“can I ask for a raise after returning from furlough, coworker is monitoring my work, and more” plus 3 more Ask a Manager

can I ask for a raise after returning from furlough, coworker is monitoring my work, and more
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my coworkers make fun of poor people
I went to a job interview where they’re not taking COVID seriously … or how to make a scene when you need to make a scene

can I ask for a raise after returning from furlough, coworker is monitoring my work, and more

Posted: 29 Jun 2020 09:03 PM PDT

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

1. Can I ask for a raise right after returning from furlough?

I work as a program coordinator at a large public university. I have been furloughed since May and am expecting to return the first week of July, which is also the week of my one-year anniversary in this particular position. Previously, I had a different job but had taken on many of my current duties due to several staff members retiring or leaving. I know that I am very valued (my boss has let me know in no uncertain terms that she cannot wait for me to return, and she had no idea how much work I actually do for her), and I would like to ask for a raise, but I am unsure if this would look really out of touch with everything going on. I know that our university is having financial issues and some furloughs are being extended, and there has been talk of layoffs as well.

I want to be paid fairly for the work I do, but don't want to look ungrateful to have a job, and especially straight off of coming back from being technically unemployed. Do I just need to let go of the idea of a raise for the foreseeable future?

Asking for a raise right after returning from being furloughed isn’t a good idea. Your employer is trying to figure out how to keep people and where to cut and what their finances will look like in a few months. They might be trying to figure out if they can keep you. It's very, very likely that you'd come across as tone-deaf to that context.

This won’t be the state of affairs forever but right now, when they’ve just brought you back, it’s not the right time.

2. My coworker is monitoring my work

My coworker told me months ago that she "watches other coworkers like a hawk" and that was uncomfortable enough. But she also does things like this: if I have cleared it with my manager to work some hours on the weekend, I will log on to our shared Google sheets to do my work, and lo and behold this coworker logs in EVERY SINGLE time, and just sits on the page to watch me work. You can see me editing the page and you can see she isn't, nor does her cursor move, unless sometimes she follows my cursor to mark where I am/where I am going on the page to see what I have done. (She can see when I log into to Slack — which I need to do for work info — and must just then go straight to our sheets.)

She is very bossy and calls out any mistakes others make, even if a slight one. She talks more than our manager in meetings, and on Zoom she has asked in a demanding way when I am coming back to work as I am still home working due to COVID. My manager has had to step in immediately and say to me, "No stress, no pressure, I know your situation." (I'm a single mom with a toddler.)

It's so frustrating to feel like I'm being watched by a coworker. How do I address this with my manager?

Your coworker is choosing to spend her weekends watching other people work. Her priorities are … odd.

One option is to ignore it and figure that if she wants to spend her off hours this way, that's its own sort of punishment. Another option when you see her watching you in a Google sheet is to message her and say, "I see you're in the sheet I'm working in. Do you need something from me there?" Or even, “Let me know when you’re out so I can resume my work in there.” It's possible that if you do that every time, she'll start to feel watched herself and will stop.

But this is bizarre enough that you could also talk to your manager about it if you want. You could frame it as, "Jane seems to be watching me while I work and I can't figure out why. She told me recently that she 'watches coworkers like a hawk' — that's a direct quote — and it's unnerving to be working on the weekend and see her logging into the Google sheets I'm in and just watching what I'm doing. Is she doing that with your blessing? If not, is it something you could ask her to stop? It's unsettling to feel she's monitoring my work so closely."

3. Is my mom's email address unprofessional?

My mother is in a profession that requires her to market herself directly to drum up business with clients she’ll have a somewhat personal relationship with. She has recently gotten a new email address she really put a lot of thought into … and I really think it could hurt her business. It is the equivalent of Karenking2cutandstyle@comcast.com. I think this email is terrible for clients! It’s taxing to remember a domain that ISN’T gmail (I have to ask her for her email constantly and am terrified of accidentally mistyping and sending a personal message to a stranger). I think the full sentence before the domain is also hard to remember and feels almost arrogant in the way it DEMANDS your attention to retain.

I told my mother that even as an old millennial, I could be completely impressed with a professional contact and upon getting this email would think, “Okay, this person is not tech savvy and possibly stuck in their ways." I am ready and willing to hear that this is none of my business, particularly because my mother is both sensitive and convinced her way is generally the right way, but I wanted your opinion, Maybe I can show her your response and she'll take your feedback into consideration. So, what say you? Can this kind of email address reflect poorly on the user even if the person is in a business that's a bit more casual and grounded in personal relationships?

Yeah, that's going to signal "not super professional and definitely not tech savvy." That doesn't mean it'll signal she's bad at what she does (the two might have nothing to do with each other), but it's definitely amateur-looking.

