical. Or if they ask you for a bunch of information about you/your company and you lie, that’s pretty shady. But a simple “can you tell me what X costs? okay, thanks very much” call isn’t a big deal.

If you do conclude that what you’d be doing falls on the shady side of the line, you could say to your boss, “I think we’d be crossing a line by asking them to spend time pulling together a quote. I’d suggest we look at X instead.” (X will depend on factors about your business I can’t predict, but ideally you’d want to have some alternate proposal to make here.)

2. My boss at my new job has barely talked to me and I have nothing but filing to do

I am a senior in college, and I was just hired at a company in their accounting department. Of course it’s a great opportunity to learn. The woman who hired me just came back from medical leave, so she’s trying to catch up on her end and in the office. In the interview, she said I would be learning how to handle the 401k accounts. The first day I worked there, she wasn’t there. So I asked her assistant on what I should do, so she told me to file. I have been filing for the past three weeks, and every time I try to talk to my manager, she’s always in a meeting or talking to someone. I don’t know if I should talk to her assistant or what to do.

Yes, talk to her assistant and ask her to help you get a meeting with your manager on her calendar. Then, in that meeting, say, “I know you’ve been very busy, but when I took this job, my understanding was that I’d be doing XYZ. Can we talk about what the timeline for getting me trained to do that will look like?”

3. Asking about an employer’s financial troubles at a job interview

I was just invited to interview at a college where I have been applying for the past several months. I’m committed to finding a job there, partially because it’ll get me much closer to field I’m most interested in, but mostly because I’m enrolled in a master’s program there and would receive free tuition as a full-time employee.

The problem is that I have several classmates who work at the college, and they (along with professors, advisors, etc.) have been openly discussing the college’s financial troubles for quite some time — budget cuts, changes to benefits packages, sporadic hiring freezes, and some layoffs (but not many, and not affecting the departments I’m applying to). Is this something I can or should bring up during the interview, when it’s my turn to ask questions? Or is it taboo (or just weird) for a candidate to ask the company about its rumored financial troubles?

Nope, you can bring it up. I’d say something like this: “I’ve heard that the college has had some layoffs and budget cuts lately, as have other schools. Has that impacted this department, and do you expect it could affect this role in the future?”

Keep in mind that they genuinely might not know the answer to that, or might give you a PR-ish answer rather than a real one, but it’s still worthwhile to ask the question, since you might have something that seems sincerely reassuring or that gives you more reason for caution.

4. Making people take the same week of vacation each year

Can a company make an employee take the same exact week of vacation each year? I can understand black-out days and the same month but the exact same week? This person can never take a family vacation because their spouse’s black-out days began on the same week.

Yes, they can — although it’s a pretty bad policy and will harm their ability to be competitive and attract good people, because people with options are likely to prefer to work somewhere less restrictive.