“my dad says I should offer to work for free to prove myself, hiding my dating life as a teacher, and more” plus 3 more Ask a Manager

my dad says I should offer to work for free to prove myself, hiding my dating life as a teacher, and more
our boss’s wife camps out in our office for hours at a time
kids at work doesn’t always end well
I joked about a coworker’s slowness — and he overheard

my dad says I should offer to work for free to prove myself, hiding my dating life as a teacher, and more

Posted: 24 Jun 2019 09:03 PM PDT

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

1. My dad says I should offer to work for free to prove myself

I was wondering about a piece of interview advice my father and I recently disagreed about (for context, I am a college student who most recently interviewed for internships, and my dad is a small business owner who regularly hires for office positions). He said that during an interview, candidates should offer to work the first two months for free, as this shows a strong interest in the position and sets you apart from the other people interviewing. He compared it to a probationary period, where the company can decide if they like the quality of your work before they start paying you. For what it's worth, he also said that a good company wouldn't take a candidate up on this offer, but would look at it as a strong positive in an interview. Is this advice worth regarding? Is it good practice or even legal for a company to consider this kind of offer? Do I just not understand what a probationary period usually entails?

Nooooo, do not do this. And unfortunately, this means that all job search advice from your dad probably needs to be ignored because this is the mark of very weird judgment.

Working for free is illegal (unless it's for a nonprofit or for a bona fide internship program that meets the legal requirements for unpaid work). Suggesting it will make you look naive, not only because it's illegal but also because it'll sound like you don't realize that employers want to hire the best candidate, not the cheapest one, and have budgeted to pay them. It'll also sound like you don't realize that it can take much longer than two months to get up to speed and demonstrate your value. This is classic parental "gumption" advice, and it's bad. Ignore ignore ignore.

2. How much do I need to hide my dating life if I want to teach?

I've worked with children and teenagers in various capacities all through college and during my first year in the workforce, at a nonprofit in a large city. In a couple of months, I will be moving to a small town to start my first classroom position (high school). I've always been fairly promiscuous and identify as queer. I use dating apps a lot and date a lot of couples (all above-board); I have used my own photos and my middle name for my profiles, and am pretty clear on those profiles about the sort of arrangements that I am open to.

Recognizing that I could have done more to conceal my identity and leave less of a digital trail thus far, I am wondering what to do when I get back to small-town life and take up a more codified position in my future students' lives and in the community. I'm already a little worried about being out as bisexual at work (it's not something I either particularly bring up or hide from coworkers but is evident from my social media and other clues). My friend who grew up and still lives in the town says that people are generally very gossipy and she goes to great lengths to conceal her open relationship from coworkers and in general. Do I need to delete all the apps and my profiles on them ASAP? Do I need to stop dating couples, in case it comes to light somehow and scandalizes colleagues/administrators/parents/students? Can I continue but just be extra discreet? Are there further things I should be doing to scrub my Internet presence and limit what the public can learn about my personal life? What are my responsibilities here? I'm only a year out of college and am adjusting to the thought that I may not be able to behave however I want in my personal life any more, even if I'm not directly harming anyone involved.

More than any other field I can think of, teaching is still a field where employers exercise an enormous amount of control over your private life. Teachers have been fired for posting photos of themselves drinking a beer, for having slightly racy photos online, or because their students learned something about their sex lives beyond "I am in a monogamous relationship.” This is wrong, and it's also the reality teachers face.

So yes, unfortunately, I'd recommend that you scrub your online presence if you want to teach. I don't think you need to stop dating couples, but I do think you'll need to be discreet about it if you want to safely work as a teacher in most parts of the U.S. I'm sorry that's the case. Your dating/sex life is no one's business, and this is BS.

You shouldn't need to hide your bisexuality or queerness any more than another teacher would need to hide their heterosexuality, but you also want to know what your risks are, so check to see if you live in a state that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

3. My coworker pounds on the door while I’m in the bathroom

My coworker, Jane, and I have jobs that are very interdependent. She is more or less a salesperson, and sees clients first to sell them things. Then the clients come over to me, and I do paperwork and such with them.