Really, she should have a business domain — NameOfBusiness.com. She can register one for about $10 and pay a small monthly fee for email hosting (around $5-10/month), and it's a lot more professional than Comcast or Gmail or anything else. (An extra problem using Comcast, though, is that if she changes internet providers, her email address will change! And then all that marketing will have the wrong email on it. A bunch of Verizon subscribers found this out a few years ago when Verizon email addresses were shut down entirely.)

For what it's worth, I’m not concerned that people will struggle to remember it — most people don't memorize email addresses and instead rely on their email program filling them in. (Speaking of which: Put your mom's email in your computer's address book so you stop worrying about emailing the wrong person!) It's just about the signals it's sending, and that's so easily remedied with a few bucks and a domain registration.

4. My boss keeps saying I'm the head of a new team, but I'm not

My company is splitting into two separate companies and I found out that I'm going to the spin-off. I'm the only one from my department going to the new company. My current boss keeps introducing me as "head" of the department at the new company, often telling executives who'll be working with in my new capacity that I'll be running the department.

The problem is that there is absolutely nothing to indicate that me leading the department is the reality, and he does not have a say in shaping my role at the new company. I've asked him numerous times to not jump the gun and just introduce me to others as "part of" the department rather than running it, but he insists on saying that I am leading it. I'm terrified of this getting to my boss at the new company, making me look like I'm promoting myself. Advice?

How clear have you been with your boss about your concern? If you've framed it as "let's not jump the gun," he might figure you're just being modest or otherwise not take your concern seriously, and you need to be more explicit about what you're worried about and why. For example: "It's really important to me that you stop telling people I'm the head of the new department. That’s not the case and I'm concerned it could even hurt my chances of it ever happening, by making me look like I'm being presumptuous or campaigning for the title. I appreciate your confidence in me, but I feel strongly about this — it could end up hurting me."

If you've already been that clear and he's still doing it, correct him every time he introduces you that way — "Nope, not the head! I’m the person who does X."

5. I'm getting a flat fee per project — but only if my client wins his bid

I was laid off earlier this year prior to COVID. While I was searching for work, I was introduced to someone who owns his own business (he is the only employee) and he hired me to work on projects for him. I was hired as a contractor on a per project basis. How it works is a client requests a proposal from him, and I get vendor estimates and enter them into Excel for him to put in his proposal. Once the client approves the proposal and we win the project, I do additional work for him through the project lifecycle and he pays me a flat fee for the entire project (including my time for getting the estimates). If he is not awarded the project from the client, I get paid nothing.

I initially agreed to this because the time spent doing the estimates was minimal (less than two hours normally). Recently his proposals have gotten more extensive and he now asks me to do multiple scenarios for multiple vendors for each project. If we won every project, I would have no issue, but he only has a win rate of about 40-50% so I’m doing a ton of free work for him and I’m starting to feel a little taken advantage of. Is this legal? Even if it is not illegal, I feel like I should be paid for the help I’m providing him even if he doesn’t win the project. Am I wrong for thinking that? This is my first time freelancing so maybe this is just how it works and I’m unaware.

If you're genuinely a contractor and not an employee (which sounds like is probably the case, but you can read more on that here), this is legal since minimum wage laws only apply to employers. As a contractor, the law says you can decide on your own payment arrangements.

But why not tell your client that the scope of the work has changed and so you need to charge for it differently? I would say, "Now that the proposals have become more extensive and include multiple scenarios for multiple vendors per project, doing the work for each takes significantly more time. Typically I'm putting in about X hours of work per project, so I need to bill these differently. What I propose is (fill in with what you propose charging).”

While I was in the waiting area a woman without a mask sat in the chair right next to me and it looked like she worked there because she had a big stack of paperwork that she was going through. I didn't want to ask or look too closely because she was so near to me and it made me nervous. I was trying to look away the whole time to limit exposure. Not sure that helps, but I was not sure what to do.

I was then escorted by the HR woman to the interview room down the hall. She had put on a mask and that made me feel better. The two owners, who were also in the interview, were definitely not on the same page. One of them had a mask on the whole time, but she was not wearing it properly. Her nose was popped out the top the whole time. The other owner had a mask on at first, but a few minutes in he took it off. The room was fairly big and we were far enough apart that I decided it was okay.

However, it was not big enough to account for what happened next. The man sneezed twice. He did not cover his face AT ALL the first time and made a sad attempt to sneeze into his elbow the second time. I was really disturbed by this but did not feel comfortable saying anything.

Otherwise, the interview went well and it seemed like my skills were a good fit for the job. I have decided that if I am offered the job, I will let them know how unsafe I felt during the interview and give them an ultimatum about implementing better precautions. It is bad enough to expose me and each other, but this is a healthcare-adjacent field. They work with some very sick people who need to be protected too. I considered reporting them, but the process for someone who wasn't an employee was unclear.

