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“employee overstepped with a coworker’s tragedy, boss told me to change my ringtone, and more” plus 3 more Ask a Manager

“employee overstepped with a coworker’s tragedy, boss told me to change my ringtone, and more” plus 3 more Ask a Manager


employee overstepped with a coworker’s tragedy, boss told me to change my ringtone, and more

Posted: 17 Apr 2018 09:03 PM PDT

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

1. My employee alienated a coworker with her opinions about his personal tragedy

I’m a relatively new manager (six months in) and this is my first management job. I’m still getting the hang of things. My boss and everyone above him don’t work in this branch. I am wondering when a manager should get involved in a personal dispute between two employees that has nothing to do with work.

"Robb” is the relative of someone who was murdered. He changed after it. He lives alone, doesn’t celebrate holidays or things, and wants to go through the motions and be left alone. He has been vocal in his personal (not work) life about there being no justice for victims. "Arya" is a newer employee. I don’t know how she found out about Robb because he doesn’t talk about it at work, but she thinks Robb needs to forgive the perpetrator (who got life with no parole) and fight for prisoner rights to fix the prison system, and she told him this a few times. Robb now avoids Arya as much as possible (and she hasn't made any further comment). Other employees are enabling Robb by dealing with Arya on his behalf.

My conundrum is that all the work is getting done, Robb has not been hostile to Arya (nor has anyone else) and he just avoids her, and no one has complained or brought forward concerns about anything. As a manager, should I be dealing with Robb’s situation or should I leave this alone because it a personal conflict?

Don't fall into the trap of thinking that personal conflicts are off-limits to you as a manager. If they impact your employees' work, work environment, or overall satisfaction at work, you can get involved.

If you haven't already, you should tell Arya clearly and sternly that her comments to Robb were unacceptable and that in the future she needs to stay out of other people's highly sensitive personal situations. You should also let Robb know that you've done that, and that you're sorry he was subjected to that.

I don't know how big a deal it is that other people have to deal with Arya on his behalf, and that's very relevant here. If it's not very frequent and if it's not disrupting other people's work, I'd let this go for a while so that Robb can get some space from her. Even if it is frequent, if you can change the workflow to keep them apart without compromising what you need each of them to be producing (and without overloading anyone else), that might be the smartest path. If that's not possible, then yeah, at some point you’ll need to talk to Robb and find out what he'll need to be able to work with Arya again. But if you can give him the grace of some space from her now, that would be a kindness.

2. My boss asked me to change my ringtone

Is it worth it to try to push back when you’re the only one in an office of 10 people asked by your manager to change the ringtone on your personal cell phone? My standard one (that’s the one when anyone calls, but I have distinctive ringtones for certain folks) is the theme from the Beverly Hills Cop movies, and I keep my volume at about 20-25%. Everyone else in the office has their ringtones on full blast. I know because I hear them. One is a particularly shrill old-style telephone ring, and another is the bugle call “Release the Hounds” from a fox hunt.

In any case, mine’s not bad, and it’s not loud, but I’m the only one asked to change it. Is it worth pushing back on?

I mean, I think everyone in your office should be keeping their phones on vibrate; this sounds like way too much jarring noise.

But I don’t think you can push back on this. Your manager has told you that she finds yours in particular to be disruptive (and maybe others have told her that too), and that warrants changing it. Or if you feel strongly about keeping it, then keep your phone on vibrate when you're at work.

(And actually, even if this request had come from a generally reasonable peer, rather than your manager, I'd say the same thing. It can be hard to work in an office full of other people's noises, and if someone tells you you're making a noise that's particularly driving them round a bend, it's kind to try to accommodate them if you can do so without major inconvenience. Even if you feel like other people are just as bad!)

3. How can I explain a medical absence without sharing the details?

I am a 30-year old woman working in my first professional role following graduate school. The team I work on is small (eight people) and fairly tight-knit. In two weeks, I am going to be missing a few days of work to have a tubal ligation. This surgery is completely elective and something my husband and I have been discussing for a long time. I'm actually really excited about it.

My issue is that I'm not sure how much I will need to tell my team. As a woman who has never had and does not want children, I am used to getting a lot of unwanted commentary from friends, family and – most annoyingly – strangers about the issue. I know that I'm making the right choice for myself, and I don't want to open myself up to lectures or judgment from well-meaning coworkers with different value systems.

How do I explain that I will be taking a few days off to recover, without getting into the specifics? I have disclosed the reason for my surgery to my manager, who is very supportive. I'm just not comfortable going into great detail to the rest of the team, and I know they will be curious and ask questions.