I have, for lack of a better term, bathroom problems. I have never been diagnosed with anything, but when I have to go, I have to go. Right then. And it usually takes me a while. I can be in the bathroom for up to 30 minutes sometimes. Needless to say, I find this issue to be kind of embarrassing.

If I happen to be in the bathroom when Jane is finishing up with a client who needs to see me, she has this habit of coming into the bathroom and pounding on the door. I’ll say "occupied” or something like that (because I don’t know for sure who it is) and then she’ll then announce to me that I have a client waiting whenever I’m done, and sometimes she’ll ask me how long I think I will be.

I do not like to be talked to while I’m trying to use the bathroom, especially about work. Nor do I like being asked how long I think I will be. It really upsets me, probably because I am embarrassed about my problem. A few times, I have chosen to just not respond to the pounding on the door, and she just continues to pound until I say something. Am I crazy? Do I need to just get over it? Or is she as out of line as I think she is?

No, you're not crazy, and you don't need to get over it — Jane is being really rude! And ineffective — I can't imagine how she thinks you're suddenly going to finish up more quickly just because she's pounding on the door.

You should say this to her: "Please don't knock on the door to tell me I have a client when I'm in the bathroom. I can't speed things up in there — I'll be out when I'm able to be out, and it's weird to have someone pounding on the door and asking me for a time estimate. I don't want to talk while I'm in the bathroom. Instead, please tell the client I'm not available yet but will be with them as soon as I can."

In fairness to Jane, it's true that 30-minute bathroom visits are long, and so if that's regularly delaying clients, the two of you should decide how to best handle that — is there another piece of the process that can happen while you're indisposed, is there better messaging to use with them, etc.? But the solution shouldn't be that she just bangs on the door and demands answers from you while you're on the toilet.

4. Recruiter approached me, now wants a resume

I was approached by a recruiter for a position for which I am well qualified. I am not actively looking, but I was interested enough in having a phone interview with the employer after hearing about the position. Now, two days before the interview, the recruiter is saying that the employer needs a resume. I started with my current employer out of grad school almost nine years ago, so needless to say, I don’t have anything even remotely usable and, honestly, I don’t want to invest the time. My bio online is quite detailed already, so I’d really like to leave it at that. But, I’m not sure if I’m totally off-base here. What do you think?

Eh. It's not ridiculous that the employer wants a resume, but it's also true that if they approached you and you're not actively job hunting, they should be willing to use your online bio for now (assuming it covers the basics of your work history). I'd feel more strongly about that if the recruiter is an internal recruiter at the company. If they're an outside recruiter, then I don't blame the employer for wanting some standard info on you in the form of a resume.

Anyway, one option is to say to the recruiter, "I'm not job searching so didn’t have a resume prepared when you contacted me and don't think I could put one together in two days. Will my online bio do for now? It has my full work history." But I wouldn’t say this just for the principle of it; if you have time to pull a resume together, you should. (And if your online bio is something like LinkedIn, you can probably turn that into a resume pretty quickly.)

5. Are certifications in softer skills useful on a resume?

How do you know if non-degree certifications from reputable universities are worth the (sometimes significant) cost? I’m not talking about the certifications that come through national professional organizations like PMI, but about the custom certificates I have seen where a university will offer a Project Management certification. They often seem to be tied to softer skills or intangibles, like communication, negotiation, or project management.

Are these kinds of programs worth doing beyond just for personal satisfaction and development? Do companies place any value on these when hiring, or would they be something to justify a higher salary? Just looking to get a sense of how hiring managers view these kinds of programs.

A project management certification can be useful, depending on exactly what it is (and especially if it’s a PMP), but certificates in soft skills like communication and negotiation are not going to be given any weight by hiring managers and won't help to include on your resume. (In fact, depending how soft the skills we’re talking about are, listing them can even hurt you because it can come across as if you’re giving them undue weight.) You might find the classes themselves useful, but don't look at them as resume boosters.

