“I’m pregnant and my new boss is the dad, coworker wants to keep us all connected in cutesy ways, and more” plus 4 more Ask a Manager

I’m pregnant and my new boss is the dad, coworker wants to keep us all connected in cutesy ways, and more
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I’m pregnant and my new boss is the dad, coworker wants to keep us all connected in cutesy ways, and more

Posted: 30 Mar 2020 09:03 PM PDT

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

1. I'm pregnant by my new manager and don't want higher-ups to know

I’m still fairly early in a pregnancy that is with a fellow coworker who became my boss right at the point I found out I was pregnant. We have a perfectly normal working relationship; nobody would ever even know based on how we act.

There are no anti-fraternization rules, but I went to HR to discuss it because I was worried about both our jobs. I told her I was four months pregnant and that the father was a coworker. I told her I’m afraid to share it due to higher-ups knowing and getting involved. She said she needed to talk to him but needed to think about it before she did and would tell me that she was going to speak with him before she did.

I am currently working mostly from home, but some people are still working from the office. I went in to discuss some items and walked right in on her having a conversation with him. She told him they will have to move my position and she will have to tell the higher-ups sooner rather than later, which was the opposite of what she and I discussed. And now he’s bothered I said something, since his biggest issue was he didn’t want the office to know.

So does she have to do this if there is no conflict? Can’t, she wait till the baby is born? Telling the higher-ups will affect my chances of a promotion because my promotion would put me over him. Should I never have opened my mouth?

She absolutely has to let your company know the situation because they can't let someone manage an employee who they're romantically or sexually involved with or who is the parent of their child (even if the relationship ended). It doesn’t matter if you’re perfectly professional with each other at work; he cannot manage you, period. There’s too much potential for conflict of interest, and people will assume there is conflict of interest whether or not there really is. For example, if he has to lay off part of his team and you’re not on that list, people will assume it’s because he didn’t want the mother of his child to lose her job. But it’s also a problem with things that are far more routine — like whether he can give you feedback, whether you can accept that feedback, whether there will be favoritism that disadvantages other people or even just the appearance of that, etc. The company also has to worry about legal liability: as your boss he has power over you, and you could feel pressure, subtle or otherwise, to remain involved with him when you would rather not.

And yes, this definitely will affect your chance a promotion if that would mean you managing him, since all the above would still apply, just in reverse.

So your HR person had to speak up. Since she told you she'd speak with you before she spoke with him, she should have done that or let you know she wouldn’t be able to keep that promise. But otherwise, you and he both need to accept that if you’re in each other’s chain of command, there’s no option of keeping this hidden. (And it could rightfully get you fired if you tried.)

2. My coworker wants to keep us all connected in cutesy ways

I need a nice way to tell a coworker that I don't have time for her cute little ways to try to keep us all connected while we are teleworking 100% (trivia quizzes, shared meme lists, etc.). They are all great little short team-building things. Part of it is my personality (I get along with everyone, but I really just come to work to work) and part of it is the rapid pace we are all working at.

She doesn't work for me, but we do work closely together and often collaborate. She tends to use me as a sounding board for her ideas before taking them to her boss. I don't usually have too much issue with it and she understands if I can't get to something right away. In light of the current environment, we are all teleworking and we have also taken on additional responsibilities around the virus because of the kind of work we do. So I'm not just busy, I am crazy busy. She either is not as busy or just gets lonely being at home all day. I have been working remotely for years (not 100% though) so this is easy for me, plus I like it because I am an introvert.

Late last week she sent me an idea for a way for our whole office to stay connected. It was kind of cutesy… not my thing, but I know my thing isn't everybody's thing so I gave her my input. Her boss was a little hesitant (because she recognizes we are all very busy) but decided to give it the go ahead. Again. other personalities may enjoy it.

Today she brought me another idea. Honestly, I don't have the bandwidth to think about it. I just need a really nice way to tell her to STOP IT!

Can you just be straightforward but kind? For example: "To be honest, that kind of thing isn't my cup of tea, especially right now when I'm so swamped. Other people might appreciate it more, but I’m not a good sounding board for it. Sorry I can’t help!"