You don't need to tell them anything! Or at least nothing beyond "I'll be out for a few days" or, if you want, "I'm just having a medical procedure — it's nothing to worry about." The idea here isn't to hide the details out of shame or stigma; the idea is that this is the appropriate language for any medical procedure, because none of them are your coworkers' business! It's totally normal not to divulge medical details at work. (The same was true with your boss, actually — you weren't obligated to share the details with her either, unless you wanted to.)

4. My job doesn't provide safe parking

I currently have a second job at a restaurant with not a whole lot of parking. On weekend nights, in order to free up more parking for customers, they force us to park in a strip mall parking lot (if we don’t park there, we can be sent home for the night or fired). This parking lot is across a very busy road, past a sketchy gas station, and past a very dark store front. I am a tiny young woman and am forced to walk alone back to my car, usually between 11 p.m. and midnight. I am always in my restaurant uniform and almost always carrying nearly $100 in cash. We have asked several times for a remedy to this situation, and their best answer was that they would drive us to our cars at the end of the night. They’re promised this four or five times, but it still hasn’t happened. In fact, one of our managers has a suspended license so, if he’s closing, it isn’t even possible! They’ve also offered to go get my car for me, which I politely declined because I don’t want anyone else driving my car, god forbid they get in an accident.

I know that employers aren’t technically required to provide parking, but the place they require us to park is owned by other businesses! There is a large supermarket and probably eight other smaller stores in the strip mall and we are effectively stealing their parking. Are they within their bounds legally? Do we have any avenue for action here, or do we just have to suck it up?

They are indeed within their bounds legally. There's no legal requirement that an employer provide parking to employees. If the lot where they’re telling you to park is marked for those other businesses’ customers, you can point that out, but then they might just shrug and tell you to take public transportation.

Your best bet is probably to push for a solution with a group of your coworkers, which will make you harder to ignore. Insist on the rides-to-cars plan happening, and push for a work-around on the nights the manager with the suspended license is working. Or you could ask if they'd pay for a group cab for you all to that parking lot, but who knows if they'd be willing to do it.

If they won't budge, or if they agree and then flounder when it comes to actually implementing what they agree to, then at that point you'd need to decide whether you want to stay there, knowing that this job doesn't come with safe parking, or if you'd rather leave. (Or a third option — unionize and make parking part of the negotiations! But that may be more invested than you want to get.)

5. Should I do more to show I want a job at a particular company?

I applied to a position at my alma mater which I didn't get because they felt I was overqualified. But they said they were impressed with me and would be in touch if a more suitable position opened up. They reached out to me about another position 5 months later but I didn't get that job either because I didn't have experience in one area they felt was relevant for the job.

A few of my friends think I should do more to get them to hire me: one suggested going there and having a conversation with the HR manager about how unsatisfied I am with my current job and how I really want to work there. Another suggested applying to other positions even when I don't have all the qualifications just to show how badly I want to work there. My instincts say that would hurt rather than help my chances because they have already stated in both interviews that they like me and that it's more a matter of finding the right fit than anything else. Should I do more to show I really want to work there?

Listen to your instincts here, not to your friends. This employer knows that you're interested because you've applied for two jobs with them. The reason they're not hiring you isn't that you don't seem insufficiently interested; it's been about your qualifications not being the right match both times. So finding ways to impress upon them how very interested you are isn't the right path here (and rarely is, after a certain baseline level of interest has been expressed).

Definitely stay away from that advice to tell the HR manager how unhappy you are with your current job (after showing up in person, no less!). That's not why employers hire people. The way to get hired there is going to be the same as it is for most jobs: Be a very strong match with what they're looking for, and be able to convey that in your resume, cover letter, and interviews. That's a boring answer so sometimes people (like your friends) go looking for alternative paths, but those alternate paths are often off-putting (as "show up in person and explain you hate your current job" definitely would be).

employee overstepped with a coworker’s tragedy, boss told me to change my ringtone, and more was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.

can I show annoyance with a terrible job offer that I don’t plan to take?

Posted: 17 Apr 2018 10:59 AM PDT

A reader writes:

Is there ever a productive or reasonable way to express annoyance at a job offer you don’t intend to accept?

I recently interviewed with a company for what sounded like a lower-mid-level position. The title, described duties, and reporting structure all indicated a position that would be the next step up from what I currently do. I’ll admit, some of the questions I was asked in the interview process were fairly low-level, but the actual duties of the job were complex enough that I chalked the low-level questions to a poor talent pool in our area combined with a new interviewer.

I went through a phone interview, took a full day off for an in-person interview, which was canceled at the last minute, and then took a morning off for the rescheduled interview, after which I was offered the job and told the HR department would be calling me to discuss terms. I was very curious at that point to hear the offer. Like I said, everything about the job was pointing to it being a higher level than I’m currently working, but because of some of their questions, I was prepared for the offer to be more of a lateral move.

