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“I said something profane to my boss, should I tell my manager my coworker is in jail, and more” plus 3 more Ask a Manager

“I said something profane to my boss, should I tell my manager my coworker is in jail, and more” plus 3 more Ask a Manager


I said something profane to my boss, should I tell my manager my coworker is in jail, and more

Posted: 22 Feb 2018 09:03 PM PST

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

1. I said something profane to my boss

About a month ago, I got a job at a small company. This is my first job out of college, and my first time working in a fairly informal environment; there is no dress code, and judging by the way my coworkers talk, foul language isn't just acceptable — it's the norm.

I'm not used to such relaxed rules, and in a poor attempt to fit in, I made a pretty raunchy comment to one of my supervisors, who was definitely shocked by my choice of words. (I'm totally cringing writing this, but she was warning me about her bluntness with delegating tasks and saying that she hoped I wouldn't get offended. I told her not to worry, and that "it's not like I need you to suck my dick every time you tell me to get something done." Meaning, I don't need her to do me any favors or soften her delivery when delegating tasks. For the record, I am also a woman, so she knew I couldn't have meant that literally. I knew I shouldn't have said that the second it came out of my mouth. Ugh.)

She later told me that another coworker had overheard what I'd said and was surprised/put off that I'd said something like that in the workplace. My supervisor said that she understood that people my age are used to talking in the way that I did (I'm the youngest person in the office, though not by much) but that I shouldn't say things like that at work.

I apologized for what I'd said and thanked her for telling me, but I'm now afraid of saying the wrong thing again. When boundaries and expectations aren't clear, how do I ensure that I'm following them? And if a situation like this one happens again, how do I deal with it in a way that shows that I'm sorry and puts it behind me?

Ten years from now, you will find this hilarious. I hope.

But now, yes, you're mortified! Which … is warranted. But it really can be hard to know exactly where the line is when you're working in an office that has relaxed a lot of them, as yours has. One thing that might help is to think of swear words as separate from truly raunchy language; you can probably see the difference between "this printer is shit" and what you said.

When your boss talked to you about it, you handled it perfectly: you apologized and thanked her for telling you. That's exactly what you should do. If you're corrected about something in the future, you could also add, "I will definitely correct this going forward" or "I'll make sure I don't handle it that way again."

Going forward, I would err on the side of caution — meaning stay toward the very light end of the profanity spectrum, and don't do it at all around your boss or other people senior to you, even if you hear them doing it themselves. And it wouldn’t be a terrible idea to cut it out entirely; in most places, that wouldn't stop you from fitting in (although if it would in your office, you could drop in an occasional low-grade swear word if you feel you must) — plus then you won't be stuck having to re-train your mouth when you move to your next job. (To be clear, some amount of profanity is fine in many offices, but it sounds like yours might be on the extreme end of that.)

2. Should I tell my manager my coworker is in jail?

I have an ethical dilemma. A coworker was arrested two weeks ago. She has been in jail the whole time, because the bail is high and she cannot raise it. I found out about it through another coworker. I was able to find the affidavit for her arrest online, and she will be gone for awhile. She had told my coworker that her ex was "messing with her.” The reality is quite different. She is charged with grand theft, scheme to defraud, cashing checks with intent to defraud, etc.

I am torn about what to do. One thought is that she has been arrested, not convicted, and I should mind my own business. The competing thought is that the affidavit shows a lot of evidence, and she admitted to some of the charges when speaking with the police prior to her arrest. We work in accounting (bad enough), but we also have secret government clearances to allow us to work on certain projects.

The first day that she missed work, her father called our manager and stated that she would be out for a "family emergency."

It takes around two months to interview and place a qualified candidate. In the meanwhile, her work is being handled by the rest of the department, and the longer this goes on, the more stress and strain it places on already full workloads. The thought of telling … or of not telling … neither feels completely right. Do I have an ethical obligation to tell me employer? Or do I leave it alone, because at some point my manager should terminate her for no call/no show?

I would share with your manager what you learned. But all you need to share is that she appears to be in jail charged with financial crimes. (You don't need to pass judgment on any evidence the affidavit shows; there are a jury and a judge to do that, so you don’t have to.) You're not gossiping here; you're passing on information that's relevant to your team and to your manager — that she's in jail and that the crimes she's accused of are ones with implications for your work and her clearance. Your manager can decide how to handle it from there.

This is going to come out at some point anyway, so you're not divulging some huge secret that would otherwise be kept (or, given the nature of your work, that should be kept), and it sounds like it would be significantly better for your team if your manager were aware of the situation now.

