Ask a Manager

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

1. Can I report my coworker’s drunken, racist aggression outside of work?

This past weekend, after a Saturday work event, a coworker invited me out for lunch and a few drinks to celebrate a job well done. We made a call to another coworker who lived in the area to join us. She said she would be joining with one of our out-of-country coworkers, Fergus, who was in-country on a work trip and looking to socialize. None of us is a fan of Fergus as we find him annoying (long overshares about his fraught divorce, a general negative outlook), but our impression of him was that he was harmless, just unpleasant.

During the lunch, Fergus was really throwing back the drinks. He became distracted by a few men at the table next to us, and joined their conversation, which they initially seemed to welcome. My coworkers and I enjoyed catching up in his absence.

After a time, one of the men came over to our table and said, “The time has come, you need to take your friend back. You need to get him out of here.” On further inquiring, we learned that, after becoming very drunk, Fergus had made an offensive comment about one of the men’s wives, asking how he could, as a black African man, be married to a white woman. (Fergus is a white African.) The man did not take kindly to this and put an end to their conversation.

On hearing this, my coworkers and I quickly paid our bill and tried to corral Fergus away and convince him to leave the restaurant. This proved difficult, as again and again he kept walking back to the men to try to apologize. They made it clear they did not want to hear it, they just wanted him to leave. I reiterated this to Fergus, saying, “We need to go. They’ve told us they want us to leave this here, so we need to leave it here.” He then turned on me, angrily called me the c-word, and said that I don’t understand because I am not African and it is in their culture to make things right, and I am a Trump American who will never understand their culture. He also said he wanted to kill me, and then find my husband and kill him. I took this calmly as we needed to leave the restaurant, and you can’t reason with a drunk person, but this malice really shook me. (Also, not that it matters as he was being ridiculous, but I am not aligned politically with Trump at all, and he knows this).

We thankfully made it out of the restaurant, where one of our coworkers took him back to her place to sober up before she felt he could reasonably take a taxi back to his hotel without harassing the driver. I received a text from him the next day apologizing for his appalling behavior and asking for forgiveness. I replied that I was thankful for the apology and glad to hear he made it home safely.

Now we are back at the office after the weekend, and I want nothing to do with him. I’ve heard him all morning walking down to my office to try and make right, and I’ve managed to avoid him so far. I will never spend time outside of work with him ever again, but I’m not sure how to proceed from here. Is this something that HR can take up? I don’t want to tank a person’s career over a drunk mistake, but this felt like more than that to me. He has really soured our working relationship. It all happened outside of work so I’m unsure of my options. I didn’t take his comments and threats to be real, but regardless, they were ugly.

For context, we are located outside of the United States.

I can’t speak to norms and laws outside the U.S. so this advice is necessarily from within my own cultural frame of reference (as is always the case) but: yes, talk to HR! Their purview doesn’t stop just because this happened outside of work; if you harass a coworker on your own time, it’s still harassment that your employer has a right to be interested in stopping.

And this wasn’t just “oh, a coworker got a little drunk and rowdy.” This was someone making racist comments, calling you an obscene slur, and threatening to kill you and your husband (!). This is way, way behind needing to give him any benefit of the doubt or worrying about what the consequences to him might be. (If anything, worry about what could happen if he’s allowed to keep behaving this way without some kind of official intervention.)

If this was a one-time, out-of-character incident for Fergus (which I very much doubt), he’s free to explain that to HR. You don’t need to sort through what the appropriate consequences are; you just need to let them know it happened and assume they will take it from there.

If Fergus does approach you to try to “make it right,” you should feel free to tell him (ideally in writing, with HR cc’d) that you don’t want to discuss it further with him and that the contact is unwelcome and needs to stop.

2. We get bonuses for more dangerous work — are we unethical if we spread it around?

I work in a medical setting. Four or five times a week, we have to handle patients who have serious and infectious diseases. While we of course have safety precautions in place, there’s still a risk. So every time we do, we can claim a $10 allowance — with a catch. We may only claim it once per day.

