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“do I have to invite a manager I hate to my wedding, my team is snarky and negative, and more” plus 1 more Ask a Manager

“do I have to invite a manager I hate to my wedding, my team is snarky and negative, and more” plus 1 more Ask a Manager


do I have to invite a manager I hate to my wedding, my team is snarky and negative, and more

Posted: 16 Dec 2018 09:03 PM PST

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

1. Do I have to invite a manager who I hate to my wedding?

I’m getting married in about 11 months and we are sending out save-the-dates. For a while, a big question mark about our wedding has been whether or not we should invite my manager, Jane. She’s not actually really my manager anymore — I reported to her for four years before I got a promotion and then was moved under someone else. But my new boss reports to Jane too (our structure is kind of messed up), and so she still has a big say in my work activities.

The thing is, she’s a really difficult person who made my life miserable for the four years I was directly under her. I cried at work constantly and was stressed to no end by her exacting demands and micromanaging. Although I low-key hate her, I am a very friendly and positive person at work, and she thinks we have an excellent relationship both personally and professionally and has long liked me (and I have been able to advance because of that). When I got engaged, she demanded to hear the story and see the ring and has long joked about how my fiance needs her “approval.”

The only reason I think I should invite Jane is that a coworker once told me that Jane was adamant that employees have to invite their managers to their weddings, because “that’s how it’s done.” Jane went so far as to talk crap about three of our team members who got married without inviting her.

I don’t want Jane to be at my wedding because she has hurt me so much, but I’m terrified that if I don’t invite her, she will retaliate in some way at work. I can’t say that we’re not inviting any coworkers, because some of my best friends are on the team, and I’ve already sent them save-the-dates. My coworkers have urged me to invite her, citing my out-of-town wedding as a reason she won’t come. My fiance adamantly doesn’t want to invite her. I’m torn.

Don't invite her. You shouldn't have someone at your wedding who you hate and who regularly made you cry. You're absolutely not obligated to invite her, or managers in general. It's true that you shouldn't exclude just one person from your team if you're inviting everyone else but (a) that doesn't sound like the case here and (b) that doesn't really apply to your manager anyway.

It would be interesting to know if she did anything more than just some brief complaining about those other people who didn't invite her. If not, I think you can move forward with peace of mind here; let her complain if she wants to. But otherwise, you could either ask the coworkers you're inviting to keep it quiet and not mention it to Jane, or you can go with the time-honored "our venue is really small and so we have really strict limits on how many people we can have there," maybe adding on "but thank you for being so supportive of us!"

2. My team is snarky and negative

I've been at my company for six years, and was promoted after four to an elevated but non-management role. The team is comprised of mostly newer members; apart from one employee, they've all been here less than two years. It's an entry-level role, and we often fill it with people who lack office experience. Even factoring in the office behavior learning curve, I think there's a problem with attitude and disrespect.

There's a lot of swearing and friendly bantering, but I feel it crosses a line. Some days it's almost constant between two employees — i.e., "I have a question" … "Your mom has a question" / "I'm not sure what to do" … "That's because you're dumb" / "Can you help me with something?" … "I can help punch you in the face!" It's just those two who go back and forth, but it's grating to hear the play fighting. There's a lot of swearing and discussion of drinking (I also enjoy drinking but I don't talk about getting wasted at work, because it's, ya know, work.) We have a pretty casual office and I appreciate the lack of formality, but I feel like they take it 10 steps too far. When a newer member IMed me to share his similar feelings, I felt it was worth raising to our manager. Two days ago he sent a group wide email "to ensure we all get the same message" about being respectful of language and volumes.

The response has been … lackluster. I heard an over-exaggerated apology yesterday along the lines of "I'm SO sorry if I've offended you." One of the girls tagged two others in a meme on facebook about getting people to stop talking to you, and they responded "that's not appropriate" and "this is an office." I showed that posting to my manager (feeling like a tattletale) but felt he should know they were treating it like a joke and he said "nothing I can do about them outside of work.”

I'd love to take it to my grand-boss, but a friend at work has said she doesn't think anything will change. I know my manager is not effective, I'm not blind to that. I really like the rest of the company and would like to stay here, but this environment feels toxic and draining. Am I just being petty for caring so much about how they behave? Should I continue trying to raise it, or put my headphones in and ignore it? It also concerns me that we hire new members to the workforce, and I don't want a potentially good employee to normalize such damaging behaviors.

