Ask a Manager

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

1. We can’t have couches anymore

I work as a staff member at a college. The other day, the HR director told us he is getting rid of all of the couches around administrative offices and lobbies. When asked why, he said, “Title IX. We want people to remain upright.”

I have no idea what this means. I have never had a student or colleague try to lay down on these 3.5-foot couches. I looked briefly at Title IX documentation, but could not find anything on seating. These campus-approved couches are utilitarian at best: uncomfortable, wrapped in ugly, fire-retardant patterns and just long enough to fit two people reasonably without touching. They are in glass-walled, visible offices and public waiting areas. We were told the two-person couches would be replaced with two chairs instead. Which would be right next to each other.

I am not sure what could happen on a couch — hanky panky? Or unwanted touching? Do you have any thoughts on whether “Title IX” is a reason to remove couches? I don’t really care what people sit on while they are waiting to meet with administrators, I just want to know if this absurd reason is actually real.

Title IX is the law that makes it illegal to discriminate on the basis of sex, which can include sexual harassment and sexual coercion. Your HR director is saying, “We don’t want to make it easy for sexual contact to occur in our work settings, and we think the presence of couches may do that.”

It’s a bit silly to think that someone who wants to have sex in an office would require a couch to do it, but that’s what he’s referencing. And I wouldn’t be surprised if there was An Incident that led to the change — but if there was, it’s pretty likely that it would have happened with or without the presence of a couch.

2. Coworker offered to use food stamps for our holiday party

During the lead-up to our holiday party, a younger coworker offered to use their extra food stamps to get food for the team. They explained that they weren’t planning to use the stamps for themselves and wanted to contribute to the celebration. They went around and asked everyone for their requests.

While their offer was generous and clearly well-intentioned, it made some of my coworkers uncomfortable. No one knew quite how to navigate this. Some were unsure if it was appropriate to accept, given the purpose of food stamps. Others didn’t want to hurt the coworker’s feelings by declining.

It was a one-time occurrence, and I’d love your thoughts on how you would have navigated this as a coworker. It doesn’t feel right to escalate it to HR and even saying something to this employee, I believe, would cause them to feel a ton of shame and embarrassment.

You’re right that it wouldn’t be appropriate to use food stamps to fund a company party — and it would violate the terms of the benefit.

So: “You’re kind to offer, but we couldn’t accept that.” Or, “You’re kind to offer, but I don’t think they’re allowed to be transferred so we couldn’t accept that.”

3. We can’t use holiday party leave to do axe-throwing as a group

My manager is a good guy but a bit of a pushover. We are at an office with very few perks, but every year at the holidays we are allowed half a day of leave to attend an office holiday party.

This year my boss asked us if we would be interested in going to a local axe-throwing place (and paying our own way) during the workday as an office party. It is not mandatory, but we would be allowed to charge our “holiday party leave” time to attend. A sufficient number of people were interested so the party was booked.

Now my boss’s boss has told us we can still attend the party but we would have to charge PTO as we are going someplace with “weapons” involved. As far as I know, this isn’t an office-wide policy, she just made it up this year for this particular event. She also complained that she wouldn’t be able to attend the party anyway because someone has to be in the office.

We are all pretty bummed, but the bigger implication is she is just arbitrarily taking away our job benefits and we don’t think it’s fair. Do we have any recourse here? Should we throw axes in defiance of her edict?

Eh. I see why it grates, but it’s also not inherently outrageous to say that the office won’t sponsor parties centered around weapons. And while you’re paying your own way, they’d be sponsoring it in the sense of giving you party leave to attend … which might be making her worried about issues of liability if something goes wrong. (Of course, something could just as easily go wrong if you went zip-lining or any number of the other off-site activities some offices choose. Axe-throwing just makes the risk feel more obvious.)

You can certainly try to push back as a group on this type of thing, but ultimately it’s her call to make.

4. How to end a conversation after giving negative feedback

I just gave some negative feedback to one of my direct reports, but I struggled with how to end the conversation. Basically, she failed to do a follow-up task as per procedure because she was too busy, and that resulted with some employees not getting a recognition in due time and in our org, those recognitions are very important. I told her it was unacceptable and to ask for help if she is overloaded. I was able to use an example of someone close to her to drive home the importance of not letting such things slip.

She apologized and accepted the feedback and after that I had no idea how to close the conversation. Yes, I was not happy but it was not a life-or-death situation and other then her agreeing not to do it again in the future, there was no reason for me to prolong the conversation beyond that. The exchange was happening on a Teams chat. I had to pull away for a few moments to deal with an email, but after that I was able to come up with this: “I understand that you’ve been very busy while Varys is absent, but I cannot take action to help you out if I am not aware of what is going on. What is important going forward is that this doesn’t happen again. I will send the scrolls to the Wall via Raven.”