So if a patient in this category comes in and has to be moved three separate times and I do it all three times, I still only get $10.

So I might say to my colleague Bob, “Hey I’ve already claimed my 10 bucks, when the call comes through, you should do the next move and claim yours” to spread the money around (any staff member can respond to any call). Bob in turn would let Carol know and she would take the next assignment and claim her allowance.

Is this ethical? We tend to do this very quietly and not draw management attention to it. We’re increasing the cost to the facility but also we’re reducing the risk for any one person, and the risk is the reason behind the allowance.

I’m hard-pressed to say it’s unethical — it’s the system that’s in place, and if they feel they’re paying out too much or people are taking advantage of it, they can revisit it.

The part that makes me a little uncomfortable is that you’re sort commodifying the patients themselves, who might feel weird knowing people are gaming out how they can make a bonus off of their infectious disease. (On the other hand, some patients might be delighted to help with that!) That makes it extra important to ensure you’re treating these patients with dignity and compassion and not losing sight of their humanity (important regardless, obviously) and that they’re not ever waiting a longer amount of time so Carol can show up even though Bob is right there and could otherwise do it. If it ever does build in a delay (for them or for another patient), that’s when I think it would cross over into unethical, because you’d be prioritizing the bonus above the person.

3. Too soon to brag about a new accomplishment?

I was recently selected to join a new advisory council initiative at my workplace that brings together different parts of the company so we can best work together. (I suspect I was the only person who applied to represent my role, two or three tops — so not a huge accolade.) I’m also low-key job searching right now.

My first question is how soon can I start listing this on my resume? We haven’t had our first meeting yet and might not for several weeks, by which point I definitely will have applied to a very promising position. It feels wrong to list it before we ever meet, but my friends say I’m too shy about showing off my accomplishments. And my second question is how to discuss this type of thing on applications. I would list it as a bullet point in my resume, right? Or wait to discuss it in an interview?

I wouldn’t put it on your resume until more has happened with it. If it’s on your resume, you may be asked about it, and you don’t want your answer to be, “Well, we haven’t done anything yet.” And just being appointed to it doesn’t really warrant using resume space (so far).

That said, if you ignore me and include it anyway, it’s not a huge problem! I’m just talking best practices here, not “a thing you must not do under any circumstances.”

4. My company wants to cut our pay retroactively

I’m in an industry hard hit by the federal cuts and our team just went through layoffs. I received a mass email from HR saying that we would be getting a pay cut retroactive to the beginning of the month (time worked but not yet paid). We were asked to send agreement via email ASAP as they were about to run payroll. A quick search of your site says a retroactive pay cut is not legal, but do you think the company successfully got around it by asking for agreement in writing?

Nope. Employers cannot cut your pay retroactively. They can cut it going forward — since then you have the chance to agree to work at that rate or to decline to (i.e., quit) — but they cannot reduce it after you’ve already done the work while thinking it was for your previously-agreed-upon rate. That doesn’t change just because they ask you to agree to it afterwards.

The way to handle it is to reply that you can agree to the cut going forward (if indeed you do agree to it) and then say, “But my understanding is that we can’t legally make it retroactive, even if people agree, and I don’t want us to get in trouble for that.” If they push back, the next move is to report it to your state department of labor. (That said, realistically that may put a target on your back at a time when they’re already cutting jobs, and I don’t want you to be unaware of that risk.)

5. Digital nomad visas

I am considering looking for a job that could be done remotely from anywhere and moving my family out of the U.S. using another country’s digital nomad visa (other country TBD). I was hoping some people may have done the same and would be willing to discuss experiences? I really trust your blog for advice.

Sure, I’m happy to throw this out to people with experience with digital nomad visas.

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

1. How to get someone to say what they want on Teams chat, not just say “hi”

I’m looking for a polite script to nip a problem in the bud. I started a new job today, and a colleague with whom I’ll be working closely just messaged me saying, “Hi.”