If she doesn't get the message from that and asks you again: “I’m swamped and can’t help with this kind of thing right now. Sorry about that!"

Speaking of which…

3. Team-building activities that can be done remotely

With the sudden rise in work-from-home arrangements, do you or your readers have suggestions for good team-building activities that don’t require meeting in person?

Are you sure you need them? If you have a team where 100% of the people on it genuinely like and want this stuff, then maybe. But so many people dislike this kind of thing during the best of times that asking them to do it now — when they're stressed and trying to juggle kids and medical needs and grocery scarcities, etc. — would alienate a lot of people. Particularly for people who are juggling child care with work, asking them to spend half an hour of their scarce work time on fluff is likely to really rankle some of your team.

The best team building you can do right now is to give people maximum flexibility, ask how they're doing, find out what they need to be better able to do their jobs, assure them their jobs are safe (only if that's true), and be supportive and understanding of their stress and distractions. Throw in some occasional (and optional) online or video socializing, sure, but stay away from the really structured stuff for now.

That's not to say no one would appreciate formal team-building activities right now. But if you have even one person on your team who doesn't, their frustration is going to outweigh any good from it. (But if you must do it anyway, keep it optional and keep it short.)

4. Since the right to discuss wages excludes supervisors, how does the law define supervisors?

I have a question about the National Labor Relations Act I’ve been wondering about. I know that law grants employees rights to talk to each other about workplace conditions and salaries (among other things), but it is only applicable to employees who are not supervisors.

How are supervisors defined? For instance, a few years ago I worked at a lobbying firm where, as an associate, I supervised the work of interns and staff assistants (though I didn’t have any say over their salary, and had very limited input in hiring/firing and reviews). Would I have been considered a supervisor, even though I was only a step above staff assistants and had many layers over me? In another example, I’m currently a director at an association, but don’t have any employees under me (one-person department), and am not on the management team. So it seems that at my old job, even though I was three years into my field and not making very much at all, I would not have been able to discuss my salary with anyone, but at my current job, I would be protected in talking to even our lowest paid and newest employees about salary, just because I’m a one-person department. Is that really the way it works? It seems that organizations would be able to easily get around this law by giving everyone limited supervisory responsibilities over the next level under them, so only maybe 2-3 people at the very bottom would be able to discuss salary.

You're right that the NLRA protects employees' right to talk to each other about wages and working conditions and you’re right that its protections only apply to non-supervisors. But nah, you probably wouldn't have been considered a supervisor for the purposes of the law. This particular law defines supervisors as people whose functions are "to hire, transfer, suspend, lay off, recall, promote, discharge, assign, reward, or discipline other employees, or responsibly to direct them, or to adjust their grievances, or effectively to recommend such action." It also says that your authority to perform these functions can’t be clerical or routine, but must require the use of independent judgment — for example, whether you can act independently or require the approval of others in the company before doing the things above.

Certainly it’s not uncommon for supervisors only only be able to recommend some of those actions, with final approval coming from above, so it’s something you’d need to look at case-by-case, but this gives the general feel of what the law considers. Someone who's only overseeing interns and isn’t in a particularly senior role themselves is very unlikely to be considered a supervisor under this law.

5. If they knew I didn't have enough experience, why did they interview me?

I just went through a rather frustrating interview process. I applied for this job on a whim since (I thought) it would be a dream to work for them. Someone in my network passed on my resume to a partner at the firm, and they reached out to me, to my delight.

I had a one-hour intro phone call with a middle manager who I got a very weird vibe from — she did most of the talking and I did a lot of listening. Then she had me do a skills assessment that took 1.5 hours (I think I rocked it). She then called me unannounced two hours later to have me walk her through it, which was also strange. But she told me the assessment impressed her and they would be in touch.

Then they set up a call between me and a partner at the firm. He grilled me for a half hour on in-the-weeds, substantive questions. Then he spent the next few minutes telling me how great I am and how much I know my stuff, but they were simply looking for a person with a few years more of experience. Normally, I could handle that, but he said that the team knew I didn’t have enough experience when I first entered the process. He said to keep in touch for future opportunities. I can’t but help be a little frustrated and feel a led on. And it makes me wonder if something I did in the interview process furthered their hesitancy to hire me?

