“giving a coworker a “World’s Greatest Dad” mug, is it rude to answer a voicemail with an email, and more” plus 3 more Ask a Manager

giving a coworker a “World’s Greatest Dad” mug, is it rude to answer a voicemail with an email, and more
can I call an employer back with additional questions about why I was rejected?
my boss is having sex in the office
my employee isn’t doing her job — but I think she’s in an abusive relationship

giving a coworker a “World’s Greatest Dad” mug, is it rude to answer a voicemail with an email, and more

Posted: 14 Aug 2018 09:03 PM PDT

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

1. Our intern wants us all to give a coworker a “World’s Greatest Dad" mug

A birthday came up for a person in the department named Bob. He is the oldest in the department and has been with the company for over 20 years. He is loved by many and is seen as a welcoming person to the department. He has a particularly jovial relationship with one of the interns I supervise, and they jokingly refer to each other as “dad and son.” The intern showed me the birthday gift he bought for Bob and it was a “World’s Greatest Dad” mug. He said he wanted the entire department to write loving messages to Bob that would go into the mug and be presented to Bob at a later date.

I recognize the intern bought the mug with his own money, but I feel uncomfortable promoting the “Bob is the department Dad” mentality to the entire department. I do not know why exactly, but I do not think it sends the right message. (Also, we already celebrate Bob’s birthday with a happy birthday banner signed by people in the department)

I have no doubt that many in the department will love the intern’s initiative, so I have been thinking about letting it go. However, I am curious if it is more appropriate to redirect the intern to make his gift a personal one for Bob and leave the rest of the department out of it.

Yeah, the "dad" thing is a pretty weird and problematic message to promote as any kind of official department gift. It's asking people to buy into a label for the relationship that probably won't resonate with some/most of them, and it's age-focused in a way you don't want any even quasi-formal gifts at work to be. If Bob and the intern want to jokingly refer to each other as dad and son, that's their own (odd) thing, not everyone else's.

I'd say this to your intern: "That's your private joke with Bob, so the mug should be your own gift to him. Ultimately, though, these are professional relationships, warm and friendly as they may be, and I don't want to promote the 'dad' thing more broadly." Frankly, that's not a bad message for your intern to hear anyway.

(Oooh, and in a convenient tie-in, today's episode of the AAM podcast takes on a different version of this — an admin who positions herself as everyone's mom and literally calls them "my kids.” Not everyone is thrilled.)

2. Is it rude to answer a voicemail with an email?

I spend a lot of time on conference calls, so I often can’t answer my phone when people call me directly. More often than not, the voicemails I get are along the lines of, “Do you have any information about the teapot design meeting on September 5?” Is it rude to answer these voicemails with an email, especially when the response is a simple answer? I understand that sometimes a quick call is easier, but what if it’s not?

I think it's totally fine, but I'd include some context to explain why you're choosing to do that — like "figured it would be easier to get you this in an email" or "running to a meeting, but here's the info you wanted."

Obviously the answer is different when someone is clearly calling because they want a back-and-forth (like "I was hoping we could hash out your concerns about the X project"). But for stuff that you can easily answer in an email, go for it.

3. My manager is denying me a day off because I "might" be needed

My manager is possibly denying me PTO because it lands on the day of a conference that my team "might" need to help with. This manager has historically required weekend travel that was unnecessary because he is anxious and insecure about his place in the org and we all have to suffer for it rather than working for a boss with confidence and boundaries. I suspect this event will be more of the same. In the meantime, the PTO day for me is an opportunity to be part of a huge event at my school (I also work on a master’s in addition to full time work). It is a long-term career growth opportunity to participate, whereas there is little career growth available to me in my current role. Any ideas on navigating the conflict? Or my right to refuse and insist on PTO?

You can't insist on taking that day off if your manager continues to refuse it; he has the ability to say yes or no to you taking that particular day. But you can certainly try pushing back and that might work. Say something like this: "This event is very important to me, and I don't want to miss it just because we might need to help with something, when it doesn't look likely that we'll be needed. I wouldn't normally push for this, but this is an unusual circumstance. Can you help me make this work?"