To find out this was all she said, I had to put in a long password to open the app, just to find nothing actionable. She still hasn’t sent me the information I need about where to meet tomorrow, so I guess she’s holding off until I reply “hi.” I really don’t want to encourage this kind of empty message leading to back and forths before getting to the point. I write friendly warm messages, but always with the request or information the other person needs in it, assuming they will respond when they can.

I don’t want to get off on the wrong foot and am looking for ways to respond that will stop this style of messaging which I literally don’t have time for!

Your first week on the job is not the time to fight that battle.

This behavior is annoying and inefficient; you’re not wrong! But you’re brand new and people don’t know anything about you and are trying to be friendly. It would be a very bad idea to make this a priority so early on, when you haven’t built relationships with people yet.

If it’s still happening a couple of months from now, by all means tell your coworker that it’s easier for you to respond quickly if she includes what she needs in the first message (if your understanding of the culture by that point indicates that would be fine to do; sample wording here), but not during week one.

2. Old boss told potential new boss my previous salary

This happened years ago, but I still wonder if there’s anything else I could’ve done.

Earlier in my career (religious nonprofit), I worked in the same organization as my husband (we did not report to one another; our first boss was cool with this). A new CEO (Good Old Boy #1) was hired when the old one retired, and he was NOT cool with this — he wanted one of us gone immediately, and made it clear that I (younger, female, earlier in my career) was the one.

I quickly found a new job in the same city, an excellent if slightly lateral move into a related religious nonprofit, headed by Good Old Boy #2.

Well, somehow GOB1 found out that I had been offered the job by GOB2, and he reached out and told GOB2 my salary! I found this out because, when entering the negotiation phase post-offer, GOB2 offered me that exact number because “GOB1 told me this is how much you make now, and as a smaller org, we can’t improve much on that” (not true).

WTF?!? As a highly desirable candidate for Job #2, I had serious leverage before GOB1 overshared. I’m certain that I lost as much as $50k over the next few years as a result. Anything else I could’ve done?

WTF indeed. Your boss was wildly out of line in sharing that info on your behalf.

All you really could have done at that point was to say something like, “I’m searching in part because I’m underpaid for the market and I’m looking for a range of $X in order to make a move.” But as with any negotiation, it would ultimately come down to who was more willing to walk away (or who each person believed was more willing to walk away).

3. Did I mess up by sending my new house listing to my team?

I have a question about what’s appropriate for managers to share with their direct reports, I think I’m overthinking it. After living in a small condo for 10 years, my partner and I just sold it and bought a new house (yay!). I am a manager of a seven-person team and we regularly share life updates with each other and celebrate personal wins (wedding gifts are purchased, virtual baby showers thrown, and all gifts flow downwards) so I didn’t think twice when I shared that I was planning to buy a new house, and my team expressed nothing but excitement.

Here’s where I potentially misstepped. I live in a smaller but popular metro city where median house prices are ~$500,000 – it’s expensive to live here! We purchased our new house for ~$100,000 more than the median. My team asked to see the listing and I happily shared it with them. But afterwards, I wondered if I shouldn’t have. I don’t make an insane amount of money more than those who report to me, and many of them also own homes, but was it too much to share that I bought what I perceive as a very expensive house? I’m honestly not sure how I could have got around it since my team directly asked to see the new place, but I wish I could have hidden the price somehow!

Well, if you could go back in time, I’d say to just send a couple of photos without the listing itself.

But what’s done is done and there’s no point in stressing about it. People probably will be interested in what you paid (which is always the case with real estate!) but they’re also presumably aware of housing prices in your area and won’t be taken aback/bothered unless your housing budget is significantly higher than theirs thanks to your partner and you’ve previously seemed out of touch to them in other ways. (Hopefully you haven’t been quizzing them on your horses and your vineyard!)

4. I put myself on a PIP — could that help me get a new job?

Last year was rough. Had a confluence of physical and mental health issues, a substance use problem, and stressful life issues all slam together. All combined, it affected my job performance to the point where I very nearly (and understandably) was fired. Up until that point, I had been one of my agency’s top performers.