Maybe, maybe not. People always wish companies would give more people a chance, even if they don't have exactly the right experience — but doing that means sometimes the company will determine after talking that you’re not quite right for the role. That doesn’t mean they were leading you on or weren’t genuine about their interest; most often it means they talked to you with an open mind but as they got more info during the process, they determined you weren’t strongly enough matched with what they’re looking for. That’s what a hiring process is designed to figure out (on both sides).

That doesn’t necessarily mean you did anything wrong. It could just be that during that last call, it became apparent that you don’t have the seasoning in your field that they want for the role. You could still be great — and promising enough that they wanted to give you a shot, despite your experience level — but ultimately not as strong as they wanted.

My company started everyone on work from home recently due to COVID-19. I have two close work friends and we still chat regularly online. All of us take little breaks for non-work activities (switching laundry over, grabbing a snack) but I have tried to make sure I walk away from my computer no more than I do at the office. My friend, however, showers on the clock, goes to restaurants to get breakfast, cleans her whole house, walks her dogs… We have a minimum quota of items to produce each day, but she cherry picks the easiest orders to meet the goal.

Our company has historically denied us work-from-home because they think employees will take advantage of them. Frankly, it outrages me that she is proving their point when we have an opportunity to demonstrate the opposite. On a personal level, it also annoys me that I’m making less than her an hour to work while she goes to the store or takes a quick nap.

I want to complain, but I’m afraid it will cost us all our work-from-home privileges, and while she’s a terrible employee, she’s a good friend. Our line supervisor would also definitely tell my coworker that I “told” on her (our supervisor considers the coworker her best friend and tells her all sorts of things she shouldn’t) and I’m afraid my friend might try to retaliate.

Our manager has become impossible to reach since this began, due to the difficulty of this changeover and unrelated emails to them have gone unanswered for over two weeks now. The woman in charge of HR is the person who fought work-from-home all this time, so I’d hate to have her catch wind of this.

Our mutual friend and I have already tried to advise her to just stay in the house during the workday, but she doesn’t think anything bad will happen. I want someone to intervene but it seems like it will hurt me in the end if I do. Do you have any suggestions how to handle this delicately?

Your coworker is being an ass. She's taking advantage of a bad situation, and presumably leaving the rest of you with more work.

To be clear, when you're working from home, it's okay not to be 100% focused on work every minute. That's true even in normal circumstances — and there are plenty of things that distract us at the office too — but it's especially true in a stressful situation like this one. People have other things they need to deal with right now, and they need more flexibility in their days than might be expected under more routine conditions.

But cleaning her whole house, eating breakfast at a restaurants when your company assumes she’s working, etc. — and especially all of it put together — is a different thing, and I doubt your company would be happy to hear of that.

But that doesn't make it yours to report, especially since you don't have any good options for who to report it to. If you did have a responsive and skilled manager who wasn't the type to take this as an indictment of remote work in general, there could be a case for discreetly mentioning to them what your coworker is telling you … but then again if you had a good, responsive manager, they’d be paying enough attention to pick up on this happening. The fact that they’re not is pretty telling.

However, the piece of this that you could more easily address is your coworker's cherry-picking of the easiest tasks. There's no reason you can't tell her to knock that off since it affects the rest of you, or ask your manager to come up with a more equitable system for task division. And it could be that flagging that as a problem will prompt your manager to take a closer look at the rest of what’s going on.

But beyond that, if you’re going to say something, say it to your coworker directly!

You said when you talked to her previously, she didn't "think anything bad would happen." Change the angle you use. Since she’s a good friend, you should be able to tell her you think what she’s doing is wrong. Tell her you think she’s putting work-from-home at risk for everyone, at the most terrible time to do that. Tell her she’s leaving you with an unfair share of the work, even though you're paid less than her, and when you’re already stressed and overwhelmed. And tell her you think on an ethical level it’s crappy, because it is.

If she doesn’t care … well, it might be that you should rethink how good of a friend you consider her. (Or not! Some people are fine never letting this sort of thing affect a friendship — although it sounds like it’s already affecting it because you’re resentful.)