“can local businesses ethically accept volunteer help, are quick “thanks!” emails annoying, and more” plus 3 more Ask a Manager

can local businesses ethically accept volunteer help, are quick “thanks!” emails annoying, and more
4 updates from letter-writers (the office supplies, the delayed honeymoon, and more)
should I be worried I’m overpaid?
what glorious all-staff emails/memos/rants have you received at work?

can local businesses ethically accept volunteer help, are quick “thanks!” emails annoying, and more

Posted: 09 Aug 2018 09:03 PM PDT

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

1. Is it ethical to accept volunteer help at my local business?

Half a year ago, my husband and I started our own business, known in the gaming community as an FLGS (friendly local game shop). It’s as much a geeky community center as it is a retail outlet. We host daily events for the community and in a short time we have been fortunate enough to attract a friendly, enthusiastic and loyal player base.

Earlier this month, my husband unexpectedly passed away, leaving me as the sole owner and manager of our business. Determined to see our project through, I decided to keep the store going, and to my eternal gratitude the community stepped up in truly amazing ways. Many kind and talented people have kindly offered to volunteer for shifts and to run events, for which I am eternally grateful.

My issue is that I am a recent immigrant and not innately familiar with how the U.S. handles volunteer work like this. (I am rapidly learning, of course, but this period of my life is a whirlwind of thousands of unexpected learning experiences, and there are only so many hours in the day.) Since the company is a start-up, money is tight. As much as I would love to pay everyone a fair compensation for their hours, that is just not possible right now. I am discussing all of this with a business lawyer who will make sure everyone is in the clear legally, but my question is more about U.S. work culture. Is it ethical to have people volunteer for work like this without offering pay? I do my best to offer them some perks I know they enjoy (free drinks and snacks, free event participation, store credit and so on) but it gnaws at my conscience to accept labor and not compensate people the way I feel they deserve, especially in this economic climate. I have looked up many examples of volunteer contracts and am uncomfortable with how one-sided all of them are. (As you may have guessed, I’m from a socialist national background). Is it ethical to accept volunteer work in these circumstances, in the understanding that I fully intend to hire people from this pool somewhere down the line when the business is out of the weeds?

Well, the bigger issue may be that it's illegal. You're required to pay people at least minimum wage, and they can't legally volunteer for a for-profit business. You may decide that you're willing to take that risk and do it anyway, and that they're all fully consenting adults who can choose for themselves, but do be aware that it's technically illegal.

Leaving the legality aside and focusing just on ethics … I tend to think that as long as you're not promising them eventual paid employment and they're very clear on what they are and aren't getting from volunteering, they're consenting adults who can decide for themselves if they're happy with the arrangement or not. (And this kind of thing has a lot of precedent; it's pretty common in yoga studios, for example.) That said, my opinion would change if they were young (and thus not necessarily well positioned to understand the value of their labor), or donating a large number of hours (because that would feel more exploitative), or seemed to expect to be paid at some point (even after you've explained you can't guarantee that).

The argument on the other side, of course, is that they're donating their time toward what's ultimately a profit-making enterprise for you. And even if they feel personally invested in the community around your store, they're still volunteering for free for something that's earning money for you. You might decide you're not comfortable with that. Or you might decide that you can compensate them in ways that feel fair to you both, even if it's not in actual dollars. Different people will come down on different sides of this, though.

2. Are "thanks!" emails annoying?

I have a question about email etiquette, though in the grand scheme of things it may be minor. I work in an environment that is very collaborative, and it's my job and the jobs of several of my colleagues to share information with each other, usually by email.

When I came on board not too long ago, my trainer would handle emailing other colleagues for the data we needed. Once we received the information, he'd then reply with an email that thanked them for sending us it. I can see this being fine if it's not a frequent occurrence, but a lot of what we do involves information shared via email, and the tasks are routine. This results in a lot of thank-you emails, which can clutter an inbox. While the recipient can always delete those emails, if these quick thank-you's are unnecessary and don't have to be sent, then it's less for the recipient to have to go through.

My trainer left the company and now I'm the one handling the email correspondence. I don't want to seem rude to my colleagues, but I know I wouldn't miss being thanked for everything as it comes up. Can I stop sending constant thank-you's or should I be keeping up with what my trainer would do?

It's really up to you. Some people send them, some people don't. Some people hate the inbox clutter, other people figure it takes two seconds to delete.

But be aware that those quick "thanks!" emails are often less about conveying thanks and more about confirming receipt and that you now have what you need. (I generally send them for that reason — to me it feels rude not to acknowledge receipt.)