When I saw the writing on the wall, I asked my supervisor to put me on a PIP.

And this PIP was honestly a lifesaver. Within a couple of months, I was back on track. The confidence I regained in my work and the trust I began to win back also gave me a lot of momentum to finally get help for all the personal issues I was dealing with: I got sober, I started seeing a therapist and a rockstar psychiatrist. I’m miles better than I was last year. And that’s translated into my performance; I’m even better at what I do.

I’m considering applying for a new job because I’m at a point in my career where I’d like to move up.

I’m wondering a couple things: is having ever been on a PIP a red flag to an employer (if they ever do learn I was for some reason)? And could I actually use experiences of turning things around on a PIP to my advantage in emphasizing my value? In other words, I won’t ignore a problem before it’s too late, I’ll do whatever I can to fix it, etc.

It’s definitely true that it reflects well on you that you recognized there was a problem and figured out what you needed to get back on track (and then did that), but it’s not something you should use in job interviews. There’s too much risk that interviewers will be concerned since they won’t want things to get to that point while you’re working for them, and they might wonder why you needed the external threat of consequences to fix things rather than doing it on your own. That’s not necessarily reasonable, but there are so many ways it could land, some of them not good, that it’s not a risk worth taking.

(Also, they’d be likely to ask about specifically what you changed to fix things, and sobriety and therapy aren’t things you want to be talking about during an interview, important as they have been to you!)

5. Being told you have to go from 40 hours/week to 56 hours/week

My sister has been working for a company for about a year. The job she was hired for is 40 hours a week, Monday through Friday. Today, her management team told her whole department that they would now be working 56 hours a week, Monday through Saturday. Is there anything she and her team can do about this?

They can push back as a group and say they’re unavailable and this isn’t what they signed on for. Ultimately, if the company won’t budge, it won’t budge, and so your sister and her coworkers will have to decide if they still want their jobs under those terms — but having multiple employees object and say “this won’t work for us and it’s not going to be possible” will carry a lot more weight and power than just one or two people saying it.

There’s also unionizing.

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

1. Should I speak up about an inappropriate song in children’s theater?

I’m a volunteer in a community theater production for young children between five and seven years old. Our current show involves a dance number that takes place in ancient Egypt, and there’s a recent change to the production that I feel uncomfortable with. The children were originally dancing to “Walk Like an Egyptian” by the Bangles, but then the coordinator changed it by “popular demand” to a different song called “Camel by Camel.” This decision on its own seems innocuous albeit strange. The song itself is alright, but I unfortunately know some outside context that gives me pause.

There’s a famous meme of a video game character dancing to this song. The video is explicitly pornographic, which was an important part of the appeal. Although there are family-friendly versions of the meme, the adult aspect is always associated with it, and this song is now associated with that adult aspect by proxy.

Something that eventually became part of the joke was that unsuspecting people (such as your grandma on Facebook) would share more appropriate parts of the meme saying, “Look at this adorable Egyptian cat I found!” And then all the grandkids would exchange glances wondering whether someone should break the news. This is what’s raising my eyebrows in particular, because I feel like if someone is making these kids dance to the song because of THAT, it’s a step too far, even if the children are completely unaware. The way the children are dancing is not the same suggestive way the character dances, although there is still clapping and hip-moving to the music.

The coordinator is a kindergarten teacher in her 50s, and I don’t think she’s aware of the context behind the song. It perhaps wouldn’t bother me if she had chosen it herself, but I don’t know what she meant by “popular demand.” The other volunteers are all either high school or college-aged, which makes me concerned if one of them suggested it.

Additionally, the parents in the audience will be Millennials and older Zoomers, who are more likely to know the meme. The last thing we need are complaints from parents because their five-year-old is dancing to THAT SONG.

