my boss wants a team outing to a gun range, employer wants to discuss my “hot mess” cover letter, and more Ask a Manager

my boss wants a team outing to a gun range, employer wants to discuss my “hot mess” cover letter, and more

Posted: 15 Jul 2018 09:03 PM PDT

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

1. My boss wants to do a team outing at a gun range

My boss keeps suggesting a team outing at a gun range. I feel very uncomfortable about this prospect as I don’t have any interest in handling guns. Is there a way to gracefully bow out of this “team building” activity? He is a bit provocative and I really don’t want to get into a discussion about why I am not interested in going.

What the actual F? Your boss is not thinking this through.

Ideally you'd say: "Many people aren't comfortable around guns, and given the high emotions around gun issues right now, I think this would do the opposite of team building. I'd like to suggest we pick something else, but if this goes forward, I'd need to opt out of it." And then if he tried to get into a back-and-forth with you about it, you could say, "It's not something I'm comfortable discussing at work. I just wanted to register my concern and let you know I wouldn't be able to participate if you decide to do it." (Repeat as necessary.)

But if you don't want to go that route, there's always (a) discreetly asking HR to intervene (I can't imagine they'll love this, at least in most companies, at least in most regions), or (b) finding a reason to be out that day.

2. Employer wants to meet to discuss my "hot mess" cover letter

I screwed up and got overzealous on my cover letter. There were no typos (luckily), but I managed to repeat myself again and again, and managed to go on so long that it was hard to read. Apparently it was bad enough that the recruiting manager wants to meet to review the letter together.

Apparently, they want to help me improve it before it can be sent higher for decisions on interviews. The exact wording they used on the letter was "hot mess" and that they simply cannot send it to the managing partner looking like that. I assume I wasn't outright denied because I applied through an amazing recommendation by a contact who they are close with.

This is not an interview, though I will prepare as if it was one. How should I approach this in the future? Normally I pride myself in well written cover letters, but I was very excited for the position and really wanted to show that I had the credentials and experience. I have never heard of anything like this happening.

I'd assume that your contact's recommendation is carrying serious weight here and they want to interview you because of that — but that they can't make that case with the current cover letter. That said, meeting to review it together is … strange. I could see them saying something like "can you take another stab at the cover letter and make it half the length?" (although even that would be unusual) but an entire meeting to go over it together is really odd. And frankly, if I were that managing partner and found out my hiring staff had coached a candidate this closely to meet my standards, or that they were covering up a relevant piece of someone’s application, I'd be pissed — and would have serious concerns about their trustworthiness and understanding of how the process is supposed to work.

That's not for you to solve though. All you can really do here is go into the meeting with an open mind and listen to their feedback. And yes, prepare for it as if it's an interview, because it’s likely to be at least interview-ish, and possibly an actual formal interview. You should also start reworking the letter now, so that you've gotten a head start on figuring out where you went wrong and how to fix it. Don't finalize the new version until you get their input, but it'll help to have already done some of the work.

(In an ideal world, you'd redo it on your own ahead of time and send it over to them, saying that your enthusiasm got the better of you initially and here's a more restrained version … but that only works if the new version is excellent. If it's not great — and you aren't necessarily well positioned to assess that yourself — then you've made the problem worse, so I wouldn't take that risk.)

3. I'm moving and my company won't let me work out of the office I want, even though other people have been allowed to

I have been with my employer for four years, straight out of college. I have decided to move an hour away, back to my hometown, to be near family and because I just purchased a home in a community that I like (and could afford). As the closing process was happening, I sat down with my supervisor to let him know that I would be interested in relocating to the office most near my new home, the Teaville office.

I didn’t think this would be problem since two and a half years ago, another colleague who is close to my age, but at that time had also been with the company four years, was moving with her fiance to the opposite coast for a job he has been assigned (he works with a different company). We are located on the east coast. So she was moving from one coast to the other. Also, a year ago, a colleague joined our department from another team and was offered the option of working from the Teaville office or our office, the Earlville office. In both cases, both were able to remain with our department and keep their regular duties.

Now I am asking to relocate to the Teaville office and instead my supervisor proposed moving me to the Potville office.The Potville is about the same distance to my new home as the Teaville office, but significantly more difficult to get to (more traffic) so my commute would be a bit longer. Additionally, I would be moved out of my department to a role where I am doing what I do now but with a smaller scope.

My supervisor said this was because it would be “harder to manage you,” and that we needed to find something that was reasonable for both the company and for me. He also mentioned that he wished that I would have brought this up before I decided to buy my home, which strikes me as odd. All this strikes me as being unfair given that in less than five years, two colleagues were given the opportunity to relocate and keep their roles.

