“women-only Valentine’s Day gestures, employee is having affair with client’s spouse, and more” plus 3 more Ask a Manager

women-only Valentine’s Day gestures, employee is having affair with client’s spouse, and more
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how can I explain why I’m leaving my new job after only three months?
my employee sent a memo to management about ghosts in the building

women-only Valentine’s Day gestures, employee is having affair with client’s spouse, and more

Posted: 13 Feb 2018 09:03 PM PST

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

1. My coworker wants to send flowers to all the women for Valentine's Day

I have a question about Valentine’s Day at work. I have a coworker, “Martin,” who works overseas in London, and he recently visited one of our U.S. locations and met several people in person for the first time. I work in a different office and have never met him in person.

Martin messaged me on our work IM asking me what I thought about his idea for Valentine’s Day — he wants to send flowers to all the women he met at the U.S. office he visited. I didn’t think his idea was a good one, mainly because I feel like there’s a bit of a sexist undertone to singling out the women for gifts on a day associated with love and romance. Why isn’t he sending the men flowers? Why does he feel that women alone need some kind of present on February 14th?

He said his intentions are harmless (which I acknowledge) and that calling it sexist is a stretch, but I feel like this may be a case of a man not being able to accept that what they consider to be “innocent” behavior can be sexist in nature. He also said that in London nobody would think it’s strange, and compared it to sending someone a birthday gift, but I don’t see how that’s related at all. I suggested sending chocolates to the entire office instead, but he seems pretty adamant that his flowers-to-the-ladies is the way to go. What do you think?

Yeah, tell him not to do that. Since he doesn't see how it's sexist, you might have more luck just explaining that a lot of women will find it icky and patronizing.

Generally when you're treating people at work differently based on gender, you're on the wrong path.

2. My employee is having an affair with a client's spouse

I have a very difficult question to ask pertaining to an employee having an affair with a client’s spouse. This employee happens to be a personal friend, which is why I know about the affair. However, a scorned spouse could cause ramifications to my business in a small town.

I have already told the employee/friend that I do not approve of the relationship (as a friend), and I feel that I may need to fire her to protect my business. What legal ramifications could occur if I do fire her, or if I don’t and the spouse finds out?

You can have a rule that employees can't date clients or people to close to clients. Many businesses do have that rule, because they know that they'd risk losing the client if the relationship went south. Your employee is showing awfully bad judgment here and a total lack of concern for how her actions will harm you and your business, and it would be reasonable for you to explain that she's putting your business from the client in jeopardy and that you can't keep her on your staff (if indeed that's what you decide). If she has trouble understanding this, ask her if she'd continue to employ, say, a housekeeper who slept with her husband.

Unfortunately, it sounds like it may be past the point where she can salvage the situation — even if she broke off the affair now, the damage has been done.

3. Did I go to a networking meeting or on a date?

I am a senior in college who will be graduating in the spring. My childhood next-door neighbor, who is a few years older than me, recently contacted me by text, saying, “Hey, I saw on your LinkedIn that you are interested in data science. [My company] has an opening on our analytics team. If you want, we can talk about it and catch up :)”

I was very interested, so I looked into the position myself and did some surface level research about the company. We ended up going to a Panera to chat. We only talked briefly about the actual position — most of the conversation was dominated by what he does there and what I have been up to at school, which didn't strike me as odd for a mentoring/networking meeting. However, when we were parting ways, he said, "This was fun, but I don't think it's going to work out."

So, I may be hopping on the crazy train here, but did I go on a date with this guy? His language at the end there is not language I would use to tell someone I didn't think they were right for a job. I thought it was a networking thing, but looking back it reads sort of like a date. He did pay for lunch. Anyway, if it was a date, can I still ask him to put in a good word for me even though it's not going to work out between us (ha-ha!)?

If I did not go on a date with him, does he have the authority to reject me from the position? He is not the hiring manager, and does not work in HR (not to mention I have not submitted a formal application). I know that contacting a company after being rejected can be obnoxious, so any advice you have would be great!

Eeeww, yeah, it sounds like he invited you to a networking chat, but then treated it like a date, complete with unsolicited rejection. I suppose it's possible that "I don't think it's going to work out" referred to the job — but given all the context you describe, it really doesn't sound like it. (And if it did, he was incredibly awkward and unclear about it, and you are in no way to blame for not understanding that.)

But no, you didn't go on a date with this guy. You went to a networking meeting. He may have been on a date in his own mind, but if that's what he wanted it to be, he should have made that clear from the beginning, rather than using his company's job opening as a way to hang out with you.