Is there a professional way to broach this topic to an innocent old lady? Is there a way to ask how the decision to change the song came about? What if one of the other volunteers suggested it as an inside joke to make children dance to a porn song? Or am I perhaps making a problem out of nothing and should just keep it to myself?

Yes, speak up! If there’s a likelihood that some parents in the audience are going to know the meme and be upset, it’s far better for the teacher to hear that now than to be blindsided when parents are angry.

Just be straightforward! “I’m guessing you’re not aware of this, but using that song might seem wrong to some parents — it’s part of a very adult-oriented internet meme, and that’s a lot of people’s first association with the song. Enough people know about it that we risk complaints and I didn’t want you to be blindsided if that happens.” (Note that this language doesn’t get into trying to sort out who first suggested the song, since ultimately that’s not yours to sort out; you’re just alerting her that there is in fact an issue with it.)

Also, um, women in our fifties are not “innocent old ladies,” WTF. If she can’t handle this news, it’s not because of her age. (Although it does remind me of this.)

2. We’re feds with a coworker who won’t stop insisting everything is fine

I’m a fed. My office of less than 20 people has a director (who took the fork in the road deal), a deputy (who lives several states away from the rest of us), and two team managers, Arwen and Fergus. Fergus suffered an unimaginable personal tragedy less than six months ago. We all think this is why he can’t handle what’s happening now. (He may have also voted for this, so there’s that.) He’s constantly telling us that we’re blowing things out of proportion when we raise concerns about losing our jobs or other things that are happening. My manager, Arwen, has talked to him on more than one occasion, but he just doesn’t get it. Listening to him go on and on (unprompted!) about how we’re all going to keep our jobs and we have nothing to worry about makes us more anxious!

We’ll all be back in the office soon, and avoiding him is going to be harder. Arwen is my direct manager, so I’m shielded a little bit, but our teams are small and most of us do work for both teams. The deputy is not very hands-on about this stuff and will not be physically in our office. Is there any way to get through to him? Is there any way I can politely get out of conversations with him? We’re all at a loss.

Your manager, Arwen, is the one best positioned to handle this, and since she’s done it in the past, you have evidence that she shares your concern about it and is willing to address it — so you should go back to her and let her know that it’s still happening and it’s incredibly demoralizing at an already stressful time, and ask if she can tell him that he needs to cut it out for everyone’s mental health and ability to focus on their jobs.

That said, what would happen if you also addressed it in the moment when it’s happening? “It’s hard to navigate this with you denying it’s happening. If you’re not concerned about it yourself, please respect that the rest of us are” would be a reasonable thing to say.

Of course, it’s also true that if the rest of you are talking about it, Fergus is entitled to share his perspective, and so it likely makes sense to avoid raising it around him at all, to the extent that you can. But given that it’s affecting actual work, your ability to plan, etc., you presumably can’t avoid the topic with him entirely and you need him to be able to engage with reality for those conversations — and plus you said he’s doing this unprompted too.

Related:
I manage an employee who pushes too much positivity on her team

3. Who pays for coffee in informal business meetings?

Relatively minor question, but who pays for coffee in informal business meetings? Is it who is more senior, who makes more money, or who asked for the coffee?

The context is that it is common in my profession to work for a couple years and then go get your PhD. That is what I did, and I am currently in a well-regarded PhD program. Some people from my former organization have since gotten into the program and want to talk to me about my experience. So I’m technically more senior, but they asked for the coffee, and we both know that they make significantly more money than me. I’ve just been paying for myself, but am I committing a faux pas? Also, I don’t know if gender dynamics come into play at all.

The etiquette is that the person who asked for the coffee is supposed to pay for both of you; you are taking your time to do them a favor (letting them pick your brain) and so they cover your drink. That said, in situations where the person asking is, say, a 20-year-old college student, you might still cover it anyway because you more senior and clearly better paid. But they should come prepared to pay, and they should proceed as if they are paying until and unless you announce that you’re covering it. You don’t have that factor in your mix, though, so it’s just the standard rule — the person who invites the other and is requesting the favor pays.

