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“can I ask my husband’s boss not to renew someone’s contract, keeping personal files at work” plus 3 more Ask a Manager

“can I ask my husband’s boss not to renew someone’s contract, keeping personal files at work” plus 3 more Ask a Manager


can I ask my husband’s boss not to renew someone’s contract, keeping personal files at work

Posted: 28 Aug 2018 09:03 PM PDT

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

1. Can I ask my husband's boss not to renew someone's contract?

My husband told me that he and a contractor had an affair while on a company trip. This contractor’s contract is due to expire in a few months. Can I ask my husband’s boss to not renew the contractors contract for personal reasons (to save my marriage) without it bouncing back on my husband?

No, you definitely cannot. First of all, you shouldn't be having any contact with your husband's boss about anything, unless it's to say that your husband is in the hospital or something like that. But beyond that, it would be incredibly inappropriate for you to try to interfere with someone else's employment, or with your husband's employer's hiring decisions, because of issues in your marriage. It would reflect really poorly on your husband … and a decent employer wouldn't take your opinion into account anyway. Do not do this.

This is between you and your husband, and needs to stay that way.

2. Keeping a file of personal items at work

I’ve seen some great videos on having a tidy workspace and I’ve shared them with my team (I like a clean, neat workspace and I try to lead by example). I wonder what others feel about personal items in your workspace. By personal items, I don’t mean a picture of your family or a box of tea. I’ve worked in two positions where one of my admins has dedicated an unlocked file cabinet drawer to organize their life – from healthcare claims, credit card bills, and mortgage information to court information on a divorce in progress. If I’ve discovered this drawer while looking for a copy of something, how many others have discovered this, and how many have been nosey enough to have a good read? Any thoughts on this?

It’s not something you should intervene in as their manager. But if I were advising the person doing it, I’d suggest that they not keep such a file at work, at least not if they want to keep the info private. It's normal to have some of that stuff there temporarily, like bringing a bill to work because you needed to call your credit card company about it that day, or having some paperwork there while you were in the process of applying of a mortgage, because there's often back and forth on that during business hours. But if they’re keeping a permanent "personal documents" file at work, there's no guarantee of privacy, or even a guarantee that it won't somehow get accidentally thrown out in some office purge that they’re not full control of. And  it's going to look a little odd if someone comes across it, as you did; it reads as "I'm managing my entire personal life from work on the regular."

But it’s not really something for you as their boss to be dictating. I would also lay off sending the videos about clean workspaces; focus on the work.

3. My employer told me to express breastmilk in my car

I'm in my mid 30's and just started a family. I work in an offsite sales office that is currently being remodeled. Our sales office has around 60 employees. While I have a private office now where I can shut my door, when the remodel is completed, I will have an open cube and all quiet rooms will all have glass walls.

My problem is that I am due to give birth before the remodel is completed and will be back in the office after it is completed. I plan on breastfeeding, which means I will need to pump during the day. Our remodel does not allow for private space — our conference rooms and kitchen will be glass walls. When I brought this to HR, I was told my manager approved the space and that if I need to pump, i can do so in my car or bathroom. I'm not happy with this answer and feel like being told to pump in a bathroom or my car is illegal. Am I off base here or not? I work in Connecticut and am an exempt, salaried director.

People don't always realize that the federal law requiring employers to provide a private space for pumping (which cannot be a bathroom and which must have a door that locks) only applies to non-exempt workers. However, many states have passed additional protections, and fortunately yours is one of them. Connecticut state law requires that employers “make reasonable efforts to provide a room or other location, in close proximity to the work area, other than a toilet stall, where the employee can express her milk in private," and that covers exempt workers too. I'd show them this and propose that one easy way of complying with the law would be to simply hang curtains in one of those quiet rooms and keep them up as long as needed.

4. My employee scares the crap out of me by not knocking

I am a manager and have a recurring issue with one of my team members. When he comes to my office to discuss something, rather than knock on the door or speak to announce his presence, he will just walk in without making a sound (carpeted floors, soft shoes) and stand there in silence until I notice. My desk does not face the door and when I am engaged in a task, I tend to be very focused. I usually jump half out of my skin when I finally become aware of his presence!

I've asked him to please say something or knock when he enters but he responds that he doesn't want to interrupt me. I guess he'd rather give me a heart attack than interrupt my typing! How do I get through to him? I am considering giving him the same treatment!

Revisit it with him and this time be firmer about it. Say something like, "I appreciate that you don't want to interrupt me, but I do want you to knock or say hello when you come to my door rather than waiting for me to notice you. Otherwise I don't always see you right away, and it can be jarring when I finally do. So, please just knock."

It's unlikely that he'll flatly refuse when you put it this way, but if he does, then say: "I'm telling you this with my manager hat on — start knocking. Thanks."

5. During layoffs, is it better to jump ship or gamble on sticking it out?

My employer is facing a sudden, unexpected loss of a significant source of revenue next year. They have been pretty transparent with us about what happened and have announced that staff will be impacted, meaning layoffs, but we don’t know who, when, or how many yet.