3. Accepting a lower salary in a lower cost-of-living area

I’m currently getting recruited for a couple of jobs that would require me to move from my current location with a high cost of living to a new location with a much lower cost of living. With these jobs, I’m getting to the point where salary has come up and the managers have told me that they wouldn’t be able to match what I would be making here, but that they could offer a competitive salary for the area with a signing bonus or other perks to make up for it.

I’ve always heard you should never accept a position for less money or in a lower rank than what you currently are at, but what are the rules when there’s such a difference in how much you would pay to live there?

Note: I’m in a well paying field so I’m not concerned about making ends meet.

It's pretty normal for this to happen when you're moving and there's a significant cost-of-living difference between the two areas. Jobs in high cost-of-living areas areas tend to pay more, sometimes much more, and you can't expect the salary to stay the same when you leave for a lower cost-of-living area. You can use online cost-of-living calculators to get a good sense of the difference between two cities (which will show you how the buying power of a dollar differs from region to region).

I wouldn't subscribe to a rule that says you should never accept less money anyway (sometimes there are reasons to do that, like that you're moving into a new field, have much better benefits, are doing more interesting work, etc.), but it especially doesn't apply in this context.

4. Is my former employer telling reference checkers I was fired?

I left my first post-college job about two years ago after a messy situation involving potential software safety issues that I felt had not been addressed appropriately. I became very depressed and my work started slipping as a result, so I ended up quitting before I could be fired. I didn’t think I was at that point yet — my performance wasn’t particularly good, but I knew there was a probationary program employees were put on pre-firing, and I was never placed in it.

At the time, I did what I thought was the responsible thing (since my girlfriend was depending on me to contribute to the rent) and applied for unemployment benefits. When the state employee in charge of my file called me to ask questions, I got the shock of my life when he said my old employer had told him I had been fired.

To the best of my knowledge, I was not. My manager thought I didn’t seem happy and asked if I wanted to continue working there; a few days later, I told him I thought I should leave. We agreed that I would leave after we finished working on the next release. The date the company had set for the release, more than a month afterwards, would be my last day. It was never suggested to me that I was being fired, and I felt I had more say in exactly when I left than my manager did.

After that unemployment call, I have yet to receive a single interview or call back from a job I’ve applied to. I realize this might be any combination of bad luck, bad resume, bad job targeting, etc., but I’m worried that, since my old employer told the state I had been fired, they might have been telling others who contact them the same thing. Is there some way to find out? (Calling them myself?) Was I fired, and I just didn’t know it? Am I just being paranoid?

It's very unlikely that that's why you're not getting interviews, because most employers don't call references before even interviewing someone (it would be a huge waste of their time to do that before they have finalists). It's more likely that the issue is your resume and/or cover letter, as it is for most people.

That said, you definitely should find out what's going on with your old employer, because it's concerning that they reported you were fired when you weren't. I'd contact your old manager and ask how they have your departure recorded and what info they'd release to reference-checkers. If you find out it's inaccurate, you can point that out and ask them to correct it. (Worst case scenario, you might need to get a lawyer involved if they refuse, but this kind of thing can often be handled by a direct conversation, especially if it's just based on a misunderstanding.)

As for the question of whether you might have been fired and not realized it … well, there's a little grey here but not a ton. That conversation where your manager asked if you wanted to continue working there may have been the beginning of you being pushed out; if you hadn't come back a few days later and quit, he might have made the decision for you. But he didn't; he gave you room to quit, and you did. They certainly might be able to truthfully say that things weren't working out and they were planning to fire you but then you quit, but it doesn't sound like you were in fact fired.

I've spent a lot of hours now going through the responses on your post about my unique supplies, and wow!!! They all made me smile!!! I'm so happy that everyone thought my taste is (at least somewhat) acceptable, and I'm frankly amazed that we got the sloth pencil case to sell out! (At least, there's a correlation there!)

I'd like to clear up a couple things I saw repeatedly in the comments:

1. Dad doesn't work in a really stuffy office. He actually doesn't work in any office; he's a railroad engineer! I knew from the beginning that his advice was out of touch at minimum, but I wanted to get a perspective from someone who knew for sure about this sort of thing.

2. The reason he called my school "weird" is because… well, it's a little weird. It's a tiny women's college in the middle of nowhere that has an insane amount of direct faculty support for students, has a ton of formerly stray cats who live on campus (who are neutered and vaccinated!), and they do things like have potted herb gardens in dining areas so people can put fresh flavor on their meals. It's certainly different, but it's perfect for me!

3. Everyone seems to be saying the acceptability is based on profession, and luckily for me, everything I'm considering has been stated as perfectly fine with this sort of thing! My hope is to go into either academia, counseling psychology, or creative writing, but since I'm just starting out I'm leaving my options open a bit.