You’re not committing a faux pas by paying for yourself, but it’s also fine to let them get it.

Gender doesn’t come into it at all.

Related:
who should pay at a networking coffee or lunch?

4. How can I keep track of what I’ll want to remember for future reference checks?

I manage three to six interns a year, which became part of my job about a year ago after having managed intermittently before then. So far, it’s been very easy to keep track of them; a potential employer for my first intern here just asked me for a call, and I feel confident that I remember enough about that intern’s strengths, weaknesses, etc. to give her a useful reference. But as a person with a fairly average memory and a lot on my plate in addition to one or two interns a semester, I imagine that it’s eventually going to get hard! What if she stays at that job for a few years and needs a reference after that, because I’ll still be one of her most recent bosses other than the one at her current job? That’s about 10 to 15 former interns at a time whom I might feasibly serve as a reference for and need to remember reasonably well!

I’d love to hear about common strategies people use to keep track of past interns, or past short-term employees more generally. Should I just write down everything I think I would want to say in a reference call around the end of an internship? Maybe I’ve answered my own question there, but I still think learning about how others do it would help me — my predecessor here had an obnoxiously good memory, so his “system” was just to remember everyone in detail.

I have an answer to this that kills two birds with one stone. (What a horrid expression, can we please come up with a better one? I went looking and saw someone suggest “feed two birds with one scone,” which I enjoy.)

At the end of each person’s internship, ideally you’d give them some feedback on how things went. As part of that, jot down some notes for yourself about what you saw as their strengths, areas where they should work on improving, feedback on big projects, etc. Meet with them as their internship is ending and talk through that feedback! That’s a big benefit to them; it’s the sort of feedback you should be providing anyway, and summing it all up can help them synthesize useful takeaways from the experience (and so often at that stage, they’re just figuring out what they’re all about as professionals and what they’re good at, so having someone talk it through with them can be hugely helpful). And then save those notes, because those will jog your memory when you’re asked to give them a reference later on.

Two birds, one scone!

5. Employee keeps working unpaid overtime and lies about it

A manager position below me is currently vacant, and so the team that person would normally manage doesn’t have a manager right now. We have a supervisor from a different team floating around occasionally for general supervision in their area.

I saw one of the employees on that team, Pam, working several hours past her normal finish time. (She is paid hourly.) As with previous occasions when she did this, I told her to stop working and go home. She insisted she had clocked out already and was simply staying behind to “help out” and didn’t want to be paid past her normal hours.

Since this wasn’t the first time we had this exact conversation, I called her aside for a meeting the next day. I explained she wasn’t allowed to work extra hours for free. Bizarrely, she flatly denied this ever happened. She claimed she properly reported and was paid for all overtime.

When I mentioned prior examples that proved otherwise, she gave nonsensical excuses for each occasion. This wasn’t an “oh, I see where you might have misunderstood” situation. She outright lied. As an example, she said the unpaid overtime she did a couple of weeks ago was because the roster was printed incorrectly and that she emailed payroll about it already and payroll responded. This … just didn’t happen. Both the alleged incorrect printing and the email with payroll. Also, she knows how to put through changes on the time sheet, and it is never, ever done by email.

I’m at a loss. We have dealt with employees faking time sheets by adding hours they never worked. We never had anyone illicitly trying to perform free labor. If this happens again, how should we deal with Pam?

You’ve got two big problems here (and sadly, no scone): first, Pam is exposing your company to legal liability if you don’t pay her for all the hours she works, whether she reports them or not. Second, Pam apparently tells bizarrely flagrant lies.

At a minimum, you should tell Pam that working unreported hours is a fireable offense, that this is her final warning, and that if it happens again you will need to let her go. That part is simple. But beyond that, I’d start poking around in Pam’s work more deeply, because the lying is weird enough that it’s very, very likely that there are other significant problems in her work that you’ll uncover if you start looking for them. Every time I’ve seen someone lie in this way, it’s been the tip of the iceberg.