No, that kind of thing is toxic over time. It breeds cynicism and negativity, and it can be really unpleasant to be around it all the time. It would be one thing if people had reacted well when your manager stepped in, but their response is really indicative of a culture problem. And that's very much your manager's business, so it's too bad that he doesn't think there's anything he can or should do. It sounds like he needs to be a much more active presence around your coworkers, and possibly that he needs to have one-on-one conversations with people about what's happening.

If your grand-boss has good judgment and is a decent manager, you could indeed mention it to her — explicating naming it as a damaging culture problem and flagging that a new hire talked to you about it too. You can also address it in the moment yourself when it happens by saying things like "It's really unpleasant to hear that all time time — could you stop?" and "Could you take that down a notch?" and so forth. That risks them turning their snark on you as well, but if you're otherwise warm and friendly to them, it might actually make an impression.

3. My manager told me to stop saying "again…" in response to the same questions

I am the team lead working on a tough engineering problem. Management decided to hold a brainstorming session with people who are experts in the general field but not familiar with the problem. I was tasked with putting together a pre-session by teleconference where I introduce the problem, provide background, and detail previous work. This was not intended to be the brainstorming session but just informational. True brainstorming with a face-to-face meeting will happen after Christmas.

I went through the presentation. We had an interesting mix of people who asked a lot of good questions sometimes about the same thing. When a question came up that I had answered previously, apparently, I answered by saying "Again, we did x experiment and saw no effect of y.” After the meeting, my manager told me that I should be careful not to use the word "again" too often. To him, he heard me say "again (you idiot, I already told you this!)” which was totally not my intent. I don't even realize I use "again" that much or even at all. It might be my substitute for "ummm" while I'm thinking? When I do, I really mean "as you may recall from the earlier discussion." This way I feel I can cut down on my response time since I already provided details previously.

I am a 50ish woman PhD engineer with close to 25 years experience, and my boss is a male mid 40 engineer with 20 years experience. I think we usually get along very, very well. I was providing information to a group of 6-10 mostly male engineers with similar experience in the field. I do not know most of them.

Is this weird feedback or is it me? I asked two other people in the room that I am friends with if they noticed that I used the phrasing "again" a lot and did it bother them (one man, one woman). They said they didn't even notice. I almost feel like this is a situation where even though I am by far the expert, as a woman, I'm expected to use softer language. What do you think?

Hmmm. It's definitely true that women sometimes get told to soften their language when men wouldn't get told the same thing, but I’m not sure that’s what’s happening here. In the context you describe, using "again" before your answer is indeed likely to come across as "I told you this before and I’m annoyed that you didn't retain it." Sometimes there's a softer way to say that, like "Like I was explaining in response to Ryan's question, we did X and didn't see Y." But just "again…" is likely to come across as either brusque or frustrated if you're saying it a bunch of times in one conversation. (And that's going to be true for men as well. This one isn't especially gendered.)

When people are asking the same questions over and over, something's going on. It could be that people aren't paying attention, or it could be that you're not explaining as clearly as you thought you were. Either is possible, but this sounds like a pretty engaged audience, so it's worth reflecting on whether it could be the latter! (It could also be interesting to ask your boss about his thoughts on that.)

4. My boss asked me to take a dance class with her

My boss recently pulled me aside after a team meeting and said she wanted to talk to me. She told me that she works part-time at a dance studio, and that I should really go take a class there sometime because “it’s a really great way to meet people.” I told her I’d think about it, but that I really needed to go finish up with my work for the day.

I understand where my boss is coming from. She grew up in Europe and doesn’t have family here, and she and her husband moved to the area a few years ago when our offices merged. On top of that, her husband is currently attending medical school, so she’s lonely. She and I were friendly as colleagues before she was promoted, and she knows that I went through a difficult breakup earlier this year.

It’s easy enough to brush her off for the time being — work is crazy, holiday parties, travel, etc. — but when you get right down to it, I believe in keeping my work life and personal life separate. She’s a nice person, but not a great boss, and I don’t really want her intervening in my personal life.

Unless she's extraordinarily pushy, it's likely that she's not going to bring this up over and over. But if she does bring it up again, you can say something vague like, "Maybe, we'll see!" If she brings it up after that, though, then you're officially in Weirdly Pushy territory and at that point you're going to need to give her a clear no. That clear no could be "I don't think it's for me, but thanks!" or "I'm old-fashioned about not mixing my work and non-work life, but thank you!" Or you could jump straight here the next time if you want, but a soft no may get the job done before that.

