“asking to work from home when it’s really hot out, happy hour hurt feelings, and more” plus 3 more Ask a Manager

asking to work from home when it’s really hot out, happy hour hurt feelings, and more
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asking to work from home when it’s really hot out, happy hour hurt feelings, and more

Posted: 10 Jul 2018 09:03 PM PDT

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

1. Can I ask to work from home when it's really hot outside?

I have a question about asking to work from home in extreme heat. I live in a very pedestrian-friendly city and do not have a car. I have a 15-minute walk to work, which is a huge perk, except during the summer, when the weather in my city is very hot and humid all season long. We are in a particularly hot patch — temperatures in the high 80s/low 90s by 9 a.m., with 70-80% humidity, and a heat index of 100+. I'm not asthmatic, but I find the air hard to breathe. My morning commute is miserable; even if I take the nearby bus, I still have to walk a couple blocks to get to the office, and just those few blocks leave me so drained and in a bad mood. There is virtually no parking near our office, so everyone commutes by public transit or on foot or a combination of both. Taking an Uber or cab every morning would add up to over $200 a month, at a conservative estimate.

Is it fair to ask to work from home on days when the heat index is over 100 degrees? The management team allows everyone to work from home on Fridays in the summer because it's such a slow season. I made a joke about this to our number two person and she didn't respond at all — it was like she pretended not to hear me. Was I overstepping the line?

Well, maybe. There are so many hot days during the summer that in a lot of areas, this would be like asking to work from home every time it rains. That said, this kind of thing can be office-dependent. If you're in an office that's really flexible about working from home and your area doesn't have a ton of 100+ heat index days, then maybe. But if you're somewhere where extreme heat is just a normal thing that happens during summer, then yeah, it's probably not really a thing you can do very often, lest you look like you're making too big a deal of relatively normal weather. (That obviously changes if there are health conditions in play.)

2. Avoiding hurt feelings over happy hour

My coworkers and I enjoy getting together for drinks/dinner every now and then, usually once a month. Typically it's just a small group of the same six or seven people (out of a team of a dozen) and it's never a formal thing, usually just happens spontaneously like "oh hey it's payday on Friday, let's go for beers!" e've never excluded anyone from joining us and usually make our plans known to the whole team. However, there's this one guy, I'll call him Fergus, who is very difficult to work with but seems totally oblivious to this fact. He spends all day complaining about his boss and his job to anyone who will listen, makes a lot of casually racist comments (one recent example: assuming that a coworker from X ethnicity knew everyone else of X ethnicity in our small city), and is generally not a fun person to be around.

The problem is, he doesn't seem to get that his behaviour is problematic (despite being told this by nearly everyone at one point or another), and he's REALLY eager to hang out with the rest of us after work, to the point where he sulked for a couple days after finding out a few of us had gone out for drinks the previous Friday without explicitly inviting him. He's overly sensitive and gets frustrated easily, so even the most mild criticism or pointing out a minor mistake will send him into a tailspin of cursing under his breath and griping to everyone within earshot. It's exhausting and makes the rest of us uncomfortable.

I don't want to be a part of clique-ish behaviour, because I know how much it hurts to be excluded, but at the same time I'm constantly cringing at the stuff Fergus says and does. My coworkers feel the same way, but we don't want to be jerks because at the end of the day, we still have to work with this guy. Despite how annoying he can be, his work is solid and he's a key part of our team. We all WANT to get along with Fergus but he makes it very difficult.

We don't want to exclude Fergus from our after-work socializing, but his presence makes it a lot less enjoyable. Is there a kind, gentle way to approach the guy and explain why we don't want to hang out with him, or should I just be blunt and honest about his behaviour? Being frank with him has worked for me in the past (he hasn't gone off and complained about me to others), but this might cause a meltdown if I'm not careful.

You'd be doing him and everyone else a favor if you were blunt and said something like, "We don't want to exclude you but we don't want to listen to complaints about work the whole time either — and you also need to lay off the weird racial comments." (I worry that last part will invite debate from him about whether what he's saying is racist or not, but if that happens, it's okay to say, "I don't want to debate this with you. I'm just telling you how it's coming across. If you don't want it to come across that way, lay off those comments.")