HR called, and … their range for the position was really low. It was low enough that I don’t know of anybody in our industry (and I know folks who are working call centers!) who would be tempted to accept. I felt like they had wasted a day and a half of my time and PTO when any reasonable hiring manager and HR department would have known that what they were offering was unlikely to be commensurate with specialized experience (and this was a large company with a formal HR department, not a mom-and-pop who maybe didn’t know better).

Would there have been any way to express my frustration and annoyance at their waste of my time that would have done any good? I had a similar situation a few months ago, where the company handled it in the exact opposite way. I applied to a position that seemed like a lateral move, and the hiring manager emailed me to say that their budget was tight and that, based on my resume, they suspected I wouldn’t be interested in moving forward. They were up-front that the position pays X and said to let them know if I’d still like to schedule an interview. I could not have been more impressed with their respect for my time (and their own!), and I almost wanted to point out the contrast to the HR person at the more recent company. Would that have been warranted? Would any expression of frustration have been?

What I actually ended up doing was telling the HR person that I would need double what they were offering to even consider the role and that it didn’t sound like it made sense for us to continue the discussion. The hiring manager ended up trying to get them to expand the salary rage to at least come cose to what I wanted, because my skillset was exactly what she was looking for, but HR wouldn’t budge, so that was the end of that. But I still wonder if I could have given some indication of how much I felt they had wasted my time when they could have been upfront about the salary range.

Yeah, I can see why you were really annoyed by that. When an employer knows that they're offering a salary that might be low, or when they have reason to think the person they're interviewing will find it low (like if the person is coming from a notoriously higher-paying industry), it's common sense and courteous to talk about it early on the process, so that they don't waste anyone's time, including their own.

As for whether you can point that out to them … You actually kind of did, just without spelling out your irritation. "I would need double what you're offering to even consider the role" pretty clearly says "wow, you are way off what I was expecting."

But there's room to say a little more if you want, too. For example, upon hearing the salary offer: "Oh! … (uncomfortable silence) … That is significantly lower than what I'd expect for a role like this one. Wow. I have to be honest, I wouldn't have invested this amount of time in your process if I'd realized from the beginning that the salary was so far below the market rate."

That's blunt, but it's reasonable. You don't say it in an angry tone, just a surprised and concerned one.

Another version, for use later on, not on the spot: "Can I pass along some feedback that I think might help with your process? The salary you're offering is so far below market rate that I really wish I'd known about it from the start, before I used up PTO from my current job to come interview. I think so many candidates will be taken aback by it that you'll save a lot of time — yours and theirs — if you let people know your range up-front."

This, of course, is one of many ways that our culture's weird coyness around salary hurts people. They wasted your time and energy, and they wasted their own too. No one was served by them springing that information on you at the end of the process.

can I show annoyance with a terrible job offer that I don’t plan to take? was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.

am I being ageist toward my older employee?

Posted: 17 Apr 2018 09:29 AM PDT

A reader writes:

I work at a job where I manage several remote contract workers. It’s my first time managing this many people and I really enjoy it. However, I have one person who I get periodically frustrated with, and she happens to be the oldest person I manage. She’s probably at least in her 60s, if I had to guess.

She does pretty good work when I push her, but it doesn’t come easily. I have to ask her repeatedly to follow instructions that seem to come a lot easier to my other employees. The job involves writing, and she complains that she can’t come up with ideas to write about, but when I send out content ideas to all my writers she never takes any of them.

With any other writer I wouldn’t let this slide, but there are two factors keeping me from parting ways with this one: One, every time I’ve express disappointment in her work, she’s told me pretty dire things like “I’m desperate for this job” and “This is my only source of income.” One time, payment was a little late and she said that if she wasn’t paid soon, she wouldn’t have any money in her account (I used to be a freelancer so I know the struggle, but I also had more than one gig). And making all of this worse, she recently experienced a really sudden death of a close family member. I can’t hear these things and not be affected by it.

Second, I worry that some of my frustrations have to do with ageism. The fact is that my other younger writers (some are millennial aged, like I am, while others are in their 40s) are more responsive via email, better at using digital tools, and just better at writing for the internet. They are more nimble and versatile, and they take direction well. With this other writer, I feel like everything comes so much harder, but I wonder if it’s because the other writers and I are at the same pace because we are closer in age, and that I just need to be more patient.

This employee is really sweet, and like I said, she can do good work sometimes. But I get really frustrated and I feel like if things got worse with her performance, I’d never be able to sever ties because I’d feel too bad.