Is there a general script that I can use to close such conversations? I didn’t want to harp on the issue but I didn’t want to close it by softening the message after she apologized with an “It’s ok” as I would if it was a minor issue.

You’re overthinking it! It’s enough to just say, “Thank you.”

When you’re delivering critical feedback, once it’s clear the person gets it (and, if relevant, is taking whatever action you need them to take), you don’t need to reiterate the message again … and in some cases, doing that can come across as berating them. In your mind you’re summing up the main takeaways, but to the person being criticized, hearing it repeated can feel like you’re hammering it in when they’ve already made it clear that they get it.

That’s not a hard and fast rule; sometimes something is so serious that reiterating it in a summary at the end makes sense. But in this case, it sounds like you were really just looking for a way to close the conversation, and “thank you” (or “I appreciate it” or “I think we’re on the same page now, so thank you” or “sounds good, thank you” or similar) is a perfectly fine (and lower key) way to do that.

Related:
how to criticize someone’s work without making it awkward

5. Why did this rejection bother to say the job was already slated for someone else?

I’ve been casually looking for a new job for the past year or more, and I encountered this line in what was otherwise a fairly standard “we’ll keep your info on file, please search our site for other positions” email response: “This role was specifically intended for transitioning one of our temporary contract employees into a full-time position at Company.”

Is there a reason they would need to send this? I hadn’t interviewed or anything so it felt odd that they went into detail like that. I’ve certainly gotten enough “thanks, we’re going a different direction” messages that this one stuck out.

Transparency! They didn’t have to offer it, but they did. They’re letting you know that the rejection wasn’t about your qualifications, but simply that they’d already selected someone for the position. (And yes, it’s a problem that they even bothered to post the job if people didn’t have a real shot at it, but some companies’ internal rules require them to do that … even though this is very much not in the spirit of said rule.)

I’m on vacation. Here are some past letters that I’m making new again, rather than leaving them to wilt in the archives.

1. My coworker is wearing jewelry that signifies a dominant/submissive relationship

I recently realized that one of my coworkers wears D/s jewelry every day. (Funny enough, I wouldn’t have recognized it had I not been a devout reader of your blog and read the letter from the person asking about wearing a collar to work!) Now that I’ve noticed the jewelry, I feel like I can’t un-notice it. I’m all for people living their own best lives, but overt sexuality at work makes me incredibly uncomfortable. (Can I blame my Catholic upbringing? Because I’d really like to blame my Catholic upbringing.) I work with this person regularly and am on friendly terms with them. We don’t discuss our personal lives with each other, so I would feel weird bringing up the issue of the jewelry. While we both work for a children-focused nonprofit, my coworker doesn’t interact with the public in any way. I think my concern is too petty and intrusive to bring to HR. Any tips on how to “get over“ the discomfort?

You’re right that it’s definitely not something you should bring up with HR or raise with your coworker.

I don’t know exactly what the piece of jewelry is, but there’s no guarantee that she’s wearing it to signify a dominant/submissive relationship! That stuff isn’t exclusively for D/s relationships, so it’s possible she just saw it and liked it. In fact, there were a bunch of commenters on that previous letter saying they owned similar jewelry with no symbolism attached.

So to get over your discomfort, why not decide that’s likely the case here? There’s a decent chance it really is and that your coworker would be horrified (or just amused) to find out how you’re interpreting it.

– 2019

2. My coworker keeps telling people she’s my boss

I’ve worked on a small team in a large company for about ten years. I have two peers — same pay grade but different functional work — one of whom started after me, who I’ll call Jack, and one of whom has been there about 20 years, who I’ll call Jill. We have together been through a half dozen bosses.

Both Jill and I have been encouraged to take the manager of the team position as our bosses have left, and both of us have repeatedly declined. I like the career I have and have no interest in converting to management. Jill seems to want the authority of being the manager without any of the responsibility. She frequently tries to assign work to Jack and me, repeatedly directly tells people inside and outside the company that we are her employees (in front of our current boss), and scolded our current boss because he “needs to clear changes to team assignments” with her first — which he immediately made clear to her that he does not need to do, as he is the boss.

So far, I have simply ignored this, since I work at a different site and don’t see most of it directly, but I’m starting to run into issues because she’s told this lie to so many people that there is confusion among some vendors and the teams we work with, especially since we do change bosses frequently. Our current boss has called her out when she claims Jack and I are her employees, and she claims she “misspoke” or that our boss or other hearers “misunderstood,” so talking to her directly isn’t terribly productive.