Beyond that, a good rule of thumb is that you can hang out with coworkers outside of work without inviting everyone as long as the number of people assembling is smaller than the number of people on your team who aren’t invited. In other words, it's fine to hang out with people you're personally close with without inviting everyone. But once it's open to a majority of team members, it does become cliquish and hurtful to exclude others. At that point, it becomes a situation of "tolerating annoying coworkers is part of the package if you’re doing a work happy hour." This guy is a little different because of the casual racism, though, which is why I think your best bet is to talk to him.

3. Teased about last name

My wife and I occasionally encounter a problem with our last name. It’s the kind of name that was much longer back in the old country but was shortened in America, and now is identical to a word you would use to describe a certain kind of unpleasant person. Most people are nice enough and don’t say anything, but too often we get comments like "Oh, that doesn’t describe you at all” or "You should change it to something nicer.” Lately, a woman in my wife’s office building has taken to commenting on our name every single time they see each other. How do you tell someone to drop it?

To some extent, this is just people being people — being weird and thoughtless and awkward, often at the exact time that they're attempting to reach out for human connection! It's similar to what's behind the obvious "you're really tall" comments that tall people get.

So I don't think you can stamp it out entirely, but certainly when someone won't let it drop, that's tiresome and you can say something like, "Hey, it's time for us to have a new joke" or "okay, I think we need to retire that comment at this point" or "objections registered, let's move on."

4. I have IBS and my manager is hassling me about my bathroom use

I have IBS, specifically the kind that makes you have frequent diarrhea. My manager (shift supervisor so there are three tiers above her) today told me if I take another bathroom break, she would send me home and write me up. I'm not comfortable telling people as it's a rather embarrassing issue. Can I just say I have digestive health problems? Are they even allowed to ask me about my health condition? Are they allowed to discipline me for using the bathroom once an hour when I bust my butt working so hard? I just feel like it's a little ridiculous for me to have to tell them about it. I maybe go once an hour on bad days, every three or so hours on the good ones. I never go if the rest of the staff needs me, or if we're busy. I make sure everyone and everything is fine before I go and I never take more than 10 minutes. I just don't feel like I need to disclose private medical information just to avoid getting in trouble for using the bathroom.

It's ridiculous that they're policing your bathroom usage, based on the frequency and duration you've described here. But they are legally allowed to tell you that you need to be at your desk more, if they don't realize that there's a medical issue involved. Because of that, you're likely to get the best outcome by explaining that. You don't need to give details, though; it's enough to just say, "I have a medical issue that on some days means I need to use the bathroom more frequently. Should I make an official request for formal accommodations?" Actually, you might want to skip that last part and just go ahead and make the official request, since your manager is already taking about sending you home (!) and writing you up, and it's smart to protect yourself formally.

5. At what point do I ask to be paid for off-the-clock phone calls?

I am a manager at a company I really do love. The job is enjoyable, I like my coworkers, no complaints there. I also would say that I take myself seriously when it comes to doing my job. However, I am non-exempt and I have reached a point in my career where I feel this is interfering with my actual duties and professionalism. Since I’m collecting my pay by the hour, how do I professionally handle all the calls that come my way? I don’t mind answering a few quick off-the-clock calls, but the past few months have had my fires-put-out whilst off-the-clock at several hours a week. There are days here and there where I avoid making plans because I predict I will found myself on the phone. I have made my own personal goals of claiming I’ll avoid my work phone, but the effort never lasts. Is this ever appropriate for a non-exempt worker? If not, at what point do I demand payment, quietly clock in, or even have a discussion about moving to a salary?

The point where you expect payment is whenever you do any work. That's what the law requires for non-exempt workers, and right now you're putting your company in legal jeopardy by not logging that time.

Start logging it, immediately (as well as any past time that you can credibly reconstruct). And go talk to your boss and say this: "I've realized that I haven't been logging the time I spent answering calls outside of work, and legally we need to. In the past month, I've spent X hours on calls outside of my normal work hours, so I'm adding those to my timesheet and just wanted to flag it for you." If your boss objects to that, the solution needs to be that people stop calling you outside of your normal hours, not that you work it unpaid.

Also, it's not necessarily to your advantage to move to salary (assuming you also mean exempt, and assuming you legally qualify to be made exempt, which isn’t up to your company), since it may just mean working more hours for the same pay (or close to the same pay). The big issue here is just getting you and your company in compliance with the law.