I do not need this job badly enough to not say something, and I honestly would not feel comfortable working there unless they made some changes. I think it's important enough for me to say something and risk not getting the job by appearing "difficult" and I hope my concerns might prompt changes for those already working there and clients. Do you have any suggestions on how to say these things to them if I am offered the job? If I am not, should I say something to them anyway?

I am disappointed in myself because I didn't do anything in the moment. I felt uncomfortable rocking the boat in an interview, but I hate having been kind of a doormat too.

I wouldn't take this job if it's offered, since you say you don’t need it. Even if you address your concerns and they promise to make changes, they've already shown you they're not taking safety seriously enough. It's unlikely that having already ignored months of public health warnings, they're going to dramatically overhaul things based on one person's complaint and then sustain those changes. It's very likely that no matter what they promise, they still won’t take it seriously enough. So if you only want a job that takes employee and patient safety seriously, this isn't that job.

But I do think you should say something, because they need to hear that people are bothered. One person's complaints may not matter to them, but if they hear it from multiple people, it has a chance of sinking in. Be one of those people.

If you're offered the job, you could say this: "I appreciate the offer. There's one big concern on my mind, which is the lack of safety precautions I saw when I was in your office. People weren't wearing masks or distancing — someone sat right next to me in the waiting room with no mask. My interviewer wasn’t wearing a mask and was sneezing while we were talking. Can I ask why your office isn’t complying with the CDC's guidelines for businesses?" … followed by, presumably, turning down the offer unless you hear something surprisingly reassuring (perhaps “we’d all been carbon monoxide poisoned that day, weren’t thinking clearly, and were horrified afterwards”).

If you're not offered the job, you could adapt that same language, framing it as, "I appreciate you getting back to me and wish you all the best with your new hire. Can I give you some feedback about the experience I had as a candidate?”

Alternately, you could withdraw from the process now and explain why. But there's potentially more opportunity to have an impact if you wait until they've decided they want to hire you and turn down their offer then. (Of course, you need to balance that with the fact that if you wait and they reject you, at that point anything you say will probably carry less weight. There's no way around that, though.)

Let’s also talk about what you could have done in the moment! It’s really common to feel uncomfortable rocking the boat in an interview. Lots of people feel that way! Something is happening that you didn't expect and which is clearly wrong, and it's hard to think of a way to address it on the fly that doesn't feel rude or awkward or confrontational, and you don't want to make a scene. That's especially true in job interviews, but it happens in all sorts of other situations too.

The best way to handle that is to be prepared with a few stock phrases ahead of time, so they're ready when you need them and you're not scrambling for wording in the moment. You can't always predict what weird situation will come up, but right now, during a pandemic, wherever you go it's smart to be ready to say things like:

“Could you back up a few feet to give us both more space?"
"I'm going to move my chair over here so there's more space between us.”
"Before we go on, would you mind adjusting your mask so it's covering your nose as well? I'm trying to be really careful.”
"Before we start, would you mind wearing a mask? I'm high-risk/live with someone who's high-risk/trying to be really careful. I'll of course keep one on myself too."
"Since there's not a lot of room for distancing in your reception area, I'm going to wait in the hallway — could you let Jane know I'm out here when she's ready?"
And if necessary: “I don’t feel safe staying here because your office is violating public safety guidelines, so I’m going to cut this short. Thank you for your time.”

Some of it too, though, is mental. It's the work of getting clear in your own mind that it's okay to assert yourself to protect your safety, even if it feels awkward or uncomfortable and even if it annoys someone else. Most of us know that in theory, but your brain will still often default to Don't Make A Scene until you take the time to really process what prioritizing your safety means ("it means I will say things like X or Y" and "it means I might create a moment of weirdness, and I'm okay with that").

I often think that I benefitted tremendously from an activism job I had in my 20s, where part of my job was literally to make scenes. To call attention to animal abuse, I disrupted large events by standing on chairs, shouting, and unfurling massive banners; I crashed private events dressed as a giant chicken; I tossed pies; I went naked in "rather go naked than wear fur" protests. Before every single one of these, I secretly panicked and felt like I was going to have a heart attack. It's scary to deliberately disrupt the social contract! We’ve been trained since childhood not to do it, and it took a lot of mental work to force myself to overcome all those instincts to Not Make A Scene. But doing it got me comfortable with causing a public spectacle — and as a result, "would you mind moving six feet back?" seems a lot easier.

I'm not suggesting that everyone experiment with public disruptions (although if you can tie it to a good cause, I endorse it). But I do think there's value in thinking about how wired we are to be polite, and how much our brains resist causing those record-scratch moments, and how much that does or doesn't serve us as we navigate life. It's really useful to do the mental work to get comfortable with discomfort — to be okay with being the one to cause a stink in the service of a greater good, and to embrace and honor those acts of discomfort because they're about who we are and what we want to stand for.

That might feel like a lot for a question about a frustrating interview. But I think it's right for this moment.

Rapitful Shqip

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