Is this something I should keep mostly ignoring and just correcting with individuals as needed? Given that she won’t own up to the fact she is doing this, I can’t think of any way to say, “Knock it off. If you want to be the boss, then take the job next time it comes up!” What do I say to someone when they have been directly told by Jill that she is my boss, and I have to correct that lie?

It’s bizarre that she’s doing this in front of your boss, who would obviously know the truth.

I think you do need to call it out directly, both on principle and because it’s causing confusion. It doesn’t matter that she’ll deny it; there’s value in calling it out and making it clear to her that you’re not going to tolerate it. You also don’t need to prove that she’s doing it in order to be able to speak up. It’s come up enough that you can safely say this to her: “Jill, why are you continuing to tell people that you’re my manager?” If she says she hasn’t and that people just misunderstood, then say this: “It’s happening frequently enough that if it’s a misunderstanding, it’s being caused by something you said. But to make sure we’re all on the same page, you’re clear that you’re not in fact my boss and that we’re peers, right?” Assuming she says yes, then say, “Okay. I’ll assume there won’t be further misunderstandings, but if there are, I’m going to ask (boss) to intervene.”

Or you could skip that last part and go straight to your boss now, which would be more than reasonable.

When you need to correct the facts with someone who’s been told Jill is your boss, you can just be matter-of-fact about it — “No, that must have been a miscommunication! Jill and I are peers. I report to Fergus.”

– 2017

3. My mentor got fired and now I’m questioning what she taught me

I started a new job in payroll last July and on my first day got paired up with Jane, a current employee. Jane had been handling most of my job for a few months and also had years of experience with payroll even though she was in a different department here. At the time, Jane was presented as an excellent resource for me to find out about the job and the company as a whole. We even were given an office to share, so she would be readily available to answer any questions that I had. We had many long conversations about her experience and opinions of the company and her input really shaped my impression of my job.

Six months after I started, Jane was fired. Since then, I have heard snide remarks about Jane from others in her department that she was not a good employee.

I have not been able to reconcile the first six months of working with Jane with this new information. Even though I didn’t take all of her advice, I did listen to everything she told me and believed much of it because of her experience. For instance, she told me a particular manager was terrible at his job (a position that she had before), yet I have heard positive feedback about him from others now. Should I forget everything that Jane told me? How should I filter out the good from the bad?

Do what you would do if you’d never had those in-depth conversations with Jane: form your own impressions, based on your own experiences with people, and reserve judgment about people you don’t work with yourself.

It’s possible that Jane’s impressions were all pretty right on. It’s also possible that they were way off, or somewhere in between. You’ll probably have a better idea of how you rate her accuracy once you start forming your own impressions and can check how well they line up with what she told you. You might find you come to similar conclusions, or really different ones. Stay open-minded and see what happens.

One thing to think about though: If Jane was very quick to share negative opinions about others when you started, that’s actually a strike against her. People with good judgment usually don’t rush to dump negativity onto a new hire and will be more discreet. So if looking back, that’s what happened, I’d bring some additional skepticism to bear.

– 2019

4. My VP insists on leaving papers in my chair instead of my inbox

I’m the admin for a team of four in a large company. It’s an okay job and I’m an okay admin. It’s a step back for me but I need the money. We have a new VP who insists on leaving paperwork for me on my seat. This is a major pet peeve of mine. I have an inbox on my desk for a reason. I’ve told the new VP this several times but he refuses to use the box. He says he doesn’t want his work to be missed. I put his papers in the box, on the bottom. However I’m tempted to start chucking them out. An I overreacting or is he being rude?

You are overreacting. Yes, ideally he’d comply with your request — but ultimately, as someone higher in the hierarchy than you, he can decide how he wants to do this. And who knows, maybe he works with other people who prefer urgent stuff go on their chair so they see it right away, and it’s not reasonable to expect him to track the inbox vs. chair preferences of everyone he works with. Or maybe it’s not that at all; maybe this is just his preference. It’s just not a big deal either way.

And it’s definitely not a big enough deal for you to expend energy or capital on it. Pick up the papers, put them in your inbox, done. (And frankly, rather than sticking them in the bottom of the box, you should look at them to see how they need to be prioritized. You’ve got to prioritize doing your job well over getting petty payback to him.)

I think you’re choosing to see this as some kind of power play. It’s not; it’s just a thing some people do. Let it go.

– 2019