I work for an accounting firm with about 40 employees. I’ve been there for about nine months now and generally enjoy it. However, the culture has been a bit difficult for me to adjust to. We sometimes have clients visit for meetings and because there is limited space at the office and it’s always busy, we have a system to make sure the meeting rooms are always available when needed.

Some of the time this works. However, the director’s wife (who works for a completely different company) has a habit of regularly turning up to either hang out and chat or actually work from our office. Jane turns up unannounced with a laptop and camps out in one of the meeting rooms doing work for whatever company she works for, which makes things very difficult for us. The director is sometimes busy for hours until he realizes Jane is there and presumably resolves whatever reason she had for coming in.

Our PA tried talking to her once, but Jane doesn’t make much/any effort to communicate with staff (bar one of the accountants who she knows) and just brushed her off. Her attitude appears to be that she married the boss so she can do whatever she likes. Jane also doesn’t seem to like two of my younger female colleagues and has started coming in even more since they joined. One of them is incredibly uncomfortable when Jane turns up, as she will make a point of staring at her.

Aside from the awkwardness of having the director’s spouse camping out in the office for hours on end, it disrupts our work. Normally, we will fit any internal meetings around scheduled client meetings, but when she is there we can’t. We’ve also had a couple of times where a client turned up and the receptionist was confused as the booked room wasn’t available.

What would you advise we do in this situation? I’ve never worked in a company where family members used the office like that. They would sometimes attend big social events (awards, etc.) and maybe if a well known colleague’s wife had a baby she might visit briefly. But otherwise family and work was always separated. I would never turn up like that at my uncle’s company, despite it being a huge office.

Yeah, that's disruptive and weird. Showing up occasionally — not a big deal. Sometimes waiting for him to be done with meetings or whatever — fine. But regularly showing up and staying for hours on end, in other people’s space? No. And if she's showing up more now because young women have started working there, that's a real problem.

The easiest part of this to tackle is the availability of your conference rooms. When Jane goes into one of your conference rooms, someone needs to say, "Oh, that room is booked for a meeting and isn't available." Or, if the room isn’t needed right away, you can say, "Just to let you know, we're going to need that room at (time), but you're welcome to stay in there until then." And then when it's time for your meeting, you go to the door and say, "Sorry to kick you out — we're about to use this room for a meeting."

You say it cheerfully, but firmly and matter-of-factly — as if there's no question that of course she'll vacate the room (because any reasonable person would).

It's possible that this is all it will take to solve the conference room problem. If no one has been speaking up when the rooms are needed, Jane legitimately could have no idea she's causing a problem, and simply explaining you need the space will likely resolve it.

But let’s say she refuses to vacate the space when told you need it. In some ways that might be a blessing, because it gives you a very easy thing to take to your director. In that case, you'd talk to him and say this: "We're running into a problem where Jane comes in and sets up in one of the conference rooms when we need them for meetings. We've explained to her that the rooms are booked and needed for meetings, and we’ve asked her to move when we need the space, but she's refused. A couple of times she's bumped us out of the space when we needed it for client meetings. How would you like us to handle this?"

Even once you solve the conference room problem, though, you still have the problem of her showing up and making people uncomfortable. You might not be able to get her to stop hanging out entirely (unless you can tie it to a work issue, like if there are confidentiality restrictions that are hard to abide by with a non-employee around so frequently). But if she's staring down employees and making people uncomfortable, that's something you can raise. Whoever there is most senior and/or has the most capital with your boss should speak to him and deliver that message. There's no getting around the fact that it's an awkward message to deliver, but the best way to do it is to just be very matter-of-fact: "Jane frequently stays in the office for a few hours at a time while she's waiting to talk to you. Since Cecily and Lucinda started, she's been here more often, and she stares at Cecily in a way that anyone in Cecily’s shoes would be uncomfortable with. None of us have the standing to talk with her about it, so we're hoping you can intervene.”

And really, in many situations that person would also be able to say, "It's tough to have Jane here so often for so many hours. She's making the staff uncomfortable and no one feels they can say anything, but if you can tell her not to camp out here, people would appreciate that." You can't say that to every boss, but if the director isn’t an ogre, it’s a reasonable thing to try.

