employer will only reimburse travel if I accept their offer, tired of covering for a slacking coworker, and more Ask a Manager

employer will only reimburse travel if I accept their offer, tired of covering for a slacking coworker, and more

Posted: 17 Jun 2018 09:03 PM PDT

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

1. Employer will only reimburse interview travel expenses if I accept their offer

I recently applied for a summer job at a nonprofit. It seems interesting, but the more I learn about it, the more challenging it sounds and the less sure I am that I’m qualified for it/would succeed in the role. They invited me to a in-person, three-day seminar this weekend, where all applicants will present a self-prepared lesson so their teaching skills can evaluated. Afterwards, it will be decided who will actually get a spot in the summer job program. Still, all applicants must stay for three whole days and watch/listen/give feedback to everyone else’s presentation.

As the nonprofit is, understandably, tight on money, we were asked to cover the travel expenses up-front and we’ll be reimbursed later. However, only applicants who *do not turn down the job when offered* will be reimbursed. If they don’t chose you, you’re good, but if you realize during the training that the job isn’t for you, you’ll have to cover the travel expenses yourself. Considering that the seminar requires quite extensive preparation (about two full days) and travel can be expensive (at least for college students’ budgets, and the job is constructed for college students), I’m kind of at a loss on what to do. What if I realize I won’t be good at/don’t want the summer job after all? I’ve then spent five days (two days preparing + three days seminar) *and* a rather large amount of money on travel for – basically nothing. I’ve bought my train ticket already (they asked us to buy ASAP to keep costs down). Can you give any suggestions on how to handle this?

Run in the other direction.

None of this is reasonable. It's not reasonable to expect candidates to spend five days out of town (or even three, for that matter) applying for a summer job. It's not reasonable to expect that for a longer-than-summer job, but the fact that it's just for a few months makes it even more ridiculous. And as if it weren't already sufficiently disrespectful of your time, a couple of those days are just to watch other applicants? No.

This is an organization that I can almost guarantee you abuses power dynamics with their employees too.

And the thing about only reimbursing travel expenses if you don't turn down their offer?! No, that's not how this works, and that's not okay. They don't need to pay travel expenses for candidates, but if they're offering to, it's not okay to make it contingent on "but you must work for us if we decide we want you or we'll yank our reimbursement." That is shitty, and that's not how decent employers do this.

Train tickets are usually refundable. Go get a refund on the ticket you bought and stay away from this organization.

2. I'm sick of having to do my slacker coworker's projects

My coworker, Cersei, is notorious for goofing off instead of working. It’s become a running joke that if we pass her desk we’ll be more surprised to catch her working instead of coloring or other crafts (I once caught her painting on a canvas). Mostly, the office as a whole has let it go because we realize that it is up to management to correct, not us.

Unfortunately, we’ve started to find it harder to let go because we’ve started to have to do her work for her because she can’t do it on her own. The manager usually passes out whatever work she can’t get done to the rest of the team, which creates a problem because we now have to drop what we were already working on to make sure Cersei’s work gets out on time. Is it okay to tell my manager that I don’t want to do Cersei’s work anymore? I can’t think of a respectful way of saying “if Cersei spent her time wisely, I wouldn’t be needing to do her work in the first place."

Often in a situation like this, you can say, "I can do X (your own work) or Y (Cersei's work) but not both. Which would you like me to do?" But this isn't always a perfect solution — sometimes you might genuinely have time for both but still be annoyed on principle that you're picking up Cersei's slack, or the answer might be "please stay late if you need to" (which would be really unfair in this context), or you might be worried about it taking you away from lower-priority stuff that you'd still like to spend time on. Or you might just care about the long-term morale impact of being asked to constantly cover for her.

If you have decent rapport with your manager, there might be room to say, "Is there another solution for Cersei's work rather than redistributing it to me and others? It's happening regularly, and while I of course don't mind helping out when someone is really busy, it's frustrating to be asked to cover her projects when I frequently see her doing crafts at her desk." Bonus points if you get a group of coworkers together to say this to your manager as a group.