I would like to sit my supervisor down and advocate why this is unfair and cite the two examples above and offer solutions to mitigate their fears, like weekly phone check-ins and driving in to the Earlville office two to three times a month. What do you think?

You can give it a try! But go into it with the understanding that there can be good reasons not to treat everyone exactly the same and your manager might have legitimate reasons for his decision. For example, you might require a different type of management than your colleagues did (like more interaction or more oversight), or your work might be fine but theirs was great (and thus your employer was more motivated to accommodate them), or maybe the two previous moves ended up being more challenging than they’d expected. So your argument shouldn't center on "it's unfair" or "other people have been allowed to do this" but rather on how you think you can make it work and address your manager's concerns.

4. Dealing with grief at work

I’ve been at my current organization for three years. It’s my first job out of college, and for the most part, it’s been a great experience. But during those three years, my mom suffered serious health issues and eventually passed away. It was a really difficult time for my whole family–basically two years of constant stress, followed by the heartbreak of her passing at such a young age. The first anniversary of her death was a week ago.

Over the course of this year, I’ve found navigating grief at work to be tricky. I was able to take three weeks of paid bereavement leave thanks to the generosity of my colleagues, but coming back was still difficult. For one thing, my short term memory really took a hit (I’ve since learned that this is normal for people who are grieving or experiencing a lot of stress). My motivation was also dicey, and I flirted with quitting and just taking some time off. I cried in my manager’s office more than once, and I think she struggled with how to deal with me, though she did her best.

Now, almost a year later, and I’ve found the weeks around her yarzheit to be particularly challenging. I’ve been struggling with a lack of focus and motivation because all I’m thinking about is my mom. I was just promoted a couple months ago to a whole new division and team. One of my immediate supervisors knows about my loss, but not the details. The other two do not. It’s difficult for me to talk about my mom without crying (I’m crying as I write this), so I avoid it at work. But I worry that they see my lack of focus and motivation and judge me for it.

How do I manage this? Should I let my whole team know about what I’m going through and why I’ve been a little out-of-sorts? Or should I just carry on, hope it will pass soon, and avoid calling attention to my less-than-stellar performance the past few weeks? I’d also like to hear from readers about how they’ve managed coming back to work while grieving. People have been telling me to “be kind to yourself,” but I don’t know how to balance that with doing good work and making a good impression on my new supervisors. Any advice?

I'm so sorry. I know this is horrible.

I don't think you need to make a team-wide announcement, but do talk to your managers and let them know what's going on. It's enough to just say something like, "I suspect I haven’t seemed like myself the last couple of weeks, and I didn't want to leave you with no context for that. It's the first anniversary of my mom's death, and it's been a tough time. I felt like I should mention it in case you've noticed me seeming off."

Once they know what's going on, decent managers will understand. If they don't have any context for it, though, they may draw the wrong conclusions about what's going on — so just let them know.

5. Can I ask for a phone interview before coming in for an in-person interview?

My question might fall under “good problems to have,” but it’s still becoming a problem. I am working at my current job, but looking for a new job outside my company. I have been getting positive responses to my applications with one weird curve — they always want to bring me in to their company right away for an interview, as opposed to doing an introductory phone call first. This has happened several times already. While I am flattered, it means that I am sometimes going in cold to an interview (sometimes not knowing all that much about the company). I have to make excuses to leave my current work early/come in late, which is awkward (I hate lying). I live in a major metropolitan area and commute in, which means there’s sometimes significant time/stress involved in getting to the interview (fighting traffic, finding parking, getting on the right train, etc.) I’ve gotten to an interview to find out about 20 minutes in either that the job is not what I’m looking for, or I’m not what they’re looking for, which is a waste of my time and theirs.

I just got a request on a Friday to come for an in-person interview the following Monday at 10 a.m.! Can I push back and ask for an introductory phone call first, just to get a lay of the land, or would that put them off? I don’t want to lose a great opportunity, but I’m also tired of schlepping into the city on a bust.

They should want to save themselves the time too! I can’t imagine hiring without phone screens first, because you end up weeding out tons of people in 10-15 minutes of talking to them — sometimes even in the first few minutes, depending on the issue. It makes no sense to set up in-person interviews without a shorter phone screen first.

Anyway, if you were coming in from out of town, you absolutely could request a phone interview first. It's a little trickier when you're local, because it risks coming across as "I'm not willing to invest time in exploring this yet." But you could try saying something like, "I'm in a period at work where it's difficult to get away during the day. I'm really interested in the position and will certainly make that happen if we move forward, but would you be open to doing a phone interview first so we can get an initial sense of how strong the match is on both sides?" You do risk someone bristling at the idea of having to adjust their process, but it's a reasonable thing to ask for and it sounds like you're a strong enough candidate to have a lot of interest from employers, so I'd give it a shot a couple of times and see how it goes.

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