3. Not labelling an interview an interview

I'm "interviewing" at a very large global company. I'm really excited! My professional network all says it's a great company and would be a great opportunity, and my own research indicates this as well.

However: they've yet to call any of the steps in this process an "interview.” It's been called: a chat, a conversation, meet the team, etc.

Is this a new strategy in the hiring/recruiting world to put candidates at ease? (It definitely worked for me.) It's a very large, corporate company, so I don't *think* it's part of the culture (I could be wrong because the interviews were very conversational). Are they trying somehow not to lead me on by being so casual about it all? (Like theoretically, they have someone else in mind but are going through the motions with me to fill some applicant/candidate interview quota?)

I've treated the process no less formally, but like I said above, I appreciate the terminology because I felt like I was really able to shine and give my best when I thought of it as a conversation and not strictly an interview. If this is a new trend, do you have any resources/articles you could refer me? I tried googling it but nothing really came up.

I've occasionally noticed people who do this too! I don't think a particularly deliberate strategy with specific goals attached to it, but it might reflect a general trend toward less formality in some aspects of work in general. I suspect the people who do it just feel more comfortable with that terminology themselves for some reason, like it somehow lessens the pressure for all involved. And really, it's perfectly accurate; there's no reason it must be labeled an interview. (That said, I usually say "interview" because I don't want to inadvertently signal to the person that it will just be a free-roaming chat, as opposed to a relatively structured conversation with lots of questions coming their way. I want them prepared and not taken off-guard.)

4. Can my employer delay our paychecks for not doing a required training?

I just found out my company is considering holding paychecks if we don’t complete some required training on time. I’ve completed it so I’m not personally worried, but is this legal? I’ve read up on the FLSA but I’m a little confused if the requirement of being paid on the next scheduled payday is for non-exempt employees only, or applies to everyone. We are all (I think) exempt.

No, they can't do that. Your state law should specify how frequently you must be paid, and I don't know of any state that makes an exception to those rules for exempt workers. To be sure, here's a great site that lists employment laws for each state; click on your state and then on "frequency of wage payments."

You message to your boss could be, "Hey, we'd run afoul of state labor law if we did that. The state requires that we pay people (insert frequency here) and we can get fined if we violate that." You're especially well positioned to say this since you've already completed the training that he's threatening people over, so you're not impacted by his threat.

I said something profane to my boss, should I tell my manager my coworker is in jail, and more was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.

how many times can I ask a networking contact for help?

Posted: 22 Feb 2018 10:59 AM PST

A reader writes:

I was wondering how many times it is appropriate to reach out to networking contacts for informational interviews, referrals, connections, etc.? I have been searching on and off over the past two years due to being laid off and then moving to a new city for my spouse’s job opportunity. I don’t want to take advantage of my older networking contacts who have already helped me, and I would certainly return any favors if I could! But I’m trying to find an opportunity in a pretty small field and can use all the help I can get. Any ideas how to navigate this?

It depends on how well you know each contact. The closer you are to someone, the more often you can ask for help. If the contact is your best friend, she might be happy to help you multiple times per month. If the contact isn't someone you know well, the limit is generally closer to once or twice a year. For someone in between — let’s say a former coworker who likes you — you’re probably safe with two or three requests in a year’s time, but you’d want to be really effusively appreciative that third time, and more than that risks feeling like too much.

It's also important to pay attention to people's cues. If someone responds to you right away and sounds enthusiastic about helping, those are good signs that you haven't worn out your welcome. On the other hand, if someone takes a while to respond and is pretty brief and business-like when they do, that might not be someone to go back to again for a while.

You can also attempt to elicit some cues about how welcome additional contact would be. If this is the second or third time you've called on someone for help, you can say something like, "I know I've asked you for a lot of help lately, and I'm so grateful for favor X and favor Y." If the person responds with genuine-sounding encouragement not to worry about it ("Don't worry about that at all — I'm happy to help, and let me know what else I can do"), you can probably believe that. On the other hand, if the person doesn't say much in response to that, that may be a sign that their welcome mat is not exactly out for more favors. (That doesn't mean you've overstepped or they resent you — just that you might give them a rest as far as future requests.)

how many times can I ask a networking contact for help? was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.

my boss refused to call an ambulance for an injured coworker

Posted: 22 Feb 2018 09:30 AM PST

A reader writes:

I'm wondering if I could get your take on a situation that happened at the elementary school where I teach back in September. It's been a few months since it happened, but it's still on everyone's minds.