I have a summer intern and have offered to let her come along as an observer. This kind of inclusion would usually be considered a major perk for an intern. But she is adamantly refusing, citing this gentleman's political views and threatening to physically attack him if she is "forced” to be in his presence (although I'm hoping that she is rather tastelessly joking about that last part). She is also refusing to do any of the logistical or planning tasks that would normally fall to her, and that's a problem as well.

Here's the tricky part: I completely and totally agree with her opinion of this politician's views and behavior. I have actually literally protested outside his office in the past. I'm not looking forward to spending any time in his presence. But my perspective is that my personal views aren't relevant in these circumstances, and that a significant part of my job is representing my museum with dignity, even when I really don't want to. I will never agree with this politician (nor he with me, probably) but I keep telling myself: at the very least, this is a good opportunity for us to showcase to him the value of well-funded cultural institutions.

I've told my intern she can sit this one out, but I feel like we need to have a conversation about this when the dust settles. I am very torn, though. As I alluded to above, I'm active in social justice work and various kinds of protests, but all on my own time; no one I work with is aware of my outside activities. I don't want to force anyone to do something they don't believe in, but I worry this young lady will be shooting herself in the foot if this is her stance in the long term. What advice would you give me?

Yes, talk with her. The way she's handling this is juvenile and it doesn't reflect well on her professionally, and I say that as someone with a deep appreciation for social justice activism (and possibly for her stance as well, just not the way she’s executing it).

It would be one thing if she'd said, "I feel very uncomfortable interacting with this person; would it be possible for me to sit this out?" Even that isn't necessarily ideal, and you still might need to talk to her about what it means to work for an institution that welcomes all visitors and the benefits to the museum of not turning away people whose views might be at odds with those of its staff. But that would have been a reasonable way for her to handle it. But threatening to physically attack him? Even assuming she's joking, that's just an incredibly unprofessional thing for her to say in a work context, and she should probably think about whether she wants to normalize that type of response in our discourse more broadly. She might also benefit from contemplating whether she really wants any employee to be able to refuse to serve anyone they disagree with or find immoral — because that goes both ways, and people tend not to like it when it's reversed on them.

That's not to say that there isn't room for people to act on their consciences at work. There is. But there's a professional way to do that and an unprofessional way, and she's choosing the unprofessional way. The professional way would be voicing her concerns, asking if they could be accommodated (not demanding it), realizing the answer might be "no" — and knowing that if it were, then at that point she'd need to decide if she felt strongly enough to leave the job over it.

So yes, talk with her. The fact that you share her views about this particular politician might give you more credibility when you do. (Or who knows, maybe she'll just think you're a sell-out.)

You could say, "We're not in the business of deciding who can and who can't tour our exhibits, and that's a good thing because access to museums shouldn't depend on individual employees' personal viewpoints. I'd be outraged we turned someone away because they supported Issue X or Issue Y (insert issues here that you support), and I suspect you would be too. We're on very dangerous ground if we let people say that their own personal views will determine who they do and don't serve at work."

You could also say, "It's not that you can never take a stand on work based on principle. You can. But it's a big deal to refuse to do parts of your job, and so if you do that, you need to be professional about it. That means raising your concerns in a mature manner, not threatening physical attacks, and asking if work-arounds can be found, not just assuming you can refuse and that'll be that. Sometimes it might not be possible for you to be recused, and if that's the case, you might need to decide if you're willing to leave the job over it. But the way you handle moments of conflict at work will have a big impact on your professional reputation, and so here's why you'd want to approach this differently in the future…”

All that said … there are people whose actions are so directly harmful to others that I can understand why someone might take the stand your intern is taking. Sometimes our morals do compel us to stand up and say, “No, I will not act as if this normal because it is profoundly wrong.”

But it’ll be helpful to her if she learns how to do that in a way that maximizes her chances of getting the outcome she wants, and without hurting her own standing in the meantime. And of course, sometimes something is important enough that it’s worth hurting your own standing! I don’t mean to imply that professionalism is the be-all, end-all, because there are other things that are more important. But it’ll help her to learn to figure out when she has no choice but to take that hit, and when there are more effective paths to achieve what she wants.

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