4. My coworker won't stop talking about my hair

I recently (about a month ago) started a new role, and one of my coworkers (let's call her Kira) is making comments about my hair that are making me uncomfortable. Some background: I'm Caucasian with a head of wavy/curly hair. I wear it this way because I like it, and I'm proud of it. It's styled in a professional-looking, below-the-shoulders hairstyle, and even though I have frizz some days, I think it looks fairly good. Kira is from a culture that is different than my own (I'm in the U.S.). She has been coming to my desk almost every morning as soon as I get in to talk about my hair. First, she suggested under the guise of some small talk that I needed to get a product to "deal with my frizz." I just wrote it off as a weird culture/language barrier issue, and changed the subject.

I didn't think she had bad intentions, but it has been happening for around three weeks, and today it escalated. I hadn't even set my stuff down on my desk when she came over and told me something to the effect of "You should go to my stylist, she can show you how to do your hair." I was speechless. I told her something about liking my current stylist, but I honestly was at a loss for words!

I brought this up with another coworker, who is African American, and she told me that Kira has made comments about her hair before, like asking if it was "real.” Said coworker told Kira that it was rude and wrong to ask people questions like that, and Kira apparently got all upset that someone would be so "touchy.”

What do I do? These comments have been happening nearly every day. I have the ability to be direct with people when needed; I am just having trouble with it in this situation! I don't want to make Kira hate me, but I also am getting sick of her making comments about my hair.

Be direct: "Please stop commenting on my hair." Or, "I'm really not interested in discussing my hair anymore." Or, "I don't want to talk about my hair with you anymore." If these feel like slightly rude things to say, they're really not. They're just the sort of comments that you're probably not used to having to make, because most people aren't commenting on your hair every day. But Kira is the one making the situation weird, not you.

Your measure of success here isn't "Kira gets the message and doesn't get upset." Kira shouldn't get upset, but who knows, she might. You can't control that. But if Kira hates you forever afterwards because you made a perfectly reasonable request, that's on her, not on you (and really, if she's that unreasonable, you were likely to set her off with something else at some point anyway, and at least this way you get to end the constant commentary on your hair).

5. Our flexible schedules have me staying up too late at night while I wait for work to come to me

I’m a team lead who works on projects for a company that gives its workers the perk of working pretty much anytime they want as long as they are present for meetings, are in for the core hours and meet their goals. All of my teammates come in and go home at different times and the flexibility allows us to take our work home and finish up there.

So, this package is pretty awesome, right? It is! Except when projects are ending. We have a QA process where things are sent back for feedback among members of the team. The team member makes the changes and sends it back for approval. I really like this because high quality content comes out of it so I’m not complaining about that.

The complaint I have is that as projects close, some team members will bring their work home and respond to feedback long after business hours as if that part of the project is not due the next day (but it is!). Which means that the person waiting to check to see if the updates are made also has to be logged on waiting for those to come back in for review. This is stressful for me because I am the last step before the material goes live and that means that I will have to stay up and just wait for things to come in so I can check them. I’m exhausted all the time and nod off on the couch by 9:30 pm and I’m terrified that one day, I’ll sleep through a deadline because someone waited until 10:30 pm to send it to me.

Since I am not the manager, just a team lead and we all report to different managers, how can I approach my team about being considerate of other people’s hours and schedules? How can I say it without sounding bossy or inconsiderate of THEIR time? I’m a little worried about asking my manager about it because this perk may be taken away. I benefit from this perk by being in the office by being in the office at 8 and leaving at around 4. I also bring my work home with me if I need to catch up.

It's reasonable to lay out your own deadlines, based on when you need to receive work in order to have enough time to finish it. When you know someone is due to send work to you that day, let them know ahead of time that you'll need to receive it by 6 p.m. (or whatever time you pick) in order to finish your part on time. This is actually a pretty normal thing to do! It’s not overstepping your authority or anything like that; it’s giving them info about how long you’ll need for your piece of things.

