Ask a Manager

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

1. The prize for our tree decorating contest is … baby clothes

My office does a “Best Holiday Tree” decorating competition based on department. Everyone is encouraged to decorate their department’s trees using office supplies. It has been popular for several years. The winning department, based on anonymous vote, previously got a free happy hour and dinner. This year there was a wave of newborns amongst my coworkers so the admin who sets it up has decided that the winning group will get … company-branded baby clothes.

I pointed out that while a lot of people did have kids this year, baby clothes excludes more than half the office. I’ve suggested we do a voucher to the company brand store so everyone has the same level of incentive to participate if a happy hour was no longer an option, but “baby clothes” has taken off among the new parents. I’m one of the many who hasn’t had a baby this year, and when I brought it up to the admin, I was told I was whining. Is there a way to bring it up without coming off as “whiny,” or should I suck it up?

Yeah, that’s a bad prize, for a whole bunch of reasons. It’s not that a prize is so incredibly high stakes — obviously it’s not — but it’s an odd and un-inclusive choice.

If you want to try again, bring it up to someone who’s not the admin — her boss, or someone else with enough authority to overrule them. It’s not “whiny” to point out the prize is of strangely narrow interest. (And if you have anyone struggling with infertility or miscarriages, ugh.) Although at this point, the thing I’d be more interested in raising is that it’s fine to consider and reject feedback, but it’s not okay to call well-intentioned feedback “whiny,” especially about something that’s supposed to boost morale.

Whether to bring any of this up depends on how much you care and your sense of how much other people care — it might not be worth the capital to bother — but you’re not wrong to be annoyed.

Also, those aren’t “holiday trees.” — your friendly neighborhood Jew

2. I accidentally recommended a smutty book to my boss

In my last one-on-one with my boss, we started chatting about books, and I mentioned that I’d be rereading a series in anticipation for the release of the third book this past weekend. We exchanged titles of books we liked, and the meeting moved on.

However, upon rereading the books I recommended, I realized they were a LOT smuttier than I remembered, and this third one has some pretty kinky sex scenes. Help! My anxiety is through the roof, thinking that I told my boss to go read a romance book that I remembered as mostly fantasy! How much of a work faux pas did I commit? Should I mention it again and warn her about the explicit bits that I forgot about?? Or am I completely overthinking this?

For reference, the book series is The Last Binding by Freya Marske. I highly recommend it but know that it gets pretty explicit lol.

Did you recommend it to her or just mention that you enjoyed it? If the latter, I don’t think you need to worry about it, but if the former, yeah, it wouldn’t hurt (and would probably give you peace of mind) to go back and say, “After I recommended Book X to you, I realized it is much smuttier than I’d remembered! And then I was mortified because I hadn’t warned you. So I am remedying that with this warning!” A lot of bosses will laugh at that point, and that should be that. But if she doesn’t think it’s hilarious, that might be even more of a sign that the disclaimer was a good idea.

3. My boss threatened to fire me after I had one bad month

I’m a manager on a small team. The past month or so, several personal issues have caused my response time at work to slow. Think going from same-day or one day response time to 4-5 business day response time. Some tasks that I’d previously always completed on time I needed extra time for. I honestly didn’t think it was severe enough for anyone to even notice. I have a stellar track record at work up til now, and received a promotion/raise earlier this year in recognition of that fact, so I thought I could let myself slow down a little while I worked through everything in my personal life.

My boss did notice. Instead of addressing it with me, we had a surprise meeting where he implied I would be fired if I didn’t shape up. No “I’ve noticed you struggling, you’re usually so on the ball, how can I support you?” Just “Get back to how you were or you’re out.”

At least until I revealed that some of the personal issues I have been going through are medical in nature. He was a lot more supportive and understanding after that. I’m still on thin ice, but the tone definitely shifted from aggressive to understanding.

It seems wild to me that, until I revealed private medical info, he was ready to fire me after a few bad weeks without once offering support. I fully admit I haven’t been as on the ball lately, but I really would have expected some steps between that and immediate risk of firing. We don’t do any work that’s time sensitive or life-threatening. Am I crazy?

No, that’s ridiculous. You have a stellar track record, which they recently recognized with a huge raise, but they threatened to fire you over one month of slower response times? Maybe your work in the last month was worse than you realized, but the conversation should have been, “I’m seeing these issues, what’s going on?” not “This is your final chance.”

4. High school teachers as references

I’m a high school teacher, and have been asked to be a reference for dozens of students over the years. These are either for typical high school jobs (fast food, retail) or for internships / junior positions in the field that I teach in (computing).

I have never once been contacted! Often students will tell me they got the job and thank me for being a reference — but I’ve never been emailed or called in the last six years of being a teacher.

Is this common in hiring teenagers? Do people not really care what an applicant’s teacher has to say about them?

