“my boss reminds me to do basic tasks, should I stand up when my manager comes to my desk, and more” plus 3 more Ask a Manager

my boss reminds me to do basic tasks, should I stand up when my manager comes to my desk, and more
people keep sending me job postings that are way below my skill level
I showed up for an interview on the wrong day
my boss wants us to all share our mental health needs – at every meeting

my boss reminds me to do basic tasks, should I stand up when my manager comes to my desk, and more

Posted: 18 Jun 2018 09:03 PM PDT

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

1. My boss keeps reminding me to do basic tasks

My boss constantly reminds me of things I already know how to do. These are VERY basic tasks required of someone in my position. Early on, I would respond to these "helpful" "reminders" with something to the effect of "got it" or "yes, I know." A few weeks later, it's the exact same reminder, or something similar, so the fact that I already know how to do X or Y clearly isn't registering. I've taken to just ignoring it every time he does this, but honestly, it sticks in my craw. My reviews have been uniformly excellent, and I've been told multiple times that I outperform everyone who held my position before me. I know he doesn't think I'm incompetent, and he's a very genial man, but the constant "reminders" feel infantilizing. For what it's worth, I'm a woman in my mid-30s who's been in this field for nine years and working under this particular boss for three; my boss is a man in his mid-late 60s. I'm one of two direct reports. The other is a man the same age as him; as far as I know, he doesn't get the same "reminders."

Honestly, I don't think my boss even realizes A) that he does this quite so often or B) that it's insulting. Is there a polite way to frame "Is there a particular reason you don't seem to think I can handle my shit?" or should I just grit my teeth and let this one go?

Say something! It's perfectly reasonable to say something like, "You've been reminding me recently to do some of the core tasks of my position, like X and Y. Have I done something to make you worry that I'm not on top of those things?"

There's a decent chance that that conversation will get this to stop. But if it doesn't, and he keeps doing it, then sit down with him and say this: "It's important to me that you're able to trust that I'm on top of core tasks like X and Y. When you remind me about them, it comes across as if you don't. Is there a way for us to assume that I've got this stuff covered, unless something specific comes up that makes you worry I don't?"

2. Should you stand up when your boss comes to your desk to talk to you?

Small random question about office etiquette. When you’re sitting at your desk and your boss comes over to talk to you, should you stand up? Obviously it’s better to be on the same level for longer conversations, but you don’t always know how long something is going to last. I do stand usually because its awkward to have somebody hovering over me, but I also worry that I’m acting overly deferential and generally feel awkward either way. I’ve also noticed that some managers will just pull up a free chair if they want to talk about some substantial, but others just seem to loom.

I may be overthinking this, but its one of those things I feel awkward about whatever I do. I’m also one of the most junior people in the office, if that matters.

No need to stand up — and popping up when your boss shows up to ask you a quick question would probably, as you worry, come across as a tad too deferential. It's fine to remain seated. If the conversation starts going on for a while and you feel weird about it, you could say, "I could pull a chair over here if you'd like."

3. Can I ask for a retroactive raise after leaving my job?

I have a question where I think the short answer is that I’m a little screwed, but as an avid reader I’d love your take. I recently left my job after about three years. This was partly because I found a great job that I love, but also because my past company hasn’t given raises in years, even for high performers, and didn’t have any plan to start. I left about a month ago.

Since I left, they announced that they’d be giving cost-of-living increases retroactive from the beginning of 2018, and performance raises for 2017 performance. I feel like this is a definite "no,” since the purpose of raises is to retain talent, but do I have any standing to go back and say “hi, I’d like my retroactive raise now?"

To add a smidge of additional context, I have one friend whose last day was the day this policy was announced, and he was told that he would receive his retroactive raise and bonus (the policy also includes bonuses for 2017 performance, along with the raises).

You're out of luck on this one, unfortunately. You don't work there anymore, so it would be very, very unusual for them to entertain this request. There's just no incentive for them to pay additional money to someone who no longer works there. You might be thinking that there wasn't a real incentive for them to do that for your friend on their last day either — but it's likely that they're using an "everyone currently working here is eligible" rule and he got lucky with his timing.

4. My manager wants me to track down past program participants on Facebook

I work with a nonprofit organization that offers services both online and occasionally at in-person events. In the past, we’ve had some people who engaged with us and shared their stories for our website and other materials. At the time, we captured their email addresses and in some cases phone numbers.

Our work does not require ongoing intervention or outreach, but we do occasionally reach out to past participants to get updates and so forth. As time has passed, some of them have clearly changed their contact information, and what we have on file is no longer valid. Our supervisor is disturbed by this and wants us to use Facebook to try to locate these past participants in our programs.

I’m deeply concerned that this crosses a line as far as their privacy, and think that if they wanted to remain in touch with us, they would have updated their contact information with our organization and remained on our email lists. If they have not, and/or they don’t return our messages, I think we need to respect that, especially given that there’s not an urgent need to contact them. But our supervisor insists that it’s not acceptable to have “lost contact” with anyone and that locating them through Facebook and using that to message them is an ethical thing to do.

What do you think? Am I being too sensitive? Is it really okay for organizations to try to locate past clients on social media?

It's not a horrendous ethical breach, but it's going to come across as … overzealous. The exception to that is if there's some specific context that makes it make sense, like "I'm so sorry to track you down this way, but Oprah is interested in producing a movie based on the story you shared on our website and I wanted to gauge your level of interest." But if it's anything remotely close to "we want to send you email updates," you should just let people move on. (Similarly, if you're doing it for everyone in your database systematically, it's weird. If you're just doing it individually when something specific comes up that you want to contact one individual person about, it's less weird.)