Thank you all so much for weighing in, and thank you especially for all the kind messages!

2. I'm about to go on medical leave, but I'm also hoping to take my long-delayed honeymoon (first update here)

I have a sad update to this tale. Just over a week before I was scheduled to leave I got my leave form back, and it was denied. I was given the excuse that it was “policy,” but I was told unofficially by another department head that I’m close to that there is no such policy at the org and it’s at the discretion of the supervisor, so I’m not sure why she gave that excuse, but either way I’m now not going to be taking the trip. It’s extremely disappointing because all unofficial indications pointed to me being allowed to go, and my previous talk with my supervisor had been positive, but I knew this was a possibility. I am frustrated that they waited so late to let me know since if I’d known a month ago I might have been able to get some money back on our lodging, but after the responses to the first letter were so strong about not booking until you have signed leave forms I realized I’d fudged up there and I just have to suck it up and take the hit. Thankfully no activities were booked yet so the financial damage is relatively minimal, and we are going to keep what we had scraped together in a separate account for whenever we are able to take the trip.

3. The lazy coworker (featured on this episode of the Ask a Manager podcast)

I decided–against the advice of many of my coworkers–to engage with Jack on a small, low-stakes project that I could have done myself. It was an experiment. I figured if he could do well working with me, someone who is actually rooting for him to get his shit together, that I would feel more motivated to talk with him about his reputation. If he blew it off, I would be more justified to go to my boss or just let the situation play out.

In the end, the project went okay but he was a bit difficult to work with. I was sort of on the fence about the results of this experiment until the very end. We have a solid finished product, and my team often runs our deliverables by a certain director, “Jill.” Jill sort of has a supervisory role over Jack (our organizational structure is a mess, bear with me). I explained to Jack that Jill always signs off on my team’s final products, and that I usually send them to her, but I recommend that he send it to her so that he can really showcase all the hard work he put in. Hew argued with me that he didn’t see the point of looping Jill in (essentially: “What if she makes me do work on this?”), then said he would do it if I insisted, then passive aggressively didn’t do it. It probably sounds stupid, but this was the sign I needed to make like Elsa and let it go.

Separately, the coworker who wanted me to talk to my boss has now been quietly deputized as Jack’s manager, so she’s more actively standardizing and tracking his work. My hope is that this will result in him being transitioned to part-time, which will either convince him to quit or step up his game to get back to full-time. She and I have been strategizing on this together, affirming Matt’s comment about strength in numbers.

4. My boss is a notorious liar, and he yells too

Thank you so much for your advice, and to the amazing readers who took the time to write comments. I think I knew how unhealthy and unprofessional the situation, and my workplace in general, was, but my sense of self and what's normal have been shaken by being here. I felt validated by your response and those of your readers, which I really needed. The advice that you and the readers gave has helped me to focus on moving on professionally from this toxic environment.

Very soon after you published my question and your response, I gave my boss notice. I did so without any other job lined up, though I had multiple successful phone interviews that ended in me being asked to come in in person. I told my boss that I would not be seeking a new contract when the fiscal year ends, as I was looking for a job with a shorter commute (mine is over an hour) and shorter hours (we work 9.5 hour days) so that I could spend more time with my family (my partner and I recently had a baby). I'm the past, my boss has been mostly grateful to know that people plan to leave, so he took it well and thanked me for letting him know. Since then, there have been no major incidents like the one I wrote about… well, not any involving myself. He has done some petty things like repeatedly ordering lunch for the 3 people I share an office with but not me, and leaving me off of text/email chains but then publicly referencing them. I think this is an attempt to wield some power over me or show what I'm missing by leaving, because while he appreciates knowing peoples plans so that he can plan accordingly and says as much, he also ALWAYS takes it personally when people leave, even if the person quitting cites reasons like moving out of state or going into another field. I think that's insecurity on his part. Anyway, there pettiness is annoying, but if anything it shows me that I'm doing the right thing by leaving. I have felt mentally and emotionally free since giving notice.

About two weeks after letting him know that I'd be leaving, I found myself with 3 jobs offers and several more inquires for interviews. I was cautious with my questions and evaluating the potential employers. Two of the jobs were ideal in terms of hours, salary, benefits, and work environment. I've accepted one, and I'll begin in a few months when the new fiscal year starts. I'm so excited!

And I just have to say: Ask A Manager has been a super valuable resource for me ever since I discovered it. I'm so thankful to you for publishing people's questions and responding to them thoughtfully, as well as to all the readers who add their thoughts and stories to the comments section. I'll still be reading, even after I leave my current terrible job!

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