5. Applications that want contact info for all my past managers

I know that it's important to ask permission of potential references before providing their contact information to a potential employer. Is this also true for filling out the work history sections of online job applications with the contact information of former supervisors?

I've come across online job applications that require the phone number of each former supervisor listed in the work history section, where that information is considered a required field and you can't continue without providing a phone number. I wouldn't necessarily ask each of my former supervisors to be a reference, but is this essentially putting them in the position of becoming a potential reference because their contact information has been provided? And so, do I essentially need to ask all of my former supervisors if they are willing to be a reference for me before I complete any job applications that require their contact information in the work history section of the application? I am hesitant to do so unless I am being seriously considered for a position since I want to avoid "reference fatigue," but maybe this is unavoidable in a job search.

You should give them all a heads-up that they might be contacted, but you don't need to do that every time you fill out an application. You can just do it once at the start of your search and frame it as "I wanted to let you know that I'm beginning a job search and some applications are asking for the contact info of all my past supervisors. So it's possible that you'll get a call from a potential employer about me, and I didn't want you to be blindsided by it." That notification is good for a few months at least; you don't need to renew it with each new application you submit.

do I have to invite a manager I hate to my wedding, my team is snarky and negative, and more was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.

update: do I really need to schedule my wedding around work events?

Posted: 16 Dec 2018 07:00 AM PST

It's "where are you now?" month at Ask a Manager, and all December I'm running updates from people who had their letters here answered in the past.

Remember the letter-writer whose boss was pushing back on her wedding date because it was right before a major annual event? Here’s the update.

I had written to you in 2017 asking if I was off-base for being upset when my boss didn’t like the date I chose for my wedding because it interfered with “Big Event.” In reality, my problem went beyond the issue with the wedding date. I became frustrated with the position almost immediately after starting, and I think it caused me to be a lot more upset with the situation than had it happened under different circumstances.

In this job, I had a kind supervisor who unfortunately was a micromanager and a “24/7” worker (nights, weekends, vacations and days off), so I’d often find myself staring at an inbox of anywhere from 40-60 emails from her each morning, and about 150 or so when I would return from a few days off (no exaggeration on those numbers!). The projects and initiatives themselves would be set with unrealistic deadlines that I drained myself to meet (by myself as there were no other department members), and there was never a reprieve between projects, nor was there ever acknowledgement of the amount of work I put in. I am in a creative field, and I have always found SO much joy in what I do. However as time went on, I got so burned out that I started to believe that I wasn’t cut out to be in design anymore, that the problem was me, that I just didn’t have the work ethic I used to, and I found myself making preventable and atypical mistakes. Sunday nights, my anxiety would be through the roof, and I struggled to enjoy any time off because I’d be dreading seeing what would be waiting for me upon returning to work.

I started looking for a new job, and, ironically enough, “Big Event” ended up being my last day with the company. They were sad to see me go, and asked if I had any feedback for what type of replacement they should look for. I was very honest with them I am happy to say they took my advice to heart, and they have had a solid employee in that role for the last year now.

However the BEST news here is that my confidence is back on the upswing, and I’ve found enjoyment in my work again. It’s amazing how much a person can flourish when they aren’t being micromanaged! I’m now in a position where I need to take more accountability for my work and the decisions I make, and as a result the quality of my work is much, much better and I no longer find myself making stupid mistakes. I’ve been at this new job for almost a year now, and I’m again having FUN doing what I do and I enjoy getting up for work again!

After I wrote in the first time, I found that so many commenters fell on opposite sides of the spectrum: Those who NEVER let work interfere with personal life, and those who see work as the “be all end all”. I like to think I fall somewhere in the middle. I am OK with making sacrifices in my personal life for work, but I know where the boundaries should lie so that I do have an adequate work/life balance. I make sure to never leave my team hanging, while making sure I take care of myself too.

Alison, your blog and the AAM community has helped me in so many ways. It’s helped me to be introspective enough to acknowledge my own misgivings, and its (VERY SLOWLY) helping me to stand up, set boundaries, and advocate for myself (a lifelong hurdle of mine). Thank you so much for all your help, and your readers/commenters too, of course!

update: do I really need to schedule my wedding around work events? was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.

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