It's possible in theory that he does have some authority to screen candidates, but there's nothing here to indicate that’s the case. So go ahead and formally apply for the job. I wouldn't ask him to put in a good word though — he seems sketchy and I'm not sure it will help you. (The exception to that is if he seemed genuinely enthusiastic about you and your work, aside from his weirdness. But it doesn't sound like there was even time in the conversation for that.)

4. Application system had no way for me to upload a portfolio of work

I work in a creative industry (graphic design) that, when applying for jobs, generally requires the ability to submit examples of previous work. In my recent job search, most of my applications have either gone to an email address where I could attach my PDF portfolio, or have been on a website that included a space for me to upload my portfolio separate from my resume.

However, I recently applied for a position in a non-creative industry, and their web application process didn’t include a space for my portfolio upload, despite one being required to apply — I’m assuming because this is not an industry that generally has to worry about seeing one — and nowhere could I find information for their HR or hiring manager to follow up. (I should note that I did try to upload a resume/portfolio combo, but got an error, which makes me think they had a file size cap on uploads.) A couple weeks later, I received an email informing me that I hadn’t been offered the position BUT they foresaw a need for a second position opening the coming months, and I would be encouraged to apply again because they thought I was a strong candidate.

Would it be appropriate to respond to this email thanking them for the opportunity, but also somehow tactfully pointing out that I was unable to attach my work samples? I can’t help feeling a little bitter — if I’d been able to provide my portfolio, would I have fared better in the selection process? I don’t want to sound rude and sour their impression of me just in case I do apply again further down the road, but at that point, I’d be faced with this same problem all over again.

The way around this is to put your portfolio online somewhere and send a link to it in your cover letter. If you don't want it online because you're concerned about privacy, you can host it in the cloud (like by using Dropbox) and send a link to it there (and so people won't be able to just randomly come across it online).

5. Should I avoid saying my coworker was laid off?

I started at my company immediately after grad school, and I have been here for three years. After I had been here for one year, there was a small round of layoffs, and my coworker (with more than 15 years of experience) was let go, leaving me in charge of our small work group. Although my title did not change, this was a large increase in responsibility for me and there was no transition time. I did well in the role and was given an excellent performance review the following year.

I'm now searching for a new job, and I'm struggling with how to mention my coworker's departure during interviews. I feel it's important to bring up that I've handled a larger amount of responsibility than is typical for someone at my career stage, and that after just one year, my company felt comfortable having me take over the leadership role. I just can't find the right words to describe what happened, because it feels impolite to mention that my coworker was laid off. Should I just say that she "left the company," or "left the company abruptly" or is there a better way to describe this situation?

It's not impolite to mention a layoff! Layoffs are a normal thing that happens, and you don't need to dance around that, especially when it's so relevant. You can just say, "My company did a small round of layoffs. My coworker's job was eliminated and I took over much of her work, including X, Y, and Z."

I'm a relatively new manager and some of my inherited employees have, well, pretty questionable judgment that I've been trying to address since I started. They've made some odd decisions in the past, and as their boss, I’ve had to deal with the fall-out, but I’m slowly training them towards a better understanding of what I actually need from them.

We are in the hospitality industry, and my department is on scheduled shift-work to cover a reception desk, among other duties. A new CEO started taking over right around the same time I was promoted, and she is making a lot of changes to how we document particular things. She has requested that my department prepare a daily report regarding any significant issues that occur in the building over the course of each shift, such as maintenance problems or emergency calls, either medical/police, or for repairs such as plumbing.

I’ve had some trouble communicating with my staff what exactly they need to put in this report (which gets sent to my boss, my boss’ boss, the CEO, and the owner), that small things like regular old incandescent light bulbs being out in the lobby floor lamps do not need to be detailed here, and that it’s fine to just write “no issues today, everything went well." We've been doing the report for just over two months now, and although we had a rocky start I really thought we had gotten this particular new duty down as part of our routine.

Well … Monday morning I came in to work and was greeted by my boss, when he asked to have a quick chat about the all-staff memo that went out Sunday afternoon. Apparently the staff member who works weekend mornings sent out an email that included several things that did not belong on her shift report, including that the department was out of printer paper and staples, and that the desk calculator was starting to break. I’ve already addressed these things — clarifying that office supply requests should be directed to me, or to any of the managers on duty when I am not in the office, and that this sort of thing doesn’t belong on an incident report. I was stumped, however, on how to address the other thing that was included:

Apparently multiple guests asked her “if we have had any reports of ghosts,” and she thought that this was a reasonable thing to mention on her daily report! She didn’t just mention it, actually — she went into full detail about what the guests told her. According to her long paragraph describing the incident, multiple people claimed to see “a shadow of a silhouette outside [the door],” “including children” so “they don’t think it was because they had too much to drink.” This was in a section labeled “Issues to be Addressed"!