Yeah, a lot of jobs that hire teenagers won’t bother to check references at all, or if they do they’re more likely to call past managers (if available) rather than teachers because they want to ask job-focused questions. It’s not that teachers don’t have insight into what their students are like or that there’s not a lot of overlap between how someone shows up in class and how they are at a job — you do and there is — but a lot of hiring managers just don’t put enough stock in teacher references to bother calling them. (Which is not to discourage people from using teachers as references at that stage of life! Teachers are a reasonable reference for teenagers to offer when they don’t have much or any job history.)

5. Company pays health insurance premiums for some but not others

My husband works for a small mom-and-pop business with about 15 employees. After many years of employee requests, the business just started offering health insurance to employees two years ago. As is typical, the business pays for a percentage of the health insurance — I believe around 50%. However, my husband recently learned that some of his coworkers (seemingly at random) have 100% of their health insurance premiums covered, including one coworker who also has her dependent covered in full. My husband is the only other employee who has a dependent, and having him and our child covered would lift a huge financial burden on our family. All of his coworkers but one have the same title, and there is no pattern that we can ascertain as to who has theirs covered and who doesn’t. Is this legal?

No federal law requires employers to cover the same portion of insurance premiums for all employees as long as they’re acting without regard to race, sex, national origin, religion, age, or other protected class. That’s still a very unusual choice, though. Typically employers that cover different amounts for different people base the differences on clear eligibility criteria, like full-time or part-time status, job title, or seniority. If it’s truly random, they’re opening the door to (even inadvertent) differences by race/age/etc., which creates a legal liability.

Your husband would be on solid ground in asking what criteria are being used for this, or just trying to negotiate his own premium coverage.

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

1. My boss is sleeping with my nemesis

I have regular conflict with a team manager, Jane, who is employed at the same level as me in our workplace hierarchy and is sort of my nemesis. She has denied my requests for us to have regular meetings so we can keep on top of co-managing our overlapping projects. Instead of bringing her concerns to me, she consistently escalates these issues directly to my boss, Brian. He usually responds with a directive to me that reflects Jane’s agenda. Jane does not report to him, and I’ve been concerned for some time about the undue level of influence she has with him.

I recently learned Brian and Jane sleeping together, which explains the whole situation. When I “innocently” raised with him that I had noticed a pattern of Jane escalating issues directly to him, he got defensive and stated that it was appropriate that she could, as there is a “dotted line” between them. (She is not in his chain of command, although her area is related to his and mine, so she has reason to consult with both of us.)

I’m feeling sandwiched in a hopeless situation. Part of me has hoped that it will become public so that it can be appropriately managed. And then I realize that it should be being managed appropriately already: Brian is senior enough that he should know better, and already be being highly vigilant about not crossing lines while they’re not being public about it.

I love this job. Everything about it is great except for these two. Leaving is not my first choice. How do I manage this, while their relationship is not public?

I don’t think the other senior people know. And I don’t have the kind of evidence of this affair I would need to bring it to their attention. (The way I know is that a colleague reported to me that another colleague had discovered an intimate voicemail Brian had left for Jane on an office phone; Jane had changed desks and the new occupier of the desk discovered it.)

Yeah, if they’re having an affair, it’s critical that Brian have a firewall between his personal relationship with Jane and his decisions at work.

Any chance you could try talking to Jane about this (not the affair! but about her going around you to Brian) and ask that she bring things like X and Y to you directly so you can figure them out together? Since you’re calling her your nemesis, I’m guessing that might be a no-go for Reasons About Jane, but otherwise it’s worth a shot. Who knows, maybe it’ll shame her into stopping at least some of it … but it sounds likely that Brian is now Her Person and so she sees no reason not to discuss work stuff with him.

If that’s the case, there’s not much else you can do if you’re not willing to escalate it, but I do think you have enough to report it! You’re not a prosecutor who needs evidence to prove a case in a court of law. You have the standing to talk to HR and say, “I’ve noticed Jane seems to have undue influence with Brian in XYZ ways, and I’m concerned that it’s because they have a personal relationship that’s interfering with his objectivity, since there have been indications that they’re romantically involved. I don’t care about that on its own, but I do care if it’s influencing his decisions as my manager and it hasn’t been disclosed.” You’d need to tell them about the voicemail since they’re going to ask why you think that (ideally you’d have your colleague’s permission to share that info, but you don’t need to hide that you were told about it).

In reality, whether or not it’s a good idea to do this depends on how your organization’s HR functions and whether you trust them to ensure there’s no blowback on you from Brian — and that’s a question I’d raise with them explicitly before you share anything else.

2. I’m about to go on vacation — and just used up all my PTO on the flu

I am possibly in a pickle here. I had saved up PTO throughout the year in order to go on a trip for seven (work) days in December, the dates off of which have been approved. Two weeks ago, I got a bad flu and blew though all of my saved up PTO. Now, my trip is in three weeks and I am worried about what my boss is going to say/do about my lack of PTO for my trip. I see some ways that this could go and need your sage advice on what to do:

1. She never mentions it, and I just take the trip unpaid and no need to talk about it.

2. She says that my time off is now not approved since I don’t have PTO — in this instance, I would still be going on this trip that I have thousands of dollars into — but what would I say to her? I can’t control when/how I get sick and this job does not have separate sick time/vacation time (we even are forced to use PTO for holidays).