I am the first-level manager of a small group of about half a dozen people. I sometimes work with non-management-level staff outside my group, one of whom is an exceedingly capable, but highly idiosyncratic, person, "Karl.” He is very focused on any work that he does, and will go far above and beyond the call of duty to make sure that everything is clear, organized, and exactly right. For example, one of his jobs is reviewing documents to make sure that they conform to certain standards, and he provides outstanding copy editing while doing so simply because he cannot just let errors pass. This is great if that’s what you want, and is perfect for his primary work responsibilities (which often involve planning and executing tasks that could be unsafe if done improperly), but he can be a bit slow in getting things finalized and his intensity for his work can be a bit off-putting sometimes.

A few days ago, I was discussing some work with my immediate supervisor, "Bill,” who also supervises Karl’s supervisor, in a meeting in his office. I was telling Bill about what a great job that Karl had done on a project that he did for me as a bit of a favor, and how Karl’s thoroughness had led to a good result. I also commented that it took longer than expected, which caused Bill to smile and laugh a bit, knowingly, since he knows Karl well.

I then did something foolish and unprofessional: In parting, I made a joking comment about not expecting speedy work from Karl, and I did so in a slightly louder voice than normal. (I can’t remember my exact phrasing, but the comment was something like, “Well, Karl’s who you go to when you want thorough, but definitely not when you want fast!”) I then turned around to leave and saw Karl through the window of the closed office door, speaking to the admin. Karl looked up at me, looked away, and left. I wasn’t sure if he had heard my joke, but he has rather obviously dodged me in the hall several times since. My comment seemed fairly gentle to me at the time, but from Karl’s perspective, I can see why it might have been upsetting to hear.

Prior to this, I had a good working relationship with Karl, and I enjoyed talking to him. I feel terrible that I (probably?) offended him with my thoughtless, stupid joke. The lesson from this for me is clear, and one that I’m embarrassed has not yet become sufficiently internalized: Do not make jokes about colleagues while at work. Period.

I would like to try to repair the relationship, to apologize to him and express that I appreciate his work greatly. (Which I do!) I don’t know how to approach this, though. Should I try a direct approach, knocking on his office door and apologizing in person? Should I do something less direct, like sending an email to him, copying both his manager and mine, expressing my appreciation for his excellent work on the project in question? (Such a letter is justified, regardless of my contrition.) Or should I just let it drop?

Oh no! Yeah, I can imagine how that didn't feel insulting when it was coming out of your mouth, but landed that way with Karl. It might have sounded far more insulting to him than you meant: you felt like you were praising his thoroughness while noting that it comes at a cost (a cost you might normally consider small), while he took it as you denigrating his work.

If you weren't sure he'd heard you, I might have different advice — but it sounds like he did, since he's been avoiding you since then. So you probably need to address it head-on.

I'd consider going to him and saying something like this: "I want to apologize to you for a comment I made the other day. I'd joked to Bill about you being my go-to person when I need something done well, but not when I need it fast. I so value how thorough you are — you're amazing at making sure things are clear, organized, and accurate. You're better than anyone else here at that! It does mean things sometimes take a little longer because that level of care takes time. But I didn't mean to sound as if I were denigrating that. My phrasing was thoughtless, and I want to apologize to you."

The keys here are that you’re not trying to deny what you said or twist it into something else; you’re owning it, but you’re also trying to put it into context, and you’re telling him with sincerity what you appreciate about his work. (If you didn’t actually think his work was strong, you’d need a different approach, more like this letter where the framing is “I do have some concerns, but I was wrong not to talk to you directly about them.”)

Your thought of copying his manager and your own on an email praising his work would be a good follow-up to this … although rather than writing to him and cc'ing them, I might write to them and cc him. That email can reinforce to him that you do value his work and are trying to make amends — and will also let him see you've corrected the record with Bill, since Bill was the one you were talking to when you made the remark.

Both of these things should go a long way toward resolving this. After that, give it a little time and keep being warm and considerate toward him, even if he remains standoffish for a while. I suspect things will eventually be okay.

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