5. Will my old job care that I'm still in the city I said I was leaving?

I got a new job and I am moving from City A to City B. My old boss was two steps above toxic and City B is my hometown where I will rejoin family and friends. I am doing what is best for me.

New Job said I could start off in City A for a month and then transition to City B. This was helpful so I could work out my notice period, take a break, start my new job, and then move. It helped space out the process.

I have been leading people at Old Job to believe I am starting in City B right away. I was doing this so I wouldn't be pressured to extend my notice period. It was also a way to have less to explain – "Moving to City B, BYE!"

But now I am wondering if this will get back to Old Job. We all work in the same industry. I am indeed ultimately transferring to City B. But I am wondering about what people might say when they find out that I am still in City A. How bad is this? Or is it none of their business? I don't know what I might say if confronted. I guess I could say this came up later in the process and didn't feel comfortable sharing details about New Job.

It's not really any of their business, but if anyone directly asks you about it, you can just say something like, "Yeah, the schedule got changed around a little." That's it — you don't need to get into any detail beyond that.

I work at a small company where I like to maintain a professional persona, focusing on getting work done and keeping my personal life separate. The company is not well managed but I have a decent amount of autonomy, people are reasonably pleasant, and for a variety of family reasons the location, commute, and hours work really well and would be hard to replicate elsewhere.

My boss has started asking us to share reflections on mental health as an icebreaker at mandatory meetings in the name of “breaking down the stigma around mental health.” His intention is so genuinely good — he wants to support his staff. Usually I deflect by saying something relatively generic about limiting my social media use. However, this is increasing in frequency and the people who jump in first set the tone by going all-in and sharing super personal details about medications and therapy. It creates a lot of implicit pressure to share something similarly personal.

Aside from finding this uncomfortable, I’m noticing that these sharing sessions actually detract from my mental health. (I don’t have truly serious issues, but I do struggle with some anxiety and insomnia.) Work is by far the most significant stress in my life, because the organization is not well managed, roles/assignments are unclear, and some staff work glaringly harder than others with no one ever held to account for failing to produce. It’s not a toxic workplace or anything, but neither is it particularly enjoyable to see people coming late and leaving early while taking long lunches, while I’m glued to my computer.

I’ve suffered a lot from insomnia that’s offen triggered by workplace frustrations, so protect my mental health I’ve been working on creating a mental wall where I ignore what everyone else is doing or not doing except for my direct reports (mantra is “Not my circus, not my monkeys”) and focus on doing a good job on my own projects. These “mental health sharing sessions” break down this (sadly fragile) wall and I end up dwelling on negative thoughts and feelings again, often leading to insomnia that night, because when I really contemplate what I need for mental health, I re-examine all the frustrations of the office.

I want to manage my own mental fragility and not make it someone else’s problem or blame others, but I also want to protect myself from these spirals if possible. I also worry that others may be finding these sharing sessions helpful, and that by asking for them to stop I’d be standing in the way of someone else’s process.

Tl;dr: Boss wants us to share what our mental health needs and what would really support my mental health would be a better-managed workplace, but I don’t think that’s on the table and contemplating that fact is making me feel worse. Can you help me find a constructive way to address this?

This is … so inappropriate.

He might be well-meaning, but it is so not his place, or any employer's place, to request this of people. Many, many people prefer to keep their mental health private, or at least not to share details about it with their boss and coworkers. And many, many people prefer not to receive information of that sort about their boss and coworkers, as well.

Frankly, he is asking for legal issues here as well, because by soliciting all of this mental health information from people, he might be (a) inadvertently creating accommodation obligations for the company that it doesn't realize it will have, and/or (b) setting up the company for claims of discrimination if someone (incorrectly or not) later believes he treated them differently based on something mental-health-related they shared in these meetings, or feels that they were required to disclose a disability (even if he doesn’t feel he’s requiring anything).

But the legal issues are the least of the problems here. The far bigger one is that this is a huge invasion of privacy and wildly inappropriate.

If he wants to support his staff, he can do that by giving people reasonable hours and time off for whatever form of self-care they might need, using his influence to push for good company-provided health benefits, and otherwise supporting people's individual mental health needs. It does not require a group therapy session at the start of every meeting.

Can you find out if any of your other coworkers feel uncomfortable with this? If they do, you and they could speak up as a group and say something like, "We're not comfortable being asked to share such personal information at work. At a minimum, we'd like to be able to opt out, but we'd like to discontinue this practice altogether because it's actually creating more stress for some of us. We'd like to be able to focus on the work we're here to do."

Or there's a more blunt version if you prefer it: "This feels really inappropriate in a work setting, where people might have good reason not to want to discuss mental health with their boss and coworkers. We don't want to participate in this."

You can also say either of those on your own, but doing it as a group will create more pressure on your boss to cut this out.

You could also just go with “pass” or “I’m not into sharing this kind of thing” every time it’s your turn in a meeting, but that doesn’t address the fact that the practice in general is stressing you out, so I think you’ve got to tackle it more head-on, as in one of the examples above.

And I hear you that you're concerned about taking away something that others might find helpful — but this is Just Not Appropriate at work, and you'll be doing a favor to your employer (and to future employees who will come along later and be horrified the first time they're at a meeting where this happens) by pointing out that this needs to stop. And keep in mind that if there are some people who really want to continue this, they could form their own private group to do it. It shouldn't be part of meetings where people haven't explicitly opted in, and opted in without pressure.

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