3. Giving notice when my manager is away

I'll likely be receiving a job offer in the next couple of days and I'm ready to accept the offer if it meets my expectations. However, my manager is currently off work for the week dealing with a parent in very poor health. It's very rare for my manager to take time off work because she's unbelievably busy (and luckily loves her job!). She'll undoubtedly be under a huge amount of stress having to catch up on her missed work from her time off as well as cope with her parent's ongoing health battles.

How do I delicately give notice so that she won't be too overwhelmed when she gets back? How should I give notice if she needs to take extended leave to take care of her parent?

What's best here depends on what you know about your boss. Some managers would want you to call them while they're away to deliver this news, so that they're able to get some pieces in motion before you get back (like getting your job advertised, talking to you about what's most essential for you to do before you leave, etc.). Other managers wouldn't want their time off interrupted and would prefer to hear about it when they returned (in which case you'd give your notice to your boss's boss or to HR, depending on your company). If you're not sure which of these categories your boss falls in, I'd default to the second one and ask whoever you give you notice to for their advice on whether to contact your boss while she's away or not.

As for how to minimize the impact on her during a stressful time … there's not a lot you can do there. It's bad timing, but resignations often are, and she'll make do. All you can really do is be as proactive as you can in helping with a smooth transition during your notice period, and leave your projects in good shape with plenty of documentation. Resignations are rarely convenient, and sometimes they are especially inconvenient, but people get by.

4. Answering questions about why I'm at work early

I've recently started a relationship with someone whose working life is completely different to my own – I'm in a creative industry, he works in construction. He starts work at seven in the morning and I tend to find it easiest to just leave at the same time as him when we stay with each other, as whenever I've tried to go back to sleep afterwards, I end up oversleeping and being late.

However, on a normal day I'm usually not in the office until bang on our start time or even a fair bit later (on a time scale my director has described as “early for a publicist”). This director (my boss's boss) is usually the only other person there when I get in early and always asks what I'm doing there at that time. It doesn't feel very professional to explain about a new relationship – particularly as it always invites lots of follow-up questions because of our very different backgrounds. (My industry is known for being ridiculously middle class and I don't think any of my colleagues have met a plumber outside of employing one. Hell, until my boyfriend, neither hadI!) My office is very friendly and we have lots of socials, but equally it's my first permanent job and I don't want to overstep the mark particularly with senior management. Can you advise?

This makes me think of the advice to parents not to go into all the details about procreation the first time their kid asks where babies come from; it's enough to just say "they come from a woman's tummy" because usually that's all the kid is interested in knowing at that point. In your case, you're worrying that you need to explain the whole situation when a much shorter, vaguer answer will be enough! They don't need to know about your new relationship or the logistics of how it works when you spend the night with each other. You can just say, "Oh, I've been waking up early lately, so sometimes I come in earlier!"

5. Are online degree programs reputable?

I’m wondering how recruiters/employers feel about candidates who have earned their college degree via online courses. I’m an adult who’s been in the workforce for 20+ years, and I’d love to go back to school to finish the bachelor’s degree I started many moons ago, but due to a heavy workload and varying schedule, it would be very difficult to attend classes in-person, so I’ve been considering an online degree program.

Many reputable colleges and universities (University of Missouri, University of Arizona, etc.) are now offering online degree programs, but I’d hate to waste my time and money if the degree would ultimately be considered "worthless.” In the past I’ve heard recruiters be very dismissive of candidates with degrees from the University of Phoenix, and similar schools, but I’m thinking maybe a degree from a more reputable online program might be better received. Any advice or thoughts you have on this subject would be very much appreciated.

The thing to look at isn't whether a degree program is online or not; it's whether the school is nonprofit or for-profit. For-profit schools (like the University of Phoenix) have a terrible reputation, and rightly so. But many nonprofit schools run excellent, reputable online programs, and you would be fine with one of those.

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