Ask a Manager

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

1. My boss sent me a message urging me to follow Jesus

My boss sent me this after I quit: “Good morning Jane! I wasn’t working on your last day and didn’t get a chance to thank you for your time with us. I sure appreciate you staying your last few weeks! With an employee/boss relationship I am limited on things I can talk about. Well … I am not your boss anymore. I am someone who cares very much about you. I pray for you quite regularly. I know by the messages you have on your vehicle that you might not think that matters. Oh Jane, it does. Satan is real; so very real. I know you have studied about Him and now seem to be inviting him to be Lord of your life. I beg you, Jane; please spend some time studying who Jesus is before you make your final decision. I was 44 years old when I decided to follow Jesus. Best decision I ever made. Eternity is a guarantee for all of us. I truly want you to be a part of mine.”

I never responded. I don’t believe in God and have a hail Satan stickers on my car along with BLM, pro-choice, and pride stickers. She is very Republican and I know she’s religious from casual conversations we’ve had at work. And she also knows that I’m not a fan of mainstream religion from the same conversations. Those conversations have never crossed the line before, but I feel like this really crosses the line. I want to call her out but, she’s a year away from retirement and I don’t want her to get fired when she’s that close. I would feel bad but I don’t know what to do or if I should do anything.

This is wildly inappropriate and it didn’t become okay just because you no longer work for her. Aside from the fundamental obnoxiousness of proselytizing to someone who has never invited it, you’re dependent on her for references so there’s still a power dynamic, and I suspect your former employer would be very unhappy to know your old boss is sending messages like this to people who worked for her.

It’s so inappropriate that I would indeed report it to your former HR department, with a note saying, “I’m especially concerned because I’ll be depending on Jane for a good reference in the future” just in case they don’t connect those dots themselves.

She’s highly unlikely to be fired (rather than warned) over this, unless she’s already been warned not to do it previously (in which case, firing would be a reasonable outcome).

2. My coworker reported me to HR for saying “data Nazi”

I’m a data science manager working in a tech company. I jokingly used the phrase “Data Nazi” in a Slack message in a private team channel. 20 minutes later, I got a slack DM from HR, letting me know that she got some feedback about me that I probably would prefer to get ASAP.

I appreciate the callout and I would like to be more sensitive. However, this also makes me very uncomfortable. My partner is Jewish, our children are half Jewish. I was in a conversation with another person in my company with a higher title than me. He used the exact same phrase. (The particular person happens to be Jewish as well.) I don’t have any ill intentions. Personally, I care about people’s intentions. I don’t get upset or report to HR for things like this. I understand that everyone is different.

I have a hunch about who this person is. This person is certainly on my team. I want to treat everybody on my team fairly and I don’t want this incident to affect my relationship with them. I find it hard to overcome how I feel though.

Try to let it go. It’s a phrase that a lot of people find offensive. Yes, the person who reported it to HR should have just talked to you directly instead, but for whatever reason they didn’t. Maybe they struggle with uncomfortable conversations, maybe they’ve had bad experiences addressing this kind of thing in the past, maybe they had reason to think you wouldn’t be receptive, maybe it’s the fifth offensive thing they’ve heard at work this week and they’re fed up — who knows.

But now you know it bothers someone on your team, so you can avoid using it. That’s all it needs to be. You can choose to turn it into something, but you can also choose to simply accept the correction and leave it there. The second one is better for your quality of life.

(For what it’s worth, avoid the whole “a Jewish person was fine with it” thing — no one Jew speaks for the rest of us, and it’s basically a tenet of Judaism that we have a bunch of different opinions on things.)

3. My coworker’s inattention to detail impacts my work

I work in tech in a QA role. Most of my job is checking work that others have completed, making sure that it is fully complete and without error. My team is cross-functional and I am the most junior person. We use a work tracking system to define and assign work; by the time work is assigned, business has spelled out the requirements pretty specifically and developers have had multiple opportunities to ask questions and make sure that they understand what they are being asked to do.

One of the devs I work with consistently skips half the pieces in his assigned work. For example, if he was supposed to do A, B, C, D, and E (and he previously agreed that this was a reasonable amount of work to be done in this time period and acknowledged that he did not have any questions about it); he’ll do A and C, then tell me the whole thing is done. I’ll come back and tell him that B, D, and E aren’t done yet, and it takes some back and forth before he sees what I mean. Sometimes we even go through a third round of this. It’s an inefficient use of both of our time and I’m not sure how to bring it up or who to bring it up with.