I had a job interview a while ago for a position I did not get (I am a health and safety professional and at the time had been working for an international mining company, for 3.5 years at a field site and 3 years at the corporate office). I was invited to a screening interview which was only 10 minutes in length, where a few HR people sat with me and asked a few very vague questions to “get to know me” without even really telling me much about the job (e.g., tell me a little about yourself, why are you interested in this job, do you have any questions for us, what are your salary expectations). They told me that there had been over 200 applicants for the job and they were only conducting the screening interviews with the top four. When they told me a week later that I was not being invited back for a full interview, I called to inquire why. I was told by the recruiter that they really liked me but they were looking for someone with more “field experience.” I accepted this answer and thanked them for their time.

Almost immediately after hanging up, it hit me that my field experience should have been evident from my resume and known to them prior to the interview (which is why I was four of 200 selected for a screener) — and in fact they didn’t even ask any follow-up or clarification questions about my field experience in the interview. Thus the answer I’d accepted now seemed like BS.

I have two questions now, based on this: First, is there a professional way to call back an interviewer almost immediately after you’ve already accepted their reasons for not hiring you and ask them follow-up questions that you didn’t think to ask?

And second, I suspect the reason they doubted my “field experience” is because of my appearance and demeanor. I know I didn’t shoot too high on salary and I can’t think of anything else that would have been a red flag. I am an extremely petite and fairly soft spoken woman, and I look about 10 years younger than I am (34). However, I am also very tenacious and assertive and have never had trouble dealing with unruly miners or tradesmen (many of whom have told me with the best of intentions that I’m tougher than I look). This is likely not to come across in vague “get to know you” questions, and even may not have a chance to come up in a full interview (nor was I prepared for this to be something I’d have to “prove”).

Can I bring up the fact that I’m “tougher than I look” in an interview, if there is no organic way to work it into the answers to the questions? How is the best way to do it without making it seem like I might be accusing the interviewers of judging me on my appearance?

You can't really go back and try to reopen this conversation; at their end, it's already closed.

They're already rejected you, and they've already given you some feedback, even though it wasn't especially satisfying.

The thing to remember here — frustrating as it is — is that they don't owe you a satisfying explanation for the rejection, and asking to talk about it some more will come across as if you think they do. (Many employers won't give you any reason for rejecting you, in fact.)

There are a few different possible explanations for why they told you they're looking for someone with more field experience, despite your experience: (1) They're looking for more field experience than what you have. (2) Other candidates ended up having more field experience than you do, so while yours seemed fine initially, now that they’re comparing you to other candidates, they prefer more of it. (3) They rejected you for some other reason, but "field experience" is easier/less awkward to say than the more nuanced reasons why people often get rejected (like "you rambled/creeped out your interviewer/didn't seem smart enough/seemed fine but not great/didn't answer questions head-on/seemed difficult/etc."). (4) The recruiter just got it wrong/confused you with another candidate/reached for the first easy explanation she could think of. (That's actually way more common for recruiters than people often realize.)

Or, yes, it's also possible that you're right that your appearance and demeanor pinged for them as "not right for this job" and they didn't think you were tough enough. That could actually explain the very short interview and the softball questions; if they had written you off from the moment you walked in, they might not have felt like bothering with a full interview. And it's definitely weird to make people show up in-person for a 10-minute interview; that's normally a phone interview, not an in-person interview. (It’s also true, though, that lots of employers just suck at hiring and have bizarre processes that defy understanding.)

There's just no way to know which of these it is.

I know that might seem unfair. If you're right about what happened, then why shouldn't you be able to correct the record? But it's just not the way interviewing works. You mostly get the chances to talk that they offer you, they make a decision (which may or may not be the right one), and that's the end of it. (Obviously it's different if you have strong indicators of illegal discrimination, but that doesn't sound like that's the case here.)

But if this has made you conclude that it's important for you to emphasize to interviewers that you're tenacious and assertive, that's definitely something that you can make a point of working into future interviews! One way to do it is to prepare some stories that highlight that — for instance, when you're asked to talk about work challenges, you could share a story about dealing successfully with unruly miners. Or you can even address it explicitly by saying something like, "I want to note that I don't often fit people's profile of who does this work, but in fact my managers have always told me I could hold my own with tradesmen better than anyone on the team" (or whatever).