On the first day of school, one of my fellow teachers tripped and fell backwards down the concrete steps leading up to the entrance of the school as she was arriving that morning. She split the back of her head open. As the school nurse was assessing the situation, our principal came running over and demanded that the injured teacher be helped to her feet and walked into the school "so the parents and students wouldn't see her as they begin to arrive for school.” The principal then told everyone who witnessed the incident that they were forbidden to call an ambulance because she did not want to create a scene and scare the kids or worry the parents. The injured teacher was kept in the principal's office with a wad of paper towels on her head for almost half an hour until most of the kids had been dropped off for the day and the buses had arrived. Then the nurse was finally "allowed" to call someone to take the teacher to the hospital, but it had to be a family member, not EMS. Several phone calls later, the nurse was finally able to get in touch with the teacher's sister-in-law, who came to pick her up and drive her to the hospital. All in all, it was over an hour between her injury and arriving at the hospital, which is ridiculous because the school is right up the street from the fire department so am ambulance could have gotten there super quickly, and the hospital is only 10-15 minutes away so she literally could have gotten to the hospital in under 20 minutes.

It turns out, she had a concussion (no surprise there) and she needed eight stitches in her head. To my knowledge, she did not lose consciousness but she says she was in such a daze that she went along with what the principal decided instead of advocating for herself. I don't think she was able to really even speak. She missed a week and a half of work and had residual headaches for a month or so afterward.

We were all flabbergasted that our principal chose to keep her hidden in an office with a head injury until the "right time" to get her to the hospital. The teacher probably should not have even been moved in the first place, and an injury to the head should be treated immediately regardless of the "scene" it might create. Our principal can also be very intimidating, and her decisions override the nurse's decisions.

We're all very concerned that she chose to put the appearances of the school ahead of the safety of an injured teacher. I know what she was probably thinking — "these parents won't leave me alone if they see an ambulance here, they'll think the school isn't safe for their children," etc. And I understand not wanting these helicopter parents breathing down your neck, but this teacher could have had a much worse spinal/head injury than she did, and it shouldn't be up to the principal to decide when her staff warrants emergency medical care.

We were all shaken after this incident, and worried that if someone else were to get injured in the future it would be handled in a similar way. Jokes have been made like "hey, be careful carrying that box of books, if you drop it on your foot you won't be allowed to use crutches because it might look bad to the parents," things like that. Some people say she just made a bad judgment call, probably due to first day of school anxiety, but I worry it speaks more to her priorities than anything. What do you think of this? Was there anything legally wrong with her actions?

Her actions were horrible.

She denied a staff member needed medical care because she was concerned about appearances. That is a cartoon-villain-level act. Head injuries are serious, and her desire to hide the situation from parents (which is a weird desire to begin with — people fall)  could have made the damage far more serious than it needed to be.

I can't speak to the legality of her actions — I can't think of any laws she violated, but you'd need a lawyer to tell you for sure — but there's no question that what she didn't wasn't okay from an ethical or human perspective. Of course the rest of you are worried about how any future injuries will be handled, and it's reasonable to speak up and insist on a change to the way these incidents are handled.

This is a perfect time to use the advice I talked about earlier this week, about how to speak up as a group when you want your employer to do something differently. There's power in numbers, and this warrants using it (and as many people are noting in the comment section, since you’re at a school, you probably have a union to do this through).

my boss refused to call an ambulance for an injured coworker was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.

listen to episode 1 of the Ask a Manager podcast

Posted: 22 Feb 2018 07:59 AM PST

I'm excited to announce today's launch of the Ask a Manager podcast, from Anchor FM and Penguin Random House.

You can listen to the first episode right now on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, or Anchor FM. Please subscribe! (Those links will take you straight to it.)

Each week, I'll bring letter-writers on the show to talk directly with me about their work predicaments. A cool thing about this format is that it lets me ask clarifying questions and talk through the advice with the question-asker to make sure it really works for them — and as listeners, you can hear how that plays out. We'll also sometimes go more in-depth on some of the letters from the blog. Most episodes will be around 15 minutes.

In this week’s episode, titled The Friend Boss, I talk with a letter-writer whose good friend at work is becoming her boss.

If you have a question that you'd like to discuss with me on the podcast, please send it to podcast@askamanager.org. (Note that if I don't use your question on the show, I may use it here instead … so if you only want it used on the podcast, please note that in your email.)

listen to episode 1 of the Ask a Manager podcast was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.

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