They’re still trying to get a handle on the budget situation, and have also told us they would offer severance. We have no idea how the layoffs are going to be decided. I’m not the newest member of my team, but I haven’t been here two years yet.

With so much uncertainty, what makes the most sense to do? Start looking for another job now? I’ve already taken a look at our household finances and where we could trim. I like this job and would like to stay, but I also don’t want to go through months of layoffs or being anxious every Friday or whenever my boss needs to meet with me. I know this is sort of like asking you to look into a crystal ball, but what do you think is the best course of action?

Start job searching now. You won't necessarily need a new job, but job searches can take a while and by starting now, you'll have a head start that you'll be grateful for if you do get laid off. And you don't need to accept a job if one's offered to you; if you're still employed when that happens, you can decide at that point whether you prefer the new job or the old one, along with any uncertainty that still might be attached to it.

And read these tips for what to do if you're laid off, and these tips on how to prepare if you think you're going to be fired (which is different from being laid off, but a lot of the advice in that piece still applies).

can I ask my husband’s boss not to renew someone’s contract, keeping personal files at work was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.

my office space is completely open and I can’t concentrate

Posted: 28 Aug 2018 10:59 AM PDT

A reader writes:

I work for a tiny nonprofit in a small office where the 5-6 of us work. The way it’s laid out, there is a central pod with desks and dividers, two executive offices with thin sliding doors, a separate kitchen with printing station that also has a sliding door, and a “conference room” that’s actually just a space with a half wall blocking it off. This means that if anyone is having a meeting, it’s loud and distracting. And the doors to the offices don’t really block sound either, unless the people inside are whispering.

My work isn’t confidential (although sometimes I overhear things that I wonder if I should be hearing) and any calls I have to make can either be done from my desk or the kitchen for privacy/quietness, but I’ve found that it’s really hard to focus when anyone is having a meeting or call. Even blasting music in my earbuds hasn’t blocked it out completely. Sometimes it’s dead quiet in the office and no problem, but other times it gets noisy and drives me crazy. There’s no way to change the physical space, so do I have any hope of making the situation better?

This is a terrible set-up! If the conference room had full walls rather than half walls, you'd have some hope of making this better. It still wouldn't be great, but if people got in the habit of having meetings or long phone calls in there, it would be a significant improvement. But for the sake of blocking sound, half walls are pretty similar to no walls.

Do others in your office struggle with this too? I'm guessing at least one other person does. You might be able to raise the issue as a group and ask about whether it's possible to get those half walls turned into full walls and/or get real doors on the executive offices.

It might even be worth asking about looking for a different office space; it's not uncommon for small organizations to move periodically and if you have a lease, it's going to be up at some point and it's not crazy to raise the prospect of looking for a space that's better suited to your staff. And who knows, maybe they've been in this space for a while and it worked fine when it was just two or three people, but it's not working now that you've added staff. (Obviously, be sensitive to your context on this one. If the organization has a shoestring budget and can only afford this space because of some special break, raising the prospect of a move would seem tone-deaf. But there are lots of contexts where it would be fine — and indeed, issues like this do drive some organizations to move.)

But if moving or real walls and doors aren't an option, then the answer to your question of whether you have any hope of making things better is … probably not, unfortunately. If you're stuck in this space exactly as it is now, then you're going to be hearing other people's conversations pretty regularly, and it's going to be distracting and annoying. Headphones are good, but you said even loud music doesn't work all the time.

One other option would be asking about working from home on days when you really need to concentrate, or even seeing if you can take your work somewhere else (like a park or a coffee shop, if the type of work you do allows that). But ultimately, this may be part of the package when you're working in a small, poorly-constructed office.

my office space is completely open and I can’t concentrate was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.

my boss is giving us the silent treatment

Posted: 28 Aug 2018 09:30 AM PDT

A reader writes:

My department is in shambles. We are all miserable, we are all job searching, and we cannot leave fast enough. Unfortunately though, for the time being, we are stuck in our positions.

To paint a picture of our situation: On a company-wide survey, our team came in with the lowest morale and happiness in the company, and it has become a well-known fact due to our HR team's loose lips and unprofessionalism. Our general unhappiness stems from the top. Our senior VP is a severely unhappy woman who makes inappropriate comments to and her about her employees and lies to our CEO about things — and then throws team members under the bus to shrug off the blame.

While that is a leading cause of our unhappiness, here's where I need help: Most of the time, our direct manager acts just like one of us. We go shopping, talk TV shows, pop culture, and more – dare I say we're even friends? But she has gone radio-silent on us for the past week. She'll walk into the office and not say anything to anyone, and leave the office without saying anything to anyone. She sends passive-aggressive emails and acts like we are not here. We have always assumed when she does this that something in her personal life is off, and eventually she'll come around. This time is different. She's deliberately ignoring emails, not attending meetings, and looking right through us.