I work in a very seasonal business, one where I can really only retain one person in the off-season, as we can’t afford (nor have the work for) anyone else during that time. In the six years I’ve been here, we’ve built up a good core staff that returns most years, and I’ve promoted one person to the full-time, year-round assistant manager position. She’s been with me four years.

The problem is this: in the last year or so, her performance has dropped to the point that her job is in jeopardy. She calls in often to say she’s going to be late, and about half the time that happens, she simply doesn’t show up (to the point where it’s become something of a joke, at least inside my own head). She is entirely non-communicative when she’s out of the office – she doesn’t have her own phone, and so is impossible to get in touch with. To cap it off, she has begun dropping duties entirely, to the point where I have taken over a number of her duties because I can’t count on her to actually take care of things.

Here’s the complicating factor: she’s in what I believe to be an abusive relationship. Many of her call-outs are related to a series of injuries, all of which have fantastical stories explaining them, but … well, let’s just say I’ve never heard of a cat giving someone a black eye before this. Last year, we actually moved her onto the property to give her a few months to get her feet under her (this is hospitality), and at the end of the three months, she went back to him.

I’m at the end of my rope. She and I are going to have to have a serious discussion about the realities of her performance, but at the same time, I don’t want to make her life even worse. I honestly don’t know where to start, but the system can’t continue as-is.

What do I do, and how do I do it compassionately?

Oh, this is so hard.

One one hand, you've hired her because you need a job done, and it presumably could have pretty serious effects on your business if that doesn't happen. That's especially true because she's your only employee for much of the year.

On the other hand, the job may be one of her few lifelines, and the thing that may make it possible to leave her abuser at some point (assuming that your suspicions that she's being abused are correct). And abusers are known to try to get their victims fired in order to be able to exert more control over them. Lots of absences can also themselves be a result of the abuse.

I think you've got to tackle this on two different fronts: (1) what you're in a position to do as the employer of someone you suspect is being abused, and (2) the performance issues.

For the first of those, I'm going to link you to this really excellent advice from a commenter who herself escaped an abusive relationship. There's lots here that you might be able to put into practice.

To that advice, I'd also add that you could say to her, "If you ever need a safe place to stay again, we can move you back on to the property, no questions asked.”

Also, since she doesn't have her own phone, could you offer to provide her with a work cell, even if her position wouldn’t normally have one? If she balks at the offer, don't push it (she may know that it would actually make her situation worse if her abuser learned about it), but it might be helpful to offer and see if she accepts.

For the performance issue, I'd suggest looking at this the way you'd look at it if she were missing work and under-performing due to illness. You'd presumably give her a lot more leeway than if she were just slacking off for the hell of it — but there would also be a limit to how much you were able to accommodate, and at some point you'd need to have an honest conversation with her about what you needed and what she could reasonably commit to. This is different from an illness, but I think that's closer to the right model to use than any other we have.

So at this point, I'd suggest sitting down with her and having a kind conversation about what you need and what's going on. You can use language like, "I know that you've been having a tough time" and "I want to support you however I can" and even "I get the sense things aren't okay at home and that's affecting you at work" and "I really want to work with you however I can to make this work, but I do need you to be here reliably and to let me know when you won't be" and "are there things I can do on my end that will help?" And because things are at the point where her job is in jeopardy, you'll need to say something like, "I want to be up-front with you that if things continue as they have been, I wouldn't be able to keep you on because I need someone here to do this work — but I really want to figure out a way to support you in keeping the job if that's something you think we can work out.”

Ultimately there might not be anything you can do to make this work, especially as a small business where one person not doing their job will have such a significant impact (and where your resources presumably are more limited, although being able to offer her housing again if she needs/wants it is a huge thing to be able to do).

It's really hard in situations like this to accept that your options are so limited, and it's even worse to, as you wrote, feel like you might be making her situation even harder. But you can do what you as her employer are in a position to do: cut her more slack than you would if the circumstances were different (although not infinite slack), and approach her with compassion and empathy and make it clear you're ready to help if she wants it.

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