The work that gets done is done well, he’s a nice guy, and I’ve only picked up on animosity in some specific and particularly stressful situations. I’ve also noticed he tends to be inattentive in meetings. I find myself wondering if it’s purely inattentiveness, lack of attention to detail, or if he has difficulties understanding written and verbal communication. Whatever it is, it affects my work and I don’t know how to handle it.

Talk to your boss.

In theory, you could try handling it yourself first. For example, the next time you need to have two or three rounds of “it’s not done”/“yes, it is”/“no, it’s not,” you could ask your coworker whether there was something the two of you can do differently so that it doesn’t keep happening. That can be a polite way to point out that there’s a pattern, it’s a problem, and something needs to change. But this sounds like a big enough issue with his work that I don’t think you’re positioned to handle it on your end, especially as the most junior person on the team. Instead, talk to your boss, explain it keeps happening and what impact it’s having on your work, and ask for her advice on how to handle it. (You do want her advice if she has any, but you mostly want to being this to her attention so she can intervene and asking for advice can be a good way of doing that.)

4. The horrors of an artisanal shop

Could anyone who works in a small boutique selling gorgeous clothes, trinkets, or lovely fripperies tell me what to do when you go into an artisan-type shop, take one look at the hand-carved llamas or llama wool shawls on display (or the attached high-dollar price tag), and think, “Oops, not going to buy in here”? What is the most graceful and face-saving way of rapidly exiting this kind of quiet artisan store?

I have an excess of polite apologetic-ness (being a stereotypical Canadian from the Maritimes perhaps?) and it kills me to leave a store without showing polite interest in the four stained glass mallards or tie-dyed tea cozies because it seems too rude to walk in, look around, go “Nope!”and stride out again.

Do shop owners or assistants prefer the politeness band-aid being ripped off with a swift exit as soon as possible, or is there a benefit to the chit chatters who they know won’t buy anything? Why does this tie me up in knots and am I alone in this feeling?

Shop owners/employees are used to people coming in, realizing the store isn’t for them, and quickly exiting! It’s a normal thing. You can just cheerfully say “thank you!” on your way out the door — that’s all you need to do. You do not need to hang around and make chit chat to be polite, and most shop workers don’t want you to chat with them out of a sense of obligation before you feel you’re allowed to leave.

Readers who have worked in this type of boutique, would you like to weigh in?

5. Should I be setting goals?

A lot of your questions/answers involve employees having goals and managers helping or hindering them from being achieved. Should I be setting goals? How do I identify what goals to set? Overall I just don’t know how to set professional goals, or what it means.

If you’re managing people, you should indeed be setting goals, for them individually and for your team as a whole. Goals are what describe what a successful year (or quarter, or whatever period you use) would look like — so that you and your employees are on the same page about exactly what they’re expected to achieve and what success would look like. (But not just any goals. They should be measurable, outcome-based (not activity-based), and specific enough that you can both agree on whether they’ve been met or not, and should represent meaningful progress. SMART goals — look it up! you’ll find tons of resources — are a popular model organizations use.)

If you’re not a manager and your organization doesn’t use formal goals, you don’t need to start doing it. But a lot of people find it a helpful tool to get aligned with their boss about what their priorities should be and what success will (and won’t) look like.

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

1. My coworker saves hair

My coworker has a lot of odd quirks and strange things that she does in general. I’m incredibly bothered by one thing she does and am wondering if it’s as disgusting as I think? My coworker saves her hair anytime a strand falls out. I found out because one day when I looked her way I saw her taping a strand of hair to the side of her desk. Apparently she saves the hair and donates it. Normally I think donating is great, I think most people though go get their hair cut and donate it then. I looked one day while she wasn’t at her desk and found she essentially has a wall of hair taped to the side of her desk. Is this okay for the office and I need to get over it or is this gross and she should leave this activity for home?

This is strange and gross and she should not do this at work … but it also doesn’t rise to the level of something you have standing to intervene on. All you can really do is save it as an amazing story that you’ll forever be able to use to one-up your friends when they talk about their coworkers.

(Also, I am skeptical that she can really donate it — places that accept hair donations usually have stricter requirements than “a bunch of random hairs that I shed” — but who knows. Maybe that’s her cover story and she’s really collecting it all so no one can make a voodoo doll from it.)