We were asked to give feedback about her to the CEO in a meeting where we were encouraged to be open and honest because, as he noted, the feedback was just for him to look over. However, we think that our feedback (which wasn't necessarily negative but wasn't overwhelmingly positive) was shared with her, and that's the reason she's giving us the silent treatment. The fact that she's behaving like this screams out that she's not ready for a promotion, but it's also causing so much tension within our team that even the summer interns have noticed, as well as other people in the company.

As a friend I want to go ask her what's going on, but she's also my boss, and I don't have enough in savings to lose my job. My team is upset, stressed, and at a loss. Her behavior is affecting our performance and our motivation. We don't know who to turn to because we fear our VP will make a childish comment about our feedback, and unfortunately we can't trust our HR department. Do we just suck it up and hope she thaws out soon?

You can read my answer to this letter at New York Magazine today. Head over there to read it.

my boss is giving us the silent treatment was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.

sick coworker says he can’t work alone

Posted: 28 Aug 2018 07:59 AM PDT

A reader writes:

I’m an avid reader and I have a question on behalf of a friend. She works in retail and recently told me she felt too sick to work but couldn’t call in because her coworker, "Bob,” who has stage 4 cancer says he can’t work alone. This sounds off to me. I understand that due to ADA requirements he is entitled to reasonable accommodations but I am unsure if he indeed can require that a sick coworker stays at work with him.

He says that he has stage 4 cancer and that the doctor says he might as well just quit chemo because there is nothing he can do. She says otherwise he seems healthy. He drinks beer, eats raw fish and junk food, and otherwise seems normal. He is unable to answer any casual questions about his health when he brings up the cancer, such as what his white blood cells are, etc. He always answers by saying that he doesn’t know and starts to make a facial tick as if he were lying. I asked if he has supplied her company with a doctor’s note to confirm he needs accommodations. She says that her laid-back management takes his word for it. She suspects (but hopes not) that he might be fabricating his sickness. He is adamant that no one outside of work knows, and recently she has come to learn that he has been stealing items from work (another issue).

Bob says that he can not work alone because he might become dizzy, etc. and needs someone there in case that happens. This doesn’t sound too unreasonable, but they normally only have two staff per day at the small shop and what if the other person is sick? My friend went in to work anyway after vomiting because there was no one else to cover her and again he says he can’t be alone. When she mentioned that she had been vomiting all night, he replied that he knows all about that, as if he were shutting down any thought of her leaving. Can someone with a disability require that they not work alone at all times? What if the only other staff are sick themselves?

In a business where only two people are typically present at any time, my hunch is that "must always have another person on the premises, with no exceptions" would be considered "undue hardship" and thus not a reasonable accommodation that they'd be legally required to make (since it would mean having to keep three people there instead of two, in case one of them had to leave unexpectedly). But that's something that your friend's employer would need to talk to a lawyer about, since what the law considers "undue hardship" isn't always in line with what a normal person would consider undue hardship.

Typically, though, what I'd expect an employer to do in this situation would be to say to Bob, "We can definitely try to schedule you with another person, but if that person becomes sick or unexpectedly has an emergency and needs to leave, we can't guarantee that we'd be able to get someone else there within a few hours. We'd certainly try to call around and get coverage, but it wouldn't be immediate." I'm curious if your friend's employer has said that to Bob or not. I'm also curious about how much of this conversation Bob has had with his manager, versus just with your friend.

And most importantly, I wonder if your friend is taking on way more of this problem than she should. She's allowing Bob to dictate the terms of her employment, when that's something she should be talking to her manager about. Just because Bob says "I need you here," that doesn't mean that your friend has to comply. She should talk to her boss about what's going on and ask what she should do if she gets sick at work and Bob says he can't be alone. And when she needs to call in sick, she should just call in sick. She doesn't need to come in while she's vomiting just because Bob asks her to. It's perfectly fine to say, "I'm so sorry, but I'm too ill to come in today." From there, it's her employer's problem to solve. And really, by being overly accommodating like this, she's preventing them from even knowing that there's a problem they need to address, and that's not good for anyone.

If Bob really has talked to the employer about this, and the employer really has agreed with Bob that they'll ensure he's never alone, then it’s on the employer to make that happen. Your friend doesn’t carry the burden of making that work. The employer does, and they'd presumably need to put more staff on those shifts or otherwise change how they handle it.

As for your friend’s worries that Bob is lying … he might be! Or he might not be. Ultimately it doesn't change the way she should handle this. Either way, the right course of action is for her to shift the problem back to her management to deal, rather than trying to make it work on her own.

By the way — she should report the stealing. I don't know if she's hesitant to do that because of sympathy or if she's worried that her management will excuse it because of the medical situation, but she really should speak up about that, and even more so in a situation where she already feels like she's being asked to take on more than she should. She shouldn't take on potential complicity in theft on top of that.

sick coworker says he can’t work alone was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.

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