I have this whole spiel in my head about all of the hard work I have put in this year (with specific examples) and how I have earned this vacation. But I don’t want to seem like a total wad, just saying “I am going no matter what you say.” But basically I will be doing that!

If you’re going on the trip regardless of what your manager says, you’re probably better off just aiming for option #1. I’m not always a fan of “it’s better to ask forgiveness than permission,” but in this case if you’re going regardless, you might as well just do it and hope for the best. However, you’d want to be prepared to be told after the fact that the time will be unpaid (which it sounds like you’re fine with) or for the possibility that they might want to subtract it from your PTO for next year (which you could try pushing back against by proposing taking it unpaid, but they may or may not agree to that).

Read an update to this letter. 

3. Doing performance reviews when they’ve been inflated in the past

My boss recently retired and I was promoted to his role. It is now time for performance reviews for my now employees, my former peers. I’m prepared to have productive conversations with them about the past year (I took over right after mid-year reviews), but looking back at past performance reviews, I realized that my former boss was padding the reviews. People were getting “exceeds expectations” (or better) when I know he did not consider their performance all that spectacular. I now want to combat this “inflation” by going back to what I think people honestly earned (meets expectations). I imagine this will be a shock for them. Any advice on how to approach this or am I missing the benefit of inflating performance?

First and foremost, make sure you’re assessing people against clearly defined expectations that they have been aware you have. I say this because you’re new to managing the team, and you can’t fairly evaluate someone based on expectations they didn’t know you had.

Assuming you’ve already gotten aligned about that, the most important thing is to be very transparent about how ratings are set — what “meets expectations” looks like, “what “exceeds expectations” looks like, and so forth. Give concrete examples of what someone performing at each level would be doing and achieving, so that everyone is really clear on the definitions you’re using and how you arrived at them. The more you’re using fair and transparent benchmarks — so people understand very clearly what it would take to move from one level to the next — the better. And have these discussions as far ahead of the actual review process as you can; people shouldn’t be blindsided by hearing about it for the first time when they’re reading their evaluation.

You should also address the change in method head-on: “I know this might be different from how Jane handled reviews. I want to be transparent about how I’m approaching them and why, so you know what to expect and what each rating means.” (Hopefully your company has already done this kind of level-setting — where they define what each rating means — and so you can also say that you’re aligning your team’s process with the larger company one. Speaking of which: make sure you are in alignment with your company on this.)

Last, make it clear that you’re open to feedback on their reviews, and that if you’re missing anything or don’t have context for something, you want to hear that. Performance reviews should ideally always be a discussion of some sort, but that’s especially important when you’ve only been managing them for part of the year and really might not have all the context.

4. Should I ask my manager if I was going to be laid off?

I have been working on the finance team at my company for two years. When I started it was a four-person team, and the workload was manageable. But six months after I started, two of my teammates quit, leaving me and the head of the department just when we were heading into a forecast and an audit at the same time. I had to take on many completely new responsibilities on top of my regular workload, and consequently made several mistakes that really frustrated my manager. I was reduced to tears at a few points during this period.

That said, my review at the beginning of this year went well. My manager mentioned my mistakes but acknowledged that I was very green and it was an impossible workload for both of us. By the time of my review, we had hired two more people. But six months later, one of these new teammates was laid off.

My question is whether I should ask my manager at the next review if I was ever considered for the layoff instead of my teammate. I do have seniority, but just a few days before the termination, my manager scheduled a one-on-one with me, which disappeared off of my calendar two days later. What do you think?

Don’t do it. First, if you were considered for a layoff, it’s very unlikely that your boss would tell you that; layoff discussions are typically very confidential (and she might not even know if you had been considered), and you’d be putting her on the spot in an awkward way.

Second, I can’t see what you’d have to gain by that conversation even if she did tell you the truth! Sometimes people want to know things like this because it makes them feel more in control of the situation … but even if she did tell say you’d been considered for the layoff, it wouldn’t mean anything about your job security now. People are laid off for all kinds of reasons and it’s often not about performance at all; in your coworker’s case, it could have been as simple as “last in, first out.”

5. Holidays that fall on Fridays, when I don’t work Fridays

I am an exempt, salaried employee and I work a four-day week (I have Fridays off). This year, due to the way Christmas and New Year’s holidays fall, my company’s paid holidays will include a couple Fridays. I asked what the procedure was for me to take those holidays and it was requested I just work eight hours less those weeks. Is that … allowed? What’s the protocol for holidays that fall outside your usual schedule but that the company offers as paid in our handbook?

It’s allowed! There’s no requirement in the U.S. that workers get any paid holidays or holidays off at all, so companies can handle them pretty much however they want. But in your case, if I’m understanding your letter correctly, they’re saying that the way you’ll “get” the holiday is by getting a different day off that week — so like your coworkers, you get a paid day off; it’s just not on Friday because you’re already off on Fridays. That’s actually an ideal way of handling it. Some companies’ policy is that if a holiday falls on your day off, you just don’t get holiday time at all — which is also allowed, but this is much better!