How should I manage this employee without letting my emotions or ageism get in the way? Help!

You can read my answer to this letter at New York Magazine today. Head over there to read it.

am I being ageist toward my older employee? was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.

my boss won’t stop posting fake news and false memes on our company Facebook

Posted: 17 Apr 2018 07:59 AM PDT

A reader writes:

I work for a small charity and report directly to our founder/president. We have a contractor for our Twitter and Instagram accounts, but our president refuses to hand over our Facebook pages to anyone.

Lately, he’s started posting fake news/memes. The memes are "in line" with our mission in that our mission is around social justice, but they're wrong. For example, we were especially loathed for sharing that incorrect meme saying something like more kids have died in school shootings than in the Iraq war, which is absurdly wrong.

We receive dozens of emails and our reviews plummet every time he does this. I’ve brought it up to him five times. The first two times, he “explained” that the news/memes are “partially” true and that he doesn’t delete them because it increases engagement and exposure, and the last three times I received no response at all. (My only way of communicating with him is through email, so I document everything because it’s very easy for him to ignore me.) The worst part is that our organization takes a firm stance AGAINST fake news.

I’m in charge of answering our email, so I’m the one who has to deal with these people who are (justifiably) angry about the misinformation we spread. I forward them all to my boss so he knows the impact of his posts and then try my best to smooth things over with the emailer. When my boss sometimes replies to them, his response is always essentially that he’s been in this business for decades and knows better than everyone else.

We’ve had our Facebook Ads account revoked, lost a full star on our reviews (which should have been almost impossible with the number of five-star reviews we’ve received over the years), people are telling their friends that we’re frauds, and donations have almost ceased. I’m embarrassed to be working in what used to be a coveted position in a highly-regarded charity. I’ve started looking for other jobs, but there are few prospects right now. Is there anything I can do to save us in the meantime?

I wrote back to this letter-writer and asked what's up with email being the only communication method between her and her boss, because that's quite odd:

I've worked here for a year, and my boss has only physically been in the office for maybe six weeks of that time. He won't talk on the phone, I don't even know his actual number (he gives out various ones depending on who he's talking to), he refuses to buy me a work phone (so I have to give out my personal number to people who sell it), and he won't answer any contact through unofficial means like Facebook — unless the person is important, of course. The ONLY way he will contact me is through email. If I had to hazard a guess, I'd say it's because it's really easy to just not acknowledge an email.

I actually think you've got bigger problems than your fake-news-loving boss. An organization president who only communicate with his staff through email is … not great.

I mean, if you were a huge organization and you were many layers of management beneath him, maybe. But you said it's a small organization, so there's no excuse for this other than that he's really terrible at managing people and/or is purposely avoiding accountability for his decisions and/or both. I'm guessing both.

You say the charity is highly regarded, so I'm curious if the founder/president has always been this way, or if something has changed in recent times. For example, maybe there used to a be a competent second-in-command who reined him in but who's no longer there, or maybe he's just become increasingly checked out as time has gone on. Or maybe he's always been like this, but the rest of the staff has been strong enough to compensate. Or maybe he's truly great at some other aspect of the job, and just really bad at the parts described here, who knows.

But please know that the part of this where he's incommunicado is really strange.

In any case, as for what you can do about it … I'm not hopeful that you can change it, because you've already taken the obvious steps and they haven't worked.

In general in a situation like this, you'd want to do the following, in roughly this order:

* Talk to the person and explain in very clear, concrete terms the harm the behavior is causing — in this case, that your reviews are plummeting, your membership is angry and calling you frauds, your Facebook Ads account has been revoked, and donations have almost ceased (!). That last one is usually pretty hard to ignore, and the fact that hasn't mattered to him is a particularly strong point in the "all is not well" here column.

* Have someone senior to you and with more standing/influence raise the issue and repeat your points.

* If the problem continues after that, decide how strongly you feel about it and how much capital you're willing to invest in pushing back. If the answer is "lots," then at that point you can do things like organize your coworkers to push back as a group (which can be harder to ignore and can give you some cover).

Ultimately, though, sometimes the leadership of an organization will make terrible decisions and be impervious to reasoned feedback about it. When that happens, generally you need to accept that they've made their decision and you need need to make yours (in other words, accept that it's not likely to change and decide how bothered are you about it, and choose whether to stay or go accordingly).

But this guy is watching donations dry up and doesn't care. Assuming you've made sure he knows the connection between his memes and the decrease in revenue, this isn't a "try to make him see reason" situation. It's a "exit the ship as quickly as you can" situation.

my boss won’t stop posting fake news and false memes on our company Facebook was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.

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