Related (sort of): someone is leaving their fingernail clippings in my desk

2. Was I wrong to say I was glad to have time to figure out if a job was a good fit?

I was recently promoted to interim manager over my department. I had applied for the position but they decided to make me interim for 90 days while they decide if I’m the right fit. There are a couple of reasons: (1) We didn’t have a good pool of candidates and (2) on paper, I don’t have the credentials they are looking for and I don’t think my interview went as well as I would have liked to show my experience. I appreciate so much that they know me and have faith I can do this and are giving me the opportunity to try it out.

In a recent conversation with my grandboss, I made a comment about how much I appreciate this opportunity and that it also gives me the time to see if it is a good fit for me as well. It got back to me that she found this a bit offensive. I think she just wanted me to be grateful. I’m not super concerned as I have a great relationship with my direct boss (and she thinks grandboss already forgot) but I wanted your take on it. Is that an entitled attitude? I think it is normal to figure out if it is a good fit for the candidate as well but I know she is somewhat old school.

No, you don’t have an entitled attitude! Her attitude is the problem — you should just be grateful for the opportunity and not think critically about whether the job is the right fit for you? She should want you to be thinking critically about that — and if she’s not ready to commit to you for the job, it’s a bit much that she thinks you should be certain about it yourself. (I don’t mean that in an “if they aren’t sure they want me, why should I want them?” way, but rather that she clearly has some hesitations, so why wouldn’t it be okay for you to have your own questions about it too?) I’d rather hire someone who comes in well aware that a job could be a stretch than someone who just assumes their success is guaranteed.

3. Applying for a job with an enormous salary range

I’m currently employed but looking for new opportunities. My current salary is $125,000, and to take a new job I would need at least something in that general vicinity.

I recently applied for a job that included a very wide salary range in the position description. For simplicity’s sake, let’s say the range was $80,000-$140,000.

After two rounds of interviews and a reference check, they offer me the job at $105,000. I told the manager that the salary was less than I was hoping for and asked if there was any room for negotiation. Turns out the salary offer was firm, but they could offer a $5,000 signing bonus. Obviously I had to decline the position.

Had I known that the actual salary for the position was $105,000, I never would have applied in the first place, so I feel like I wasted everyone’s time, including my own. Is there anyway I could have figured this out earlier in the process? I have always heard that you shouldn’t talk about money and benefits until you have an offer. But that seems really inefficient.

It is indeed incredibly inefficient, and fortunately it’s changing / has changed. When you see a wide range like that, assume it’s possible that you could be offered the low end of it (in some cases because they’re listing the full salary band for the role even though they always start people at the low end, or sometimes because the higher end is only for unicorns, or sometimes because they have criteria for who lands where that they haven’t bothered to share). If part of the range would be a deal-breaker for you, ask about it early on (even as early as a phone screen). You can say it this way: “I saw you listed a range of $80,000-$140,000. I’d be looking for the higher end of the range — over $X — and wanted to make sure it makes sense to to move forward.”

4. Ghosted by a company that invited me to apply

I was recently invited to apply for a new position at a company I worked for 10 years ago. I left on good terms and am friendly with former colleagues – social media, chat when we run into each other in town, etc. I was interviewed by two of these friendly former colleagues who are now managers. I didn’t get the job, which is fine.

However, they ghosted me. I determined they had chosen another candidate based on the time that passed. Given the circumstances – they reached out to me – and the fact that I’m friendly with these people, I’m annoyed about being ghosted. I expected a polite “thanks for your time, we went another direction” email at a minimum. Am I out of line to be irritated about being ghosted? I could use an outside perspective. The ghosting makes me think I don’t want to work for their department in any capacity in the future.

No, you’re not out of line. Ghosting is rude when companies do it to candidates they have no history with (common, but still rude). Doing it in a situation like this, where they know you, have worked with you before, and asked you to apply, is even ruder.

However, a caveat: You’ve determined they ghosted you based on the amount of time that’s passed. But if you haven’t seen a hire announced, it’s possible you haven’t been ghosted but the process is taking a lot longer than expected or is on hold. They should still update you (and that goes double if you’ve contacted them and been ignored) but you can’t be sure they’ve chosen someone else. If you haven’t already contacted them to ask for an update, you should.