I’m really blindsided by the level of judgment that was shown in thinking that she should put this on a report that went to not only her grandboss, but to the owner of the entire company. Belief in the supernatural aside, surely she should have realized that guests asking about rumors of a haunted old building wasn’t exactly an actionable complaint that needed to be elevated to management?

I have already prepared a note to her about this (she doesn’t work until Saturday). In it I stressed that although I do think she should report serious issues with guests such as (repeated) complaints about food or cleanliness, there are some things that guests will bring to her that don’t need to be reported to the entirety of upper management. I used several examples, not just this incident, but I did conclude with telling her that ghost stories probably fall into the latter category.

But I have to know — am I being the stereotypical skeptic jerk here? It’s not even that I 100% don’t believe in ghosts (I certainly lean skeptic but I’m willing to be convinced!). I just think that maybe paranormal rumors in the context of a workplace need, I don't know, a less credulous approach if you feel the need to mention them to your bosses? Do I need to take into account that some people's beliefs in this sort of thing are very sincere and border on a spiritual/religious view?

I was eager to hear more and wrote back to this letter-writer and asked, “I’m so curious — is your building rumored to be haunted, or this just all come out of the blue? And why so many reports on this one weekend and never previously? I am dying to hear more." Her response:

It’s an old building, originally built in 1925. We have overnight staff, and some of the employees who don’t work third shift say they wouldn’t want to be alone in building this big and old, but I think it’s just a general sentiment because giant dark empty ballrooms with floor-to-ceiling windows that look out onto more darkness are creepy as hell to walk through, ghosts or no ghosts!

I’ve absolutely never heard of any ghost stories involving us in particular, and this is in a town that was incorporated in the 1600s and has tons and tons of local ghost stories. I feel pretty confident in saying there’s no rumors of the sort among our client base and I’m fairly sure the employee who made the report hadn’t heard anything either. It seems to me like the guests just experienced what some employees (and I myself) have experienced in the past — a hundred-year-old building on a windy February night, a dimly lit hallway, and the adrenaline of just having left a big party, all adding up to a spooky experience. And then my employee took their spooky tale of their spooky experience very sincerely.

As for why so many reports? I honestly couldn’t tell you. We’re in our winter slow season so there’s plenty of contractors in and out of the building to report on and not much else — I imagine this is the first Weird Guest Thing she’s had to deal with since we started doing these daily shift reports, and hasn’t had a chance to exercise her judgement in passing on things that guests say to her? I don’t know! Her reports have been pretty much what I’m looking for since the beginning of the year — this is a pretty sudden bombardment of bad judgement!

Okay. Fascinating.

So no, I do not think you're being a jerk here, and you are absolutely right that she needs to take a less credulous approach in a memo that's going to her boss, her boss's boss, her boss's boss's boss, the CEO, and the owner. And that's true even if she has a religious/spiritual belief in ghosts.

I suppose it's possible that she figured that if multiple guests were asking about ghosts, it's enough of a thing that the facility might want to have an official response to give out in the future. And maybe that's what she meant by listing it under "Issues to be Addressed" — not that some kind of paranormal investigation was warranted. But if so, she should have been clearer — and it still probably didn't belong in this particular report!

I know you already left her a note, but that’s a limited, one-sided way of communicating. I'd also sit down and talk with her in person the next time you're both in at the same time. By doing that, you’ll get a better feel for how she's taking your feedback, and whether she gets why this was odd to do. If this is a sign of a broader issue with her judgment, a corrective note won't fix it — so you need to have a real conversation to know if there's a bigger problem here or not. Depending on how that conversation goes, you might come away feeling reassured that this was a fluke … or you might come away with more concerns about her judgment.

The thing is, as amusing as I find this, it’s happening in the context of you already having concerns about your team’s judgment, and there's been a pattern of them making bad decisions and causing fall-out for you. Given that backdrop, this may be another flag that you do have serious judgment problems on your staff and need to figure out what you're going to do about that. Judgment is a hard thing to train people on, particularly in the amount of time that you as a manager will generally have available to invest. So that leaves you either needing to monitor people far more closely than you’ve been doing (and probably more closely than you can), or considering whether you might need different people on your team. I'm not saying that you should fire your employee over this ghost report — I don't think that. But it does sound like you’ve had a lot of signs that things aren't running the way you want them to run, and you can't let that go on indefinitely. If you’re seeing significant improvement from your coaching, then that's great — but if it's slow going (and it sounds like it might be), at some point soon you might need to change course.

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